 From A to Z by Susan Glassbell. Thus had another ideal tumbled to the rubber-sheep. She seemed to be breathing the dust which the newly fallen had stirred up among its longer dead fellows. Suddenly she was breathing the dust from somewhere. During her senior year at the university, when people would ask, and what are you going to do when you leave school, Miss Willard? She would respond with anything that came to hand, secretly hugging to her mind that idea of getting a position in a publishing-house. Her conception of her publishing-house was finished about the same time as her class daygown. She was to have a roll-top desk, probably of mahogany, and a big chair, which whirled round like that in the office of the undergraduate dean. She was to have a little office, all by herself, opening onto a bigger office, the little one marked private. There would be beautiful rugs, the general effect not unlike the library at the university club, books and pictures, and cultivated gentlemen who spoke often of Greek tragedies and the Renaissance. She was a little uncertain as to her duties, but had a general idea about getting down between nine and ten, reading the morning paper, cutting the latest magazine, and then writing something. Commencement was now four months past, and one of her professors had indeed secured for her a position in a Chicago publishing-house. This was her first morning, and she was standing at the window, looking down into Dearborn Street, while the man, who was to have her in charge, was fixing a place for her to sit. That the publishing-house should be on Dearborn Street had been her first blow, for she had long located her publishing-house on that beautiful stretch of Michigan Avenue which overlooked the lake. But the real insult was that this publishing-house, instead of having a building, or at least a floor, all to itself, simply had a place penned off in a bleak, dirty building, such as one who had done work in sociological research instinctively associated with a box factory. And the thing which fairly trailed her visions in the dust, was that the partition penning them off did not extend to the ceiling, and the adjoining room being occupied by a patent medicine company, she was face to face with glaring endorsements of Dr. Bunting's famous kidney and bladder cure. Taken all in all, there seemed a little chance for Greek tragedies or the Renaissance. The man who was running things, she buried her phraseology with her dreams, were a skullcap, and his moustache dragged down below his chin. Just at present he was engaged in noisily pulling a most unliterary pine-table from a dark corner to a place near the window. That accomplished an ostentatious hunting-suit, resulting in the triumphant flourish of a feather duster. Several knocks at the table, and the dust of many months, perhaps likewise of many dreams, ascended to a resting place on the endorsement of Dr. Bunting's kidney and bladder cure. He next produced a short, straight-backed chair, which she recognized as brother to the one which used to stand behind their kitchen stove. He gave it a shake, thus delicately indicating that she was receiving special favours in this matter of an able-bodied chair, and then announced, with brisk satisfaction, so now we are ready to begin. She murmured a thank-you, seated herself and her buried hopes in this chair which did not well round, and leaned her arms upon a table which did not even dream in mahogany. In the other publishing-house one pushed buttons, and uniformed menials appeared, noiselessly, quickly and deferentially. At this moment a boy with sandy hair brushed straight back in a manner either statesman-like or clown-like, things were too involved to know which, shuffled in with an armful of yellow paper which he flopped down on the pine table. After a minute he returned, with a warbled, take me back to New York Town, and a past-pot. And upon his third appearance he was practising gymnastics with a huge pair of shears, which he finally presented, grinningly. There was a long pause, broken only by the sonorous voice of Dr. Bunting, upbraiding someone for not having build out that stuff to apple-grove. And then the sandy-haired boy appeared, bearing large dictionary, followed by the man in a skull-cap, behind a dictionary of equal unwieldiness. These were set down on either side of the yellow paper, and he who was filling the position of cultivated gentleman pulled up a chair briskly. "'Has Professor Lee explained to you the nature of our work?' he wanted to know. "'No,' she replied, half grimly, a little humorously, and not far from tearfully. "'He didn't, explain. Then it is my pleasure to inform you,' he began, blinking at her importantly, that we are engaged here in the making of a dictionary. "'A dick?' But she swallowed the gasp, in the laugh coming up to meet it, and if their union was born a saving cough. "'Quite an overpowering thought, is it not?' he agreed pleasantly. "'Now you see, you have before you the two dictionaries you will use most, and over in that case you will find other references. The main thing,' his voice sank to an impressive whisper. "'He is not to infringe the copyright.'" The publisher was in yesterday, and made a little talk to the force, and he said that anyone who handed in a piece of copy, infringing the copyright, simply employed that means of writing his own resignation. Neat way of putting it, was it not? "'Yes. Wasn't it neat?' she agreed, wildly. She was conscious of a man's having stepped in behind her, and taken a seat at the table next to hers. She heard him opening his dictionaries, and getting out his paper. Then the man in a skull-cap had risen, and was saying genially, "'Well, here is a piece of old Webster, your first take. No copyright on this, you see, but you must modernise and expand. Don't miss any of the good words in either of these dictionaries. Here you have dictionaries, copy-paper, paste, and Professor Leigh assures me you have brains, all the necessary ingredients for successful lexicography. We are to have some rules printed to-morrow, and in the meantime I trust I've made myself clear. The main thing—he bent down and spoke it solemnly—is not to infringe the copyright. With the cheerful nod he was gone, and she heard him saying to the man at the next table, Mr Clifford, I shall have to ask you to be more careful about getting in promptly at eight.' She removed the cover from her paste-pot, and dabbled a little on a piece of paper. Then she tried the unwieldy shears on another piece of paper. She then opened one of her dictionaries and read studiously for fifteen minutes. That accomplished. She opened the other dictionary, and pursued it for twelve minutes. Then she took the column of old Webster, which had been handed her, pasted on a piece of yellow paper, and set her out attempting to commit it to memory. She looked up, to be met with the statement that Miss Marjorie van Lüsterveen, after spending years under the so-called best surgeons of the country, had been cured in six weeks by Dr Bunting's famous kidney and bladder cure. She pushed the dictionaries petulantly from her, and, leaning her very red cheek upon her hand, her hazel eyes blurred with tears of perplexity and resentment, her mouth drawn in pathetic little lines of uncertainty, looked over at the sprawling warehouse on the opposite side of Dearborn Street. She was just considering the direct manner of writing one's resignation, not knowing how to infringe the copyright, when a voice said, I beg pardon, but I wonder if I can help you any. She had never heard a voice like that before, or had she heard it, and where? She looked at him, a long, startled gaze. Something made her think of the voice the Prince used to have in long ago dreams. She looked into a face that was dark, and thin, and different. Two very dark eyes were looking at her kindly, and a mouth, which was a baffling combination of things to be loved, and things to be deplored, was twitching a little, as though it would like to join the eyes in a smile, if it dared. Because he saw both how funny and how hard it was, she liked him. It would have been quite different had he seen either one without the other. You can tell me how not to infringe the copyright? She laughed. I'm not sure that I know what a copyright is. He laughed, a laugh which belonged with his voice. Mr. Little Tree isn't as lucid as he thinks he is. I've been here a week or so, and picked up a few things you might like to know. He pulled his chair closer to her table, then, and gave her a lesson in the making of copy. Edna Willard was never one half so attractive, as when absorbed in a thing which someone was showing her how to do. Her hazel eyes would widen and glisten with the joy of comprehending. Her cheeks would flush a deeper pink, with the coming of new light. Her mouth would part in a childlike way it had forgotten to outgrow. Her head would nod gleefully in token that she understood, and she had a way of pulling at her wavy hair and making it more wavy than it had been before. The man at the next table was a long time in explaining the making of a dictionary. He spoke in low tones, often looking at the figure of the man in the skullcap, who was sitting with his back to them, looking over copy. Once, she cried excitedly, oh, I see! and he warned, shh, explaining, let him think you got it all from him. It will give you a better stand in. She nodded appreciatively, and felt very well acquainted with this kind man, whose voice made her think of something, called to something. She did not just know what. After that, she became so absorbed in lexicography, that when the men began putting away their things, it was hard to realise that the morning had gone. It was a new and difficult game, the evasion of the copyright furnishing the stimulus of a hazard. The man at the next table had been watching her with an amused admiration. Her childlike absorption, the way every emotion, from perplexity to satisfaction, expressed itself in the poise of her head and the pucker of her face, took him back over years emotionally barren, to the time when he too had those easily stirred enthousiasms of youth. For the man at the next table was far from young now. His mouth had never quite parted with boyishness, but there was more white than black in his hair, and the lines about his mouth told that time, as well as forces more aging than time, had laid heavy hand upon him. But when he looked at the girl and told her with a smile that it was time to stop work, it was a smile and a voice to defy the most tell-tale face in all the world. During her luncheon, as she watched the strange people coming and going, she did much wondering. She wondered why it was that so many of the men at the dictionary place were very old men. She wondered if it would be a good dictionary, one that would be used in the schools. She wondered if Dr. Bunting had made a great deal of money. And most of all, she wondered about the man at the next table, whose voice was like—like a dream, which she did not know that she had dreamed. When she had returned to the straggling old building, had stumbled down the narrow dark hall, and opened the door of the big bleak room, she saw that the man at the next table was the only one who had returned from luncheon. Something in his profile made her stand there very still. He had not heard her come in, and he was looking straight ahead, eyes half closed, mouth set, no unsurrendered boyishness there now. Holy unconsciously, she took an impulsive step forward. But she stopped. For she saw, and felt, without really understanding, that it was not just the moment's pain, but the revealed pain of years. Just then he began to cough, and it seemed the cough, too, was more than of the moment. And then he turned, and saw her, and smiled, and the smile changed all. As the afternoon wore on the man stopped working, and turning a little in his chair sat there covertly watching the girl. She was just typically girl. It was written that she had spent her days in the happy ways of healthful girlhood. He supposed that a great many young fellows had fallen in love with her—nice, clean young fellows, the kind she would naturally meet. And then his eyes closed for a minute, and he put up his hand and brushed back his hair. There was weariness, weariness weary of itself in the gesture. He looked about the room, and scanned the faces of the men, most of them older than he, many of the men whose histories were well known to him. They were the usual hangers on about newspaper offices, men who, for one reason or another, age, dissipation, antiquated methods, had been pitched over. Men for whom such work as this came as a godsend. They were the men of yesterday, men whom the world had rushed past. She was the only one there, this girl who would probably sit here beside him for many months, with whom the future had anything to do. Youth, goodness, joy, hope—strange things to bring to a place like this. And as if their alienism disturbed him, he moved restlessly, almost resentfully, bit his lips nervously, moistened them, and began putting away his things. As the girl was starting home along Dearborn Street a few minutes later, she chanced to look in a window. She saw that it was a saloon, but before she could turn away, she saw a man with a white face, white with the peculiar whiteness of a dark face, standing before the bar, drinking from a small glass. She stood still, arrested by a look such as she had never seen before. A panting human soul, sobbingly fluttering down into something from which it had spent all its force in trying to rise. When she recalled herself and passed on, a mist which she could neither account for nor banish was dimming the clear hazel of her eyes. The next day was a hard one at the dictionary place. She told herself it was because the novelty of it was wearing away, because her fingers ached, because it tied her back to sit in that horrid chair. She did not admit of any connection between her flagging interest, and the fact that the place at the next table was vacant. The following day he was still absent. She assumed that it was nervousness occasioned by her queer surroundings made her look around whenever she heard a step behind her. Where was he? Where had that look carried him? If he were in trouble, was there no one to help him? The third day she did an unpremeditated thing. The man in the skullcap had been showing her something about the copy. As he was leaving she asked, Is the man who sits at the next table coming back? Oh, yes, he replied grimly. He'll be back. Because, she went on, if he wasn't, I thought I would take his shears, these hurt my fingers. He made the exchange for her, and after that things went better. He did return late the next morning. After he had taken his place he looked over at her and smiled. He looked sick and shaken, as if something that knew no mercy had taken hold of him and rung body and soul. You have been ill, she asked, with timid solicitude. Oh, no, he replied rather shortly. He was quiet all that day, but the next day they talked about the work, laughed together over funny definitions they found. She felt that he could tell many interesting things about himself, if he cared to. As the days went on he did tell some of those things. Out of the way places where he had worked, queer people whom he had known. It seemed that words came to him as gifts, came freely, happily, pleased perhaps, to be borne by so sympathetic a voice. And there was another thing about him. He always seemed to know just what she was trying to say, he never missed the unexpressed. That made it easy to say things to him. There seemed a certain at-homeness between his thought and hers. She accounted for her interest in him by telling herself she had never known anyone like that before. Now Harold, the boy whom she knew best out at the university, why one had to say things to Harold to make him understand. And Harold never left one wondering, wondering what he had meant by that smile, what he had been going to say when he started to say something and stopped, wondering what it was about his face that one could not understand. Harold could never claim as his the hour after he had left her, and was one ever close to anyone with whom one did not spend some of the hours of absence. She began to see that hours spent together, when apart, were the most intimate hours of all. And as Harold did not make one wonder, so he did not make one worry. Never in all her life had there been a lump in her throat when she thought of Harold. There was often a lump in her throat when the man at the next table was coughing. One day, she had been there about two months. She said something to him about it. It was hard. It seemed forcing one's way into a room that had never been opened to one. There were several doors he kept closed. Mr Clifford. She turned to him impetuously as they were putting away their things that night. Will you mind if I say something to you? He was covering his pastepot. He looked up at her strangely. The closed door seemed to open a little way. I can't conceive of minding anything you might say to me, Miss Noah. He had called her Miss Noah, ever since she, by mistake, had one day called him Mr Webster. You see, she hurried on, very timid, now that the door had opened a little. You have been so good to me. Because you have been so good to me, it seems that I have some right to- to- His head was resting upon his hand, and he leaned a little closer, as though listening for something he wanted to hear. I had a cousin who had a cough like yours. Brave, now that she could not go back. And he went down to New Mexico and stayed for a year, and when he came back, when he came back he was as well as any of us. It seemed so foolish not to. Her voice broke, now that it had so valiantly carried it. Not to. He looked at her. And that was all. But she was never wholly the same again after that look. It enveloped her being in a something which left her richer. Different. It was a look to light the dark place between two human souls. It seemed for the moment that words would follow it. But, as if feeling their helplessness, perhaps needlessness, they sank back, unuttered, and at the last he got up abruptly and walked away. One night, while waiting for the elevator, she heard two of the men talking about him. When she went out onto the street, it was with head high, cheeks hot. For nothing is so hard to hear as that which one has half known and evaded. One never denies so hotly as in denying to oneself what one fears is true, and one never resents so bitterly as in resenting that which one cannot say one has the right to resent. That night she lay in her bed with wide open eyes, going over and over the things they had said. Cure, one of them had scoffed, after telling how brilliant he had been before he went to pieces. Why, all the cures on earth couldn't help him. He can go just so far, and then he can no more stop himself, or about as much as an ant could stop a prairie fire. She finally turned over on her pillow and sobbed, and she wondered why. Wondered, yet knew. But it resulted in the flowering of her tenderness for him. Interest mounted to defiance. It ended in blind, passionate desire to make it up to him. And again he was so different from Harold. Harold did not impress himself upon one, by upsetting all one's preconceived ideas. She felt now that she understood better, understood the closed doors. He was—she could think of no better word than sensitive. And that is why, several mornings later, she very courageously, for it did take courage, threw this little note over on his desk. They had formed a habit of writing notes to each other, sometimes about the words, sometimes about other things. INVITATION Noun That which Miss Noah extends to Mr. Webster for Friday evening, December 2nd, at the house where she lives, hasn't she already told him where that is? It is the wish of Miss Noah to present Mr. Webster to various other Miss Noah's, all of whom are desirous of making his acquaintance. She was absurdly nervous at luncheon that day, and kept telling herself with severity not to act like a high school girl. He was late in returning that noon, and though there seemed to news something in his voice, when he asked if he hadn't better sharpened her pencils, he said nothing about her new definition of invitation. It was almost five o'clock when he threw this over on her desk. APPRECIATION Noun That sentiment inspired in Mr. Webster by the kind invitation of Miss Noah for Friday evening. REGRET Noun That which Mr. Webster experiences because, for reasons into which he cannot go in detail, it is impossible for him to accept Miss Noah's invitation. RESENTMENT Noun That which is inspired in Mr. Webster by the insinuation that there are other Miss Noah's in the world, then below he had written, Three hours later, Miss Noah, the world is queer. Someday you may find out, though I hope you never will, that it is frequently the things we most want to do that we must leave undone. Miss Noah, won't you go on bringing me as much of yourself as you can to Dearborn Street, and try not to think much about my not being able to know the Miss Noah of Hyde Park? Noun And little Miss Noah, I thank you. There aren't words enough in this old book of ours to tell you how much, or why. That night he hurried away with never a joke about how many words she had written that day. She did not look up as he stood there putting on his coat. It was spring now, and the dictionary staff had begun on W. They had written of joy, of hope, and life, and love, and many other things. Life seemed pressing just behind some of those definitions, pressing the harder perhaps, because it could not break through the surface. For it did not break through, it flooded just beneath. How did she know that he cared for her? She could not possibly have told. Perhaps the nearest to actual proof she could bring was that he always saw that her overshoes were put in a warm place, and when one came down to facts, the putting of a girl's rubbers near the radiator did not necessarily mean love. Perhaps then it was because there was no proof of it that she was most sure. For some of the most sure things in the world are things which cannot be proved. It was only that they worked together, and were friends, that they laughed together over funny definitions they found, that he was kind to her, and that they seemed remarkably close together. That is as far as facts can take it. And just there it begins. For the force which rushes beneath the facts of life, caring nothing for conditions, not asking what one desires or what one thinks best, caring as little about a past as about a future, save its own future. The force which can laugh at man's institutions, and batter over in one sweep, what he likes to call his wisdom, was sweeping them on. And because it could get no other recognition, it forced its way into the moments when he asked her for an eraser, when she wanted to know how to spell a word. He could not so much as ask her if she needed more copy paper, without seeming to be lavishing upon her all the love of all the ages. And so the winter had worn on, and there was really nothing whatever to tell about it. She was quiet this morning, and kept her head bent low over her work, for she had estimated the number of pages there were between W and Z. Soon they would be at Z, and then, then. Shiley, she turned and looked at him, he too was bent over his work. When she came in, she had said something about its being spring, and that there must be wild flowers in the woods. Since then he had not looked up. Suddenly it came to her, tenderly, hotly, fearfully, yet bravely, that it was she who must meet Z. She looked at him again, covertly, and she felt that she understood. It was the lines in his face that made it clearest. Years, and things blacker, less easily surmounted than years. Oh, yes, that too she faced fearlessly, or piled in between. She knew now that it was she, not he, who could push them aside. It was all very unmaidently, of course, but maidently is a word love, and life, and desire, may crowd from the page. Perhaps she would not have thrown it after all, the little note she had written, had it not been that, when she went over for more copy paper, she stood for a minute, looking out of the window. Even on Dearborn Street, the seductiveness of spring was in the air. Spring, and all that spring meant, filled her. Because, way beyond the voice of Dr. Bunting, she heard the songs of faraway birds. And because, beneath the rumble of a printing-press, she could get the babble of a brook. Because Z was near, and life was strong, the woman vanquished the girl, and she threw this over to his desk. Chafing-dish, noun. That out of which Miss Noah asks Mr. Webster to eat his Sunday night lunch tomorrow. All the other Miss Noah's are going to be away, and if Mr. Webster does not come, Miss Noah will be all alone. Miss Noah does not like to be lonely. She ate no lunch that day. She only drank a cup of coffee, and walked around. He did not come back that afternoon. It passed from one to two, from two to three, and then, very slowly, from three to four, and still, he had not come. He, too, was walking about. He had walked down to the lake, and was standing there, looking out across it. Why not? He was saying to himself, fiercely, doggedly, over and over again. Well, why not? A hundred nights, alone in his room, he had gone over it. Had not life used him hard enough to give him a little now, longing had not come. And now there was a new voice, more prevailing voice, the voice of her happiness. His face softened to an almost maternal tenderness as he listened to that voice. Too worn to fight any longer, he gave himself up to it, and sat there, dreaming. They were dreams of joy, rushing in after lonely years, dreams of stepping into the darkness of the night. Dreams of stepping into the sunlight after long days in fog and cold. Dreams of a woman before a fireplace, her arms about him, her cheer, and her tenderness, her comradeship, and her passion, all his to take. Ah, dreams which even thoughts must not touch, so wonderful and sacred they were. A long time he sat there, dreaming dreams and seeing visions. The force that rules the race was telling him that the one crime was the denial of happiness, his happiness, her happiness. And when at last his fight seemed but a purile fight against force's worlds mightier than he, he rose, and as one who sees a great light, started back toward Dearborn Street. On the way he began to cough. The coughing was violent, and he stepped into a doorway to gain breath. And after he had gone in there, he realized that it was the building of Chicago's greatest newspaper. He had been city editor of that paper once. Facts, the things he knew about himself, talked to him then. There was no answer. It left him weak and dizzy and crazy for a drink. He walked on slowly, unsteadyly, his white face set. For he had vowed that if it took the last nerve in his body there should be no more of that until after they had finished would set. He knew himself too well to vow more. He was not even sure of that. He did not turn in where he wanted to go, but resistance took the last bit of force that was in him. He was trembling like a sick man, when he stepped into the elevator. She was just leaving. She was in a little cloakroom putting on her things. She was all alone in there. He stepped in. He pushed the door shut, and stood there leaning against it, looking at her, saying nothing. Oh! you are ill! She gasped and laid a frightened hand upon him. The touch crazed him. All resistance gone. He swept her into his arms. He held her fiercely, and between sobs kissed her again and again. He could not let her go. He frightened her. He hurt her. And he did not care. He did not know. Then he held her off and looked at her. And as he looked into her eyes, passion melted to tenderness. It was she now, not the one who was in her arms. Not he, love, not hunger. Holding her face in his two hands, looking at her, as if getting something to take away, his white lips murmured words too inarticulate for her to hear. And then again he put his arms around her, all differently, reverently, sobbingly, he kissed her hair. And then he was gone. He did not come out that Sunday afternoon. But Harold dropped in instead and talked of some athletic affairs over the university. She wondered why she did not go crazy in listening to him, and yet she could answer intelligently. It was queer what one could do. They had come at last to Z. There would be no more work upon the dictionary after that day. And it was raining, raining as in Chicago alone, it knows how to rain. They wrote no notes to each other now. It had been different since that day. They made small effort to cover their raw souls with the mantle of commonplace words. Both of them had tried to stay away that last day. But both were in their usual places. The day wore on eventlessly. Those men with whom she had worked, the men of yesterday, who had been kind to her, came up at various times for little farewell chats. The man in the skull-cap told her that she had done excellent work. She was surprised at the ease with which she could make decent reply, thinking again that it was queer what one could do. He was moving. She saw him lay some sheets of yellow paper on the desk in front. He had finished with his take. There would not be another to give him. He would go now. He came back to his desk. She could hear him putting away his things. And then, for a long time, there was no sound. She knew that he was just sitting there, in his chair. Then she heard him get up. She heard him push his chair up to the table. And then for a minute, he stood there. She wanted to turn toward him. She wanted to say something, do something. But she had no power. She saw him lay an envelope upon her desk. She heard him walking away. She knew, numbly, that his footsteps were not steady. She knew that he had stopped. She was sure that he was looking back. But still she had no power. And then she heard him go. Even then, she went on with her work. She finished her take and laid down her pencil. It was finished now. And he had gone. Finished? Gone? She was tearing open the envelope of the letter. This was what she read. Little dictionary sprite. Sunshine vendor and girl to be loved. If I were a free man, I would say to you, come, little one, and let us learn of love. Let us learn of it, not as one learns from dictionaries. But let us learn from the morning glow and the evening shades. But Miss Noah, maker of dictionaries, and creeper into hearts, the bound must not call to the free. They might fittingly have used my name as one of the synonyms under that word, failure. But I trust not under coward. And now, you funny little Miss Noah, from the University of Chicago, don't I know that your heart is blazing forth the assurance that you don't care for any of those things, the world, people, common sense, that you want just love. They made a grand failure of you out at your University, they taught you philosophy, and they taught you Greek, and they've left you just as much the woman as women were five thousand years ago. Oh, I know all about you, you little girl whose hair tried so hard to be read. Your soul touched mine as we sat there writing words. Words, words, the very words in which men try to tell things, and can't, and I know all about what you would do. But you shall not do it. Dear little copy-maker, would a man standing out on the end of a slippery plank have any right to cry to someone on the shore, come out here on this plank with me? If he loved the someone on the shore, would he not say instead, don't get on this plank? Me, get off the plank, come with you to the shore, you were saying. But you see, dear, you only know slippery planks as viewed from the shore, God grant you may never know of them any other way. It was you, was it not, who wrote our definition of happiness? Yes, I remember the day you did it. You were so interested, your cheeks grew so very red, and you pulled and pulled at your wavy hair. You said it was such an important definition. And so it is, Miss Noah, quite the most important of all. And on the page of life, Miss Noah, may happiness be written large and unblurred for you. It is because I cannot help you write it that I turn away. I want to at least leave the page unspoiled. I carry a picture of you. I shall carry it always. You were sitting before a fireplace, and I think of that fireplace as symbolizing the warmth and care and tenderness and the safety that will surround you. And sometimes, as you sit there, let a thought of me come for just a minute, Miss Noah, not long enough or deep enough to bring you any pain, but only think, I brought him happiness after he believed all happiness had gone. He was so grateful for that light which came after he thought the darkness had settled down. It will light his way to the end. We've come to Zed, and it's good-bye. There is one thing I can give you without hurting you, the hope, the prayer, that life may be very, very good to you. The sheets of paper fell from her hands. She sat, stirring out into Dearborn Street. She began to see. After all, he had not understood her. Perhaps men never understood women. Certainly, he had not understood her. What he did not know was that she was willing to pay for her happiness, pay, pay any price that might be exacted. And anyway, she had no choice. Strange that he could not see that. Strange that he could not see the irony and cruelty of bidding her good-bye, and then telling her to be happy. It simplified itself to such an extent that she grew very calm. It would be easy to find him, easy to make him see, for it was so very simple, and then she turned in her copy. She said good-bye quietly, naturally, rode down in a lumbering old elevator, and started out into the now drenching rain toward the elevated trains, which would take her to the west side. It was so fortunate that she had heard him telling one day why he lived. When she reached the station, she saw that more people were coming down the stairs than were going up. They were saying things about the trains, but she did not heed them. But at the top of the stairs, a man in uniform said, Blockade, miss, you'll have to take the surface cars. She was sorry for it would delay her, and there was not a minute to lose. She was dismayed upon reaching the surface cars to find she could not get near them. The rain, the blockade on the L, had caused a great crowd to congregate there. She waited a long time, getting more and more wet, but it was impossible to get near the cars. She thought of a cab, but could see none, they too having all been pressed into service. She determined, desperately, to start and walk. Soon she would surely get either a cab or a car. And so she started, staunchly, though she was wet through now, and trembling with cold and nervousness. As she hurried through the driving rain, she faced things fearlessly. Oh yes, she understood everything. But if he were not well, should he not have her with him? If he had that thing to fight, did he not need her help? What did men think women were like? Did he think she was one to sit down and reason out what would be advantageous? Better a little while with him on a slippery plank than for ever safe and desolate upon the shore. She never questioned her going. Were not life and love too great to be lost through that which could so easily be put right? The buildings were reeling, the streets moving up and down. That awful rain, she thought, was making her dizzy. Laboriously she walked on, more slowly, less steadily, a pain in her side, that awful reeling in her head. Carriages returning to the city were passing her, but she had not strength to call to them, and it seemed if she walked to the curbing she would fall. She was not thinking so clearly now. The thing which took all of her force was the lifting of her feet and the putting them down in the right place. Her throat seemed to be closing up, and her side and her head. Someone had her by the arm. Then someone was speaking her name, speaking it in surprise, consternation, alarm. It was Harold. It was all vague then. She knew that she was in a carriage and that Harold was talking to her kindly. You're taking me there, she murmured. Yes, yes, Edna, everything's all right, he replied soothingly. Everything's all right, she repeated in a whisper, and leaned her head back against the cushions. They stopped after a while, and Harold was standing at the open door of the cab with something steaming hot which he told her to drink. You need it, he said decisively, and thinking it would help her to tell it, she drank it down. The world was a little more defined after that, and she saw things which puzzled her. Why, it looks like the city, she whispered, her throat too soren out to speak aloud. Why, sure, he replied banteringly. Don't you know we have to go through the city to get out onto the south side? But you see, she cried, holding her throat, but you see it's the other way. Not tonight, he insisted. The place for you tonight is home. I'm taking you where you belong. She reached over wildly, trying to open the door, but he held her back. She began to cry, and he talked to her, gently but unbendingly. But you don't understand, she whispered passionately. I've got to go. Not tonight, he said again, and something in the way he said it made her finally huddle back in the corner of the carriage. Block after block, mile after mile, they rode on in silence. She felt overpowered, and with submission she knew that it was Zed. For the whole city was piled in between. Great buildings were in between. Thousands of men running to and fro on the streets. Man, and all man had build it up, were in between. And then Harold, Harold who had always seemed to count for so little, had come and taken her away, dullly, wretchedly. Knowing that her heart would ache far worse tomorrow than it did tonight, she wondered about things. Did things like rain, and street-cars, and wet feet, and a sore throat determine life? Was it that way with other people, too? Did other people have barriers, whole cities full of them piled in between? And then did the Haralds come and take them where they said they belonged? Were there not some people strong enough to go where they wanted to go? End of From A to Z by Susan Glasspole. The Haunted Author by Marcus Clark 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 Christopher Mark Dale of Cambridge, England. What can I do for you, sir? I ask blandly, astonished. It was a tall, broad-shouldered man in a rough p-jacket, and scowled potentuously. Put me into an honest livelihood, he answered. It was such a strange request that I could only stare. Don't you understand, he said, seating himself with rough vehemence. I want to become a reputable member of society. I want some honest employment. But, my good sir, why do you come to me? Your motive is most excellent, but an honest employment is the last thing at my disposal. That be blowed, said he. You could give me a fortune if you liked. You know you could. But I don't want that. No, I'm fly to that game. You'll have some blessed elder brother that nobody know of, coming back from New Zealand and succeeding to the ancestral mansion. Or you'll get me pitched out of the gilded chariot at the church door, and marry my wife, that ought to be, to somebody else. I know you. I only want a modest competence. Nobody interferes with that. Your language is even more mysterious than your appearance, my friend, I said. Thra, said he. I'd never heard a man outside a book say thra, never. Don't you know me? I looked at him steadily, and it seemed that I ought to know him. That hat, that pea jacket, that knotted scarf around his muscular throat, those fierce eyes, all were familiar to me. You don't happen to have any marks about you, I asked, while a cold sweat broke out upon my brow. He laughed. That bitter laugh which I had described so often. I have a peculiar mole on the back of my neck. The tip of my left ear is shot away. My right side still bears the marks of Pompey's claws, when he defended his young mistress Alice in the lonely swamp. I have lost the little finger of my right hand, and have three pear-shaped wends beside the usual allowance of strawberry marks. There was no mistaking him. It was my villain. I knew his blood-thirsty nature, and dreaded the tremendous struggle which experience told me was about to follow. But why come here? I urged. I am sick of it, said my villain doggedly. I ain't to be badgered any more. It ain't a respectable business. First I was Jabez Jamrak, then Black Wilver Smuggler, then Kerluis Carlayan, then a poacher, then a burglar, then an unjust steward, and now I'm an escaped convict. It was true. The unhappy creature before me had figured in my world-renowned novels in all those capacities. It ain't because I'm out all nights and all sorts of weather, mostly thunderous. It ain't because I'm often drunk, always in debt and totally disreputable. It ain't because I've murdered a large variety of mothers and brought the gray airs of a corresponding number of aged fathers with sorrow to the grave. It ain't because my language is altogether ridiculous, and I leave out more h's and put in more oaths in my conversation than any natural man did yet. It ain't that. No. He cried, waxing rough. It's because I'm always left at the end of a third volume, if I'm still alive, without hope of mercy or promise of repentance. I shuddered. Take some brandy, I said, and pushed him for decanter. He took it, and filling half a tumbler with neat spirit drained it at a gulp. I knew he would. The beast, under my direction, invariably took his liquor in that fashion. Is it right? Is it just, Governor? Your comic servant winds up with a chambermaid. Your aristocratic villain, the Marcus, my master, who poisons his niece and shoots his ant with an airgun. He's all right. He's never hung in chains, or tucked in your gate, or starved to death in a deserted drive on the diggings in Bendigo. But why waste words? Are we not alone here? No sound but the whistling of the wind in the wide chimneys of the moated Grange. No footsteps but that of a midnight mouser she creeps stealthily to her prey. Thou art mine, and... Ha, ha, indeed. I guessed how it would happen. My experience as a novel writer told me as much. Just as the enraged Ruffian advanced to seize me, a newcomer appeared upon the scene. By his wavy hair, square-toed wellingtons, massive watch chain and handkerchief are hung from the right-hand pocket of a shooting-coat, I knew him at once. He was Sir Aubrey de Briancourt. Assist me, I exclaimed. The look of scorn he gave me was sufficient to daunt a bolder man, but I knew of a spell by which I could compel him. Hissed, I said, in a thrilling whisper. Proud scion of the lordly house, there is another Sir Aubrey. Refuse me, aid, and young Fairfield will assume your name and title. These minions are beyond my power, but remember you are to be continued in our next. The threat made pale the cheeks, even of one whose ancestors had bled on Bosworth, and the baronet waved a white hand towards the back door. Take my cabaret, dog, he said, with that courtesy which characterises the British aristocrat. I need scarcely remark that I leapt into the cabaret, and was soon driving with a rapidity of lightning toward Goodman gully. Fast behind me came echo of hooves, the lightning flashed incessantly, and the negro who held the reins was white with fear. All at once a mad clad in a red shirt jumped from behind a bush and seized the head of a mare. Who are you? I cried. The most abused of all, said he. I am the typical digger. I am the man whom you and the others of your tribe have made to eat banknotes as sandwiches. I have shod my horse with gold and swill champagne, which I detest, out of stable buckets. Am I to pass my life in finding repeatedly gigantic nuggets, and being perpetually robbed of the same? Must I never shave? Shall the tyranny of a fiction monger compel me to sleep in my boots? Calm yourself, my friend, I said. There is not much harm done. I know some poor fellows whom the fiction mongers have treated much more rudely. At that instant the demonic howls of my pursuers were born upon the blast. That may be, roared the digger of romance, but I will be avenged on thee. Come! The cabaret disappeared into the distance. There was never a cabaret yet that did not do so under such circumstances, and my captor led me away. He paused at the door of the usual bush in, how well I knew it, and striking three blows upon the door, they invariably struck three loud blows. We were admitted into the long apartment. I beheld with astonishment that all the personages whom I had imagined the creatures of my own two fertile brain were there. Wretch! cried the fair Lady Madeline. Why did you not unite me to the duke? You know you changed your mind at the last minute. Monster! said the lovely violet. You made me pass three nights of horror in the red farm, when one stroke of your pen could have freed me. Christian dog! roared Mordecai the Jew. I was born with charitable impulses, and should have lent in peace the humble shilling upon the ragged coat of poverty, had not your felon soul plunged me into crime to gratify the taste of a blood and thunder-loving public. And I remarked Henry Mortimer, with that cynical smile that I had so often depicted, curling his proud lip. Did I wish to throw my elder brother down a well in order to succeed to his name and heritage? No! I loved him fondly, madly, as you took pains to state in your earlier chapters. Away with him! hissed Lady Millicent the Poisoner. I knew not of the deadly power of stricting until he told me. T'was he that let me linger in consumption for forty pages folio? cried Coralie de Belazelle, the planter's daughter. T'was he that blighted my vultuous contours with an entirely unnecessary railway accident. Wet the lovely Geraldine. Away with him! Mercy! I cried, gazing in terror on their well-known liniments. Mercy! cried the lost heiress, Isabelle de Beaumonneur. When for two long hours you deliberated whether my sainted mother, or the poacher's wife, should give me birth. Mercy for thee? Oh, no, no, no! I trembled over the abyss. Why seek to dispel my ennui? With this espiaglerie, mon ami? said the soft tones of account in his native tongue. Sacre! Let the purve petite escape. My dejeuner, the forchette awaits. The coup d'oeil est superbe. The two ensembles, all that could be desired. Voila! The digger swung me over the yawning grave. All the buttons in my waistcoat gave way, and for an instant my life hung literally by a thread. Will you make me respectable? said the villain. Never. The button cracked. I was going, going, gone. When the alarm bell sounded, the door burst open and... Bridget entered. It is a boy from the printers, for the proofs, she said. Tell him to wait! said I, wiping the sweat from my intellectual brow. I seized my pen, and in ten lines had got my villain comfortably in irons at Norfolk Island. End of story. Read by Christopher Mark Dale of Cambridge, England. This is a LibraVox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org. Recording by Shana Bogden-Sterbl. His America by Susan Glassbell. He hated to see the reporter go. With the closing of that door, it seemed certain that there was no putting it off any longer. But even when the men's footsteps were at last sounding on the stairway, he still clung to him. Father, he asked readily, why do you always talk to those fellows? Herman Beckman turned in his chair and stared at the son. Then he laughed. Now that's a fine question to come from the honor man of a law school. I hope, Fritz, that your oration tonight is going to have a little more sense in it than that. The calling up of his oration made him reach out another clutching hand to the vanished reporter. But it's far sickle, Father, to be always interviewed by a paper nobody reads. Nobody reads? Why, nobody cares anything about the leader. It's dead. Herman Beckman looked at his son sharply. Something about him seemed strange. He decided that he was nervous about the commencement program. Fritz had the one oration. The boy had opened the door of his study table and was fingering some papers he'd taken out. Sure you know it, the man asked with affectionate parental anxiety. Oh, I know it all right, Fred answered grimly. And again the father decided that he was nervous about the thing. He wasn't just like himself. The man walked the window and stood looking across at the university buildings. Colleges had always meant much to Herman Beckman. The very day Fritz was born, he determined that the boy was to go to college. It was good to witness the fulfillment of his dreams. He turned his glance to the comfortable room. Pretty decent, comfortable sort of place, isn't it, father? Fred asked, following his father's look and thought from the Morris chair to the student's lamp. And all those other things which nowadays seem an inevitable part of the acquirement of learning. It made his father laugh. Yes, my boy, I should call it decent and comfortable. He grew up well after that. Pretty different from the place you have, father? Oh, me? My place to study was any place I could find. Sometimes on top of a load of hay, lots of times by the light of the logs. I've studied in some funny places, Fritz. Well, you got there, father. The boy burst out with feeling by Jove. There aren't many of them know the things you know. I know enough to know what I don't know, said the old man, a little sadly. I know enough to know what I missed. I wanted to go to college. No one will ever know how I wanted to. I began to think I'd never feel right about it. But I have a notion that when I sit there tonight listening to you, Fritz, knowing that you're speaking for 200 boys, half of whose fathers did go to college, I think I'm going to feel better about it then. The boy turned away. Something in the kindly words seemed as the cut of a whip across his face. Well, Fritz, his father continued getting into his coat. I'll be going downtown. Leave you to put on an extra flourish or two. He laughed in proud parental fashion. Anyway, I have some things to see about. The boy stood up. Father, I have something to tell you. He said it shortly and sharply. The father stood there puzzled. He won't like my oration tonight, father. And still the man did not speak. The words would not have bothered him much. It was the boy's manner. In fact, father, you're going to be desperately disappointed in it. The dull red was creeping into the man's cheeks. He was one to have little patience with that thing of not doing one's work. Why am I going to be disappointed? This is no time to shirk. You should, oh, you'll not complain of the time and thought I'd put on it. The boy broke in with a short hard laugh. But you see, father, you see his armor had slipped from him. It doesn't express your views. Did I ever say I wanted you to express my views? Did I bring you up to be a mouthpiece of mine? Haven't I told you to think? But with a long sharp glance at his boy, anger gave way. Come boy, going over and patting him on the back. Brace up now. You're acting like a seven-year-old girl afraid to speak her first piece. And this big laugh rang out, eager to reassure. You won't see it. You won't believe it. I don't suppose you'll believe it when you hear it. He turned away, overwhelmed by a sudden realization of just how difficult was the thing that lay before him. The man started toward his son, but instead he walked over and sat down at the opposite side of the table, waiting. He was beginning to see that there was something in this which he did not understand. At last the boy turned to him, biting back some things, taking on other things. He gazed at the kale-worn, rugged face, face of a worker and a dreamer, reading in those lines the story of that life, seeing more clearly than he had ever seen before the beauty and futility of it. Here was the idealist, the man who would give his whole lifetime to a dream he had dreamed. He loved his father very tenderly as he looked at him, wed him then. Father, he asked quietly, are you satisfied with your life? The man simply stared, waiting, seeking his bearings. You came to this country when you were nineteen years old, didn't you father? The man nodded. And now you're at sixty one, isn't it? Again, he nodded. You've been in America then, forty-two years. Father, do you think as much of it now as you did forty-two years ago? I don't know what you mean, the man said, searching his son's quiet, passionate face. I can't make you outfits. My favorite story as a kid the boy went on was to hear you tell of how you felt when your boat came sailing into New York Harbor, and you saw the first outlines of a country you had dreamed about all through your boyhood, which you would say pennies for, work nights for, ever since you were old enough to know the meaning of America. I mean, he corrected significantly, the meaning of what you thought was America. It's a bully story, father, he continued with a smile at once tender and hard. The simple German boy, born a dreamer, standing there looking out at the dim shores of the land he had idealized. If ever a man came to America bringing at rich gifts, that man was you. Fritz, his father's voice was rendered harsh by mystification and foreboding. Tell me what you're talking about. Come to the point, clear this up. I'm talking about American politics, your party having ruined your life. I'm talking about working like a slave all your days and having nothing but a mortgaged farm at 61. I'm talking about playing a losing game. I'm saying what's the use? Father, I'm telling you that I'm going to join the other party and make some money. The man just sat there staring. Well, the boy took it up defiantly. Why not? And then he moved, laid a not quite steady hand out upon the table. My boy, you're not well. You've studied too hard. Now brace yourself up for tonight and then we'll go down home and fix you up. What you need, Fritz, he said, trying to laugh, is the hayfield. You're not seeing it. The boy pushed back his chair and began moving about the room. The only way I can brace myself up for tonight is to get so mad. Father, usually you see things so easily. Don't you understand? It was my chance, my one moment, my time to strike. It will be years before I get such a hearing again. You see, Father, the thing will be printed and the men I want to have hear it, the men who own this state will be there. One of them is to preside and the story of it, the worth of it to them, is that I'm your son. You see, after all, he seized it this wildly. I'm getting my start on the fact that I'm your son. Go on, said the man, the brown of his wind-beaten face had yielded to a tinge of gray. Just what is it you're going to say? I call it the New America. A lot of us talk about doing things, the glory of industrial America, the true Americans, the men of constructive genius, the patriotism of railroad and factory building, a eulogy of railroad officials and corporation presidents, he rushed on with a laugh, singing the song of capital. Father, can't you see why? The old man had risen. Tell me this, he said. None of it matters much if you just tell me this. You believe these things? You've thought it all out for yourself and you feel that way? You're honest, aren't you Fritz? He put that last in a whisper. The boy made no reply. After a minute, the man sank back to his chair. The years seemed coming to him with the minutes. Fred was leaning against the wall. Father, he said at last, I hope you'll let me be a little roundabout. It's only fair to me to let me ramble on a little. I've got to put it all right before you or you know, dad, he came back to his place by the table. First thing I remember very clearly is those men, your party managers, coming down to the farm one time and asking you to run for governor. How many times is it you've run for governor, father? He put the question slowly. Five, said the man heavily. I don't know which time this was, but you didn't want to. You were sorry when you saw them coming. I heard some of the talk. You talked about your farm, what you wanted to do that summer, how you couldn't afford the time or the money. They argue that you owed it to the party. They always got you there. How no other man could hold down majorities as you could. A man like you giving the best years of his life to holding down majorities. They said you were the one man against whom no personal attack could be made. And when there was so much to fight anyway. Oh, I know that speech by heart. They've made great capital of your honesty in your clean life. In fact, they've held that up as a curtain behind which a great many things could go on. Oh, you didn't know about them. You were out in front of the curtain, but I haven't lived in this town without finding out that they needed your integrity and your clean record pretty bad. That was out on the side porch. Mother had brought out some buttermilk and they drank it while they talked. You put up a good fight. Your time was money to you at that time of year. A man shouldn't neglect his farm, but you never yet could hold out against that needing you kind of talk. They knew there was no chance for your election. You knew it. But it takes a man of just your grit to put any snap into a hopeless campaign. Mother cried when you went to drive them back to town. You see, I remember all those things. She told about how hard you would work and how it would do no good that the state belonged to the other party. She talked about the farm too, and the addition she'd wanted for the house, and how now she wouldn't have it. Mother felt pretty bad that night. She's gone through a lot of those times. There was a silence. You were away a lot that summer and all fall. You looked pretty well used up when you came home, but you said that you held out majorities splendidly. Again, there was silence. It was the silences that seemed to be saying the most. You had one term in Congress. That's the only thing you ever had. Then you did so much that they concentrated in your district and saw to it that you never got back. Julius Caesar couldn't have been elected again. He laughed harshly. Father, the boy went on after a pause. You asked me if I were honest. There are two kinds of honesty, the primitive kind, like yours, and then the kind you develop for yourself. Do I believe the things I'm going to say tonight? No, not now, but I'll believe them more after I've heard the applause I'm sure to get. I'll believe them still more after I've had my first case thrown to me by our well-willed friends who own this state. More and more after I've said them over and campaigning next fall and pretty soon I'll be so sure I believe them that I really will believe them. And that, he concluded flippantly, is the new brand of American honesty. Why, any smart man can persuade himself he's not a hypocrite. My God, it wrenched from the man. This, if you'd stolen money, killed a man, but hypocrisy kept the very thing I bought hardest, hated most. You lived all your life with me to learn this. I lived all my life with you to learn what pays and what doesn't. I lived all my life with you to learn from failure, the value of success. I never was sure I was a failure till this hour. Father, can't you see? Oh, don't talk to me, cried the old man, rising, reaching out his fist as though he would strike him. Son of mine sitting there telling me he is fixing up a brand of honesty for himself. The boy grew quieter and self-restraint left his father. I mean that, just that, he said at last. Let a man either give or get. If he gives, let it be to the real thing. There are two Americas, the America of you dreamers and then the real America. Yours is an idea, an idea quite as much as an ideal. I don't think you have the slightest comprehension of how far apart it is from the real America. The people who dream of it over in Europe are a great deal nearer than you people who work for it here. Father, the spirit of this country flows in a strong, swift, resistless current. You never got into it at all. Your kind of idealist influence it about as much, about as much as red lights burned on the banks of the Great River would influence the current of that river. You're not of it. You came here, throbbing with the love for America and with your ideal America, you've fought the real and you've worked and you've believed and you've sacrificed. Father, what's the use in this state anyway? It's hopeless. It has been so through your lifetime. It will be through mine. The man sat looking at him. He felt that he should say something, but the words did not come. Hell that, perhaps, by a sense of their uselessness. It was not so much what Fred said as it was the look in his eyes as he said it. There was nothing impetuous or youthful about that look, nothing to be laughed at or argued away. He had always felt that Fred had a mind which saw things straight, saw them in their right relations, and at that moment he had no words to plead for what Fred called the America of the Dreamers. I'm of the second generation dad, the boy went on at length, and the second generation has an ideal of its own and that ideal is success. It took us these 40 years to come to understand the spirit of America. You were a dreamer who loved America. I'm an American. We've translated democracy and brotherhood and equality into enterprise and opportunity and success and that's getting Americanized. Now father, he sought refuge in the tone of everyday things. You'll get used to it, won't you? I don't expect you to feel very good about it, but you aren't going to be broken up about it, are you? After all, father, laughing and moving about as if to break the seriousness of things, there's nothing criminal about being one of the other fellows, is there? Just remember that there are folks who even think it's respectable. The father had risen and picked up his hat. No, Fred, he said, with the sadness in which there was great dignity. There is nothing criminal in it if a man's conviction sends him that way. But to me, there is something, something too sad for words in a man's selling his own soul. Father, how extravagant. Why is it selling one soul to sit down and figure out what's the best thing to do? He hesitated, hating to add hurt to hurt, not wanting to say that his father's fight should have been with a revolutionist, that his life was ineffective because seeing his dream from within a dream, his thinking had been muddled. He only said, as I say, father, it's a question of giving or getting. I couldn't even give in your way. And I've seen enough of giving to want a taste of getting. I want to make things go, and I see my chance. Why father, he laughed, trying to turn it. There's nothing so American as wanting to make things go. He looked at him for a long minute. My boy, he said, I fear you're becoming so American that I am losing you. Father, the boy pleaded affectionately. No, don't. The old man held up his hand. He tried to make me understand it. He said and succeeded. You can't complain of the way you've succeeded. I don't know why I don't argue with you. Plead. There are things I could say, should say perhaps put something assures me it would be useless. I feel a good many years older than I did when I came into this room. But the reason for it is not that you're joining the other party. You know what I think of the men who control this state, the men with whom you desire to cast your lot. But I trust the years I've spent fighting them haven't made a bigot of me. It's not joining their party. It's using it makes this the hardest thing I've been called upon to meet. Father, don't look like that. How do you think I'm going to get up and speak tonight with that face before me? You didn't think, did you? The man laughed bitterly that I would inspire you to your effort. The boy stood looking at his father, a strange new fire in his eyes. Yes, he said quietly, tenderly, you will inspire me. When I get up before those men tonight, I'm going to see the picture of that boy straining for his first glimpse of New York Harbor. I'm going to think for just a minute of the things that boy brought with him, things he has never lost. And then I'll see you as you stand here now. It will be enough. What I need to do is get mad. If I falter, I'll just think of some of those times when you came home from your campaigns, how you looked, what you said, it will bring the inspiration. Father, I figured out like this. We're going to get it back. We're going to get what's coming to us. There's another America than the America of you dreamers. To yours you have given, the mine I will get. And the irony of it, don't think I don't see the irony of it, is that I will be called the real American. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make the railroads of this state. It sounds like schoolboy talk, but just give me a little time. I'm going to make the railroads of this state pay off every cent of that mortgage on your farm. Father, he finished impetuously in a last appeal. You're broken up now, disappointed. But would you honestly want me to travel the road you've traveled? My boy answered the old man and the tears came with it. I wanted you to travel the road of an honest man. Herman Beckman did not go to the commencement exercises that night. There was no train home until morning, so he had the night to spend in town. He was alone, for his friends assumed that he would be out at the university, but he preferred being alone. He sat in his room at the hotel reading, and he could read. Years of discipline stood him in good stead now. His life had taught him to read anywhere at any time. He had never permitted himself the luxury of not being in the mood. It was only the men who had gone to college who could do that. He had to read. He always carried some little book with him, for how did a man know that he might not have to wait an hour for a train somewhere? The man had a simple-minded veneration for knowledge. He wanted to know about things, and he had never learned to pretend that he didn't want to know. He quite lacked the modern art of flippancy. He believed in great books. And so, on the night that his son was being graduated from college, he sat in his room at the hotel, cheap room in a mediocre hotel. He had never learned to feel at home in the rich ones, reading Marcus Aurelius. But his hand as he turned the pages trembled as the hand of a very old man. At midnight, some reporters came in to ask him what he thought of his son's oration. They wanted a statement from him. He told them that he had never believed the sins of a parent should be visited on a child, and that it was even so with the thought. He had always contended that a man should do his own thinking. The contention applied to his son. Gamey O. Brute was what one of the reporters said in the elevator. He could not read Marcus Aurelius after that. He went to bed, but he did not sleep. Many things passed before him. His anticipations, his dreams for Fritz had brought the warmest pleasure of his stern, un-relaxing life. There was a great emptiness tonight. What was a man to turn to think about when he seemed stripped, not only of the future, but of the past? He seemed called upon to readjust the whole of his life, giving up that which he had held dearest. What was left? Daylight found him turning it over and over. In the morning, he went home. He got away without seeing any of his friends. He did not try to read this morning. Somehow it seemed there was no use in trying to read anymore. He watched the country through which they were passing, thinking of the hundreds of times he had ridden over it in the campaigning. He wondered vaguely just how much money he had spent on railroad fare. He had never accepted mileage. Fritz, what the use kept ringing in his ears. There was something about that phrase which made one feel very tired and old. It even seemed there was no looking out to see how the crops were getting on. What's the use? What's the use? Was that a phrase one learned in college? There had been two things to tell Mother that night. The first was that he had stopped in town till Claus Hansen. He could have that south hundred and sixty. He had been wanting for two years. It was not easy to tell the woman who had worked shoulder to shoulder with him for thirty years. The woman who during those years had risen with him in the early morning and worked with him until darkness rescued the weary bodies. That in their old age they must surrender the fruit of their toil. They would have left just what they had started with. They had just held their own. Coming down on the train he'd made up his mind that if Hansen were in town he would tell him that he could have the land. He was so very tired and old. So bowed down with Fritz. What's the use? That he saw that he himself would never get the mortgage paid off. And Fritz had said something about making the railroads pay it. He did not know just how the boy figured that out. Indeed he was getting a little dazed about the whole thing. But if Fritz had any idea of having the railroads pay off the mortgage on his farm he couldn't forget how the boy looked when he said it. Face white, eyes burning. He would see to it right now that there was no chance of that. He tried not to look at the land as he drove past it on the way home. He wondered just how much campaign literature it had paid for. He wondered if he would ever get used to seeing Claus Hansen putting up his hay over there in that field. He felt so badly about telling Mother that he told it very bluntly. And because he felt so sorry for her he said not one kind word but just sat quiet looking the other way. She was clearing off the table. He heard her scraping out the potato dish with great care. Then she was coming over to him. She came awkwardly, hesitatingly. Her life had not schooled her in meeting emotional moments beautifully. But she laid her hand upon him, patting him on the shoulders one would a child. Never mind Papa, never you mind. It will make it easier for us. There's enough left and it will make it easier. We're getting on. There she broke off abruptly into a vigorous scolding of the dog who was lifting covetous nostrils to a piece of meat. That was all. And there was no woman in the country had worked harder and Martha was ambitious. She liked land and she did not like Claus Hansen's wife. Yes, he had had a good wife. Then there was that other thing to tell her about Fritz. That was harder. Mother had not gone up to the city to hear Fritz speak because her feet were bothering her and she could not wear her shoes. He had had a vague idea of how disappointed she was. Though she'd said very little about it. Martha never had been one to say much about things. When he came back, of course she'd wanted to know all about it and he'd put her off. Now he had to tell her. It was much harder and in the telling of it, he broke down. This time she did not come over and pat his shoulder. Perhaps Martha knew, likely she never heard the word intuition. But anyway, she knew that it was beyond that. It seemed difficult for her to comprehend. She was bewildered to find that Fritz could change parties all in a minute. She seemed to grasp, first of all, that it was disrespectful to his father. Some boys at school had been putting notions into his head. But gradually she began to see it. Fritz wanted to make money. Fritz wanted to have it easier and the other people did have it easier. He divided her feeling, sorry and indignant for the father, secretly glad and relieved for the boy. He will have it easier than we had at papa, she said at the last. But it was not right of Fritz, she concluded vaguely but severely. As she washed the dishes, Martha was thinking that likely Fritz's wife would have a hired girl. Then Martha went up to bed. He said that he would come in a few minutes but many minutes went by while he sat out on the side porch trying to think it out. The moon was shining brightly down on that 160 which Claus Hansen was to have. And the moon too seemed to be saying, what's the use? Well, what was the use? Perhaps after all the boy was right. What had it all amounted to? What was their left? What had he done? Two Americas, Fred had said. And here's but the America of the Dreamers. He had always thought that he was fighting for the real and now Fred said that he had never become an American at all. From the time he was 12 years old, he had wanted to be an American. A queer old man back in the German village. An old man, he recalls strangely now, who had never been in America, told him about it. He told how all men were brothers in America. How the poor and the rich loved each other. Indeed, how there were no poor and rich at all. But the same chance for every man who would work. He told about the marvelous resources of that distant America, gold in the earth, which men were free to go and get. Hundreds upon hundreds of miles of untouched forest and great rivers. All for men to use. Great cities no older than the men who were in them. Which men at that present moment were making every man his equal chance. He told of rich land which men could have for nothing which would be his if he would but go and work upon it. In the heart of the little German boy there was kindled in a fire which the years had never put out. His cheeks grew red, his eyes bright and very deep as he listened to the story. He went home that night and dreamed of going to America. And through the years of his boyhood penny by penny he saved his money for America. It was his dream. It was the passion of his life. More plainly than the events of yesterday he remembered his first glimpse of those wonderful shores, the lump in his throat, the passionate excitement, the uplift leaning over the railing of his boat, staring, searching, penetrating, worshiping. He lifted up his heart and sent out his pledge of allegiance to the new land. How he would love America, work for it, be true to it. He had three dollars and sixty cents in his pocket when he stepped upon American soil. He wondered if any man had ever felt richer. For had he not reached the land where there was an equal chance for every man who would work, where men loved each other as brothers and where the earth itself was so rich and so gracious in its offerings. The old man crossed one leg over the other slowly, stiffly. It made him tired and stiff now just to think of the work he had done between that day and this. But there was something which he had always had. That something was his America. That had never wavered, though he soon learned that between it and realities were many things which were wrong and unfortunate. With the whole force and passion of his nature, with all his single-mindedness. Would some call it simple-mindedness? He threw himself into the fight against those things which were blurring men's vision of his America. No work, no sacrifices too great. For America had enemies who call themselves friends, men who were striking heavy blows at that equal chance for every man. When he failed it was because he did not know enough. He must work, he must study, he must think in order to make more real to other men the America which was in his heart. He must fight for it because it was his. And now it seemed that the end had come. He was old, he was tired, he was not sure. Claus Hanson would have his land and his son would join hands with the things which he had spent his life in fighting. And far deeper and sadder and more bitter than that he had not transmitted the America of his heart even to his own son. He was not leaving someone to fight for it in his stead to win where he had failed. Fred saw in it but a place for gain. I lived all my life with you to learn from failure the value of success. That was what he had given to his boy. Yes, that was what he had bequeathed to America. Could the failure, the futility of his life be more clearly revealed? Twice Martha had called to him but still he sat smoking, thinking. There was much to think about tonight. Finally was not thought but visions. Too tired for conscious thinking he gave himself up to what came. Fred's America, here's America, the America of the dreamers and the things which stood between. The America of the future, what would that America be? At the last taking form from many things which came and went, shaping itself slowly, form giving place to new form. He seemed to see it grow. Out beyond that land Claus Hanson was to have a long way off. There rose the vision of the America of the future, an America of realities and yet an America of dreams. For the dreamers had become the realist or was it that the realities had become dreamers? In the manifold forms taken on and cast aside destroying dualism had made way for the strength and the dignity and harmony of unity. He watched it as breathlessly, as yearningly as the 19-year-old boy had watched the other America taking shape in the distance some 40 years before. How did you come? He whispered. What are you? And the voice of that real America seemed to answer. I came because for a long enough time there were enough men who held me in their hearts. I came because there were men who never gave me up. I was won by men who believed that they had failed. Again there was a lump in his throat. Once more an exultation flooded all his being. For to the old man, tired, stiff, smitten though he had been, there came again that same uplift which long before had come to the boy. Was there not here an answer to what's the use? For he would leave America as he came to it, loving it, believing in it. What were the work and the failure of a lifetime when there was something in his heart which was his? Should he say that he had fought in vain when he had kept it for himself? It was as real, as wonderful, yes as inevitable as it had been 40 years before. Realities had taken his land, his career, his hopes for the boy, but realities had not stripped him of his dream. The futility of the years could not harm the things which were in his heart. Even in America he had not lost his America. Perhaps it is then that it is like that, he murmured, his vision carrying him back to the days of his broken English. Perhaps it is that every man's America is in the inside of his own heart. Perhaps it is that it will come when it has grown big, big and very strong in the hearts. End of His America by Susan Glassville. This recording is in the public domain.