New York: Macmillan, 1905
[first published, Saturday Evening Post, 1905;
Copy-text: the book version as edited by Herrick:
Cambridge: Harvard, 1963, edited by Daniel Aaron,
ISBN 674-56501-0]
TO WILL PAYNE
[Chicago critic William Morton Payne, 1858-1919]
"O Commander of the Faithful," said the other, "shall I tell thee what I have seen with my eyes or what I have only heard tell?"
"If thou hast seen aught worth telling," replied the Khalif, "let us hear it: for report is not like eye-witness."
"O Commander of the Faithful," said the other, "lend me thine ear and thine heart."
"O Ibn Mensour," answered the Khalif, "behold I am listening to thee with mine ears, and looking at thee with mine eyes, and attending to thee with mine heart."
I sleep out -- A companion -- Hunting a job -- Free lunch and a bad friend -- Steele's store and what happened there -- A positive young woman -- Number twelve
IT was a raw, blustering September night when I rounded up for the first time at the lake front in Chicago. There was just a strip of waste land, in those days, between the great avenue and the railroad tracks that skirted the lake. In 1876 there were no large hotels or skyscrapers fronting a tidy park; nothing but some wooden or brick houses, and, across the tracks, the waves lapped away at the railroad embankment. I was something more than twenty, old enough, at any rate, to have earned a better bed than a few feet of sand and sooty grass in a vacant lot. It was the first night I had ever slept out,--at least, because there was no place I had a right to go to. All that day I had been on the tramp from Indiana, and reached the city with only a few cents in my pockets.
I was not the only homeless wanderer by any means. Early in the evening a lot of bums began to drop in, slinking down the avenue or coming over from the city through the cross streets. It was early in the season; but to-night the east wind raked the park and shook gusts of rain from the low clouds, making it comfortable to keep moving. So we wandered up and down that sandy strip, footing it like dogs on the hunt for a hole, and eying each other gloomily when we passed.
Early in the evening a big wooden building at the north end was lighted up, and some of us gathered around the windows and hung there under the eaves watching the carriages drive up to the door to leave their freight. There was a concert in the hall, and after it began I crawled up into the arch of a window where I was out of the rain and could hear the music. Before the concert was over a watchman caught sight of me and snaked me to the ground. He was making a round of the building, stirring up the bums who had found any hole out of the reach of the wind. So we began once more that dreary, purposeless tramp to keep from freezing.
"Kind of chilly!" a young fellow called out to me.
"Chillier before morning, all right," I growled back, glad enough to hear a voice speaking to me as if it expected an answer.
"First night?" he inquired, coming up close to me in a friendly way. "'Tain't so bad--when it's warm and the wind don't blow."
We walked on together slowly, as though we were looking for something. When we came under the light of the lamps in the avenue we eyed each other. My tramp companion was a stout, honest-looking young fellow about my age. His loose-fitting black clothes and collarless shirt made me think that he too had come from the country recently.
"Been farming?" I ventured.
"Pine Lake, across there in Michigan that's where I come from. Hostetter, Ed Hostetter, that's my name."
We faced about and headed toward the lake without any purpose. He told me his story while we dragged ourselves back and forth along the high board fence that guarded the railroad property. He had got tired of working on his father's farm for nothing and had struck out for the big city. Hostetter had a married aunt, so he told me, living somewhere in Chicago, and he had thought to stay with her until he could get a start on fortune's road. But she had moved from her old address, and his money had given out before he knew it. For the last week he had been wandering about the streets, hunting a job, and looking sharp for that aunt.
"We can't keep this up all night!" I observed when his story had run out.
"Last night I found an empty over there in the yards, but some of the railroad fellers got hold of me toward morning and made me jump high."
A couple of tramps were crouching low beside the fence just ahead of us. "Watch 'em!" my companion whispered.
Suddenly they burrowed down into the sand and disappeared. We could hear their steps on the other side of the fence; then a gruff voice In a few moments back they came, burrowing up from under the fence.
"That's what you get!" Ed grunted.
Well, in the end we had to make the best of it, and we camped right there, hugging the fence for protection against the east wind. We burrowed into the loose sand, piling it up on the open side until we were well covered. Now and then a train rushing past shook us awake with its heavy tread. Toward morning there were fewer trains, and though it began to mist pretty hard, and the water trickled into our hole, I managed to get some sleep.
At daylight we got up and shook ourselves, and then wandered miserably into the silent streets of the downtown district. Between us we had fifteen cents, and with that we got some coffee and a piece of bread at a little shanty stuck on the side of the river. A fat man with a greasy, pock-marked face served us, and I can see him now as he looked us over and winked to the policeman who was loafing in the joint.
After our coffee we began the hunt for an odd job, and Ed talked of his hopes of finding that aunt--Mrs. Pierson. We kept together because we were so lonesome, I suppose, and Ed was good company--jolly and happy-hearted. That night we slept on the back porch of an empty house 'way south, where the streets were broad, and there were little strips of green all about the houses. The owners of the large house we picked out must have been away for the summer. Toward morning we heard some one stirring around inside, opening and shutting doors, and we made up our minds there were thieves at work in the house.
Ed stayed to watch, while I ran out to the avenue to get some help. It was a long time before I could find a policeman, and when we got back to the house there was Hostetter sitting on the curbstone hugging his belly. One of the thieves had come out of the house the back way, and when Ed tried to hold him had given him such a kick that Ed was glad to let him go. The officer I had brought evidently thought we were playing some game on him or weren't quite straight ourselves, and he tried to take us to the station. We gave him a lively chase for a couple of blocks; the last we saw of him he was shaking his fist at us and cussing loud enough to wake the dead.
That day was much like the one before, only worse. The weather was mean and drizzly. I earned a quarter lugging a valise across the city, and we ate that up at breakfast. At noon we turned into one of the flashy saloons on State Street. We hoped to be overlooked in the crowd before the bar while we helped ourselves to the crackers and salt fish. We were making out pretty well when a man who was standing near the bar and drinking nothing spied us and came over to the lunch table.
"Wet day," he observed sociably.
"That's about it," I replied cautiously, looking the man over.
He wore a long black coat, a dirty light-colored waistcoat, and a silk hat, underneath which little brown curls sprouted out. He fed himself delicately out of the common bowl, as if the free lunch didn't tempt his appetite.
"Seeing the town?" he asked next, looking pointedly at Ed's dirty shoes.
"Some part of it, I reckon," Ed laughed.
"Looking for a job?"
"You bet we're looking!" Ed growled back. "Know where we can find it?"
Before long we were on easy terms with the stranger. He insisted on paying for beer all around, and on the strength of that Ed and I made another raid on a platter of beans. Dinner that night didn't look very promising.
"It seems to me I know of the very thing for you young fellers," our friend finally remarked, and we pricked up our ears.
He said he had a friend in one of the large stores on State Street, who had found fine places for some young men he had recommended. They were making big money now. Ed's eyes began to glisten. But suddenly another idea struck our good friend. He lowered his voice and drew us to one side. Would one of us like a fat job, where there wasn't much work except special times--a gay kind of place, where we could see something of life? Ed was pretty eager, but I rather suspected what he was after.
"I guess the other place is more what we want," I said.
"Ain't up to snuff just yet?" be giggled. "Wait a week or two, and you will be as quick as the next one." As we made no reply, and I was moving toward the door, he remarked:--
"Sure, it's stopped raining! Let's be moving up the street, and see what my friend can do for you."
So we started up State Street with the man in the silk hat. At the door of a big dry-goods store, where we had tried unsuccessfully that morning to obtain work, he remarked:--
"We'll just look in here. I know a man in the gents' underwear department, and p'r'aps he can help you."
I didn't think it very likely, for I hadn't much faith in our smooth acquaintance. But there was nothing better to do. So we all passed in through the heavy doors of Steele & Co.'s establishment. Even on that rainy afternoon the place was pretty well filled, mostly with women, who were bunched together at certain counters. We had some trouble in following our guide, who squirmed into the thick of every jam. I began to think that, having talked big to two green young fellows, he now wanted to give us the slip. But I determined, just to tease him, he shouldn't get out of our sight as easily as he thought to.
The "gents' underwear" department, as I happened to have observed in the morning, was on the State Street side, near the door which we had just entered. Nevertheless, our friend was leading us away from that part and seemed to prefer the most crowded aisles, where "ladies' goods" were displayed. At the glove counter there was a press of women who were trying to get near a heap of ninety-eight-cent gloves. Our guide was just ahead of us at this point, and near his elbow I noticed an old gentleman and a young lady. The latter, who was trying on a pair of gloves, kept asking the old gentleman a string of questions. He was smiling at her without taking the trouble to reply. The girl was pretty and nicely dressed, and I suppose I must have looked at her hard, for she suddenly glanced up at me and then turned her back and faced the counter. As she turned I noticed something white drop from her hand, and I pressed closer to her to pick it up. It was a little handkerchief. As I reached down I saw a thin hand stretch out around the young lady's waist and then give a little jerk. I had just straightened myself with the handkerchief in my fingers when I heard the young lady exclaim:--
"Father! My purse has gone!"
"Why, why!" the old man stammered. "Your purse has gone? Where could it have gone to?"
Just then some one grabbed my arm, and a voice said in my ear:--
"Not so slick as that, young feller!"
A man who looked like an official of the store had hold of me.
"Don't make any fuss, and hand over that lady's purse," he added in a low voice.
"I haven't got her purse. I was just going to give her this handkerchief, which I saw her drop," I protested, holding up the silly thing I had picked from the floor.
"That's all right," the man said with a grin. "And now hand over the purse, too."
He began to feel my pockets, and, of course, I resented his familiarity, and, like a country jake, kicked up a muss then and there. A crowd began to collect. The floor-manager rushed up at this point, and between them I was hustled across the store and into one of the private offices. The first thing I heard when I got there was the old gentleman just behind me, stuttering, too much excited to talk plain.
"Yes, yes, my daughter's purse! She just lost it!"
"That's all right," I said. "And I saw the fellow who took it. . . ."
"I saw this man take it," I heard the girl say to the manager.
"Yes, yes, my daughter saw the thief take her purse," the old man put in excitedly.
"I was watching him all the time," said the man who had laid hold of me first. "He came in at the State Street entrance a few minutes ago with a green one and an old sneak. I didn't think he had the time to pass the stuff over."
I was cool now, and laughed as the manager and the detective went through my pockets carefully.
"The old one's got the stuff fast enough," the detective remarked disgustedly. "Shall we have this one locked up, Mr. Marble?"
"You'll do it at your risk!" I put in loudly.
"Where's the young woman?" the manager demanded.
"It happened just while my daughter was buying a pair of gloves," the old man began to chatter. "You were asking me, my love. . . ."
The young woman looked a little confused, I thought, and not so sure of herself. But she answered the manager's questions by saying promptly:--
"He must have taken it!"
"You saw him?" the detective questioned.
"Yes--I must have seen him--I saw him, of course!"
"I don't believe you could have seen me, ma'am," I said with a grin, "for you had just turned your back on me."
"How did you know that?" she asked triumphantly.
"I know it because when I first began to look at you, you didn't like it, and so you turned your back on me to show it."
"You know too much, young man," the manager remarked.
"You'll prosecute him?" he added, turning to the old man.
"Prosecute? Why, yes, of course," he stammered; "though, if he hasn't the purse--"
"Come on, m'boy," the detective said to me. "You and I'll take a stroll down the street and find a good night's lodging for you."
That was before the day of patrol wagons. So the detective locked his right arm securely in my left, and in this intimate fashion we walked through the streets to the police station.
When we reached that foul-smelling pen we were kept waiting by a large "order" that had just been rounded up from a gambling-house in the neighborhood. There were about twenty men and women in this flock. They were filing, one by one, before the desk-sergeant. I had never heard such a family gathering of names. They were all Smiths, Browns, and Joneses, and they all lived a good way from town, out in the fifty-hundreds, where there are many vacant lots. At the end of the file there was a little unshaven Jew, who seemed very mad about it all. He was the only one who had any money; he gave up a fat roll of bills that took the officer some time to count.
"I know who did this!" the Jew sputtered at the man behind the desk. "And I can make it hot for some of youse, all right."
"That's good," the sergeant replied pleasantly. "Another time you'll have the sense to know when you are well off."
I thought this was fatherly advice addressed to the Jew for his moral health. I congratulated myself that I had fallen into clean hands. So when my turn came, I said to the desk-sergeant confidentially:--
"I am quite innocent!"
"Is that so, m'son?" he remarked pleasantly.
"They haven't any right to arrest me. I was--"
"Of course, of course! Keep all that for his Honor to-morrow morning. What's your name, m'son?"
"E. V. Harrington," I replied quite innocently.
"And where do you hail from?"
"Jasonville, lndiana."
It did not occur to me then that, guilty or innocent, it made no difference after I had given my real name and home. Thanks to the enterprise of metropolitan journalism, the folks in Jasonville, Indiana, would be reading at their breakfast to-morrow morning all about how Van Harrington had been taken up as a thief.
"Here!" the fat sergeant called out to one of the officers, after I had handed over to his care the few odds and ends that I still had about me; "show the gent from Indiany to number twelve."
A night in jail -- A rapid-fire judge -- The young lady is not so positive -- The psychology of justice -- What's the matter with Jasonville? -- I tell my story to his Honor
THERE was a greasy bench at one end of number twelve, where I sat myself down, feeling that I had come to the end of things in Chicago mighty quick. A measly gas-jet above the door showed what a stinking hole I had got myself into. I could hear the gambling party across the way, laughing and talking, taking their lot rather easily. Pretty soon a man was put into the cell next mine. He kept groaning about his head. "My head!" he would say, "oh, my head! My head! oh, my head!" until I thought my own head was going wrong.
I wondered what had become of Hostetter. Apparently he had cleared out when he saw his chance friend getting into trouble. Perhaps he thought I had been working with our smooth acquaintance all along. Then I thought what a fool I had been to give my real name and home to the desk-sergeant. To-morrow the wise ones down in Jasonville would be calling Van Harrington bad names all over again, and think how clever they had been.
Some bad-smelling mess was shoved at me for supper, but I had no stomach for food, good or bad. The jail quieted down after a time, but I couldn't sleep. My mind was full of the past, of everything that had happened to me from the beginning. Only forty-eight hours before I had been tramping my way into the city, as keen as a hungry steer for all the glory I saw there ahead of me under the bank of smoke that was Chicago. Boylike, I had looked up at the big packing-houses, the factories, the tall elevators that I passed, and thought how one day I should be building my fortune out of them as others had built theirs before me. And the end of that boyish dream was this bed in jail!
The next morning they hustled us all into court. I was crowded into the pen along with some of the numerous Smiths and Joneses who hadn't been able to secure bail the night before. These were disposed of first in the way of routine business, together with a few drunks and disorderlies. There were also in the pen some sickly-looking fellows who had been taken up for smoking opium in a Chinese cellar, a woman in whose house there had been a robbery, and a well-dressed man with a bandage over one eye. He must have been my neighbor of the bad head.
The court room was pretty well jammed with these prisoners, the police officers, and a few loafers. The air smelled like a sewer, and the windows were foul with dirt. The judge was a good-looking, youngish man, with a curling black mustache, and he wore a diamond-studded circlet around his necktie. Behind the judge on the platform sat the young woman whose purse I was accused of stealing, and her father. She saw me when I was brought into the pen, but tried not to let me know it, looking away all the time.
When I arrived on the scene the judge was administering an oath to a seedy-looking man, who kissed eagerly the filthy Bible and began to mumble something in a hurry to the judge.
"Yes, I know that pipe dream," his Honor interrupted pleasantly. "Now, tell me the straight story of what you have been doing since you were here last week."
"You insult me, Judge," the prisoner replied haughtily. "I'm an educated man, a graduate of a great institution of learning. You know your Horace, Judge?"
"Not so well as the revised statutes of the state of Illinois," his Honor snapped back with what I thought was a lack of respect for learning. "Two months. Next!"
"Why, Judge--"
There was a titter in the court room as the graduate of a great university was led from the pen. His Honor, wearing the same easy smile, was already listening to the next case. He flecked off a stray particle of soot that had lodged on the big pink in his buttonhole as he remarked casually:-- "Is that so? Twenty-five dollars. It will be fifty the next time.
The judge nodded blandly to the prisoner and turned to my neighbor of the night, the man who had had so much trouble with his head. I was getting very uneasy. That smiling gentleman up there on the bench seemed to have his mind made up about most folks beforehand, and it didn't seem to be favorably inclined this morning. I was beginning to wonder how many months he had me down for already. It didn't add to my peace of mind to see him chatting genially with the old gentleman and his daughter as he listened to the poor criminals at the bar.
His Honor went on disposing of the last cases at a rapid rate, with a smile, a nod, a joke--and my time was coming nearer. The sweat rolled down my cheeks. I couldn't keep my eyes off the young lady's face; somehow I felt that she was my only hope of safety. Finally the judge leaned back in his chair and smelled at his pink, as if he had 'most finished his morning's work.
The clerk called, "Edward V. Harrington." I jumped.
"Well, Edward?" the judge inquired pleasantly as I stood before him. "The first time we have had the pleasure, I believe?"
I mumbled something, and the store detective began to tell his story.
"Is that it, Doctor?" the judge asked the old man.
"Why, I suppose so--I don't know. He was caught in the act, wasn't he?" Then, as the old man sat down, he added peevishly: "At least, that's what my daughter says, and she ought to know. It was her purse, and she got me down here this morning."
"How about it, miss?" the judge asked quickly, wheeling his chair the other way and smiling at the young lady. "Did you see the prisoner here take your purse?"
"Why, of course--" She was just going to say "yes" when her eyes caught mine for a moment, and she hesitated. "No, I didn't exactly see him, but--" her look swept haughtily over my head. "But he was very close to me and was stooping down just as I felt a jerk at my belt. And then the purse was gone. He must have taken it!"
"Stooping to beauty, possibly?" the judge suggested.
"Stooping to pick up the lady's handkerchief, which I saw her drop," I ventured to put in, feeling that in another moment I should find myself blown into prison with a joke.
"Oh! So you were picking up the lady's handkerchief? Very polite, I am sure!" His Honor glared at me for an instant for the first time. "And you thought you might as well take the purse, too? For a keepsake, eh?"
He had wheeled around to face me. A sentence was on his lips. I could feel it coming, and hadn't an idea how to keep it back. I looked helplessly at the young woman. Just as his Honor opened his mouth to speak, she exclaimed:--
"Wait a moment! I am not sure--he doesn't look bad. I thought, Judge, you could tell whether he had really taken my purse," she ended reproachfully.
"Do you consider me a mind reader, miss?" the judge retorted, suspending that sentence in mid-air.
"Let him say something! Let him tell his story," the young lady urged. "Perhaps he isn't guilty, after all. I am sure he doesn't look it."
"Why, Sarah!" the old gentleman gasped in astonishment. "You said this morning at breakfast that you were sure he had stolen it.
Here the detective put in his oar.
"I know him and the one that was with him--they're old sneaks, your Honor."
"That's a lie!" I said, finding my tongue at last.
"Good!" the judge exclaimed appreciatively. "I am inclined to think so, too, Edward," he went on, adjusting his diamond circlet with one finger. "This young lady thinks you have a story of your own. Have you?"
"Yes, I have, and a straight one," I answered, plucking up my courage.
"Of course," he grunted sarcastically. "Well, let's have it, but make it short."
It did sound rather lame when I came to tell what I had done with myself since I had entered the city. When I got to that part about the house where Ed and I had been disturbed by thieves, the old gentleman broke in:--
"Bless my soul! That must be the Wordens' house. The officer said there were two suspicious characters who ran away up the boulevard. This fellow must be one of them. Of course he took the purse! You know the Wordens, don't you, Judge?" His Honor merely nodded to the old gentleman, smiled at the young lady, and said to me:--
"Go on, young man! Tell us why you left home in the first place."
I got red all over again at this invitation, and was taken with a new panic.
"Who are your folks? What's the name of the place?" the judge asked encouragingly.
"Jasonville, Indiana."
"What's the matter with Jasonville, Edward?" he asked more sharply. "Why do you blush for it?"
"I had rather not tell with all these folks around," I answered, looking at the young lady.
His Honor must have found something in my case a little out of his ordinary experience, for he took me back into his own room. He got me started on my story, and one thing led to another. His manner changed all of a sudden: he no longer tried to be smart, and he seemed to have plenty of time. After that long night in the jail I wanted to talk. So I told his Honor just how it had been with me from the beginning.
The Harringtons -- The village magnate -- A young hoodlum -- On the road to school -- The first woman -- Disgrace, and a girl's will -- An unfortunate coincidence -- in trouble again -- May loses faith -- The end of Jasonville -- Discharged -- A loan -- Charity -- The positive young lady hopes I shall start right -- The lake front once more -- I preach myself a good sermon
THE Harringtons were pretty well known in Greene County, Indiana. Father moved to Jasonville just after the war, when the place was not much more than a crossroads with a prospect of a railroad sometime. Ours was the first brick house, built after the kind he and mother used to know back in York State. And he set up the largest general store in that district and made money. Then he lost most of it when the oil boom first came.
Mother and he set great store by education,--if father hadn't gone to the war he wouldn't have been keeping a country store,--and they helped start the first township high school in our part of the state. And he sent Will, my older brother, and me to the Methodist school at Eureka, which was the best he could do for us. There wasn't much learning to be had in Eureka "College," however; the two or three old preachers and women who composed the faculty were too busy trying to keep the boys from playing cards and smoking or chewing to teach us much.
Perhaps I was a bit of a hoodlum as a boy, anyway. The trouble started with the judge--Judge Sorrell. He was a local light, who held a mortgage on 'most everything in town (including our store--after father went into oil). We boys had always heard at home how hard and mean the judge was, and dishonest, too; for in some of the oil deals he had tricked folks out of their property. It wasn't so strange, then, that we youngsters took liberties with the judge's belongings that the older folks did not dare to. The judge's fine stock used to come in from the field done up, raced to death, and the orchard by the creek just out of town (which had belonged to us once) rarely brought a good crop to maturity. We made ourselves believe that the judge didn't really own it, and treated him as a trespasser. So one night, when the judge made a hasty visit to our house after one of the "raids," my father found me in bed with a wet suit of clothes on, which I had been forced to sacrifice in the creek. The end of that lark was that father had to pay a good sum for my private interpretation of the laws of property, and I spent the rest of the summer on a farm doing a man's work.
Perhaps if it hadn't been for that ducking in the river and what followed, I might have come out just a plain thief. While I was sweating on that farm I saw the folly of running against common notions about property. I came to the conclusion that if I wanted what my neighbor considered to be his, I must get the law to do the business for me. For the first time it dawned on me how wonderful is that system which shuts up one man in jail for taking a few dollars' worth of truck that doesn't belong to him, and honors the man who steals his millions--if he robs in the legal way! Yes, the old judge knocked some good worldly sense into me.
(Nevertheless, old Sorrell needn't have hounded me after I came back to Jasonville, and carried his malice to the point of keeping me from getting a job when I was hoping to make a fair start so that I could ask May Rudge to marry me. But all that was some time later.)
May was one of that handful of young women who in those days stood being sneered at for wanting to go to college with their brothers. We were in the same classes at Eureka two years before I noticed her much. She was little and pale and delicate--with serious, cold gray eyes, and a mouth that was always laughing at you. I can see to-day the very spot where she stood when I first spoke to her. Good weather I used to drive over from father's to Eureka, and one spring morning I happened to drive by the Rudge farm on my way to school instead of taking the pike, which was shorter. There was a long level stretch of road straightaway between two pieces of green meadow, and there, ahead of me, I saw the girl, walking steadily, looking neither to the right nor to the left. I slowed up with the idea that she might give me a nod or a word; but she kept her pace as though she were thinking of things too far off to notice a horse and buggy on the road. Somehow I wanted to make her speak. Pretty soon I said:--
"Won't you ride to school with me, Miss May?"
Then she turned her head, not the least flustered like other girls, and looked me square in the eye for a minute. I knew she was wondering what made me speak to her then, for the boys at school never took notice of the college girls. But she got into the buggy and sat prim and solemn by my side. We jogged along between the meadows, which were bright with flowers and the soft, green grass of spring. The big timber along the roadside and between the pasture lands had just leaved out, and the long branches hung daintily in the misty morning air. All of a sudden I felt mighty happy to be there with her. I think her first words were,--"Do you come this way often?"
"Perhaps I shall be coming this way oftener now," I made bold to answer.
Her lips trembled in a little ironical smile, and the least bit of red sprang into her white face. I said, "It isn't as short as the pike, but it is a prettier road."
The smile deepened, and I had it on my tongue to add, "I shall be coming this way every morning if you will ride with me." But I was afraid of that smiling mouth.
(Of course I didn't tell his Honor all this, but I add it now, together with other matters that concern me and belong here. It will help to explain what happened later.)
So that fine spring morning, when I was seventeen, I first took note of what a woman is. The rest of that year I used to drive the prim little girl back and forth between her father's farm and school. I was no scholar like her, and she never went about with the other girls to parties. She wasn't in the least free and easy with the boys. In those days most girls didn't think much of a fellow who wouldn't take his chances to kiss them when he could. Evenings, when we called, we used to pull the parlor door to and sit holding hands with the young woman of our admiration. And no harm ever came of it that I know: most of those girls made good wives when the time came, for all they were easy and tender and ready to make love in the days of their youth.
But once, when I tried to put my arm about May Rudge, as we were driving along the lonely road, she turned and looked at me out of those cold gray eyes. Her mouth rippled in that little ironical way, as if she were laughing down in her mind. She never said a word or pulled away from me, but I didn't care to go on.
May gave me ambition, and she made me want to be steady and good, though she never said anything about it. But now and then I would break away and get myself into some fool scrape. Such was the time when I came back from a Terre Haute party pretty lightheaded, and went with some others to wake up the old Methodist president of the college. I don't remember what happened then, but the next morning at chapel the old boy let loose on "wine and wantoning," and called me by name. I knew that I had done for myself at Eureka, and I was pretty mad to be singled out for reprobation from all the offenders. I got up from my seat and walked out while the school stared. As I was getting my horse from the place where I kept it, May Rudge came into the yard.
"You aren't going this way?" she demanded quickly.
"I don't see as there's much use waiting for bouquets."
"You aren't going without apologizing!" she flashed out.
To tell the truth, that had never occurred to me. It seemed she cared less for the disgrace than for the way I took it. So in the end, before I left town, I drove up to the president's house, apologized, and got my dismissal in due form, and was told I should go to hell unless I was converted straightway. Then May drove down the street with me in face of the whole school, who contrived to be there to see my departure.
"I guess this ends my education, and being a lawyer, and all that," I said gloomily, as we drew near the Rudge farm. "Dad will never forgive this. He thinks rum is the best road to hell, the same as the old preacher. He won't sell a glass of cider in the store."
"There are other kinds of work," she answered. "You can show them just the same you know what's right."
"But you'll never marry a man who isn't educated," I said boldly.
"I'll never marry a man who hasn't principles--and religion, she replied without a blush.
"So I must be good and pious, as well as educated?"
"You must be a man"--and her lips curved ironically--"and now you are just a boy."
But I held her hand when I helped her from the buggy, and I believe she would have let me kiss her had I wanted to then. Father and mother took my expulsion from school very hard, as I expected. Father especially--who had begun to brag somewhat at the store about my being a lawyer and beating the judge out--was so bitter that I told him if he would give me fifty dollars I would go off somewhere and never trouble him again.
"You ask me to give you fifty dollars to go to hell with!" he shouted out.
"Put me in the store, then, and let me earn it. Give me the same money you give Will."
But father didn't want me around the store for folks to see. So I had to go out to a farm once more, to a place that father was working on shares with a Swede. I spent the better part of two years on that farm, living with the old Swede, and earning mighty little but my keep. For father gave me a dollar now and then, but no regular wages. I could get sight of May only on a Sunday. She was teaching her first school in another county. Father and mother Rudge had never liked me: they looked higher for May than to marry a poor farm-hand, who had a bad name in the town. My brother Will, who was a quiet, church-going fellow, had learned his way to the Rudge place by this time, and the old people favored him.
After a while I heard of a chance in a surveyor's office at Terre Haute, but old Sorrell, who had more business than any ten men in that part of the country, met the surveyor on the train, and when I reached the office there wasn't any job for me. That night, when I got back from Terre Haute, I told my folks that I was going to Chicago. The next day I asked my father again for some money. Mother answered for him:--
"Will don't ask us for money. It won't be fair to him."
"So he's to have the store and my girl too," I said bitterly. "May Rudge isn't the girl to marry a young man who's wild."
"I'll find that out for myself!"
Always having had a pretty fair opinion of myself, I found it hard to be patient and earn good-will by my own deserts. So I said rather foolishly to father:--
"Will you give me a few dollars to start me with? I have earned it all right, and I am asking you for the last time."
It was a kind of threat, and I am sorry enough for it now. I suspect he hadn't the money, for things were going badly with him. He answered pretty warmly that I should wait a long time before he gave me another dollar to throw away. I turned on my heel without a word to him or mother, and went out of the house with the resolve not to return.
But before I left Jasonville to make my plunge into the world I would see May Rudge. I wanted to say to her: "Which will you have? Choose now!" So I turned about and started for the Rudge farm, which was about a mile from the town, beyond the old place on the creek that used to belong to us. Judge Sorrell had put up a large new barn on the place, where he kept some fine blooded stock that he had been at considerable expense to import. I had never been inside the barn, and as I passed it that afternoon, it came into my mind, for no particular reason, to turn in at the judge's farm and go by the new building. Maybe I thought the old judge would be around somewhere, and I should have the chance before I left Jasonville to tell him what I thought of his dirty, sneaking ways.
But there was no one in the big barn, apparently, or anywhere on the place, and after looking about for a little I went on to May's. I came up to the Rudge farm from the back, having taken a cut across the fields.
As I drew near the house I saw Will and May sitting under an apple tree talking. I walked on slowly, my anger somehow rising against them both. There was nothing wrong in their being there--nothing at all; but I was ready to fire at the first sign. By the looks of it, mother was right: they were already sweethearts. Will seemed to have something very earnest to say to May. He took hold of one of her hands, and she didn't draw it away at once. . . . There wasn't anything more to keep me in Jasonville.
I kept right on up the country road, without much notion of where I was going to, too hot and angry to think about anything but those two under the apple tree. I had not gone far before I heard behind me a great rushing noise, like the sudden sweep of a tornado, and then a following roar. I looked up across the fields, and there was the judge's fine new barn one mass of red flame and black smoke. It was roaring so that I could hear it plainly a quarter of a mile away. Naturally, I started to run for the fire, and ran hard all the way across the fields. By the time I got there some men from town had arrived and were rushing around crazily. But they hadn't got out the live stock, and there was no chance now to save a hen. The judge drove up presently, and we all stood around and stared at the fire. After a time I began to think it was time for me to move on if I was to get to any place that night. I slipped off and started up the road once more. I hadn't gone far, however, before I was overtaken by a buggy in which was one of the men who had been at the fire.
"Where be yer goin', Van?" he asked peremptorily.
"I don't know as I am called on to tell you, Sam," I answered back.
"Yes, you be," he said more kindly. "I guess you'll have to jump right in here, anyways, and ride back with me. The judge wants to ask you a few questions about this here fire."
"I don't answer any of the judge's questions!" I replied sharply enough, not yet seeing what the man was after. But he told me bluntly enough that I was suspected of setting fire to the barn, and drove me back to the town, where I stayed in the sheriff's custody until my uncle came late that night and bailed me out. Will was with him. Father didn't want me to come home, so Will let me understand. Neither he nor my uncle thought I was innocent, but they hoped that there might not be enough evidence to convict me. Some one on the creek road had seen me going past the barn a little time before the fire was discovered, and that was the only ground for suspecting me.
The next morning I got my uncle (who wouldn't trust me out of his sight) to drive me over to the Rudge place. He sat in the team while I went up to the house and knocked. I was feeling pretty desperate in my mind, but if May would only believe my story, I shouldn't care about the others. She would understand quick enough why I never appeared at the farm the day before. Old man Rudge came to the door, and when he saw me, he drew back and asked me what my business was.
"I want to see May," I said.
"I guess she don't want much to see you."
"I must see her."
The sound of our voices brought Mrs. Rudge from the kitchen.
"Mother," old Rudge said, "Van wants to see May."
"Well, Cyrus, it won't do any harm, I guess."
When May came to the door she waited for me to speak.
"I want to tell you, May," I said slowly, "that I didn't have any hand in burning the judge's barn."
"I don't want to believe you did," she said.
"But you do all the same!" I cried sharply.
"Every one says you did, Van," she answered doubtfully.
"So you think I could do a mean, sneaky thing like that?" I replied hotly, and added bitterly: "And then not have sense enough to get out of the way! Well, I know what this means: you and Will have put your heads together. You're welcome to him!"
"You've no reason to say such things, Van!" she exclaimed.
"There ain't no use in you talking with my girl, Harrington," put in Rudge, who had come back to the door. "And I don't want you coming here any more."
"How about that, May?" I asked. "Do you tell me to go?" Her lips trembled, and she looked at me more kindly. Perhaps in another moment she would have answered and not failed me. But hot and heady as I was by nature, and smarting from all that had happened, I wanted a ready answer: I would not plead for myself.
"So you won't take my word for it?" I said, turning away.
"The word of a drunkard and a good-for-nothing!" the old man fired after me.
"Oh, father! don't," I heard May say. Then perhaps she called my name. But I was at the gate, and too proud to turn back.
I was discharged the next week. Although there was nothing against me except the fact that I had been seen about the barn previous to the fire, and the well-known enmity between me and the judge, it would have gone hard with me had it not been for the fact that in the ruins of the burned barn they found the remains of an old farm-hand, who had probably wandered in there while drunk and set the place on fire with his pipe.
When I was released my uncle said the folks were ready to have me back home; but without a word I started north on the county road in the direction of the great city.
"So," said his Honor, when I had finished my story in the dingy chamber of the police court, "you want me to believe that you really had no hand in firing that barn any more than you took this lady's purse?"
But he smiled to himself, at his own penetration, I suppose, and when we were back in the court room that dreaded sentence fell from his lips like a shot,--"Officer, the prisoner is discharged."
"I knew he was innocent!" the young lady exclaimed the next instant.
"But, Judge, where is the purse and my friend Worden's fur coat?" the old gentleman protested.
"You don't see them about him, do you, Doctor?" the judge inquired blandly. Then he turned to me: "Edward, I think that you have told me an honest story. I hope so."
He took a coin from his pocket.
"Here's a dollar, my boy. Buy a ticket for as far as this will take you, and walk the rest of the way home."
"I guess I have come to Chicago to stay," I answered. "They aren't breaking their hearts over losing me down home."
"Well, my son, as you think best. In this glorious Republic it is every man's first privilege to take his own road to hell. But, at any rate, get a good dinner to start on. We don't serve first-class meals here."
"I'll return this as soon as I can," I said, picking up the coin.
"The sooner the better; and the less we see of each other in the future, the better, eh?"
I grinned, and started for the door through which I had been brought into court, but an officer pointed to another door that led to the street. As I made for it I passed near the young lady. She called to me:--
"Mister, mister, what will you do now?"
"Get something to eat first, and then look for another purse, perhaps," I replied.
She blushed very prettily.
"I am sorry I accused you, but you were looking at me so hard just then--I thought . . . I want you to take this!" She tried to give me a bill rolled up in a little wad.
"No thanks," I said, moving off.
"But you may need it. Every one says it's so hard to find work."
"Well, I don't take money from a woman."
"Oh!" She blushed again.
Then she ran to the old gentleman, who was talking to the judge, and got from him a little black memorandum-book.
"You see, my cards were all in the purse. But there!" she said, writing down her name and address on the first page. "You will know now where to come in case you need help or advice."
"Thank you," I replied, taking the book.
"I do so want to help you to start right and become a good man," she said timidly. "Won't you try to show your friends that they were mistaken in you?"
She turned her eyes up at me appealingly as if she were asking it as a favor to her. I felt foolish and began to laugh, but stopped, for she looked hurt.
"I guess, miss, it don't work quite that way. Of course, I mean to start fresh--but I shan't do it even for your sake. All the same, when you see me next it won't be in a police station."
"That's right!" she exclaimed, beaming at me with her round blue eyes. "I should like to feel that I hadn't hurt you--made you worse."
"Oh, you needn't worry about that, miss. I guess I'm not much worse off for a night in the police station."
She held out her hand and I took it.
"Sarah! Sarah!" the old gentleman called as we were shaking hands. He seemed rather shocked, but the judge looked up at us and smiled quizzically.
Outside it was a warm, pleasant day; the wind was blowing merrily through the dirty street toward the blue lake. For the moment I did not worry over what was to come next. The first thing I did was to get a good meal.
After that refreshment I sauntered forth in the direction of the lake front--the most homelike place I could think of. The roar of the city ran through my head like the clatter of a mill. I seemed to be just a feeble atom of waste in the great stream of life flowing around me.
When I reached the desolate strip of weeds and sand between the avenue and the railroad, the first relay of bums was beginning to round up for the night. The sight of their tough faces filled me with a new disgust; I turned back to the busy avenue, where men and women were driving to and fro with plenty to do and think, and then and there I turned on myself and gave myself a good cussing. Here I was more than twenty, and just a plain fool, and had been ever since I could remember. When I had rid myself of several layers of conceit it began to dawn on me that this was a world where one had to step lively if he wasn't to join the ranks of the bums back there in the sand. That was the most valuable lot of thinking I ever did in my life. It took the sorehead feeling of wronged genius out of me for good and all. Pretty soon I straightened my back and started for the city to find somewhere a bite of food and a roof to cover my head.
And afterward there would be time to think of conquering the world!
A familiar face -- A hospitable roof -- The Pierson family, and others -- The Enterprise Market, and ten dollars a week -- Miss Hillary Cox -- Crape -- From the sidewalk -- The company of successful adventurers -- The great Strauss
"HELLO! Here you be! Ain't I glad I found yer this soon," and Ed's brown eyes were looking into mine. His seemed to me just then about the best face in the world. "Seems though I was bound to be chasm' some one in this city!" he shouted, grabbing me by the arm. "But I've found all of 'em now."
He had missed me at the police station by a few minutes, and I had left no address. After looking up and down a few streets near by, Ed had thought of lying in wait for me on the lake front, feeling that unless some extraordinary good luck had happened to me I should bring up at that popular resort. He had not seen the little incident when the detective grabbed me in the great store, for just at that moment his attention had been attracted to a girl at one of the counters, who had called him by name. The girl, who was selling perfumes and tooth-washes, turned out to be his cousin Lou, his Aunt Pierson's younger daughter. After the surprise of their meeting Ed had looked for me, and the floor-walker told them of my misfortune. Then the cousin had made Ed go home with her. Mrs. Pierson, it seems, took in boarders in her three-story-and-basement house on West Van Buren Street. She and the two girls had given Ed a warm welcome, and for the first time in many days he had had the luxury of a bed, which had caused him to oversleep, and miss me at the station.
All this I learned as we walked westward toward Ed's new home. At first I was a little shy about putting another burden on the boy's relations. But my friend would not hear of letting me go. When Ed tucked his arm under mine and hauled me along with country heartiness, saying I could share his bed and he had a job in view for us both, I felt as though the sun had begun to shine all over again that day. Through all the accidents of many years I have never forgotten that kindness, and my heart warms afresh when I stop to think how Ed grabbed my arm and pulled me along with him off those city streets.
So it happened at dinner-time that night I found myself in the basement dining room and made my first bow to some people who were to be near me for a number of years--one or two of them for life. I can remember just how they all looked sitting about the table, which was covered with a mussed red table-cloth, and lit by a big, smelly oil lamp. Pa Pierson sat at the head of the table, an untidy, gray-haired old man, who gave away his story in every line of his body. He had made some money in his country store back in Michigan; but the ambition to try his luck in the city had ruined him. He had gone broke on crockery. He was supposed to be looking for work, but he spent most of his time in this basement dining room, warming himself at the stove and reading the boarders' papers.
The girls and the boy, Dick, paid him even less respect than they did their mother. They were all the kind of children that don't tolerate much incompetence in their parents. Dick was a putty-faced, black-haired cub, who scrubbed blackboards and chewed gum in a Board of Trade man's office. Neither he nor his two sisters, who were also working downtown, contributed much to the house, and except that now and then Grace, the older one, would help clean up the dishes in a shamefaced way, or bring the food on the table when the meal was extra late or she wanted to get out for the evening, not one of the three ever raised a finger to help with the work. The whole place, from kitchen to garret, fell on poor old Ma Pierson, and the boarders were kinder to her than her own children. Lank and stooping, short-sighted, with a faded, tired smile, she came and went between the kitchen and the dining room, cooking the food and serving it, washing the dishes, scrubbing the floors, and making the beds--I never saw her sit down to the table with us except one Christmas Day, when she was too sick to cook. She took her fate like an Indian, and died on the steps of her treadmill.
There were two other regular boarders besides myself and Ed--a man and a woman. The latter, Miss Hillary Cox, was cashier in the New Enterprise Market, not far from the house. She was rather short and stout, with thick ropes of brown hair that she piled on her head in a solid mass to make her look tall. She had bright little eyes, and her rosy face showed that she had not been long in the city.
The man was a long, lean, thin-faced chap, somewhat older than I was. His name was Jaffrey Slocum; he was studying law and doing stenographic work in a law office in the city. When I first looked at him I thought that he would push his way over most of the rocks in the road--and he did. Slocum was a mighty silent man, but little passed before his eyes without his knowing what it meant. I learned later that he came from a good Maine family, and had been to college in the East. And he had it much on his mind to do several things with his life--the first of which was to buy back the old home in Portland, and put his folks there where they belonged. Old Sloco, we called him! For all his slow, draggy ways he had pounds of pressure on the gauge. He and I have fought through some big fights%%37%5since then, and there's no man I had as soon have beside me in a scrap as that thin-faced, scrawny-necked old chip of Maine granite.
When Ed introduced me at the table, Grace made a place beside her, and her sister Lou hospitably shoved over a plate of stew. Then Lou smiled at me and opened fire:--
"We read all about you in the papers this morning, Mr. Harrington!"
"Heh, heh! "Pa Pierson cackled.
"Say, Lou, I don't call that polite," Grace protested in an affected tone.
"Don't mind me," I called out. "I guess I'm a public character, anyway."
"What did the lady say when she found she was wrong?" Lou went on. "I should think she'd want to die, doing a mean thing like that."
"Did she give you any little souvenir of the occasion?" Dick inquired.
"If they are real nice folks, I should think they'd try to make it up some way," Grace added.
"But what we want to know first," Slocum drawled gravely, "is, did you take the purse, and, if so, where did you put it?"
"Why, Mr. Slocum!" Miss Cox sputtered, not catching the joke. "What a thing to insinuate! I am sure Mr. Harrington doesn't look like that--any one could see he wouldn't steal."
In this way they passed me back and forth, up and down the table, until the last scrap of meat was gnawed from the bone. Then they sniffed at Jasonville. Where was it? What did I do there? Why did I come to the city? Miss Cox was the sharpest one at the questions. She wanted to know all about my father's store. She had already got Ed a place as delivery clerk in the Enterprise Market, and there might be an opening in the same store for me. I could see that there would be a place all right if I met the approval of the smart little cashier. It has never been one of my faults to be backward with women,--all except May,--and as Miss Hillary Cox was far from unprepossessing, I fixed my attention on her for the rest of the evening.
The Pierson girls tired of me quickly enough, as they had already tired of Ed. Lou soon ceased to smile at me and open her eyes in her silly stare when I made a remark. After dinner she went out on the steps to wait for a beau, who was to take her to a dance. Grace sat awhile to chaff with the lawyer's clerk. He seemed to make fun of her, but I could see that he liked her pretty well. (It must be a stupid sort of woman, indeed, who can't get hold of a man when he has nothing to do after his work except walk the streets or read a book!) There was nothing bad in either of the girls: they were just soft, purring things, shut up all day long, one in a big shop and the other in a dentist's office. Of course, when they got home, they were frantic for amusement, dress, the theatre--anything bright and happy; anything that would make a change. They had a knack of stylish dressing, and on the street looked for all the world like a rich man's daughters. Nothing bad in either one, then--only that kind gets its eyes opened too late! . . .
The next morning I stepped around to the Enterprise Market, and Miss Cox introduced me to the proprietors. They were two brothers, sharp-looking young men, up-to-date in their ideas, the cashier had told me, and bound to make the Enterprise the largest market on the West Side. Miss Cox had evidently said a good word for me, and that afternoon I found myself tying up parcels and taking orders at ten dollars a week.
Not a very brilliant start on fortune's road, but I was glad enough to get it. The capable cashier kept a friendly eye on me, and saved me from getting into trouble. Before long I had my pay raised, and then raised again. Ed had taken hold well, too, and was given more pay. He was more content with his job than I was. The work suited him--the driving about the city streets, the rush at the market mornings, the big crates of country stuff that came smelling fresh from the fields. The city was all that he had hoped to find it. Not so to me--I looked beyond; but I worked hard and took my cues from the pretty cashier, who grew more friendly every day. We used to go to places in the evenings,--lectures and concerts mostly,--for Miss Cox thought the theatre was wicked. She was a regular church attendant, and made me go with her Sundays. She was thrifty, too, and taught me to be stingy with my quarters and halves.
The first day I could take off I went to the police station and paid my loan from the judge. I had to wait an hour before I could speak to him, while he ground out a string of drunks and assaults, shooting out his sentences like a rapid-fire battery. When I finally got his attention, he turned one eye on me:--
"Well, Edward, so you haven't gone home yet!" And that was all he said as he dropped the coin into his pocket. (I hope that my paying back that money made him merciful to the next young tramp that was cast up there before him!)
After I had paid the judge I strolled down to the South Side, into the new residence district, with some idea of seeing where the young lady lived who had first had me arrested and then wanted to reform me. When I came to the number she had written in the memorandum-book, there was a piece of crape on the door. It gave me a shock. I hung around for a while, not caring to disturb the people inside, and yet hoping to find out that it was not the young lady who had died. Finally I came away, having made up my mind, somehow, that it was the young lady, and feeling sorry that she was gone. That night I opened the memorandum-book she had given me, and began a sort of diary in a cramped, abbreviated hand. The first items read as follows:--
September 30. Giv. this book by young la. who tho't I stole her purse. She hopes I may take the right road.
October 1.--Got job in Ent--mark., 1417 W. VanB St. $10. Is this the right road?
October 23.--Went to address young lad. gav, me. Found crape on the door. Hope it's the old man.
From time to time since then I have taken out the little black memorandum-book, and made other entries of those happenings in my life that seemed to me especially important--sometimes a mere list of figures or names, writing them in very small. It lies here before me now, and out of these bare notes, keywords as it were, there rise before me many facts,--the deeds of twenty-five years.
When I got back to the Piersons' for dinner, Miss Cox was curious to know what I had done with my first day off.
"I bet he's been to see that girl who had him arrested," Lou suggested mischievously. "And from the way he looks I guess she told him she hadn't much use for a butcher-boy."
Pa Pierson laughed; he was a great admirer of his daughter's wit.
"I don't think he's that much of a fool, to waste his time trapesing about after her," Hillary Cox snapped back.
"Well, I did look up the house," I admitted, and added, "but the folks weren't at home."
After supper we sat out on the steps, and Hillary asked me what kind of a place the young woman lived in. I told her about the crape on the door, and she looked at me disgustedly.
"Why didn't you ask?" she demanded.
"I didn't care to know if it was so, perhaps."
"I don't see as you have any particular reason to care, one way or the other," she retorted. And she went off for that evening somewhere with Ed. For the want of anything better to do I borrowed a book from the law student, who was studying in his room, and thus, by way of an accident, began a habit of reading and talking over books with Slocum.
So I was soon fitted into my hole in the city. In that neighborhood there must have been many hundreds of places like Ma Pierson's boarding-house. The checkerboard of prairie streets cut up the houses like marble cake--all the same, three-story-and-mansard-roof, yellow brick, with long lines of dirty, soft stone steps stretching from the wooden sidewalks to the second stories. And the group of us there in the little basement dining room, noisy with the rattle of the street cars, and dirty with the smoke of factory chimneys in the rear, was a good deal like the others in the other houses--strugglers on the outside of prosperity, trying hard to climb up somewhere in the bread-and-butter order of life, and to hold on tight to what we had got. No one, I suppose, ever came to Chicago, at least in those days, without a hope in his pocket of landing at the head of the game sometime. Even old Ma Pierson cherished a secret dream of a rich marriage for one or other of her girls!
Hillary Cox smiled on me again the next day, and we were as good friends as ever. As I have said, the energetic cashier of the Enterprise Market had taken me in hand and was forming me to be a business man. She was a smart little woman, and had lots of good principles besides. She believed in religion on Sundays, as she believed in business on week days. So on the Sabbath morning we would leave Ed and Lou and Dick Pierson yawning over the breakfast table, while Slocum and I escorted Grace and Hillary downtown to hear some celebrated preacher in one of the prominent churches. Hillary Cox had no relish for the insignificant and humble in religion, such as we might have found around the corner. She wanted the best there was to be had, she said, and she wanted to see the people who were so much talked about in the papers.
Perhaps the rich and prominent citizens made more of a point of going to church in those days than they do now. It was a pretty inferior church society that couldn't show up two or three of the city's solid merchants, who came every Sunday with their women, all dressed in their smartest and best. Hillary and Grace seemed to know most of these people by sight. Women are naturally curious about one another, and I suppose the girls saw their pictures and learned their names in the newspapers. And in this way I, too, learned to know by sight some of the men whom later it was my fortune to meet elsewhere.
There was Steele, the great dry-goods merchant, and Purington, whose works for manufacturing farming tools were just behind Ma Pierson's house; Lardner, a great hardware merchant; Maybricks, a wholesale grocer; York, a rich lumberman--most of them thin-faced, shrewd Yankees, who had seized that tide of fate which the poet tells us sweeps men to fortune. And there were others, perhaps less honorably known as citizens, but equally important financially: Vitzer, who became known later as the famous duke of gas, and Maxim, who already had begun to stretch out his fingers over the street-car lines. This man had made his money buying up tax titles, that one building cars, and another laying out railroads, and wrecking them, too. They were the people of the land!
One fine winter morning, as the four of us idled on the sidewalk opposite a prominent South Side church that was discharging its prosperous congregation into the street, Slocum nudged me and pointed to a group of well-dressed people--two or three women and a short, stout, smooth-shaven man--who were standing on the steps of the church, surveying the scene and bowing to their neighbors.
It was not necessary to say more. Even in those days the great Strauss had made his name as well known as that of the father of our country. He it was who knew each morning whether the rains had fallen on the plains beneath the Andes; how many cattle on the hoof had entered the gates of Omaha and Kansas City; how tight the pinch of starvation set upon Russian bellies; and whether the Sultan's subjects had bought their bread of Liverpool. Flesh and grain, meat and bread--Strauss held them in his hand, and he dealt them forth in the markets of the world!
Is it any wonder that I looked hard at the portly, red-faced man, standing there on the steps of his temple, where, with his women and children, he had been worshipping his God?
"My!" said Grace, "Mrs. Strauss is plain enough, and just common-looking."
(I have noticed that women find it hard to reconcile themselves to a rich man's early taste in their sex.)
"She don't dress very stylish, that's true," Hillary observed thoughtfully. "But it weren't so very long ago, I guess, that she was saving his money."
Strauss, surrounded by his women folk, marched up the avenue in solemn order. We followed along slowly on the other side of the street.
"He didn't make his pile at the Enterprise Market," Grace remarked. She spoke the idea that was in all our minds: how did he and the others make their money?
"I guess they began like other folks," Hillary contended, "saving their earnings and not putting all their money in their stomachs and on their backs."
This last was aimed at Grace, who was pretty smartly dressed.
"Well," said Slocum, dryly, "probably by this time Strauss has something more than his savings in the bank."
Thus we followed them down the street, speculating on the great packer's success, on the success of all the fortunate ones in the great game of the market, wondering what magic power these men possessed to lift themselves out of the mass of people like ourselves. Pretty simple of us, perhaps you think, hanging around on the street a good winter morning and gossiping about our rich neighbors! But natural enough, too: we had no place to loaf in, except Ma Pierson's smelly dining room, and nothing to do with our Sunday holiday but to walk around the streets and stare up at the handsome new houses and our well-dressed and prosperous neighbors. Every keen boy who looks out on life from the city sidewalk has a pretty vigorous idea that if he isn't as good as the next man, at least he will make as much money if he can only learn the secret. We read about the rich and their doings in the newspapers; we see them in the streets; their horses and carriages flash by us--do you wonder that some poor clerks on a Sunday gape at the Steeles and the Strausses from the sidewalk?
What was the golden road? These men had found it--hundreds, thousands of them,--farming tools, railroads, groceries, gas, dry-goods. It made no matter what: fortunes were building on every side; the flowers of success were blooming before our eyes. To take my place with these mighty ones--I thought a good deal about that these days! And I remember Grace saying sentimentally to Slocum that Sunday:--
"You fellers keep thinkin' of nothin' but money and how you're goin' to make it. Perhaps rich folks ain't the only happy ones in the world."
"Yes," Hillary chimed in, "there's such a thing as being too greedy to eat."
"What else are we here for except to make money?" Slocum demanded more bitterly than usual.
He raised his long arm in explanation and swept it to and fro over the straggling prairie city, with its rough, patched look. I didn't see what there was in the city to object to: it was just a place like any other--to work, eat, and sleep in. Later, however, when I saw the little towns back East, the pleasant hills, the old homes in the valleys, and the red-brick house on the elm-shaded street in Portland, then I knew what Slocum meant.
Whatever was there in Chicago in 1877 to live for but Success?
Signs of trouble at the Enterprise -- A possible partnership -- He travels fastest who travels alone -- John Carmichael -- Feeding the peoples of the earth -- I drive for Dround
"DO you see that big, fat fellow talking with Mr. Joyce?" the cashier whispered to me one morning as I passed her cage. "He's Dround's manager--his name is Carmichael. When he shows up, there is trouble coming to some one."
Dround & Co. was the name of the packing firm that the Enterprise dealt with. I tied up my bundles and made up my cash account, thinking a good deal about the appearance of the burly manager of the packing-house. Pretty soon Mr. Carmichael came out into the front store very red in the face, followed by the elder Joyce, who had been drinking, and they had some words. The cashier winked at me.
The Enterprise had been doing a good business. It was run on a new principle for those days--strictly cash and all cut prices, a cent off here and there, a great sale of some one thing each day, which the house handled speculatively. The brothers Joyce kept branching out, but there wasn't any money to speak of behind the firm. The Drounds and a wholesale grocer had backed it from the start. Nevertheless, we should have got on all right if the elder Joyce had given up drinking and the younger one had not taken to driving fast horses. Latterly no matter how big a business we did, the profits went the wrong way.
That evening, as Hillary Cox and I walked over to the Piersons', she said to me abruptly, "There's going to be a new sign at the Enterprise before long!"
The smart little cashier must have divined the situation as I had.
"Cox's Market?" I suggested jokingly.
"Why not Harrington & Cox?" she retorted with a nervous little laugh. We were on the steps then, and Ed joined us, so that I did not have to answer her invitation. But all through the meal I kept thinking of her suggestion. It was nearly two years since she had introduced me to the Enterprise, and I had saved up several hundred dollars in the meantime, which I wanted to put into some business of my own. But it did not quite suit my card to run a retail market. After supper the others left us in the dining room, and when we were alone Hillary said:--
"Well, what do you think of the firm name? It wouldn't be so impossible. I've got considerable money saved up, and I guess you have some in the bank, too. It wouldn't be the first time in this town that a clerk's name followed a busted owner's over the door."
She spoke in a light kind of way, but a tone in her voice made me look up. It struck me suddenly that this thing might mean a partnership for life, as well as a partnership for meat and groceries. Hillary Cox was an attractive woman, and she would make a splendid wife for a poor man, doing her part to save his money. Between us, no doubt, we could make a good business out of the old Enterprise, and more, too!
"That firm name sounds pretty well," I answered slowly, somewhat embarrassed.
"Yes--I thought it pretty good."
Suddenly she turned her face shyly away from my eyes. She was a woman, and a lovable, warm-hearted one. Perhaps she was dreaming of a home and a family--of just that plain, ordinary happiness which our unambitious fathers and mothers took out of life. I liked her all the better for it; but when I tried to say something tender, that would meet her wish, I couldn't find a word from my heart: there was nothing but a hollow feeling inside me. And the thought came over me, hard and selfish, that a man like me, who was bound on a long road, travels best alone.
"I don't know as I want to sell coffee and potatoes all my life," I said at last, and my voice sounded colder than I meant to make it.
"Oh!" she gave a little gasp, as if some one had struck her. "You're very ambitious, Mr. Harrington," she said coldly. "I hope you'll get all you think you deserve, I am sure."
"Well, that wouldn't be much--only I am going to try for more than I deserve--see?" I laughed as easily as I could.
We talked a little longer, and then she made some kind of excuse--we had planned to go out that evening--and left me, bidding me good night as if I were a stranger. I felt small and mean, yet glad, too, to speak the truth--that I hadn't made a false step just there and pretended to more than I could carry through.
Some time later Slocum looked in at the door, and, seeing me alone, came into the room. He had a grim kind of smile on his face, as if he suspected what had been happening.
"Where's Grace?" I asked him.
"Just about where your Hillary is," he answered dryly; "gone off with another fellow."
I laughed. We looked at each other for some time.
"Well?" I said.
"He travels fastest who travels alone," he drawled, using the very words that had been in my mind. "But it is a shame--Miss Cox is a nice woman."
"So is the other."
"Yes, but it can't be--or anything like it."
And the difference between us was that I believe he really cared.
So the Enterprise Market crumbled rapidly to its end, while I kept my eye open for a landing-place when I should have to jump. One day I was sent over to Dround's to see why our usual order of meats hadn't been delivered. I was referred to the manager. Carmichael, as I have said, was a burly, red-faced Irishman--and hot-tempered. His black hair stood up all over his head, and when he moved he seemed to wrench his whole big carcass with the effort. As I made my errand known to him, he growled something at me. I gathered that he didn't think favorably of the Enterprise and all that belonged thereto.
"They can't have any more," he said. "I told your boss so the last time I was over."
I hung on, not knowing exactly what to say or do.
"I guess they must have it this time," I ventured after a while.
"'Guess they must have it'! Who are you?"
He thrust his big head over the top of his desk and looked at me, laying his cigar down deliberately, as if he meant to throw me out of the office for my impudence.
"Oh!" I said as easily as I could, "I'm one of their help."
"Well, my son, maybe you know better than I what they do with their money? They don't pay us."
I knew he was trying to pump me about the Enterprise. I smiled and told him nothing, but I got that order delivered. Once or twice more, having been successful with the manager, I was sent on the same errand. Carmichael swore at me, bullied me, and jollied me, as his mood happened to be. Finally he said in earnest:--
"Joyce's got to the end of his rope, kid. You needn't come in here again. The firm will collect in the usual way."
I had seen all along that this was bound to come, and had made up my mind what I should do in the event.
"Do you hear?" the Irishman roared. "What are you standing there for? Get along and tell your boss I'll put a sheriff over there."
"I guess I have come to stay," I replied easily.
"Come to stay?" he said with a grin. "How much, kid?"
"All you will give me."
"What are you getting?"
"Twenty."
"I'll give you fifteen to drive a wagon," he said offhand, "and I'll fire you in a week if you haven't anything better with you than your cheek."
"All right," I said coolly, not letting him see that I was ruffled by his rough tongue.
In that way I made the second round of the ladder, and went whistling out of Dround's packing-house into the murky daylight of the Stock Yards.
I liked it all. Something told me that here was my field--this square plot of prairie, where is carried on the largest commissariat business of the world. In spite of its filth and its ugly look, it fired my blood to be a part of it. There's something pretty close to the earth in all of us, if we have the stomach to do the world's work: men of bone and sinew and rich blood, the strong men who do the deeds at the head of the ranks, feed close to the earth. The lowing cattle in the pens, the squealing hogs in the cars, the smell of the fat carcasses in the heavy wagons drawn by the sleek Percherons--it all made me think of the soft, fertile fields from which we take the grain--the blood and flesh that enter into our being.
The bigness of it all! The one sure fact before every son and daughter of woman is the need of daily bread and meat. To feed the people of the earth--that is a man's business. My part was to drive a wagon for Dround at fifteen a week, but I walked out of the Yards with the swagger of a packer!
Wholesale -- The little envies of life-- Learning how to read -- What there might be in sausage -- Schemes --A rise in life -- Big John's favoring eye -- Going short of pork -- Uncertainty -- Five thousand dollars in the bank
I TOLD them all at the supper table that evening how I was going into wholesale with Henry I. Dround & Co. Slocum nodded approvingly, but before any one could say a word of congratulation, Hillary Cox snapped this at me:--
"So you were looking out for yourself with that Carmichael man! I thought the Enterprise wasn't big enough for your talents. A desk in the inside office. I s'pose?"
"Not quite yet," I laughed; but I didn't say how little my job was to be.
Miss Cox had given me up. I don't believe she meant to be disagreeable, but somehow we had become strangers, all at once. There were no more gossips on the front steps or Sunday parties. Ed went to church with her in my place. They were getting very close, those two, and it didn't take a shrewd eye to see what was going to happen sometime soon.
The others were more generous than the little cashier and inclined to make too much of my good fortune. For the first time in my life I had the pleasure of knowing that folks were looking up at me and envying me, and I liked the feeling of consequence. I let them think J was to get big wages.
"I suppose you'll be leaving this ranch before long?" Lou suggested.
"Oh, I shouldn't wonder if I might move over to the Palmer House."
A look of consternation spread over Ma Pierson's face at my joking words. She saw a quarter of her regular income wiped off the slate. After the others had gone I told her it was only a joke, and that I should stay with her "until I got married." She cried a little, and said things were bad with her and getting worse all the time. Lately Lou had taken to going with such kind of men that she had no peace at all. I tried to cheer her up, and it was a number of years after that before I could bring myself to leave her place, although the food got worse and worse, and the house more messy and slack.
Even when, later, I began to make a good deal of money, I did not care to change my way of life. At Ma Pierson's were the only people I knew well in the city, and though Grace, and Lou, and Ed, and Dick weren't the most brilliant folks in the city, they were honest, warm-hearted souls and good enough company. And the law clerk, Slocum, was much more. He meant a good deal to me. He taught me how to read--I mean how to take in ideas as they were thought out by those who put them in books. He lent me his own books, all marked and pencilled with notes and references, which showed me how a well-trained mind stows away its information, how it compares and weighs and judges--in short, how it thinks.
We had many a good talk, sitting on the dusty stone steps in our shirt sleeves late summer nights, when it was too hot to sleep. He had read a deal of history and politics and economics as well as his law, and when it came to argument, he could shut me up with a mouthful of facts that showed me how small my lookout on the world was. I remember how he put me through his old Mill, making me chew hard at every point until I had mastered the theory; then he fed me Darwin and Spencer, and Stubbs and Lecky, and a lot more hard nuts. And I think that I owe no one in the world quite so much as I do that keen, silent Yankee, who taught me how to read books and know what is in them.
Meantime I was not doing anything wonderful over at the Yards. For several months the big manager scarce looked my way when he came across me, while I drove and made deliveries to the city trade. Dround & Co.'s customers were mostly on the West Side, in the poorer wards along the river, where Jews and foreigners live. I used to wonder why the firm didn't try for a better trade; but later, when I learned something about the private agreements among the packers, I saw why each kept to his own field. I soon came to know our territory pretty well, and got acquainted with the little markets. My experience at the Enterprise gave me an idea that I thought to turn to some account with Dround's manager. One day, as I was driving into the Yards, I met the Irishman, and he threw me a greeting:--
"Hello, kid! What's the good word?" And he climbed affably into the seat beside me to drive up to the office.
Here was my chance, and I took it.
"Why don't Dround's handle sausage?" I said to the manager.
"What do you know about sausage?" he asked.
I told him what I had in mind. When I worked for the Enterprise we used to have trouble in selling our sausage. Women were afraid of it, thinking it was made from any foul scraps in the store. So, to make the customers take it, I hit on the plan when we had fresh sausage meat of putting some of the sausages by in clean little pasteboard boxes, and the next time a particular customer came in I would call her attention to one of the boxes, "which I had put aside for her specially." And she would take it every time. In this way the Enterprise built up a considerable trade in sausages. The same condition existed in other markets, as I knew; good customers were afraid to eat the ordinary sausage. So, I thought, why shouldn't the packing-house put up a superior kind of sausage in nice little boxes, with a fancy name? The marketmen could retail them handily. Carmichael seemed to be impressed with my idea: he asked questions and said he would think it over. That encouraged me to spring another scheme on him. Dround's trade was in the Jewish quarters, but of course we didn't sell to the real Jews.
"Why not get some old rabbi and make kosher meat--the real article? Strauss and the other packers don't handle it. We might have the market to ourselves, and it is a big one, too."
"Kid, you've got a head on you," big John said to me with warmth. And I saw myself a member of the firm next week!
It didn't work as easily as that, however. The next time I saw the manager I asked him about sausage and kosher meat, and he scowled. It seems he had presented my ideas to Mr. Henry I. Dround, and that gentleman had turned them down. He was a packer, so the head of the house said, and no cat's-meat man, to retail sausages in paper packages to the public. The same way with the kosher meat idea: his business was the packing business, and the firm wasn't trying any ventures. It seemed to me that Mr. Henry I. Dround lacked enterprise; I felt that his manager would have given my ideas a trial.
It was not long after that, however, before Carmichael took me into the office and made me a kind of helper to him, sending me up and down the city to collect accounts, look after the little markets that traded with Dround's, and try on the sly to steal some other fellow's business--that is, to break secretly one of those trade agreements which the packers were always making together, and always breaking here and there, and, when caught, promising each other to be good, and never do it again--until the next opportunity offered, of course! This was more or less confidential and delicate business, and I was not let into the inside all at once. But I said nothing, and kept my eyes open. I began to know some things about the business, and I could guess a few more. I learned pretty soon that Henry I. Dround & Co. was not one of the strongest concerns in the city; that it was being squeezed in the ribs by the great Strauss over the way--that, if it had not been for the smart Irishman, Strauss might take the bread out of our mouths.
Next to Slocum, I owe big John Carmichael more than I could ever pay in money. He was an ignorant, hot-tempered, foul-mouthed Irishman, who had almost been born in the Yards, and had seen little else than the inside of a packing-house all his life. He couldn't write a grammatical letter or speak an unblasphemous sentence. But it didn't take me long to see that Dround & Co. was Carmichael, the manager, and that I was in the best kind of luck to be there under him, and, so to speak, part way in his confidence. . . .
Well, as I said, I got an inkling from time to time how there was a private agreement between the large firms to carve up the market, retail as well as wholesale, and that when one of the firms felt that they could do it safely they would sneak around the agreement (which, of course, was illegal) and try to steal their neighbors' trade. Carmichael managed this business himself, and now and then, when he saw I knew how to keep my mouth shut, he would trust some detail of it to me.
But I was getting only twenty dollars a week, and no rosy prospects. My little schemes of making sausages on a large scale and kosher meat had been turned down. I stowed them away in my mind for future use. Meantime, after working at the Yards for nearly two years, I had managed to lay by about a thousand dollars, what with my savings when I was at the Enterprise. That thousand dollars was in a savings-bank downtown, and it made me restless to think that it was drawing only three and a half per cent, when chances to make big money were going by me all the time just out of my grasp. I kept turning over and over in my mind how I might use that thousand and make it breed money. There were lively times then on the Board of Trade. Nothing much was done in the stock market in Chicago in those early days, but when a man wanted to take his flyer he went into pork or grain. I used to hear more or less about what was being done on the Board of Trade from Dick Pierson, who had been promoted from scrubbing blackboards to a little clerkship in the same office, which operated on the Board.
Dick had grown to be a sallow-faced, black-mustached youth who had his sisters' knack of smart dressing, and a good deal of mouth. He was always talking of the deals the big fellows were carrying, and how this man made fifty thousand dollars going short on lard and that man had his all taken away from him in the wheat pit. He was full of tips that he picked up in his office--always fingering the dice, so to speak, but without the cash to make a throw. Dick knew that I had some money in the bank, and he was ever at me to put it up on some deal on margin. Slocum used to chaff him about his tips, and I didn't take his talk very seriously. It was along in the early summer of my third year at Dround's when Dick began to talk about the big deal Strauss was running in pork. Pork was going to twenty dollars a barrel, sure. According to Dick, all any one had to do to make a fortune was to get on the train now. This time his talk made some impression on me; for the boys were saying the same thing over in the office at the Yards. I thought of asking Carmichael about it, but I suspected John might lie to me and laugh to see the "kid" robbed. So I said nothing, but every time I had occasion to go by the bank where I kept my money it seemed to call out to me to do something. And I was hot to do something! I had about made up my mind after turning it over for several weeks, to make my venture in Strauss's corner. Pork was then selling about seventeen dollars a barrel, and there was talk of its going as high as twenty-five dollars by the October delivery.
It happened that the very day I made up my mind to go down to the city and draw out my money I was in the manager's office talking to him about one of our small customers. Carmichael was opening his mail and listening to me. He would rip up an envelope and throw it down on his desk, then let the letter slide out of his fat hand, and pick up another. I saw him grab one letter in a hurry. On the envelope, which was plain, was printed JOHN CARMICHAEL in large letters. As he tore open the enclosure I could see that it was a broker's form, and printed in fat capitals beneath the firm name was the word SOLD, and after it a written item that looked like pork. As Carmichael shoved this slip of paper back in the envelope I took another look and was sure it was pork. I went out of the office thinking to myself: "Carmichael isn't buying any pork this trip: he's selling. What does that mean?"
As I have said, the manager had charge of those private agreements with which the trade was kept together. In this way he came in contact with all our rivals, and among them the great Strauss. After thinking for a time, it was clear to me that the Irishman had some safe inside information about this deal which Dick did not have, nor any one else on the street. That afternoon when I could get off I went down to the bank and drew my money. At first I thought I would take five hundred dollars and have something left in the bank in case I was wrong on my guess. But the nearer I got to the bank the keener I was to make all I could. I took the thousand and hurried over to the office on La Salle Street, where Dick worked. I beckoned him out of the crowd in front of the board and shoved my bunch of money into his hand.
"I want you to sell a thousand barrels of pork for me," I said.
"Gee!" Dick whistled, "you've got nerve. What makes you want to go short of pork?"
"Never you mind," I said; "go on and tell your boss to sell, and there's your margin."
"I'll have to speak to the old man himself about this," Dick replied soberly. "This ain't any market to fool with."
"Well, if he don't want the business there are others," I observed coolly.
Dick disappeared into the back office, and I had to wait some time. Presently a fat little smooth-shaven man shoved his head through the door and looked me over for a moment with a grin on his face. I suppose he thought me crazy, but he didn't object to taking my money all the same.
"All right," he called out with another grin, "we'll take his deal." And Dick came out from the door and told me in a big voice:--
"All right, old man! We sell a thousand for you."
When I got out into the street I wasn't as sure of what I had done as I had been when I went into the broker's office; but I had too much nerve to admit that I wished I had my money back in my fist. And I kept my courage the next week, while pork hung just about where it was or maybe went up a few cents. Then it began to slide back just a little--$16.87 1/2, $16.85, $16.80, were the quotations--and so on until it reached $16.50, where it hung for a week. Then it took up its retreat again until it had slid to an even $16. Dick, who congratulated me on my luck, advised me to sell and be content with doubling my money. Strauss was just playing with the street, he said. This was only the end of August: by the middle of September there would be a procession. But my head was set. To be sure, when, after the first of September, pork began to climb, I rather wished I had been content with doubling my money. But I pinned my faith on Carmichael. I didn't believe he was selling yet. For a fortnight at the close of September, pork hung about $16.37 1/2, with little variation either way. Then the last three days of the month, as the time for October deliveries drew near, it began to sag and dropped to $16.10. I hung on.
It was well for me that I did. October first Strauss began delivering, and he poured pork into the market by the thousand barrels. Pork dropped, shot down, and touched $13. One morning I called at the broker's office and gave the order to buy. I had cleared four thousand dollars in my deal.
It was first blood!
There was about five thousand dollars in the bank that day when I went back to the Yards, and I was as proud as a millionnaire. Somehow, I seemed to forget how I had learned the right tip, and thought of myself as a terribly smart young man. Perhaps I looked what I was thinking, for when the manager stepped out of his office a little later and eyed me there was a queer kind of smile on his lips.
"What's happened, kid?" he asked, quizzing me. "Been selling any more pork this morning?"
Then I suspected that somehow he had learned about my little venture in the market. I was doubtful just how he might take it.
"No," I said. "It's the time to buy now, isn't it?"
"Covering?" he chuckled. "Well, that's good. Say, some one telephoned out from Cooper's office for you this morning about a little deal in pork. I answered the 'phone."
So that was the way he had learned! That fool Dick had got nervous, and been telephoning to me.
"I hope you made it all right," Carmichael added.
"You bet," I answered cheerily. And that was all that was ever said about the matter.
I become a packer on my own account -- What there is in sausage -- The Duchess -- The Piersons' again -- At the Haymarket -- The path of the bomb -- Another kind of evil
NOT long after my little deal in pork Carmichael promoted me. Instead of running around the city to look after the markets, I was sent out on the road to the towns that were building up all along the railroad lines throughout the neighboring states. My business was to secure as many of these new markets as I could, and, wherever it was possible, to dispossess any rival that had got hold before. It gave me a splendid chance to know a great section of our country which was teeming with life.
That five thousand dollars in the bank burned worse than the first thousand. I took no more chances on pork, however, but I managed to turn a dollar here and there, and after a time something rather big came my way. There were a couple of German Jews, the brothers Schunemann, who were trying to run a packing business at Aurora. They had started as small butchers, and had done well; but they wanted to get into the packing business, and they were having a hard time to compete with the big fellows in Chicago. Their little plant was covered with a mortgage, and Dround and Strauss had taken away most of their trade. The Schunemann brothers were such small fish that they could make no agreements with the large companies, and they weren't important enough to be bought out.
That was what I told one of the brothers when he asked me to say a good word for him with Carmichael. His concern was pretty near bankruptcy then, and it was plainly out of the question for them to go on as they had been without capital. If they had tried to build up a small business in delicatessen and such things, they might have succeeded better. I had never given up the idea of the money that might be made in putting up sausages and preparing kosher meat for the city market. Here, I thought, was just the opportunity. If I could buy out the Schunemann brothers or get a controlling interest, I might try my experiment. The scheme grew in my mind, and I went to Aurora several times to see the brothers. After a while I made the man an offer, and then we talked terms for several months. Slocum advised me and drew up the agreement. I was ready to put my stake into the venture, all that I had in the world. It hurt them to sell me the control of their business for seven thousand dollars, which was all that I could scrape together--and part of that was Slocum's savings, which he lent me.
At last we made the arrangement, and the Schunemann brothers put up the "Duchess" brand of sausage after my plan, and we began to handle kosher meat in a small way. I managed the sausage trade with Dround's business, working the two together very well; for the retailers who dealt with Dround's took to my idea and pushed our Duchess brand, which was packed in nice little boxes. It was a new idea in those days, and nothing takes like something that hasn't been tried before. We began to make money--not a fortune all at once; but the business promised to grow. Thus I became a packer, after a fashion!
In the years that immediately preceded the troublous times of 1886, I was a very busy man and often out of the city, too much engrossed with the growing business on my hands to consider very seriously the disturbances of that period. The fight with labor, which seems to be a necessary feature of our progress, had come to a kind of crisis in that year. But the events in Chicago during that crisis are still so near to many of us that even with the rapid forgetfulness of our days they have not quite escaped the memory of thoughtful men.
I remember that now and then, around Ma Pierson's table, the talk turned on the strike over at the harvesting works. We were all on the same side, I guess--the side of capital; there was enough for all of the good things of life, we thought, if men would only stop their kicking and keep at work. Slocum, for all that he was a lawyer, was the only easy one on the strikers: so long as they respected the laws he was with them in their struggle to get all they could from their employers.
"Mr. Renshaw says they're too well off now," Lou observed. "Who is Mr. Renshaw?" I asked, surprised that Lou should take an interest in such matters.
Slocum looked across the table at me, and Grace quickly began on something else. . . .
Well, on the night of the fourth of May I was on my way to the Piersons' from the Union Station. It was very late, for I had just returned from Aurora, where I had been during the afternoon on my own business. As I got on the street car the men on the platform were talking excitedly about the shooting over at the harvester works. When I reached home, I was surprised to find no one on the steps, the door wide open, and a kind of emptiness in the whole place.
"What's up?" I asked old Pierson.
"That Cox girl's got her cheek blowed open with a bomb or suthin'. Times like this folks can't go gallivantin' about the streets," the old man snarled.
Slocum came in at the sound of my voice and told me what had happened. His face was white, and his long arms still twitched with the horror of what he had seen that night. It seems that Dick Pierson had come home to supper full of the news about the row between the police and the strikers. His talk had worked up the girls,--that is, Hillary Cox and Grace,--for Lou hadn't come home,--until all of them had started off after supper in the direction of the harvester works, where the trouble was reported to be.
Then they had strolled down to the Haymarket, where, instead of the great crowd they had expected to find, there were only some hundreds of men and women listening quietly to several workingmen who were speechifying from a cart. It didn't look very lively, and as a thunder storm was coming up in the north Sloco was for going home. But Ed, who, like a country galoot, was curious to hear what the orator in the cart had to say, pressed up close to the truck, in the front of the crowd, with Hillary Cox on his arm. Suddenly, so Slocum said, there was a shout from somewhere behind them:--
"The police! Look out for the police!"
In the rush that followed, Slocum and Grace were jammed back by the press and separated from the others. He remembered only a little of what happened those next moments. And what he did remember didn't tally with the stories that were told later at the trial. In the darkness of the lowering storm, above the heads of the close-packed, swaying mass in the square, there sounded a dull whir. Then came a terrific explosion. The next thing Slocum knew he was crawling on his hands and knees, groping in the darkness for Grace, while all around them crackled the pistol shots of the police. Then he heard Ed's voice shrieking:--
"The bloody brutes have shot her!". .
"And Hillary?" I asked. "Is it bad?"
"A piece of iron ploughed across her cheek."
"Scar?"
Slocum nodded. (The truth is that if it hadn't been for the ignorant doctor who got hold of the girl first her looks might have been saved. But he took eleven stitches, and there was left a long, ugly, furrowed scar across her pretty face!)
We went up to Slocum's room, and sat there far into the night, discussing what had happened.
"Oh, I suppose you law pills will mouse around in it considerable," I said. "The way to do is to string 'em up to the nearest lamp-post, as they do out West."
As I was saying that, a cab drove up hurriedly in the quiet street and stopped at our door. Slocum and I put our heads out of his window, curious to know what was happening now at two o'clock in the morning. We saw a man get out, then turn and lift a woman from the cab to the street. The woman staggered as she started to walk across the sidewalk.
"It's Lou Pierson!" Slocum exclaimed. He drew in his head suddenly and bolted from the room. I waited long enough to see the man who was with Lou pull the doorbell, and then leave the poor girl half-fallen on the steps, while he went back to the cab and spoke to the driver. Then I followed Slocum downstairs, two steps at a time. Slocum had wrenched open the house door and leaped down the long flight of steps, not pausing at the girl, who was making feeble attempts to rise and calling: "Fred! Fred!" But the man, having given his directions to the driver, paid no attention and got into the cab.
I helped Lou to her feet; she was still calling in a drowsy voice: "Fred! Fred!" I could see Slocum with his hand on the door of the cab. He spoke to the man inside, but I could not hear what he said. Suddenly his hand shot out; there was a tussle, half in and half out of the cab; the driver whipped up his horses, and Slocum was thrown to his knees. He picked himself up holding in his fist something that looked like a necktie.
As Slocum helped me carry the girl up the steps, he said:--
"That's who Renshaw is. A bit of a bomb would be about the right thing for him!"
Generalizations, I have learned, are silly things to play with. But there are some experiences in a man's life that tempt him to make them. It was only a mere accident that the man who was Lou Pierson's companion in the cab that night had taken a prominent part against the striking workmen. But when, later, I was called upon to sit in judgment on some hot-headed fools because they, in their struggle to get an eight-hour day, fomented strife, my thoughts would go back sourly to this example of the men I was expected to side with.
The terror of good citizens -- Henry Iverson Dround -- Righteous indignation -- Leaders of industry get together "to protect society" -- A disagreeable duty -- Selecting the jury -- The man from Steele's -- What is evidence? -- What is justice? -- In behalf of society -- Life is for the strong -- All there is in it! --I take my side
THE morning after the fourth of May the city was sizzling with excitement. From what the papers said you might think there was an anarchist or two skulking in every alley in Chicago with a basket of bombs under his arm. The men on the street seemed to rub their eyes and stare up at the buildings in surprise to find them standing. There was every kind of rumor flying about: some had it that the police had unearthed a general conspiracy to dynamite the city; others that the bomb throwers had been found and were locked up. It was all a parcel of lies, of course, but the people were crazy to be lied to, and the police, having nothing better, fed them lies. At the Yards, men were standing about in little groups discussing the rumors; they seemed really afraid to go into the buildings.
In front of our office a brougham was drawn up--an unusual sight at any time, and especially at this hour. It was standing close to the door, and as I picked my way through the crowd I looked in at the open window. My eyes met the eyes of a woman, who was leaning against the cushioned back of the carriage. She was dressed in a white, ruffled gown that appeared strange there in the yards, and her eyes were half closed, as if she were napping or thinking thoughts far removed from the agitated city. But when I came closer she gave me the sharpest look I ever saw in a woman's eyes. It was a queer face, dark and pale and lifeless--except for that power of the eyes to look into you. I stopped, and my lips opened involuntarily to speak. As I went on upstairs, I wondered who she could be.
My desk was just outside the manager's private office, and, the door happening to be ajar, I could see Mr. Dround within, striding up and down in great excitement. Carmichael was trying to quiet him down. I could hear the chief's high, thin voice denouncing the anarchists:
"It is a dastardly crime against God and man! It threatens the very foundations of our free country--"
"Yes, that's all right," big John was growling in his heavy tone. "But we don't want to make too much fuss; it won't do no good to poke around in a nest of rattlers."
"Let them do their worst! Let them blow up this building! Let them dynamite my house! I should call myself a craven, a poltroon, if I wavered for one moment in my duty as a citizen."
Carmichael sighed and bit off the end of a fat cigar that he had been rolling to and fro in his mouth. He seemed to give his boss up, as you might a talkative schoolboy.
Henry Iverson Dround was a tall, dignified gentleman, with thick gray hair, close-cut gray whiskers, and a grizzled mustache. He always dressed much better than most business men of my acquaintance, with a sober good taste. The chief thing about him was his manners, which, for a packer, were polished. I knew that he had been to college: there was a tradition in the office that he had gone into the business against his will to please his father, who had begun life as a butcher in the good old way and couldn't understand his son's prejudices. Perhaps that explains why all the men in the house thought him haughty, and the other big packers were inclined to make fun of him. However that might be, Mr. Dround had a high reputation in the city at large for honorable dealing and public spirit. There was little set afoot for the public good that Henry I. Dround did not have a hand in.
I had met the chief once or twice, big John having called his attention to me, but he never seemed to remember my existence. To-day Mr. Dround blew out of the manager's office pretty soon and brushed against my desk. Suddenly he stopped and addressed me in his thin, high voice:--
"What do you think, Mr. Harrington, of this infernal business?"
My answer was ready, pat, and sufficiently hot to please the boss. He turned to Carmichael, who had followed him.
"That is what young America is thinking!"
Carmichael put his tongue into his cheek instead of spitting out an oath; but after Mr. Dround had gone, he growled at me:--
"That's all right for young America, but I am no damn fool, either! My father saw the riots back home in Dublin. It's no good sitting too close on the top of a chimney--maybe you'll set the house on fire. The police? The police are half thieves and all blackguards! They got this up for a benefit party, most likely. Why, didn't they kill more'n twice as many men over at McCormick's only the other day, just because the boys were making a bit of a disturbance? And nobody said anything about it! What are they kicking for, anyway?"
Mr. Dround's view, however, was the one generally held. That very evening there was a meeting of the prominent men of the city to take counsel together how anarchy might be suppressed with a strong hand. We little people heard only rumors of what took place in that gathering, but it leaked out that there had been two minds among those wealthy and powerful men--the timid and the bold. The timid were overridden by the bolder-hearted. Good citizens, like Strauss and Vitzer, so Carmichael told me with a sneer, talked strong about encouraging the district attorney to do his duty, and raised a fund to pay for having justice done.
"It means that some of those rats the police have been ferreting out of the West Side saloons will hang to make them feel right. The swells are bringing pressure to bear, and some one must be punished. It's grand!"
He chuckled bitterly at his own wit. But the swells meant business, and when Henry I. Dround was drawn for the grand jury, to indict those anarchists that the police had already netted, big John swore:--
"He needn't have done that! There are plenty to do the fool things. It's his sense of duty, I s'pose, damn him! It's some of his duty to come over here and help us make enough money to keep his old business afloat!"
The Irishman thought only of the business, but Henry I. Dround was not the man to let any personal interest stand in the way of what he considered his duty to society. Perhaps he was a little too proud of his sacrifices and his civic virtues. Some years later he told me all about that grand jury. All I need say here is that this famous trial of the anarchists was engineered from the beginning by prominent men to go straight.
The hatred and the rage of all kinds of men during those months while the anarchists were on our hands, before they were finally hanged or sent to prison, is hard to understand now at this distance from the event. That bomb in its murderous course had stirred our people to the depths of terror and hate: even easy-going hustlers like