MACON
Thelanguid town of Macon, Georgia, will ever remain in my mind as my first island of respite after vagrancy. My friend C. D. Russell lent me his clothes, took me to his eating-place, introduced his circle. We settled the destiny of the universe several different ways in peripatetic discourse.
After one has ventured one hundred and fifty miles through everglades and spent twenty-four sleepless hours riding in freight-cabooses the marrow of his bones is marsh, his hair and clothes are moss, cinders and bark, his immortal soul is engine-smoke. Feeling just so, I had entered Russell’s law office. He was at court. I sent word by his partner that I had gone to school with him in Ohio, that I had mailed a postal last Sunday from Florida telling him I would arrive afoot in three weeks,—but here I was, already. The word was carried with Southern precision.
“There is a person in the office who went to school with you in Indiana.â€
“I did not go to school in Indiana.â€
“He has been walking in Mississippi and Alabama. He wrote you a postal six weeks ago.â€
“How does he look?â€
“Like the devil. He is principally pants and shirt.â€
The cavalier knew who that was. He found me, took me to his castle, introduced civilization.Civilizationis whiter than the clouds, and full of clear water. One enters it with a plunge.Cultureis a fuzzy fabric with which one rubs inCivilization. After I had been intimate with these, I was admitted toSociety: a suit of the cavalier’s clothes. I looked like him then, all but head and hands. I regarded myself with awe, as a gorilla would if he found himself fading into a Gibson picture.
A chair is a sturdy creature. I wonder who captured the first one? Who put out its eyes and taught it to stand still? A table-cloth is ritualistic. How nobly the napkin defends the vest, while those glistening birds, the knife, the fork, the spoon, bring one food.
How did these things to eat get here among these hundreds of houses? One would think that if anything to eat were brought among so many men, there would be enough hungry ones to kill each other and spoil it with blood.
Why do people stop eating when they have had just a bit? Why not go on forever?
We were in another room. The cavalier showed on the table what he called his Bible: the letters of Lord Chesterfield. To one who has not slept in all his life, who has lived a thousand years on freight trains, books do not count much. But how ingenious is a white iron bed, how subtle are pillows, how overwhelming is sleep!