text:
Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/166

 140 called "children's homes" or "boarding schools." The children are not quite so wretchedly fed in these institutions as when with their families (though the reports above quoted show they are often starving even in the Soviet "homes")—a fact which naturally makes fond parents surrender them—"voluntarily" according to the Bolshevists and their cold-blooded "liberal" supporters. But besides this "the theory of the Communist Party that every soul must give a labor contribution to the community carries with it the implication that the individual must be freed from the economic burden of the family. Both men and women are paid on the basis of the individual wage." (British Labor Delegation report.)

So with other "reforms." All vital and national improvements are costly. Therefore none have been made, and all changes are either of secondary importance—such as new "movies"—or on an utterly insignificant scale for a country of the first magnitude. All claims to the contrary are among the clearest proofs of the bold and unscrupulous character of the Bolshevist propaganda.

The Bolshevist leader himself does not make any claim of construction worth boasting about. He is proud of his work of destruction and has said so again and again. All pre-existing civilization is to be destroyed. As for the rest he is proud of his resistance to those who would destroy him. Reconstruction can and must wait. He is very patient, as to construction, as long as he believes the fighting is going his way:

In our struggle two main factors are apparent. On the one hand there is the task of destroying, of an-


text:
Author:Charles Davis Mitchell

As illustrator

 * Man's Country (1923) by Peter Clark MacFarlane

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Author:Charles Davis Mitchell


text:
Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/167

 Rh nihilating the heritage received from the bourgeois regime, of suppressing the ceaselessly repeated attempts of the bourgeoisie to destroy the Soviet power. This task has hitherto taken up most of our attention and prevented us from going about the other task, that of reconstruction.

(Speech at Political Education Conference November 5, 1920—from Soviet Russia, April 30, 1921.)


text:
Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/168

foundation of the entire Bolshevist movement as well as the foreign policy of the Soviet Government is world revolution, the overthrow of all existing governments—even the most democratic—all being regarded as equally "capitalistic." This is the aim of the Russian Communist Party, which is the Soviet Government, and also of the Communist Internationale which shapes the Soviet foreign policy. No compromise of this aim has been adopted or is even projected.

In the Bolshevist view the present is a period of closely connected wars and revolutions, all having a common capitalistic cause, and all working towards the same end, a communist world state.

The increasing pressure of the proletariat, particularly its victories in some countries, strengthens the resistance of the exploiters and compels them to create new forms of international capitalist solidarity (League of Nations, etc.) which, organizing the systematic exploitation of all nations on a world scale, directs all its efforts to the immediate suppression of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat of all countries.

All this inevitably leads to the blending of civil war within various countries with the defensive wars of revolutionary countries, and the struggles of oppressed nations against the yoke of imperialist states. (From


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/96

, whom; fugis, are you avoiding; ah demens, you silly ass; habitarunt di quoque, gods too have lived in; silvas, the woods.' Go ahead!"

I always brighten the classics—it is part of my system—and therefore I translated demens by "silly ass." But Miss Beaumont need not have made a note of the translation, and Ford, who knows better, need not have echoed after me. "Whom are you avoiding, you silly ass, gods too have lived in the woods."

"Ye—es," I replied, with scholarly hesitation. "Ye—es. Silvas—woods, wooded spaces, the country generally. Yes. Demens, of course, is de—mens. 'Ah, witless fellow! Gods, I say, even gods have dwelt in the woods ere now.

"But I thought gods always lived in the sky," said Mrs. Worters, interrupting our lesson for I think the third-and-twentieth time.


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/81

Rh over he saw three maidens rise to the surface of the pool, singing, and playing with something that glistened like a ring.

"You down in the water" he called.

They answered, "You up on the bridge" There was a burst of music. "You up on the bridge, good luck to you. Truth in the depth, truth on the height."

"You down in the water, what are you doing?"

Sir Thomas Browne replied: "They sport in the mancipiary possession of their gold"; and the omnibus arrived.

boy was in disgrace. He sat locked up in the nursery of Agathox Lodge, learning poetry for a punishment. His father had said, "My boy! I can pardon anything but untruthfulness," and had caned him, saying at each stroke, "There is no omnibus, no driver, no bridge, no mountain; you are a truant, a guttersnipe, a liar."

His father could be very stern at times. His mother had begged him to say he was sorry. But


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/82

Rh he could not say that. It was the greatest day of his life, in spite of the caning and the poetry at the end of it.

He had returned punctually at sunset—driven not by Sir Thomas Browne, but by a maiden lady who was full of quiet fun. They had talked of omnibuses and also of barouche landaus. How far away her gentle voice seemed now! Yet it was scarcely three hours since he had left her up the alley.

His mother called through the door. "Dear, you are to come down and to bring your poetry with you."

He came down, and found that Mr. Bons was in the smoking-room with his father. It had been a dinner party.

"Here is the great traveller!" said his father grimly. "Here is the young gentleman who drives in an omnibus over rainbows, while young ladies sing to him." Pleased with his wit, he laughed.

"After all," said Mr. Bons, smiling, "there is something a little like it in Wagner. It is odd how, in quite illiterate minds, you will find glimmers of Artistic Truth. The case interests me. Let me plead for the culprit. We have all romanced in our time, haven't we?"


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/83

Rh "Hear how kind Mr. Bons is," said his mother, while his father said, "Very well. Let him say his Poem, and that will do. He is going away to my sister on Tuesday, and she will cure him of this alley-slopering." (Laughter.) "Say your Poem."

The boy began. Standing aloof in giant ignorance.

His father laughed again—roared. "One for you, my son! 'Standing aloof in giant ignorance!' I never knew these poets talked sense. Just describes you. Here, Bons, you go in for poetry. Put him through it, will you, while I fetch up the whisky?"

"Yes, give me the Keats," said Mr. Bons. "Let him say his Keats to me."

So for a few moments the wise man and the ignorant boy were left alone in the smoking-room.

Standing aloof in giant ignorance, of thee I dream and of the Cyclades, as one who sits ashore and longs perchance to visit

"Quite right. To visit what?"

To visit dolphin coral in deep seas, said the boy, and burst into tears.

"Come, come! why do you cry?"

"Because—because all these words that


text: Page:Letters of James Madison - 1865 - Volume 3.djvu/1


text: Page:Letters of James Madison - 1865 - Volume 3.djvu/2


text: Page:Letters of James Madison - 1865 - Volume 3.djvu/3


text: Page:Letters of James Madison - 1865 - Volume 3.djvu/4


text: Page:Letters of James Madison - 1865 - Volume 3.djvu/5


text: Page:Letters of James Madison - 1865 - Volume 3.djvu/6


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/84

Rh only rhymed before, now that I've come back they're me."

Mr. Bons laid the Keats down. The case was more interesting than he had expected. "You?" he exclaimed. "This sonnet, you?"

"Yes—and look further on: 'Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light, and precipices show untrodden green.' It is so, sir. All these things are true."

"I never doubted it," said Mr. Bons, with closed eyes.

"You—then you believe me? You believe in the omnibus and the driver and the storm and that return ticket I got for nothing and"

"Tut, tut! No more of your yarns, my boy. I meant that I never doubted the essential truth of Poetry. Some day, when you have read more, you will understand what I mean."

"But Mr. Bons, it is so. There is light upon the shores of darkness. I have seen it coming. Light and a wind."

"Nonsense," said Mr. Bons.

"If I had stopped! They tempted me. They told me to give up my ticket—for you cannot come back if you lose your ticket. They called from the river for it, and indeed I was tempted, for I have never been so happy as among those


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/85

Rh The Celestial Omnibus precipices. But I thought of my mother and father, and that I must fetch them. Yet they will not come, though the road starts opposite our house. It has all happened as the people up there warned me, and Mr. Bons has disbelieved me like every one else. I have been caned. I shall never see that mountain again."

"What's that about me?" said Mr. Bons, sitting up in his chair very suddenly.

"I told them about you, and how clever you were, and how many books you had, and they said, 'Mr. Bons will certainly disbelieve you.

"Stuff and nonsense, my young friend. You grow impertinent. I—well—I will settle the matter. Not a word to your father. I will cure you. To-morrow evening I will myself call here to take you for a walk, and at sunset we will go up this alley opposite and hunt for your omnibus, you silly little boy."

His face grew serious, for the boy was not disconcerted, but leapt about the room singing, "Joy! joy! I told them you would believe me. We will drive together over the rainbow. I told them that you would come." After all, could there be anything in the story? Wagner? Keats? Shelley? Sir Thomas Browne? Certainly the case was interesting.


text: Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 21.djvu/1


text:
Page:Legislative Acts of the Governor General of India in Council, 1834-1851.djvu/12

viii.


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/87

Rh Mr. Bons sprang in too. A blast of wind immediately slammed the omnibus door, and the shock jerked down all the omnibus blinds, which were very weak on their springs.

"Dan Show me. Good gracious heavens! we're moving."

"Hooray!" said the boy.

Mr. Bons became flustered. He had not intended to be kidnapped. He could not find the door-handle, nor push up the blinds. The omnibus was quite dark, and by the time he had struck a match, night had come on outside also. They were moving rapidly.

"A strange, a memorable adventure," he said, surveying the interior of the omnibus, which was large, roomy, and constructed with extreme regularity, every part exactly answering to every other part. Over the door (the handle of which was outside) was written, "Lasciate ogni baldanza voi che entrate"—at least, that was what was written, but Mr. Bons said that it was Lashy arty something, and that baldanza was a mistake for speranza. His voice sounded as if he was in church. Meanwhile, the boy called to the cadaverous driver for two return tickets. They were handed in without a word. Mr. Bons covered his face with his hand and again trembled. "Do


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/88

Rh you know who that is!" he whispered, when the little window had shut upon them. "It is the impossible."

"Well, I don't like him as much as Sir Thomas Browne, though I shouldn't be surprised if he had even more in him."

"More in him?" He stamped irritably. "By accident you have made the greatest discovery of the century, and all you can say is that there is more in this man. Do you remember those vellum books in my library, stamped with red lilies? This—sit still, I bring you stupendous news!—this is the man who wrote them."

The boy sat quite still. "I wonder if we shall see Mrs. Gamp?" he asked, after a civil pause.

"Mrs.?"

"Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Harris. I like Mrs. Harris. I came upon them quite suddenly. Mrs. Gamp's bandboxes have moved over the rainbow so badly. All the bottoms have fallen out, and two of the pippins off her bedstead tumbled into the stream."

"Out there sits the man who wrote my vellum books!" thundered Mr. Bons, "and you talk to me of Dickens and of Mrs. Gamp?"

"I know Mrs. Gamp so well," he apologized.


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/89

Rh "I could not help being glad to see her. I recognized her voice. She was telling Mrs. Harris about Mrs. Prig."

"Did you spend the whole day in her elevating company?"

"Oh, no. I raced. I met a man who took me out beyond to a race-course. You run, and there are dolphins out at sea."

"Indeed. Do you remember the man's name?"

"Achilles. No; he was later. Tom Jones."

Mr. Bons sighed heavily. "Well, my lad, you have made a miserable mess of it. Think of a cultured person with your opportunities! A cultured person would have known all these characters and known what to have said to each. He would not have wasted his time with a Mrs. Gamp or a Tom Jones. The creations of Homer, of Shakespeare, and of Him who drives us now, would alone have contented him. He would not have raced. He would have asked intelligent questions."

"But, Mr. Bons," said the boy humbly, "you will be a cultured person. I told them so."

"True, true, and I beg you not to disgrace me when we arrive. No gossiping. No running. Keep close to my side, and never speak to these


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/90

Rh Immortals unless they speak to you. Yes, and give me the return tickets. You will be losing them."

The boy surrendered the tickets, but felt a little sore. After all, he had found the way to this place. It was hard first to be disbelieved and then to be lectured. Meanwhile, the rain had stopped, and moonlight crept into the omnibus through the cracks in the blinds.

"But how is there to be a rainbow?" cried the boy.

"You distract me," snapped Mr. Bons. "I wish to meditate on beauty. I wish to goodness I was with a reverent and sympathetic person."

The lad bit his lip. He made a hundred good resolutions. He would imitate Mr. Bons all the visit. He would not laugh, or run, or sing, or do any of the vulgar things that must have disgusted his new friends last time. He would be very careful to pronounce their names properly, and to remember who knew whom. Achilles did not know Tom Jones—at least, so Mr. Bons said. The Duchess of Malfi was older than Mrs. Gamp—at least, so Mr. Bons said. He would be self-conscious, reticent, and prim. He would never say he liked any one. Yet,


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/91

Rh when the blind flew up at a chance touch of his head, all these good resolutions went to the winds, for the omnibus had reached the summit of a moonlit hill, and there was the chasm, and there, across it, stood the old precipices, dreaming, with their feet in the everlasting river. He exclaimed, "The mountain! Listen to the new tune in the water! Look at the camp fires in the ravines," and Mr. Bons, after a hasty glance, retorted, "Water? Camp fires? Ridiculous rubbish. Hold your tongue. There is nothing at all."

Yet, under his eyes, a rainbow formed, compounded not of sunlight and storm, but of moonlight and the spray of the river. The three horses put their feet upon it. He thought it the finest rainbow he had seen, but did not dare to say so, since Mr. Bons said that nothing was there. He leant out—the window had opened—and sang the tune that rose from the sleeping waters.

"The prelude to Rhinegold?" said Mr. Bons suddenly. "Who taught you these leit motifs?" He, too, looked out of the window. Then he behaved very oddly. He gave a choking cry, and fell back on to the omnibus floor. He writhed and kicked. His face was green.


text: Index:Man's Country (1923).pdf

title: Index:Man's Country (1923).pdf


text:
Index:Man's Country (1923).pdf/styles.css

.chapter { text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 120%; margin-bottom: 1.5em; }

.title-header { text-align: center; font-size: 144%; margin-bottom: 1.5em; text-transform: uppercase; }

.wst-block-center { max-width: 25em; }

.wst-fine-block { margin-bottom: 2em; margin-top: 2em; }

.wst-freedimg-caption { font-size: 92%; font-variant: all-small-caps; }

.wst-toc-table { font-variant: small-caps; max-width: 25em; font-size: 92%; }


text: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/1

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/1


text: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/2

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/2


text: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/3

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/3


text: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/4

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/4


text: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/5

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/5


text: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/6

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/6


text: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/7

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/7


text: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/8

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/8


text: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/9

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/9


text: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/10

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/10


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/11

ID."

"Didn't."

"A wagon without any horse! It rolled right by me—lickety split."

"You're a darn liar!"

Bim! In the thickening dusk of an April night in the middle nineties, on a suburban street of the city of Detroit, two half-grown brothers leaped upon each other and fought, scratching, kicking, pommeling.

"George-e-e-e-ee! . . . Jimmee-e-e--ee! . . . Sup-per-r-r-r."

Borne upon the breath of a mother who was blissfully unaware what emprise engaged her sons at the moment, these words, with affectionate appeal in every syllable, floated out of a small cottage, from the side-door and one front window of which light was streaming.

At the gladsome call the battlers gave off the conflict abruptly and raced each other for the wash-basin which stood on a bench in the lean-

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/11


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/12

 to at the back of the house. They were at the age when the call of the stomach claimed precedence over every other demand of lusty nature.

Malachi Judson, head of this house, father of these boys, husband of that slender woman whose tired, proud voice had summoned them to supper, was a hard-working man of stalwart frame, a quick temper, and a slow mind. His face, bearded below the jaw line, was cavernous above, and the responsibilities of life had carved anxious wrinkles deep in his bony brow. With scarce a glimpse at his sons when they sidled, belated and slightly, to the table, Malachi was bowed above his food, eating as a man is entitled to eat who has laid bricks alt day.

When the last morsel of corned beef to which he had served himself so liberally was gone from his plate, Malachi, after an audible and gustatory draught from his tea-cup, straightened himself and gazed about him with an air of renewed interest in the world. For the first time he noticed that the faces of his sons bore fresh scratches, sundry discolorations, and certain swellings of obviously recent origin.

"Fighting again? You two brothers! Hain't you ashamed of yourselves?" demanded Malachi.

"But, Pa!" and Jim, who was the older brother, although but little the larger—a lad

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/12


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/13

 with narrow shoulders, thin features, and squirrel teeth—began to make his defense. "George said he saw a wagon out in the road tonight, running along without any horse."

"I did, all right," insisted George, who while younger was the more robust and the more pleasing to look upon had he not just then spoiled the fairness of his countenance by darting daggers of resentment and accusation at his tattling brother. "It nearly run over me."

Malachi Judson's close-set orbs of vision grew stern, and his thin lips tightened. Above all things Malachi hated a liar, and this younger son of his was known to be afflicted with a super-imagination.

"What's that?" he scorned. "A wagon running along without a horse?"

"Yes, sir," replied George, leaning forward, eyes still more aglow, tones frankly excited. "I saw it!"

"You—young—imp!" Malachi denounced, the words catapulting forth with an augmented emphasis on each successive one. "What do you mean—setting there and lying to me?"

"I'm not lying, Papa! Honest, I saw it!" avowed George, eyes literally blazing now, but cheeks blanched and voice manifesting a due and proper sense of alarm at his father's dangerous incredulity.

Malachi's face reddened. "You are, you im-

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/13


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/92

Rh "Does the bridge make you dizzy?" the boy asked.

"Dizzy!" gasped Mr. Bons. "I want to go back. Tell the driver."

But the driver shook his head.

"We are nearly there," said the boy. "They are asleep. Shall I call? They will be so pleased to see you, for I have prepared them."

Mr. Bons moaned. They moved over the lunar rainbow, which ever and ever broke away behind their wheels. How still the night was! Who would be sentry at the Gate?

"I am coming," he shouted, again forgetting the hundred resolutions. "I am returning—I, the boy."

"The boy is returning," cried a voice to other voices, who repeated, "The boy is returning."

"I am bringing Mr. Bons with me."

Silence.

"I should have said Mr. Bons is bringing me with him."

Profound silence.

"Who stands sentry?"

"Achilles."

And on the rocky causeway, close to the springing of the rainbow bridge, he saw a young man who carried a wonderful shield.


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/14

 pudent puppy!" he accused and, with a deft swing of his trowel hand, reached across the corner of the table and cuffed young George sharply upon the ear, whereat tears started in the luminous, brown, excited eyes.

"Did, too, see it!" persisted the boy, whimpering. "What you want to hit me for—just because I told you the truth!"

"Oh, Pa!" the mother importuned, eyes full of pain, sitting helpless but lifting appealing hands. "Don't hurt him, Mal!"

"I'm not hurting him, Mary!" protested Malachi, breathing quickly. "I'm learning him not to lie—the darn impudent cub."

Malachi sighed virtuously, took up the evening paper and sank once more into his chair, where he made an honest effort at composing his family and himself once more in peace. But ostentatious sniffings from the lounge made peace not easy to be composed. After enduring for a time, though with irritable twitchings of the shoulders, these unpleasant lachrymose reminders of the scene which had just been enacted, Malachi gave up in disgust. With an angry crackling of his paper he tossed it from him and arose. The charm of a restful evening in his own home, which the day's work had undoubtedly earned him, had been spoiled. With a manner theatrically deliberate and a frown that forbade questioning, he rolled down his

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/14


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/15

 sleeves and buttoned them at the wrists; he drew on his coat, picked up his hat, and started for the door.

Yet the parting glance bestowed upon his wife was not ill-natured or unkind. She was merely asked by lifted brows and a facial gesture to comprehend that his own house had been made unbearable to him and that he sought peace where peace could be found—at Kelley's. The front door closed upon him with a snap.

"I did, too, see a wagon without a horse!" blustered the blubbering boy, the minute that snap had echoed into the sitting-room. "I did, too. Give me a licking, will you—and then get me another one from Pa, will you?" he snarled and turned ferociously upon his brother.

"There, there, George," soothed the mother with a caressing hand upon the boy's shoulder. "Don't talk about it any more, that's a good boy. It's too unpleasant. Let's not think about it any more even." Fair-haired and gentle-faced, with large, fond eyes and a patient, wistful mouth, the hurt mother threw an arm about each boy and drew them lovingly to her. "You must have thought you saw it, George, of course, or you wouldn't have said so," she comforted tactfully.

"I know I saw it," declared George and stamped impatiently.

"Darn that boy!" soliloquized Malachi, fum-

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/15


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/16

 ing as he strode out of the yard. "I've got to learn him not to lie."

The street whereon his modest home was situated was within the city's limits, but unimproved and little better than a country road. The path to Kelley's being better on the other side of this road, Malachi started to cross it diagonally, picking his way over the spongy, oozy surface. As he angled thus, he became aware of a strange, mechanical rattle and an odd, persistent snorting in the darkness, but as the sounds were unaccompanied by hoof-beats, he judged them to be something far away and was busy with his thoughts till suddenly the strange noises were in his ears and he felt himself assailed from behind—violently, abruptly, undignifiedly—assailed and overturned, so that he went rolling, coasting, and skidding clear to a ditch that would some day be a gutter, while the rattle and the snort passed on, attaching itself to something totally invisible in the inky blackness.

But human voices, high-pitched and soaring distantly above the rattle and the snort, came back out of the void.

"I think we struck something!" shouted one voice.

"Only a chuck-hole. This road is rotten!" volleyed another.

"Gosh darn ye!" bellowed Malachi, furious, from his ditch, his hand closing on mud as he

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/16


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/17

 clenched his fist and shook it. "Gosh darn ye! What are ye, anyhow?"

Rising painfully, to the accompaniment of language he would not have wished his sons to hear, with mind engulfed in a fog of mist and amazement, Malachi gave up the intended visit to Kelley's and turned back toward his own house.

"Why, Pa! What's happened to you?" exclaimed Mrs. Judson in astonishment and alarm, as she viewed her husband's rueful countenance and mud-plastered body.

"Fell down!" said Malachi grumpily, and did not meet the gaze of his son, George, when that forgiving youth, all sympathy, rushed to his father's assistance and began currying him with that identical newspaper to whose perusal he had succeeded when the former flung it irately from him. A bathroom being an unknown luxury in the homes of such as Malachi in that period, the kitchen and the kitchen sink were given over to his purpose, while the boys quickened the fire in the cookstove to dry his clothes against the morrow.

Eventually the Judson family went to bed in average good humor with itself. But Malachi had a problem on his mind as he laid his stubbled cheek on the pillow.

"I wonder what the devil hit me?" he kept

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/17


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/18

 saying to himself throughout the night, but the night brought no answer.

Meagning, however, was more communicative. At the breakfast table he got his answer. It was while he gulped his coffee and glanced the Free Press through. Upon an inside page his eyes encountered that which made him growl and start.

"Well, I be darned," he muttered with incredulous wonder. "I do be darned."

"What is it, pop?" demanded George pertly. But the father's manner became at once confused and forbidding. He vouchsafed no reply, but folding the paper as for further perusal at noontime, pushed it down into his side coat-pocket.

The day was Saturday.

"Jim, you come with me today," his father directed. "There's a lot of broken scantlings and waste lumber Mulligan said I could have if I'd haul it away. Some of it will be good for kindling, and some for tomato and bean stakes, and some of it for fencing and chicken coops. It'll take you all day to gather it. George, you stay and help your mother."

George could not repress a grin and a gloating wink at his brother. Helping mother was a snap. Jim, on the contrary, would have to put in a day of grinding toil, get splinters in his hands, perhaps a nail in his sensitive flesh, and generally punish his lazy body.

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/18


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/19

 But when Mr. Judson stepped out of his front door, he noted with surprise that the west wind, blowing all night, had dried the street surface completely, and reasoned that if it had dried the street completely, it would have dried the garden tolerably. To make proof of this he thrust a spading fork into the soil and brought up a huge lump of it. "George," he decided, "you spade up the cabbage patch today, and we'll be getting it in shape for the peas and beans."

He said this quite casually, as if spading up the erstwhile cabbage patch did not represent at least three hours of back-breaking toil to a lad of George's size. It was the elder brother who beamed more happily now and the younger whose smile was sickly.

Now it chanced that as Malachi had lifted that single experimental forkful of earth, the folded newspaper fell unnoticed from his pocket and lay amid the damp weeds unregarded.

George spaded one row across with fine vigor, then paused to reflect upon the hardness of toil in general and the magnitude of this task in particular. He decided to divide it into two parts—one hour's work in the morning and two in the afternoon, when he should have grown more accustomed to such herculean labors and when he would naturally be the stronger with increasing age and another meal inside him. He decided

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/19


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/20

 further that it would not hurt the ground to dry a little more, and therefore to the morning's portion of the task should be dedicated the last hour before noon.

So blithely he left the fork standing upright in the damp earth and went indoors to help mother. Helping mother consisted in yawning around, offering to do things he knew he could not do, and dawdling lazily through such tasks of sweeping and kitchen-floor scrubbing as were well within his powers. Casually and openly he visited the cooky jar twice, and secretly some half a dozen times more. Then he lay for one hour flat upon his stomach, reading "Golden Days." As the kitchen clock struck eleven, he regarded it malignantly.

"Coises on you!" he muttered in mock tragic humor and dragged himself out into the garden.

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/20


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/21

HE sun was shining clear. Some birds were twittering in the plum tree, white with blossoms. Pigeons drummed and cooed in the Flannigan cote, some hundred yards away. The leaves of the maple had enlarged since George was out here two hours before. Everything was astir and a-rustle. The air was warm. The earth was steaming. Seeds were popping in it. Everything—everything seemed imbued with energy save only George Judson.

Lazily he put his hand to the fork, and listlessly he pried its tines to and fro in the soil. He had placed one foot on it to thrust it downward, when his eyes fell upon the folded newspaper and recognized it. He took it up, not so much that he recalled that something in its pages had made his father start and frown, not so much as that unfolding it with delicious deliberation and gazing at each succeeding page long and curiously offered valid excuse for further postponement of entry upon his distasteful task. An illustration, the picture of a cheap-looking wagon, yet with something unmistakably odd about it, had caught his eye, when a sound from the roadside path just over the garden fence

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/21


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/22

 drew his attention. He turned and leaned on the fence, transfixed by a vision that was altogether startling.

A rare and glorified equipage, the like of which he had hitherto beheld only in highlycolored picture-books, was coming down the path. A pair of goats, horns polished, fleeces white and immaculate, were drawing a blue wagon, blue as a bluebird's wing, and proudly perched on the little seat, holding silken rope lines in one hand and a tiny whip in the other, sat a young miss of maybe ten years. She wore a red velvet dress, and a red velvet hat shaped like a lampshade. A cascade of golden curls stole out from under the hat and fell away down the little miss's regally upright back.

The goats advanced in leisurely fashion, putting down their feet like sticks, quite after the manner of goats, but daintily as high-bred animals conscious of their estate. The wheels rolled slowly with an aristocratic crunching as they passed over the uneven surfaces of the dirt path. The lady, like a queen in a circus parade—that was the figure that occurred to the boy—gazed proudly around her from side to side. In the course of those regal circlings it was inevitable that her glance should fall upon young George Judson, standing there in the cabbage patch, newspaper fallen from his fingers, leaning on the fence to look at her.

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/22


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/23

 "Hullo, boy!" she smiled, unabashed, serene.

George was petrified. "Hullo!" he said.

And she, having greeted him as a human feature on the landscape, regarded him no further, for when her eyes swept next around the circle of her vision, the cart had moved on so far that he was no longer in range.

Once the spectacle was gone by, George affected to scoff. "Where'd that come from now?" he jested. "Runaway, I'll bet, from some of those big houses down on the avenue. Bet she don't know where she is. Bet she don't know where she's going. Bet they're out looking for her right now's what I bet."

But though his utterances affected scorn, in his heart of hearts George Judson was profoundly touched and softened by the vision of a beauty more tender and appealing than any his gaze had ever rested upon. He felt himself all at once a man and knew that in reality he had looked on really satisfying and enthralling female charm for the first time.

Leaving the paper where it had fallen, George leaned over the fence and marked where the horns of the goats jerked rhythmically up and down, with the red velvet dress stirring gently in the breeze. The queenly poise of the head, with its gradual rotation from side to side, was still the same.

George's mouth was open. Speculative awe

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/23


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/24

 held him motionless. His eye never shifted its objective till the last wheel of the blue wagon had disappeared around the corner into that open pasture where the city might be said entirely to cease and the country definitely to begin. Slowly, like one recovering consciousness and memory, the boy turned toward his spade and his newspaper, but before he got to either, a piercing scream had reached his ears—from down the road and round the corner.

George leaped the fence and darted toward the cries. On rounding the corner, a truly piteous spectacle met his alarmed but valorous gaze. Flannigan's brindled goat, the monster! a depraved and bewhiskered old patriarch of no graces and no uses that any one could discover, was attacking the white goats of the little red queen, and with consequences the more disastrous to her majesty because, when a goat attacks, he does not, as the comic supplements portray, double up like a ball of springs and launch himself with lowered head. As a fact of biology, your butting goat elevates himself high upon his hind legs, stiffens himself like a ramrod from horn to heel, then falls like a leaning tower toward the object of his attack, forehead set to smite.

So Flannigan's outlawed billy reared and fell upon the goats of the queen, and so her white steeds reared to meet the attack and fell forward

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/24


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/25

 against Flannigan's goat. In consequence the blue wagon of the red queen was going through a series of billowing motions, the front wheels now upon the ground and now in the air, to the necessary disturbance of the peace and dignity of her majesty, who, screaming stridently, but commanding loftily and clinging stoutly, lost her balance just after George rounded the corner, and went rolling backward out upon the dried grass of the pasture.

With true maidenly modesty the little queen thought first of inevitably disarranged skirts and composed them quickly over a pair of legs that appeared to George to be mostly knees, and was sitting up and crying: "Stop him! Stop him! Oh, do please stop him! The horrid, smelly thing!" as her rescuer came dashing up. Gallantry and discretion prompted him to assist the little lady to her feet lest she be trampled upon, but embarrassment and his natural passion for a fight led him to leave majesty to help itself up, and to charge between the battling and embattled animals.

"Ouch!" grunted George. "Dad burn you! Plague take you! Butt me, will you?" and he tried to kick in three directions at once, with only two feet to kick with, one of which must necessarily be upon the ground at least a portion of the time.

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/25


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/26

 "Oo! Oo!" screamed the little queen, wringing her hands.

George's squirming hand now came in contact with the goat whip upon which its owner in her excitement had lost her grip. Using the handle for a weapon of offense, the boy fell upon Flannigan's goat, selecting the nose as the principal point of attack, and speedily put the old rascal in retreat. But he retired stubbornly and turned at a distance of a dozen paces, stamping, flaunting his whiskers, and shaking his horns menacingly.

"Oh! Oh! You have saved me!" cried the little queen. "Thank you! Thank you!" And with admirable resumption of composure, she came right up and took him by the hand, just as a grown-up lady might have done.

George knew this was very queenly and elegant, yet it embarrassed him. He did not know how to respond in kind. He felt all at once that his own social training must have been highly deficient, since it had not equipped him for an emergency like this. "Your britchin' is busted!" he announced concernedly.

"Is it?" gasped the little queen and clawed at herself in dismay. "Why, no,—no, there's nothing broken, I think."

But George was bending over the traces. "Stand still, will you?" he half-ordered and half-entreated—then, holding the still perturbed

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/26


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/27

 steeds with one hand, he produced from pocket after pocket, by various physical contortions, an amazing quantity of material—bits of string, bits of wire, a leather shoelace, a one-bladed knife, and some small nails. With these he managed temporary repairs upon the broken breeching, while the little queen gazed with an absorbed expression and tears drying upon her face. She accepted all this service quite as if she were well accustomed to being waited on.

"You're an awfully nice boy," she decided, climbing into the blue wagon and taking the reins, while her radiant eyes looked up so frankly direct into George's that the youngster blushed.

"I'll keep this old skeezicks away from you," he assured, and menaced the brindled creature which waited vindictively in the offing.

"You came from that way," reminded George. "You want to go home, don't you?"

She turned her glorious equipage about, the team being entirely tractable once more till Flannigan's goat began to follow, uttering malicious bleats, when they showed signs of stampede. Thereat the velvet queen manifested alarm, and George, to reassure her, acted as escort clear past the cabbage patch and away down to Kelley's corner, the Flannigan animal obstinately following.

"Now you can go on," said George. "I'll

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/27


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/28

 drive old Bill clear back home and put him in the pen."

But when the little girl gazed down the vast length of Jefferson Avenue and considered its huge open spaces that by and by lost themselves in a distance in which horses and wagons and carriages seemed all scrambled up together, a fearsomeness possessed her small soul, and her blue eyes, full of wistful appeal, wavered a moment, then fixed themselves upon the face of the boy.

"I—I'm afraid to go home, I guess," she confessed, as if disappointed in herself. "I've had such a scare, you know. I probably must be nervous."

As if suddenly bereft and alone in the world, she thrust out one of the milk-white hands and took hold of George's wrist—a grasp that was timid and yet confiding—a touch that was altogether different from that sturdy clasp of gratitude with which she had taken his hand before.

Inwardly, in the boy soul of him, George Judson jumped as if a hot iron had been laid upon him, but in his flesh he did not move nor start. He only felt that warm, soft touch like velvet, and it melted every purpose in his breast to one purpose—the purpose to guard the little queen from harm—to do more, to be henceforth and forever in all things her obedient slave.

"I'll go home with you!" he announced

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/28


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/29

 stoutly, disregarding loftily unpleasant memories of an unspaded cabbage patch.

"Oo, that will be lovely—just like a prince in a fairy-tale," cried the little girl, clapping her hands. "You rescue me and then you escort me home."

She looked up at him with the most amazing, sun-like radiance in those jeweled eyes of hers, and somehow all the shyness went out of George. Proud as a knight with his lady, he walked along by her side. Imagination played; possibilities dawned; he was ostentatiously attentive. He must frequently stoop to examine the harness, and he must keep his glance skirting wide horizons for possible massing attacks of enemies—Indians or cannibals or whole herds of goats or lions or elephants or whatever danger it was that might threaten this beauteous young lady who put herself so trustfully under his protection.

From time to time her coquettish glance searched the boy's face from under coy lashes, and at intervals her warmest, most confiding smile was vouchsafed, thrilling him to the depths. But besides being a confiding smile it was a tantalizing, bantering smile. George Judson's was a bold nature. He would not be bantered. And he had made up his mind. Why should he not speak it?

"Some day I'll marry you," he announced frankly.

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/29


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/30

 "You?" The little red queen drew herself up, yet she was flattered at the compliment. She gave him, after the first look of hauteur, an even more confiding smile. "I like you, boy, you're awfully nice," and she reached out and took his hand once more as sympathetically breaking the force of what she had to communicate. "But—the man who marries girls like me must be rich. Vurry—vurry rich—or they must do something wonderful, boy—something that makes everybody talk about them. Then we marry them."

"I'm going to be rich and do something wonderful too," declared George Judson with a set of his sturdy shoulders. He had made up his mind to that at once.

For some time the houses past which the goat cart trundled had been getting bigger, and now there appeared in the near distance one red stone house which had a whole quarter of a block to itself. It was huge and solid looking, with a white portico in front and wide lawns unfenced and noble trees all around.

"That's where I live—there!" she announced impressively.

"Gosh!" breathed George, deeply awed. "It's a grand home, isn't it?"

But, at the moment, this home showed signs of being much less at ease within itself than its heavy and self-satisfied architecture might suggest. The vast front door was open. A baldish

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/30


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/31

 man, wearing a solemn coat and a worried expression, and a young woman with a lace cap on her head stood out under the portico, staring up and down the four streets, while before a palatial stable at one side two men hurriedly backed horses into a surrey. For a full minute the little queen appeared to enjoy with a certain approving complacency all these signs of stir and anxiety. And then:

"I guess you better go back now, boy," she suggested, still gazing forward with an abstracted air. "They may be's turbed about me being gone so long. They might blame you."

"Let 'em!" George challenged, and would have stood forth boldly.

The blue eyes gave him a grateful look, but the queenly head was shaken in a decisive negative. "I couldn't let you," she whispered with a smile of delightful intimacy, "but I like you, and I'll come driving out your way again sometime. Thank you ever and ever so much. You're a real nice boy—really."

The goats, still putting their feet down like sticks, rolled the little blue wagon forward into the purview of the maid and the butler on the porch. There were immediate manifestations. The butler shouted something, and both he and the maid rushed forward. The grooms stood gazing, then turned the horses back toward their stalls. At the same time a woman bounded down

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/31


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/32

 the front steps, raced across the lawn, and seized upon the driver of the goats, kissing her frantically. But the little queen, after enduring a moment in the maternal embrace, struggled free, and from the first step leading upward to the grand portico turned loyal eyes back to the land of adventure whence she had come and toward him who had adventured with her. Sighting that face peering from behind the tree, she lifted an arm high, then dipped the four fingers of its hand up and down rapidly in comradely farewell.

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/32


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/93

Rh "Mr. Bons, it is Achilles, armed."

"I want to go back," said Mr. Bons.

The last fragment of the rainbow melted, the wheels sang upon the living rock, the door of the omnibus burst open. Out leapt the boy—he could not resist—and sprang to meet the warrior, who, stooping suddenly, caught him on his shield.

"Achilles!" he cried, "let me get down, for I am ignorant and vulgar, and I must wait for that Mr. Bons of whom I told you yesterday."

But Achilles raised him aloft. He crouched on the wonderful shield, on heroes and burning cities, on vineyards graven in gold, on every dear passion, every joy, on the entire image of the Mountain that he had discovered, encircled, like it, with an everlasting stream. "No, no, he protested, "I am not worthy. It is Mr. Bons who must be up here."

But Mr. Bons was whimpering, and Achilles trumpeted and cried, "Stand upright upon my shield!"

Sir, I did not mean to stand! something made me stand. Sir, why do you delay? Here is only the great Achilles, whom you knew."

Mr. Bons screamed, "I see no one. I see


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/33

T did not matter to George that the Goat Girl had not asked his name. It mattered only that he had seen a great vision and by it been lifted at least one whole cubit toward manhood's fullest stature. It was a long two miles back to the cabbage patch, but miles had now no power to weary him. Big and purposeful, he strode along. Tardy though he was, recreant though he had been, he did not sidle guilty-faced into the kitchen, but stalked in boldly and sat down to his belated dinner. When his mother chided him, he bore it silently, containing himself with noble patience.

Only one thing bade speculation pause. The Goat Girl had warned he must be rich. His pride approved of that as well. It demanded that he must be upon the same plane with her before he could offer himself; and he must do something worth while besides. That was again the instinct of his pride—always to heap the measure full and overflowing. But how was he to get rich as quickly almost as manhood should be reached, for his was an ardent love that would brook no long delay?

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/33


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/34

 The spading fork was in his hands once more as he asked himself this question, but there was the paper under foot to remind him of an unfulfilled duty toward the world's news. Turning the pages he came upon that which had caught his eyes before—nothing more, after all, than a cut of a light spring wagon. But the odd look about it. Why, it had neither shafts, nor tongue, nor whiffletrees, and underneath its body, but atop the running gear, was a junk-like collection of coils and goitres, wens and tuberosities, wires and shafts, chains, gears, and cogs, suggesting some kind of engine. Beneath the cut was the legend, "Horseless Carriage."

George got it on the instant. "A wagon without a horse," he cried aloud. "That's what I said. That's what I said. Ma! Ma! A wagon without a horse!"

He went dashing into the house to thrust the picture under his mother's eyes and to read over her shoulder:

"Our fellow citizen, Charles B. King, has been one of the first men in America to build a gasoline-propelled vehicle, and the very first to operate one on the streets of Detroit. In the past two weeks several runs of the new vehicle have been made on suburban roads, mostly in the night-time to escape the eyes of the curious."

"Now, will you believe me?" exulted the boy, capering before his mother.

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/34


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/35

 "Sakes alive!" declared Mrs. Judson. "What won't they do next?"

"I told you I saw it!" he crowed, pointing to the picture. "It nearly ran over me."

He took the paper out with him again into the garden where, expressing rather the emotions of excitement than the energy of industry, he spaded a row clear across the garden. But with that supreme effort, industry paused content. He beamed once more at the picture of the horseless carriage. It held a strange fascination for him. He felt the elation of a discoverer. He read and reread the news account. It was all too brief.

"Wisht I could see it," he murmured and stared at the nest of machinery. "That's what makes it go, a-course. I wonder what it would be like to ride in it!" At the thought his eyes danced, his voice grew excited, and then a sudden insanity possessed him. "By jinks, I'm a-going to see it!" he announced and kicked down his standing spade. "I'm a-going to see it today. I'll tell Mr. King he nearly run over me, and I'll ask him if I can have a ride in it." The boy's face was shining with the light of a great eagerness. "This old cabbage patch can go to the dickens!" he declared with a defiant look around him.

With a furtive glance over his shoulder at his unsuspecting mother bent over a basket of darn-

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/35


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/36

 ing, he stole in for cap and coat, then, with the newspaper containing the picture and the address of Charlie King's shop tightly in his hand, George climbed over the fence and started on a dogged run for the main trunk artery east and west through the city of Detroit. How George Judson, reasonably conscientious and with a healthy awe of his father's disciplinary hand, could so have abandoned duty was something that neither his fascination by the idea of the self-propelled vehicle nor his hatred of the smell of a horse could account for. He did it—that was all; and at about half after two o'clock that day stood before King's red factory building. At various places on the ground floor forges flamed, lathes turned, and men hammered at anvils or before benches, making a terrible racket and seeming to exult in it; but back in the far corner of this ground floor was a vacant space. Into this George's eyes eventually roved, then peered, then stared, while a lump formed in his throat and a singular thrill went downward to his heels. There stood the shaftless vehicle of the newspaper cut.

To the boy's complete surprise no gaping crowd surrounded it—in his fascinated judgment an almost irreverent neglect, an indifference that was near to blasphemy; but true enough it was that few in that day took any particular interest in the marvel of the horseless

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/36


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/37

 vehicle. Indeed, it was not regarded as a marvel, but as a joke—a huge, preposterous farce.

As George gazed there was only one man near the vehicle, a person in all-enveloping overalls and a greasy mechanic's cap, who squatted, prying into the intricacies of the machinery, tapping, peering, and occasionally squirting oil. But presently he touched something that seemed to make the machinery blow up in noise, to the accompaniment of clouds of smoke and fumes of most vile odor. It would have taken a steadier nerve than George's to stand his ground against this sudden manifestation of a hurricane in the midriff of an old spring wagon. Instinctively the lad leaped backward toward the door, but when he saw the workmen not even glancing up from forge and lathe, he turned again to look with startled eyes. The wagon was still there, but vibrating with some whirling mechanical force, and the man in overalls still knelt beside it solicitously.

When Charles B. King straightened his back, wiping his hands with a piece of cotton waste and wearing an air of having concluded operations upon his patient for that day, he noticed the boy for the first time—a lad in his first long pants probably, with a reefer jacket, belt unbuttoned, and a cap perched abstractedly on the back of his head. His hands were thrust deep

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/37


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/38

 in his pockets, and his face was all absorption, all reverential interest. And Charles B. King in those days could not help but be grateful as a dog to any creature who manifested interest in his machine. Besides, he was fond of boys.

"Hullo, Bub!" he said, and smiled—a confidence-creating smile. "Want to see her go?"

"You bet!" declared George with gusto, yet found himself backing off as the inventor laid his hand upon the seat, but there was something so utterly engaging in Mr. King's twinkling eye as he noticed this rearward movement, that the boy confessed his timidity openly. "I'm kind of 'fraid of her, I guess!" he laughed.

Mr. King laughed also. "So am I, Bub!" he declared. "You never know what kind of a stunt she is going to pull next. Hop into her and let's see what she does this time."

Though fearful, George was not lacking in decision. "I'll chance her," he said and swung into the seat on one side as Mr. King climbed in upon the other.

Gravely the inventor manipulated the steering apparatus to set his front wheels toward the driveway—gravely, as if starting this soulless mechanism were a doubtful, nay, even a dangerous operation. Next he manipulated a lever and toyed with some pedals, after which he waited—solemnly, apprehensively almost, for something to happen. Nothing did happen, whereat

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/38


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/39

 a puzzled look crept over his face. He thrust the lever forward, then back, then wabbled it experimentally, apparently considering what to do next, when. . . Whoosh! . . . The wagon started—with a clatter in every joint—but backward! It leaped backward so suddenly that George all but went over the dashboard.

Rearward in a dizzy circle spun the car, aiming carefully for a spot on the back wall of the factory and accelerating speed with every movement. The driver meanwhile was frantically pulling and hauling at levers and dancing on various pedals. With the wheels all but striking the brick wall they stopped—stopped as suddenly as they had started; and Mr. King, breathing quickly, perspiring profusely, turned, noted the distance of six inches between his precious vehicle and destruction for it, for his guest, and for himself; then sighed with relief and wiped his sleeve across a young but care-lined brow.

"You stopped her just in time," complimented George with an admiring glance at such a cool-headed driver.

Mr. King laughed mirthlessly. "I don't think I stopped her," he confessed, glancing down warily at his feet and carefully refraining from touching any part of the mechanism of control with his hands. "I—don't know why she stopped," he confessed. "I don't know why she

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/39


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/40

 shouldn't start again and take us through the wall at any moment."

After some reflection, as being very careful what he did, Mr. King bent over and opened a crude electric switch, whereat the engine ceased to fume and sputter, wheezed once, and passed slowly out of life.

"Guess there won't be any ride today, Bub," he said apologetically. "The gears aren't working right. I've got to take her insides out and tinker her some more."

"S'all right. I had a fine ride," assured George considerately, estimating with his eye the twenty feet the little wagon had darted crablike. "Say, Mr. King!" he announced with brightening countenance, "when I'm grown up, I'm going to build horseless wagons myself and make a lot of money selling 'em." Then the boyish face brightened still more, and the voice grew exceedingly eager. "Do—do you want to hire a boy right now—a boy that's getting to be a man pretty fast—and let him go to work to help you and learn how to build horseless wagons himself?"

There was such a simple earnestness about this request that it smothered the laugh in Charlie King's throat. "You?" he exclaimed, and took a reinventory of the lad's face, the broad forehead, the large, light-filled, brown eyes, the expression of wistful appeal.

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/40


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/41

 "I—I've got to be pretty well off by the time I'm a man," confided George, "—for certain reasons," with a look and a tone as if two men should understand each other in some particulars without going too much into details.

"But—school, boy!" protested Mr. King, warningly. "You've got to be at school till you're grown up. You don't build horseless carriages with your hands, you know. You build them with your brains. You don't build a house or a locomotive or anything worth while first with your hands."

This was a devastating thought. George Judson considered doubtfully. He was in a hurry with life. Could he waste much more time on school?

"In your brains?" asked George, still mulling over the thought.

"Yes," said the inventor with laconic emphasis. "And then you build 'em on paper. Last of all you come here to a shop and build 'em of steel and wood." While he said this, Mr. King was unbuttoning those all-shrouding and greasespotted blue denims and peeling them off.

"It's too late to start work on the gears today," the inventor explained. "Besides, I'm tired and disappointed, and a little peeved at the old girl." He hung his overalls and cap on a peg and was taking down from sister pegs a coat and a derby hat.

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/41


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/42

 "Would you like to see where I built this wagon first?" he inquired, contemplating George with a thoughtful air.

"Would I!" blurted George Judson.

"Come along; I'll show you," announced Mr. King cheerfully.

Outside the shop stood a team of handsome horses attached to a smart, un-covered buggy.

"Hop in!" commanded his new friend, and George did so.

After a spanking trot through the business district of the city the team swerved in and stopped on Woodward Avenue as at a familiar curb. George saw in front of him a largish house with largish grounds, and yet somehow very different from the Goat Girl's house with which he instantly compared it. This King house seemed older, and it and its surroundings were not "arranged." The yard was packed full of trees and shrubs and flower-beds and walks with a fountain and a little pool.

And when he got into the house it was just like the yard, stuffed full of every kind of beautiful and attractive thing. Two models of fullrigged ships met the boy's eye as he entered the hall, black and shiny hulls, white and gleaming canvas, new yellow ropes.

"I made 'em," boasted Mr. King proudly, enormously delighted with the subtle compliment of George's awed silence before them.

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/42


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/43

 But besides ships that Mr. King had made, there were pictures in the house that he had painted—gorgeous, oily canvasses. George turned and looked the inventor all over again with an entirely new respect.

"Wisht I could see you paint one," murmured the boy, but even as he said it, his roving eye was lost in other wonders.

At length they came to a desk-like table with a raised slope to part of it. On this were draughting materials, pencils, erasers, rules, compasses, and strange, cloth-like paper, semitransparent—things the boy's fingers itched to get hold of at once.

"Here's where I borned her!" announced Mr. King with an exaggerated gesture and his most beaming smile.

"Gosh!" sighed the boy, and stood gazing. "Gosh! There—there's a lot more to it than I thought," he confided after a time—"to building horseless wagons."

Charlie King nodded approvingly. The ships, the pictures, the armor, the butterflies—nothing had knocked it out of the kid's head. He wanted to build horseless wagons, and he was yet a boy. But, at that, the horseless wagon was far younger than he. He was half-grown. The horseless wagon was just born.

"Tell you, George," suggested King confidentially and encouragingly. "The horseless

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/43


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/44

 wagon is yet in its infancy. There's got to be a whole lot of things found out about it yet. Men will have to tinker and tinker for some years yet before the horseless wagon comes into its own and begins to drive other kinds of locomotion off the highways, but it's coming. To bring it is a job for mechanics. Old heads—on young shoulders maybe—but old heads will make the horseless carriage practicable. In the meantime, you stick to school! Father prosperous?"

"Bricklayer, sir; but he's educated some, and he believes in education. He says he's going to keep us boys in school if it's the last thing he does."

"Wise father," approved Charlie King with one of his emphatic nods. "You get through high school at least—make college if you can. When you've done your best, come to me. I'll have the biggest horseless carriage factory in the world then—perhaps the only one—and there'll be a job in it for you."

"I take the job," said George seriously, as if it were right there before him now.

It was wonderful how assuring this prospect was to George Judson; how it appeared to offer the grand solution of all his problems and to provide a field of cloth of gold across which he could gallop straight into the perfect favor of his Velvet Queen. And besides this, there was

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/44


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/45

 something in Mr. King's manner, in his smile, to make any program seem attractive.

"I guess I've got to go home now," announced George. "Thank you a lot!" He offered in farewell a hand that had been sanctified by the touch of the Velvet Queen, but upon which was still some of the smell of Flannigan's goat and some of the grime of the cabbage patch. "I'll stick to school like you say, and I'll come back for that job. Be sure you hold it open for me."

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/45


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/46

EORGE, hurrying homeward, knew well that he had banked away another huge purpose in his life, yet as he sped on his way his new purpose seemed somehow to belong entirely to tomorrow. Today became once more ominously imminent. For two hours or more he had forgotten time. Now he was painfully conscious of it. The cabbage patch bulked like a mountain; it stretched like a moral morass in which he saw himself struggling.

An unexplained fear forced him to hurry. Something made him sick with a vague, illdefined unescapable apprehension of impending calamity. He attributed this to mere guilty conscience.

Six o'clock and his father would be at home—grim and uncompromising when he found the spading but half-completed. To save time, the lad angled across lots, darting behind Flannigan's diminutive barn and making a dash for the Judson garden. But as he gained the fence on one side of it, something halted him.

There was an unusual stir around that loved little home. He thought he heard a cry of

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/46


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/47

 lamentation—a short, sharp, half-smothered wail of anguish. He saw Mrs. Flannigan and another neighbor woman run in hastily; he saw a second woman rush out of the house, hood her bare head in the end of an apron the other end of which was still fastened about the waist, and run frantically up the road. That woman was George's mother. He could not understand it, but a whir of alarm went off in his breast.

A procession of men was coming toward him—a little, short procession of workingmen, with their dinner-pails in their unoccupied hands, and between them they were carrying something. His mother had reached them now and was stumbling along beside that something, wiping her eyes with the apron and exclaiming hysterically. But George Judson still sat upon the fence, frozen stiff, for he saw that the thing the men were carrying was his father. They bore him crudely—but tenderly—upon a door with scantlings thrust underneath, and with his own coat rolled up for a pillow under his head.

All at once George Judson found his legs again. He leaped from the fence and flew to meet the procession.

"Ma! Oh, Ma!" he cried. "Pa! Pa!"

But his mother did not answer. Nobody answered. The solemn-faced bearers marched steadily, but slowly, forward. Eventually, however, the arm of the distracted mother swept out

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/47


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/48

 and enfolded George without seeing him. This occurred just at the moment when his father's groan of agony assured the boy he was not half an orphan.

Thereafter for a time detached sights and sounds registered themselves vividly but confusedly on the boy's consciousness. There were the feet of the solemn-faced bearers treading lightly and yet their foot-falls booming in his sensitive ears like thunder as they walked across the sitting-room floor and eased their heavy burden down on the bed. There was the crowd about the door. There were his father's groans; there was the wringing of his mother's hands, and the moaning and lamenting of the neighbor women, and the low-voiced, awed tones of the workingmen. There was rushing to get hot cloths for compresses, there was the smell of liniment and arnica; there was the doctor's buggy coming to the door, and by and by another doctor and another buggy. There were George and Jim running wildly past Kelley's to the nearest drug store and back on succeeding frantic errands; and there was his father, calmer now, but with face white and set, a kind of grim courage on it that George always knew was in his father.

"Dad!" he half-sobbed, and, creeping close, crouched to kiss the rough hand that hung over the edge of the bed—it was the trowel hand, the

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/48


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/49

 hand that had smitten him upon the ear but yesterday.

Malachi Judson needed not to have the doctor's verdict told to him. He knew within himself; hence this expression now of gray despair.

George, awed by this look growing upon his father's face, slipped out to join his mother bowed in the semi-darkness and facing all at once a world of semi-darkness. The doctors had gone away. Mrs. Flannigan watched the patient within.

"Ma!" the boy asked, crowding close and whispering, while he buried his face in her ginghamed arm. "What's—what's the matter with Pa?"

The boy knew, of course, that his father had fallen from the scaffold on which he worked; he had heard the men reciting that; but this question probed deeper. He felt a shudder shake the wiry and toil-hardened, but to him always soft and tender, frame against which he leaned.

"It's—it's Pa's back!" answered the mother, her voice a broken whisper, her words vague and indefinite as if she somehow lessened the calamity by not defining it.

But the boy's mind was intent to know the worst—the worst that all this gloom on every

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/49


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/50

 face portended. "Is it—is it broke?" he appealed.

The mother's answer was a sob, deep and farreaching as if her lungs would confess all her grief in a single expiration.

Something that felt like an icy dagger pierced the heart of George Judson. A broken back! A dog of his had once sustained a broken back. He knew the utter helplessness, the utter hopelessness, of a creature with a broken back. Yet of his father such a calamity seemed unbelievable. His father had been always to him the embodiment of towering strength. And now was he as helpless as the puppy? Would he never fight the battle of bread for them again? Never chastise his sons again? George felt that he could take a thrashing every day of his adolescent life if only his father could be strong enough to give it to him.

His mother rose heavily and went inside, tears conquered, tear-blotches unconquerable. She stooped and kissed her husband's pain-dewed brow.

"Courage, Mary, old girl!" he whispered. "We got to bear it."

"I know," she said, simply, mournfully, with eloquent resignation in every line of her face and pose.

The two boys were still crouching in separate loneliness upon the porch, with just the width

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/50


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/94

Rh nothing. I want to go back." Then he cried to the driver, "Save me! Let me stop in your chariot. I have honoured you. I have quoted you. I have bound you in vellum. Take me back to my world."

The driver replied, "I am the means and not the end. I am the food and not the life. Stand by yourself, as that boy has stood. I cannot save you. For poetry is a spirit; and they that would worship it must worship in spirit and in truth."

Mr. Bons—he could not resist—crawled out of the beautiful omnibus. His face appeared, gaping horribly. His hands followed, one gripping the step, the other beating the air. Now his shoulders emerged, his chest, his stomach. With a shriek of "I see London," he fell—fell against the hard, moonlit rock, fell into it as if it were water, fell through it, vanished, and was seen by the boy no more.

"Where have you fallen to, Mr. Bons? Here is a procession arriving to honour you with music and torches. Here come the men and women whose names you know. The mountain is awake, the river is awake, over the racecourse the sea is awaking those dolphins, and it is all for you. They want you"


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/51

 of the mother's body between them, for Jim had been there upon the other side of her, leaning against her, too.

"Jim," said George in a husky whisper. "Where's the lantern? I'm going to spade that cabbage patch tonight, so that when father looks out in the morning, he'll see it's done."

"I'll get Flannigan's spade and help you," proposed Jim with an astounding generosity of spirit.

George responded with like generosity. "Shucks, no, Jim! You've worked hard all day. I'm going to do it—alone."

But they did it together, and two tired brothers crept into their common bed to sleep the sleep of utter weariness, sweetened by a sense of fraternal love that was new to them.

A few days later came the inevitable council over ways and means. It was conceded that the family savings would pay the doctors and leave a small nest-egg against the proverbial rainy day, but this must not be impaired or drawn upon for daily sustenance.

Jim seemed not to pay attention and sighted out the open door with his slingshot. George's face wore a stubborn cast, although his heart was beating quickly.

"I can take in washing and get some orders for rag rugs," proposed the mother hopefully, and then she rested her pleading, expectant

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/51


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/52

 glance upon her sons, own brothers and yet so different. "You boys will have to quit school and go to work," she sighed.

"I'm willing," said Jim with an alacrity almost suspicious yet having a grateful sound to the ears of his parents.

"I'm not!" declared the younger boy stubbornly, with what seemed the first jarring note of selfishness that had been struck since an untoward accident had sweetened the unity of the home life. Hearing it, the bewhiskered face upon the pillow, whitening on cheeks and forehead under its coat of weathered tan, shifted abruptly, and the quick, close-set eyes of gray slanted their piercing, pain-shot beams upon the face of this youngest child who had spoken his rebellion with such studied resolution as if he had been a man. His mother's lip quivered, and her startled, hurt eyes also reproached him.

"Son!" she chided.

"Oh, I'll help, mother," assured George with a worried look. "I'll help, Dad. I'll dig up as many dollars for the house every month as Jim will; only I won't quit school. I'll get a paper route to carry in the morning; I'll get another for the afternoon; I'll work Saturdays. I'll find ways to earn money and to earn enough, but I won't quit school."

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/52


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/53

OME years slipped along, and a miracle happened to the world. Concerned with that miracle was Milton Morris. He was a man of fifty, with an open but rather serious countenance, with broad brow, with recessed, crow's footed eyes.

Mr. Morris sat in his shirt-sleeves at a flat desk that was large, substantial, and scarred with much usage. It was littered with correspondence, with drawings and much small mechanical junk. The room in which the desk was located, besides some office furniture, was also cumbered with cogs, wheels, pieces of shafting, and parts of gas engines with half-exposed workings. This cluttered office was situated on the ground floor of a rangy, two-story structure of brick and corrugated iron in Franklin Street on a lot reaching back toward the Detroit River. Across the top of this building was a sign in cut-out letters against a screen of wire, somewhat loppy under the impact of winds and years, but which still lifted to the world the words:

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/53


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/54

 But underneath the center of this legend had been added by means of a wooden sign, in black letters painted on a ground of white, the single word:

The automobile was the miracle which had now happened to the world. When Charlie King and George Judson shook hands that day, there was no such thing—only groping experiments with a horseless carriage. Now the carriage had got the name "automobile"—over which people stumbled somewhat—but it had it; and its commercial manufacture had begun in several American cities. One of these was this same city of Detroit, where a progressive citizen, R. E. Olds by name, astounded those of his fellow-townsmen who took note of such things by the manufacture and sale of four hundred and eighteen automobiles in a single year.

Stories were immediately rife that Olds had made an amazing profit. Scores of men rushed into the manufacture of the new vehicle—some men of ideas, some men of energy, some men of money, all men with dreams of large and glittering profits.

But Milton Morris was different from all these inventors and enthusiasts and promoters. They were young men; he was matured. He had a slow, solid business in gas engines, but it

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/54


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/55

 never grew large because he was more interested in building machines than in selling them. It was because he was a builder that he added automobiles at all. An automobile was several times more complicated than a gas engine; it challenged his building instinct. The result was a little spawn of automobiles, each an almost individual product—a more costly car, but a better car, than most of its early rivals in that city.

But because he was not a salesman, these better cars stood neglected on his floors, and because they stood so neglected Milton Morris sat at his desk and frowned. Yet it was perfectly characteristic that while he frowned, what his mind worked at was not a problem in salesmanship, but an idea half sketched out before him, an idea for taking the controls for his car off the dashboard and running them up through the center of the steering shaft, which would therefore have to be made hollow.

Peering over steel-framed glasses with peculiar flat tops constructed to make peering over easy, he became aware of a young man in a blue serge suit and a straw hat, slightly over the medium height, with dark but luminous eyes, an olive skin, an arching chest, sturdy shoulders, and a combined air of solidity, energy, and smiling aggression about him. Along with buoyant youthfulness, the stranger displayed an

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/55


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/56

 odd commingling of mannish gravity and earnestness, which challenged closer observation.

"I am George Judson," announced the visitor, quietly, but with the subtle, though perhaps unintended intimation that it was something to be George Judson. At the same time the young man smiled yet more broadly, thereby revealing rows of even, white, strong teeth.

But Mr. Morris did not wish to be sold anything this afternoon. "What can I do for you, Mr. Judson?" he asked, a trifle brusquely.

Now Mr. Morris, without knowing it of course, had got his question all wrong. He should have inquired, "What can you do for me, Mr. Judson?"

The George Judson standing here was himself a sort of miracle. Comparing him with that straddling adolescent who had gawped at Mr. King's horseless carriage, this young man represented as much the magic of evolution as the transmutation of "a wagon without a horse" into an automobile.

To believe in this miracle one turns back to that day of dreams shattered by a father's broken back and the stubborn resolve of a boy to realize his dreams in spite of obstacles.

It was from that hour that the boy's old-time, happy-go-lucky ways began to fall from him like the tattered pieces of a frayed and failing garment. He straightened his small back under

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/56


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/57

 responsibilities, preparing to keep the bond of words which he had given. Yet the ensuing two years proved very hard on the stricken family, mostly because the elder brother, Jim, failed it so completely.

But fortunately, as Jim brought home less and less, George Judson brought home more and more. This was possible because, every day when the afternoon paper route was carried, he went on the street with papers under his arm to sell, and the spring of 1898 was a great year for a newsboy. Cuba was a daily source of sensations. At length the Maine was blown up, and swiftly the scare-heads of war became thrilling facts.

George sold out edition after edition. He read the news, of course, and felt a great pride in his country. In his boyish heart he longed to have been storming up San Juan Hill with the Colonel of the Rough Riders, but the regret he felt over an involuntary absence from those stirring scenes of battle was compensated in a measure by the joy and pride he felt in going home each night to his mother with pockets jingling full of nickels, dimes, and quarters. On the 4th of July, 1898, the events of that day being big in news value, he put another boy on to carry his route for him and took the whole afternoon for salesmanship. He made double the usual amount of money and got the first glimpse of a

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/57


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/58

 new business idea. From that day he never carried another afternoon route. He sublet the job and established himself on a Jefferson Avenue corner.

To maintain himself here, he had: sometimes to fight. In business matters his brain was keen. His temper was quick as a flash. His fists were quicker. And yet he was no brawler—no bulldozer. He was fair—fair to the smaller boys, whereat they rallied around him and bought their papers through him. He gave them their rights, but he fought tenaciously against the older fellows for his rights. Presently he had a little stand from behind which he handled his papers. The stand enlarged. He added a few magazines, and then a few more. The stand became a hole in the wall, and he added a whole line of magazines.

Then one day George tried an experiment. He employed a broken-down Civil War veteran, ambitionless but faithful and honest, to keep the stand open all day while the boy was himself in school. This was an enlarging glimpse of that idea which had come to him when he farmed out his afternoon paper route. While he studied, an old man and a six-foot wooden shelf with a two-dollar cotton awning over it made him as much money as he had made in the three after-school hours in which he had been accustomed to prosecute his business so energetically, and

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/58


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/59

 George was greatly excited by the possibilities revealed. He explained the principle to his brother Jim, now eighteen, sly, furtive, oversophisticated, but still his brother, for whom George continued to hope the best, even against his better judgment. He emphasized this belief by setting Jim up in another stand, the duplicate of the first, and located two blocks distant on Griswold Street. But Jim absconded at the end of the first week with some seventy-two dollars of the little news-stand's funds. For George to lose a dime in these days was like losing a drop of heart's blood, but he gritted his teeth and never told his father and mother why it was that Jim did not come home at all now, or, indeed, that he had departed from the city.

Yet this final defection of his brother was a discouraging blow to struggling youth. It hurt George while it hardened him. His life was now all strain and struggle anyway; up betimes each morning to carry his paper route, then came next an hour on the news-stand, at the end of which he set old Nick Cross going for the day and made hasty strides to school and the lessons that he somehow found time to con half-way at least. In the after-school hours there was no play for him. He hurried to the news-stand once more to take up that keen chase for nickels, dimes, pennies that continued till seven or later in the evening. Arrived at home he was accus-

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/59


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/60

 tomed to smile and kiss his mother, force a cheery "Hello, Dad! How's it been?" for his father, press on him some beguiling magazine, and then, after bolting food he was too weary to enjoy, his school-books displaced the dishes on the table before him. But this study was seldom finished. Usually it merely ended with the youth's face down and fast asleep upon an open page.

"It's too much—too much for you, Sonny!" his mother would urge, almost weeping as she roused and dragged him off to bed.

"No! No!" George would protest, shamefaced. "I wasn't asleep—honest. I got through and just laid down my head for a minute."

The boy was tired, dog-tired all the time, and yet there was a compensating thrill to it all—if he could just hold out. He was getting an education; he was supporting his parents; he was learning wonderful lessons not taught in school, and opportunity, the whole wide field of business and opportunity, was opening before him most astonishingly. Take, for instance, the case of Tony Colombo—Tony who kept the boot-black stand next door to George, with four chairs operated by himself and one assistant. Tony one day got into trouble with the officers of the law over a matter of no concern to this narrative and had immediate necessity for $200, with also the prospect that he might not be able to give his

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/60


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/61

 personal attention to business duties for some months to come. Tony told his misfortune to the bustling young chap who owned the news-stand, casually and not hopefully.

"Too bad," sympathized George. "Too bad, old man!" and considered the incident a closed one. But later, watching the number of patrons who climbed up in Tony's chairs, and computing the total of the dimes they left each day in Tony's cash drawer, he began to scent an opportunity. The chairs, the brushes, the bench, the whole outfit, could have been duplicated for $40. The balance of the $200 Tony demanded was his valuation on good will, on the steady stream of patrons, and George had been in business long enough to know that this stream of patrons was the difference between success and failure. He estimated the stream and decided it was worth the money—provided one had the money.

Now it happened that George had observed quite early this important fact—that the most flourishing tree of prosperity has its beginning in a very small plant and that while this plant is small it may be bought for very little, but that little must usually be cash. That he might be ready when such an opportunity knocked at his door, George had enjoined upon himself the habit of a cash reserve. At first it used to be only fifty cents to buy the morrow's stock of papers with, but it grew larger; and all the while

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/61


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/62

 George was taking care of the folks at home quite generously, he was skimping and almost cheating himself to increase day by day this cash reserve. This afternoon, counting up, his cash reserve totaled $190.

From the day's take-in he added another ten dollars and laid the whole in Tony Colombo's surprised and grateful hand—after Tony and George had together evolved a bill of sale, to which the seller affixed his scrawling signature.

The next day, with another assistant in Tony's place and the first man raised to a sort of foreman, George Judson at school—and making an excursion into the literature of the Elizabethan period—was distracted by glowing reflections that besides old Nick Cross selling papers and magazines, two pairs of swarthy hands were shining shoes for his customers and ringing up dimes in the cash-drawer. He got a rare thrill out of this and knew that he was becoming a magnate upon a small scale.

But there were always happening things to prevent him from feeling plutocratic—to remind him that his necessities still exceeded his rewards. As, for instance, on the very evening of his acquisition of the boot-black stand, Doctor Denman, while making a family rather than a sick-call upon the Judsons, had ventured the remark that some wonderful things were beginning to be done with spines now. He

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/62


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/63

 dropped the hint that some months for Malachi in the surgical ward of a great hospital, with the attentions of a certain eminent specialist and the use of some newly contrived and very expensive apparatus, might work a great improvement in the afflicted man's condition.

There was general talk and nothing decided. But the next day George called on the physician in his office.

"Say, Doc, what will it cost?" he asked eagerly—and anxiously.

Doctor Denman was thoughtful, wiping his glasses and staring out the window. "Figuring the lowest possible, and with the specialist cutting seventy-five per cent. off his fee, about $1200."

"Twelve—twelve hundred!" gasped George hollowly. "Twelve hundred to try it?"

"To try it—hospital bills and all."

"And it may not help?"

"It may not."

"But it might?"

"It might."

George's voice was getting steadier and steadier, until he gulped the proposition down. "I can pay you forty dollars a month till the twelve hundred's paid," he said, having made swift calculations.

The experiment failed.

Malachi Judson came home from the hospital

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/63


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/64

 sentenced to a life-long helplessness so far as all but his hands were concerned, yet faced the situation with a dismal fortitude.

And George, having recently attained the proud dignity of a bank account, was sending his check for forty dollars till the whole twelve hundred was paid; and not a dollar of it did he regret, deeming that he got his money's worth in knowing that his father had his chance. Besides, he was getting to be more of a magnate every day. He had two news shops now instead of one, with an alert young woman in charge of the second. But there must have been too much distraction in so many business enterprises for a student's mind, for this year, his first in high school, George failed completely in his midwinter examinations. It was a crushing blow to his self-esteem.

"Better take it slower, George," urged his friends, the teachers.

And he did. Fewer studies allowed him more sleep, while the steadiness of his income and its equally steady enlargement brought additional ease to mind.

Almost as if in consequence of these things there began to take place a remarkable physical change in George. The intensive labors of the past three years had made him scrawny and nervous. He had been hollow-cheeked, big-eyed, rough-haired, almost ill-favored. But

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/64


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/65

 now, suddenly, he was none of these things. Adolescence was completing its brilliant transformation act; it was delivering a gawky youth into the arms of glowing, symmetrical young manhood.

It was in this period that George first began to play at salesmanship as if it were some stirring piece of drama.

One day his customers noted, over and above the stock of newspapers and magazines, a shelf of bound books—cheap reprints of best sellers, they were, yet they gave the whole place dignity from George's point of view. Gradually a modest line of new fiction was added, and young Judson was gathering a finer and a finer clientele and supplying a larger and larger stock to meet its requirements.

Yet such successes only whetted the youth's ambition. Among the books that now got on his shelves was a volume called "Self Help," by Samuel Smiles. George found this book full of recitals of how poor boys had won successes, how struggling young men had become artists or sculptors or successful manufacturers or business men. He pored over its pages. He gloated over its heroes. The book became his Bible. And there was a magazine called "Success" that came monthly to his stand, which devoted itself to inspiring men and women of all classes to better their conditions. On this George used to feed

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/65


text:
Page:Bierce - Collected Works - Volume 09.djvu/36

82

CIVILIZATION OF THE MONKEY
PROFESSOR GARNER, who has penetrated the mystery of the sibilants and gutturals with which monkeys prefer to converse, is said to entertain the glittering hope that by means of his discoveries these contemporary ancestors of ours may be elevated to civilization. The prospect is fascinating exceedingly. It opens to conjecture an almost limitless domain of human interest. It illuminates, with a light as of revelation, numberless paths of endeavor leading to glorious goals of achievement.

The crying need of our time is more civilization. We have made a rather lamentable failure in the attempt to elevate certain of the lower races, such as the Chinese, the Sabbatarians and the Protectionists; and to still others we have imparted only dim and transient gleams of our great light. Some, indeed, we have civilized so imperfectly that they might almost as well have been left in outer darkness; for example, the Negroes of the South. Our utmost efforts—aided, in many


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/66

 his ego fat each month with higher hopes and more solemn determinations.

Inevitably, as it seemed, both his hole-in-the-wall news shops widened and lengthened into real little stores with considerable stocks upon their shelves. He began to develop a chain of news-and-magazine stands. The shoe-shining parlor grew to ten chairs, and six men bent their backs and agitated their elbows to make dimes for George Judson. From every standpoint the young man flourished. In his plan of life there seemed no flaw.

George had a horse and buggy, with which he drove himself to and fro; he built a stable where the cabbage patch had been. He had the cottage painted and new carpets and curtains added. An up-to-date wheel chair that was the last word in comfort replaced the old one. He bought his father fancy shirts and attractive neckwear.

"Making a darned dude out of me," Malachi used to grumble, though secretly pleased.

George bought pretty dresses for his mother and insisted on her wearing them. His manner toward his parents was dutiful, and yet it was also masterful. He was quiet, thoughtful, considerate—but authoritative. His parents, proud of him as they were, began to be a little in awe of him.

"Ain't it wonderful, the way that boy's come

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/66


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/67

 out!" boasted Malachi one day and waited to hear his wife's approving echo.

Instead there came a sound like a sob, and he turned with astonished eyes to behold a coddled mother who was weeping.

"Oh, I think it's terrible, Mal!" she broke out, as with emotion that had been long suppressed. "It's been necessary, I guess, but he's almost ruined," she wailed. "He's a little old man. He don't think of anything but money—making money—Success! Success! Success! He's just got his eye on that."

If George Judson could have seen his mother's tears, he would have been mystified. If he had heard her speech he would have laughed. Neither seeing nor hearing, he went blissfully and determinedly upon his way.

Eventually he graduated from high school two years behind his class, and he had been at least a year behind his age to begin with. He was an oldster among youngsters and was sufficiently embarrassed by this fact that he would not appear upon the platform at the commencement exercises to receive his diploma. He had gained the knowledge it stood for, and that was the important thing with George anyway. The diploma was eventually slipped into his hand at one of his stores by his admiring principal.

These two stores, by the way, had by this time grown to be considerable enterprises, with ever

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/67


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/68

 growing stocks upon their shelves and with trained salespeople to dispose of them. But the best, the most assiduous sales person of them all was George Judson himself. Indeed it was as a salesman that his genius manifested itself. George would not be an inventor like Charlie King; he would not be a builder like Henry Ford. But he was already a salesman. He was a marvel at selling things. Being that, he one afternoon sold out his business to the last shoestring—the shining shop, the chain of news-stands, and the two book stores—everything that he owned; and the proceeds put fourteen thousand dollars in the bank. Fourteen!

Now it would not be strange if at this moment George Judson felt a bit cocky, and underneath his prematurely varnished exterior, George was still naïve and human. A little more than twenty-one years old, toughened rather than hardened by his experiences—tempered perhaps is the better word—he straightened his shoulders with this sale of all his business, as if a burden had rolled off, then filled his lungs afresh. He stood upon the threshold of manhood, amply equipped. Before him were two choices. He could go to college and drink in knowledge in long, thirsty draughts with absolutely nothing to distract, or he could launch directly out. He had made up his mind which.

But what he did first was a perfectly natural

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/68


text:
Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/69

 expression of that habit of duty which he had formed. He climbed into his buggy and started for the cottage out beyond the "Indian Village," into that district which had so long been negligible, but now all at once began to be within speaking distance of the homes of the ultra well-to-do.

Once in a while, as they bowled along, the foolish horse looked askance or shied a little at a "devil-wagon" as people still called the gasoline-propelled vehicles now fairly common in the streets of Detroit, though there were yet plenty of superior people who had not so far deigned to ride in one. But as George himself bent his glance upon the devil-wagon it was with an admiring eye—an eye that looked almost as if it knew something that it wouldn't tell.

"Dad," the young man hailed, when he surprised his parents by arriving at home at this unusual time of day. "I'm going to build you and mother a new house and furnish it; and besides, mother's done her last lick of work except waiting on you. I'm going to hire a girl to do the cooking and the housework."

Malachi Judson was impressedly silent as he heard this announcement, contemplating his son with respectful, almost reverential eye.

But his mother was more vocative. "Oh, George!" she exclaimed with a gesture and a tone that were almost of protest. "Are you sure you can afford it?"

title: Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/69