CHAPTER XIVCONSIDER THE WORM

By the time he had reached seventeen Nathan had attained what it too often requires discouraging years for older persons to negotiate.

He had lifted his handicapped, browbeaten young shoulders above the drab-colored dead level of village mediocrity.

Fourteen of his poems had been printed intermittently as “boxed” features on the front page of theDaily Telegraph.

The village, therefore, had been forced to admit—grudgingly to be sure, but nevertheless to admit—that if he kept it up long enough, and nothing stopped him, and the quality of his verse showed improvement instead of deterioration, and no one surpassed him, and theTelegraphkept out of bankruptcy, and the Federal constitution wasn’t amended so as to prohibit poetry altogether—somewhere down long vistas of future years he might possibly be expected to approach a fair-to-middlin’ resemblance to a near-celebrity.

These qualifying adverbs and adjectives constitute an attempt at faithful reproduction of the community’s attitude toward budding talent. Paris, like all Vermont, like all New England, like small towns all over the planet, was doggedly determined that a loophole should be left, in fact several loopholes, so that in case of failure and fizzle it might be in that crushing position to retort, “I told you so!”

To bet on a local son’s ability to rise above the common herd’s tenor of nothing-in-particular and have the wager turn out a loss was more to be deplored than a failure of the nation’s credit system. The grocery-store and barbershop economists could blame the prevailing administration for the latter, but for the former there would be no one to take the ignominy but themselves.

It was only natural that there should be those in townwho had no patience whatever with the tone of Nathan’s verse. It was sickly, sloppy, moon-sighing stuff, that suggested “dying calves with their mouths full of mush.”

Another element, chiefly recruited from the young, unmarried set, or Raveled Ends of Might-Have-Been Romances, clipped out the boy’s verses and mailed them to sweethearts. Or they pasted them in scrapbooks alongside clippings from the Poet’s Corner in theBoston Sunday Globe.

But as a matter of genuine enthusiasm, the bulk of the local census was phlegmatic. They read the boy’s amateurish little girl rhymes with indifference, waiting for it to be disclosed “whether that mopey Forge young one was a darn bright kid or a goddam fool.”

Yet the fact remained that the lad was getting “published.” And every effusion carried its tuppence worth of advertising. Soon the town was forced to sit up and take notice. Some of the best of Nat’s work had been clipped from our smudgy, homely, country sheet and been copied in theSpringfield Unionor the aforesaidBoston Globe.

That a lethargic exchange editor in each case, hunting for material to fill odd corners with “hay”, had snipped out the verses with a vast and pardonable ennui, spiked them on a linotype hook and forgotten them, was immaterial, even if it had been generally known. Paris felt duly edified.

The effect on Johnathan the day Uncle Joe Fodder, the town philosopher, found the first of Nat’s poems in theGlobeand advised John to that effect was as amusing as it was interesting.

John had been positive his boy’s propensity for poetry was in the same category with his Abaddonic proclivity toward girls. Realization that fame was being forced upon the family despite his dogged assumption to the contrary came as a shock. A great city newspaper had printed the name of a Forge and circulated the same by hundreds of thousands of copies! What could Johnathan do in the face of such titanic refutation? Nothing but to glow in his heart that the celebrity was his son and then treat the said celebrity as his own personal washpot.

“I guess I know best how to bring out talent and ability in a youngster,” he affirmed. “Keep ’em in their places and give ’em a little hardship to rise above! That’s the thingthat makes men. Give a boy encouragement and he either gets a swelled head or turns out a mollycoddle.”

Besides, what encouragement had his father ever given him?

Many times in those months and years, I saw the man opposite me in church or shop and studied him. But there was little to “study.”

It puzzled me for a long time how two such people as Johnathan and Anna could remain together year after year in any such loveless connubiality and not realize its prostitution. But of one thing I am convinced absolutely: Johnathan was no hypocrite; up to the time of Nathan’s marriage and still more vital events yet to be delineated, the man, however narrow, had the courage of his convictions.

Separating from a woman whom he had once married and by whom he had received children—even if not divorcing her—was not only heresy and against all ethics, but it struck at the very roots of society and nominated him for the seventh strata of the bottomless pit.

All marriages were made in heaven. That was the Alpha and Omega of the whole business. The Bible says a man shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh, though they fight openly from New Year’s to Christmas and make the home life of growing children a nerve-racking hell. You can’t get back of the Bible. There it is in black and white. And you know what it says in the ending of Revelations about daring to change one jot or tittle of Holy Writ.

If there were unpleasantness in his home, it was the woman’s fault. She rebelled against the hypothesis that he was the head of his house, the arbiter of its destinies, the party responsible for its souls and bodies to God and State. She spat upon the verdict of St. Paul: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the law of God.” She was responsible for everything wrong. She was “undermining Church and State.” She was a sinner from wayback.

The man totally lacked the capacity to see himself in any other rôle than that of model father, husband, citizen and church member.

He was one of those men of whom it may truthfully besaid that he took life seriously. To say nothing of himself. To associate, disport or enjoy himself with family or neighbors was something he did not know how to do. He couldn’t have taken enjoyment from life even if he had wanted. It was rather pathetic.

He was a finished product of his own philosophy and never saw it. His father had succeeded in doing in him exactly what he was trying to do in Nathan. Only there were leavening and countering chromosomes in Nathan’s make-up ultimately working for the boy’s salvation which had not been Johnathan’s heritage.

He rarely attended any church or village function unless admittance was free, and on rare occasions when the circus came to Paris and he consented to take his children, he bought no admittance to performance or side shows. He taught them to be content with standing off in the background and “watching people make fools of themselves.”

When by unavoidable circumstance he was forced to participate in any social function where people looked on, he either did so with an awkward, clumsy, painful, red-faced self-consciousness, or he “tried to be funny.” But in both cases he withdrew into innocuous desuetude as quickly as he was permitted. Thereupon, unless the affair had been directly connected with religion, he carried away the impression that he had been a “cut-up” and a “card.”

Once, just once, when Edith had been ten, the Forge home had been opened for a party. But on that occasion he had not been content to let the youngsters work out their own social salvation. It had devolved upon him as “master of his house” and “protector of his children’s morals” to place himself in the best chair in the front room and preside over the progress of the affair. It was his business to see that no kissing games were played, suggest when the children had applied themselves to each pastime long enough, inject witty criticisms of juvenile deportment, indicate when it was time for the refreshments to be served and when the hour had come for adjournment. All this he did in slippered feet, with hair a bit rumpled and vest unbuttoned. On the whole, it was quite a responsibility.

Vainly his wife had tried to spirit him out and away so the children might act naturally and enjoy themselves. Johnathan was indignant. He guessed it was his house. Hiscarpets were being scuffed out. His money was paying for the ice cream and cake. He stayed.

His favorite contribution to the entertainment when the children sat around like little wooden puppets, half-frightened to death by the Moloch presiding over them, was the demand, accompanied by an indulgent toe-tapping: “Who can tell a funny story or sing a funny song?” But ten-year-olds who wanted to play “Copenhagen” or “Drop the Pillow” were rather deficient in the matter of volunteering comic anecdotes or rendering humorous ballads. And whereas Johnathan’s repertoire was rather limited along those lines also, the party was not all it might have been.

That night in bed an exasperated wife “started in her same old tirade” and ended her excoriation by kicking her loving husband in the shins. Johnathan exhibited the black and blue spot to Nathan in the week ensuing to prove to the son that his father had married a virago. There never was another party.

And now Nathan, the offspring of a God-fearing male and an unholy female, was upsetting all his father’s unassailable calculations and becoming known throughout our part of New England as a celebrity. Just what should Johnathan do about it? Not being in a position to do much of anything about it, the father concluded it best to pursue a policy of watchful waiting.

So matters drifted—with Nathan performing rather indefinite tasks in the tannery, the vague nature of which bothered his father not a little bit, but which nevertheless brought in six dollars a week—until the disturbing young coot “up and wrote ‘The Pagans.’”

To speak truthfully, our prune-and-prism community received a shock. Sam Hod, proprietor of theTelegraph, undoubtedly wanted to administer a shock. Anyhow, he not only printed what the precocious rhymster had composed but called attention to its moral excellence in his editorial column that night.

“THE PAGANS“We bought two slaves on the Block of Life,Out-crying the bidders all;Two slaves as rare as the maids of Punt,White-limbed as the girls of Gaul.The Pagan bought for the right to own,With gold that he could not missWhile I bought mine for the right to loveAnd swapped for her flesh a kiss.“We pushed our slaves from the auction hallAnd drove them along Life’s street;We jested over their bodies pink,The pad of their naked feet.Ahmed chained his to a black floor ringAs butt for his brutal fun,While I chained mine to a kitchen rangeAnd work that was never done.“The Pagan’s slave was a high-strung lassAnd fought with a courage rare;But broke at last ‘neath her master’s whipAnd pain from her tortured hair.Now my slave, too, was a high-strung lass,And so—for my right was clear—Ibroke her back with a thankless drudgeAnd a baby every year.“The Pagan swore that his slave should dieBy slash ‘cross her milk-white throat,Her body sewed in a sack by nightBe dropped in his harem moat.I likewise ordered my slave should dieBut I did the thing with art:I ground my spleen to a rapier pointAnd stabbed till I found her heart.“The Pagan slept when his slave was dead,For he had much gold to spare;Next day he went to the market placeAnd bought with a better care.But when my slave had been killed with wordsI placed at her head a stone:‘Here sleeps the one that I loved most dearWhile I go my way—alone!’“We bought two slaves on the Block of Life,The Pagan and I one day;But he killed his with a short, curved sword,A damned, paganistic way.My slave died too, but a Christian’s death,And God tells me all is well;So while white heaven’s ahead for me,The Pagan must writhe in hell.“—Nathaniel Forge.

“THE PAGANS

“We bought two slaves on the Block of Life,Out-crying the bidders all;Two slaves as rare as the maids of Punt,White-limbed as the girls of Gaul.The Pagan bought for the right to own,With gold that he could not missWhile I bought mine for the right to loveAnd swapped for her flesh a kiss.

“We bought two slaves on the Block of Life,

Out-crying the bidders all;

Two slaves as rare as the maids of Punt,

White-limbed as the girls of Gaul.

The Pagan bought for the right to own,

With gold that he could not miss

While I bought mine for the right to love

And swapped for her flesh a kiss.

“We pushed our slaves from the auction hallAnd drove them along Life’s street;We jested over their bodies pink,The pad of their naked feet.Ahmed chained his to a black floor ringAs butt for his brutal fun,While I chained mine to a kitchen rangeAnd work that was never done.

“We pushed our slaves from the auction hall

And drove them along Life’s street;

We jested over their bodies pink,

The pad of their naked feet.

Ahmed chained his to a black floor ring

As butt for his brutal fun,

While I chained mine to a kitchen range

And work that was never done.

“The Pagan’s slave was a high-strung lassAnd fought with a courage rare;But broke at last ‘neath her master’s whipAnd pain from her tortured hair.Now my slave, too, was a high-strung lass,And so—for my right was clear—Ibroke her back with a thankless drudgeAnd a baby every year.

“The Pagan’s slave was a high-strung lass

And fought with a courage rare;

But broke at last ‘neath her master’s whip

And pain from her tortured hair.

Now my slave, too, was a high-strung lass,

And so—for my right was clear—I

broke her back with a thankless drudge

And a baby every year.

“The Pagan swore that his slave should dieBy slash ‘cross her milk-white throat,Her body sewed in a sack by nightBe dropped in his harem moat.I likewise ordered my slave should dieBut I did the thing with art:I ground my spleen to a rapier pointAnd stabbed till I found her heart.

“The Pagan swore that his slave should die

By slash ‘cross her milk-white throat,

Her body sewed in a sack by night

Be dropped in his harem moat.

I likewise ordered my slave should die

But I did the thing with art:

I ground my spleen to a rapier point

And stabbed till I found her heart.

“The Pagan slept when his slave was dead,For he had much gold to spare;Next day he went to the market placeAnd bought with a better care.But when my slave had been killed with wordsI placed at her head a stone:‘Here sleeps the one that I loved most dearWhile I go my way—alone!’

“The Pagan slept when his slave was dead,

For he had much gold to spare;

Next day he went to the market place

And bought with a better care.

But when my slave had been killed with words

I placed at her head a stone:

‘Here sleeps the one that I loved most dear

While I go my way—alone!’

“We bought two slaves on the Block of Life,The Pagan and I one day;But he killed his with a short, curved sword,A damned, paganistic way.My slave died too, but a Christian’s death,And God tells me all is well;So while white heaven’s ahead for me,The Pagan must writhe in hell.“—Nathaniel Forge.

“We bought two slaves on the Block of Life,

The Pagan and I one day;

But he killed his with a short, curved sword,

A damned, paganistic way.

My slave died too, but a Christian’s death,

And God tells me all is well;

So while white heaven’s ahead for me,

The Pagan must writhe in hell.

“—Nathaniel Forge.

“Paris, Vt., Sept. 25, 1906.”

It should not be difficult to understand where Nathan derived material or satire for this poem. Neither should its reception be difficult to grasp in a prudish New England community.

“That boy’s mind is becoming positively foul!” cried Mrs. Caleb Gridley when she had found the paper that night and then dropped it as though it were hot. “The very idea of putting such a thing in type! What’s Mr. Hod thinking of? Moral excellence, indeed! I thank the Lord that pure-minded little Bernice-Theresa is out of town and away from it all. Her sweet morals are safeguarded from any such youthful depravity as that Forge boy is showing.”

Old Caleb secured the paper and read the verses in silence.

“Oh, I dunno,” he answered after a time. Then he sat staring into space.

Many husbands in Paris sat staring into space after reading Nat’s poem that night. A few, however, did not get the chance to stare into space.

“Cost me twenty-five dollars!” growled Artemus Harrington in the Smoke Shoppe Cigar Store later that evening. “My wife says it was the best thing she’d ever read and it would do a heap o’ men around town good to read it, too. One thing led to another and we ended up in a fight. She made me ‘fork over,’ and she sashayed home to her mother’s.”

Cora Whipple, Nathan’s former teacher, declared it was bizarre, but nevertheless Literature. She said it ought to be printed in all the best magazines. Her prim old-maid sister called it the height of obscenity and gave theTelegraph’seditor a piece of her mind over the ‘phone, ringing off before Sam had the chance to reply. The poem set the town by the ears, so to speak.

“You sure can pick out which hubbies love their wives andwhich women ain’t happily married by the way that poetry sets on their stummicks!” observed Uncle Joe Fodder. “B’dam whether I think the kid writ it himself or whether he’s got some old person coachin’ him. But believe me, if Sam goes on printin’ the likes of that poem he’s sure goin’ to swell his subscription list. And not because folks want to see the report o’ the tax commissioners, either.”

It was old Doctor Dodd who caused the direct reaction on Nathan, however. The poem—particularly the last two lines—perturbed the old minister grievously. And he “took it up in prayer meeting” that evening.

Johnathan had read the verses shortly after supper while waiting for the drone of the weekly church bell. Nathan had luckily returned downtown before the carrier boy tossed aTelegraphon the Forge veranda.

The father sat stupefied for a moment, after bringing the front legs of his chair to the floor with a clump. Then as the “coat” fitted him perfectly, he proceeded to put it on. He left the house without speaking and wandered through the neighborhood, hands clasped behind his back, lips set tightly.

Reaching the church, hoping to receive comfort and consolation from the service in this latest parental “trial”, Doctor Dodd “opened up” on it. And the father’s blood ran icy cold.

The minister’s subject was “Train up a child in the way he shall go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Every person in that vestry knew to whom and what the pastor was referring. Every face was turned toward the ashen mask that was Johnathan’s countenance before that discourse ended.

The father stared stonily ahead until the minister had finished. Then he arose and “testified.” It was deathly quiet in the prayer-meeting room as Johnathan concluded that “testimony.”

Everybody present felt “so sorry” for poor Brother and Sister Forge.

Nathan slunk like a felon through the back streets to reach his home. He knew the town was talking about his poem.He was shy of praise and criticism hurt him. Not because it was criticism but because it usually rested on some one’s disapproval. The last thought in his head was any back fire at home from the verses. Consequently he was puzzled when on reaching the Spring Street corner he saw his sister arise from the steps and hurry toward him.

“Natie!” she cried. “Don’t go in! Run and hide!”

“Hide! What for?”

“Dad’s whopping mad over what you had in the paper to-night. He’s laying for you good.”

“Laying for me?”

“He thinks you’ve slammed him somehow, for the fights he has with Ma. And I guess the minister didn’t like it either and jawed him about it in prayer meeting. Anyway, Pa came in as white as a ghost. He asked for you. When Ma said you was still out, he took off his things and started pulling down all the curtains. He shoved back the furniture and went and got the strap. Ma wanted to know what was eating him, and he said when you came in he was going to give you the darnedest dressing down you’d ever got in your life.”

Nathan sank down on the low cement wall which ran around the Granger lawn.

“And how did Ma take it?”

“Oh, she stood up for you. Not because she’d read the poetry or cared a hoot what you’d said in it. Just because it was something to fight about with Pa. They were going it hot and heavy when I decided to sit out on the steps and warn you. I’ve got to go back before they miss me, so, listen! You hang around outside, Natie, and if Ma talks him out of it or he gets winded and goes to bed, I’ll put a lamp in my upstairs window and you’ll know it’s a sign to sneak in.”

Nathan remained seated on the fence. Once or twice he cast glances toward his home, fearing to go in, fearing to remain out later. He looked down at his shoes, worn, sloppy and unshined. He felt supinely small in the ludicrous suit he wore, an old one of his father’s. His hands were soiled. His finger nails were broken. He needed a bath, in fact, it seemed as though he always needed a bath. He felt grimy and seamy and prematurely old.

He had been that evening in the Seaver home. FredSeaver’s father ran a meat and grocery store in East Main Street. Fred was experimenting with electricity and Nat had gone over to inspect his apparatus. But it had not been the apparatus which had most interested Nathan. It had been the Seaver home.

The Seaver home had hardwood floors and all the rooms were lighted by electric chandeliers. The dining room had a cozy “dome” above the table, and silver sparkled amid cut glass on the buffet. The Seaver parlor wasn’t “saved for company.” It was open all the time and in one corner an open fire burned cheerily. The Seavers called it the “living room.” There were bookshelves between the windows and a soft-shaded reading lamp on the center table.

In the Forge home, Johnathan “roared like a bull” if more than one gas light was burned at once. Out from the west wall of the Forge kitchen stuck a twelve-inch gas bracket with a single Welsbach burner. It was a white, cheerless light which burned unevenly. Beneath it each night Johnathan tipped back his plain wooden chair and read hisTelegraph. If the rest of the family cared to read, they “strained their eyes” or waited until the father had finished. Nathan could not help comparing the two lamps,—the difference in homes which they represented.

The Seaver home was inviting, restful. In the Forge home, clothes were always piled on chairs or tables. More ironed clothes were usually strung on a wire from corner to corner, making the kitchen atmosphere stuffy. The sink was always filled with greasy dishes. The faucet dripped. There were crumbs on the red tablecloth and sugar grains on the worn linoleum.

Nathan had compared the two and wished, poor boy, that he might know such a home as Fred Seaver’s. He thought of it now as he sat out in the chill September night, afraid to enter a house where a father waited to flog him.

Of one thing the boy was grimly resolved. At exactly the moment the law allowed him his freedom, he would find a girl somewhere and have a home that should exhibit some claim toward beauty, cheerfulness and peace. Who the girl might be was immaterial. To flee the horrible, fear-driven, Scripture-surfeited place he had known from earliest boyhood was becoming the greatest objective in existence. But meanwhile, what should he do?

The question answered itself. The front door of his father’s house opened and Johnathan himself emerged. He wore hat and coat. Down the steps he started and in the opposite direction from where Nathan waited. Before the boy could solve the mystery, his sister appeared. She ran frantically for the place where she had left her brother.

“Natie!” she cried hysterically. “Natie—come quick! Something’s happened to Ma!”

Across the street Nathan leaped and into the dark hallway. He bumped into a door, stumbled over a chair, reached the kitchen.

His mother was seated on the floor, hammering her gnarled fists crazily upon the linoleum. One of her legs stuck out, uncovered, from beneath her body. Her spectacles were off, her face was swollen—as it usually was swollen—with weeping.

“She’s having one of her spells!” cried the awe-struck sister. “You’ll have to put her to bed—or do something!” The girl spoke as though they were gazing down on a strange biological exhibit.

Mrs. Forge was only letting her nerves go in an enjoyable fit of hysterics. But it was an epochal fit of hysterics. She pounded the floor and she kicked her heels. She tore down her hair and ripped her washed-out blue wrapper from her thin shoulders, leaving soiled underclothes and rusty, broken corsets exposed.

“I’ll kill myself!” she shrieked. “I will! I will! I’ll not stand it another day! I’ll kill myself!” She emphasized each “will” with a thump of her tightly clenched fist upon the floor.

“Doctor Johnson told Pa once the quickest way to bring folks out of a ‘spell’ was to throw cold water on ’em!” suggested Edith. “You better get the bucket, Nat. Give her a sloppin’—a good one!”

But Nat could not “give her a sloppin’.” He was suddenly overwhelmed with pity.

“Come, mother,” he said. “Let me help you to bed!”

“I don’t want to go to bed! I want to kill myself! And I will! I will! I will! Get me the butcher knife! Edith!—Nathan! Get the butcher knife! Watch your mother kill herself.”

Edith started to cry. Nathan saw something should bedone and he did it. He stooped and picked up his mother. Though she fought and clawed his face, he managed it. Bidding Edith go ahead with the lamp, he carried his struggling mother up the stairs and into her chamber. There he laid her on the bed.

“Undress her, Edie,” he ordered. “Get her into bed before Pa comes back.”

“I dassent, Nat. I’m afraid.”

Nathan locked his mother into the bedroom, first making certain there was nothing about the chamber with which she could “do anything rash.” Then he went back down the stairs.

He was inclined to agree with an oft-expressed sentiment of his father’s. It was a “hell of a home.”

“Where you going, Natie?” cried Edith. “Don’t leave me alone with her. I’m afraid, I say.”

“She can’t get out, unless she jumps through a window, and I don’t aim to be here when Pa comes back.”

“Where you going?”

“I dunno. Just out.”

Nathan started for the hallway. But he got no farther. He met his father—coming in.

Johnathan made an arresting gesture.

“Young man,” he announced hoarsely, “I want to see you.”

The boy was startled by the strange quality of Johnathan’s voice. The father’s face was white and drawn. There were puffy circles beneath his eyes and almost no color in his lips.

“Whatter you want?” demanded the boy sullenly.

“It’s time that you and I had a talk, young fellow. You’re approaching man’s estate. It’s time that you and I had a talk.”

They went into the parlor and sat down in the dark. Nathan was first puzzled, then alarmed. As the time passed and his father sat silent, an ominous silhouette opposite in the dark, that alarm increased to panic. Finally Johnathan cleared his throat.

“I just met Caleb Gridley up the street a pace,” he announced.“We had a talk—him and me. We talked about you—and your poetry.”

“Mr. Gridley?”

“Yes, Mr. Gridley! You’ve been coming along, Nathaniel. You’ve been coming along so fast I’ve hardly noticed. But to-night you’ve had a thing printed in the paper that’s brought me to my senses. You’re getting too big to thrash. So I’ve concluded to talk with you, I say. It’s time we got this poetry business straight. I’m responsible to God for your soul and this poetry business brings home how much. How old are you, Nathan?”

“Seventeen,” the boy answered grimly.

“Yes, you’re seventeen. And at the wild, foolish age of seventeen you’re starting out to ruin your life precisely as I started out to ruin mine. And did! Only I started at twenty-one instead of bally seventeen.”

“Ruining my life? How am I ruining my life, by writing poetry?”

“No! By going contrary to your father’s best judgment for your welfare and future. By trying to do something and be something which your father doesn’t approve of. At twenty-one I was in the same position toward my father—I admit it! My father knew what was best for me; he was older and therefore wiser. He wanted me to be a business man—to set up a shop with him. But I had hazy, half-baked ideas that I wanted to be a minister. So I went contrary to my father’s advice and his wiser judgment.”

“You regretted wanting to be a minister?”

“No! I’ve regretted I presumed to know more than my father about what I was best fitted to do. And now my own boy has come along and stands exactly on the brink of the same horrible precipice. I’d have thanked my father if he’d broken my neck for my independence. I’m not going to do that to you. But I want to show you the hideous mistake you’re making. Nathaniel, I want to save you from frittering away your life being any such puerile, willy-nilly thing as a poet!”

“But I like being a writer! I could do something big!”

“Stop! I’m doing the talking! You like to write poems, yes. And some men like to drink whisky and smoke cigarettes. But this isn’t a world in which we can pamper ourselves in the things we like to do. It’s a world in whichwe’ve got to school ourselves in stiff self-discipline—do the things we don’t like to do. Always! The moment a boy or a man goes doing something he likes to do, he’s guilty of a weakness—of a sin!—and sin is displeasing in the sight of the Heavenly Father. The Bible says so!”

“But if I can’t write, what do you want I should do?”

“The Bible says, ‘By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread,’ Genesis, third chapter, nineteenth verse. That means a man’s chief concern in this world is work, business. All other things come second to work, business. A man should first of all have a trade, succeed in a good business, make money. After he’s done these things, then perhaps he can waste a little time with foolishness like poetry. But to put the poetry nonsense first,—that’s the cart before the horse; that’s to court failure, poverty, all the hardships I’ve had to endure, wanting to be a minister before I knew my own mind—marrying your mother! And I’ve decided I don’t intend to see you do it. As you’re not old enough to make up your own mind yet, it’s my duty to make it up for you. But I want you to see why and how it’s done. Twenty years from to-night, on your bended knees, with tears in your eyes, you’ll kiss my hand and thank me—just as you’re going to thank me some day for keeping you from girls or setting you to work in the tannery—having that valuable experience in contacting with unpleasant things.”

“Pa!” cried the aghast boy. “You’re not going to say I can’t write any more poetry!”

“I’m going to say you can’t write any more poetry until you know your own mind. What you’ve written in to-night’s paper goes to show the injury an immature, undisciplined boy can do to himself and to those who love him—by not knowing his own mind. All over this town to-night sensible people are reading your poetry. They’re laughing at you and pitying you. But they’re damning me as your father for not keeping a guiding hand on you, training your thoughts and impulses into healthy, money-making channels. To-night in the House of God I hung my head in shame for the thing my son had done. Even a minister of the Gospel rebuked me before the Elders in the Temple. And that shame, your shame as well as mine, is almost greater than Ican bear. It can’t be duplicated, young man. It’s got to stop before you do something far more sickening.”

“But, Pa! I like to write poetry! It comes so easy——”

“Who are you—little, inconsequential, immature Nathaniel Forge—that you should consider yourself capable or talented enough to go before the public with your silly little rhymes? What do you know about life and its responsibilities and penalties—merely living here in this quiet, sheltered, comfortable home with your dear father and mother and little sister? Hasn’t it yet dawned on your brazen little brain that all the great poets have been men of mature intellect and venerable years—Longfellow, Tennyson, Whittier—what were they but bent beneath the weight of time, with gray heads and flowing beards——?”

“Bryant wrote ‘Thanatopsis’ at eighteen!” flashed Nathan. “And it’s one of the biggest poems in the English language!”

“Don’t argue!” roared Johnathan, his temper rising. “‘Harken to my counsel and give heed to my understanding!’ I’m talking for your own best interest.”

“Hang it all, Pa, I don’t care about business! I don’t take to money-making at all!”

“Then all the more reason why you should be made to take to money-making—correct a weakness in your character. Making money, doing business, is fine and manly and virile. But is there anything fine and manly and virile about wasting your time on silly, obscene lines of rhymes—that start a whole town laughing at you and pointing the finger of scorn at your father? Answer me, sir! Answer me!”

“I don’t know what to answer. You cut all the solid ground out from under me. I thought I’d found something I could be a success in, if I did it long enough. But you throw me all up in the air. I don’t know what I want to be, or what I want to aim for, at all!”

“That’s God speaking to you, my boy—telling you you’re not old enough nor wise enough yet to decide such matters for yourself. That’s why boys are given fathers—to decide for them. The proper and commendable conduct for a boy is to be meek and docile and humble, to accept the dictates and judgments of those who are wiser and older. The Bible says, ‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth!’—Matthew, fifth chapter, fifth verse. Allgreat men are meek men. They efface themselves. They harken to those more learned and venerable—not ram about the world trying to poke their half-digested opinions at people, especially at seventeen. And in poetry!”

“I suppose I should have been meek when Si Plumb made me the laughing-stock of the tannery crowd that day? Let him walk all over me. You said then you were glad I’d showed some starch——”

“Young man, we’ll not make this an argument! Standing up for your rights in a fist fight is a far different matter than trying to show you are somebody in print, before you’ve reached your majority. Besides, if you hadn’t been drooling around with poetry that day, you wouldn’t have got yourself into that fight in the first place!”

Nathan had difficulty in following his father’s logic excepting that Johnathan had decided he did not care to have his boy a poet,—at least at present. Tears welled in his eyes. He pillowed his head wearily on his arm.

“Hang it all, Pa! It seems as if Life’s getting to be nothing but a regular fog. I feel as if I were groping my way around in it—not being able to see much sun—bumping into all sorts of things—not knowing which way to go to get out, or reach any special place. I’m just blundering around and around and around and—oh, what’s the use?”

“All the more reason why you should listen to your loving father’s counsel. I’ve been through the mill of experience. I want to save you from going through it, too—making all my hideous, horrible mistakes.”

“But you haven’t made a success of your own life, Pa! Then how can you tell me what to do, when you haven’t been able to do it yourself?”

“Be careful, young man! No impudence! I’m older than you and therefore must know better.”

A long, strained silence followed. Finally came Nathan’s voice.

“Father!”

“Yes, my son?”

“I’m not going to do it!”

“You’re not going to do what?”

“Stop writing!”

Johnathan Forge could scarcely believe his ears. For a quarter moment he sat rigid, hardly seeming to breathe.

“What say? What say?” he gasped weakly.

“I’m not going to promise to stop writing poetry—nothing of the sort! I’ve got a hunch for it, if I am blundering around in a fog. But somewhere, sometime, I’ll find my way out. I know I’m not the kind of son you wish you’d had. Edith’s not the kind of daughter or mother isn’t the kind of wife, either. But I’m me and I’m going to keep trying. Nobody’s going to stop me—and——”

“You saucy young pup! You saucy young pup!”

“I’m not saucy! I’m honest. I’m giving you a fair, square answer——”

“I’ll flog you within an inch of your life!”

“Don’t do it, dad! It’ll only make things worse.”

There was a queer ring in the boy’s voice. Johnathan was so totally and completely taken aback he was weak all over. His own son!—in his own house!—openly defying him!—declaring bluntly and boldly that he, the father, was not to have perfect obedience in all things.

“My son, don’t have me call down the curse of God upon you! It will follow you all the days of your life.”

“You don’t have to call down anything, Pa. You’re trying to make me give up the only thing I know how to do and do well. You haven’t any right to do it. I know you haven’t. Ifeelit. I can write good enough to get published. So I’m going on. I don’t believe you know what’s good for me at all, or you wouldn’t ask it. Instead of helping me in the fog, you’re only making it worse.”

“You miserable, little——”

“I’m going to be twenty-one in just four years more. I’m going to boss my own life then. You can lick me now if you want. But if you do—for just wanting to keep on with the thing I can do best and easiest and like to do—I’ve pretty near made up my mind I’m going to run away—where you can’t find me till I’m twenty-one. And I’m never coming back.”

“God’s curses——”

“I don’t believe God curses any one, Pa. He’s too busy running the stars and suns and—heaven—to care whether I like poetry or you want me to be a business man.”

“And you’d—stand up to your father—like this——?”

“When I don’t think I’ve done any wrong, yes.”

“I’ll thrash you——”

“All right, Pa. Only to-morrow morning I won’t be here. You’ll never do it again.”

“I’ll have the law on you and fetch you back!”

“The law’ll never know where I am—to fetch me back.”

For the first time, Johnathan stood checkmate. That queer, hard ring in his incorrigible son’s voice told him subconsciously that he was close to the end of seventeen years of bullying.

Such a thing had never happened before. His wife had fought with him, indeed, but it had always been a “chewing match.” Though he had never struck her, the fact remained that he could strike her and beat her up thoroughly, if he chose. He had a feeling, however, that if he went beyond a certain point with Nathan, the devil had hold of his son’s soul just hard enough so that Johnathan might encounter the distressing predicament of not being able to come off victor. Nathan had whipped the Plumb fellow. The Plumb fellow was larger than Johnathan. In popular parlance, Johnathan was rather “up against it.”

The father did a strange thing. He arose abruptly, turned and walked from the room. Nathan heard him pass through the hall, out the front door, across the veranda and down the steps.

Why had he gone? Where was he headed? This silent, abrupt, unexplained, ominous departure unnerved the lad more than any commencement of fistic hostilities.

Johnathan Forge did not return that evening. All that night he walked the streets, debating whether he should call down God’s curses on his boy. He actually believed that if he did, the son’s life would be blasted forever. Morning came cold and gray and clammy across the eastern hills.

But in the morning the Forge household resumed the even tenor of its way. Only Johnathan did not speak to his son for four days and then only on matters of absolute necessity.

Nathan, however, had made a discovery. This is a world in which people suffer and endure exactly what they choose to suffer and not much more. When the worm turns, ninety per cent. of the early birds turn also.

As a discovery, it opened many prolific possibilities.

Johnathan, on that night’s walk, however, had determined upon a maneuver and reached a great decision.

If he could not control his son by scoring his body with a harness tug for the good of his soul, he would employ tact and discretion. In order to save his son from a horrible life of poetry, he would get into some business, ostensibly of a manufacturing nature, which might grip his boy’s interest as his own, and set up an industrial counter-irritant to poetic pathology.

If Nathan hadn’t written that Pagan poem and set his father by the ears, Johnathan would never have gone into business and taken Nathan with him. And if he had not gone into business and taken Nathan with him, all the course of the boy’s life would have been changed.

Viewed from the perspective of the present, truly it was a happy stroke,—writing that Pagan poem.

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