Nuevo Mundo! shouted the sailors. The sea was rippling like the bottom of a woven grassrope chair. A new world! Taking out their finest satins and putting on new armor the commanders of the little party ordered boats to be made ready and the royal standards of Aragon and Castile to be taken into men meanwhile feeling the balmy air and seeing green and a shore for the first time in two months were greedily talking of fresh fruit—after their monotonous and meager diet of meat—of milk, of a chance to walk free in the air, to escape their commanders, and of women. Yes perhaps there would be women, beautiful savages of manifold charms. But most of all they were filled with the wild joy of release from torment of the mind. For not one among them but expected to be eaten by a god or a monster long since or to have been boiled alive by a hypertropical sea. Excitedly they went down the ladders and took their places at the words of the boatswain spoken in the Castilian tongue.
Of Columbus' small talk on that occasion nothing remains but it could not have been of Eric the Discoverer. Nor of the parties of Asiatics and Islanders—Pacific Islanders who had in other ages peopled the continents from the east. No matter:Nuevo Mundo! had shouted the sailors andNuevo Mundoit was sure enough as they found out as soon as they had set foot on it and Columbus had kneeled and said prayers and the priest had spoken his rigmarole in the name of Christ and the land was finally declared taken over for Ferdinand and Isabella the far distant king and queen.
Yes it was indeed a new world. They the product of an age-long civilization beginning in India, it is said, and growing through conquest and struggle of all imaginable sorts through periods of success and decline, through ages of walkings to and fro in the fields and woods and the streets of cities that were without walls and had walls and burst their walk and became ruins again; through the changes of speech: Sanscrit, Greek, Latin growing crooked in the mouths of peasants who would rise and impose their speech on their masters, and on divisions, in the state and savage colonial influences, words accurate to the country, Italian, French and Spanish itself not to speak of Portuguese. Words! Yes this party of sailors, men of the sea, brothers of a most ancient guild, ambassadors of all the ages that had gone before them, had indeed found a new world, a world, that is, that knew nothing about them, on which the foot of a white man had never made a mark such as theirs were then making on the white sand under the palms.Nuevo Mundo!
The children released from school lay in the gutter and covered themselves with the fallen poplar leaves.—A new world! All summer the leaves had been thick on the branches but now after the heat and the rain and the wind the branches were beginning to be bare. More sky appeared to their eyes than ever before. With what relief the children had pranced in the wind! Now they lay half covered in the leaves and enjoying the warmth looked out on the new world.
And he was passing and saw them. And wondered if it were too late to be Eric. What a new world they had made of it with their Cortezes, their Pizarros yes and their Lord Howes, their Washingtons even. The Declaration of Independence. I wonder, he said, whether it could be possible that the influence of the climate—I wonder if the seed, the sperm of that, existed in Columbus. Was it authentic? Is there a word to be found there? Could it be that in those men who had crossed, in the Norse as; well as the Mongols, something, spontaneous could not have been implanted out of the air? Or was the declaration to be put to the credit of that German George? Was it only the result of local conditions?
"A new declaration of independence, signed by Columbus, found in Porto Rico."
Indians in any case, pale yellow and with lank black hair came to the edge of the bushes and stared: The Yaquis territory lay north of the river Fuertes. To the south was Carrancista territory. The valley was, fertile, the Indians wanted it.
During the week of November 13th, 17th, 1916—word reached Los Mochis that Gen. Banderas and the Villistas from Chihuahua had been defeated by the Carrancistas near Fuertes and were in retreat. During this week two Indians were captured by Los Mochis police and hung on willow trees below the Jaula.
On Saturday November 13th, Col. Escobar and his Carrancistas of the Fifth regiment of Sinaloa were withdrawn from Los Mochis and Aguila and concentrated in San Blas. Banderas and his Villistas meanwhile had come down the Fuertes, effected a junction with Bacomo and his Mayo Indians, and Monday night crossed the river above Los Tastos, tore out the telephone at the pumps and started for Los Mochis. All gate keepers encountered on the road were killed as were their families. Mr. Wilcox estimated the combined forces participating in the raid and on the other side of the river at 6,000.
The first intimation of the raid was at one o'clock in the morning of Tuesday when with a "Villa! Vive Villa! Vive Villa!" the raiders swarmed into Los Mochis from three sides, shooting cursing as they galloped into town. From all over the town came the sound of smashing doors and windows, shots, yells and screams.
When I came here the Indians all used bows and arrows. Conscripted during the many revolutions they had deserted with their rifles until at last, after 800 of them, in a body, went over they used the rifle extensively. Wilcox lived at the pumps with his wife and daughter. A cocky Englishman, he poopooed the danger. He had been in the habit of telephoning into the town, seven miles, whenever a raid was coming. It was agreed we Americans were to keep to our houses, take our animals off the roads and wait with more or less excitement until it was over. We never notified the Mexicans. Had we done so once we should not have escaped the next raid. This time the Villistas were with the Indians. As you saw the first thing they did was to rip out the wires. Washington had just accepted Carranza as the power in authority and the Villistas were angry.
Wilcox and his wife and daughter were locked in a room all the first night while Banderas and Bacomo argued over their fate. Banderas was for killing Wilcox and taking over his wife and daughter for camp women. But the Indian stood out against him. It seems Wilcox had at one time given the Indians some sacks of beans when they were hard up for food. They remembered this. It was a good thing for the three.
At a previous raid an American engineer living near Wilcox was found dead. He was supposed to have run. Looked just like a pin-cushion, with the feathered arrows that were in him. Funniest thing you ever saw in your life. There were four bullets in him also.
The Americans were too scattered to resist. It was decided to save the few guns by hiding them. Bacomo rode up to the house with his escort,—ordered to give up all guns and cartridges. At the last moment he turned back from the stairs, entered Mrs. Johnson's room where the ladies were sitting on the beds and ordered them to get up. Under the mattress a miscellaneous collection of riot guns, rifles, shot guns, automatics, pistols and cartridges were found. When all the guns and cartridges to the last shell had been loaded on the horses behind the drunken soldiers Bacomo refused C.'s request for one of the riot guns and with a polite bow and a "Con permiso, senores," he rode off.
In Mr. Johnson's cellar they had found all sorts of bottles from Scotch to GermanScheiswasserand had drunk it all indiscriminately.
Cattle had eaten the standing rice. The pigs had got loose and over-run everything. Returning there were corpses on all sides. About one of these a triple battle raged. The pigs were ranged on one side, the dogs on another and from a third a flock of vultures crept up from time to time. The pigs and dogs would make a united rush at the birds who would fly a few feet into the air and settle a yard or so away.
These pictures are of Bacomo taken a year later just as he was being taken from the train by his captors. He was a physical wreck at the time but at the time of the raid he was a magnificent specimen of a man. It seemed there was some silver buried near Los Mochis which they wanted. He would not disclose its whereabouts unless they freed him and they would not free him unless he spoke first.
The end is shown in this picture. Here he is with the pick and spade at his feet surrounded by the Carrancista soldiers. He dug his grave and was shot and they buried him there.
The Indians have made a local saint of him and every night you will see candles burning on the spot and little plates of rice and other food placed there for his spirit.—
For a moment Columbus stood as if spell-bound by the fact of this new country. Soon however he regained his self-possession and with Alonzo Pinzon ordered the trunks of trifles to be opened which, being opened, the Indians drew near in wonder and began to try to communicate with these gods.
It was indeed a new world.
No man can tell the truth and survive—save through prestige. And no child either. Aristocracy is license to tell the truth. And to hear it. Witness the man William in Henry Fifth, the camp incident. Fear clutched at his heart.
Agh-ha-ha! Shouted thevaquerosplunging their spurs into the bronchos' sides. Up with the heels. Buck, buck, buck. Agh-ha-ha!Fortissimo. The wild and unexpected cry out of the Mexican Indian country rang through the quiet house so that the pup leaped up and rushed to the door.
Someone had taken the apple. Both denied they had had a hand in it. Each accused the other. The truth did not appear. For an hour the man tried his best to arrive at a just decision. Joseph Smith shook where he stood and fell frothing at the mouth. He was of Vermont mountain stock. His birth among the poor white trash there had not even been thought worth recording. Yet a vision came to him of the marriage in Cana. Christ drank the wine and Martha and Mary her sister became his wives—so to speak. It is the truth. The world shall be saved anew, said Joseph Smith in the mountains of Vermont—where the mushrooms are so plentiful among the fir trees.
Who had given the boy the apple against the father's express orders? Had he taken it himself—which he denied or had the girl gone into the store room—as he asserted but which she denied—and selected it herself? Where was the truth?
In Illinois Brigham Young was recruited. Off they set with fifty oxen for the Promised Land away over the prairies and deserts—through the Sioux country, in search of Zion. The whole world they would leave behind and for the truth's sake they would live in that far country—to be discovered, to which the Lord would lead them.
Go upstairs sir and take your clothes off. You shall go to bed for this lie—I'll say I took the apple Daddy, said the boy sobbing violently, but she gave it to me. In minute detail he repeated the story of how the apple was picked out of the basket by the girl and handed to him to eat.
Lions of the Lord. The boy would not give up his bride to Brigham and wasaltered, as a rebel. She went mad. In '49 a party of gold seekers came by accident into the valley they had found. They were gently received. A warning was given of hostile Indians and a special guard was appointed to conduct them safely on their way. But Brigham had had a dream. Men must not wander into the valley of Zion to disturb the ways of God's holy ones. A blood sacrifice had been demanded of Brigham by the Lord. John D. Lee was selected as he who must lend himself to the Almighty will of God for the good of the church and state. Slowly the party of gold seekers departed for California. At the narrow defile at Mountain Meadow the treacherous business was performed. All but a child were killed and Brigham and the Lord were revenged. Later John D. Lee was convicted of murder by government authorities and shot. A poor ignorant tool in the hands of that most mighty Lion of the Lord.
And you my girl. You have lied to me before this. Did you or did you not take the apple? No one will be punished but I must have the truth. Tomorrow is Sunday. You shall go to church, and up to the minister you shall march, and he will ask you what I am asking you now. In the face of God you shall say to him that you did not take that apple, then I shall know. Did you or did you not take that apple? I will have the truth. And you my young sir, I shall not punish you but I must have the truth. You shall stay in bed all day tomorrow, all next week as long as it takes for one of you to change your story. I will have the truth.
The mountains are savage about the valley. The lake is bitter, scalding with the salt. They knew they had found the Dead Sea. At last the child confessed, with bitter and hard tears that he had taken the fruit himself. It was the truth.
Clear and cold the moon shone in the partly denuded poplars. It was midnight and the little fellow to whom he had determined to teach the meaning of the truth was snug in his bed. Years before that Utah had been admitted to the Union as a state and polygamy had been more or less abandoned. The young folk were beginning to be ashamed of the narrowness of their cult and the bones of the fathers were rotten.
The glassy half moon in the dark leaves cast a dull light over the world upon which a calm had descended. Suddenly the pleiades could be heard talking together in Phœnician. Their words were clear as dropping water: What things they do in this new world: they said. Let us from now on swear to each other that we will give up every thought of wisdom and seek no further for the truth—which is, after all a veritable moon.—At this the moon was overcast for a moment by a falling leaf. The answer that came from that clear but broken ball rose slowly toward the stars: The child is asleep. Let us warn him of the folly of words. Let us bless him only with words that change often and never stiffen nor remain to form sentences of seven parts. To him I send a message of words like running water.—At this the stars smiled for they were married to one—
Elena, yo soy unwonder, she would say.Vu par le jury. And who is the jury but myself. The boy had struck her with a stone. Come we shall go and apologise, said Brigham Young. Into the neighbour's kitchen they walked. An older sister was cleaning the gas range. Where is your sister? But the truth is that all the while he had been hoping that just what had happened would happen. His eye ran up and down the girl's form. Secretly he was happy to have found her alone. I'm sorry, I will never do it again, Never again. Never again. Oh never, never again.
And how can I, now that it is all over, and I am old? But at first I tell you I cried my eyes out. I had just been admitted to the Beaux Arts. All was as near perfect as could well be. I had the friendship of La Baronne d'Orsay and then the stars withdrew their aid. I had to go back to Porto Rico. I had to leave everything behind to go back to that country where there was nothing.
There life ended. But it is over now. I was just beginning to do things. I tell you I cried my eyes out. But I am old now. I wanted you to see these drawings, to show you it was not a bluff.
The Indians are gone. It is late now. It is cold. September is over. October is cold. Words should be—Words should be—I am tired to death.
But two enormous women, middle aged, dignified, with still broad backs came down the street just as the very dirty little boy was crossing over. The three arrived at the entrance to the path at the same moment. The women looked hard at the filthy little boy whose face was stickily from apple-juice and black, with a great circle of dirt around the mouth. The women looked and the little boy hung his head and stumbled off into the long grass, almost falling into the abandoned foundation.
And so the little company went on foot 20,000 miles along what later became known as Emigration Trail, overcoming incredible obstacles, eating the draught oxen, through savage mountains on, on to the Mountain Meadow Massacre. For they would worship the Lord their God in peace and in their own way. At last the Mayflower was in the harbor and the pilgrims had landed and dispersed.
Yes, it was a New World.
But they have prospered and today the Mormon Church is all for goodness and it is powerful and rich.
A favorite trick of the Mayo Indians is, if they meet a man with good clothes, to take what they want and let him go on in his drawers.
So it was with infinite satisfaction that on looking up the little boy saw those two terrible viragos suddenly as low as he.Nuevo Mundo.
Calang-glang! Calang-glang! went the bells of the little Episcopal Church at Allandale. It was eight o'clock in the evening. A row of cars stood along the curb, each with its headlights lit, but dimmed so as not to make too much of a glare on the road, at the same time to save the battery while complying with the law!
On sped the little family all crowded into one seat, the two children sleeping.
In the Dutch church on the old Paramus Road Aaron Burr was married to Mrs. Prevost, Jataqua! It is near Hohokus, cleft-in-the-rocks, where the Leni Lenapes of the Delaware nation had their village from time immemorial. Aaron, my darling, life begins anew! It is a new start. Let us look forward staunchly together—
The long, palm-like leaves of the ailantus trees moved slowly up and down in the little wind, up and down.
And along this road came the British. Aaron, the youth from Princeton, gathered his command together and drove them back. Mother I cannot sleep in this bed, it is full ofBritish soldiers. Why so it is! How horrid.
And he too, on his memorable retreat, that excellent judge of horseflesh, George Washington, he too had passed over this road; and these trees, the oldest of them, had witnessed him. And now the wind has torn the finest of them in half.
Nothing more wonderful than to see the pears attached by their stems to the trees. Earth, trunk, branch, twig and the fruit: a circle soon to be completed when the pear falls. They had left at eleven and soon they would be home. The little car purred pleasantly to itself at the thought of the long night. Oh, to be a woman, thought the speeding mechanism. For they had wrapped something or other in a piece of newspaper and placed it under the seat and there were pictures there of girls—or grown women it might be, in very short skirts. Steadily the wheels spun while on the paper were printed these words:
The Perfection of Pisek-designed Personality Modes: A distinctly forward move in the realm of fashion is suggested by the new personality modes, designed by Pisek... modes that are genuine inspirations of individual styling, created for meeting the personal preferences of a fastidiously fashionable clientele, the woman and the miss who seek personality in dress in keeping with their charms, characteristics and station . . . Thus you can expect at Pisek's only thosetailleurs, gowns, wraps and frocks that bear the unmistakable stamp of individuality—styles that encourage and inspire admiration for their splendid simplicity and differentness... come to Pisek's . . . (the more the better) . . . see the new ideas in fashions . . . You'll not be disappointed . . .
What chit of a girl could have appreciated you, my darling boy, as I do. A man of your personality, so fresh in wit, so brimming with vigor and new ideas. Aaron my dear, dear boy, life has not yet begun. All is new and untouched in the world waiting, like the pear on the tree, for you to pluck it. Everyone loves you and will wait on you. For you everything is possible. Bing! and Hamilton lies dead.
As old Mr. Goss, who lost his hearing from an explosion of fireworks in Philadelphia after Lee's defeat, has said in his high nasal twang: Quite right, quite right, I've seen the country saved 8 times in the last fifty years.
At any rate it was a new world to them; they two together would conquer and use, life had smiled upon them.Nuevo Mundo.
Along the road the Dutch settlers came out from their attractive brown stone houses as the happy and distinguished couple went by. It was a great day for the little colony of New Jersey. There over the misty meadows the lights of Weehawken were beginning to glimmer as the little car and its precious freight drew near the end of the journey. The pear fell to the earth and was eaten by the pigs.
I wonder if he'll recognise me in my Greenwich Village honkie-tonk bobbed hair. The hairdresser said: Don't you do it, when I said I'd like mine bobbed too. So many of the girls had theirs done a year ago and now its just at that impossible stage where you can't do a thing with it. Better go to Europe or California until it grows again. There's a reason for travel: As the hair progresses the days grow fewer.
But is South Africa after all the country of the future?
Over the great spaces of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana he sped in the Pullman car. City after city swept up to him, paused awhile at his elbow and plunged away to the rear with the motion of a wheel whose hub was hidden in infinity. And such indeed was exactly the case. He was being ground between two wheels, one on either side of the car and it was their turning that thrust him forward at such speed. The wheat was up in the fields but a fellow passenger assured him that in Kansas, only two days before, he had seen wheat twice as high—which explains the cause of so many abandoned farms in Vermont, he remembered, and settled back to another hour of idle staring. A new country he kept saying to himself. On a siding were cars loaded with emigrants from Holland booked through to San Francisco.
Into the elevator stepped the young man in a petty officer's uniform. His Spanish was exquisite to hear. The first battleship since the Spanish-American war was anchored in New York harbor. How well he bears himself. The Spanish are the only people in Europe whom civilization has not ruined. Savage men, big bearded chins—but shaved clean. They know how to treat their women—better than the French for the French—after all areblagueursto a man. The Spanish stand still. What an ass a man will make of himself in a strange country! In armor De Soto wandering haphazard over Alabama. The Seminoles for guides. Buried him in the Mississippi. It is my river, he said. Roll Jordan roll. It ismyriver for I discovered it and into it let my body, in full armor, be put to rest. The cat-fish ate it. So roll Jordan roll. Diada Daughter of Discord: read it.
In Illinois, far in the west, over that trackless waste of forest and mountain and river and lake they came at last to a valley that pleased them and there they determined to build. So they fell to hewing trees and building their houses, work to which they had been bred and trained for two generations since Plymouth and Salem days. Cornwallis had been beaten fifty years before and Pitt had rushed to see the King crying: All is lost. A new world had been born. Here in the primeval forest the little colony of New Englanders hoped to realize success and plenty.
In Bonnie, Illinois, the Presbyterian minister is a very good man. He is as good a preacher as Bonnie can afford and if anybody said that Bonnie is made up of mad-men—He would be shot.Nuevo Mundo, shouted the sailors. But their cry was by now almost extinct.
In polite stories the world had been made acquainted with the picturesque lives of these commonplace but worthy people. In detail their story had been told. Over the precipice in Yosemite the Bridal Veil Falls had been launching its water for a thousand years and ignorance was fattening his belly apace.
Bonnie, Ill., October 22. Dear Bill: Am up to my ears in painting, and am preparing to go to Alton, Ill., to work in the State Hospital, if I get a call, so am too busy now to read your book but think I'm going to like it and will devour it later. Sincerely. A. N. Turner.
And the little boy crept into the great chest like Peppo into the Cardinal's tomb and began to pick up the mothballs that had been left there when the winter things were removed.
An Indian would sense the facts as he wished. A tree would speak to him with a definite identity. It would not at least seem endowed with human characteristics: a voice, that would be all.
Arnold, this wind is, the wise and sagacious captain. Henchman of the wind. The wind is a lion with hooked teeth. The saber-toothed tiger inhabited the region west of the Alleganies throughout the pleistocene age. With a snarl it wrenches the limbs of the trees from their places and tosses them to earth where they lie with the leaves still fluttering.
Vacuous; full of wind. Her whole pelvis is full of intestine but aside from the ptosis I find nothing really wrong. The uterus appears to be normal. The bleeding may come from a cyst. At least there is no good reason for removing—for a hysterectomy. There it is. It. Like some tropical fruit color of the skunk cabbage flower. There it is, that mystical pear, glistening with the peritoneum. Here the cavern of all caverns. Alpha if not omega. Talk politely and obey the law. But do not remove it.
Oh my country. Shall it be a hysterectomy? Arnold there is a wind with a knife's edge.
And Remy says the spring of curiosity is broken at thirty. Nothing left at fifty but the facts of bed and table. He has the lilt of Heine at his best and in places quite equals the work of the author of Danny Deever. The catgut had slipped out of the needle. The young interne held the point of the suture between his fingers and the nurse approached the needle as accurately as she could. But the man's hand trembled slightly. For a moment they tried to complete the connection but failing in their attempt the nurse took the end in her other hand and soon had the needle threaded. The young doctor looked up as much as to say thank you.
Such a wind. At fifteen they seem noble, desirable beyond dreams. In the winter the trees at least remain stems of wood that resist with a will, whose branches rebound against the impact of sleet. At thirty they are what they are. The boy rebels and she with her hair in distressed tangles about the disorderly boudoir cap, at mid-day, whines and snatches at him as he jerks and defies her. It is beyond her strength to control a boy of nine. Clutching her dressing sack—oh slobbery morsel—about her breastless form with one hand she rushes as far as she dares to the porch edge, glancing furtively about for chance gentlemen or neighbors and tries to overtake the youngster. No, the young man has really escaped. He goes to school filthy again and what will they think of his mother.
At fifteen they are slender and coquettish and they cry if you are rough with them. Great burly fellow, she seemed to him all that he was not, the quintessence of Ibsenism, the wind among the reeds. Or perhaps the reed in the wind. Something to love, to take into the arms, to protect—If you can find any reason for doing a hysterectomy doctor, do it. Her husband is good for nothing at all. She at least is a power in her family. She is not like the native American women of her class, she is a Polock. You never saw such courage.
The schooner left Southampton bound for New York with a cargo of rails—steel rails. But the English emigrants were not like these modern messes. Those round, expressionless peasant faces of today. See that one there with the little boy at her side. Castle Garden. At last we are to be in America, where gold is in the streets. Look at that face. That is the kind of immigration we want. Look at the power in that jaw. Look at that nose. She is one who will give two for every stroke she has to take. Look at the intensity of her gaze. Well, she's English, that's the reason. Nowadays they have no more of that sort. These Jews and Polocks, Sicilians and Greeks. Goodbye America!
The head nurse's legs under her practical short skirt were like mighty columns. They held the seriousness of her looks, her steady, able hands. A fine woman.
The American background is America. If there is to be a new world Europe must not invade us. It is not a matter of changing the y to i as in Chile. They are bound.
The background of America is not Europe but America.
Eh bien mon vieux coco, this stuff that you have been writing today, do you mean that you are attempting to set down the American background? You will go mad. Why? Because you are trying to do nothing at all. The American background? It is Europe. It can be nothing else. Your very method proves what I say. You have no notion what you are going to write from one word to the other. It is madness. You call this the background of American life? Madness?
As far as I have gone it is accurate.
It is painting the wind.
Ah, that would be something.
Mais ça, are you a plain imbecile? That is a game for children. Why do you not do as so many of your good writers do? Your Edgar Lee Masters, your Winesburg, Ohio. Have you not seen the photographs of men and women on your walls? They are a type, as distinct as a Frenchman or a German. Study these men, know their lives. You have a real work to do, you have the talent, the opportunity even. This is your work in life. You Americans, you are wasteful, mad—
Our background.
You would paint the wind. Well, it has been tried—many times, and do you know where that leads?
I know where it has led.
But do you know? Have you seen, felt, heard what they have seen, felt, heard, our Villons—
Apollo was out of breath but the nymph was more tired than he. The chase must soon have ended when she falling to her knees half from the will to be there half from fatigue besought her mistress Diana to save her from the God's desire. And she was changed into a laurel bush.
All about the hills where they stood the hard waxen leaves of the laurel glistened above the dead leaves of the hardwood trees, the beech, the maple, the oak.
You imagine I am French because I attack you from the continental viewpoint. You are wrong. I am from the country of your friends Mussorgsky, Dostoevsky, Chekov. At least if you will not yield me the point that America cannot be new, cannot do anything unless she takes the great heritage which men of all nations and ages have left to the human race.
You mean that I should not be an American but—Turgenev, enjoy you more if, well, if you were more comprehensible, a little more particular,vous comprenez? You sweep out your arms, you—I see no faces, no details of the life, no new shape—
The druggist's boy cannot be distinguished from his master when he says, Hello, over the phone—Is that what you mean?
Well, you are very much children, you Americans.
It is not to be avoided as far as I can see.
Let us have now a beginning of composition. We have had enough of your improvisations.
I am consumed by my lusts. No American can imagine the hunger I have.
It is the itch, monsieur. It is neurasthenia. Desire is not a thing to speak of as if it were a matter of filling the stomach. It is wind, gas. You are empty my friend. Eat. Then and then only.
Like all men save perhaps the Chinese you are most transparent when you imagine yourself most protected.
Her bosom reached almost to her knees. That morning in the October garden she had picked a violet for him and placed it in his coat. Watching the feet of men and women as they touched the pavement a strong odor of violets crossed his path.
He turned and saw the massive Jewess waddling by. It had been good perfume too.
These Polocks. Their heads have no occiput. They are flat behind. It is why when they put on their American hats the things slip down about their ears. The nigger's head isn't that way. You know how the bump goes out behind in so many of them. The club sandwich on her plate kept sliding apart, the top slice of bread would slip. Then she took the pieces in her fingers and poked the lettuce in under the sheet. On her breast was a black pin. It formed a circle. She looked up with her mouth full of food and resting both elbows on the table chewed America thoughtfully while she held the state of Maryland in her firm fingers. The ends of each finger were stubby, the nails cut short and as clean as well manicured nails could well be. Clatter, clatter, clatter. He could see himself in the plate glass behind her. He was conscious of his hat which he had not removed. He was at this table with these five women—one of them young, ready—and he had not removed his hat. There was in fact no place to put it.
I am begging, frankly. Ten cents a ticket. I have to raise fifty dollars by the end of next week. We want to fit up a room in our hall where the colored working girls can come and rest. On Thursdays we serve tea. Then they go back to the office. When the impact is over the man must think. I tell you I do not contemplate with relish seeing my children bred out of all these girls. Is it wrong? Well, I thought you said you had an appetite. Impregnate eighty of them, right and left as you see them here in this room. It would not be impossible. I cannot think of my children running about in the environment in which these have to live. My dear sir, you are a fool. You are lying to yourself—As to the girls, I frankly desire them. I desire many, many, many.
There she sat on the bench of the subway car looking idly about, being rushed under the river at great speed to the kitchen of her mother's flat. Malodorous mother. Or wrinkled hard-put-to-it mother. Savior of the movies. After the impact his great heart had expanded so as to include the whole city, every woman young and old there he having impregnated with sons and daughters. For everyone loved him. And he knew how to look into their eyes with both passion and understanding. Each had taken him to her soul of souls where the walls were papered with editorials from the Journal and there he had made himself father to her future child. As they went upstairs he saw how her heels were worn—Who will understand the hugeness of my passion?
But he had understood. The truth lay under the surface. Why then not—No two can remain together without training. Who better than that one who is practiced. The faithful husband of the clothing store madam is used to her. They functionate well together. He puts his hat in the right place. His money in the right bank. His arm fitted in just the posture best suited to their mutual height and width. All their practices were mated.
But he was an outsider. He was new to all. Her shoes are stitched up the back.
Card-index minds, the judges have. Socialism, immorality and lunacy are about synonyms to the judge. Property is sacred and human liberty is bitter, bitter, bitter to their tongues.
Walk up the stairs there little girl. But she is naked! These are all doctors. So the little tot struggled up the very high clinic steps, naked as she was, and all the doctors looked at her. She had some spots on her body that had been there a year. Had I been her father I would know why I am a fool.
Naked and free, free to be damned in to hell by a chance vagrant to whom she had taken a fancy. Her father did not know her. Did not even know that she existed. Cared less. We will look after her said the head doctor.
That cat is funny. I think she'd be a good one for the circus. When she's hungry she bites your legs. Then she jumps at you as much as to say:Carramba, give me something.
America needs the flamboyant to save her soul—said Vachel Lindsay to the indifferent mountains.
He might have added that America tries to satisfy this need in strange and often uncatalogued ways. America, living an exemplary three-meals-a-day-and-bed-time life in a wall-papered home, goes now and thenen masse, by Gosh, to the circus to see men, women and animals perform exquisite and impossible feats or daring. What could be more flamboyant than the trapeze-performer hurtling through the air, the tiger leaping through man-made hoops, or the elephant poising his mighty bulk on his two forelegs lifted to the top of bottles? What more flamboyant than the painted clown, timeless type of the race, laughing that he may not weep, grinning through a thousand tragic jests while little human beings perform their miraculous tricks around him?
Jazz, the Follies, the flapper in orange and green gown and war-paint of rouge—impossible frenzies of color in a world that refuses to be drab. Even the movies, devoid as they are of color in the physical sense, are gaudy in the imaginations of the people who watch them; gaudy with exaggerated romance, exaggerated comedy, exaggerated splendor or grotesqueness or passion. Human souls who are not living impassioned lives, not creating romance and splendor and grotesqueness—phases of beauty's infinite variety—such people wistfully try to find these things outside themselves; a futile, often a destructive quest.
The imagination will not down. If it is not a dance, a song, it becomes an outcry, a protest. If it is not flamboyance it becomes deformity; if it is not art, it becomes crime. Men and women cannot be content, any more than children, with the mere facts of a humdrum life—the imagination must adorn and exaggerate life, must give it splendor and grotesqueness, beauty and infinite depth. And the mere acceptance of these things from without is not enough—it is not enough to agree and assert when the imagination demands for satisfaction creative energy. Flamboyance expresses faith in that energy—it is a shout of delight, a declaration of richness. It is at least the beginning of art.
All right go ahead: A TEXAS PRIZE CONTEST—The Southern Methodist University at Dallas, Texas, recently emerged from a prize contest which had a strangedénouement—
Look here young man, after this you examine those girls in the cold weather.
Who is Warner Fabian?Flaming Youthis the story of the super-flapper, of her affairs at country clubs and cozy home-dances with all the accompaniments of prohibition stimulants. Warner Fabian believes that the youth of this country feeds on excitement and rushes to knowledge "heeled" by way of petting parties and the elemental stimulus of jazz. The barriers of convention are down. Youth makes its own standards and innocence, according to the author, has been superseded by omniscience.
It doesn't matter that Warner Fabian is anom de plumewhich conceals the identity of one of the ablest scientists of this country who has dared to look facts in the face, facts physical, moral and emotional. He has written the truth about youth, the youth of today as he sees it.
FLAMING YOUTH by Warner Fabian is the writing on the wall. It is theQuo Vadis? of the present moment.
Those who are following in the Metropolitan Magazine the fortunes of Pat, the most sophisticated and yet at the same time one of the most deliciously lovely heroines of recent novels, and the fortunes of her two sisters, may protest that Mr. Fabian's portrayal of youth in this novel is outscotting Fitzgerald and overdancing in the Dark. We feel however that this story of three girls and their many men is one which may sufficiently frighten mothers and electrify fathers and hit the younger set hard enough between the eyes to help America's youth to, at least, a gradual return to sanity.
And so the beginning of art ends in a gradual return to sanity.
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If a man died on a stretcher he simply said: Dump it out. And ordered us back for another load.
Intended to stop at the school but his mind waylaid him. Down the hill came the ash-cart—on the wrong side of the street. He, up the hill, perforce went wrong also and with great headway. Just as he was about to pass the cart another car swung out from behind it, headed down hill at full speed. It was too late for any of the three to stop. In three seconds there would be death for someone. Angels would be waiting for mother's little boy. Without the minutest loss of time, in time with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at its best he swung far to the left, up over the curb, between two trees, onto the sidewalk—by luck no one was passing—and going fifty feet came back between two trees, over the curb to the roadway and continued his empty progress, rather hot in the face, it must be confessed. He felt happy and proud.
But he had missed his street.
Well let it go. Far away in front of him a locomotive stood indifferently at the avenue end, emitting great clouds of smoke. It was autumn, clear and cold.
But you Scandinavians, said the Frenchman, it is impossible to live in this way. Why France, which is ten times as rich as your countries, could not do it. You do not know what money is for. You throw it away like a sickness. To drink champagne like this is madness, and it is every night, everywhere, in Christiania, Copenhagen, everywhere.
And there she sits staring out, not at the sea, but over Long Island Sound. Dreaming of her sons—and of the money she will make next year by renting the better of her two little shacks.
When you have paid up the twenty shares you may, if you like, retain them as paid up shares in which case you will receive the 5% interest, or, if you feel that you would like to do so, you may increase your holding to thirty shares and receive the 6%. Of course everyone is not able to do that. Do not worry about it, we will notify you in plenty of time when your book is balanced at the end of the six months.
Let's see. What is the number of your house? Four eighty? I'll see that they send it right up.
You know last Sunday was my birthday. Seventy-three years old. I had a party, a surprise party—my relatives came from all sides. But I couldn't get her downstairs. She's afraid. We had a banister put on the stairs, cost me nine dollars but she will not do it. She's so fat you know, she's afraid of falling.
Re Commissions due—Amount $1.00. Dear Sir:—You will please take notice that unless we receive payment in full of your account within FIVE DAYS after receipt of this letter, we shall draw upon you for the amount due.
A collection agency draft notifies the banks—those great institutions of finance—that there is serious doubt regarding the way you pay your honest obligations. The bank will take note of it. From there the information quietly passes to the various Mercantile Agencies, Dun's, Bradstreet's, Martindale's. And this is ONLY ONE cog in the wheel of ARROW SERVICE. Our reports cover the whole field of credit reporting.
Your continued indifference to our requests for payment has forced us to consider this action. The draft, with a full history of the debt leaves our office in five days unless your check is received in the meantime.
Let your better judgement guide you, and pay this account without any more trouble or expense. Yours very truly—MEMBERS: Retail Credit Men's National Association. Commercial Law League of America. Rotary International. O Rotary International!
At this, De Soto, sick, after all the months of travel, stopped out of breath and looked about him. Hundreds of miles he had travelled through morass after morass, where the trees were so thick that one could scarcely get between them, over mountain and river but never did he come to the other side. The best he had done was to locate a river running across his path, the greatest he had ever seen or heard of, greater than the Nile, greater than the Euphrates, no less indeed than any. Here he had confronted the New World in all its mighty significance and something had penetrated his soul so that in the hour of need he had turned to this Mighty River rather than to any other thing. Should it come to the worst he had decided what to do. Out of the tangle around him, out of the mess of his own past the river alone could give him rest. Should he die his body should be given to this last resting place. Into it Europe should pass as into a new world.
Near the shore he saw a school of small fish which seemed to look at him, rippling the water as they moved out in unison. Raising his heavy head De Soto gave the order to proceed. Four of the men lifted him on an improvised stretcher and the party, headed by the Indians, started again north along the bank.
The whole country was strange to them. But there at the edge of that mighty river he had seen those little fish who would soon be eating him, he, De Soto the mighty explorer—He smiled quietly to himself with a curious satisfaction.