Chapter VIII: Part 8

So, as the I. C. trains rush their thousands to work and home again the citizens and breadwinners let their imaginations gallop toward a faraway horizon. And these imaginations came galloping back again and the breadwinners are saddened--by a memory. Yes, they were for a moment rovers, egad! swashbucklers, gentlemen and ladies of fortune free of the rigamarole burdens that keep them on the I. C. treadmill. And now they are again passengers. Going to work. Going home to go to work again tomorrow.

It is easy to think that this is the secret of the sad little grimace the lake brings to the eyes of the train riders.

* * * * *

This discourse is becoming a bit dolorous. But the subject rather requires an andante treatment. The city's press agents will tell you quite another story about the lake--about the "city's playground" and how conducive it is to healthful sport and joyous recreation. But, on the other hand, there is this other side, so to speak, of the lake. For the lake belongs to those familiar things that surprise people into uncomfortable silences.

One could as easily write about the sky in this vein, since the lake, like the sky, challenges the monotony of people's lives with another monotony--the monotony of nature that seems to engulf, obliterate, reduce to puny proportions the routine by which people live and which, fortunately, they delude themselves into admiring.

There is also the question of beauty. This is a delicate issue to introduce into one's daily reading and the reader's pardon is solicited with proper humiliation. And yet, there is a question of beauty, of soul states and aesthetic nuances involved in the consideration of the lake.

Beauty by one definition is the sensatory excitement stirred in people by the rhythm of line, the vibration of color, the play of motion and the surprise of idea. It is usually a saddening effect that beauty produces and perhaps this is because beauty is something like an illumination that while admirable in itself throws into pathetic evidence all the ugly and unbeautiful things of one's life.

In this somewhat involved aesthetic principle there is probably another hint at the causes of the sadness people show when they look at the lake.

* * * * *

Today the lake wears its autumn aspect. Out of the train window one sees a wedge of geese flying south or occasionally a lone bird circling like an endless note over the water. The waves look cold and their symmetrical crisscross makes one think of the chill, lonely nights that beckon outside the coziness of one's home windows.

On summer days the lake is sometimes like a huge lavender leaf veined with gold. Sometimes it becomes festive and wears the awning stripes of cloud and sun. Or it grows serene and reminds one of a superb domesticity--as it lies pointed like a grate, arched like a saucer or the back of a sleeping kitten.

But today its autumn is a bit depressing. It no longer lures toward strange adventure. Instead its grayness seems to say to one, "Stay away--stay away. Hide away in warm houses and warm overcoats. Men are little things--puny things."

It is when one leaves the city and goes to visit or to live in another place where there is no lake that the lake grows y alive in one's mind. One becomes thirsty for it and dreams of it. One remembers it then as something that was almost an essential part of life, like a third dimension. In some way one associates one's day dreams with the lake and falls into thinking that there is something unfinished, sterile about living with no lake at one's elbow.

* * * * *

In a short while, a month or so, the lake will become a stage for melodrama. The people riding on its edge will stare into mists. They will watch the huge mist shapes rolling back and forth over the hidden water. The blue of the sky, the cold sun, the fog and the freezing water will become actors in a great play and the train windows will be little prosceniums inclosing the melodrama of winter.

SERGT. KUZICK'S WATERLOO

"Offhand," said Sergt. Kuzick of the first precinct, "offhand, I can't think of any stories for you. If you give me a little time, maybe I could think of one or two. What you want, I suppose, is some story as I know about from personal experience. Like the time, for instance, that the half-breed Indian busted out of the bridewell, where he was serving a six months' sentence, and snuck home and killed his wife and went back again to the bridewell, and they didn't find out who killed her until he got drunk a year later and told a bartender about it. That's the kind you want, ain't it?"

I said it was.

"Well," said Sergt. Kuzick, "I can't think of any offhand, like I said. There was a building over on West Monroe Street once where we found three bodies in the basement. They was all dead, but that wouldn't make a story hardly, because nobody ever found out who killed them. Let me think awhile."

Sergt. Kuzick thought.

* * * * *

"Do you remember the Leggett mystery?" he inquired doubtfully. "I guess that was before your time. I was only a patrolman then. Old Leggett had a tobacco jar made out of a human skull, and that's how they found out he killed his wife. It was her skull. It come out one evening when he brought his bride home. You know, he got married again after killin' the first one. And they was having a party and the new bride said she didn't want that skull around in her house. Old Leggett got mad and said he wouldn't part with that skull for love or money. So when he was to work one day she threw the skull into the ash can, and when old Leggett come home and saw the skull missing he swore like the devil and come down to the station to swear out a warrant for his wife's arrest, chargin' her with disorderly conduct. He carried on so that one of the boys got suspicious and went out to the house with him and they found the skull in the ash can, and old Leggett began to weep over it. So one of the boys asked him, naturally, whose skull it was. He said it wasn't a skull no more, but a tobacco jar. And they asked him where he'd got it. And he begun to lie so hard that they tripped him up and finally he said it was his first wife's skull, and he was hung shortly afterward. You see, if you give me time I could remember something like that for a story.

* * * * *

"Offhand, though," sighed Sergt. Kuzick, "it's difficult. I ain't got it clear in my head what you want either. Of course I know it's got to be interestin' or the paper won't print it. But interestin' things is pretty hard to run into. I remember one night out to the old morgue. This was 'way back when I started on the force thirty years ago and more. And they was having trouble at the morgue owing to the stiffs vanishing and being mutilated. They thought maybe it was students carryin' them off to practice medicine on. But it wasn't, because they found old Pete--that was the colored janitor they had out there--he wasn't an African, but it turned out a Fiji Islander afterward. They found him dead in the morgue one day and it turned out he was a cannibal. Or, anyway, his folks had been cannibals in Fiji, and the old habit had come up in him so he couldn't help himself, and he was makin' a diet off the bodies in the morgue. But he struck one that was embalmed, and the poison in the body killed him. The papers didn't carry much on it on account of it not bein' very important, but I always thought it was kind of interestin' at that. That's about what you want, I suppose--some story or other like that. Well, let's see.

* * * * *

"It's hard," sighed Sergt. Kuzick, after a pause, "to put your finger on a yarn offhand. I remember a lot of things now, come to think of it, like the case I was on where a fella named Zianow killed his wife by pouring little pieces of hot lead into her ear, and he would have escaped, but he sold the body to the old county hospital for practicin' purposes, and while they was monkeying with the skull they heard something rattle and when they investigated it was several pieces of lead inside rattling around. So they arrested Zianow and got him to confess the whole thing, and he was sent up for life, because it turned out his wife had stabbed him four times the week before he poured the lead into her while she slept, and frightened him so that he did it in self-defense, in a way.

"I understand in a general way what you want," murmured Sergt. Kuzick, "but so help me if I can think of a thing that you might call interestin'. Most of the things we have to deal with is chiefly murders and suicides and highway robberies, like the time old Alderman McGuire, who is dead now, was held up by two bandits while going home from a night session of the council, and he hypnotized one bandit. Yes, sir, you may wonder at that, but you didn't know McGuire. He was a wonderful hypnotist, and he hypnotized the bandit, and just as the other one, who wasn't hypnotized, was searching his pockets McGuire said to the hypnotized bandit, 'You're a policeman, shoot this highwayman.' And the hypnotized one was the bandit who had the gun, and he turned around, as Alderman McGuire said, and shot the other, unhypnotized bandit and killed him. But when he reported the entire incident to the station--I was on duty that night--the captain wouldn't believe it, and tried to argue McGuire into saying it was a accident, and that the gun had gone off accidentally and killed the unhypnotized bandit. But the alderman stuck to his story, and it was true, because the hypnotized bandit told me privately all about it when I took him down to Joliet.

* * * * *

"I will try," said Sergt. Kuzick, "to think of something for you in about a week. I begin to get a pretty definite idea what you want, and I'll talk it over with old Jim, who used to travel beat with me. He's a great one for stories, old Jim is. A man tan hardly think of them offhand like. You give me a week." And the old sergeant sank into his wooden chair and gazed out of the dusty station window with a perplexed and baffled eye.

DEAD WARRIOR

Do you want to see the dead warriors come back, the fallen army come back, crawling out of its million coffins and walking back across the sea and across the prairie; the waxen face of youth come out of its million graves and its uniform hanging from its limp frame? Do you want to see the war dead, the young ones ripped to pieces in the trenches standing like tired beggars at your back door, dead hands and dead eyes and wailing softly: "I was so young. I died so soon. All of us from all the countries who died so soon, we grow lonely on the other side. Ah, my unlived days! My uneaten bread! My uncounted years! They lie in a little corner and nobody comes to them!"

It's a Jewish play called "The Dead Man" and every night in Glickman's Palace Theater on Blue Island Avenue a thousand men and women sit with staring eyes and watch this figure in its grave-clothes come dragging back like a tired beggar, come moaning back with the cry: "My unlived days! My uneaten bread! My uncounted years!"

He stands between Hamlet and Peer Gynt, this strangely motionless one who has thrown the west side into an uproar. There is no drama around him. He is a dead young man in uniform walking slowly, limply through three acts. This is all one remembers--that his eyes were open and unseeing, that his arms hung like a scarecrow's and that the fingers of his hands were curled in and motionless.

* * * * *

They talk to him in the play. The scene is a Jewish village in Poland. The war has ended. Famine, disease and poverty remain. Refugees, dying ones, starving ones, huddle together in the dismantled synagogue. No one knows what has happened. The armies have passed. Flame and blood brightened the sky for a time. Now the little village lies cut off from the world and its people clutch desperately to the hem of life. No news has come. Wanderers stagger down the torn roads with crazy tidings and the old men of the synagogue sit shivering over their prayer books. A world has been blown into fragments and this scene is one of the fragments.

Sholom Ash, who wrote this play, spent a time in villages abroad as a Jewish relief worker and he brought back this scene. A bedlam of despair, a merciless photograph that stares across the footlights for a half-hour. The story begins. There is a village leader in whose veins the will to live still throbs. He exhorts the shivering ones. There will be a wedding. He will give his daughter in marriage. There will be feasting. The dead are dead. The duty of the living ones is to live. Let the old women prepare food and the men will sing. Life will begin over and a new village will be built up.

But the daughter hangs back. She talks of the young man whom she married and who went away to war.

"He is dead, poor child," the father says.

"No, no, he isn't dead. I dreamed he was still alive," she answers.

But the festival starts. The starving ones sing in the broken synagogue. There will be a wedding. Life will begin. But there is something in the ruined doorway. A uniform stands in the doorway. A dark, waxen-faced young man who seems asleep, whose arms hang limp, whose fingers curl in. He comes forward and stands, a terribly idle figure. He is the young man.

* * * * *

They greet him. His bride weeps with joy. His aged mother presses his hands and weeps and murmurs in a whisper: "Oh, how changed he is!" The synagogue shouts and cries its welcome. But the young man's eyes stare and it would seem almost that he is dead. Then he talks. His voice has a lifeless sound, his words are like a child reciting sleepily. There is a gruesome oddity about him. But an old man explains. "They come back like that," he says. "There is one who came back who shrieks all night. And another who cannot remember anything."

Yet how strangely he talks! Of a country from which he has come--on the other side, it lies. Hysterical questions arise. Is there food there, are there houses there, is there milk for children and synagogues in which to pray? There is everything one desires, he says. So the questions rise and the answers come--curious child answers. But why is he so pale and worn if the country whence he comes is so remarkable? Ah, because he was lonely. All who are in this country are like him--lonely for the homes they left so soon. For their people. All who are in the country whence he came sit and remember only the things of the past. Yes, that is all one does in this marvelous country--remember the things of the past, over and over again.

* * * * *

They will go with him. The miser who has hidden away his gold, the widow and her two orphans, the hungry ones and despairing ones--they will all go back with him.

One comes out of the theater with a strange sense of understanding. The dead have spoken to one. It is never to be forgotten. The youth that was ripped to pieces in the trenches reached out his limp arms across a row of west side footlights and left a cry echoing in one's heart: "My unlived days! My uneaten bread! My uncounted years! They lie in a little corner waiting and no one comes to them."

Propaganda? Yes, a curious undertone of propaganda. The war propaganda of the dead, older than the fall of Liege by a hundred centuries. The primitive propaganda of the world mourning for its lost ones.

You will see the play, perhaps. Or you will wait until it is translated some day. But this month the west side is aglow with the genius of Sholom Ash and with the interpretative genius of Aaron Teitelbaum, who plays the dead man in uniform and who directed the production. I know of no performance today that rivals his.

THE TATTOOER

Here the city kind of runs over at the heel and flaunts a seven-year-old straw hat. Babylon mooches wearily along with a red nose dreaming in the sun, and Gomorrah leans against an ash can. It is South State Street below Van Buren. The ancient palaces of mirth and wonder blink with dusty lithographs.

"Long ago," says Dutch, "yeh, long ago it was different. Then people was people. Then life was something. Then the tattooing business was a business. When the old London Musee was next door and everybody knew how to have a good time."

The automatic piano in the penny arcade whangs dolorously into a forgotten tango. The two errand boys stand with their eyes glued on the interiors of the picture slot machines--"An Artist's Model" and "On the Beach at Atlantic City." A gun pops foolishly in the rear and the 3-inch bullseye clangs. In a corner behind the Postal Card Photo Taken in a Minute gallery sits Dutch, the world's leading tattooer. Sample tattoo designs cover the two walls. Dragons, scorpions, bulbous nymphs, crossed flags, wreathed anchors, cupids, butterflies, daggers and quaint decorations that seem the grotesque survivals of the mid-Victorian schools of fantasy. Photographs of famous men also cover the walls--Capt. Constantinus tattooed from head to foot, every inch of him; Barnum's favorites, ancient and forgotten kooch dancers, fire eaters, sword swallowers, magicians and museum freaks. And a two column article from the Chicago Chronicle of 1897, yellowed and framed and recounting in sonorous phrases ("pulchritudinous epidermis" is featured frequently) that the society folk of Chicago have taken up tattooing as a fad, following the lead of New York's Four Hundred, who followed the lead of London's most aristocratic circles; and that Prof. Al Herman, known from Madagascar to Sandy Hook as "Dutch," was the leading artist of the tattoo needle in the world.

Here in his corner, surrounded by the molding symbols and slogans of a dead world, Dutch is rounding out his career--a Silenus in exile, his eyes still bright with the memory of hurdy-gurdy midnights.

"Long ago," says Dutch, and his sigh evokes a procession of marvelous ghosts tattooed from head to toe and capering like a company of debonair totem poles over the cobblestones of another South State Street. But the macabre days are gone. The Barnum bacchanal of the nineties lies in its grave with a fading lithograph for a tombstone. Along with the fall of the Russian empire, the collapse of the fourteen points and the general dethronement of reason since the World's Fair, the honorable art of tattooing has come in for its share of vicissitudes.

"Oh, we still do business," says Dutch. "Human nature is slow to decline and there are people who still realize that if you got a handsome watch what do you want to do to it? Engrave it, ain't it? And if you got a handsome skin, what then? Tattoo, naturally. And we tattoo in seven colors now where it used to be three, and use electricity. Do you think it's crazy? Well, you should see who I used to tattoo in the old days. Read the article on the wall. As for being crazy, what do you say about the man who spends his last 50 cents to get into a baseball game, and gets excited and throws his only hat in the air and loses it, and the man who sits all day and all night with a fishpole on the pier and don't catch any fish? Yes, like I tell the judge who picked us up one day in Iowa, you know how they do sometimes when you follow the carnival. And he asks me why I shouldn't go to jail, and if tattooing ain't crazy, and I says give me three minutes and I prove my case. And I begin with the Romans, and how they was the brightest people we knew, and how they went in for tattooing, and how Columbus was tattooed, and all the sailors that was bright enough to discover America was tattooed, also. Then I say, what if Charlie Ross was tattooed? Would he be lost to-day? And what if he had under his name the word Philadelphia? And in addition to that the date where he was born and his address and so on. Would he be lost then? 'You see,' I says, 'a man can't be tattooed enough for his own good,' and the judge says I win my case."

* * * * *

The automatic piano plays "Over There" and the shooting gallery rifles pop too insistently for a moment. Dutch contemplates a plug of fresh tobacco. Then he resumes. This time a more intimate tale--the story of his romance--a weird, grotesque amour with a gaudy can-can obbligato.

"Long ago," Dutch whispers; "yeh, I knew all the girls. I tattoned them all. And I live in this street for thirty years now. But nobody is interested any more in what used to be. How this street has become different! Ach, it is gone, all gone. Everything. Tattooing hangs on a little. Human nature demand it. But human nature is dying likewise. Yeh, I ask you what would old Barnum say if he should come back and see me sitting here? Me, who was as good any day as Capt. Constantinus? I hate to think what. In those days talent counted. If you could sing or dance or tattoo it meant something. Now what does it mean? Look at the dancers and singers they have, and who is there that tattooes any more? It's all gone to smash, the whole world."

* * * * *

Now amid the popping of the rifles and the tinny whanging of the piano Dutch draws forth a final package. He unwraps a yellowed newspaper. Photographs. One by one he shuffles them out and arranges them on the broken desk as if in some pensive game of solitaire. There is Dutch when he was a boy, when he was a sailor, when he grew up and became a world famous tattooer. There is Dutch surrounded by queens of the Midway, Dutch with his arms debonairly thrown round the shoulders of snake charmers and other bizarre and vanished contemporaries. The photographs are yellowed. They make a curious collection. They make the soulless piano sound a bit softer. A "where are the snows of yesteryear" motif played on a can-can fife.

Finally a modern photo in a folder, unyellowed. A smiling, wholesome faced girl. Here Dutch pauses in his game of solitaire and looks in silence.

"My daughter," he says finally. "I sent her through college. Yeh, she's graduated now and has a fine job. I help her all I can. What? Is she tattooed?"

The world's greatest tattoo artist bristles and glowers at the designs on the walls, frowns at the cupids, nymphs, anchors, dragons and butterflies.

"I should say not," he mutters. "She don't belong in this street, not here. She's got a different life, and I help her all I can and she likes me. No, sir, in this street belongs only those who have a long memory. The new ones should start somewhere else. Not, mind you, that tattooing ain't good enough for anybody. But times have changed."

The piano obliges with "The Blue Danube." A customer saunters in. Dutch is all business. The electricity is switched on. A blue spark crackles. Dutch clears his throat and slaps the customer proudly on the back.

"Only a little more to go," he explains, "all over. Two more ships at sea and three dragons will do the job, Heinie. And then, h'm, you will get a job any day in any side show, I can guarantee you that."

Heinie grins hopefully.

THE THING IN THE DARK

It has the usual Huron street ending. Emergency case. Psychopathic hospital. Dunning. But the landlady talked to the police sergeant. The landlady was curious. She wanted the police sergeant to tell her something. And the police sergeant, resting his chin on his elbow, leaned forward on his high stool and peered through the partition window at the landlady--and said nothing. Or rather, he said: "don't know. That's the way with people sometimes. They get afraid."

This man came to Mrs. Balmer's rooming-house in Huron Street when it was spring. He was a short, stocky man with a leathery face and little eyes. He identified himself as Joseph Crawford, offered to pay $5 a week for a 12 by 12 room on the third floor at the rear end of the long gloomy hallway and arrived the next day at Mrs. Balmer's faded tenement with an equally faded trunk. Nothing happened.

But when Mrs. Balmer entered the room the following morning to straighten it up she found several innovations. There were four kerosene lamps in the room. They stood on small rickety tables, one in each corner. And there was a new electric light bulb in the central fixture. Mrs. Balmer took note of these things with a professional eye but said nothing. Idiosyncrasies are to be expected of the amputated folk who seek out lonely tenement bedrooms for a home.

* * * * *

A week later, however, Mrs. Balmer spoke to the man. "You burn your light all night," said Mrs. Balmer, "and while I have no objection to that, still it runs up the electric light bill."

The man agreed that this was true and answered that he would pay $1 extra each week for the privilege of continuing to burn the electric light all night.

Nothing happened. Yet Mrs. Balmer, when she had time for such things as contemplation, grew curious about the man in the back room. In fact she transferred her curiosity from the Japanese female impersonator on the second floor and the beautiful and remarkably gowned middle-aged woman on the first floor to this man who kept four kerosene lamps and an electric bulb burning all night on the third floor.

For some time Mrs. Balmer was worried over the thought that this man was probably an experimenter. He probably fussed around with things as an old crank does sometimes, and he would end by burning down the house or blowing it up--accidentally.

But Mrs. Balmer's fears were removed one evening when she happened to look down the gloomy hallway and notice that this man's door was open. A gay, festive illumination streamed out of the opened doorway and Mrs. Balmer paid a social call. She found her roomer sitting in a chair, reading. Around him blazed four large kerosene lamps. But there was nothing else to notice. His eyes were probably bad, and Mrs. Balmer, after exchanging a few words on the subject of towels, transportation and the weather, said good-night.

But always after that Mrs. Balmer noticed that the door remained open. Open doors are frequent in rooming-houses. People grow lonely and leave the doors of their cubby holes open. There is nothing odd about that. Yet one evening while Mrs. Balmer stood gossiping with this man in the doorway she noticed something about him that disturbed her. She had noticed it first when she looked in the room before saying hello. Mr. Crawford was sitting facing the portieres that covered the folding doors that partitioned the room. The portieres were a very clever ruse of Mrs. Balmer. Behind them were screwed hooks and these hooks functioned as a clothes-closet.

Mrs. Balmer noticed that Mr. Crawford, as she talked, kept staring at the portieres and watching them and that he seemed very nervous. The next morning, when she was straightening up the room, Mrs. Balmer looked behind the portières. An old straw hat, an old coat, a few worn shirts hung from the hooks. There was nothing else but the folding-door and this was not only locked but nailed up.

When two months had passed Mrs. Balmer had made a discovery. It had to do with the four kerosene lamps and the extra large electric bulb and the portières. But it was an irritating discovery, since it made everything more mysterious than ever in the landlady's mind.

She had caught many glimpses of this man in the back room when he wasn't looking. Of evenings he sat with his door opened and his eyes fastened on the portières. He would sit like that for hours and his leathery face would become gray. His little eyes would widen and his body would hunch up as if he were stiffening. But nothing happened.

Finally, however, Mrs. Balmer began to talk. She didn't like this man Crawford. It made her nervous to catch a glimpse of him in his too-brightly lighted room, sitting hour after hour staring at the portières--as if there was something behind them, when there was nothing behind them except an old hat and coat and shirt. She looked every morning.

But he paid his rent regularly. He left in the morning regularly and always returned at eight o'clock. He was an ideal roomer--except that there never is an ideal roomer--but Mrs. Balmer couldn't stand his lights and his watching the portières. It frightened her.

* * * * *

Screams sometimes sound in a rooming-house. One night--it was after midnight--Mrs. Balmer woke up. The darkened house seemed filled with noises. A man was screaming.

Mrs. Balmer got dressed and called the janitor. There was no doubt in her mind where the noises came from. Some of the roomers were awake and looking sleepily and frightenedly out of their doorways. Mrs. Balmer and the janitor hurried to the back room on the third floor. It was Crawford screaming.

His door was closed, but it opened when the janitor turned the knob. Mr. Crawford was standing in front of the portières in the too-brightly lighted room and screaming. His arms, as if overcoming some awful resistance, shot out, and his hands seized the portières. With the amazing screams still coming from his throat, Mr. Crawford tore crazily at the portières until they ripped from the rod above the folding-door. They came down and the man fell with them. Over him, hanging on the "clothes-closet" hooks, were revealed an old straw hat, an old coat and a worn shirt.

* * * * *

"You see," said Mrs. Balmer to the police sergeant, "he was afraid of something and he couldn't stand the dark. And the portières always frightened him. But the doctor wasn't able to do anything with him. The doctor says there was some secret about it and that Mr. Crawford went crazy because of this secret. The only thing they found out about him was that he used to be a sailor."

AN OLD AUDIENCE SPEAKS

Tired, madam? That is nothing remarkable. So are we, whose faces you see from across the footlights, faces like rows of wilted plants in the gloom of this decrepit theater. We are all very tired.

It is Saturday afternoon. For a little while yesterday there was spring in the streets. But now it has grown cold again. The wind blows. The buildings wear a bald, cheerless look.

What are we tired about? God knows. Perhaps because winter is so long in passing. Or, perhaps, because spring will be so long in passing. Tired of waiting for tomorrow.

So you dance for us. We have paid 50 cents each to see the show. This abominable orchestra is out of tune. The fiddles scrape, the piano makes clattering sounds. And you, madam, are tired. The gay purple tights, the gilded bodice, the sultana's toque, or whatever it is, do not deceive us. Your legs, madam, are not as shapely as they were once. And your body--ah, bodies grow old.

Yes, we are not deceived, madam. You have come to us--last. There were others before us, others reaching far back, to whom you gave your youth. Others for whom you danced when your legs were, perhaps, like two spring mornings, and when your body was, perhaps, like a pretty laugh.

* * * * *

Here are the tired ones. From the South Clark and South State streets bed-houses. The kinds of faces that the smart movie directors hire as "types" for the underworld scenes or the slum scenes.

It is Saturday afternoon and we walked up and down the street, looking at the lithographs outside the decrepit theater fronts. And when it got too cold to walk any farther we dropped in, forking out four bits for the privilege.

And we expect nothing, madam. There will be no great music for us. And what scenery there is behind the footlights will be faded and patched. The jokes will be things that make no one laugh. And the dancers, madam, will be like you. Tired, heavy-faced dancers, whose legs flop, whose bodies bounce while the abominable orchestra plays.

But it is warm where we sit. We half shut our eyes and tired little dreams come to us. And you, madam, going wearily through your steps, are the Joy of Life. Your hoarse voice, singing indecipherable words about dearie and honey and my jazz baby, your sagging shoulders layered with powder and jerking to the music, the rigid, lifeless grin of your cruelly painted lips--these things and the torn, smeared papier-mâché ballroom interior--these are the Joy of Life.

Tired little dreams, worth almost the four bits. Do you remember other audiences, madam? As we remember other dancers? Do you recall the gay, dark glow of ornate auditoriums, and do you remember when you were young and there were many tomorrows? As we do? Oh, dearie, dearie, how mah heart grows weary, waitin' for mah baby for to come back home. Very good, madam. Although the voice is a bit cracked. Now dance. Lumber across the stage in your purple tights, wiggle around in your sultana's toque. That's the baby. And kick your legs at us as you exit. Ah, what a kick! But never mind. It is quite good enough for us. And--it reminds us.

* * * * *

We applaud. Does the noise sound ghastly? What is it we applaud? God knows. But applause is a habit. One applauds in a theater. How does it sound in the wings to you, madam, our applause? Rather meaningless, eh? And not interesting at all? Ah, we forgive you for that, for not feeling a great thrill at our applause. Nevertheless, it is a rather piquant thing, our applause. Considering how cold it is outside, how long winter is in passing. Considering how cheerless the buildings look.

Put on the red ball gown and come out and crack jokes with the hop-headed-looking juvenile lead. Greetings, madam. How marvelous you look in this ball gown! Ah, indeed! You were walking down the street the other day and chanced to meet. Hm, we've heard that joke, but we'll laugh again. Matrimony. I'll tell you what marriage is. A lottery. Yes, we've heard that one, too. Accept our laughter, nevertheless.

Your jokes, madam, are neither young nor refined. But--neither are we. And your wit is somewhat coarse and pointless. But so are we. And your voice is a trifle tired and cracked and loud. But so is our laughter. We are even, quite even, madam. If you were better once, so were we. If you remember sweeter laughter, why we remember more charming jests. Go on, Dolores, our lady of jokes, you're worth the four bits.

* * * * *

Now the street seems a bit colder because it was warmer in the theater. Where do we go from here? Up and down, up and down the old street. A very pleasant afternoon. Spent in laughter and applause. Once there was booze for a nickel and a dime. But it was found necessary to improve the morals of the nation. No booze today.

That is quite a brave photograph of you outside the theater, madam. The Dancing Venus. If we had tears we would shed them. The Dancing Venus, indeed! We smile as you smiled yourself when you saw it for the first time. But--good-by. Master Francois Villon sang it all long ago. Yesterdays, yesterdays, here is a street of yesterdays.

And we, the tired ones, the brutal-faced, bitter-eyed ones, the beaten ones--we walk up and down the cold street, peering at the cheerless buildings. Life takes a long time to pass. But without changing our bitter, brutal faces we bow this afternoon, madam, to the memory of you.

We paid four bits to see you. Our Lady of Jokes, and in this cold, sunless street we grin, we smirk, we leer a salutation to your photograph and the phrase beneath it that laughs mockingly back at us--Oh, Dancing Venus!

MISHKIN'S MINYON

We were discussing vacations and Sammy, who is eleven years old going on twelve, listened nervously to his father. Finally Sammy spoke up:

"I won't go," he bristled. "No, I won't if I gotta tell the conductor I'm under five. I ain't going."

Sammy's father coughed with some embarrassment.

"Sha!" said Feodor Mishkin, removing his attention from the bowl of fruit, "I see it takes more than naturalization papers to change a _landsmann_ from Kremetchuk." And he fastened a humorous eye upon Sammy's father.

"It's like this," continued the Falstaffian one from Roosevelt Road: "In Russia where my friend here, Hershela comes from, that is in Russia of the good old days where there were pogroms and ghettos and _provocateurs_--ah, I grow homesick for that old Russia sometimes--the Jews were not always so honest as they might be. Don't interrupt me, Hershela. My friend here I want to tell a story to is a journalist and he will understand I am no 'antishemite' if I explain how it is that you want your son Sammy to tell the conductor he is under five."

* * * * *

Turning to me Mishkin grinned and proceeded.

"The Jews, as you know, are great travelers," he said. "They have traveled more than all the other peoples put together. And yet, they don't like to pay car fare, in Russia, particular. I can remember my father, who was a good rabbi and a holy man. Yes, but when it came time to ride on the train from one city to another he would fold up his long beard and crawl under the seat.

"It was only on such an occasion that my father would talk to a woman. He would actually rather cut off his right hand than talk to a woman in public that he didn't know. This was because Rabbi Mishkin, my father, was a holy man. But he was not above asking a woman to spread out her skirts so that the inspector coming through the train couldn't see him under the seat.

"Of course, you had to pay the conductors. But a ruble was enough, not ten or twenty rubles like the fare called for. And the conductors were always glad to have Jews ride on their train because it meant a private revenue for them. I remember that the conductors on the line running through Kremetchuk had learned a few words of Yiddish. For instance, when the train would stop at a station the conductor would walk up and down the platform and cry out a few times--_mu kennt_. This meant that the inspector wasn't on the train and you could jump on and hide under the seats. Or if the inspector was on the train the conductor would walk up and down and yell a few times, _Malchamovis_! This is a Hebrew word that means Evil Angel and it was the signal for nothing doing.

"The story I remember is on a train going but of Kiev," said Mishkin. "Years ago it was. I was sitting in the train reading some Russian papers when I heard three old Jews talking. They had long white beards and there were marks on their foreheads from where they laid twillum. Yes, I saw that they were holy men and pretty soon I heard that they were upset about something. You know what? I'll tell you.

"For a religious Jew in the old country to pass an evening without a minyon is a sin. A minyon is a prayer that is said at evening. And to make a minyon there must be ten Jews. And they must stand up when they pray. Of course, if you are somewhere where there are no ten Jews, then maybe it's all right to say it with three or four Jews only.

"So these holy men on the train were arguing if they should have a minyon or not because there were only three of them. But finally they decided after a theological discussion that it would be all right to have the minyon. It was dark already and the train was going fast and the three Jews stood up in their place at the end of the car and began the prayer.

"And pretty soon I began to hear voices. Yes, from under nearly every seat. Voices praying. A mumble-bumble that filled the car. I didn't know what to make of it for a few minutes. But then I remembered. Of course, the car was full of rabbis or at least holy men and they were as usual riding with their beards folded up under the seats.

* * * * *

"So," smiled Mishkin, "the prayer continued and some of the passengers who were listening began to smile. You can imagine. But the three Jews paid no attention. They went on with the minyon. And now, listen, now comes the whole story You will laugh. But it is true. I saw it with my own eyes.

"The prayer, like I told you, must be said standing up. At least it is a sin to say the last part of the prayer, particularly the 'amen,' without standing up. So as the prayer came towards its finish imagine what happened. From under a dozen seats began to appear old Jews with white beards. They crawled out and without brushing themselves off stood up and when the 'amen' finally came there were eleven Jews standing up in a group and praying. Under the seats it was completely vacant.

"And just at this moment, when the 'amen' filled the car, who should come through but the inspector in his uniform with his lantern. When he saw this whole car full of passengers he hadn't seen before he stopped in surprise. And the finish of it was that they all had to pay their fare--extra fare, too.

* * * * *

"It is a nice story, don't you think, Hershela" Mishkin laughed. "It shows a lot of things, but principally it shows that a holy man is a holy man first and that he will sacrifice himself to an inquisition in Madrid or a train inspector in Kiev for the simple sake of saying his 'amen' just as he believed it should be said and just as he wants to say it."

Sammy's father shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't see how what you say has anything to do with what my son said," he demurred. "Sammy looks user more than five and what harm is there in saving $15 if--"

Sammy interrupted with a wail.

"I won't go," he cried. "No, if I gotta tell the conductor I'm under five I better stay home. I don't wanna go. He'll know I'm 'leven going on twelve."

"All right, all right," sighed Sammy's father. "But you see," he added, turning to Mishkin, "it ain't on account of wanting to have a minyon that my son has such high ideas."

SOCIABLE GAMBLERS

"Yes, it do interfere with their game," said Bill Cochran, the deputy sheriff from Tom Freeman's office. He cut himself a slice of chewing tobacco and glanced meditatively out of the window of the Dearborn Street bastile. Whereat he repeated with gentle emphasis, "It do."

A long rain was leaning against the walls of the county jail. A dismal yellowish gloom drifted up and down the street. Deputy Cochran, with an effort, detached his eye from the lugubrious scene of the rain and the day-dark and spoke up brightly.

"But at that," said he, "I don't think their being doomed for to hang can be held entirely responsible for their losing. You see, I've made quite a study of the game o' rhummy, not to mention pinochle and other such games of chance, and if I do say so myself I doubt there's the man in Chicago, doomed for to hang or otherwise, who would find me an easy mark. Still, as I say, in the case of these gentlemen who you refer to--to wit, the doomed men as I have acted as death watch for--it do interfere with their game. There's no denying that."

* * * * *

Now the rain chattered darkly on the grated windows of the Dearborn Street bastile and Deputy Cochran tilted back in his chair and thought pensively and in silence of life and death and high, low, jack and the game.

"They pick me out for the death watch on account I have a way with doomed men," he remarked at last, his voice modestly self-conscious. "Some of the deputies is inclined to get a bit sad, you know. Or to let their nerves go away with them. But me, I feel as the best thing to do in the crisis to which I refer is to make the best of it.

"So when I sit in on the death watch I faces myself with the truth. I says to myself right away: 'Bill, this young feller here is to be hanged by the neck until dead, in a few hours. Which being the case, there's no use wasting any more time or thought on the matter.' So after this self-communication, I usually says to the young feller under observation by the death watch, 'Cheerio, m'lad. Is there anything in particular as you'd like to discuss.'

"I was a bit thick with the Abyssinian prince, Grover Redding, you recall. The man spent the whole time we were with him praying at the top of his voice and singing hymns. Not that I begrudged the fellow this privilege. But if you've ever heard a man who's going to be hanged in a few hours try to pass the time in continual prayers shouted at the top of his voice you'll understand our predicament.

"Then there was Antonio Lopez. I was death watch on him and a difficult task that was. The lad kept up his pretense that he fancied himself a rooster to the very end. He crouched on the chair on his feet and flapped his elbows like as they were wings and emitted rooster calls all night long. I tried to dissuade him and offered to play him any game he wished for any stake. But the only way he could reconcile himself to the approaching fatal dawn was to crow like a rooster. I thought to cheer him up toward the end by congratulating him on his excellent imitations, as I bore him no ill will despite he gave us all a terrible headache before the death march took him away."

* * * * *

Now the rain dropped in long, quick lines outside the window and the pavements below glowed like dark mirrors. Deputy Cochran, however, had become oblivious to the scene. His eyes withdrew themselves from the rain-dark and casually traced themselves over the memories his calling had left him.

"There was Blacky Weed some years ago," he went on. "And Viana, the choir boy. And to come down to more recent incidents, Harry Ward, the 'Lone Wolf.' I played cards with them all and can truthfully say I won most of the games played to which I refer, with the exception of those played with the 'Lone Wolf,' hanged recently, if you recall.

"I will say that the chief trouble with the doomed men as I have engaged in games of chance with is their inability to concentrate. Now cards, to be properly played, requires above all a gift of the ability to concentrate. Recognizing this I have always refused to play for money with the doomed as I have been watch over, saying to them when they pressed the matter, 'No, m'lad. Let's make it just a sociable game for the fun there's in it rather than play for money.'

"There are others not so scrupulous," hinted Deputy Cochran. "Take for instance, the example of the newspaper man as was Eddie Brislane's friend and comforter. He was with him in the cell most of the time before the hanging, and two days before the aforesaid he paid Brislane $50 for a story to be printed exclusively in his paper. Then this newspaper man, which I consider unethical under the circumstances, played Brislane poker, and what with the doomed man's lack of concentration and his inability to take advantage of the turns of the game, therefore, this newspaper man won back his $50 and some few dollars besides.

"As for me, I doubt whether all my card playing with these doomed men, successful though it has been, has ever brought me as much as a half dollar. No, as I said, sociability is the object of these games and all I aim for is to put the doomed man at his ease for the time being."

* * * * *

Deputy Cochian suddenly smiled, although before an impersonal air had marked his discourse.

"There was the 'Lone Wolf,' as I mentioned," he continued. "A cold-blooded feller and a sinner to the end. But he was the best rhummy player as I have ever had the pleasure of matching skill with. Yes, sir, it was his ability for to concentrate. As I said, that is, the prime ability necessary and the 'Lone Wolf' had more concentration than any one I have matched skill with in or out of the jail.

"That was an interesting evening we spent on the death watch for the 'Lone Wolf.' He regaled us for an hour or so telling us how he used to steal motor cars. Yes, sir, whenever the 'Lone Wolf' wanted a new car he just went out and took it. A cold-blooded feller, as I say.

"Then he asked if I would mind playing him a game of rhummy and I answered, 'No, Harry. As you are aware, I am here to oblige. So we got out the deck and Harry insisted upon gambling. 'Make it a dollar a hand,' he said. But I would listen to none of that. We played eight games in all and he beat me six of them. Perhaps I was not at my best that night. But I never played against such a cold-blooded feller. He took a positive joy in winning his games and on the whole acted like a bum winner, making the most of his unusual good luck. I hold no grudge for that, however. But I feel that if we could have continued the play some other time I'd easily have finished him off."

Now the sun was slowly recovering its place and the rain had become a light mist. Deputy Cochran seemed to regard this as a signal for a conclusion.

"Summing the matter all up, pro and con," he offered, "it do interfere with their game a lot. But I lay this to the fact that they all fancy they're going to be reprieved and they keep waiting and listening for an announcement which will save them from the gallows. I've known some of them to lead a deuce thinking it was an ace and vice versa. But at that I can fully recommend a good, sociable game of cards as the best way for a doomed man to pass the few hours before the arrival of the fatal moment."

RIPPLES

It rains. People carry umbrellas. A great financier has promised me an interview. The windows of his club look out on a thousand umbrellas. They bob along like drunken beetles.