Chapter III (1)

The next morning the postman brought a letter. Mary was not surprised to get it. Casey had gone to look for the "gran' job," and the older children were in school, so the letter could not be read, but she could make out the signature, written in the large, unformed hand where-with Angela had covered every available space in the days of her brief but laborious apprenticeship to the art of writing.

With trembling hand Mary tucked the letter in her bosom, hastily got ready herself and Dewey and the baby, and started for Maggie's. Maggie was younger and had enjoyed more educational advantages. She could "r'ade printin'" easily, and "writin"' fairly well if it hadn't too many flourishes.

"She says," spelled out Mrs. O'Connor, "'Dear Ma, I'm at ---- West Randolph Street I'm sick I'm afraid to go home count of Pa Your Loving daughter Angela Ann Casey.' I'll go wid ye," finished Mrs. O'Connor in the same breath.

Out of her small store of tawdry finery she lent several articles to make Mary "look more drissy," and while they got ready for their momentous journey, Mary related the events of the day before, and of Saturday night.

"Me an' Tim," said Maggie, when the tale had reached the stage of the "parlie" and Mary's earnings as a scrub-woman, "was figgerin' how we could help out a bit, ag'in' she come home, an' Tim have promised t' take me 'n' her to th' theayter quite frayquint of a Sat'day noight, an' together we're goin' t' give her half a dollar ivry wake t' spind on her clo'es."

The number they sought on West Randolph Street was not far from the fateful Haymarket Square. There was a store on the ground floor, with living rooms behind. And above, a long flight of oilcloth-covered stairs led to a "hotel."

They inquired first in the store, but no one there had ever heard of Angela Ann. Then, with fast-beating hearts, the women mounted to the office of the hotel, an inside room facing the head of the first flight of stairs. The door stood open, and they looked, before entering, into a gas-lighted room furnished with yellow-painted wooden arm-chairs ranged along the walls and flanked by a sparser row of cuspidors; a big sheet-iron stove on a square zinc plateau filled the middle of the room, and near the door, behind a small desk like a butcher-store cashier's, sat the "clerk," chewing vigorously and expectorating without accuracy.

"Yes, she has a room here," he answered to Mary's question, "hall room, rear, third floor."

"In a minute!" called Angela Ann's voice when Mary had knocked.

"My God, 'tis hersilf," sobbed Mary, and fell a-weeping violently.

"Ma!" cried Angela Ann, and threw open the door. She had been in bed when they knocked, and had not waited to put on her clothes when she heard her mother's voice. At the touch of her, the clinging clasp of her poor, thin, cold little arms, Mary grew hysterical.

"Don't, Ma, don't," begged Angela.

"She've grieved hersilf sick over ye," said Maggie, unable to forbear this much of a reprimand now that the sinner was found. "Iver since ye wint she've been loike wan crazy. Come, Mary; now ye've got her, brace up!"

"Sure, Ma," echoed the girl, "now ye've got me, brace up, I ain't never goin' t' lave ye no more, Ma--honest t' God, I ain't."

"Wheer ye been?" Mary raised her head, and drawing back from the girl peered anxiously into her face. "In God's name, Ang'la Ann, wheer you been? Tell me ye've kep' dacint, gyurl, tell me ye've kep' dacint!"

Angela sat down on the dingy, disordered bed and began to cry, hiding her face in her hands. For a long moment the silence, save for her soft sobbing, was profound. Then a low moan escaped Mary, a moan of anguish inexpressible, showing how deeply, notwithstanding her resolution of yesterday, she had cherished the hope of her daughter's safety.

Angela raised her head. The pain in her mother's moan was beyond her comprehension, and she could only understand it as horror and condemnation.

"Are ye--are ye--goin' t' t'row me off?"' she asked.

"T'row ye off? Ah, me gyurl, if ye'll on'y stick t' me as long as I'll stick t' you, 'tis all I'll ask o' Hiven! Tis fer yer sake I was prayin' no harm had come t' ye--not fer mine. Whativer happen t' ye, ye're me Ang'la Ann thot I nursed from yer first brith. An' ye don' know all I'm fixin' t' do fer ye--me an' yer pa an' yer Aunt Maggie, here, and yer Uncle Tim----"

And there followed a glowing account of the feast prepared for the prodigal's return.

"Th' idare o' you bein' afraid o' yer pa," chided Mary, "an' him fixin' t' git a stiddy job an' not have ye go downtown no more."

Far shrewder than her mother, Angela Ann did not overestimate this excellent intention of her pa's, but she said nothing of the bitterness that was in her heart on account of his past crimes. It was a long-standing grievance with her that her mother could never, for more than a fleeting, irritated moment at a time, be made to see Casey as others saw him. Angela Ann had been working for him since she was eleven (child-labor laws were lax, then) and giving up her every penny to pay rent and buy insufficient mites of coal and food--just enough to keep them alive and no more--and it was starvation of many sorts that sent her at last into the clutches of them that prey. The girl was full of self-pity, and impatient with her mother because the older woman had forgotten how to rebel.

"Yer pa say, though," added Mary, "thot he won't promise not i' kill the felly thot lid ye away; he've got tur'ble wingeance on him--yer pa have."

Angela Ann smiled grimly. "I guess theer's quite a few pa's lookin' fer him," she said, "but they don't ever seem t' find him."

"Did he prom'se t' marry ye?" asked Mary anxiously.

"I should say not! He promised to make me a primmy donny."

"What's that?" fearfully.

"'Tis a kind of actress that wear tights an' sings," explained Angela. "I'm after r'adin' in books how gran' they be, an' in the papers it tell how the swell fellies do be runnin' after thim with diming necklusses, an' marryin' of 'em. 'Tis all a lie!" she cried shrilly.

"Ye see," Mary could not refrain from reminding her. "I tol' ye thim theayters was all wrong. We kind o' t'ought it might be thim thot got ye, an' yer pa wint t' see this here Halberg, whin we foun' the caard out o' yer pocke'-book. But he said he niver hear tell o' ye."

"Did pa go there?" questioned Angela eagerly. She was all interest to know how the search for her had been carried on, and "did th' p'lice know?" and "how did ye kape it out o' th' papers?"

Yes, it had been Halberg "all the time," she admitted. She had answered his advertisement, and after a week's drill he had sent her, true to his published word, in a "road company" that mitigated the gloom of coal miners' lives by singing and dancing--and carousing--in a circuit of saloons in the soft coal regions of Illinois. When she fell sick, the company abandoned her without the formality of paying her any salary, and a foul-tongued, soft-hearted landlady, whose own young daughter was God knew where, had let Angela stay in her wretched hotel until she was able by dishwashing and lampfilling chores to earn the few dollars to take her back to Chicago.

"But I couldn' get no stren'th back," the girl went on, "an' that woman at th' hotel, Mis' Schlogel, she sez t' me, 'You better go home t' yer ma, that's wheer you better go,' an' she bundled me off Friday mornin'. But I was scairt t' go home right t' wunst till I seen how youse was goin' t' be t' me, so I come here wheer I stayed whin I was studyin' wid O. Halberg, an' Friday night I got awful sick an' laid here all night awake an' burnin' up an' my head achin' t' beat th' band. An' all day Sat'day an' Sunday I wasn't able to go out fer nothin' t' eat, an' th' propri'ter wouldn't order me nothin' sent in fer fear I wouldn't be able t' pay. A woman in the nex' room light-house-keeps, an' she made me tea a couple o' times after she heard I was sick an' alone."

"Why in Hivin's name," Maggie broke in, "did ye niver drap yer ma a line t' say ye were aloive? Ye needn't 'a' tol' wheer ye was, but ye could 'a' said ye were in the land o' th' livin', surely?"

"I was 'shamed," whimpered Angela; "I fought ye wouldn't keer wheer I was if I wasn't doin' dacint."

"Think o' that, now!" cried Mary. "That's all a gyurl do know about her ma. Whin yer a ma yersilf ye'll know better, an' not till thin, I suppose."

Thus was Angela Ann made sure of her welcome home.

"An' not wan but yer own kin know ye've been missin'" said Mary, as she helped the girl to get ready for the return, "so ye kin hol' up yer hid an' look th' world in th' faace. An' may God fergive yer mother the loies she've tol' t' save yer name!"

BORDEN

BY GEORGE C. SHEDD

ILLUSTRATIONS BY WALTER BIGGS

One rainy afternoon I was sitting with my friend Carter, in his log house. Through the open door we could see the road, all cut up by wagon-tracks, running with water; lumps of mud thrust their black heads up in it everywhere; the bordering grass was wet and heavy. And down by the creek the fringe of trees made only a gray blur.

We had talked ourselves pretty near out when a rider splashed up to the door. His ragged beard stuck out stiff, full of rain-drops, and his slouch hat had an unpleasant tilt forward. To Carter's invitation to enter he shook his head, asked if such-and-such a person had passed within the hour, and, receiving an affirmative reply, pulled his hat down tighter and galloped away west. "Who is that?" I inquired.

"That! Why, that's Borden. It's easy to see you're new out here. His hand holds the river from Saint Joe to Omaha, and men think twice before trying to break his grip." He drew out his pipe and tobacco, stuffed the bowl thoughtfully, and struck a match. "If you want to hear about the first time I saw him at work, I'll tell you."

I nodded.

"Eh? Well, this was the way of it":

* * * * *

At the end of the war I settled here--that was five years ago. Borden lived a mile up the creek, and so, as times went, we were neighbors. By the people yonder in Kinton he was not liked, being grim, rough, savage, altogether unsociable and short of word. Besides, they remembered '57. In that year he appeared from no one knew where, took his claim, and proceeded to live after his own fashion. Then the high-handed Claim Club of the village went about it to drive him "in or over the river"--a bad night for them. They rode back to Kinton with three dead men laid across saddles. That was in the rough days of the Territory, the days when men in the Nebraska hills along the Missouri were a law unto themselves.

Once he tied up on his own deck a steamboat captain who was drunk and bent on murder; single-handed he ran down two horse-thieves; and another time he choked the money out of a river-gambler who had robbed a boy. Oh, they knew Borden up and down the river in those days! Then he went to war as one of Thayer's sharpshooters, returning at the end of it to be appointed United States marshal. And he had been riding that saddle six months when I came.

One day he and another pulled rein at my door.

"Come with me," he said abruptly. "I want you to look after this fellow--you're my deputy till further notice." He did not waste time over oaths or official nonsense.

"Now, see here--" the man started to say. But Borden cut him off with a scowl.

"Who is he?" I asked.

"Him?--Fitch. You've heard of him, I guess."

Heard of him, of course, as everyone had; of his sly, petty legal tricks by which he grabbed land here and land there until his titles spotted the country about Nebraska City; of his rent-squeezing that smelled over the whole town; of these, and other things. He was a lean, dark, uneasy fellow, wearing a rumpled tile and a shiny coat, riding all crouched up, and pulling his horse away from everybody we met.

After we started, Borden told me that Fitch had brought him notice to serve on Dempster--old John Dempster, his friend. Now, that made a bad job for the Marshal. I saw it from the way he answered not a word to Fitch, who now and then pressed up--intent on the business--to make him talk. Once Borden pulled out his heavy wrinkled boot from the stirrup and kicked the other's horse in the belly until it reared on its haunches. For Borden was the law's officer, but no man's servant.

Our way ran three miles up from Kinton. There was no road, and we followed along the edge of the bluffs as best we were able, until finally we dipped down into a ravine and so came to our destination. It was a wooded flat on the bank of the river, made by a sudden retreat of the hills--a sort of pocket. The space was not large, a handful of acres, and it looked smaller than it really was. The bluffs curved around it on three sides in a yellow, crumbling wall; on the fourth flowed the muddy waters of the Missouri. The house was in the center of a small clearing, and when we came in sight of it Fitch pulled up behind a small thicket of scrub. Borden, as if he never saw the fellow halt, rode straight up to the door where John Dempster sat shaping an axe-haft.

"Jack," said Borden, swinging down from his saddle, "I've come to have a talk with you."

Dempster shaved the haft a minute, laid it aside, and gazed off toward the clump of scrub. The two men were something alike, though the man seated on the door-sill was the older, both past the prime, both spare of words, both come to the West in the same year. They had lain side by side behind a sleety log before Fort Donelson, and each in his three years of service had felt the touch of hot lead.

"How d'you come--friend or enemy?"

"The first, and always, I hope. It depends on you. Why did you kick him off of here yesterday, Jack? He's full of poison over it."

"Let him keep off then," was the gruff response.

Both looked again at the clump where Fitch could be seen through the thin screen of bushes. After a while Dempster took out his tobacco, cut off a piece, and passed the rest to us.

"You're in a dirty way of business when you're mixed up with him," he said slowly. "An' I 'spose you've come to run me out."

"What's at the bottom of this trouble?" returned Borden, evading the point. "'Tain't the land--what is it he's after?"

Dempster spat. "He's gettin' even. I knocked him down last spring when I was at Nebraska City, for lyin' about--never mind. That's all. So he sneaked around an' hunted out where I live an' filed on the land." A dull fire lighted up under his bushy eyebrows.

"Why didn't you file long ago?"

"Does the gover'ment take away a man's home when he's fought in the war?"

"You know how I feel about it," replied Borden, and he laid his hand on the other's shoulder. "But it's too late for you to try to keep it now. You'd better look up another place."

"No, I'm goin' to stay here, I guess, or nowhere."

Borden knew that the decision was inflexible. As he rose, put his foot in the stirrup, and raised himself into the saddle, he determined, however, to have another try.

"Come and settle up along the creek by me. There's an open claim just beyond mine, better than this piece."

Dempster shook his head; maybe he was thinking of the clearing back in Indiana and the boughs under which he had drawn his first breath, maybe this poor fringe of woods along the river was dearer to him than all the treeless prairie.

"We've lived here near ten years now," he said at last, "the old woman an' Joe--an' me, 'ceptin' when I was at war. I guess if we go, you'll have to use your gun."

"I'm sorry, Jack, but you've got to go. And I give you a week. It's not me that says so, it's the law."

"Law!" answered Dempster, with sudden rising fierceness. "Does the law drive a man off his own?"

It was the law, not justice, that was driving him. Without replying a word, Borden, and I by his side, rode away. When we reached the lean, eager face behind the scrub, the Marshal broke out, "You vulture, keep behind us! If you try to ride even, I'll sink your carcass in the river." And in that order, with him trailing us, we came back to Kinton.

Well, during the next week the more I turned the thing over on my tongue the less I liked the taste of it, but Borden was not one to consider dislikes--neither another man's nor his own--when he was riding the law's saddle. So I resolved to go through with it, and was ready Thursday morning. He came out from Nebraska City, accompanied by six deputies, men he had tried, who would not back off from the mouth of a gun, for he knew the door he must enter that day. Fitch was among them; oh, he was yellow over it! Borden had dragged him along to the whole end of the dirty business. The tale, too, was out among the deputies, and Fitch saw plainly what rope they would have swung him by. Grim looks were his every mile; when he pushed up among them, they crowded his horse to the withers until it hung back from the others; one cursed him fully and foully. They intended that he should earn that bit of ground before the day was done.

In the ravine at the edge of the flat we tied our horses. The men unslung their rifles, hitched their revolvers about, and waited, while Borden went down the hollow to reconnoiter. Perhaps half an hour had passed when he climbed down the bank above our heads and dropped into our midst.

"Quick! The boy's gone for water to the spring. Straight ahead there. No shooting till I give the word."

The men nodded, we filed down the ravine single-file, and the next minute were advancing noiselessly through the trees, spreading out gradually as we crossed the flat toward the clearing where stood the log house. The deputies went ahead, alert, silent, with an eye on Borden, who walked a little before them, each keeping a tree in line with the door.

Perhaps things were no different that morning than they were at any time; yet the little flat seemed possessed of a very great quiet, broken only by the slight swish of our boots through the dry grass. As we neared the cabin, we saw that its windows and door were shut. Fitch, who clung to me as though he found more comfort in my company, occasionally wiped drops of sweat from his yellow forehead, and removed his high hat to let the wind blow through his hair.

The other men went ahead unconcerned enough. One big fellow dropped his gun into the crook of his arm, pulled out a piece of tobacco, and carefully picked the lint off it. When he had had a bite, he tossed it to a comrade, who caught it handily, buried it for a moment under his mustache, and then held up the remnant to the other's sight, grinning. He tossed it back; neither had lost his place in the advancing line.

Fifty yards from the house Borden signaled a halt. Rifle-butts slipped to the ground, and the men leaned with backs against their trees--all except two, who handed their guns to others and veered off towards the bluffs, the direction Borden indicated, to the spring. A brown, grizzled fellow, sheltered behind an elm a few feet from me, turned his attention to Fitch, whom he examined curiously and at leisure, concluding his inspection by spitting his way. Then his look strayed south. After a little he began to sing softly:

The flat-boats 'r in an' the bull-boats 'r a-stoppin'
An' licker runnin' free,--oh, hell is a-poppin'!
Down on the river, down on----

He broke off suddenly, turning his head a little way towards where the two men had entered the bushes, listening. Directly he finished the lines:

Down on the river, down on the river,
Down on the Misser-ee when the boats come in.

The man must have had ears like an Indian's. He folded his arms across the muzzle of his rifle and began watching the bushes that fringed the base of the hill; the other men also were looking that way. A minute passed. All at once a young fellow slipped out from nowhere, running and carrying a full bucket. He was bare-headed, his sleeves rolled to the elbows. He ran a few steps toward the house, quickly slanted off, and kept going, while turning his head this way and that. I saw the cause of his sudden change in direction, for there was one of the deputies running parallel with him, but between him and the door. The second came in sight a minute later, farther down, and from behind a thicket, abreast of the other two. They had the young fellow between them.

The rest of us were strung about before the house in a half-circle, the three runners being on the outside of the circle. Everything was quiet, for Borden's hounds don't hunt with their mouths open. Young Dempster carried his bucket of water with scarcely a slop or a splash; the inner deputy gradually moved out and behind him. Two men at the tail of the line fell away from their trees to meet him--and there he was in a ring. The man nearest me, still leaning on his rifle, gave a cluck of his tongue as if it were all over. But it was not. A shot cracked from the door, and the deputy who was on the outside flipped his hand in the air as if he had been stung. His fingers were all bloody. That was a pretty shot, I tell you; old Jack Dempster ticked the button on his son's shirt to make it, for the men were running breast and breast from the door.

The boy saw the trap he was in. Just as he came even with me, he whirled and took his chance through the line. It was quick--oh, quick as a cat! Three of us met him. But he was in moccasins and light-footed, jumping this way and that, and though my neighbor flung his rifle between his legs, he skipped it and was nearly through. He sprang to one side, leaped at Fitch--the water was splashing now--and swerved past him. Maybe it was the nasty look on his face that made Fitch shoot, anyway the fellow fired his revolver. It did not seem as if he could miss; Joe ran straight for the cabin. Half way there the bucket slipped from his hand; then he began to stagger a little. Near the door he went to his knees and, with a look over his shoulder at us while fumbling for his revolver, crawled behind the chopping-log.

"I got him before he got me," said Fitch, fairly green about the mouth, "He was going to kill me."

Borden took a step toward him, paused for the time of a single breath, whirled around, and was behind his tree. As for the other men, I never want to see such faces as they wore.

After that it seemed to me as if our business had come to a standstill. It was little shelter we had, just a tree apiece. We might as well have been tied to them with cords, for the old man was watching from his lair, and that with his boy's blood red in his eyes, ready to catch us either advancing or retiring. Nor was the young fellow so badly hurt but what he could pull a trigger. And Borden never retired that I ever heard of--that wasn't his way. Any instant I expected to hear a bullet snip the bark on my tree. I never felt so big before or since, big as a hill, and I drew myself together mighty small, I can tell you.

While I was wondering what would come next, Borden stepped out into the open. He walked toward the door, calm and steady, and without particular haste, his revolver in its holster. It all happened so quickly it took me by surprise; the Dempsters, man and boy, must have been struck by it, for not a shot was fired. But to advance that way, to clasp hands with death! Maybe you've heard soldiers tell about charging in the face of cannon, how they felt--I know I felt worse just to see him go straight toward the house. I got dizzy, dizzy sick. Then it had all fallen so still, the little wind in the trees and the leaves stirring over the ground. I looked at the other men, thinking they could somehow change it; the grizzled old chap was chewing his tobacco as fast as he could, and the man with the bloody fingers had finished tying them up in his handkerchief. First thing I knew I was half out from behind my tree, watching him.

"Keep back, Dick Borden," warned the man in the house--I swear his voice shook as he said it--"keep back, or, by God, I'll shoot!"

"I'm coming into that door, Jack Dempster," was Borden's reply.

He never flinched, never stopped. Then the rifle sounded, and, like an echo, the boy's revolver echoed it. Borden was hit--how could they fail at that distance and such a mark? But he managed to win the log where young Dempster lay. He stood there an instant, then slowly sat down upon it. A second time the young fellow lifted his weapon, and every man of us could see the Marshal looking into the muzzle. Orders or no orders, that was too much for even the deputies; the click of their rifle hammers ran along the trees. Borden heard it.

"Don't shoot, men!"

His voice was not loud, but harsh, and keyed high, as if his throat was dry. I think the next sound was a groan from the boy, and his revolver wavered and slipped in his fingers.

"It's the gun you gave me," he said, "an' I can't kill you with it."

Borden turned his head painfully from side to side, saw a stick, bent down laboriously, got it at last, and by its aid raised himself to his feet. That seemed to exhaust him. He stood for a moment, inert and useless, like an old man. Then he began to hoist himself forward step by step to the door. Iron will, just iron, it was. And it was terrible to see him--one shoulder and arm swinging low and limp, his knees lifting high as if knotted with stiffness, his head protruding in intense effort. The distance was short, but long, long for him.

"Keep back! keep back!" cried Dempster. He himself was half out of the door, gripping his gun with one hand, warding the relentless Marshal off with the other.

Borden answered nothing, another step.

"You've got to stop!" begged Dempster. "Don't make me kill you, an' I can't let you in. Go back, go back! We fought together, we marched together, we ate and slept together, Dick--for God's sake, don't come nearer!"

One step at a time, putting his stick forward bit by bit and dragging himself to it with his queer uplifting knees, Borden moved himself ahead. There was something stern and inhuman in this persistence. So it went to the last bitter inch. Then Borden's breast touched the rifle's muzzle. The two men stood looking into each other's eyes, measuring life and death.

That is a minute in my mind forever. The young fellow had dragged himself a little way from behind his log--half-following, fascinated, supporting himself by his two hands--and was staring at them. The empty bucket lay on its side in the sunshine. The wind whined and whined through the trees. And the wife's haggard face peered over Dempster's shoulder in the door.

"I arrest you!"

The stick dropped from his fingers, he clutched at the man's sleeve and fell across the door-sill. All I remember is that we were all crowding about the door, with the boy cursing from the ground behind us for someone to help him. Even Fitch had come, twisting and pushing among the rest.

Borden was white and still, but he came around directly and stared at us a little. We laid him on a blanket outside the door, along with Joe, who carried his lead just below the knee. The Marshal was pretty bad, having a bullet through his collar-bone and another through his side, this one a big ugly hole. There were plenty of us to help, some to cut and to strip their clothes, some to fetch water, some to wash the wounds, some to tear bandages. One had already started south for a doctor. Dempster was on his knees by his old comrade.

"You got the best o' me, Dick; I'll go."

Borden smiled a little. It was good to look at their two faces then.

Fitch, who was rubbing his hands evilly, put in, "Yes, you get off here within an hour. And I'll have the law on you, too, for the kicking you gave me."

One of the men struck him across the mouth.

"Tie him," said Borden, "and hang him."

Well, there was a noisy to-do, the fellow screeching that it was against the law, that he shot the boy for trying to kill him, that it was on his own land, and the like. He kept it up until his screech fell into a quaver, and terror came into his eyes. Borden smiled again at sight of him, this time with lips that made a straight white line.

"The law!" he said, at last. "I am the law."

He let the matter go as far as the rope around the wretch's neck; then it seemed as if Fitch was dead already. No, Borden didn't hang him; he had another idea, the claim. He waited until Fitch had his senses once more and told him he would be taken to Nebraska City and tried for attempted murder. Fitch began to beg, while Borden listened with grim satisfaction. He would let the claim go, he would start down the river, quit the country. The rope was thrown off and Borden ordered him away; and with a sudden fierce oath that made him gasp from pain, Borden swore he would shoot him with his own hand if he caught sight of him again.

Fitch knew that Borden meant what he said, and he wasn't seen again in Nebraska. Six months or so fetched Borden round, and let him into the saddle again. It must be lead in the heart or brain to kill men of his fiber--and Dempster had been shaky with his gun. Things got a little loose while the Marshal was on his back up there in the cabin, but he tightened them up again soon. We'll ride up there some day and see the spot. Yes, the Dempsters have the title to the place now.

THE GLOUCESTER MOTHER

BY SARAH ORNE JEWETT

DECORATION BY WLADYSLAW T. BENDA

When Autumn winds are high
They wake and trouble me,
With thoughts of people lost
A-coming on the coast,
And all the ships at sea.

How dark, how dark and cold.
And fearful in the waves,
Are tired folk who lie not still
And quiet in their graves;--
In moving waters deep,
That will not let men sleep
As they may sleep on any hill;
May sleep ashore till time is old,
And all the earth is frosty cold.--
Under the flowers a thousand springs
They sleep and dream of many things.

God bless them all who die at sea!
If they must sleep in restless waves,
God make them dream they are ashore,
With grass above their graves.

ALCOHOL AND THE INDIVIDUAL

BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, M.D., LL.D.

Some very puzzling differences of opinion about the use of alcoholic beverages find expression. This is natural enough, since alcohol is a very curious drug, and the human organism a very complex mechanism. The effects of this drug upon this mechanism are often very mystifying. Not many persons are competent to analyze these effects in their totality. Still fewer can examine any of them quite without prejudice. But in recent years a large number of scientific investigators have attempted to substitute knowledge for guesswork as to the effects of alcohol, through the institution of definitive experiments. Some have tested its effects on the digestive apparatus; others, its power over the heart and voluntary muscles; still others, its influence upon the brain. On the whole, the results of these experiments are singularly consistent. Undoubtedly they tend to upset a good many time-honored preconceptions. But they give better grounds for judgment as to what is the rational attitude toward alcohol than have hitherto been available.

The traditional rôle of alcohol is that of a stimulant. It has been supposed to stimulate digestion and assimilation; to stimulate the heart's action; to stimulate muscular activity and strength; to stimulate the mind. The new evidence seems to show that, in the final analysis, alcohol stimulates none of these activities; that its final effect is everywhere depressive and inhibitory (at any rate, as regards higher functions) rather than stimulative; that, in short, it is properly to be classed with the anesthetics and narcotics. The grounds for this view should be of interest to every user of alcohol; of interest, for that matter, to every citizen, considering that more than one thousand million gallons of alcoholic beverages are consumed in the United States each year.

I should like to present the new evidence far more fully than space will permit. I shall attempt, however, to describe some of the more significant observations and experiments in sufficient detail to enable the reader to draw his own conclusions. To make room for this, I must deal with other portions of the testimony in a very summary manner. As regards digestion, for example, I must be content to note that the experiments show that alcohol does indeed stimulate the flow of digestive fluids, but that it also tends to interfere with their normal action; so that ordinarily one effect neutralizes the other. As regards the action on the heart, I shall merely state that the ultimate effect of alcohol is to depress, in large doses to paralyze, that organ. These, after all, are matters that concern the physician rather than the general reader.

The effect of alcohol on muscular activity has a larger measure of popular interest; indeed, it is a question of the utmost practicality. The experiments show that alcohol does not increase the capacity to do muscular work, but distinctly decreases it. Doubtless this seems at variance with many a man's observation of himself; but the explanation is found in the fact that alcohol blurs the judgment. As Voit remarks, it gives, not strength, but, at most, the feeling of strength. A man may think he is working faster and better under the influence of alcohol than he would otherwise do; but rigidly conducted experiments do not confirm this opinion. "Both science and the experience of life," says Dr. John J. Abel, of Johns Hopkins University, "have exploded the pernicious theory that alcohol gives any persistent increase of muscular power. The disappearance of this universal error will greatly reduce the consumption of alcohol among laboring men. It is well understood by all who control large bodies of men engaged in physical labor, that alcohol and effective work are incompatible."

It is even questionable whether the energy derived from the oxidation of alcohol in the body can be directly used at all as a source of muscular energy. Such competent observers as Schumberg and Scheffer independently reached the conclusion that it cannot. Dr. Abel inclines to the same opinion. He suggests that "alcohol is not a food in the sense in which fats and carbohydrates are food; it should be defined as an easily oxidizable drug with numerous untoward effects which inevitably appear when a certain minimum dose is exceeded," He thinks that alcohol should be classed "with the more or less dangerous stimulants and narcotics, such as hasheesh, tobacco, etc., rather than with truly sustaining foodstuffs," Some of the grounds for this view will appear presently, as we now turn to examine the alleged stimulating effects of alcohol upon the mental processes.

_Alcohol as a Brain Stimulant_

The celebrated physicist Von Helmholtz, one of the foremost thinkers of the nineteenth century, declared that the very smallest quantity of alcohol served effectively, while its influence lasted, to banish from his mind all possibility of creative effort; all capacity to solve an abstruse problem. The result of recent experiments in the field of physiological psychology convince one that the same thing is true in some measure of every other mind capable of creative thinking. Certainly all the evidence goes to show that no mind is capable of its best efforts when influenced by even small quantities of alcohol. If any reader of these words is disposed to challenge this statement, on the strength of his own personal experience, I would ask him to reflect carefully as to whether what he has been disposed to regard as a stimulant effect may not be better explained along lines suggested by these words of Professor James: "The reason for craving alcohol is that it is an anesthetic even in moderate quantities. It obliterates a part of the field of consciousness and abolishes collateral trains of thought."

The experimental evidence that tends to establish the position of alcohol as an inhibitor and disturber rather than a promoter of mental activity has been gathered largely by German investigators. Many of their experiments are of a rather technical character, aiming to test the basal operations of the mind. Others, however, are eminently practical, as we shall see. The earliest experiments, made by Exner in Vienna so long ago as 1873, aimed to determine the effect of alcohol upon the so-called reaction-time. The subject of the experiment sits at a table, with his finger upon a telegraph key. At a given signal--say a flash of light--he releases the key. The time that elapses between signal and response--measured electrically in fractions of a second--is called the simple or direct reaction-time. This varies for different individuals, but is relatively constant, under given conditions, for the same individual. Exner found, however, that when an individual had imbibed a small quantity of alcohol, his reaction-time was lengthened, though the subject believed himself to be responding more promptly than before.

These highly suggestive experiments attracted no very great amount of attention at the time. Some years later, however, they were repeated by several investigators, including Dietl, Vintschgau, and in particular Kraepelin and his pupils. It was then discovered that, in the case of a robust young man, if the quantity of alcohol ingested was very small, and the tests were made immediately, the direct reaction-time was not lengthened, but appreciably shortened instead. If, however, the quantity of alcohol was increased, or if the experiments were made at a considerable interval of time after its ingestion, the reaction-time fell below the normal, as in Exner's experiments.

Subsequent experiments tested mental processes of a somewhat more complicated character. For example, the subject would place, each hand on a telegraph key, at right and left. The signals would then be varied, it being understood that one key or the other would be pressed promptly accordingly as a red or a white light, appeared. It became necessary, therefore, to recognize the color of the light, and to recall which hand was to be moved at that particular, signal: in other words, to make a choice not unlike that which a locomotive engineer is required to make when he encounters an unexpected signal light. The tests showed that after the ingestion of a small quantity of alcohol--say a glass of beer--there was a marked disturbance of the mental processes involved in this reaction. On the average, the keys were released more rapidly than before the alcohol was taken, but the wrong key was much more frequently released than under normal circumstances. Speed was attained at the cost of correct judgment. Thus, as Dr. Stier remarks, the experiment shows the elements of two of the most significant and persistent effects of alcohol, namely, the vitiating of mental processes and the increased tendency to hasty or incoördinate movements. Stated otherwise, a levelling down process is involved, whereby the higher function is dulled, the lower function accentuated.

Equally suggestive are the results of some experiments devised by Ach and Maljarewski to test the effects of alcohol upon the perception and comprehension of printed symbols. The subject was required to read aloud a continuous series of letters or meaningless syllables or short words, as viewed through a small slit in a revolving cylinder. It was found that after taking a small quantity of alcohol, the subject was noticeably less able to read correctly. His capacity to repeat, after a short interval, a number of letters correctly read, was also much impaired. He made more omissions than before, and tended to substitute words and syllables for those actually seen. It is especially noteworthy that the largest number of mistakes were made in the reading of meaningless syllables,--that is to say, in the part of the task calling for the highest or most complicated type of mental activity.

Another striking illustration of the tendency of alcohol to impair the higher mental processes was given by some experiments instituted by Kraepelin to test the association of ideas, In these experiments, a word is pronounced, and the subject is required to pronounce the first word that suggests itself in response. Some very interesting secrets of the subconscious personality are revealed thereby, as was shown, for example, in a series of experiments conducted last year at Zürich by Dr. Frederick Peterson of New York. But I cannot dwell on these here. Suffice it for our purpose that the possible responses are of two general types. The suggested word being, let us say, "book," the subject may (1) think of some word associated logically with the idea of a book, such as "read" or "leaves"; or he may (2) think of some word associated merely through similarity of sound, such as "cook" or "shook." In a large series of tests, any given individual tends to show a tolerably uniform proportion between the two types of association; and this ratio is in a sense explicative of his type of mind. Generally speaking, the higher the intelligence, the higher will be the ratio of logical to merely rhymed associations. Moreover, the same individual will exhibit more associations of the logical type when his mind is fresh than when it is exhausted, as after a hard day's work.

In Kraepelin's experiments it appeared that even the smallest quantity of alcohol had virtually the effect of fatiguing the mind of the subject, so that the number of his rhymed responses rose far above the normal. That is to say, the lower form of association of ideas was accentuated, at the expense of the higher. In effect, the particular mind experimented upon was always brought for the time being to a lower level by the alcohol.

_The Effect of a Bottle of Wine a Day_

When a single dose of alcohol is administered, its effects gradually disappear, as a matter of course. But they are far more persistent than might be supposed. Some experiments conducted by Fürer are illuminative as to this. He tested a person for several days, at a given hour, as to reaction-time, the association of ideas, the capacity to memorize, and facility in adding. The subject was then allowed to drink two litres of beer in the course of a day. No intoxicating effects whatever were to be discovered by ordinary methods. The psychological tests, however, showed marked disturbance of all the reactions, a diminished capacity to memorize, decreased facility in adding, etc., not merely on the day when the alcohol was taken, but on succeeding days as well. Not until the third day was there a gradual restoration to complete normality; although the subject himself--and this should be particularly noted--felt absolutely fresh and free from after-effects of alcohol on the day following that on which the beer was taken.

Similarly Rüdin found the effects of a single dose of alcohol to persist, as regards some forms of mental disturbance, for twelve hours, for other forms twenty-four hours, and for yet others thirty-six hours and more. But Rüdin's experiments bring out another aspect of the subject, which no one who considers the alcohol question in any of its phases should overlook: the fact, namely, that individuals differ greatly in their response to a given quantity of the drug. Thus, of four healthy young students who formed the subjects of Rüdin's experiment, two showed very marked disturbance of the mental functions for more than forty-eight hours, whereas the third was influenced for a shorter time, and the fourth was scarcely affected at all. The student who was least affected was not, as might be supposed, one who had been accustomed to take alcoholics habitually, but, on the contrary, one who for six years had been a total abstainer.

Noting thus that the effects of a single dose of alcohol may persist for two or three days, one is led to inquire what the result will be if the dose is repeated day after day. Will there then be a cumulative effect, or will the system become tolerant of the drug and hence unresponsive? Some experiments of Smith, and others of Kürz and Kraepelin have been directed toward the solution of this all-important question. The results of the experiments show a piling up of the disturbing effects of the alcohol. Kürz and Kraepelin estimate that after giving eighty grams per day to an individual for twelve successive days, the working capacity of that individual's mind was lessened by from twenty-five to forty per cent. Smith found an impairment of the power to add, after twelve days, amounting to forty per cent.; the power to memorize was reduced by about seventy per cent.

Forty to eighty grams of alcohol, the amounts used in producing these astounding results, is no more than the quantity contained in one to two litres of beer or in a half-bottle to a bottle of ordinary wine. Professor Aschaffenburg, commenting on these experiments, points the obvious moral that the so-called moderate drinker, who consumes his bottle of wine as a matter of course each day with his dinner--and who doubtless would declare that he is never under the influence of liquor--is in reality never actually sober from one week's end to another. Neither in bodily nor in mental activity is he ever up to what should be his normal level.

That this fair inference from laboratory experiments may be demonstrated in a thoroughly practical field, has been shown by Professor Aschaffenburg himself, through a series of tests made on four professional typesetters. The tests were made with all the rigor of the psychological laboratory (the experimenter is a former pupil of Kraepelin), but they were conducted in a printing office, where the subjects worked at their ordinary desks, and in precisely the ordinary way, except that the copy from which the type was set was always printed, to secure perfect uniformity. The author summarizes the results of the experiment as follows:

_A Loss of Ten Per Cent. in Working Efficiency_

"The experiment extended over four days. The first and third days were observed as normal days, no alcohol being given. On the second and fourth days each worker received thirty-five grams (a little more than one ounce) of alcohol, in the form of Greek wine. A comparison of the results of work on normal and on alcoholic days showed, in the case of one of the workers, no difference. But the remaining three showed greater or less retardation of work, amounting in the most pronounced case to almost fourteen per cent. As typesetting is paid for by measure, such a worker would actually earn ten per cent. less on days when he consumed even this small quantity of alcohol."

In the light of such observations, a glass of beer or even the cheapest bottle of wine is seen to be an expensive luxury. To forfeit ten per cent. of one's working efficiency is no trifling matter in these days of strenuous competition. Perhaps it should be noted that the subjects of the experiment were all men habituated to the use of liquor, one of them being accustomed to take four glasses of beer each week day, and eight or ten on Sundays. This heaviest drinker was the one whose work was most influenced in the experiment just related. The one whose work was least influenced was the only one of the four who did not habitually drink beer every day; and he drank regularly on Sundays. It goes without saying that all abstained from beer during the experiment. We may note, further, that all the men admitted that they habitually found it more difficult to work on Mondays, after the over-indulgence of Sunday, than on other days, and that they made more mistakes on that day. Aside from that, however, the men were by no means disposed to admit, before the experiment, that their habitual use of beer interfered with their work. That it really did so could not well be doubted after the experiment.

_The Effect of Beer-drinking on German School-children_

Some doubly significant observations as to the practical effects of beer and wine in dulling the faculties were made by Bayer, who investigated the habits of 591 children in a public school in Vienna. These pupils were ranked by their teachers into three groups, denoting progress as "good," "fair," or "poor" respectively. Bayer found, on investigation, that 134 of these pupils took no alcoholic drink; that 164 drank alcoholics very seldom; but that 219 drank beer or wine once daily; 71 drank it twice daily; and three drank it with every meal. Of the total abstainers, 42 per cent. ranked in the school as "good," 49 per cent. as "fair," and 9 per cent. as "poor." Of the occasional drinkers, 34 per cent. ranked as "good," 57 per cent. as "fair," and 9 per cent. as "poor." Of the daily drinkers, 28 per cent. ranked as "good," 58 per cent. as "fair," and 14 per cent. as "poor." Those who drank twice daily ranked 25 per cent. "good," 58% "fair," and 18 per cent. "poor," Of the three who drank thrice daily, one ranked as "fair," and the other two as "poor." Statistics of this sort are rather tiresome; but these will repay a moment's examination. As Aschaffenburg, from whom I quote them, remarks, detailed comment is superfluous: the figures speak for themselves.

Neither in England nor America, fortunately, would it be possible to gather statistics comparable to these as to the effects of alcohol on growing children; for the Anglo-Saxon does not believe in alcohol for the child, whatever his view as to its utility for adults. The effects of alcohol upon the growing organism have, however, been studied here with the aid of subjects drawn from lower orders of the animal kingdom. Professor C. F. Hodge, of Clark University, gave alcohol to two kittens, with very striking results. "In beginning the experiment," he says, "it was remarkable how quickly and completely all the higher psychic characteristics of both the kittens dropped out. Playfulness, purring, cleanliness and care of coat, interest in mice, fear of dogs, while normally developed before the experiment began, all disappeared so suddenly that it could hardly be explained otherwise than as a direct influence of the alcohol upon the higher centers of the brain. The kittens simply ate and slept, and could scarcely have been less active had the greater part of their cerebral hemisphere been removed by the knife."

_The Development of Fear in Alcoholized Dogs_