 Introduction of the Cliff Dwellers. This is a LibreBox recording. All LibreBox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreBox.org. The Cliff Dwellers by Henry Blake Fuller. Introduction. Between the former site of old Fort Dearborn and the present site of our newest Board of Trade, there lies a restricted yet tumultuous territory through which, during the course of the last 50 years, the rushing streams of commerce have worn many a deep and rugged chasm. These great cannons conduits, in fact, for the leaping volume of an ever-increasing prosperity, cross each other with a sort of systematic rectangularity. And in difference to the practical directness of local requirements, they are in general called simply streets. Each of these cannons is closed in by a long frontage of towering cliffs and these soaring walls of brick and limestone in granite rise higher and higher with each succeeding year, according as the work of erosion at their basis goes onward. The work of that ceiling flood of carts, carriages, omnibuses, cabs, cars, messengers, shoppers, clerks and capitalists, which surges with increasing violence for every passing day. This erosion, proceeding with a sort of fateful regularity, has come to be a matter of constant and growing interest. Means have been found to measure its progress. Just as a scale has been arranged to measure the rising of the Nile or to gouge the draught of an ocean liner, in this case the unit of measurement is called the story. Ten years ago the most rushing and irrepressible of the torrents which devastate Chicago had not worn its bed to a greater depth than that indicated seven of these stories. This depth has since increased to 8 to 10 to 14 to 16 until some of the leading avenues of activity promised soon to become little more than mere obscure trails have lost between the bases of perpendicular precipices. High above this architectural upheaval rise yet other structures in crack-like isolation. El Capitan is duplicated time and again, both in Balkan and Stature, and around him the floating spray of the bridal whale is woven by the breezes of lake and prairie from the warp as soup flakes in the wolf of damp drenched smoke. The explorer who has climbed to the shoulder of one of these great captains and has found one of the thinnest folds in the whale may readily make out the nature of the surrounding country. The rugged and erratic plateau of the bad lands lies before him in all its hideousness and impractability. It is a wild tract full of sudden falls unexpected rises, precipices, dislocations. The high and the low are met together, the big and the little alternate in a rapid and illogical succession. Its perilous trails are followed successfully by but few, by alignment perhaps, who is balanced on the cornice, by a roofer as tries some dizzy gable, by a youth here and there whose early apprehension of the main chance in the multiplication table has stood him in good stead. This country is a treeless country. If we overlook the forest of chimneys, comprised in a bird's-eye view of any great city and if you are unable to detect any botanical analogies in the lofty articulated iron funnels whose ramifying cables reach out wherever they can to fasten wherever they may. It is a shubless country. If we give no heat to the gnarled carpentry of the awkward frameworks which carry the telegraph and which are set as cue on such dizzy corners as the course of the wires may compel, it is an arid country. If we overlook the numberless tanks that squat on the high angles of alley walls or if you fail to see the little pools of tar and gravel that ooze and shimmer in the summer sun and the roofs of old-fashioned buildings of the humbler sort, it is an airless country. If by air we mean the mere combination of oxygen and nitrogen which is commonly indicated by that name. For here the medium of sight, sound, light and life becomes largely carbonaceous and the remote peaks of this mighty yet unprepossessing landscape loom up grandly but waitly through swathing mists of cold smoke. From such conditions as these along with the Tacoma, the Monodnok and a great host of other modern monsters towers the Clifton. From the beer hall in its basement to the barber shop just under its roof the Clifton stands full 18 stories tall. It's hundreds of windows glitter with multitudinous letterings in gold and in silver and on summer afternoons its awnings flutter score and score in the tepid breezes that sometimes come up from Indiana. Four ladder-like constructions which rise skyward stage by stage promote the agility of the clambering hordes that swarm within it and ten elevators devises unknown to the real aboriginal inhabitants ameliorate the daily cliff climbing for the frail of physique and the pressed for time. The tribe inhabiting the Clifton is large and rather heterogeneous. All told it numbers about 4,000 souls. It includes bankers, capitalists, lawyers, promoters, brokers and bonds, stocks, pork, oil, mortgages, real estate people and railroad people and insurance people, life, fire, marine, accident, a host of principles, agents, middlemen, clerks, cashiers, stenographers and errand boys and the necessary force of engineers, janitors, scrub women and elevator hands. All these thousands gather daily around their own great campfire. This fire heats the four big boilers under the pavement of the court which lies just behind and it sends a loft of vast plume of smoke to mingle with those of other like communities that are settled round about. These same thousands may also gather in installments at their tribal feast. For the Clifton has its own lunch counter just off one corner of the Grand Court as well as a restaurant several floors higher up. The memories of the tribe may also smoke the pipe of peace among themselves whenever so minded. For the Clifton has its own cigars stand just within the principal entrance. Newspapers and periodicals too are sold at the same place. The warriors may also communicate their messages, hostile or friendly to chiefs, more or less remote. For there is a telegraph office in the corridor and a squad of messenger boys in wait close by. In a word, the Clifton aims to be complete within itself and it will be unnecessary for us to go a field either far or frequently during the present simple succession of brief episodes in the lives of the Clifthwellers. End of introduction. The Clifthwellers by Henry Blake Fuller. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain, recording by Saba Fatima. Chapter 1 On the 10th floor of the Clifton is the office of the Massachusetts Fast Company. Those whose minds are attuned to an appreciation of the whole street and kindred matters pronounced as little sweet the gem of the whole establishment. Even many who are not adept in the matter of house furnishing and who are much too rushed and preoccupied to become such have been known to pause in their course through the Clifton's long corridors or occasions from the ribbed glass door of the brass company happens to be standing ajar and to say to themselves with certain home offices in mind, now why can't all people do as much for us? Indeed, the office calls enough for Henry in that small square of velvety axe minister in the harmonious tinting of the walls in the padded leather backs of the swivel chairs in the polished brightness of the cherry dextops in the fresh blotting paths in the immaculate instance. To sit in this pleasant little apartment for half an hour is to receive quite a new impression of the possible luxury of business, the ultimate elegance of trade. This may be managed as easily as not if you happen to have any dealings with the Worldwood Floyd agent according to the legend on the translucent pane of the door who is quite unlikely to hurry you out before you have finished. Don't be in such a drive, he will perhaps say to you, stay and smoke a cigar. For business is not too exacting consideration with the western branch of the Massachusetts brass company. It is less a hive of industry than a social exchange. The arse are easy and the habituates are as frequently callous as customers. They are often Jacks or Tom's whose fathers are social pillars in Boston and large land owners in Wyoming and Dakota. And Jack and Tom, words of passage, in Scotch chariots and billy cock hats are given to a lighting for a brief breathing spell on this lofty perch where they reproach the slip shirt dress in careless speech of their friends's small office force by the trim neatness of their own clothes and conversation. It may be guessed that this non-haven of refuge has been established and maintained less to extend the company's trade than to provide a place for the company's Worldwood. I say company's Worldwood for in this case company and family are interchangeable terms. The Massachusetts brass company is the Floyd family and the Floyd family is the Massachusetts brass company. The company pays no dividends but it is very generous in its salaries. It is liberal with Hosea G. Floyd who is its president and with Wentrop C. Floyd who is its treasurer and with H. Louis Floyd who is its New York agent and with Cad Willado V. Floyd who looks after the Philadelphia interests. Now does it quite forget the Worldwood Floyd who holds up one end more or less effectively in the West but Worldwood is the last and the youngest of the Floyds. His marriage was not to the complete satisfaction of his family and his single independent venture before leaving home in the direction of coffee and spices compelled his brothers put their hands into their profits rather deeply. So while the rest of the Floyds think that all considered they have rather than the fear thing by Worldwood yet Worldwood on the other hand regards his assignment to the West as a mild form of punishment and exile. It does give me a little help around though. This is the silent acknowledgement that Worldwood sometimes makes to himself but crudgingly. Worldwood Floyd is a sleek, well fed, prosperous little fellow of 30. His figure is a triple too short and dumpy to be pronounced absolutely but it is always strikingly well quested for he has lived in the West hardly a year as yet. His face is not handsome but it is gentlemanly quite. One might indeed complain of the retreating lines of his forehead and regret due that his chin once perfect now shows leaning towards the lip but on the other hand his well-fished nose you're sure has been figuring in family portraits for the last 100 years and his plump hands by reason of the fine texture of the skin and the shapeliness of the nails form a point that is distinctly aristocratic. Yet when man-ship under his manipulations becomes a very grabbed and the bowl is of fear and this light species of manual labor is usually performed so far as he is concerned by other hands. He has a sort of general club and he shares the services of a stenographer with two or three of his neighbors. He employs two and of his boy who would either away a good deal of time if Woolworth were not in the habit of sending frequent communications to the stairwell of his club. Woolworth commented in his plump placidity has been accustomed to fear sumptuously every day and to worry his head about as few things as possible. Stunning he does for himself is thinking he has somebody else to do for him. His bookkeeping and auditing and so on are done in the east and a friend of his he has no enemies who once said that his stomach was in Chicago where his brains were in Boston. Woolworth considering his family training and traditions is inexplicably expansive even more than his limited capabilities for business even more than the exactions of her wife whose pinched girlhood has helped her to a full appreciation of her present membership in a wealthy family has his own open-hearted one home kept him back. He is just a man to whom one writes a letter of introduction without any sense of imposing a burden or to whom one may present it without experiencing any great sense of embarrassment and it is a letter of introduction in point of fact which is now lying half folded on the extended elbow rest of his desk and has been lying here for a quarter of an hour. Most of us know something about letters of introduction promised so thoughtlessly written so clearly presented so reluctantly received so grudgingly but when the letter is merely a trifling and insignificant line a line which has no great importance for the bearer and can cause no great annoyance to the recipient and when its presentation here and its accounting for there may be considered as but a minute item in the general system of social bookkeeping then we have an episode that passes quickly and lightly for all concerned such appears to be the situation in the office of the massachusetts brass company. Walwood is tilted back comfortably in one of his handsome chairs and sends out a casual glance through the nearest window. The sun is struggling with a half humanist haze and through this haze a hundred streets of smoke are driving headlong towards the lake. A tall clock tower looms up three or four streets away and one of its faces on the looker's own level gives the hour as half past ten. Well we are living up on fine street Mr. Ogden he's saying just a side of the water works the place where the wheels go around you know you beat me here by a few minutes this morning but i think i can promise to be the first on the ground when you call on us there. He is running his fingers over the edges of several little sheets of brass. A few bunches of these together with a set or two of brass rings of varying diameters and thicknesses are the only intimations of merchandise that the office yells. Sometimes even these are bundled away in a drawer and then commerce is refined completely beyond the kin of the senses. However don't go. I am a little late in getting around this morning but the meal is light. Pergutian will look after it sit down again. The visitor thus urged sank back into the cheer from which he had just risen. He was a slender young man a good height and his age was perhaps 24. His complexion was of the colorless kind that good health alone keeps from sadness. His hair was a light brown and fine and thick and it fell across his temples in these two smooth things that were made by an accurate parting in the middle. He had the beginnings of a shadowy little mustache and a pair of good eyes which expressed a pure amount of self-reliance and any amount of hope. And how are you finding the west side Woolworth pursued? I don't know much about it myself. This is a big town and awfully cut up. A man has to pick out his own quarter and stick to it. If you move from one side of the river to another you would goodbye to all your old friends. You never see them again. You said you were somewhere near Union Park, I believe. Yes, George Orkin answered. I have landed in a pretty good place and I want to stay there if I can. They are a sort of farming people or were to start with. They came from New York State I believe and haven't been here for a year or two. Is there anybody understand who hasn't come from somewhere else or who has been here more than a year or two? Woolworth laughed. I haven't but you go around some and you may find a few that have. The mother cooks, the father markets, the daughter helps to wait on table. Nice friendly people. Make me think of those at home. You smile a little wistfully about the only people so far that do. Well, I have heard that there are some pretty good streets over there. Is Woolworth's great response? Ask this. We have streets, all of one sort and planted regularly. I mean an ornamental lamp posts and I'm only a block from the park. Everything seems all right enough. I dare say, but don't you find it rather far away from queried ploy with a sort of insuminating intentness? However, I have no idea of reproducing Woolworth's remarks on the local topography. They were voluminous, but he would be found prejudiced and but partly informed. Besides, his little tirade was presently thrown out of joint by a dislocating interruption. Woolworth always experienced a mental dislocation, slight or serious, whenever his wife called at the office. No more matters much helped when his wife was accompanied by her sister. It was the latter of these who now opened the door with an assured hand and who shut it after the two of them with a confirmatory slam. Yes, we are here, she seems to imply. In Mrs. Woolworth's ploy, our young man met a lean and angious little body, who appeared strenuous and exacting and of the kind who, as the expression goes, are hard to get along with. She had a sharp little nose and a pair of inquisitorial eyes. She was dressed richly but as simply as a swore that it's cabard. If Woolworth spent an evening abroad, it was a fair assumption that his wife knew where he was and all about it. Otherwise, this road was drawn. We have been almost three quarters of an hour getting here, she said in a tense way. Something was to matter with the cable and they kept us in the tunnel nearly 20 minutes. As I tell Anne, you can always count on that sort of thing when you have got anything of real importance on hand and not much time for it. And yet we talk about the jams and delays in Kremen Street. She drew down her mouth and blinked her eyes indignantly. She felt all the shortcomings of her new home very keenly. She made every one of them a personal affront. Anne thought it was amusing, perhaps it won't seem so after it has happened her three or four times more. Woolworth glanced apprehensively in the direction of his sister-in-law's chair. She was understood to be in his house on a brief visit. He trusted that she was not to be exposed a second time to so annoying an accident. Anne, while was a stout woman who was nearly 40. Her appearance indicated that while she had not escaped the buffets of the world, yet her past experiences had only seasoned and toughened her for her future ones. In this earthly turmoil of give and take, she seemed to have played a full inning on each side. She had begun as a poetess, she had gone on as a boarding housekeeper and she was not ready to take her first step as an investor. To turn from literature to lodgings indicates talent. To do so well in lodgings as to have funds for the purchase of property indicates genius. Miss Wilde that 14 was a plain child who's struggling here was drawn back from her forehead by an Indian rubber comb that passed over the top of her head from ear to ear and she was called Annie. At 17, countries of the first pluttering of sentiment and prompted by indications of increasing comeliness, she renamed herself Annette. At 20, some were disappointed in the promise of beauty, yet consoled in some degrees by spreading reputation as a versifier, she changed her name to Anne. At 26, as a result of a disappointment in an affair of the heart and of a growing appreciation of the modesty of her social role, she resignededly styled herself Anna. Anna 35 fully convinced of her own hopeless plainness of the completely practical cast of things generally and of the uselessness of flying the flag of idealism any longer, she bobbed off at the same time both her hair and her name. She presented a short-cut pole of frizzle gray and she signed herself Ann. What's in a name? Sometimes nothing, sometimes a whole biography. I have been telling Mr. Ogden, said Woolworth, that he ought to be in our part of town. He ought to be one of our little circle. His wife looked up rather totally. Her little circle was not open to any new candidate that the uncalculating good nature of her husband might propose. That house around on harsh street could take him in, I imagine, and all the people he would want to know are right around there. Why, you have been in your sister, Francis. You know the Parker's. Well, Mrs. Parker is Mr. Ogden's aunt. Aunt, I think you said? Yes, aunt. So you see about how it is. Always glad to welcome one more Eastern pilgrim to our little, what you may call it, oasis, you know? Why didn't you say Mr. Ogden was from the East Woolworth, asked his wife axingly, and looked at the young man for the first time. Her gaze was critical, but not forbidding. Yes, most of us are on the North Side, she observed. Ogden is as good as a neighbor already, Woolworth went on. Perceivingly, a business neighbor. He's going into underground national letters and all that, you know? Pretty good for three weeks, I call it. If most of our fellows who come out here did as well in three months, it would be money in Mrs. Lloyd's pocket. You think of the fives and tens and twenties that have gone to old schoolmates of Vince, and to fellows who knew Lovell when he was on the road. Ogden flushed a little and took the first steps towards Fram. It is not pleasant to contemplate your possible inclusion in the pre-prehensible cause of the strapped and astranded, not to feel that only a lucky letter of recommendation has saved a friend's wife from being crossed in some priest or walked in some whim. But Floyd, olucordial and liberal, was not invariably fine. They stopped me on the street, and they buttoned hold me in the hotels, and you can't think how many of them come right here. Of course, I always do what I can, but how did they find me out? And why is it that when I am going up home late over the viaduct, and somebody is hanging about to strike some man for a quarter, I'm always the man to be struck? One or two of them have actually paid me bad, but who asked her sister-in-law? She had a loud, rasping voice. The men on the viaduct? The others. What would indicate it briefly? You are too generous, said Ogden. What a position for a man who was not to enter upon an engagement tomorrow. And what might three months be, if judged by the hopes and fears and expectations and disappointments of his three weeks? The underground, repeated Mrs. Floyd turning towards her husband, isn't that made me brain our swathers fang? She asked in a general way. Mr. Brainard is the president, assented Ogden, with a severe smile. I addressed myself to the cashier. He added shortly. I was sure I had heard of it. She rejoined with a glacial graciousness. Well, if you have heard of it, my dear, her husband joked, how widely known it must be. You ought to have heard of it. You have had enough checks on it, I am sure. But Mrs. Floyd did not pursue the subject. She looked at her sister with that grim seriousness which made something on the mind, or on two minds, and her sister returned a look in kind, and they both looked in the same fashion back and forth between Woolwood and his collar. Anne Wilde snapped the catch of her handbag once or twice and glanced between times at some loose papers inside it. For Gibson, in the other room, thought he perceived the approach of a domestic crisis, a disputed dressmaker's bill, perhaps? Here, there might be other reasons. He knew that the cook was sometimes impertinent, and that the market man now and then forgot to send the fight fish. He himself was a mere boarding bachelor, yet he had come to learn something of the relief which follows the shifting of a housekeeper's gears to the shoulders of the housekeeper's husband. For Gibson had relieved the stadium of many a half hour by short-handling bits of dialogue that accompanied the new wheelspads between his employer and his employer's wife. These signs and tokens were not lost in Ogden. He rose again to go. You were the lost on Floyd himself, whose apprehension of a bad quarter of an hour was heightened by the absence as yet of any exact data. He had no wish to hold the field alone, and he begged Ogden not to hurry his departure. They are the girls he asked to spy. I thought you said they came along with you. They did. They are in the building. They will be up in a few minutes. That child. Somebody ought to look after her. Then why not wait a little while? Floyd suggested to Ogden. My wife's affair won't take long. For Gibson, won't you just clear off that cheer out there and find the paper? And now, what is it? He asked the two women when they were left together. The Clifftwellers by Henry B. Fuller Chapter 2 Well Anne has heard from those Minneapolis people again, and she isn't any nearer making up her mind than she was before. Here's what they say, added his sister-in-law. She took a letter out of her bag and handed it to him. Oh! said Walworth. He felt half relieved, half fext. His wife stood by the window rubbing her forefinger along the edges of its silver lettering. I don't see whatever put Minneapolis into Anne's head. There seems to be a plenty of buildings right here. She looked at the rough break back of a towering structure a few hundred feet away, and at the huddle of lower roofs between. From a skylight on one of these a sunbeam came reflected and compelled her to move. And plenty of dirt, too. If she's after real estate, plenty to be sold and plenty of people to sell it. I never saw a town where it was more plentiful. She glanced downwards at the wagons and cars that were splashing through the streets after a rainy September night. Why shouldn't there be more people to shovel it, too? You see, that sign stuck up everywhere. The dealers, I mean. Anne can get to Minneapolis in thirteen hours, suggested Walworth. Passing the end of his thumb along one of his eyebrows. What's that after the trip west? And then she can see for herself. You take the cars here late in the afternoon and you get there in time for breakfast. I believe I'd just let it drop, said Miss Wilde. If I happen to know positively of any good thing here, they write a nice enough letter, but I can't tell what state the building is in, and thus I see it. And I'm merely taking their word that the ground is worth a hundred and fifty. There's forty feet. I wonder if all improvements in means that the street is paved. Drop it, any way, said her sister, as if she were disembarrassing herself of some loathsome parcel. Look around in Chicago itself. You can see what you're buying, then. Even if you do invest here, you are not compelled to live here. She became almost rigid in her disdain. Anne murmured Walworth in a noncommittal way. The door opened suddenly, and two young girls entered in a brisk fashion. The first had a slight figure, a little above the average height. Today people called her slender. Six or eight years later they would be likely to call her lean. She had long thin arms and delicate, transparent hands. She had large eyes of a deep blue and the veins were plainly outlined on her pale temples. She had a bright face and a lively manner, and seemed to be one who drew largely on her nervous force without making deposits to keep up her account. Her costume was such as to give one the idea that dress was an important matter with her. Well, Frankie, she called to Mrs. Floyd. You found your way here all right, did you? You're a clever little body. Or did Miss Wilde help you? Mrs. Floyd passed back the Minneapolis letter to her sister and bestowed a lady-like frown on the newcomers. She disliked to be called Frankie, but what is to be done between cousins? Jesse, she expostulated softly, indicating Ogden in the adjoining room. You can't think, the girl went on to Ogden, Redux, how proud my cousin is of her ignorance of Chicago. She knows where to buy her steaks and she has mastered the shortest way downtown, and that's about all. Frankie, dear, where's the city hall? How should I know? returned Frances Floyd with weary disdain. Why, there's the corner of it, cried Jesse Bradley at the window, not two blocks off. It's big enough to see. And she's been here a whole year, too, cried her husband, proudly and fondly. Mrs. Floyd drew Jesse Bradley aside. I know I'm very ignorant, she said, speaking in a low tone. But there is one thing you can tell me about, if you want to. Why, have you been so long in getting up to the office? You said Mame. Mame, as opposed that means Mary, you said that she was going to stop in the bank for just two or three minutes. Jesse looked towards her young friend, who was seated near Ogden on one of the wide windowsills. Then she turned back to her questioner with eyes that were steady and perhaps a bit defiant. Well, we stopped for a minute in that insurance office on the way up. We came partway by the stairs. Mame said she had just got to see him. I don't see how she can meet him anywhere else. They won't let him come to the house. I can't see that her brother has treated him so very well. Mrs. Floyd's regard travelled from the culprit before her to the greater culprit on the windowsill. Mary Brainerd was a pretty little thing of 18 with a plump dimpled face. She had wide eyes of baby blue under a fluffy flaxen bang. The brim of her hat threw a shadow over her pink cheeks, and she was nibbling the finger ends of her gloves between her firm white teeth. Mrs. Floyd considered this picture with grave disapproval and turned back to her young cousin a face full of severe reproach. Jesse, I don't like this. It wasn't a nice thing for you to do at all, and I'm sure your mother would agree with me. Don't mix in any such matter. Let her own people attend to it. Mary Brainerd noticed this whispered passage and suspected herself under comment. Her face, rather weakly pretty generally, was quite flushed and brilliant now, and she looked out from under her wide hat with the forced audacity that a lightly esteemed nature may sometimes assume, and afterwards, to everybody's surprise, may justify. She began to chat brightly with Ogden. Her gaiety, however, was evidently but the spending momentum of some recent impact, and the bright defiance with which she glanced around the group was not more a surprise to them than to herself. Jesse Bradley crossed over to the window and found a third place on its wide sill. Walworth gathered the two ladies behind the shelter of his big desk, and the Minneapolis matter was resumed. No, said Jesse, as she settled down. Mrs. D. Walworth Floyd doesn't know where the city hall is. She was in a slightly nervous state, and she caught hold of the first piece of conversational driftwood that came her way. I ought to have asked her something easier—where LaSalle Street was, for instance. I wonder if she knows she's on it now. Well, Mr. Ogden is going to have a chance to learn all about LaSalle Street, cried Main Brainerd, with the air of one who dreads the slightest pause in the talk. He's going into the bank, he tells me. Well, that will do very well for six days in the week, declared the other. How about the seventh, she asked, with a twinkling directness. Are you an Episcopalian, or what? What, I fancy. Why, in born, I suppose, I shall do as the Romans do. For the four noon there are the newspapers, of course, then for the afternoon the races, perhaps, and in the evening—well, the theatre, I should say. That's about the plan at my house. Well, I've never been to the theatre Sunday evening, nor any of my people. And I don't believe that many nice people do go, either. Perhaps you think that there are not any nice people in Chicago. I've heard their remark made. Well, there are, I can tell you, just as nice as anywhere. I suppose you've noticed the way the papers here have of collecting all the mean, hateful things that the whole country says about us, and making a column out of them. I daresay they think it's funny. I don't know but what it is. There's my own father now, he reads those things right after the market reports, and time and time again I've seen him laugh till he cried, yet he isn't any fonder of a joke than anybody else. He says it's better to be abused and made fun of than not to be noticed at all. How does it strike you? She made a little mew, as she recalled one or two of these national love tabs. And I must say it's awful, too, the sort of news that's sent out from here— excursions and allerums and nothing else. During the anarchist times folks down east were a good deal more scared than we were. And I remember, when I was at school, I read in the Philadelphia papers that Thai-Foid fever was raging in Chicago. They gave the death rate in everything. I came home as fast as I could. I expected to find the whole family dying, but they didn't know anything about it, and they took my pocket money to pay the return fare. They were alive enough. Ogden smiled. He saw that he was face to face with a true daughter of the West. She had never seen him before, and she might never see him again. Yet she was talking to him with perfect friendliness and confidence. Equally he was sure she was a true daughter of Chicago. She had the one infallible local trait. She would rather talk to a stranger about her own town than about any other subject. I think we shall have to reform you, she went on presently, in advance. I believe the proper place for you next Sunday would be St. Assif's, but it's how you understand. Come over, my cousin has room in her pew. There's a vested choir, and when you have heard Vibert singing, she stopped as if to appreciate her own daring, like a child lighting a match. Mary Brainerd gave a little start and put her hand on her friend's arm, yet at the same time she blushed slightly, less perhaps in panic than in pride. You will learn what it is that brings Mayne Brainerd all the way over from Union Park twice every Sunday, where the words with which this sentence was mentally concluded. It's like an angel, she continued aloud. A certain kind of angel, she added to herself. Do you sing? Yes, a little. Well, then of course you play, but that doesn't count. Do you write? But everybody does that, too. I do, or I did. I carried off a prize once. It kept me in flowers for a week. Well, what is it? Dialecto-psychological. Businessletters answered Ogden with a bulking sobriety. Well, then, can you sketch? Or can you do anything in watercolours? I did a lovely head of Desdemona once in Crayons. That was at Ogons. Kodak, Ogden confessed briefly, views along the wharves in Boston, some pretty bits from her on Stockbridge. My own story was in Stockbridge, our artist on the spot. She clapped her hands together joyfully. What else? Can you cook? No, neither can I. Can you keep books? He asked in turn. Not a bit? Well, I can. You take the odd trick. Wait a minute, though. How about private theatricals? she asked. I have acted in them once or twice. She looked a slant at Mary Brainerd. The girl seemed glad that St. Assif's had been dropped, but she was hoping, fearfully, that it might be taken up again. Well, Father Tisda has everything just about perfect. He's from St. John the Evangelist. Boston, you know. And you ought to hear little Mike Besser. He's our butcher's boy, only eleven. Sometimes he and Russell Vivert. The other girl, vibrated at this first audacious mention of the full name, sing duets together, and then her eyes rolled around the room in a mock ecstasy and rested on the group of elders whose three heads just showed above the top of the desk. Walbert's face made quite a picture of discomfort and distress as he rose from his chair with the effect of trying to shake himself loose from the complications that his wife and sister Anne were weaving about him. The whole building is full of them, he said rather pettishly. A half a dozen on every floor, but I don't know anything about any of them. He looked inquiringly towards the window-seat. Ogden might? How's that? inquired the young fellow, rising. Some real estate man. Mrs. Floyd's sister here has about concluded to cast in her lot with us. She wants an adviser. Perhaps you happen to know of. He took on the ingenuous air of one who was earnestly searching for information. In the least likely quarter. Ogden laughed self-consciously. Well, now as a matter of fact I do. His name is McDowell. He's on the second floor above. I have a sort of personal interest in him. He'll be my brother-in-law within a month or six weeks. A slight flutter among the women. The mention of matrimony. Do you want to try that, Anne? asked Floyd. We became acquainted with him down east last year, Ogden went on, proud to show his newness wearing off. He was working up a syndicate. He calls himself a hustler. He tells me he's just opened a new subdivision out south somewhere, beyond Washington Park, I believe. I think he'll find him posted. Older people than Ogden frequently go out of their way to run cheerfully the risk of advising others in business matters. I believe I'll see him anyway, decided Miss Wilde. Like all women, she embraced the personal element in every affair. The people in Minneapolis became mere myths, now that she found herself so near to the future husband of the sister of the man who had just presented a letter of introduction to her own brother-in-law. The chain was long to be sure, and some of its links were rather weak, but it served. Mrs. Floyd arose, shaking out the folds of her dress and smoothing away the wrinkles that the last half-hour had accumulated on her forehead. I've asked Mr. Ogden to go to church with us Sunday, Jesse Bradley announced to her, and he's going to bring some Stockbridge photographs. First rate! cried Walworth, relieved by any outcome whatever. Stockbridge! Why, that's what I did my courting. Mrs. Floyd was caught in a melting mood. We shall be very happy to see Mr. Ogden, she pronounced primly. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Of The Cliff Dwellers This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Chad Horner from Ballet Claire. The Cliff Dwellers by Henry Blake Fuller. Chapter 3 In one of the first floor corners of the Clifton is situated the underground national bank Erastus H. Brainard, President. The underground is not so styled on account of the policy and methods of its head. Oblique and subterranean though they may be. It is merely that the Clifton is almost entirely shut in by its tall neighbours and that so far as its lower floors are concerned direct sunlight except for a month or two in the early summer is pretty nearly out of the question. We shall have to throw our own sunlight on the underground and on the man who is its president and its principal stockholder. The underground is not one of the old banks nor is it one of the large ones. If Brainard had no other irons in the fire he would not cut much of a figure. In business circles the underground is simply one in a batch of banks that have sprung up in the last seven or eight years and that are almost unknown even by name by men who in the clearing house at that time have since passed on to other indifferent affairs. It is spoken of as Brainard's bank just as other banks are spoken of as Shane's or cutters or partitions. So Shane for example began life with a fruit stand, Jim Shane they called him. The fruit stand developed into a retail grocery and Jim Shane about the time of the fire became J. H. Shane. The retail grocery expanded into a wholesale grocery and the sign read James H. Shane and Co and the firm made money but the day dawned when his wife began to figure at dances and receptions her own and those of other people as Mrs. James Horton Shane and when his daughter's wedding was not far away with all the splendour that St. Alsoph's could command. This was no juncture for laying undue stress on the wholesale grocery business. It seemed worthwhile to become identified a little less closely with mercantile circles and a little more closely with financial circles. Shane and Co went right on both routine and profits but the high flyers national was started and James Horton Shane was more likely to be found on La Salle Street than on River Street. Cutter was in hardware his daughter was a great beauty. One day he dropped hardware in favour of his sons to become the head of a board of directors. Then people could say ah a fine girl that her father runs the parental national. Patterson's case was different he had just invested half a million in a big business blog and his daughter had just invested her all in a husband. The best office in the new building remained tenantless at the end of six months and the man of his daughter's choice continued practically without occupation during the same term. The office was worth ten thousand dollars the son-in-law in the present state of things about ten thousand cents. So Patterson in order to secure a tenant for his new building and a career for his new son started a new financial institution the Exigency Trust Co but no such considerations as these influenced Erastus Brainard when he found it the underground. He was far aside from all social ambitions and his domestic affairs took care of themselves. His business interests spread all over the city the state the west even the air west and this vast web must have a centre. That centre was on the lower floor of the Clifton where he ran a bank tree but a good many other things besides Brainard had come up from the southern part of the state from Egypt as it is called a darkness truly Egyptian brooded over his early history so that if it is a fact that he was an exhorter a Methodist camp meetings in his early 20s proof of that fact might be sought for in vain the first definite point in his career is this that as a youngish man he was connected in some capacity with a cross-country railroad on the far side of centralia how successful he was in transporting souls no one can say that he has been successful in transporting bodies no one will deny he is unrivaled in his mastery of the streetcar question and his operations have lain in many scattered fields to claim that Bernard was a national reputation would be going too far however his reputation might fairly be termed interstate if the man were to die tomorrow sketches of his life would appear in the papers of Milwaukee in the Annapolis and St. Louis and the Cossack and frankly abusive paragraphs would be copied appreciatively as far as the remote countries of Nebraska for Bernard success is not without the elements of public scandal his manipulation of city councils and of state legislators has been freely charged old stories of his brief incarceration in prison or of his narrow escape from it sometimes arise and flutter and there are those who think that if he never has been in jail then this is all the more reason for his being there now his demise would indeed set the clipping breweries to work but the work would not be started by the direction of his surviving family such as the chief to him young George Ogden has sworn allegiance I shall marry him said a voice quite firmly you may make up your mind to that Ogden started these words came through a door which stood a jar in the partition that separated him from the president's room the office was splendid with beveled glass and oxidized ironwork yet it was as compact as high rentals compel they were words in striking contrast to most of the talk that his pen commanded make it 30 days more I'll take the rest in small bills please it will be due day after tomorrow and with these I shall marry him make up your mind to that he knew the voice perfectly well he had heard it a fortnight before in Floyd's office the door in the partition opened a foot or two wider the bulky figure of Erastus Bernard appeared on his hard and determined face he was a tall broad-shouldered man with a close clipped gray beard and a shaven upper lip two or three red veins showed prominently in his bulbous nose he wore black broadcloth his coat had a velvet collar and on his shoulders there was a light fall of dandruff he wore boots on Sundays his boots had tongues and his trade was the mainstay of a german she-maker who kept a shop behind his house and whom twice a year he literally terrified into a fit but now his big figure clutched at the red cherry door jam with a tremulous hesitancy the hard fierce eyes looked out appealingly from under their coarse and shaggy brows and the proud and cruel lips opened themselves to address the young man with an order that was almost an entree day Ogden won't you ask Mr Fairchild to step this way for a mouse had come into the place and the elephant was in terror the underground national bank with a surplus equal to a third of its capital had not declared a dividend for several years Bernard along with his son and his brother owned five eighths of the stock put these two facts together and surmise the rest understand without the yelling how Bernard had bought back big blocks of stock from men who had invested on his own advice and representations only to sell out at less than two thirds the price they had paid understand how widowed and unprotected women with little realization of the remote possibilities of the science of banking and no realization at all of the way in which their five thousands have come to be worth so much less than five thousand would come to his office to implore ingenuously with sobs and tears that he would give them back their money consider these and a dozen other phases of the pleasant pastime known as freeze out and then judge whether Bernard by this time were capable or no of braving wording off beating down despiteing the threats the implications the pleadings the attacks of the harmless domestic animal known as the investor but now another domestic animal the willful daughter had entered his lair and with this new antagonist he felt himself unable to cope Ogden won't you ask mr fairchild to step this way fairchild was only the cashier of the bank while Bernard was its head but fairchild was a good deal of a man and that was more than Bernard with all his money and his brains and his conscientious listeners and all the adept power of the three combined could have claimed for himself he was merely a financial appliance one of the tools of the trade he had no friends none even of the poor short known as business friends he had no social relations of any kind he had no sense of any right relation to the community in which he lived he had next to no family life he had no apparent consciousness of the physical basis of existence for him diet rest hygiene were mere nothings but none of these considerations disturbed him very much he could do without friends having so good a friend in himself he could dispense with social diversion so long as the affairs of the underground and the eliminating company and those western minds continued to occupy his attention he could rub along without the sympathy and respect of the community while he and it held the relative positions of knife and oyster he could do perfectly well without hygiene and proper regimen as long as dyspepsia and nerves and rheumatism were not too pressing in their attentions and he could of course trust his family to run itself without any great amount of attention from its natural head his family had run itself for 20 odd years it had gone on its scattered way rejoicing after the good new western fashion which finds the unit of society less in the family than in the individual and now a very promising young Billy after having run herself for a good part of this 20 years was on the point of taking the bit between her teeth and of running away altogether the family carry all whose front seat he had left in order that he might irresponsibly dangle his legs out from behind was in danger of a runaway and a smash up and he was forced to the humiliating expedient of installing a more competent driver than himself in his own place behind the dashboard Ogden slid rapidly along the narrow aisle which ran behind the row of coups that confined the tellers and find Fairchild going over yesterday's balances with the general bookkeeper here he was intercepted by the last of the messengers who had had some delay in getting his batch of drafts and notes arranged properly into a routine he was a boy of 17 with a pert nose and a pasty complexion he had put on his hat with a backwards tilt that displayed his bang he was the son of a millionaire stockholder and was on the threshold of his business career he panned it for consideration and he had found during an experience of six months that most consideration was to be one from the news mem what's up now george he asked familiarly he twitched his narrow little shoulders as he catered back and forth on his toes old man on the rampage some more he's had it pretty bad for the last three weeks oh get out Ogden responded briefly fairchild was a man well on in the 50s he had a quiet self-contained manner a smooth forehead a gray mustache his general trustworthiness was highly esteemed by Bernard who generally treated him with civility and sometimes almost with consideration he had his privileges a member of the board of directors in the Bernard trust he would be given the opportunity to resign whenever some especially dubious piece of business was living up with the certainty of re-election within the year he was too old to tear himself up by the ritz and too valuable to be allowed in any event the racial bin of transplantation of course he paid for such a concession he acted as a buffer between Bernard and the more pathetic of the stockholders and now as we see he was summoned to deal with the domestic crisis my dear girl Ogden presently heard him saying in a dry cautious and yet somewhat parental tone you know what his position is not in the church no i don't mean that he is only a policy clerk in that insurance office at ten dollars a week probably hardly enough for him to live on decently alone yes i know he gets more from the choir but even that Ogden stopped one ear by probing his elbow on his ledger and putting his hand on his head and went on with his riding as well as he could but he had left the underground for st. Alsoph's he was busy no longer with notes for collection but with the notes the melting tenor notes of the all-admired vibert his fellow clerks noiselessly retired and a long train of choristers slowly made their way through the long aisle the others had left vacant among them vibert tall dark hard and cruel an angel possibly but if so surely one of the fallen and a little girl of 18 whose blue eyes showed out from under her fluffy blonde logs and whose lips were parted in a radiant reverent smile steadied trembling hand on the back of a pew and looked after him with the fond open and intense regard that was a perfect epitome of love those same blue eyes were now on the other side of the partition regarding her father's lieutenant with a look as bright and hard as was ever her father's own and as she'd listened to the words of warning those same full and pliant lips set themselves in a firm line that Bernard himself could not have made straighter or more unswerving nobody really knows the cashier went on who his people are or where he is from or anything definite about him he is one of thousands here is a time filled to overflowing with single young men they come from everywhere for all reasons they are taken on faith largely and are treated pretty well most of them are all right no doubt but others of course i know nothing about mister but this one but your own brother no that's just what i tell her broke in bernard with the distressful whimper bert says and he knows it's true that Ogden again stopped his ears if by any possibility there was odd good under that cast surplus he would not willfully deprive himself of any chance for belief if that full neck and heavy jaw and sinister eye and world-worn cheek and elaborate assumption of professional sanctity offered the slightest prospect of decent manliness and of happy home life he would not allow one mere solitary phrase to shut that prospect out but he could not shut out a disgust that gradually crept in upon him a disgust for the man who would arrange the most sacred and confidential affairs of his family circle in the same general fashion that he would use for dealing with the concerns of an ordinary business acquaintance a disgust for the family life in which such a state of things was possible had the girl no mother she had indeed but that mother was an invalid one who with the advancing years had come to know more and more of tonics and cordials and less and less of her daughter's needs had she no brother but what can a brother do order the intruder from the premises and intimidate him from returning which Bert had done where there are no friends or relations to see how matters were going and to speak out their minds boldly but whenever has such a course availed the friends cease to be friends and the relatives of relatives at a greater remove only and all goes on as before no there was only one way to settle this affair the business way that way Bernard took necessarily instinctively he had never lived for anything but business he had never eaten or drunk for anything but business his family shared his farm like fair and his primitive ours he had never built for anything but business though constantly investing in grounds and buildings he had occupied his own home for 15 years as a tenant merely before he could bring himself to a grudging purchase he never dressed for anything but business he had never worn a dress coat in his life he wrote about nothing but business his nearest relative was never more than dear sir and he himself was never otherwise than yours truly and he wrote on business letterheads even to his family and now that the present domestic difficulty was to be adjusted no other method was available but he had the satisfaction of feeling that his daughter was meeting him in his own spirit and on his own ground she eyed him with a cold and direct gaze like that of the sun which is setting in a clear winter sky not a single cloud shred of affection showed itself in the wide expanse of crisp and tingling atmosphere which she seemed to have created about her not a particle of floating vapor helped to diffuse the glow of sentiment over a situation which had much need of some such softening influence her fierce little glance tore down every scrap of reverence of home love of filial duty life had never seemed to him quite so bald so unfurnished so bereft of unbusiness like non-essentials I shall marry Russell she declared in spite of you and in spite of everything you may say that he has no money and that you don't know his family but Bert may forbid him the house and go prying into his private affairs and you may say that he has no friends and no abilities and as much more as you please I don't care I shall be his wife I won't believe any of these things and nobody shall separate us she rose flushed and frowning and walked out firmly fair child opened the opposite door and moved off quietly to his own place Bernard brushed aside a pile of abstracts and mortgages that encumbered his desk find an opening big enough for his elbow and leaned over his blotting pad with an air of utter dejection and defeat end of chapter three recording by chad horner from bolly clare chapter four of the cliff dwellers this is a leber vox recording all leber vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit leber vox.org recording by matt bishop the cliff dwellers by henry blake fuller chapter four on the 12th floor of the clifton at the far end of a long corridor is the office of eugene h mcdowell real estate Ogden at the beginning of one of his brief newnings took the elevator up to the quarters of his coming brother-in-law he found mcdowell stretching himself violently in his swivel chair which was tilted as far back as its mechanism would permit his head was thrown back too as far as anatomical considerations would allow his eyes would not have seen the ceiling if they had not been so tight shut his atoms apple appeared prominently between his turned down points of his collar his desk was strewn with a litter of papers and the tassels depending from his mapped rack began trembling at varying heights as Ogden closed the door behind him beyond mcdowell with his mouth at its widest then he let his chair down all at once oh it's you george is it he used the careless and patronizing freedom of a man of 30 odd to another several years his junior of a man in business for himself to a man in business for someone else of a man who was presently to undertake the protection and support of the other's sister sit down he motion Ogden to a chair which stood close to the window a window that looked out on the court and that commanded the multifarious panorama of daily businesses to go on behind the ranks and rows of great glass sheets which formed the other three sides of the enclosure the ends of the overcrowded desks the digital dumb show of stenographers the careful handling by shirt sleeved clerks of damp yellow sheets and copying books the shaking fingers and the nodding heads that accompanied the persuasion and exploitation of personal interviews mcdowell presented a physiognomy that seemed to have been stripped of all superfluities he contrived to avoid the effect of absolute leanness yet he was without a spare ounce of flesh his cheekbones did not obtrude themselves nor were his fingertips unduly prominent yet his trousers seemed more satisfactory as trousers than his legs as legs and his feet were in long narrow thin sold shoes through whose flexible leather one almost divined the articulations of his toes his hair had shrunk back from his forehead and temples but his mustache sprang out as boldly and decisively as if constructed of steel wires his nose was sharp his eyes were like two gimlets the effect of his presence was nervous exciting dry to aridity he had flattest chest and bony shoulders his was an earthly tabernacle that gave its tailor considerable cause for study tour friends called again this morning he began folding up two or three documents and thrusting him into the pigeon holes before him we have had quite a session but they're fixed finally does that cousin of theirs live with him cousin isn't she their sister sister-in-law i mean the other one miss bradley isn't it oh well no she comes in and stays with them a week now and then but her people live in hinsdale hinsdale nice country around there seems as if you just had to get outside of cook county to find anything hilly or even rolling i'd like to take it up first rate the minute you are over the country line you get clean out of all that flatland and everything's up and down like around worcester but i don't believe they save much on taxes he tore some penciled memoranda off the top of a pad and threw them into the waste basket yes the sister-in-law was here all right enough she's a pretty smart woman too got a good deal more head than any of the rest of them she's striking out a little late but she may make something of herself yet but she wants to get that poetical streak out of her he went on what was it she said now oh yes all this downtown racket came to her like the music of a battle hymn our rustling it seems resembles a hand-to-hand combat from street to street she loved in medieval florans and to finish up with she told me i was like a gladiator stripped for the fray he ran his hand down the stripes of his handsome trousers what did she mean by that was it some of her boston literary business he lifted his hand and thoughtfully twirled the scanty locks over one of his ears here's the letter i got this morning from hitty he drew out a small folded sheet from the bottom of a pile of correspondence she has about come around to my way of thinking there don't seem to be any very good reason for my traveling away down there again especially when your father and mother are going to move out here anyway i'm awful busy she'll have to have her own family at the wedding then and she'll give me a show to scare up some of mine things are just too rushing that's the amount of it i'm glad to have it settled one way or another george said and how about that other affair have you made any report to father yes that's as good as settled their deeds are all made out they've only got to be signed he reached into one of his pigeonholes and brought out a bulk of bluish paper whose fractious folds were held in some shape by a wide rubber strap here's one of the abstracts just come in the other is a good deal longer and the copy isn't finished i suppose they'll put that one on a board he snapped the band once or twice and put the abstract back again i'm glad he said that your father has finally decided to pull up all together and to transfer everything to the west that old block of his was wanting repairs all the time i don't believe it paid him four percent it takes more than soldiers monuments and musical festivals to make a town move george felt his heart given indignant throb he seemed to see before him the spokesman of a community where prosperity had drugged patriotism into unconsciousness and where the bare scaffoldings of materialism felt themselves quite independent of the graces and draperies of culture it seemed hardly possible that one short month could make his native new england appear so small so provincial so left behind we've got to have snap go you've got to have a big new country behind you how much do you suppose people in iowa and kansas and minnesota think about down east not a great deal it's chicago they're looking to this town looms up before them and shuts out boston in new york and the whole seaboard from the site and the thoughts of the west and the northwest and the new northwest and the far west and all the other west yet to be invented they read our papers they come here to buy and enjoy themselves he turned his thumb towards the ceiling and gave it an upward thrust that sent it through the six ceilings above it if you'd go up on our roof and hear them talking oh well said george hadn't we better get something to eat and what kind of a town is it that's wanted pursued mcdowell as he pulled down the cover of his desk to take up a big national enterprise and put it through with a rush a big town of course but one that has grown big so fast that hasn't had time to grow old one with lots of youth and plenty of monument young enough to be confident and enthusiastic and to have no clicks to set full bickering's and jealousies a town that will all pull one way what's new york he asked flourishing his towel from the corner where the wash stand stood it ain't a city at all it's like london it's a province father nickerbocker is too old and too big and lodgy and too all fired selfish we are the people right here well johnny you hold the fort he called to a boy who was dividing an open-eyed attention between his oriation and his own sandwich i've got to have a bite myself how are you getting on downstairs he asked as they tramped over the tiles of the long corridor towards the elevators i hear you over at brenyard's house last night he's a fine bird and his son is like him he's got another hasn't he a younger one in the bank isn't he used to be well he might be without you are knowing it queer genius his father don't know what to do with him he's kind of in the background as it were how did you happen to go over there papers to sign mr brenyard was at home sick it was something they could hardly give to any of the boys to manage i met his other daughter other didn't know they had any got too hazy and two sons well he's a great old father from all i hear and i shouldn't down but the elevator was far past them to return here's another coming said george to whom the indicated showed that a cab had left the top story and was halfway down to their level augdon had now gone through a novitiate of five or six weeks after his first wrench from the east to the west his second one from the west side to the north seemed an unimportant matter he had learned his new neighborhood he had made a few acquaintances there he had become familiar with his work at the bank and the early coming of his own family who had elected to swell the great westward movement by the contribution of themselves and all their worldly goods helped him to the feeling of being tolerably well at home from the vantage ground of a secure present and a promising future he had become an interested observer of the life that swept and swirled around him he found that there might be an inner quiet under all this fast and apparently unregulated din he recalled how in a cotton candy factory or a copper foundry the hands talked among themselves in tones lower than the average rather the higher the rumble of drays and the clang of street car gongs became less disconcerting the town's swarming hordes presently appeared less slovenly in their dress and less offensive in their manners than his startled sensibilities had found them at first even their varied physiognomies began to take on a cast less comprehensively cosmopolitan his walks through the streets and his journeyings in the public conveyances showed him a range of human types completely unknown to his past experience yet it soon came to seem possible that all these different elements might be scheduled classified brought into a sort of catalog resume which should give every feature its proper place skulls foreheads gates odors facial angles ears with their different shapes and sets eyes with their varying shapes and color hair with its divergent shades and textures noses with their multiplied turns and outlines dialects rogues patois accents in all their palatal and labial varieties and according to all the differentiations in pharynx laronics and epiglottis he disposed as readily of the germans irish and swedes as of the negroes and the chinese but how to tell the poles from the bohemians how to distinguish the sicilians from greeks how to catalog the various grades of jews how to tabulate the medes and the elemates and the capidoshians and the dwellers from mesopotamia during the enforced leisure of this first weeks he had gone several times to the city hall and had ascended in the elevator to the reading room of the public library on one of these occasions a heavy and sudden downpour had filled the room with readers and had closed all the windows the downpour without seemed but a trifle compared to the confused cataract of conflicted nationalities within and the fumes of incense that the united throng caused to rise upon the altar of learning stunned him with a sudden and sickening surprise the bogs of kilkenny the dung heaps of the black forest the miry ways of transylvania and little russia all had contributed to it the universal brotherhood of man appeared before him and its melt of mortality no partial exclusive mortality but a mortality comprehensive universal condensed and averaged up from the grand totality of items in a human maelstrom of which such a scene was but a simple transitory eddy it was a grateful to regain one bearings in sundry and to get an opportunity for meeting one or two familiar drops it had pleased him therefore to find that brennard's house was in the neighborhoods of union park and the immediate vicinity of his own lodgings and when he went over there with his documents in his pocket he appreciated the privilege of ringing the bell of a door behind which there were one or two faces that he might recognize the brennard's lived on a corner and the house was so set as to allow a narrow strip of yard along the side street it was built in the yellow limestone which was used to come from quarries at jolliet and the architect had shown his preference for the exaggerated keystones that had so great a vogue in the late 60s the house had a basement and above the elaborate wooden cornice there was a mansard with several windows that were set in a framework of clumsy and pretentious carpentry behind the house was a brick stable it had been built of cheap material uncovered with a cheaper red wash the dampness of the lower walls had caused his wash to discolor and then fall off all together around the premises there ran an old-fashioned iron fence it stood on a stone coping that was covered with perpendicular stakes of yellow rust in the yard a meandering asphalt walk led past a few lyrex and syringas which were looked down upon by a painful side porch that nobody ever used the walk in front of the house was of stone that at the side was a plank and showed three long lines of nail heads the interior so far as it came under Ogden's notice was furnished with a horrible yet consistent simplicity the large rooms were set sparely with chairs tables and sofas that represented the soil of centralia and there were a few modern additions to introduce discords an ideal sculptured head placed on a marble pedestal swathed in a fringed scarf of saffron silk and set between the lace curtain so as to shows from the street would have ruined the effect both within and without perhaps the same might be said of any other house brenard himself was not visible he was only audible his deep voice came in a sort of deadened growl through the closed door of a small side room and mingled with it were the corduola stones of a woman's voice an elderly woman a woman in poor health a woman who some sudden and distressful stroke had brought to the verge of tears the house had been built in primitive days when local architecture was still in such exact accord with local society that anything like graded receptions was undreamed of everybody who seemed too good to be kept waiting in the hall was shown to the front parlor this room had a carpet whose design was in large baskets of bright flowers and a ceiling that was frescoed in a manner derived from a former style of railroad decoration this scheme of decoration centered around a massive and contorted chandelier with eight globes nobody had ever seen the whole eight going at all one time lincoln his family were on one side of the marble mantelpiece grant and his family on the other it was in this room that ogden was received by the elder daughter of the house she seemed a quiet self-poised girl four or five years the senior of her sister she amply filled her gown of gray woollen her hair was drawn back from her forehead and made a knot just above the nape of her neck she had a pair of cool steady gray eyes she appeared wholesome stable capable of keeping herself well in hand my father isn't able to see you she said but if you will give me what you have brought i will take it to him there was a tremulousness in her voice quiet and variance with her manner and appearance she put out her hand with a wavering motion the flaring of the gas in her face seemed to strike her with a positive pain a door opened suddenly and her brother burt came in he was a stocky young man three or four years older than ogden he seemed stuffed with importance both present and future both personal and parental he was himself and his father rolled into one abbey he said in a sharp curt way i wish you'd find father the copy of that report you made for him yesterday he looked at ogden in a fashion that changed the young man from a person to a thing we have been looking for you sometime he said i'll take those papers myself he's spoken away that was abrupt and autocratic ogden recognized it as an utterance of a masterful nature but he wasn't able to see that the masterful nature was moved by an emotion that must be controlled and concealed his indignation made no allowance for this and his subsequent 10 minutes of solitary reflection left a bitterness that passed away but lingeringly more and more with every moment of this short wait did he feel himself a gentleman turned into a lackey by his inferiors there was no solve for his wounded sensibilities save perhaps in the look of a dumb expostulation which the girl cast upon her brother and in a few commonplace words which she addressed to their caller before she went out kindly wait a few moments and the papers will be ready to take back perhaps you will find this other chair more comfortable it was after this fashion that he first met abbey brennard met her as he reported it to mcdowell and hardly more he followed his brother-in-law into the elevator and they dropped swiftly to the ground floor at this level is situated the acme lunch room end of chapter 4 chapter 5 of the cliff dwellers this is a labor box recording all labor box recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit laborbox.org the cliff dwellers by Henry Blake Fuller chapter 5 mcdowell took a cup of tea and an expeditious doughnut standing and hurried away bogdan who had not overcome his habit of leisurely eating lingered behind the acme occupies a square low sealed room in the hindermost corner of the clifton perhaps with a lower ceiling and a situation on a level lower still it would have been called the zenith it is fitted up with three or four oval counters and a very close calculation of space allows room for an infinitesimal cashier's desk as well each oval encloses a high rack that is heaped with rolls buns and cakes and close to each rack stands a brace of big cylindrical nickel plated tanks that yield coffee and tea each oval is fringed with a row of stools hardwood tops on a cast iron base and in warm weather a pair of fans which are moved by power supplied from the engine room revolve aloft and agitate the stifling atmosphere Ogden had spent the past week in trying a succession of dairies lunchrooms and restaurants and had ended by returning to the acme which seemed as decent and convenient as any he found a place in a quiet corner ordered his coffee wheat muffins and pie which all came together and fell to work with his eyes soberly fixed on the shiny expanse of the freshly wiped counter was he consistent he wondered in claiming any great consideration until he could lunch at a higher figure than 15 or 20 cents the girl who had waited on him turned away but another one who stood a little distance off called her back here Maggie change that mince this gentleman don't want a piece with the whole corner knocked off Ogden buttered his muffin without raising his eyes the second girl herself placed the new cut of pie before him and stood looking down upon him the hour was a little late and but three or four customers held places around the counters presently she spoke well Mr. Ogden she said with a humorous tartness you don't seem to recognize your old friends Ogden threw up his head why nearly is this you he exclaimed it was a girl who had helped wait on table at his west side boarding house she wore a dark dress with a plain white collar her brows made two fine straight lines over the yellowish green of her eyes she had a strong decided face yet there was a certain lurking delicacy in the outlines of nose and chin that's what she replied I've made a change you see been here pretty near a week come in often I'm in the building what was the matter with your other place the girl hitched up her shoulders the fact of it is I couldn't get used to it never tried anything like that before she looked about cautiously and then resumed in a confidential voice to tell the truth I was just forced into it Paul and Ma didn't want me to come to Chicago but I couldn't make out that I was going to have any terrible great show there in Milwaukee I didn't suppose it was going to be so awful hard to find something to do in a big place like this but I made up my mind all the same that I wasn't going to cave in and go back to Wisconsin not straight off anyway keep right on trotting about any port in a storm says I and when I met that good old soul in the intelligence office that settled it she only wanted a second girl but I thought I could stand it couldn't you I didn't tell ma though that I was living out I wrote to her that I was clerking ten dollars a week ten dollars I'm looking for the girl that gets more than six I don't know what the folks would have thought if they'd known of me a being ordered around by a lot of young fellas run and fetch and carry for a parcel of strangers it don't come natural to me to be bossed I can tell you but mrs. Gore used you well she did for a fact but it wasn't the sort of thing I wanted at all so I told her I guessed I'd go well says she sort of resigned like if you've made up your mind too you must I suppose she was sorry to lose me I know she walked to the basement door with me to say goodbye with her specs on top of her head be a good girl says she and let us hear from you most exactly what ma said when I came away gray hair just like ma's to yes ma'am says I I didn't say ma'am because I thought I was a servant I wasn't but because she was older and because I had a respect for her and so I shall let her hear from me when I get along a little further I'm going to call on her and I'm going to get along let me tell you I haven't jumped on to this hobby horse of a town just to stay still she nodded her head with great decision it broke her all up when you went away she resumed she kept a wondering for two or three days what the matter was poor soul she's a good deal too tender for this town what was the matter nothing I had friends in a different part of the city in a different part of the city she repeated she spared her palms far apart on the inner edge of the counter and brought her face down almost to a level with his do you know I always like the way you talked it's real genteel and you say can't too and then oh and supple hardly anybody says hunt around here except actors say I went the other night it cost 50 cents but I was just wild to see a real out and out city show couldn't hold in any longer they all talked kind of artificial except one man he had a bad part airing son sort oh he talked right out in plain everyday style and he was about the only one I really cared for of course though I don't like bad men better than good ones but your way is nice after all thanks well I'm in a different part of the city myself she gave a comprehensive glance over the sizzling coffee earns second in command she tapped her breastbone I don't think so everlasting much of Duke in here but he recognizes talent it didn't take him long to find out what I was and he raised me I boss and help around when there's a rush and now and then I take the cashier's place it's all just like a store oh she proceeded after a shrewd look at him I know well enough what you've been thinking all this time but here's your counter and there's your goods and people just say what they want and get a check for it and pay at the door no boarding house in that is there they don't bulldoze us very much the door opened in a belated clerk came in here Gretchen she called to one of her force see what this man wants the newcomer dropped mechanically on to one of the stools and submissively took the damage pie that had been taken away from Ogden he had ordered apple most of them are tractable enough she commented I've got 10 girls here were her next words and they're quite a fair lot but that moneyed German girl over there Gretchen I call her Gretchen she don't look as if she knew beans does she well she don't she was going on in the pantry yesterday about the rights of man I knew she was due to break a saucer pretty soon well she did and we've got a sweet girl here who would be the best all around one of the lot if it wasn't for her temper all of a sudden she gets mad and she stays mad and you can't for the life of you find out what it was that made her mad those three Irish girls are pretty smart hmm yes they were rigging up a strike Tuesday they wanted 50 cents a week more they found out their want at a quarter to 12 all right girls says I you can go out if you want our regular people will kick and go somewhere else for a few days perhaps but the first rainy noon they'll all come in again and they'll see that things are running all right with a new crew and after that they'll stay goodness me I've heard more about rights and less about duties this last week than I ever did before in my life my uncle says it's the same with him he's the engineer here he really got me this place if you look down through that grading out there as you go along you may see him it's talk and argue all the time his men have more half baked notions than you can think of and he's kept on the k-jump all the time looking after things do I kick do I squeal not much and if I had come in from outside with a different language maybe in a different training in a different set of notions and if I had been a real died in the wool down trodden peasant and all my folks the same for nobody knows how far back perhaps I'd find some reason there for not keeping abreast with the tolerably smart lot of people that let me in she cast a lofty eye over her various underlings kind of a plain lot ain't we you know there's one place like this in town where they won't take a girl unless she's pretty their cashier is a regular butte but I wouldn't work in such a place no indeed she paused Ogden made no response she eyed him with a sharp impatience not but what I could though if I had a mind she remarked with a vindictive little explosion no I couldn't either she added suddenly they're all brunettes this year and she laughed forgivingly and you don't see me wearing rings and chains she pursued I guess not and I shan't either until I finished my course course was she hinting at the close of her earthly career yep shorthand but don't hurry away he had dropped his feet to the floor dug and went right off after the rush and I guess I've been hard pushed enough to enjoy a little restful conversation shorthand and typing that's what I'm steering for I'll stand this for a while until I can do 80 words I've begun at the Athenaeum already I don't see why anybody should want to take lessons in typewriting it's practice you want same with the other well I'm practicing hard enough I shall be ready for business in three months she traced with her finger on the counter giving considerable pressure to the bee in business I'm ahead of the class now I'm educated she continued I taught school one term up in Waukesha County I know how to spell you ought to see how some of those girls write out their notes and I can punctuate semicolons just as easy as anything else say do you know Mrs. Granger s Bates I've seen her name in the papers said Ogden emptying his glass and feeling in his pocket for his handkerchief sorry we don't give napkins well she was a school teacher and look at her now I went by her house on Calumet Avenue last Sunday she's got about everything she is one of the patronesses of the charity ball still I suppose she must be getting along in years her husband has come to be the Lord hi muck a muck of most everything I've read about him for years hope I haven't got to wait till I'm 50 to have a good time Ogden was shuffling his feet on the floor won't you have another piece of pie no well try a cream puff then it'll be my treat and do take time with it anything but 50 men eating away like a house of fire only one other customer remained the sweet girl began to collect the cream jugs I don't care so extra much about Mrs. Bates though but there's Mrs. Arthur J Ingles 300 and something Ontario Street do you know her now there's a woman that interests me she's in the papers every day she goes everywhere she's way up I guess I'd be wild if she wasn't she was at a dance last Tuesday and she gave her reception the day before and her sister is going to be married Ness month it's easy to follow folks since the papers began to print their names all bunched up the way they do and Mrs. Arthur J is one that I followed pretty close she must be young I never see his name except with hers I guess he's just a society dude well dudes are all right you've got to have them in a big tone you wouldn't have the whole million and a half of us be grubbers I suppose not she gave a dinner last week covers were laid for 10 what does that mean probably that she and her husband had eight people she wore heliotrope satin ornaments diamonds great wasn't it one of our girls brought down a book this morning about lady Guinevere Guinevere your grandmother what are we to Lady Guinevere or what is Lady Guinevere to us but when it comes to people living in your own town why that's getting down to business yes let us talk about realities Balzac I should say so she assented missing the illusion now then why shouldn't I be wearing heliotrope satin to dinner sometime if not under the name of Cornelia McNabb then under some other as good or better anyway I'm going to keep my hands as nice as I can a girl never knows what she may have a chance to become I don't imagine it will disfigure me much to run a typewriter dear me she sighed how much time I've lost if I hadn't been such a darned goose I might have begun pitman at home a year ago she reached down under the counter and pulled a newspaper up out of a dark corner some lunchrooms have papers around as many as a dozen sometimes but Dugan says this place is too cramped for him to give people any inducements to dilly dally it's eat and run so I have to buy my own this is the first chance I've had to look at it I wonder what she's been up to now she opened the paper and ran down its columns with an expert I yes here it is first pop Mr. and Mrs. Cluett Parker Ingles my sakes how I envy that woman of course I don't want that she should come down here and wash my dishes but wouldn't I like to go up there and eat off of hers what did she wear it don't tell where was it at Mrs. Walworth Floyd's a small dinner don't know them how about the Mrs. Jameson Parker Wentworth she's a great goer too and here are a few masseurs Johnson J. L. Cluett George Ogden she stopped abruptly you there was a world of reproach in her voice yes and you sit there and never let on yours mean as you can be what is she like tell me do ain't she young now what did she wear I didn't go I had a trip to the west side your names here the reporters get the names in advance sometimes they copy them from cards or regrets and you wasn't there oh too bad but you've seen her never how hateful but you was really invited yes hmm she said deliberately I see now why you moved I don't blame you I'm trying to get along too we're both in the same boat Ogden Rose what else is there she asked herself looking over other columns here's a marriage it's in Milwaukee don't know whether it's a society item or not who are they J. Russell Fibert is the man and Mary Adelaide Brainerd is the woman both of Chicago know him Ogden sat down suddenly she eyed him curiously that's the first sign I've seen that she was willing to stay a single minute longer than you had to you can go now whenever you want we've got to clean up so long end of chapter five