DIVERSIONS OF AN ABANDONED SINNER
Almost immediately after my conversion, or at least as soon as it had become noised about that I had consigned my holy relative to what some of our more finicky Sisters, unable to bring themselves to say “Hell,” referred to coyly as “the bad place,” I abandoned myself to a life of sin and became a total spiritual loss in the eyes of all Farmington except members of my immediate family and certain of my intimate friends who collaborated with me in various wicked but pleasant enterprises. That is to say, I cast aside the taboos and the inhibitions that religion had thrown about me, and became for the first time in my life a normal boy. I existed simply to play and raise hell generally, and for some curious reason the activity which gave me the most pleasure was throwing rocks at the church or in some manner interrupting the service.
It was not long before even the most hopeful had ceased their talk of sending me to a theological school and fitting me to carry on the family labors, for I began to smoke cigarettes, play cards, swear, drink when I could find a bartender willing to ignore the law forbidding the sale of liquor to a minor, and to cock anappreciative and appraising eye at the girls. It was then agreed that it was too late to do anything with me or for me, and on the Sunday morning that I mounted my new bicycle and rode brazenly past the Southern Methodist church as the Brothers and Sisters filed with bowed heads into the edifice for worship, I was consigned body and soul to the sizzling pits of Hell.
I suffered a great deal of physical agony before I learned to smoke cigarettes, and it was some time before I learned to blow smoke through my nose with the nonchalant ease affected by the group of older boys and young men who loafed in Doss’s barber shop and around the Post Office Building and McKinney’s peanut and popcorn machine. My older brother had learned a year or so before, and he frequently made himself very offensive to me by boasting that he could smoke a whole package of Sweet Caporals or Drums without becoming ill. I yearned to try, but he would not give me a cigarette, and neither would any of the other boys, and my finances were in such shape that I could not purchase any. And, of course, such wicked things could not be purchased and charged to my father; I could have charged a plug of chewing tobacco to him, but not cigarettes.
But one day I was loafing hopefully in McKinney’s when my brother came in and produced a dime that he had amassed by laborious work chopping wood at home,and bought a package of Sweet Caporal Little Cigars. These were really nothing but cigarettes wrapped with tobacco instead of paper, but they resembled a cigar and were thought to be infinitely more stylish and manly than the ordinary cigarette. I asked him for one, and he said he would not give one to John the Baptist himself. But I persisted, and followed him home, aghast at his determination to hide behind the barn and smoke the whole package one after the other.
“I’ll light one from the end of the other,” he boasted.
Finally as we came opposite Brother Nixon’s house just south of Elmwood Seminary, he relented and very carefully opened the box and handed me a Little Cigar. It was a great moment. The yard of Elmwood Seminary fairly swarmed with girl students, including the young lady who at the time represented everything that was desirable in the female sex, and I visioned their cries of startled admiration as I passed, puffing nonchalantly, blowing smoke from my nose and perhaps from my ears.
I had no doubt of my ability to handle the innocent-looking Little Cigar; indeed, at that time I considered no problem insurmountable. My brother instructed me to fill my mouth with smoke and then take a long, deep breath, and after that blow the smoke out gently and slowly, holding the Little Cigar between the first and second finger and crooking the little finger as we didwhen we drank tea or coffee, that being a mark of gentility and refinement. As we came in front of the old Clardy homestead less than half a block from the Seminary I struck a match and applied it to the end of the Little Cigar, while my brother watched anxiously and from time to time gave me advice. I puffed as he directed.
“Got a mouthful?” he asked.
Unable to speak, my cheeks bulging, I nodded.
“Now take a long breath.”
But, alas, I did not breathe; I swallowed, and while the smoke penetrated me and spread throughout my interior, it did not take the correct route. I began to strangle, and my brother got excited.
“Blow it out, you damn fool!” he cried. “You’ll choke!”
I did choke. I did even worse; I became very ill, and the spectacle which so intrigued the young ladies of the Seminary that day was not that of a young gentleman going nonchalantly to Hell by the cigarette route. Instead, they saw a very sick boy rolling on the sidewalk trying desperately to stem a distressing internal upheaval.
It was several days later before I had enough courage to try again, and I debated within myself whether or not God had caused me to be so ill in order to show me that smoking was a sin. But I had definitely committedmyself to the Devil, so a few days later I begged a dime from my father and bought a package of Drums and another of Sweet Caporals, the two most popular brands of cigarettes. With these, and a supply of matches, I went behind the barn. I made a neat pile of sawdust to lie upon, and there I remained the whole afternoon, smoking one cigarette after another. I was terribly ill at first, but gradually improved until the last three or four gave me no trouble. I did not have much appetite for dinner that night, but I had conquered the cigarette and I felt a glow of pride at the fact that I had got a very good start in the direction of the bad place.
The basis of my overwhelming desire to smoke cigarettes was the fact that cigarette-smoking when I was a boy in Farmington was one of the major sins. It ranked with adultery and just a little ahead of murder and theft. The Preachers called them coffin nails and delivered violent sermons against them, and every once in a while an evangelist would come to town with medical charts showing the effect of tobacco upon the interior human organs. But the fact that it was bad physically for growing boys was seldom stressed at all; we were impressed instead with the fact that God thought it a sin to smoke cigarettes, although it did not appear that it was a sin for the tobacconist to sell them. That was business.
Many efforts were made to reform me after I had begun to smoke. My mother said she had hoped I wouldn’t, but that was all she said, and my father said he did not give a hoot whether I smoked or not, but that he hoped I would not be a fool and overdo it. He himself had learned the art of chewing tobacco when he was a boy of seven in Mississippi, and so far as I have ever been able to learn, God had never called him to account. He died at the age of seventy-nine, suddenly, and a slab of plug-cut was in his pocket. It is impossible for me to believe that God refused him entrance into whatever Heaven there may be on account of his habit, which he thoroughly enjoyed.
But the Preachers and the Brothers and Sisters did not agree with my parents, nor would they admit that it was none of their business. On the contrary, they said that it was the Lord’s business, and since they were the duly accredited agents of the Lord, appointed by Him to lead Farmington into the paths of righteousness, it was their business also. When Brother Fontaine was our Methodist pastor he did not look with disfavor upon chewing, because he himself was seldom without a chew and presumably had an indulgence from God, but he looked upon the cigarette as an invention of the Devil. In this view he was upheld by the Ladies’ Aid Society and the Farmington branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. And the W. C. T. U., with the possibleexception of the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals, was and is the world’s best example of an organization maintained for the sole purpose of minding other people’s business.
The hullabaloo over my smoking only made me more determined to smoke until my insides turned black and I was called home by Satan and transformed into a tobacco demon. For that reason I probably smoked too much. As a matter of principle I always lighted a cigarette just in front of the Southern Methodist church, and in front of the home of my uncle, who was an enemy of anything that provided physical pleasure and contentment. I always smoked another as I passed the Northern Methodist church, the scene of the McConnell revival orgy, and still another in front of the Christian church, in memory of Brother Nations. That was four in half a mile, and of course was too many, but sometimes I was not permitted to finish all of them. Frequently a Brother or a Sister, seeing me thus flaunting my sin on the public highway, snatched the nasty thing from my mouth and gave me a lecture that dripped religion and was principally concerned with the fate of boys who defied God and Jesus Christ by smoking cigarettes. One Sister asked me:
“Where did you get the vile things?”
I told her that I had bought them at her husband’s store, and she shrieked:
“You saucy, blasphemous boy!”
But on that particular occasion I was not lectured, although she telephoned my mother that I had been impudent to her. My mother told her it was too bad.
I learned to play pinochle when I was about fifteen, only a few months after I had become an accomplished cigarette fiend and was generally considered a fine prospect for Satan, and thereafter was a regular participant in the game that went on every night in the back room of Karl Schliesser’s cigar factory. This was a notable den of evil, and while religion had me in its clutches I thought black magic was practiced there, and that its habitués had communion with the Devil; among us it was believed that God had doubtless never heard of the place or He would have destroyed it with a withering blast of lightning. It was frequented by Germans and other low forms of life, and they were principally Catholics and Lutherans, with a sprinkling of renegade Protestants like myself. The Brothers and Sisters held the opinion that if this crowd had a God at all he must have been a very queer being, for bursts of ribald laughter came from Schliesser’s back room, and there was card-playing, and I do not doubt that occasionally someone gambled.
Schliesser was the Town Socialist, and was looked upon with grave suspicion by the better element, as in those days it was generally recognized that a Socialist was an emissary of the Devil. But the Brothers and Sisters and the Preachers looked with even more suspicion upon Victor Quesnel. In this attitude they had the support of the Catholics. Victor Quesnel was born in France, but he had lived in Farmington for many years. He frequently quoted Voltaire, and appeared to believe that a man’s religion and his belief or disbelief in God was a matter of his own personal taste, and he was therefore regarded as an atheist. As a matter of fact he was probably more truly religious than most of the pious Brothers and Sisters; the principal difference was that he did not try to compel everyone he met to embrace his creed.
Frequently, and without particular regard as to who heard him, Quesnel discussed the advantages of sleeping naked, or, as we say in present-day journalism, undraped. That was his hobby. He said he thought it was a healthful practice, that he slept better without clothing, and that come what might he was going to continue to sleep that way. This was considered heathenish doctrine; some of our finest church members owned stores in which they sold nightgowns and pajamas, and it was felt that Quesnel’s attitude was not only a direct affront to God but was also injurious to business. Moreover,the Brothers and Sisters did not consider such a practice modest; there were scores, perhaps hundreds of people in Farmington who had never in their lives removed all of their clothing. Once at a meeting of the Ladies’ Aid Society I heard an old Sister say that she had reached the age of sixty and had never been entirely undressed; and that when she bathed she kept her eyes closed as she applied the sponge to her body. A great deal of juicy conversation could be overheard at these Ladies’ Aid meetings by a bright young lad who knew where the best keyholes were located.
Sunday was much more enjoyable after I had become a sinner and had left Sunday school and the Church to whatever fate the Lord had in store for them. I arose a little later, had a leisurely breakfast and a refreshing quarrel or fight with my brothers and sister, and then went leisurely to my room and as leisurely put on my Sunday suit, with no intention of removing it until I retired for the night. Curiously enough, as soon as I quit going regularly to church and Sunday school I began to wear my Sunday suit all day, and the little voice that I had in the selection of this garment I raised in hopeful pleas for loud checks and glaring colors. No longer did I wish to clothe myself in thesombre blacks suitable for church wear and religious activity; I desired to blossom and bloom in the more violent and pleasant colors of Hell.
Once arrayed in my Sunday suit, I left the house, a cigarette dangling from my lower lip, and my hat, carefully telescoped in the prevailing mode, sitting just so on the side of my head. I tried to time my march downtown so that I would reach Elmwood Seminary just as the young lady students resident there marched across the street, after Sunday school, from the Presbyterian church; they were not permitted to remain at the church during the fifteen or twenty-minute interval because they attracted such hordes of feverish boys intent upon everything but religion. Usually I reached the scene in time, and leaned nonchalantly against the Seminary fence, puffing vigorously and ostentatiously on a cigarette and winking at various and sundry of the girls as they passed in their caps and gowns.
For these smart-aleck activities I was presently placed upon the school’s black list and was not permitted to call upon the one night each month allotted to such social intercourse, but as I soon learned to climb a rope ladder this did not annoy me greatly. Anyhow, calling night at Elmwood Seminary was not very exciting. The procedure was to place a dozen or so chairs about a big room, in pairs but with at least twelve inches between them, in which sat the girls and their callers. In thecenter sat a gimlet-eyed teacher, constantly ready with Biblical and other uplifting quotations and seeing to it that nothing scandalous occurred. From eight to ten the caller was permitted to engage his lady love in conversation, but it was a rule that everything that was said must be audible to the teacher on guard. Whisperings and gigglings were taboo, and resulted in the young man being placed on the black list, and forbidden thereafter to darken the doors of the institution. But occasionally the teacher relaxed her vigilance for a moment, providing an opportunity to arrange a clandestine meeting. That was the principal reason that the boys of Farmington went to Elmwood on calling nights.
The regular Sunday incident of the Seminary girls having been brought to a satisfactory and successful conclusion, I went on downtown. I was very young then, and I considered myself, in my Sunday suit, a very striking and elegant figure. I thought of myself as a parade, and felt morally certain that the eyes of every girl were upon me, and that their hearts were fluttering with amatory admiration. The Methodist church was only two blocks south of the Presbyterian edifice, and I generally reached it as the Sunday-school pupils trooped out with their arms full of lesson pamphlets and their souls full of salvation, Golden Texts and catechisms. I regarded them pityingly, puffed vaingloriously at my symbol of sin, and went on past theChristian church and the Northern Methodist church and so to McKinney’s, the Post Office Building and the fascinating popcorn and peanut machine.
In the winter time Doss’s barber shop was generally open until noon so Billy Priester could shine the shoes of the young bucks who proposed to defile the Sabbath by gallivanting around with young hussies. It was a favorite loafing place for all abandoned wretches who did not care for the glory that was free in all churches. But in summer we generally sat in front of McKinney’s and the Post Office Building and, when finances permitted, ate popcorn and peanuts, envying Riley Hough as he hurried out now and then to attend to the machine and stuff his mouth with popcorn before hastening back into the store.
All of the young sinners of the town loafed there during the church services, and at twelve o’clock noon we rose in a body and walked down the street to Pelty’s Book Store, where the Sunday papers were distributed. The afternoons were devoted to baseball games and amatory pursuits, and occasionally we went fishing. But this was considered a Cardinal Sin, and was frowned upon by even our liberal element; it was felt that it was a desecration of God’s Day to drag one of His creatures from the river with a cruel fishhook. On week days, of course, fishing was all right, although a waste of time, but on Sunday an expedition to Blumeyer’sFord, or to Gruner’s Hole, was followed the next morning by buzzing comment all over town, and only a grown man could hope to indulge in such sinful adventures and escape subsequent punishment.
It was the custom of our pastors and pious brethren, and of the professional sorcerers who were imported from time to time to cast their spells and shoo the demons away from our housetops, to proclaim loudly and incessantly that our collective morals were compounded of a slice of Sodom and a cut of Gomorrah, with an extract of Babylon to flavor the sorry stew. They worried constantly and fretfully over our amorous activities; in their more feverish discourses appeared significant references to the great difficulty of remaining pure, and in effect they advised our young women to go armed to the teeth, prepared to do battle in defense of their virginity.
In Farmington and other small towns of the Middle West this sort of thing was the principal stock in trade of those who would lead their brethren to the worship of the current god; the evangelist assured his hearers that their town was overrun by harlots, and that brothels abounded in which prominent men abandoned themselves to shameful orgies, while church attendancedwindled, and collections became smaller and smaller, and chicken appeared less and less frequently upon the ministerial table. His tirades were generally in this fashion:
“Shall we permit these painted daughters of Jezebel, these bedizened hussies, to stalk the streets of this fair city and flaunt their sin in the face of the Lord? Shall we permit them to lure our sons and brothers into their vile haunts and ply their nefarious trade in the very shadow of the House of God? No! I say NO! Jesus Christ must live in this town!”
Immediately everyone shouted “Amen, Brother!” and “Praise the Lord!” But it was sometimes difficult to determine whether the congregation praised the Lord for inspiring the evangelist so courageously to defy the harlots, or for permitting him to discover them. If the Man of God could find them, why not the damned, too? Certainly there were always many who wondered if the brother had acquired any good addresses or telephone numbers since coming to town. Not infrequently, indeed, he was stealthily shadowed home by young men eager to settle this question.
These charges and denunciations were repeated, with trimmings, at the meetings for men only which were always a most interesting feature of the revivals. At similar gatherings for women, or ladies, as we called them in small-town journalism, his wife or a devout Sisterdiscussed the question from the feminine viewpoint. What went on at these latter conclaves I do not know, though I can guess, for I have often seen young girls coming out of them giggling and blushing. The meetings for men were juicy, indeed. The evangelist discussed all angles of the subject, and in a very free manner. His own amorous exploits before he was converted were recited in considerable detail, and he painted vivid word pictures of the brothels he had visited, both as a paying client and in the course of his holy work. Almost invariably they were subterranean palaces hung with silks and satins, with soft rugs upon the floor, and filled with a vast multitude of handsome young women, all as loose as ashes. Having thus intimated, with some smirking, that for many years he was almost the sole support of harlotry, he became confidential. He leaned forward and said:
“There are such Dens of the Devil right here in your town!”
This was first-hand information, and immediately there was a stir in the audience, many of his hearers betraying an eagerness to be gone. But before they could get away the evangelist thundered:
“Shall we permit them to continue their wicked practices?”
I always hoped to be present some day when the audience forgot itself and answered that question withthe thought that was so plainly in its mind, namely, “Yes!” But, alas, I never heard it, although there was much shouting of “Amen!” and “Glory to God!” These meetings for men only were generally held in the afternoon, and their net result was that the business of the drug store increased immediately, and when night fell bands of young good-for-nothings scurried hither and yon about the town, searching feverishly for the Dens of the Devil. They searched without fear, confident that modern science would save them from any untoward consequences, and knowing that no matter what they did they would go to Heaven if they permitted a preacher to intercede for them in the end, or a priest to sprinkle them with holy water.
But the Dens of the Devil were not found, neither in Farmington nor in any other small town in that region, for the very good reason that they did not exist. The evangelist did not know what he was talking about; he was simply using stock blather which he had found by experience would excite the weak-minded to both sexual and religious emotions. He knew that when they were thus upset they would be less likely to question his ravings—that they would be more pliable in his hands and easier to convert.
Our small towns were not overrun by harlots simply because harlotry could not flourish in a small town. It was economically impossible; there were not enoughcash customers to make the scarlet career profitable. Also, the poor girls had to meet too much competition from emotional ladies who had the professional spirit but retained their amateur standing by various technicalities. And harlots, like the rest of us, had to live; they required the same sort of raiment and food that sufficed their virtuous sisters; it was not until they died that they wore nothing but the smoke of Hell and were able to subsist on a diet of brimstone and sulphur.
Many men who in larger communities would have patronized the professionals could not do so in a small town. They could not afford to; it was too dangerous. The moment a woman was suspected of being a harlot she was eagerly watched by everyone from the mayor down to the preachers, and the name of every man seen talking to her, or even looking at her, went winging swiftly from mouth to mouth, and was finally posted on the heavenly bulletin board as that of an immoral wretch. A house in which harlotry was practiced was picketed day and night by small boys eager to learn the forbidden mysteries, and by Brethren and Sisters hopefully sniffing for sin. It was not possible for a harlot to keep her clientèle secret, for the sexual life of a small town is an open book, and news of amorous doings could not travel faster if each had a tabloid newspaper.
Exact statistics, of course, are not available, but it is probably true that no small American town has everharbored a harlot whose income from professional services was sufficient to feed and clothe her. Few if any such towns have ever been the abode of more than one harlot at a time. When I was a boy every one had its town harlot, just as it had its town sot (this, of course, was before drunkards became extinct) and its town idiot. But she was generally a poor creature who was employed by day as a domestic servant and practiced her ancient art only in her hours of leisure. She turned to it partly for economic reasons, but chiefly because of a great yearning for human companionship, which she could obtain in no other way. She remained in it because she was almost instantly branded a Daughter of Satan, and shunned by good and bad alike. She seldom, if ever, realized that she was doing wrong; her moral standards were those of a bedbug. She thought of harlotry in terms of new ribbons and an occasional pair of shoes, and in terms of social intercourse; she was unmoral rather than immoral, and the proceeds of her profession, to her, were just so much extra spending money.
Small-town men who occasionally visited the larger cities, and there thought nothing of spending from ten to fifty dollars in metropolitan brothels, were very stingy in dealing with the town harlot. They considered a dollar an enormous price for her, and frequently they refused to give her anything. Many smallcommunities were not able to support even a part-time harlot; consequently some members of the craft went from town to town, taking secular jobs and practicing harlotry as a side line until driven out by the godly, or until the inevitable business depression occurred. I recall one who made several towns along the O. K. Railroad in Northeastern Missouri as regularly as the shoe drummers. Her studio was always an empty box car on the town siding, and she had a mania for inscribing in such cars the exact dates and hours of her adventures, and her honoraria. It was not unusual to find in a car some such inscription as this:
“TenP.M., July 8. Fifty cents.”
These writings, scrawled in lead pencil or with a bit of chalk, were signed “Box Car Molly.” Once, in a car from which I had unloaded many heavy bags of cement, I came across what seemed to be a pathetic bit of very early, and apparently authentic, Box-Car-Molliana. On the wall was this:
“I was ruined in this car May 10.“Box Car Molly.”
Our town harlot in Farmington was a scrawny creature called variously Fanny Fewclothes and Hatrack, but usually the latter in deference to her figure. When she stood with her arms outstretched she bore a remarkableresemblance to the tall hatracks then in general use in our homes, and since she was always most amiable and obliging, she was frequently asked to pose thus for the benefit of drummers and other infidels. In time, she came to take a considerable pride in this accomplishment; she referred to herself as a model, and talked vaguely of abandoning her wicked life and going to St. Louis, where she was sure she could make a living posing for artists.
Six days a week Hatrack was a competent and more or less virtuous drudge employed by one of our best families, but Sunday was her day off, and she then, in turn, offered her soul to the Lord and went to the Devil. For the latter purpose she utilized both the Masonic and Catholic cemeteries. Hatrack’s regular Sunday-night parade, her descent from righteousness into sin, was one of the most fascinating events of the week, and promptly after supper those of us who did not have engagements to take young ladies to church (which was practically equivalent to publishing the banns) went downtown to the loafing place in front of the Post Office and waited impatiently.
On week days Hatrack turned a deaf ear to the blandishments of our roués, but on Sunday night she was more gracious. This, however, was not until she had gone to church and had been given to understand, tacitly but none the less clearly, that there was no room forher in the Kingdom of Heaven. Our Sunday-night services usually began about eight o’clock, following the meetings of the various young people’s societies. At seven-thirty, regardless of the weather, the angular figure of Hatrack could be discerned coming down the hill from the direction of the cemeteries. She lived somewhere in that section and worked out by the day. She was always dressed in her best, and in her eyes was the light of a great resolve. She was going to church, and there was that in her walk and manner which said that thereafter she was going to lead a better life.
There was always a group of men waiting for her around the Post Office. But although several muttered “Here she comes!” it was not good form to speak to her then, and she walked past them as if she had not seen them. But they, with their wide knowledge of the vagaries of the Agents of God, grinned hopefully and settled down to wait. They knew she would be back. She went on up the street past the Court House and turned into the Northern Methodist church, where she took a seat in the last row. All about her were empty seats; if they were not empty when she got there they were soon emptied. No one spoke to her. No one asked her to come to Jesus. No one held out a welcoming hand. No one prayed for her. No one offered her a hymn book. At the protracted meetingsand revivals, which she invariably attended, none of the Brothers and Sisters tried to convert her; she was a Scarlet Woman and belonged to the Devil. There was no place for her in a respectable congregation. They could not afford to be seen talking to her, even in church, where God’s love, by their theory, made brothers and sisters of us all.
It was pitiful to watch her; she listened to the Word with such rapt attention; she sang the hymns with such fanatical fervor, and she so yearned for the comforts of that barbaric religion and the blessings of easy intercourse with decent people. But she never got them. From the Christians and their God she got nothing but scorn. Of all the sinners in our town Hatrack would have been easiest to convert; she was so pathetically eager for salvation. If a Preacher, or a Brother, or a Sister, had so much as spoken a kind word to her she would have dropped to her knees and given up her soul to the Methodist God. And her conversion, in all likelihood, would have been permanent, for she was not mentally equipped for a struggle against the grandiose improbabilities of revealed religion. If someone had told her, as I was told, that God was an old man with long whiskers, she would not have called Him “Daddy,” as some of her more flippant city sisters might have done; she would have accepted Him and gloried in Him.
But she was not plucked from the burning, for theworkers for the Lord would have nothing to do with her, and by the end of the service her eyes had grown sullen and her lip had curled upward in a sneer. Before the final hymn was sung and the benediction pronounced upon the congregation, she got to her feet and left the church. None tried to stop her; she was not wanted in the House of God. I have seen her sit alone and miserably unhappy while the Preacher bellowed a sermon about forgiveness, with the whole church rocking to a chorus of sobbing, moaning amens as he told the stories of various Biblical harlots, and how God had forgiven them.
But for Hatrack there was no forgiveness. Mary Magdalene was a saint in Heaven, but Hatrack remained a harlot in Farmington. Every Sunday night for years she went through the same procedure. She was hopeful always that someone would speak to her and make a place for her, that the Brothers and Sisters who talked so volubly about the grace and the mercy of God would offer her some of the religion that they dripped so freely over everyone else in town. But they did not, and so she went back down the street to the Post Office, swishing her skirts and brazenly offering herself to all who desired her. The men who had been waiting for her, and who had known that she would come, leered at her and hailed her with obscene speech and gesture. And she gave them back leer for leer,meeting their sallies with giggles, and motioning with her head toward the cemeteries.
And so she went up the hill. A little while later a man left the group, remarking that he must go home. He followed her. And a moment after that another left, and then another, until behind Hatrack was a line of men, about one to a block, who would not look at one another, and who looked sheepishly at the ground when they met anyone coming the other way. As each man accosted her in turn Hatrack inquired whether he was a Protestant or a Catholic. If he was a Protestant she took him into the Catholic cemetery; if he was a Catholic they went into the Masonic cemetery.
I fell a willing victim to the wiles of the Rum Demon on the night of my conversion, and thereafter, in common with other boys of the town who were aflame with revolt against the religious taboos which had so oppressed us, I drank whenever I could obtain the liquor. This was not often, because I seldom had any money and it was difficult to find a bartender who would sell a drink to a minor. The eagle eye of the W. C. T. U. was constantly upon him. But occasionally the darkies would buy for us in return for one swig at the bottle, and as often as possible we purchased by this means apint or quart of whisky or gin. I did not drink because I liked the taste of liquor, for I didn’t, and I do not now, but I thought it was smart and manly to get drunk.
And there was another, and a deeper reason. It seemed to me that in the eyes of the Preachers and the Brothers and Sisters a man could commit no more heinous sin than to get tight; it was even worse than smoking. Such being the case, I felt that it was incumbent upon me to achieve that condition, and thereby show them that I had no use for them and the things for which they stood. And that was also the reason we sang vulgar songs, and roared with gusto the parodies on hymns that we learned from time to time. It was our custom to get as drunk as possible and then group ourselves about the pump in the courthouse yard, where we bellowed ditties and parodies until the town marshal or some outraged Brother or Sister stopped us.
There were few such songs that we did not sing; it was at the pump, on a summer night, that I first heard the “Song of Jack Hall.” It was taught to us by a shoe drummer from St. Louis, who sang it with appropriate gestures, and for a long time it was our favorite song. The version that we sang was this—it should be rendered with great gusto and feeling, and the final line of each verse should be dragged from deep down in the chest:
Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall, ’tis Jack Hall,Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall, ’tis Jack Hall;Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall,And I’ll tell youse one and all,The story of me fall,God damn your eyes.Oh, I killed a man ’tis said, so ’tis said,Oh, I killed a man ’tis said, so ’tis said;Oh, I killed a man ’tis said,And I kicked his bloody head,And I left him lyin’ dead,God damn his eyes.So they chucked me here in quod, here in quod,So they chucked me here in quod, here in quod;So they chucked me here in quod,With a ball and chain and rod,They did, so help me God,God damn their eyes.Well, the parson he did come, he did come,Well, the parson he did come, he did come;Well, the parson he did come,And he looked so God-damned glum,As he talked of Kingdom Come,God damn his eyes.And the sheriff he came, too, he came, too,And the sheriff he came, too, he came, too;And the sheriff he came, too,With his little boys in blue,He said: “Jack, we’ll see you through,God damn your eyes.”So it’s up the rope I go, up I go,So it’s up the rope I go, up I go;So it’s up the rope I go,And those devils down below,They’ll say: “Jack, we told you so!”God damn their eyes.
Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall, ’tis Jack Hall,Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall, ’tis Jack Hall;Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall,And I’ll tell youse one and all,The story of me fall,God damn your eyes.Oh, I killed a man ’tis said, so ’tis said,Oh, I killed a man ’tis said, so ’tis said;Oh, I killed a man ’tis said,And I kicked his bloody head,And I left him lyin’ dead,God damn his eyes.So they chucked me here in quod, here in quod,So they chucked me here in quod, here in quod;So they chucked me here in quod,With a ball and chain and rod,They did, so help me God,God damn their eyes.Well, the parson he did come, he did come,Well, the parson he did come, he did come;Well, the parson he did come,And he looked so God-damned glum,As he talked of Kingdom Come,God damn his eyes.And the sheriff he came, too, he came, too,And the sheriff he came, too, he came, too;And the sheriff he came, too,With his little boys in blue,He said: “Jack, we’ll see you through,God damn your eyes.”So it’s up the rope I go, up I go,So it’s up the rope I go, up I go;So it’s up the rope I go,And those devils down below,They’ll say: “Jack, we told you so!”God damn their eyes.
Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall, ’tis Jack Hall,Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall, ’tis Jack Hall;Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall,And I’ll tell youse one and all,The story of me fall,God damn your eyes.
Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall, ’tis Jack Hall,
Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall, ’tis Jack Hall;
Oh, me nyme it is Jack Hall,
And I’ll tell youse one and all,
The story of me fall,
God damn your eyes.
Oh, I killed a man ’tis said, so ’tis said,Oh, I killed a man ’tis said, so ’tis said;Oh, I killed a man ’tis said,And I kicked his bloody head,And I left him lyin’ dead,God damn his eyes.
Oh, I killed a man ’tis said, so ’tis said,
Oh, I killed a man ’tis said, so ’tis said;
Oh, I killed a man ’tis said,
And I kicked his bloody head,
And I left him lyin’ dead,
God damn his eyes.
So they chucked me here in quod, here in quod,So they chucked me here in quod, here in quod;So they chucked me here in quod,With a ball and chain and rod,They did, so help me God,God damn their eyes.
So they chucked me here in quod, here in quod,
So they chucked me here in quod, here in quod;
So they chucked me here in quod,
With a ball and chain and rod,
They did, so help me God,
God damn their eyes.
Well, the parson he did come, he did come,Well, the parson he did come, he did come;Well, the parson he did come,And he looked so God-damned glum,As he talked of Kingdom Come,God damn his eyes.
Well, the parson he did come, he did come,
Well, the parson he did come, he did come;
Well, the parson he did come,
And he looked so God-damned glum,
As he talked of Kingdom Come,
God damn his eyes.
And the sheriff he came, too, he came, too,And the sheriff he came, too, he came, too;And the sheriff he came, too,With his little boys in blue,He said: “Jack, we’ll see you through,God damn your eyes.”
And the sheriff he came, too, he came, too,
And the sheriff he came, too, he came, too;
And the sheriff he came, too,
With his little boys in blue,
He said: “Jack, we’ll see you through,
God damn your eyes.”
So it’s up the rope I go, up I go,So it’s up the rope I go, up I go;So it’s up the rope I go,And those devils down below,They’ll say: “Jack, we told you so!”God damn their eyes.
So it’s up the rope I go, up I go,
So it’s up the rope I go, up I go;
So it’s up the rope I go,
And those devils down below,
They’ll say: “Jack, we told you so!”
God damn their eyes.
The parodies on hymns that we sang were almost innumerable, and were undoubtedly sung all over the country by other boys who, in the eyes of their elders, were only being smart-alecky, but who, like us, had a deeper reason for the eagerness with which they paraded their disrespect for the Church and for religion. It was one of the few ways we knew to flaunt our sin, and nothing pleased us more than to break up a church service, or at least interrupt it, by bellowing at the top of our voices some disreputable and unholy parody that had reached us in one way or another.
One of our most enjoyable Sunday-night escapades was to gather in a group outside a church window, and sing a parody immediately after the choir and the congregation inside had sung the hymn itself. We persisted in this until finally the pastor of the Northern Methodist church had Wint Jackson, the Night Marshal,chase us away. We went without comment or objection when Jackson ordered us to disperse, because he had just killed a desperado named Yates, and we considered him something of a hero; we thought that he went about with his finger constantly in the trigger of his revolver, and that the finger itched.
On this particular night the parody which made the Methodist minister so angry, and swept from his mind all thought of his Christian duty to turn the other cheek for us to swat, was on “Oh, that will be glory for me.” Our version went like this:
Oh, there will be no chicken for me,No chicken for me, no chicken for me;When all the preachers have gulped their share,There’ll be no chicken, no chicken for me.
Oh, there will be no chicken for me,No chicken for me, no chicken for me;When all the preachers have gulped their share,There’ll be no chicken, no chicken for me.
Oh, there will be no chicken for me,
No chicken for me, no chicken for me;
When all the preachers have gulped their share,
There’ll be no chicken, no chicken for me.
To give the proper swing to the tune, “gulped” must be pronounced “gulluped.”
Perhaps the most celebrated of all the parodies, at that time, was on the favorite old hymn, “At the Bar.” We sang it thus:
At the bar, at the bar,Where I smoked my first cigar,And the nickels and the dimes rolled away;It was there, by chance,That I ripped my Sunday pants,And now I can wear them every day.
At the bar, at the bar,Where I smoked my first cigar,And the nickels and the dimes rolled away;It was there, by chance,That I ripped my Sunday pants,And now I can wear them every day.
At the bar, at the bar,
Where I smoked my first cigar,
And the nickels and the dimes rolled away;
It was there, by chance,
That I ripped my Sunday pants,
And now I can wear them every day.
Another parodied “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” thus:
Nero, my dog, has fleas,Nero has fleas;Although I wash him clean,Nero, my dog, has fleas.
Nero, my dog, has fleas,Nero has fleas;Although I wash him clean,Nero, my dog, has fleas.
Nero, my dog, has fleas,
Nero has fleas;
Although I wash him clean,
Nero, my dog, has fleas.
And thus, to the tune of “Hallelujah, Thine the Glory”:
Hellilujah, I’m a hobo,Hellilujah, I’m a bum;Hellilujah, give us a handout,Revive us again.
Hellilujah, I’m a hobo,Hellilujah, I’m a bum;Hellilujah, give us a handout,Revive us again.
Hellilujah, I’m a hobo,
Hellilujah, I’m a bum;
Hellilujah, give us a handout,
Revive us again.
There was also in circulation at that time a great number of parodies on hymns in which mention was made of Beecham’s Pills, the merits of which were emblazoned on every barn and fence throughout the countryside. I have heard that these parodies were circulated by the Beecham Pill people themselves in response to a plea of English churches for hymn books, but I do not know if the story is true. One of our favorites of this collection was the parody on “Hark, the herald angels sing.” It went:
Hark, the herald Angels sing,Beecham’s Pills are just the thing;Peace on earth and mercy mild,Two for man and one for child.
Hark, the herald Angels sing,Beecham’s Pills are just the thing;Peace on earth and mercy mild,Two for man and one for child.
Hark, the herald Angels sing,
Beecham’s Pills are just the thing;
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
Two for man and one for child.
To my long list of unhallowed but frequently pleasant accomplishments I added, in my sixteenth summer, journalism and dancing; I went to work on the FarmingtonTimesand learned to waltz and two-step, and on occasion danced the Virginia Reel and the quadrille with spirit and abandon if not with elegant grace. The practice of journalism was not then, in all quarters, considered a sin of the first magnitude; nor is it so considered to-day except when various Preachers and other goody-bodies find their names mentioned infrequently and their daily denunciations ignored. It is then the fashion to denounce the newspapers, and to deplore the low plane to which the fourth estate has fallen. But in Farmington in my youth the feeling against the Sunday newspaper was so great that it was felt generally that all journalism was at least slightly tainted, and so I list it as a sin. So far as the financial rewards go, it is even now nothing less than a crime.
There was no question about the sinfulness of dancing, especially the round dances, as we used to call the waltz and two-step. In some parts of the country exception was made for the square dances, but everywhere in my section of Missouri the waltz and two-step were considered Steps toward Hell. I frequently heard Preachers and Brothers and Sisters pronounce solemnjudgment against young girls who indulged in such heinous practices, and brand them before God and man as abandoned scarlet women glorying in the unsanctified embraces of wicked men. That was the way the Preachers usually talked, too. One man in our town was even criticized for waltzing with his wife.
Not only was the wicked waltz and the devilish two-step, no matter how decorously performed, a Sunday taboo in our town, but in our most religious families it was taboo at all times, and several persons were dismissed from church for participating in such orgies. We had one Preacher who informed us that both Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by God because their inhabitants danced and for no other reason, and the prediction was freely made that Farmington was destined for the same dreadful end, and he intimated that we would not even reap the resultant benefits of great fame and publicity. His tirades were strikingly similar to the ones that are being made every day now by the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals against New York City and other centers of sin.
As I have said, for many years the Presbyterians, city slickers at heart, had a virtual monopoly of dancing in Farmington. It was they who introduced the waltz and the two-step, to the great horror of all of our old women, both male and female, and it is they whomust be held responsible when God sends His avenging angels to blast and destroy. Occasionally a Baptist or a Methodist backslid sufficiently to trip the light fantastic toe, as I delighted to call it as a juvenile reporter on theTimes, but not often; generally the Presbyterians alone thus flaunted their wickedness. But when God failed to perform as expected, others became bold and abandoned all caution, and when I left Farmington, dancing was general and the town was obviously headed straight for Hell. But even then there was very little dancing done on Sunday night.
We had two newspapers in Farmington, theTimesand theNews, the former owned by Mr. Theodore Fisher and the latter by the Denman brothers, extraordinarily devout members of the Northern Methodist church and leaders in most of the town’s religious activities. Mr. Fisher was a Presbyterian, a liberal at heart, but for business reasons he was unable to do or say anything to stem the tide of prying Puritanism. Both papers were controlled by the churches of the town, and published everything that the Preachers and the Brothers and Sisters asked them to; as I grew older, Mr. Fisher became more confidential and frequently expressed his disgust at many things that went on in Farmington, but he was powerless. If he had said a word in favor of a more liberal attitude his paper would have had an even more difficult time getting along, and Heaven knows itwas hard enough as it was; Mr. Fisher frequently had to spend all of Saturday morning collecting advertising accounts so he could pay wages in the afternoon. But theNewswas always very prosperous.
When I went into the newspaper business, or game, as it is called in the motion pictures and the schools of Journalism, I went in with the enthusiastic thoroughness with which I had abandoned myself to a life of sin. Mr. Fisher hired me at $2 a week, during the summer vacation, to be the office devil, and for that princely wage I built the fires each morning, swept the office, carried copy, set type, distributed pi, kicked the job press, cranked the gasoline engine on Thursdays, fed the big roller press, folded the papers, wrote names on them and carried them to the Post Office in sacks. And I had many other duties besides.
These multitudinous activities sufficed me for a few weeks, because in doing them, and in so being engaged in journalistic practice, I had the same feeling that so encouraged me when I danced or drank or smoked cigarettes; I was confident that I was doing something of which the righteous did not wholly approve. But later I became ambitious. I wanted to be an editor. Only God knows why, but I did. So I became an editor; indeed, I became many editors. Using the small job press and Mr. Fisher’s stock of vari-colored inks, I printed cards informing the world that I was sportingeditor, society editor, fire editor, crime editor, baseball editor, football editor, financial editor, religious editor, and barber-shop editor, this last because I purposed to interview the customers in Doss’s barber shop.
Thus equipped, I felt able to handle any journalistic problem that might confront me, and I spent my spare time interviewing people and gathering items which, because of the extreme godliness of our citizens, usually consisted of nothing more exciting than announcements that so-and-so was on the sick list, or had been on the sick list and was now improving. When I asked a banker if he knew any news I gravely presented him with my financial-editor card; and when it became my proud duty to interview my youthful idol and our most famous citizen, Mr. Barney Pelty, the major-league baseball pitcher, he learned by ocular proof that I was both sporting editor and baseball editor, and as such fully competent to transmit to type and to posterity his deathless utterances. As I recall them, these were generally that he would be in town to visit his relatives or because some member of his family was on the sick list, and would then return to St. Louis to take up again the onerous duties of his profession. Once he predicted that the Browns would win the pennant, and I wrote this exclusive information with all the large and handsome words at my command, but he was mistaken.
As time went on I became almost everything that itwas possible to be on theTimes; I was printer, pressman, reporter, mechanic, editor of this and that, and what not. But I was never permitted to write editorials or chronicle the doings of our best people. TheTimeswas passionately addicted to the Democrats, and each week our editorial page trumpeted the widely known and indisputable fact that the Republicans were a lot of skunks. These blasts were written, and well written, by Mr. Fisher himself, and my own share in the good work was merely to put them into type, and occasionally correct Mr. Fisher’s phraseology when I did not think that he had expressed himself clearly. And since these corrections were made at the case after the proof had been corrected, they nearly always got printed, sometimes with dire results. Once Mr. Fisher wrote, in jovial vein, about the gaudy house in which a certain political candidate resided, and I corrected it to read “bawdy house,” holding that the latter was more definitely descriptive.
Another member of Mr. Fisher’s family, who had previously spoken to me pleasantly when she met me on the street but who regarded me as nothing but hired help after I had accepted employment, wrote about the social activities of our first families on Columbia Street and the second and third families in Doss’s Addition. I was occasionally permitted to describe the pitiful doings of the Catholics, the Lutherans and other curioushumans down near the ice plant, and the weekly dances given by the abandoned young people at our chief source of civic pride, the insane asylum. But the functions of Society were obviously beyond the descriptive powers of a mere printer’s devil. It was bad enough that such a person had to set the type. Nevertheless I attended these functions, and gained great comfort by inserting my name in the list of those present, and by adding the important and vital information that dainty and delicious refreshments had been served and a good time had by all. If it was a birthday party the host was wished many happy returns of the day. It was my belief at that time that it was against the law to publish an account of a social event without so stating. It was not always true; frequently the refreshments were not delicious and no one had a good time, but in those days I did not have that high regard for the truth that I have since acquired through labors on the great metropolitan journals; indeed, a night seldom passes now that I do not ask myself: “Have I written the truth to-day?” The answer, has, so far, eluded me. But Mr. Fisher, and to an even greater extent the Brothers Denman, sole owners of theNews, frankly tried to please the advertisers and the subscribers; there was not then that fine spirit of independence which is such an essential part of modern journalism.
I advanced rapidly on theTimes, and eventually wasreceiving $7 a week and had appointed myself to so many editorships that my cards filled two pockets. I was satisfied, and probably would have remained so for some years, but the end of my allotted time in Farmington was drawing near. I went to Northeast Missouri to visit relatives, and Mr. Fisher discharged me for over-staying my leave. This was a terrific blow; it seemed to me that my journalistic career had been cut off in the flower of its youth. I went to work in a lumber yard, and kept the job until the first carload of cement came in. But after I had pulled and tugged at the ninety-eight-pound sacks for ten hours I concluded that the lumber business held out no glowing promise for a young man who wished to retain his health and have leisure for a reasonable amount of traffic with Satan.
So I resigned and went to Quincy, Ill., where after considerable negotiations I obtained a job as reporter on the QuincyJournaland embarked on a career in daily journalism. So far this has kept me in the cities, where the opportunities for sin are vastly more numerous than in the small towns, but where there is less sin in proportion to the number of inhabitants. This is true despite the horde of wailing prophets and professional devil-chasers and snoopers whose principal occupation is violent and false denunciation of every city largeenough to have an electric-light plant. And in a city one can, by diligent search, find a few people who will admit that a man’s religion, or his lack of religion, is his own affair.