“Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist. He who wouldgather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name ofgoodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is atlast sacred but the integrity of your own mind,”—Emerson.
CONVERSING ON RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY, THE REBEL LEARNS THAT IT IS SOMETIMES WISE TO SOFT PEDAL IDEAS UNLESS THEY ARE ACCEPTED ONES
During his freshman year Jeff saw little of his cousin beyond the usual campus greetings, except for a period of six weeks when the junior happened to need him. But the career of James K. tickled immensely the under classman's sense of humor. He was becoming the most dazzling success ever developed by the college. Even with the faculty he stood high, for if he lacked scholarship he had the more showy gifts that went farther. He knew when to defer and when to ride roughshod to his end. It was felt that his brilliancy had a solidity back of it, a quality of flintiness that would endure.
James was inordinately ambitious and loved the spotlight like an actor. The flamboyant oratory at which he excelled had won for him the interstate contest. He was editor-in-chief of the “Verdenian,” manager of the varsity football team, and president of the college senate.
With the beginning of his senior year James entered another phase of his development. He offered to the college a new, or at least an enlarged, interpretation of himself. Some of his smiling good-fellowship had been sloughed to make way for the benignity of a budding statesman. He still held a tolerant attitude to the antics of his friends, but it was easy to see that he had put away childish things. To his many young women admirers he talked confidentially of his aims and aspirations. The future of James K. Farnum was a topic he never exhausted.
It was, too, a subject which greatly interested Jeff and Sam Miller. His cousin might smile at his poses, and often did, but he never denied James qualities likely to carry him far.
“His one best bet is his belief in himself,” Sam announced one night.
“It's a great thing to believe in yourself.”
“He's so dead sure he's cast for a big part. The egoism just oozes out of him. He doesn't know himself that he's a faker.”
“He is a long way from that,” Jeff protested warmly.
“Take his oratory,” Miller went on irritably. “It's all bunk. He throws a chest and makes you feel he's a big man, but what he says won't stand analysis—just a lot of platitudes.”
“Don't forget he's young yet. James K. hasn't found himself.”
“Sure there's anything to find?”
“There's a lot in him. He's the biggest man in the university to-day.”
“You practically wrote the oration that won the interstate contest. Think I don't know that?” Miller snorted.
Jeff's mouth took on a humorous twist. “I gave him some suggestions. How did you know?”
“Knew he wasn't hanging around last term for nothing. He's selfish as the devil.”
“You're all wrong about him, Sam. He isn't selfish at all at bottom.”
“Shoot the brains out of that oration and what's left would be the part he supplied. The fellow's got a gift of absorbing new ideas superficially and dressing them up smartly.”
“Then he's got us beat there,” Jeff laughed goodnaturedly. He had not in his make-up a grain of envy. Even his laughter was generally genial, though often irreverent to the God-of-things-as-they-are.
“When he won the interstate he lapped up flattery like a thirsty pup, but his bluff was that it was only for the college he cared to win.”
“Most of us have mixed motives.”
“Not J. K. Reminds me of old Johnson's 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.'”
Jeff straightened. “That won't do, Sam. I believe in J. K. You've got nothing against him except that you don't like him.”
“Forgot you were his cousin, Jeff,” Miller grumbled. “But it's a fact that he works everybody to shove him along.”
“He's only a kid. Give him time. He'll be a big help to any community.”
“James K.'s biggest achievement will always be James K.”
Jeff chuckled at the apothegm even while he protested. Sam capped it with another.
“He's always sitting to himself for his own portrait.”
“He'll get over that when he brushes up against the world.” Jeff added his own criticism thoughtfully. “The weak spot in him is a sort of flatness of mind. This makes him afraid of new ideas. He wants to be respectable, and respectability is the most damning thing on earth.”
After Miller had left Jeff buckled down to Ely's “Political Economy.” He had not been at it long when James surprised him by dropping in. His host offered the easiest chair and shoved tobacco toward him.
“Been pretty busy with the team, I suppose?” Jeff suggested.
“It's taken a lot of my time, but I think I've put the athletic association on a paying basis at last.”
“I see by your report in the 'Verdenian' that you made good.”
“A fellow ought to do well whatever he undertakes to do.”
Jeff grinned across at him from where he lay on the bed with his fingers laced beneath his head. “That's what the copybooks used to say.”
“I want to have a serious talk with you, Jeff.”
“Aren't you having it? What can be more important than the successes of James K. Farnum?”
The senior looked at him suspiciously. He was not strongly fortified with a sense of humor. “Just now I want to talk about the failures of Jefferson D. Farnum,” he answered gravely.
Jeff's eyes twinkled. “Is it worth while? I am unworthy of this boon, O great Cesar.”
“Now that's the sort of thing that stands in your way,” James told him impatiently. “People never know when you're laughing at them. There is no reason why you shouldn't succeed. Your abilities are up to the average, but you fritter them away.”
“Thank you.” Jeff wore an air of being immensely pleased.
“The truth is that you're your own worst enemy. Now that you have taken to dressing better you are not bad looking. I find a good many of the fellows like you—or they would if you'd let them.”
“Because I'm so well connected,” Jeff laughed.
“I suppose it does help, your being my cousin. But the thing depends on you. Unless you make a decided change you'll never get on.”
“What change do you suggest? Item one, please?”
James looked straight at him. “You lack bedrock principles, Jeff.”
“Do I?”
“Take your habits. Two or three times you've been seen coming out of saloons.”
“Expect I went in to get a drink.”
“It's not generally known, of course, but if it reached Prexy he'd fire you so quick your head would swim.”
“I dare say.”
The senior looked at him significantly. “You're the last man that ought to go to such places. There's such a thing as an inherited tendency.”
The jaw muscles stood out like ropes under the flesh of Jeff's lean face. “We'll not discuss that.”
“Very well. Cut it out. A drinking man is handicapped too heavily to win.”
“Much obliged. Second count in the indictment, please.”
“You've got strange, unsettling notions. The profs don't like them.”
“Don't they?”
“You know what I mean. We didn't make this world. We've got to take it as it is. You can't make it over. There are always going to be rich people and poor ones. Just because you've fed indigestibly on Ibsen and Shaw you can't change facts.”
“So you advise?”
“Soft pedal your ideas if you must have them.”
“Hasn't a man got to see things as straight as he can?”
“That's no reason for calling in the neighbors to rejoice with him because he has astigmatism.”
Jeff came back with a tag of Emerson, whose phrases James was fond of quoting in his speeches. “Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
“You can push that too far. It isn't practical. We've got to make compromises, especially with established things.”
Jeff sat up on the bed. Points of light were dancing in his big eyes. “That's what the Pharisees said to Jesus when he wouldn't stand for lies because they were deep rooted and for injustice because it had become respectable.”
“Oh, if you're going to compare yourself to Christ—”
“Verden University is supposed to stand for Christianity, isn't it? It was because Jesus whanged away at social and industrial freedom, at fraternity, at love on earth, that he had to endure the Cross. He got under the upper class skin when he attacked the traditional lies of vested interests. Now why doesn't Bland preach the things that Jesus taught?”
“He does.”
“Yes, he does,” Jeff scoffed. “He preaches good form, respectability, a narrow personal righteousness, a salvation canned and petrified three hundred years ago.”
“Do you want him to preach socialism?”
“I want him to preach the square deal in our social life, intellectual honesty, and a vital spiritual life. Think of what this college might mean, how it might stand for democracy It ought to pour out into the state hundreds of specialists on the problems of the country. Instead, it is only a reflection of the caste system that is growing up in America.”
James shrugged his broad shoulders. “I've been through all that. It's a phase we pass. You'll get over it. You've got to if you are going to succeed.”
A quizzical grin wrinkled Jeff's lean face. “What is success?”
“It's setting a high goal and reaching it. It's taking the world by the throat and shaking from it whatever you want.” James leaned across the table, his eyes shining. “It's the journey's end for the strong, that's what it is. I don't care whether a man is gathering gilt or fame, he's got to pound away with his eye right on it. And he's got to trample down the things that get in his way.”
Jeff's eye fell upon a book on the table. “Ever hear of a chap called Goldsmith?”
“Of course. He wrote 'The School for Scandal.' What's he got to do with it?”
Jeff smiled, without correcting his cousin. “I've been reading about him. Seems to have been a poor hack writer 'who threw away his life in handfuls.' He wrote the finest poem, the best novel, the most charming comedy of his day. He knew how to give, but he didn't know how to take. So he died alone in a garret. He was a failure.”
“Probably his own fault.”
“And on the day of his funeral the stairway was crowded with poor people he had helped. All of them were in tears.”
“What good did that do him? He was inefficient. He might have saved his money and helped them then.”
“Perhaps. I don't know. It might have been too late then. He chose to give his life as he was living it.”
“Another reason for his poverty, wasn't there?”
Jeff flushed. “He drank.”
“Thought so.” James rose triumphantly and put on his overcoat. “Well, think over what I've said.”
“I will. And tell the chancellor I'm much obliged to him for sending you.”
For once the Senior was taken aback. “Eh, what—what?”
“You may tell him it won't be your fault that I'll never be a credit to Verden University.”
As he walked across the campus to his fraternity house James did not feel that his call had been wholly successful. With him he carried a picture of his cousin's thin satiric face in which big expressive eyes mocked his arguments. But he let none of this sense of futility get into the report given next day to the Chancellor.
“Jeff's rather light-minded, I'm afraid, sir. He wanted to branch off to side lines. But I insisted on a serious talk. Before I left him he promised to think over what I had said.”
“Let us hope he may.”
“He said it wouldn't be my fault if he wasn't a credit to the University.”
“We can all agree with him there, Farnum.”
“Thank you, sir. I'm not very hopeful about him. He has other things to contend with.”
“I'm not sure I quite know what you mean.”
“I can't explain more fully without violating a confidence.”
“Well, we'll hope for the best, and remember him in our prayers.”
“Yes, sir,” James agreed.
“I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were allmy brothers.”—Old Proverb.
THE REBEL FLUNKS IN A COURSE ON HOW TO GET ON IN LIFE
It would be easy to overemphasize Jeff's intellectual difficulties at the expense of the deep delight he found in many phases of his student life. The daily routine of the library, the tennis courts, and the jolly table talk brought out the boy in him that had been submerged.
There developed in him a vagabond streak that took him into the woods and the hills for days at a time. About the middle of his Sophomore year he discovered Whitman. While camping alone at night under the stars he used to shout out,
“Strong and content, I travel the open road,” or
“Allons! The road is before us!
“It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well.”
Through Stevenson's essay on Whitman Jeff came to know the Scotch writer, and from the first paragraph of him was a sealed follower of R. L. S. In different ways both of these poets ministered to a certain love of freedom, of beauty, of outdoor spaces that was ineradicably a part of his nature. The essence of vagabondage is the spirit of romance. One may tour every corner of the earth and still be a respectable Pharisee. One may never move a dozen miles from the village of his birth and yet be of the happy company of romantics. Jeff could find in a sunset, in a stretch of windswept plain, in the sight of water through leafless trees, something that filled his heart with emotion.
Perhaps the very freedom of these vacation excursions helped to feed his growing discontent. The yeast of rebellion was forever stirring in him. He wanted to come to life with open mind. He was possessed of an insatiable curiosity about it. This took him to the slums of Verden, to the redlight district, to Socialist meetings, to a striking coal camp near the city where he narrowly escaped being killed as a scab. He knew that something was wrong with our social life. Inextricably blended with success and happiness he saw everywhere pain, defeat, and confusion. Why must such things be? Why poverty at all?
But when he flung his questions at Pearson, who had charge of the work in sociology, the explanations of the professor seemed to him pitifully weak.
In the ethics class he met the same experience. A chance reference to Drummond's “Natural Law in the Spiritual world” introduced him to that stimulating book. All one night he sat up and read it—drank it in with every fiber of his thirsty being.
The fire in his stove went out. He slipped into his overcoat. Gray morning found him still reading. He walked out with dazed eyes into a world that had been baptized anew during the night to a miraculous rebirth.
But when he took his discovery to the lecture room Dawson was not only cold but hostile. Drummond was not sound. There was about him a specious charm very likely to attract young minds. Better let such books alone for the present. In the meantime the class would take up with him the discussion of predeterminism as outlined in Tuesday's work.
There were members of the faculty big enough to have understood the boy and tolerant enough to have sympathized with his crude revolt, but Jeff was diffident and never came in touch with them.
His connection with the college ended abruptly during the Spring term of his Sophomore year.
A celebrated revivalist was imported to quicken the spiritual life of the University. Under his exhortations the institution underwent a religious ferment. An extraordinary excitement was astir on the campus. Class prayer meetings were held every afternoon, and at midday smaller groups met for devotional exercises. At these latter those who had made no profession of religion were petitioned for by name. James Farnum was swept into the movement and distinguished himself by his zeal. It was understood that he desired the prayers of friends for that relative who had not yet cast away the burden of his sins.
It became a point of honor with his cousin's circle to win Jeff for the cause. There was no difficulty in getting him to attend the meetings of the revivalist. But he sat motionless through the emotional climax that brought to an end each meeting. To him it seemed that this was not in any vital sense religion, but he was careful not to suggest his feeling by so much as a word.
One or two of his companions invited him to come to Jesus. He disconcerted them by showing an unexpected familiarity with the Scriptures as a weapon of offense against them.
James invited him to his rooms and labored with him. Jeff resorted to the Socratic method. From what sins was he to be saved? And when would he know he had found salvation?
His cousin uneasily explained the formula. “You must believe in Christ and Him crucified. You must surrender your will to His. Shall we pray together?”
“I'd rather not, J. K. First, I want to get some points clear. Do you mean that I'm to believe in what Jesus said and to try to live as he suggested?”
“Yes.”
Jeff picked up his cousin's Bible and read a passage. “'We know that we have passed from death unto life, BECAUSE WE LOVE THE BRETHREN. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.' That's the test, isn't it?”
“Well, you have to be converted,” James said dubiously.
“Isn't that conversion—loving your brother? And if a man is willing to live in plenty while his brother is in poverty, if he exploits those weaker than himself to help him get along, then he can't be really converted, can he?”
“Now see here, Jeff, you've got the wrong idea. Christ didn't come into the world to reform it, but to save it from its sins. He wasn't merely a man, but the Divine Son of God.”
“I don't understand the dual nature of Jesus. But when one reads His life it is easy to believe in His divinity.” After a moment the young man added: “In one way we're all divine sons of God, aren't we?”
James was shocked. “Where do you get such notions? None of our people were infidels.”
“Am I one?”
“You ought to take advantage of this chance. It's not right to set your opinion up against those that know better.”
“And that's what I'm doing, isn't it?” Jeff smiled. “Can't help it. I reckon I can't be saved by my emotions. It's going to be a life job.”
James gave him up, but he sent another Senior to make a last attempt. The young man was Thurston Thomas and he had never exchanged six sentences with Jeff in his life. The unrepentant sinner sent him to the right about sharply.
“What the devil do you mean by running about officiously and bothering about other people's souls? Better look out for your own.”
Thomas, a scion of one of the best families in Verden, looked as if he had been slapped in the face.
“Why Farnum, I—I spoke for your good.”
“No, you didn't,” contradicted Jeff flatly. “You don't care a hang about me. You've never noticed me before. We're not friends. You've always disliked me. But you want the credit of bringing me into the fold. It's damned impertinent of you.”
The Senior retired with a white face. He was furious, but he thought it due himself to turn the other cheek by saying nothing. He reported his version to a circle of friends, and from them it spread like grass seed in the wind. Soon it was generally known that Jeff Farnum had grossly insulted with blasphemy a man who had tried to save his soul.
Two days later Miller met Jeff at the door of Frome 15.
“You're in bad! Jeff. What the deuce did you do to Sissy Thomas?”
“Gave him some good advice.”
Miller grinned. “I'll bet you did. The little cad has been poisoning the wells against you. Look there.”
A young woman of their class had passed into the room. Her glance had fallen upon Farnum and been quickly averted.
“That's the first time Bessie Vroom ever cut you,” Sam continued angrily. “Thomas is responsible. I've heard the story a dozen times already.”
“I only told him to mind his own business.”
“He can't. He's a born meddler. Now he's queered you with the whole place.”
“Can't help it. I wasn't going to let him get away with his impudence. Why should I?”
Miller shrugged. “Policy, my boy. Better take the advice of Cousin James and crawl into your shell till the storm has pelted past.”
Half an hour later Jeff met his cousin near the chapel and was taken to task.
“What's this I hear about your insulting Thomas?”
“You have it wrong. He insulted me,” Jeff corrected with a smile.
“Tommyrot! Why couldn't you treat him right?”
“Didn't like to throw him through the window on account of littering up the lawn with broken glass.”
James K.'s handsome square-cut face did not relax to a smile. “You may think this a joke, but I don't. I've heard the Chancellor is going to call you on the carpet.”
“If he does he'll learn what I think.”
The upper classman's anger boiled over. “You might think of me a little.”
“Didn't know you were in this, J. K.”
“They know I'm your cousin. It's hurting my reputation.”
A faint ironic smile touched Jeff's face. “No, James, I'm helping it. Ever notice how blondes and brunettes chum together. Value of contrasts, you see. I'm a moral brunette. You're a shining example of all a man should be. I simply emphasize your greatness.”
“That's not the way it works,” his cousin grumbled.
“That's just how it works. Best thing that could happen to you would be for me to get expelled. Shall I?”
Jeff offered his suggestion debonairly.
“Of course not.”
“It would give you just the touch of halo you need to finish the picture. Think of it: your noble head bowed in grief because of the unworthy relative you had labored so hard to save; the sympathy of the faculty, the respect of the fellows, the shy adoration of the co-eds. Great Brutus bowed by the sorrow of a strong man's unrepining emotion. By Jove, I ought to give you the chance. You'd look the part to admiration.”
For a moment James saw himself in the role and coveted it. Jeff read his thought, and his laughter brought his cousin back to earth. He had the irritated sense of having been caught.
“It's not an occasion for talking nonsense,” he said coldly.
Jeff sensed his disgrace in the stiff politeness of the professors and in the embarrassed aloofness of his classmates. Some of the men frankly gave him a wide berth as if he had been a moral pervert.
His temperament was sensitive to slights and he fell into one of his rare depressions. One afternoon he took the car for the city. He wanted to get away from himself and from his environment.
A chill mist was in the air. Drawn by the bright lights, Jeff entered a saloon and sat down in an alcove with his arms on the table. Why did they hammer him so because he told the truth as he saw it? Why must he toady to the ideas of Bland as everybody else at the University seemed to do? He was not respectable enough for them. That was the trouble. They were pushing him back into the gutter whence he had emerged. Wild fragmentary thoughts chased themselves across the record of his brain.
Almost before he knew it he had ordered and drunk a highball. Immediately his horizon lightened. With the second glass his depression vanished. He felt equal to anything.
It was past nine o'clock when he took the University car. As chance had it Professor Perkins and he were the only passengers. The teacher of Economics bowed to the flushed youth and buried himself in a book. It was not till they both rose to leave at the University station that he noticed the condition of Farnum. Even then he stood in momentary doubt.
With a maudlin laugh Jeff quieted any possible explanation of sickness.
“Been havin' little spree down town, Profeshor. Good deal like one ev'body been havin' out here. Yours shpiritual; mine shpirituous. Joke, see! Play on wor'd. Shpiritual—shpirituous.”
“You're intoxicated, sir,” Perkin's told him sternly.
“Betcherlife I am, old cock! Ever get shp—shp—shpiflicated yourself?”
“Go home and go to bed, sir!”
“Whaffor? 'S early yet. 'S reasonable man I ask whaffor?”
The professor turned away, but Jeff caught at his sleeve.
“Lesh not go to bed. Lesh talk economicsh.”
“Release me at once, sir.”
“Jush's you shay. Shancellor wants see me. I'll go now.”
He did. What occurred at that interview had better be omitted. Jeff was very cordial and friendly, ready to make up any differences there might be between them. An ice statue would have been warm compared to the Chancellor.
Next day Jeff was publicly expelled. At the time it did not trouble him in the least. He had brought a bottle home with him from town, and when the notice was posted he lay among the bushes in a sodden sleep half a mile from the campus.
From a great distance there seemed to come to Jeff vaguely the sound of young rippling laughter and eager girlish voices. Drawn from heavy sleep, he was not yet fully awake. This merriment might be the music of fairy bells, such stuff as dreams are made of. He lay incurious, drowsiness still heavy on his eyelids.
“Oh, Virgie, here's another bunch! Oh, girls, fields of them!”
There was a little rush to the place, and with it a rustle of skirts that sounded authentic. Jeff began to believe that his nymphs were not born of fancy. He opened his eyes languidly to examine a strange world upon which he had not yet focused his mind.
Out of the ferns a dryad was coming toward him, lance straight, slender, buoyantly youthful in the light tread and in the poise of the golden head.
At sight of him she paused, held in her tracks, eyes grown big with solicitude.
“You are ill.”
Before he could answer she had dropped the anemones she carried, was on her knees beside him, and had his head cushioned against her arm.
“Tell me! What can I do for you? What is the matter?”
Jeff groaned. His head was aching as if it would blow up, but that was not the cause of the wave of pain which had swept over him. A realization had come to him of what was the matter with him. His eyes fell from hers. He made as if to get up, but her hand restrained him with a gentle firmness.
“Don't! You mustn't.” Then aloud, she cried: “Girls—girls—there's a sick man here. Run and get help. Quick.”
“No—no! I—I'm not sick.”
A flood of shame and embarrassment drenched him. He could not escape her tender hands without actual force and his poignant shyness made that impossible. She was like a fairy tale, a creature of dreams. He dared not meet her frank pitiful eyes, though he was intensely aware of them. The odor of violets brings to him even to this day a vision of girlish charm and daintiness, together with a memory of the abased reverence that filled him.
They came running, her companions, eager with question and suggestion. And hard upon their heels a teamster from the road broke through the thicket, summoned by their calls for help. He stooped to pick up something that his foot had struck. It was a bottle. He looked at it and then at Jeff.
“Nothing the matter with him, Miss, but just plain drunk,” the man said with a grin. “He's been sleeping it off.”
Jeff felt the quiver run through her. She rose, trembling, and with one frightened sidelong look at him walked quickly away. He had seen a wound in her eyes he would not soon forget. It was as if he had struck her down while she was holding out hands to help him.
Lies need only age to make them respectable. Given that,they become traditions and are put upon a pedestal. Then thegentlest word for him who attacks them is traitor.—Fromthe Note Book of a Dreamer.
THE REBEL FOLLOWS THE RAMIFICATIONS OF BIG BUSINESS AND FINDS THAT THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY ARE NOT IN POLITICS FOR THEIR HEALTH
“Hmp! Want to be a reporter, do you?” Warren, city editor on the Advocate, leaned back in his chair and looked Jeff over sharply.
“Yes.”
“It's a hell of a life. Better keep out.”
“I'd like to try it.”
“Any experience?”
“Only correspondence. I've had two years at college.”
The city editor snorted. He had the unreasoning contempt for college men so often found in the old-time newspaper hack.
“Then you don't want to be a reporter. You want to be a journalist,” he jeered.
“They kicked me out,” Jeff went on quietly.
“Sounds better. Why?”
Jeff hesitated. “I got drunk.”
“Can't use you,” Warren cut in hastily.
“I've quit—sworn off.”
The city editor was back on the job, his eyes devouring copy. “Heard that before. Nothing to it,” he grunted.
“Give me a trial. I'll show you.”
“Don't want a man that drinks. Office crowded with 'em already.”
Jeff held his ground. For five minutes the attention of Warren was focused on his work.
Suddenly he snapped out, “Well?”
He met Farnum's ingratiating smile. “You haven't told me yet what to start doing.”
“I told you I didn't want you.”
“But you do. I'm on the wagon.”
“For how long?” jeered the city editor.
“For good.”
Warren sized him up again. He saw a cleareyed young fellow without a superfluous ounce of flesh on him, not rugged but with a look of strength in the slender figure and the thin face. This young man somehow inspired confidence.
“Sent in that Colby story to us, didn't you?”
“Yes.”
“Rotten story. Not half played up. Report to Jenkins at the City Hall.”
“Now?”
“Now. Think I meant next year?”
The city editor was already lost in the reading of more copy.
Inside of half an hour Jeff was at work on his first assignment. Some derelict had committed suicide under the very shadow of the City Hall. Upon the body was a note scrawled on the bask of a dirty envelope.
Sick and out of work. Notify Henry Simmons, 237 River Street, San Francisco.
Jenkins, his hands in his pockets, looked at the body indifferently and turned the story over to the cub with a nod of his head.
“Go to it. Half a stick,” he said.
From another reporter Jeff learned how much half a stick is. He wrote the account. When he had read it Jenkins glanced sharply at him. Though only the barest facts were told there was a sob in the story.
“That ain't just how we handle vag suicides, but we'll let 'er go this time,” he commented.
It did not take Jeff long to learn how to cover a story to the satisfaction of the city editor. He had only to be conventional, sensational, and in general accurate as to his facts. He fraternized with his fellow reporters at the City Hall, shared stories with them, listened to the cheerful lies they told of their exploits, and lent them money they generally forgot to return. They were a happy-go-lucky lot, full of careless generosities and Bohemian tendencies. Often a week's salary went at a single poker sitting. Most of them drank a good deal.
After a few months' experience Jeff discovered that while the gathering of news tends to sharpen the wits it makes also for the superficial. Alertness, cleverness, persistence, a nose for news, and a surface accuracy were the chief qualities demanded of him by the office. He had only to look around him to see that the profession was full of keen-eyed, nimble-witted old-young men who had never attempted to synthesize the life they were supposed to be recording and interpreting. While at work they were always in a hurry, for to-day's news is dead to-morrow. They wrote on the run, without time for thought or reflection. Knowing beyond their years, the fruit of their wisdom was cynicism. Their knowledge withered for lack of roots.
The tendency of the city desk and of copy readers is to reduce all reporters to a dead level, but in spite of this Jeff managed to get himself into his work. He brought to many stories a freshness, a point of view, an optimism that began to be noticed. From the police run Jeff drifted to other departments. He covered hotels, the court house, the state house and general assignments.
At the end of a couple of years he was promoted to a desk position. This did not suit him, and he went back to the more active work of the street. In time he became known as a star man. From dramatics he went to politics, special stories and feature work. The big assignments were given him.
It was his duty to meet famous people and interview them. The chance to get behind the scenes at the real inside story was given him. Because of this many reputations were pricked like bubbles so far as he was concerned. The mask of greatness was like the false faces children wear to conceal their own. In the one or two really big men he met Jeff discovered a humility and simplicity that came from self-forgetfulness. They were too busy with their vision of truth to pose for the public admiration.
It was while Jeff was doing the City Hall run that there came to him one night at his rooms a man he had known in the old days when he had lived in the river bottom district. If he was surprised to see him the reporter did not show it.
“Hello, Burke! Come in. Glad to see you.”
Farnum took the hat of his guest and relieved his awkwardness by guiding him to a chair and helping him get his pipe alight.
“How's everything? Little Mike must be growing into a big boy these days. Let's see. It's three years since I've seen him.”
A momentary flicker lit the gloomy eyes of the Irishman. “He's a great boy, Mike is. He often speaks of you, Mr. Farnum.
“Glad to know it. And Mrs. Burke?”
“Fine.”
“That leaves only Patrick Burke. I suppose he hasn't fallen off the water wagon yet.”
The occupation of Burke had been a threadbare joke between them in the old days. He drove a street sprinkler for the city.
“That's what he has. McGuire threw the hooks into me this morning. I've drove me last day.”
“What's the matter?”
“I'm too damned honest.... or too big a coward. Take your choice.”
“All right. I've taken it,” smiled the reporter.
Pat brought his big fist down on the table so forcefully that the books shook. “I'll not go to the penitentiary for an-ny man.... He wanted me to let him put two other teams on the rolls in my name. I wouldn't stand for it. That was six weeks ago. To-day he lets me out.”
Jeff began to see dimly the trail of the serpent graft. He lit his pipe before he spoke.
“Don't quite get the idea, Pat. Why wouldn't you?”
“Because I'm on the level. I'll have no wan tellin' little Mike his father is a dirty thief....It's this way. The rolls were to be padded, understand.”
“I see. You were to draw pay for three teams when you've got only one.”
“McGuire was to draw it, all but a few dollars a month.” The Irishman leaned forward, his eyes blazing. “And because I wouldn't stand for it I'm fired for neglecting my duty. I missed a street yesterday. If he'd been frientlly to me I might have missed forty.... But he can't throw me down like that. I've got the goods to show he's a dirty grafter. Right now he's drawing pay for seven teams that don't exist.”
“And he doesn't know you know it?”
“You bet he don't. I've guessed it for a month. To-day I went round and made sure.”
Jeff asked questions, learned all that Burke had to tell him. In the days that followed he ran down the whole story of the graft so secretly that not even the city editor knew what he was about. Then he had a talk with the “old man” and wrote his story.
It was a red-hot exposure of one of the most flagrant of the City Hall gang. There was no question of the proof. He had it in black and white. Moreover, there was always the chance that in the row which must follow McGuire might peach on Big Tim himself, the boss of all the little bosses.
Within twenty-four hours Jeff was summoned to a conference at which were present the city editor and Warren, now managing editor.
“We've killed your story, Farnum,” announced the latter as soon as the door was closed.
“Why? I can prove every word of it.”
“That was what we were afraid of.”
“It's a peach of a story. With the spring elections coming on we need some dynamite to blow up Big Tim. I tell you McGuire would tell all he knows to save his own skin.”
“My opinion, too,” agreed Warren dryly. “My boy, it's too big a story. That's the whole trouble. If we were sure it would stop at McGuire we'd run it. But it won't. The corporations are backing Big Tim to win this spring. It won't do to get him tied up in a graft scandal.”
“But theAdvocatehas been out after his scalp for years.”
“Well, we're not after it any more. Of course, we're against him on the surface still.”
Jeff did some rapid thinking. “Then the program will be for us to nominate a weak ticket and elect Big Tim's by default. Is that it?”
“That's about it. The big fellows have to make sure of a Mayor who will be all right about the Gas and Electric franchise. So we're going to have four more years of Big Tim.”
“Will Brownell stand for it?”
Brownell was the principal owner of theAdvocate.
“Will he?” Warren let his eyelash rest for a second upon the cheek nearest Jeff. “He's been seen. My orders come direct from the old man.”
The story was suppressed. No more was heard about the McGuire graft scandal exposure. It had run counter to the projects of big business.
Burke had to be satisfied without his revenge.
He got a job with a brewery and charged the McGuire matter to profit and loss.
As for Jeff the incident only served to make clearer what he already knew. More and more he began to understand the forces that dominate our cities, the alliance between large vested interests and the powers that prey. These great corporations were seekers of special privileges. To secure this they financed the machines and permitted vice and corruption. He saw that ultimately most of the shame for the bad government of American cities rests upon the Fromes and the Merrills.
As for the newspapers, he was learning that between the people and an independent press stand the big advertisers. These make for conservatism, for an unfair point of view, for a slant in both news recording and news interpretation. Yet he saw that the press is in spite of this a power for good. The evil that it does is local and temporary, the good general and permanent.