Chapter II: A Mendicant Pilgrimage in the East (2)

There was no stove. The Gnome said: “Wife don’t like a stove. She had rather cook the way she learned.” We rolled in the back-log for her and coaxed up the embers. We sat at one side of the hearth. We exchanged boastful adventures. She crawled into the fireplace to nurse the corn-bread and coffee and pork to perfection and place the Dutch oven right.

Have you heard your grandmother speak of the Dutch oven? It is a squat kettle which is set in the embers. When it is hot, the biscuit dough is put in and the lid replaced. Slowly the biscuits become ambrosia. Slowly the watching cook is baked.

The Devil was in my host. By his coaxing hospitality he made it seem natural that a woman deadly sick should serve us. The rest of the family could wait. It did not matter if the tiny one cried and pulled the mother’s skirt. She smote it into silence and fear, then carried it to the black corner where the potato planter herded the rest of the babies, helped by King Log, the walrus-headed.

The Gnome said, “I quit drinking ever since I had that fight I told you about. I don’t dare drink. So I take coffee.”

You should have seen him flooding himself with black coffee, drinking from a yellow bowl. I said to myself: “He will surely turn to the consolation of liquor anon. He will beat his wife again. He will drive his children into the woods. This woman must fight the battle for her offspring till her black-snake hair is white. Or maybe that insane knife will go suddenly into her throat. She may die soon with her hair black,--and red.”

We ate with manly leisure. We were sated. The mother prepared the second meal, and called the group from the black corner. She made ready her own supper. I see her by the fire, the heavy arm shielding her face, the hunched figure a knot of roots,--a palpable mystery about her, making her worthy of a portrait by some new Rembrandt. It is the tragic mystery born of the isolation of the Blue Ridge and the juice of the Indian corn. Let us not forget the weapon with which she fights the flame, the quaint long shovel.

Let us watch her at the table, breaking her corn-bread alone, her puffy eyelids closed, her cheek-bones seeming to cut through the skin. There is something of the eagle in her aspect because of her Roman nose, and her hands moving like talons. It is not corn-bread that she tears and devours. She is consuming her enemies, which are Weariness, Squalor, Flat and Unprofitable Memory, Spiritual Death. She is seeking to forget that the light of the hearthstone that falls on her dirty but beautiful babies is kindled in hell.

The Gnome spoke of his hogs. A Middle West farmer can talk hogs, and the world will admire him the more. But a mediæval swine-herd dare not. It is self-betrayal.

My host grew affectionate, grandfatherly. He told of a solid acre of mica on top of a mountain. He speculated that it was a mile deep. He put a chunk into my pocket for me to carry to Asheville to interest great capitalists. He offered me fifty per cent on the profits. I took out a copy of the _Tree of Laughing Bells_ from my pocket. I reviewed the tale contained in the book, in words I thought the Gnome would understand. Then he read it for himself with the “specs.” He was proud of having learned to read out of the Bible, with no schooling.

He seemed particularly impressed with the length of the journey of the hero of the poem, who flew “to the farthest star of all.” He looked at me with conceited shrewdness. “I played hookey myself, when I was a kid. I rode and walked forty-five miles that day. I was mighty glad to get back to my mammy the day after. I never wanted to run away again.” He shook his pipe at me. “You are just a runaway boy, that’s what you are.”

He said something favorable about me to his wife, in the gnome language. She stood up. She shrilled back a caution. She showed her dirty teeth at him. But there was something he was bursting to tell me. He was essentially too reckless to conceal a secret long, even a life-and-death secret. He began: “I still raise a little corn.”

The Walrus gave a sort of watch-dog bark. The Gnome reluctantly accepted the caution. He pointed sharply to the bed farthest from the black corner of the room.

“That’s for you.”

“Isn’t there a shed or a corn-crib where I can sleep?”

“No, you don’t get out of this house to-night. There aren’t any sheds or cribs.”

I looked helplessly around that single-roomed cabin. Not fear, but modesty, overcame me. I was expected to retire first. But King Log, the Walrus, perceiving my diffidence, set me an example. He rapidly hauled a couch off the porch and tumbled into it, first undressing as far as his underwear. With a quilt almost to his chin, and covering his pretty pink feet, he was a decent spectacle.

Happily I also wore underwear, and was soon under my quilt. I stole a look at the potato planter. I realized that she was the maiden present. Be pleased, O brothers, to observe that she has been aware of her age and state. She has huddled up to the fire, with her back to us; she has hidden her face on her knees. At last she piles ashes on the embers and finds a place in the black corner in the cot full of children. Her father and mother take the cot between.

Next morning was Sunday, a week since Easter. Only when a man has sadly mangled feet, and blood heated by many weeks of adventure, can he find luxury such as I found in the icy stream next morning. The divine rivulet on the far side of the field had been misnamed “Mud Creek.” It was clear as a diamond.

Always carrying a piece of soap in my hip pocket, I was able to take a complete scour. Not content with this (pardon me), I did scrub shirt, socks, underwear, and bandanna. I hung them on the bushes, thanking God for the wind. Taking my before-mentioned credentials from my pocket, I made myself into a gentleman. When I dressed at last, my clothes were a little damp, but I knew that an hour’s walking would put all to rights. As I held the bushes aside I saw a crib-like structure that made me shake more than the damp clothes. Was it a still, or was it not a still?

In my innocence I could not tell. But I remembered the warning, “Don’t go pokin’ round huntin’ stills by the creeks.”

As I hurried to the house my host carelessly appeared from the region of my bathing-place. He was whittling with his historic knife. I suppose he had noted my actions enough to restore his confidence. Anyway, the shame of being unwashed was his only visible emotion. He said, “I always bathe in hot water.”

“So do I, when I am not on the road.”

Still he was abashed. He took an enormous chew of tobacco to vindicate himself.

After breakfast the wife helped the Walrus to drag the cot out of doors. When she was alone on the porch I told her how sorry I was she had been obliged to cook for me. I thanked her for her toil. But she hurried away, without a pause or a glance. She kissed one of those miry faced babies. She walked into the house, leaving me smirking at the hills. She growled something at the host. He came forth. He pointed out the road, over the mountains and far away. He broke off a blossoming apple-sprig and whittled it.

“So you’ve been to Atlanta?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I was there once. What hotel did you use?”

“The Salvation Army.”

“I was in the United States Hotel.”

Still I was stupid. He continued:

“I was there two years.”

He put on his glasses. He threw down the apple-sprig, and, looking over the glasses, he made unhappy each blossom in his own peculiar way. He continued: “I was in the United States Hotel, for making blockade whisky. I don’t make it any more.” He spat again. “I don’t even go fishin’ on Sunday unless--”

He had made up his mind that I was a customer, not a detective.

“Unless what?”

“Unless a visitor wants a mess of fish.”

But I did not want a mess of fish. Repeatedly I offered money for my night’s lodging. This he declined with real pride. _He maintained his one virtue intact._ And so I thought of him, just as I left, as a man who kept his code.

The John Collier brogans were easier that morning, partly because I had something new on my mind, no doubt.

I thought of the Gnome a long time. I thought of the wife, and wondered at her as a unique illustration of the tragic mysteries of the human race. If she screams when seven devils enter into the Gnome, no one outside the house will hear but the apple-tree. If she weeps, only the wind in the chimney will understand. If she seeks justice and the law, King Log, the Walrus, is her uncertain refuge. If she desires mercy, the emperor of that valley, the king above King Log, is a venomous serpent, even the Worm of the Still.

But now the road unwound in glory. I walked away from those serpent-bitten dominions for that time. I was one with the air of the sweet heavens, the light of the ever-enduring sun, the abounding stillness of the forest, and the inscrutable Majesty, brooding on the mountains, the Majesty whom ignorantly we worship.

THE TRAMP’S REFUSAL

On Being Asked by a Beautiful Gipsy to Join her Group of Strolling Players.

LADY, I cannot act, though I admire
God’s great chameleons, Booth-Barret men.
But when the trees are green, my thoughts may be
October-red. December comes again
And snowy Christmas there within my breast
Though I be walking in the August dust.
Often my lone contrary sword is bright
When every other soldier’s sword is rust.
Sometimes, while churchly friends go up to God
On wings of prayer to altars of delight
I walk and talk with Satan, call him friend,
And greet the imps with converse most polite.
When hunger nips me, then at once I knock
At the near farmer’s door and ask for bread.
I must, when I have wrought a curious song
Pin down some stranger till the thing is read.
When weeds choke up within, then look to me
To show the world the manners of a weed.
I cannot change my cloak except my heart
Has changed and set the fashion for the deed.
When love betrays me I go forth to tell
The first kind gossip that too-patent fact.
I cannot pose at hunger, love or shame.
It plagues me not to say: “I cannot act.”
I only mourn that this unharnessed _me_
Walks with the devil far too much each day.
I would be chained to angel-kings of fire.
And whipped and driven up the heavenly way.

THE HOUSE OF THE LOOM

A Story of Seven Aristocrats and a Soap-Kettle.

WITH no sorrow in my heart, with no money in my pocket, with no baggage but a lunch, the most dazzling feature of which was a piece of gingerbread, I walked away from a wind-swept North Carolina village, one afternoon, over the mountain ridges toward Lake Toxaway. I turned to the right once too often, and climbed Mount Whiteside. There was a drop of millions of miles, and a Lilliputian valley below like a landscape by Charlotte B. Coman. I heard some days later that once a man tied a dog to an umbrella and threw him over. Dog landed safely, barking still. Dog was able to eat, walk, and wag as before. But the fate of the master was horrible. Dog never spoke to him again.

Having no umbrella, I retraced my way. I stepped into the highway that circumscribes the tremendous amphitheatre of Cashier’s Valley. I met not a soul till eight o’clock that night. The mountain laurel, the sardis bloom, the violet, and the apple blossom made glad the margins of the splendidly built road; and, as long as the gingerbread lasted, I looked upon these things in a sort of sophisticated wonder.

This was because the gingerbread was given me by a civilized man, to whom John Collier had written for me a letter of introduction: Mr. Thomas G. Harbison, Botanical Collector; American tree seeds a specialty.

Back there by the village he was improving the breed of mountain apples by running a nursery. He was improving the children with a school he taught without salary, and was using the most modern pedagogy. Something in his manner made me say, “You are like a doctor out of one of Ibsen’s plays, only you are optimistic.” Then we talked of Ibsen. He debated art versus science, he being a science-fanatic, I an art-fanatic. He concluded the argument with these words: “You are bound to be wrong. I am bound to be wrong. What is the use of either of us judging the other?” That is not the mountain way of ending a discussion.

For the purposes of the tale, as well as for his own merits, we must praise this civilized man who entertained me a day and a half so well. His mountain cottage was a permanent civilized camp. Without intruding on his privacy, we can show what that means. Cross a few states to the west with me.

Have you watched the camps of the up-to-date visitors, in the oldest parts of Colorado? They begin with tent, axe, blanket, bacon, and frying-pan, as miners do. In ten summers, though they climb as much as the miners, wear uglier boots, and rougher clothes, their tents are highly organized. They are convenient and free from clutter as the best New York flat. The axe has multiplied rustic benches, bridges, shelters. It has made a refrigerator in the stream. The frying-pan has changed into a camp-stove and a box of white granite dishes. The blanket flowers and Mariposa lilies that made the aspen groves celestial have been gathered in jardinières.

Meanwhile, in the big houses of the veteran miners of the villages are the axe, the blanket, and the frying-pan, though their lords have been through half a dozen fortunes since pioneer days. Those houses have the single great advantage of a rich tradition. They seem to grow up out of the ground.

Musing these matters, I munched my gingerbread, walking past sweet waterfalls, groves of enormous cedars, many springs, and one deserted cabin. I was homesick for that great civilized camp, New York, and the sober-minded pursuit of knowledge there.

But civilization lost her battle at twilight, when I swallowed my last gingerbread crumb. Immediately I was in the land beyond the nowhere place, willing to sleep twelve hours by a waterfall, or let the fairies wake me before day. The road went deeper into savagery. I blundered on, rejoicing in the fever of weariness. In the piercing light of the young stars, the house that came at last before me seemed even more deeply rooted in the ground than the oaks around it. What new revelation lies here? Knock, knock, knock, O my soul, and may Heaven open a mystery that will give the traveller a contrite heart.

Let us tell a secret, even before we enter. If, with the proper magic in our minds, we were guests here, a year or a day, we might write the world’s one unwritten epic. All day, in one of these tiny rooms, amid appointments that fill the spirit with the elation of simple things, we would write. At evening we would dream the next event by the fire. The epic would begin with the opening of the door.

There appeared a military figure, with a face like Henry Irving’s in contour, like Whistler’s in sharpness, fantasy, and pride.

“May I have a night’s lodging? I have no money.”

“Come in.... We never turn a man away.”

We were inside. He asked: “What might be your name?” I gave it. He gave his. The circle by the fire did not turn their heads, but presumably I was introduced. One child ran into the kitchen. My host gave me her chair. All looked silently into the great soap-kettle in the midst of the snapping logs.

I have a high opinion of the fine people of the South, and gratefully remember the scattering of gentlefolk so good as to entertain me in their mansions. But in this cottage, with one glance at those fixed, flushed faces, I said: “This is the best blood I have met in this United States.” The five children were night-blooming flowers. There were hints of Doré in the shadow of the father, cast against the log walls of the cabin. He sat on the little stairway. He was a better Don Quixote than Doré ever drew.

I said, “Every middle-aged man I have met in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina has been a soldier, and I suppose you were.”

He looked at me long, as though the obligation of hospitality did not involve conversation. He spoke at last: “I fought, but I could not help it. It was for home, or against home. I fought for this cabin.”

“It is a beautiful cabin.”

He relented a bit. “We have kept it just so, ever since my great-grandfather came here with his pack-mule and made his own trail. I--I hated the war. We did not care anything about the cotton and niggers of the fire-eaters. The niggers never climbed this high.”

I changed the subject. “This is the largest fireplace I have seen in the South. A man could stand up in it.”

He stiffened again. “_This is not the South. This is the Blue Ridge._”

An inner door opened. It was plain the woman who stood there was his wife. She had the austere mouth a wife’s passion gives. She had the sweet white throat of her youth, that made even the candle-flame rejoice. She looked straight at me, with ink-black eyes. She was dumb, like some one struggling to awake.

“Everything is ready,” she said at length to her husband.

He turned to me: “Your supper is now in the kitchen, ‘if what we have is good enough.’” It was the usual formula for hospitality.

I turned to the wife. “My dear woman, I did not know that this was going on. It is not right for you to set a new supper at this hour. I had enough on the road.”

“But you have walked a long way.” Then she uttered the ancient proverb of the Blue Ridge. “‘A stranger needs takin’ care of.’”

In the kitchen there was a cook-stove. Otherwise there was nothing to remind one of the world this side of Beowulf. I felt myself in a stronghold of barbarian royalty.

“Do you do your own spinning and weaving?”

She lifted the candle, lighting a corner. “Here are the cards and the wools.” She held it higher. “There is the spinning wheel.”

“Where is the loom?”

“Up stairs, just by where you will sleep.”

I knew that if there was a loom, it was a magic one, for she was a witch of the better sort, a fine, serious witch, and a princess withal. Her ancestors wore their black hair that simple way when their lords won them by fighting dragons. She was prouder than the pyramids. If the epic is ever written, let it tell how the spinner of the wizard wools did stand to serve the stranger, that being the custom of her house. This was a primitive camp indeed. There was no gingerbread. There was not one thing to remind me of the last table at which I had eaten. But every gesture said, “Good prince, you are far from your court. Therefore, this, our royal trencher, is yours. May you find your way to your own kingdom in peace.” But for a long time her lips were still. She had the spareness of a fertile, toiling mother. And, ah, the motherhood in her voice when she said at last, “My son, you are tired.”

Let the epic tell that, when the stranger returned to the fireplace, a restless, expectant silence settled down upon the circle. There was portent in the hiss of the flames. When I spoke to the children they only stared at me as at a curious shadow. Their lips moved not. The eldest, about seventeen, had inherited, no doubt, his love of strange brewing. He looked sideways into the soap-kettle. I said to myself, “He sees more hippogriffs than steam-engines.” He eyed every move of the circle with restless approval or disapproval. Every chip his little brother threw on the fire seemed to be a symbol of some precious thing sacrificed, every curl of steam seemed to have something to do with the destiny of the house.

He took out of his pocket a monthly magazine. It was the sort that costs ten cents a year. No doubt, had he gone to school to the admirable man who gave me gingerbread, he would have learned to read scientific and technical monthlies. But a magazine of any sort is a terribly intrusive thing at this juncture. The boy, and a sister just a little younger, read in a loud whisper to one another an advertisement they did not want me to hear. At their stage of culture it was impossible to read silently. The advertisement, if I remember, went about this way:--

“Free, free, free! A sewing machine! Send us a two-cent stamp, your name and address, mentioning the name of this magazine. We will tell you how to get an up-to-date sewing machine absolutely free. This offer is good for thirty days.”

They wrote a most unscholarly letter, spelling it aloud. It required their total and united culture to produce it. When the girl returned to the fire, she was provoked by her pride into an astonishing flush. How it set off her temples, with their pattern of azure veins! With her lotus-leaf hands, the hands of Hathor, goddess of love, she cooled her cheeks again and again. There is something of breeding in the very color of blood. Come, brothers of the road, all who travel with me in fancy, will you not join the knighthood of the soap-kettle? Come, ladies in mansions, will you not be one with us? None of you could have gainsaid the maiden-in-chief of the assembly. She wore her homespun as Zenobia, princess of Palmyra, wore her splendors. With her arms around her two gipsy younger sisters she smiled at last into the soap-kettle. When the epic is written, let it use words of marvelling, speaking of her hair, so pale, so electrical, set in a thick, ingenious coronal.

All the little children stood up. “Uncle,” they shouted. Hoofs sounded by the door. A man entered without knocking. When he saw me he became ceremonious as a Mandarin.

“This is a traveller,” said my host.

The messenger indulged in inquiries about my welfare, journey, and destination. My host interrupted.

“How’s mother? We have watched late to know.”

“She is much worse.” And the messenger went on to say that she might not live two days, and the doctor was a careless, indifferent dog, treating her as though she were an ordinary old woman.

“Does he still give her strychnine?”

“He won’t deny it.” The messenger explained that the doctor thought strychnine in small doses was good for old people. The scientist who gave me gingerbread should have been there to champion the doctor. In the eyes of his judges that night he was suspected of poisoning or treating with criminal folly, royalty itself.

The younger doctor was miles away, and might refuse to make the trip. The two loyal sons seemed paralyzed because the time for decision and the time for mourning came together. There were long silences, interrupted by my host repeating in a sort of primitive song, “_I can’t think of anything except my dying mother. I can’t think of anything except mother is going to die._”

At last, with his brother’s consent, the messenger galloped and galloped away, to find his only hope, the younger physician. As the wife gave me the candle, sending me up stairs, I looked back at the family circle.

Helpless grief made every face rigid. I looked again at the eldest daughter. The moving shadows embroidered on her breast intricate symbols of the fair years, passing by in the ghost of tapestry, things that happened in the beginning of the world. Let the epic tell that when the stranger slept there was a magic loom by his bed that wove that history again in valiant colors, showing battles without number, and sieges, and interminable sunny love-tales, and lotus-handed ladies whispering over manuscript things too fine to be told, and ruddy warriors sitting at watch-fires on battlements eternal; and let the epic tell how, in the early dawn, the stranger half awoke, yet saw this tapestry hung round the walls. If one could remember every story for which the pictures stood, he might indeed write the world’s unwritten epic. The last tapestry to be hung changed from gold to black warp and woof upon which was written that because of a treacherous prime minister who served a poisoned wine, the Empress of the White Witches was perishing before her time, and the young wizard, with the counter-spell, was riding night and day, but all the palace knew he would arrive too late.

At breakfast the faces were stolid and white as frost. The father answered me only when I said good-by.

He said he hardly knew whether I had had anything to eat, or whether any one had been good to me. “You just had to take care of yourself.” The son, feeling the demand of hospitality in his father’s voice, walked to the road with me. He asked if I was walking to Asheville.

“Yes, by way of Mount Toxaway and Brevard.”

He told me it was good walking all the way, and added, in a difficult burst of confidence, “I am going to Asheville.”

“Why not come along with me?” I asked. I meant it heartily.

He said he had to take horseback, and then the railway. He had to be there to-morrow.

“What’s the hurry?”

“I have to witness in a whisky case, an internal revenue case.”

He said it like a Spanish Protestant called before the inquisition.

* * * * *

I said to my soul: “These were the revelations of a night and a morning. What deeper troubles were in the House of the Loom that you did not know?”

All through the country there had been that night what is called a black frost. By the roadside it was deep and white as the wool on a sheep. But it left things blighted and black, and destroyed the chances of the fruit-bearing trees. All the way to Mount Toxaway I met scattered mourners of the ill-timed visitation.

But the simple folly of spring was in me, and the strange elation of gratitude. My soul said within itself: “A money-claim has definite limits, but when will you ever discharge your obligation to the proud and the fine in the House of the Loom? You intruded on their grief. Yet they held their guest sacred as their grief.”

PHIDIAS

WOULD that the joy of living came to-day,
Even as sculptured on Athena’s shrine
In sunny conclave of serene design,
Maidens and men, procession flute and feast,
By Phidias, the ivory-hearted priest
Of beauty absolute, whose eyes the sun
Showed goodlier forms than our desires can guess
And more of happiness.

MAN, IN THE CITY OF COLLARS

A Not Very Tragic Relapse into the Toils of the World, and of Finance.

HAVING been properly treated as a bunco man by systematic piety in a certain city further south, I had double-barrelled special recommendations sent to a lofty benevolence in Asheville, from a religious leader of New York, the before-mentioned Charles F. Powlison.

It was with confidence that I bade good-by to the chicken-merchant who drove me into the city. I entered the office of the black-coated, semi-clerical gentleman who had received the Powlison indorsements. My stick pounded his floor. The heels of my brogans made the place resound. But he gave all official privileges. He received me with the fine manly hand-clasp, the glitter of teeth, the pat on the back. He insisted I use the shower bath, writing room, reading table. Then I suggested a conference among a dozen of his devouter workers on the relation of the sense of Beauty to their present notion of Christianity or, if he preferred, a talk on some aspect of art to a larger group.

He took me into his office. He shut the door. He was haughty. He made me haughty. I give the conversation as it struck me. He probably said some smart things I do not recall. But I remember all the smart things I said.

He denounced labor agitators in plain words. I agreed. I belonged to the brotherhood of those who loaf and invite their souls.

He spoke of anarchy. I maintained that I loved the law.

He very clearly, and at length, assaulted Single Tax. I knew nothing then of Single Tax, and thanked him for light. He denounced Socialism. Knowing little about Socialism at that time, I denounced it also, having just been converted to individualism by a man in Highlands.

The religious leader spoke of his long experience with bunco men. I insisted I wanted not a cent from him, I was there to do him good. I had letters of introduction to two men in the city; one of them, an active worker in the organization, had already been in to identify me. A third man was coming to climb Mount Mitchell with me.

He doubted that I was a bona fide worker in his organization. Then came my only long speech. We will omit the speech. But he began to see light. He took a fresh grip on his argument. He said: “There is a man here in Asheville I see snooping around with a tin box and a butterfly net. They call him the state something-ologist. He goes around and--and--_hunts bugs_. But do you want to know what I think of a crank like that?” I wanted to know. He told me.

“But,” I objected, “I am not a scientist. I am an art student.”

He expressed an interest in art. He gave a pious and proper view of the nude in art. It took some time. It was the sort of chilly, cautious talk that could not possibly bring a blush to the cheek of ignorance. I assured him his decorous concessions were unnecessary. I was not expounding the nude.

There was an artist here, and Asheville needed no further instruction of the kind, he maintained. The gentleman had won some blue ribbons in Europe. He painted a big picture (dimensions were given) and sold it for thousands (price was given).

“He is holding the next one, two feet longer each way, for double the money.”

I told him if he felt there was enough art in Asheville, we might do something to popularize the poets.

In reply he talked about literary cranks. He spoke of how Thoreau, with his long hair and ugly looks, frightened strangers who suddenly met him in the woods. I thanked him for light on Thoreau.... But he had to admit that my hair was short.

He suspected I was neither artist nor literary man. I assured him my friends were often of the same opinion.

“But,” he said bitterly, “do you know sir, by the tone of letters I received from Mr. Powlison I expected to assemble the wealth and fashion of Asheville to hear you. I expected to see you first in your private car, wearing a dress-suit.”

I answered sternly, “Art, my friend, does not travel in a Pullman.”

He threw off all restraint. “Old shoes,” he said, “old shoes.” He pointed at them.

“I have walked two hundred miles among the moonshiners. They wear brogans like these.” But his manner plainly said that his organization did not need cranks climbing over the mountains to tell them things.

“Your New York letter did not say you were walking. It said you ‘would arrive.’”

He began to point again. “Frayed trousers! And the lining of your coat in rags!”

“I took the lining of the coat for necessary patches.”

“A blue bandanna round your neck!”

“To protect me from sunburn.”

He rose and hit the table. “And no collar!”

“Oh yes, I have a collar.” I drew it from my hip pocket. It had had a two hundred mile ride, and needed a bath.

“I should like to have it laundered, but I haven’t the money.”

“_Get_ the money.”

“No,” I said, “but I will get a collar.”

I entered a furnishing and tailor shop around the corner. I asked for the proprietor. He showed me collars.

“Two for a quarter?”

“Yes.”

“Now I have here a little brochure I sell for twenty-five cents. In fact it is a poem, well worth the money. I will let you have it for half price, that is, one collar.”

“We are selling collars.”

“I am selling the poem.”

I turned my Ancient Mariner eye on him. I recited the most mesmeric rhymes.

He repeated, “We are selling collars.”

Evidently the eye was out of order. I tried argument.

“Don’t you think I need a collar?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you think this one would fit this shirt?”

“Yes.”

“I renew my offer.”

He sternly put the box away.

So I said, “If I must face my friends in Asheville without this necessary ornament, you shall blush. I have done my duty, and refuse to blush.”

I looked up a scholar from Yale, Yutaka Minakuchi, friend of old friends, student of philosophy, in which he instructed me much, first lending me a collar. He became my host in Asheville. It needs no words of mine to enhance the fame of Japanese hospitality....

And I had a friend in a distant place, whom, for fancy’s sake, we will call the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid. Let him remain a mystery. We will reveal this much. Had he known the truth, he would have sent Greek slaves riding on elephants, laden with changes of raiment. He discerned, at least, that I was in a barbarous land, for at length a long package containing a sword arrived from the court of the Caliph (to speak in parables). I exchanged the weapon at a pawnshop for _money_, all in one bill--_money_--against which I had so many times sworn eternal warfare, which had been my hoodoo in the past, and was destined to be again. But this time, such are the whims of fate, the little while it was with me it brought me only good.

I entered the furnishing store. The proprietor was terribly busy, but my glittering eye was in condition. I persuaded him, by dint of repetition, to show me his collars. I treated him as though we had not met.

“Fifteen cents apiece?”

“Yes.”

“I will take _one_.” I gave the bill. He had to send a boy out for the change. I put the silver in my pocket, and rattled it. He wrapped up the collar, while I studied his cheeks. He blushed like a maid, bless his tender heart, and in his sweet confusion he knew that I knew it.

The streets of Asheville kept shouting to me: “Let us praise Man, when he builds cities, and grows respectable, and cringes to money, and becomes a tailor, and loves collars with all his heart.”

* * * * *

CONFUCIUS

WOULD we were scholars of Confucius’ time
Watching the feudal China crumbling down,
Frightening our master, shaking many a crown,
Until he makes more firm the father sages,
Restoring custom from the earliest ages
With prudent sayings, golden as the sun.
Lord, show us safe, august, established ways,
Fill us with yesterdays.

THE OLD LADY AT THE TOP OF THE HILL

IT was a bland afternoon. I had been crossing a green valley in North Carolina. Every man I passed had that languid leanness slanderously attributed to the hookworm by folk who have no temperament. Yet some bee of industry must have stung these fellows into intermittent effort this morning, yesterday, last week or last year.

Here were reasonably good barns. Here were fences, and good fences at that. Here were mysterious crops, neither cotton nor corn. One man was not ploughing with a mule. No, sir. He was ploughing with a sort of horse....

At last I mounted the northern rim of the circle of steep hills that kept the place as separate from the rest of the world as a Chinese wall. I met her on the crest. She advanced slowly, looking on the ground, leaning at the hips as do the very aged, but not grotesquely. Her primly made dress and sunbonnet were dull dark blue. With her walking-stick she meditatively knocked the little stones from her path. The staff had a T-shaped head. It was the cane Old Mother Hubbard carries in the toy book.

And now she looked up and said with a pleasant start, “Why, good evening, young stranger.”

“Good evening, kind lady.”

“Where have you been, my son?”

“Why, I am following my nose to the end of the world. I have just walked through this enterprising valley.”

She looked into the dust and meditated awhile. Then she said: “It’s getting late. No one has let you in?”

“No one.”

“How about that house by the bridge?” She pointed with her cane.

“The lady said she had a sick child.”

“Nonsense, nonsense. Do you see that little Ardella by that corner of the ploughed field near the house? She don’t run like a sick child.... Did you ask at the next place, the one that has a green porch?” She pointed again with her cane.

“The woman said she had no spare bed.”

“But she has. I slept in it last week.... And that last house before you start up this hill?”

“The woman said she had to take care of saw-mill hands.”

“Did she tell you _that_?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The old lady ruminated again, leaning on her stick. At length she said: “Sit down. I want to tell you something.” There we were, Grandmother and newly adopted grandson, on a big sunlit rock.

I give only the spirit of her words. She discoursed in that precious mountain dialect, so mediæval, so Shakespearean with its surprising phrases that seem at first the slang of a literary clan, till one learns they are the common property of folk that cannot read. It is a manner of speech all too elusive. Would that I had kept a note-book upon it! But somewhat to this intent she spoke, and in a tone gentler than her words:--

“They thought I would never find out about this, or they would not have treated you so. That woman in the last house is my daughter-in-law. She has only two saw-mill hands, and they’re no trouble. That’s my house anyway. It was my mother’s before me. No one dares turn strangers away when I am there. There’s an empty bed up stairs, and another in the hall.”

She turned about and pointed in the direction in which I had been walking. “Just ahead of you, around that clump of trees, is a hospitable family. If they will not take care of you, it is because they have a good excuse. If they cannot take you in, ask no further. Come back to my place, and” (she spoke with a Colonial Dame air) “_I will make you welcome_.”

“What sort of mountaineer is this?” I asked myself. “The hospitality is the usual thing, but the grandeur is exotic.”

We chatted awhile of the sunset. Then I accompanied her to the edge of the hill.

Under her sacred hair her face retained girl-contours. The wrinkles were not too deep. She seemed not to have changed as mothers often do, when, under decades of inevitable sorrow, the features are recarved into the special mask of middle age, and finally into the very different mask of senility. She had yet the authority of Beauty. She wore her white hair with a Quakerish-feminine skill most admirably adapted to that ancient forehead. I divined she had learned that at sixteen. What a long time to be remembering.

We were spirits that at once met and understood. She said: “My son, I have walked all my life across this valley, or up this hill, or toward that green mountain where you are going. I never walked as far as I wanted to. But walking even so short a path makes for consolation.”

Now she laid aside antique grandeur and took on plain vanity.

“Do you know how old I am?”

“About eighty-five.”

“I’m ninety-two years old, young man, and I’m going to live ten years more.”

It was getting late. I said, “I am glad indeed to have met you.”

She answered, “I am sorry my valley has not been kind.”

I ventured to ask, “So it’s _your_ valley?”

I had touched a raw nerve. I was completely shaken by the suddenness of her answer.

“Mine! Mine! Mine!” she shrieked. Kneeling, she beat up the dust of the road with her cane. And then “Mine! Mine! Mine!” shaking her outstretched arms over that amphitheatre, as though she would drag it all to her breast.

She was out of breath and trembling. At length she smiled, and added so quietly it seemed another person. “And they shall not take it away from me.”

I helped her to her feet. She was once more the Martha Washington sort.... I remember her last sentence. In a royal tone, that was three times an accolade, in a motherly tone that was caressing and slow she half-sung the pretty words:--

“Good evening, young man. I wish you well.”

The man at the next house took me in. In the course of the evening he assured me that the old lady did own the valley, and that she ruled it with a rod of iron. The family graveyard was full of heirs who had grown to old age and died of old age hoping in vain to outlive, and to inherit her authority.

WITH A ROSE, TO BRUNHILDE

BRUNHILDE, with the young Norn soul
That has no peace, and grim as those
That spun the thread of life, give heed:
Peace is concealed in every rose.
And in these petals peace I bring:
A jewel clearer than the dew:
A perfume subtler than the breath
Of Spring with which it circles you.

Peace I have found, asleep, awake,
By many paths, on many a strand.
Peace overspreads the sky with stars.
Peace is concealed within your hand.
And when at night I clasp it there
I wonder how you never know
The strength you shed from finger-tips:
The treasure that consoles me so.

Begin the art of finding peace,
Beloved:--it is art, no less.
Sometimes we find it hid beneath
The orchards in their springtime dress:
Sometimes one finds it in oak woods,
Sometimes in dazzling mountain-snows;
In books, sometimes. But pray begin
By finding it within a rose.

LADY IRON-HEELS[3]

I

THE SEVEN SUSPICIONS

ONE Saturday in May I was hurrying from mountainous North Carolina into mountainous Tennessee. Because of my speed and air of alarm, I was followed by the Seven Suspicions. I was either a revenue detective in pursuit of moonshiners, or a moonshiner pursued by revenue detectives, or a thief hurrying out of hot territory, or a deputy sheriff pursuing a thief, or a pretended non-combatant hurrying toward a Tennessee feud, actually an armed recruit, or I had just killed my family’s hereditary enemy and was eluding his avengers, or I had bought some moonshine whisky and was trying to get out of a bad region before nightfall. These suspicions implied that the inhabitants admired me. Yet I hurried.

I came upon one article of my creed, the very next day, Sunday. But Saturday was a season of panic, preparation, and trial.

The article of my creed that I won as my reward might be stated in this fashion: “_Peace is to be found, even in a red and bleeding rose._”

I was accustomed to the feudist and the assassin. Such people had been good to me, and I had walked calmly through their haunts. But now the smothering landscape seemed to double every natural fear. The hills were so steep and so close together that only the indomitable corn and rye climbed to the top to see the sun. The road was in the bed of a scolding rivulet. People in general travelled horseback. Cross-logs for those afoot bridged high above the streams every half mile. There was a primeval something about the heavy chains of the cross-logs, binding them to the trees, that suggested the forgotten beginning of an iron people, some harsh iron-willed Sparta. This impression was strengthened by the unpainted dwellings, hunched close to the path, with thick walls to resist siege.

What first fixed these outlaws here, as in a nest, with a ring of houseless open country round them? A traveller was more shut from the horizon than in the slums of Chicago. The road climbed no summits. It writhed like a snake. And there were snakes sunning themselves on every other cross-log. _And there was never a flower to be seen._

An old woman, kindly enough, gave this beggar a noon-meal for the asking, but the landscape had struck into me so I almost feared to eat the bread. For this fear I sternly blamed my perverse imagination. Refreshed in body only, I crept like a fascinated fly, dragged by occult force toward a spider’s den. I felt as though I had reached the very heart of the trap when I stepped into the streets of the profane village of Flagpond, Tennessee.

It was early in the afternoon. The feudal warriors had come to the place on horseback, dressed in poverty-stricken Saturday finery: clothes tight and ill-dyed, with black felt hats that should have slouched, but did not. The immaculate rims stood out in queer precision. The wearers sat in front of the three main stores, looking across the street at one another. Since there was no woman in sight, every one knew that the shooting might begin at any time. The silence was deadly as the silence of a plague. I checked my pace. I ambled in a leisurely way from store to store, inquiring the road to Cumberland Gap, the distance to Greenville, and the like. I was on the other side of the circle of dwellings pretty soon, followed by the Seven Suspicions, shot from about seventy-five lean countenances, which makes about five hundred and twenty-five suspicions.

One of the most indescribable and haunting things of that region was that all the women and children were dressed in a certain dead-bone gray.

About four o’clock I had made good my escape. I had begun to mount rolling, uninhabited hills. At twilight I entered a plain, and felt a new kind of civilization round me. It would have been shabby in Indiana. Here it was glorious. They had whitewashed fences, and white-painted cottages, glimmering kindly through the dusk. Some farm machinery was rusting in the open. I climbed a last year’s straw-stack, and slept, with acres of stars pouring down peace.

II

THE TAILOR AND THE FLORIST

Now the story begins all over again with the episode of the well-known tailor and the unknown florist. Just off the main street of Greenville, Tennessee, there is a log cabin with the century old inscription, ANDREW JOHNSON, TAILOR. That sign is the fittest monument to the indomitable but dubious man who could not cut the mantle of the railsplitter to fit him. I was told by the citizens of Greenville that there was a monument to their hero on the hill. So I climbed up. It was indeed wonderful--a weird straddling archway, supporting an obelisk. The archway also upheld two flaming funeral urns with buzzard contours, and a stone eagle preparing to screech. There was a dog-eared scroll inscribed, “His faith in the people never wavered.” Around all was, most appropriately, a spiked fence.

But I was glad I came, because near the Tailor’s resting-place was a Florist’s grave, on which depends the rest of this adventure, and which reaches back to the beginning of it. It had a wooden headstone, marked “John Kenton of Flagpond, Florist. 1870-1900.” And in testimony to his occupation, a great rosebush almost hid the inscription. Any man who could undertake to sell flowers in Flagpond might have it said of him also, “His faith in the people never wavered.”

And now in my tramping the spirit of John Kenton, or some other Florist, seemed to lead me. My season of panic, preparation, and trial was over. It was indeed Sunday on this planet for awhile. I passed bush after bush of the same sort as that marking Kenton’s place of sleep. The sight of them was all that I had to give me strength till noon. I had had neither breakfast nor supper. People would have fed this poor tramp, but I love sometimes the ecstasy that comes with healthy fasting. And now that I reflect upon it, it was indeed appropriate that the Religion of the Rose should begin with abstinence.

I have burdened you further back with an elaborate description of the landscape of Flagpond. Now that landscape was repeated with the addition of roses. And what a difference they made! They quenched the Seven Suspicions. They made gray dresses seem rather tolerable. On either side loomed the steepest cornfields yet, but they did not make me tremble now.

At noon I turned aside where a log cabin on stilts, leaning against its own chimney, stood astride a little gully. It was about as big as a dove-cote. Straggling rose-hedges led to the green-banked spring at the foot of a ladder that took the place of steps. The old lady that came to the door was a dove in one respect only; she was dressed in gray.

She was drawn to the pattern of the tub-like peasants of the German funny paper _Simplicissimus_. I told her my name was Nicholas. She took it for granted that I wanted my dinner, and asked me up the ladder without ado. She did an unusual thing. She began to talk family affairs. “You must be kin to Lawyer Nicholas of Flagpond.... He defended my son ten years ago ... in a trial for murder.”

I said: “I am no kin to Lawyer Nicholas, but I hope he won his case.”

“No. My son is in the state’s prison for life.... He surely killed Florist Kenton.” But she added, as if it nullified all guilt, “they were both drunk.”

She was busy cooking at the open fireplace. She turned to the boy, about ten years old. “Call your Ma and your Aunt to dinner.” He climbed the steep and shouted. Presently two figures came over the ridge. The larger woman took the boy’s hand.

“_That’s my daughter-in-law, the boy’s mother_,” said Mrs. Simplicissimus.

I judged the second figure to be a woman of about twenty-eight. She carried a fence-rail on her shoulder. She was straight as an Indian. The old woman said: “_That’s my daughter. She was going to marry John Kenton._” The only influences that could have induced a mountain-woman to unburden so much, were the roses, just outside the door, leaping in the wind.

The procession soon reached us. The wood-carrier threw the log into the yard. “There’s firewood,” she sang. She vaulted over the fence, displaying iron-heeled brogans, thick red stockings, and a red-lined skirt. There was a smear of earth on cheek and chin. Her face was a sunburned, dust-mired roseleaf. She swept off her hat. She bowed ironically. She said: “Howdy. What might be your name?”

I did not tell my name.

She fell on her knees. She drank from her hands at the spring. I could feel the cold water warring with the sunshine in her sinews. She would never have done with splashing eyelids and ears, and cheeks and red arms and throat. The rosebushes behind her leaped in the wind. The boy and his mother and the grandmother knelt at that same place and splashed after that same manner. Then the grandmother nudged me.

“Wash,” she said.

I washed.

We climbed into that dove-cote block-house on stilts. We ate like four plough-horses and a colt. We consumed corn-bread and fat pork, then corn-bread and beans, then corn-bread and butter. I ate supper, breakfast, and dinner in three quarters of an hour.

III

A BRIEF SIESTA