Chapter V (2)

Among other things, we have to thank them for some diaries and autobiographies which have been notable for frank self-revelation. Henry Adams would of course have stoutly denied that any such impertinence as self-revelation was either intended or achieved in the _Education_. There is no evidence that he ever kept a diary (all things considered, the burden of proof is not on us!); but it is not to be supposed that he would have published it in any case. A man who regarded himself as of no more significance than a chance deposit on the surface of the world might indeed write down an intimate record of his soul's doings as an exercise in cosmic irony; but the idea of publishing it could hardly have lived for a moment in the lambent flame of his own sardonic humor. He could be perverse, but perversity could not well go the length of perpetrating so pointless a joke as that would come to.

No, Henry Adams would not reveal himself to the curious inspection of an unsympathetic world; but he would write a book for the purpose of exposing a dynamic theory of history, than which nothing could well be more impersonal or unrevealing. With a philosophy of history the Puritan has always been preoccupied; and it was the major interest of Henry Adams throughout the better part of his life. He never gained more than a faint idea of any intelligible philosophy, as he would himself have readily admitted; but after a lifetime of hard study and close thinking, the matter struck him thus:

Between the dynamo in the gallery of machines and the engine-house
outside, the break of continuity amounted to abysmal fracture for a
historian's objects. No more relation could he discover between the
steam and the electric current than between the Cross and the
cathedral. The forces were interchangeable if not reversible, but he
could see only an absolute _fiat_ in electricity as in faith.

In these two forces the secret must lie, since for centuries faith had ruled inexorably, only to be replaced by electricity which promised to rule quite as inexorably. To find the secret was difficult enough; but

any schoolboy could see that man as a force must be measured by
motion, from a fixed point. Psychology helped here by suggesting a
unit--the point of history when man held the highest idea of himself
as a unit in a unified universe. Eight or ten years of study had led
Adams to think he might use the century 1150-1250, expressed in Amiens
Cathedral and the Works of Thomas Aquinas, as the unit from which he
might measure motion down to his own time, without assuming anything
as true or untrue except relation.... Setting himself to the task, he
began a volume which he mentally knew as "Mont-Saint-Michel and
Chartres: a Study in Thirteenth-Century Unity." From that point he
proposed to fix a position for himself, which he could label: "The
Education of Henry Adams: a Study in Twentieth-Century Multiplicity."
With the help of these two points of relation, he hoped to project his
lines forward and backward indefinitely, subject to correction from
anyone who should know better. Thereupon, he sailed for home.

You are to understand, therefore, that the _Education of Henry Adams_ has nothing to do really with the person Henry Adams. Since the time of Rousseau,

the Ego has steadily tended to efface itself, and, for purposes of
model, to become a manikin, on which the toilet of education is to be
draped in order to show the fit or misfit of the clothes. The object
of study is the garment, not the figure.... The manikin, therefore,
has the same value as any other geometrical figure of three or four
dimensions, which is used for the study of relation. For that purpose
it cannot be spared; it is the only measure of motion, of proportion,
of human condition; it must have the air of reality; it must be taken
for real; it must be treated as though it had life. Who knows? Perhaps
it had.

Whether it had life or not is, however, of no importance. The manikin is to be treated impersonally; and will be indicated throughout in the third person, not as the author's ego, but as a kind of projected and animated geometrical point upon which cosmic lines of force impinge!

It turns out that the manikin had life after all--a good deal of it; with the effect that as you go on you become more concerned with the manikin than with the clothes, and at last find yourself wholly absorbed with an ego more subtle and complex, at times more exasperating, yet upon the whole more engaging, and above all more pervasive, than you are likely to come upon in any autobiography of modern times. It is really wonderful how the clothes fall away from the manikin, how with the best effort at draping they in fact refuse to be put on at all. The reason is simple; for the constant refrain of the study is that no clothes were ever found. The manikin is therefore always in evidence for lack of covering, and ends by having to apologize for its very existence. "To the tired student, the idea that he must give it up [the search for philosophy-clothes] seemed sheer senility. As long as he could whisper, he would go on as he had begun, bluntly refusing to meet his creator with the admission that the creation had taught him nothing except that the square of the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle might for convenience be taken as equal to something else." On his own premises, the assumption that the manikin would ever meet his creator (if he indeed had one), or that his creator would be concerned with his opinion of the creation, is gratuitous. On his own premises, there is something too much of the ego here. The _Education of Henry Adams_, conceived as a study in the philosophy of history, turns out in fact to be an _Apologia pro vitâ suâ_, one of the most self-centered and self-revealing books in the language.

The revelation is not indeed of the direct sort that springs from frank and insouciant spontaneity. Since the revelation was not intended, the process is tortuous in the extreme. It is a revelation that comes by the way, made manifest in the effort to conceal it, overlaid by all sorts of cryptic sentences and self-deprecatory phrases, half hidden by the protective coloring taken on by a sensitive mind commonly employing paradox and delighting in perverse and teasing mystification. One can never be sure what the book means; but taken at its face value the _Education_ seems to be the story of a man who regarded life from the outside, as a spectator at the play, a play in which his own part as spectator was taken by a minor character. The play was amusing in its absurdity, but it touched not the spectator, Henry Adams, who was content to sit in his protected stall and laugh in his sleeve at the play and the players--and most of all at himself for laughing. Such is the implication; but I think it was not so. In the _Mont-Saint-Michel_[17] Adams speaks of those young people who rarely like the Romanesque. "They prefer the Gothic.... No doubt, they are right, since they are young: but men and women who have lived long and are tired--who want rest--who have done with aspirations and ambitions--_whose life has been a broken arch_--feel this repose and self-restraint as they feel nothing else." The _Education_ is in fact the record, tragic and pathetic underneath its genial irony, of the defeat of fine aspirations and laudable ambitions. It is the story of a life which the man himself, in his old age, looked back upon as a broken arch.

[Footnote 17: _Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres_, p. 7. [Author's note.]]

One is not surprised that a man of Henry Adams's antecedents should take life seriously; but no sane man, looking upon his career from the outside, would call it a failure. Born into a family whose traditions were in themselves a liberal education, Henry Adams enjoyed advantages in youth such as few boys have. It was at least an unusual experience to be able, as a lad, to sit every Sunday "behind a President grandfather, and to read over his head the tablet in memory of a President great-grandfather, who had 'pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor' to secure the independence of his country." This to be sure might not have been an advantage if it led the lad to regard the presidency as a heritable office in the family; but it was certainly a great deal to be able to listen daily, at his father's table, to talk as good as he was "ever likely to hear again." This was doubtless one of the reasons why he got (or was it only that it seemed so to him in his old age?) so little from Harvard College; but at any rate he graduated with honors, and afterwards enjoyed the blessed boon of two care-free years of idling and study in Germany and Italy. For six years, as private secretary to his father on one of the most difficult and successful diplomatic missions in the history of his country, he watched history in the making, and gained an inside knowledge of English politics and society such as comes to one young man in ten thousand. Returning to America, he served for a time as editor of the _North American_, and was for seven years a professor of history in Harvard College. During the last thirty-five years of his life, he lived alternately in Washington and Paris. Relieved of official or other responsibility, he travelled all over the world, met the most interesting people of his generation, devoted himself at leisure to the study of art and literature, philosophy and science, and wrote, as an incident in a long life of serious endeavor, twelve or fifteen volumes of history which by common consent rank with the best work done in that field by American scholars.

By no common standard does such a record measure failure. Most men would have been satisfied with the life he lived apart from the books he wrote, or with the books he wrote apart from the life he lived. Henry Adams is commonly counted with the historians; but he scarcely thought of himself as one, except in so far as he sought and failed to find a philosophy of history. It is characteristic that in the _Education_ he barely mentions the _History of the United States_. The enterprise, which he undertook for lack of something better, he always regarded as negligible--an episode in his life to be chronicled like any other. But it is safe to say that most of us who call ourselves historians, with far less justification, would be well content if we could count, as the result of a lifetime of effort, such a shelfful of volumes to our credit. The average professor of history might well expect, on less showing, to be chosen president of the Historical Association; in which case the prospect of having to deliver a presidential address might lead him to speculate idly in idle moments upon the meaning of history; but the riddle of existence would not greatly trouble his sleep, nor could it be said of him, as Henry Adams said of himself, that "a historical formula that should satisfy the conditions of the stellar universe weighed heavily upon his mind." He would live out the remnant of his days, an admired and a fêted leader in the scholar's world, wholly unaware that his life had been a cosmic failure.

* * * * *

It is not likely that many readers will see the tragedy of a failure that looks like success, or miss the philosophy-clothes that were never found. And indeed we may all be well content with the doings of this manikin that turns out to be so lively an ego. Henry Adams was worth a wilderness of philosophies. Perhaps we should have liked the book better if he could have taken himself more frankly, as a matter of course, for what he was--a man of wide experience, of altogether uncommon attainments, of extraordinarily incisive mental power; and if, resting on this assumption, he had told us more directly, as something we should like to know, what he had done, what people he had met and known, what events he had shared in or observed, and what he thought about it all. This he does do of course, in his own enigmatic way, in the process of explaining where and how he sought education and failed to find it; and fortunately, in the course of the leisurely journey, he takes us into many by-paths and shows us, by the easy play of his illuminating intelligence, much strange country, and many people whom we have never known, or have never known so intimately. When this happens, when the manikin forgets itself and its education-clothes, and merely describes people or types of mind or social customs, the result is wholly admirable. There are inimitable passages, and the number is large, which one cannot forget. One will not soon forget the young men of the Harvard class of '58, who were "_negative to a degree that in the end became positive and triumphant_"; or the exquisitely drawn portrait of "Madame President," all things considered the finest passage in the book; or the picture of old John Quincy Adams coming slowly down-stairs one hot summer morning and with massive and silent solemnity leading the rebellious little Henry to school against his will; or yet the reflections of the little Henry himself (or was it the reflection of an older Henry?), who recognized on this occasion "that the President, though a tool of tyranny, had done his disreputable work with a certain intelligence. He had shown no temper, no irritation, no personal feeling, and had made no display of force. Above all, he had held his tongue."...

The number of passages one would wish to quote is legion; but one must be content to say that the book is fascinating throughout--particularly perhaps in those parts which are not concerned with the education of Henry Adams. Where this recondite and cosmic problem is touched upon, there are often qualifications to be made. The perpetual profession of ignorance and incapacity seems at times a bit disingenuous; and we have to do for the most part, not with the way things struck Adams at the time, but with the way it seemed to him, as an old man looking back upon the "broken arch," they should have struck him. Besides, in the later chapters, in which he deals with the dynamic theory of history, the problem was so vague, even to himself, that we too often do not know what he wishes to convey. Apropos of the Chicago Fair, which like everything else in his later years linked itself to the business of the dynamo and the Virgin, he says: "Did he himself quite know what he meant? Certainly not! If he had known enough to state his problem, his education would have been completed at once." Is this the statement of a fact, or only the reflection of a perversity? We do not know. Most readers, at all events, having reached page 343, will not be inclined to dispute the assertion. Yet we must after all be grateful for this meaningless philosophy of history (the more so perhaps since it is meaningless); for without it we should never have had either the _Mont-Saint-Michel_ or _The Education of Henry Adams_--"books which no gentleman's library" need contain, but which will long be read by the curious inquirer into the nature of the human heart.

Henry Adams lies buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington. The casual visitor might perhaps notice, on a slight elevation, a group of shrubs and small trees making a circular enclosure. If he should step up into this concealed spot, he would see on the opposite side a polished marble seat; and placing himself there he would find himself facing a seated figure, done in bronze, loosely wrapped in a mantle which, covering the body and the head, throws into strong relief a face of singular fascination. Whether man or woman, it would puzzle the observer to say. The eyes are half closed, in reverie rather than in sleep. The figure seems not to convey the sense either of life or death, of joy or sorrow, of hope or despair. It has lived, but life is done; it has experienced all things, but is now oblivious of all; it has questioned, but questions no more. The casual visitor will perhaps approach the figure, looking for a symbol, a name, a date--some revelation. There is none. The level ground, carpeted with dead leaves, gives no indication of a grave beneath. It may be that the puzzled visitor will step outside, walk around the enclosure, examine the marble shaft against which the figure is placed; and, finding nothing there, return to the seat and look long at the strange face. What does he make of it--this level spot, these shrubs, this figure that speaks and yet is silent? Nothing--or what he will. Such was life to Henry Adams, who lived long, and questioned seriously, and would not be content with the dishonest or the facile answer.

THE STRUGGLE FOR AN EDUCATION[18]

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

[Footnote 18: From _Up from Slavery_, by Booker T. Washington. Copyright, 1900, 1901, by Doubleday, Page & Co. By permission.]

One day, while at work in the coal-mine, I happened to overhear two miners talking about a great school for coloured people somewhere in Virginia. This was the first time that I had ever heard anything about any kind of school or college that was more pretentious than the little coloured school in our town.

In the darkness of the mine I noiselessly crept as close as I could to the two men who were talking. I heard one tell the other that not only was the school established for the members of my race, but that opportunities were provided by which poor but worthy students could work out all or a part of the cost of board, and at the same time be taught some trade or industry.

As they went on describing the school, it seemed to me that it must be the greatest place on earth, and not even Heaven presented more attractions for me at that time than did the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia, about which these men were talking. I resolved at once to go to that school, although I had no idea where it was, or how many miles away, or how I was going to reach it; I remembered only that I was on fire constantly with one ambition, and that was to go to Hampton. This thought was with me day and night.

After hearing of the Hampton Institute, I continued to work for a few months longer in the coal-mine. While at work there, I heard of a vacant position in the household of General Lewis Ruffner, the owner of the salt-furnace and coal-mine. Mrs. Viola Ruffner, the wife of General Ruffner, was a "Yankee" woman from Vermont. Mrs. Ruffner had a reputation all through the vicinity for being very strict with her servants, and especially with the boys who tried to serve her. Few of them had remained with her more than two or three weeks. They all left with the same excuse: she was too strict. I decided, however, that I would rather try Mrs. Ruffner's house than remain in the coal-mine, and so my mother applied to her for the vacant position. I was hired at a salary of $5 per month.

I had heard so much about Mrs. Ruffner's severity that I was almost afraid to see her, and trembled when I went into her presence. I had not lived with her many weeks, however, before I began to understand her. I soon began to learn that, first of all, she wanted everything kept clean about her, that she wanted things done promptly and systematically, and at the bottom of everything she wanted absolute honesty and frankness. Nothing must be sloven or slipshod; every door, every fence, must be kept in repair.

I cannot now recall how long I lived with Mrs. Ruffner before going to Hampton, but I think it must have been a year and a half. At any rate, I here repeat what I have said more than once before, that the lessons that I learned in the home of Mrs. Ruffner were as valuable to me as any education I have ever gotten anywhere since. Even to this day I never see bits of paper scattered around a house or in the street that I do not want to pick them up at once. I never see a filthy yard that I do not want to clean it, a paling off of a fence that I do not want to put it on, an unpainted or unwhitewashed house that I do not want to paint or whitewash it, or a button off one's clothes, or a grease-spot on them or on a floor, that I do not want to call attention to it.

From fearing Mrs. Ruffner I soon learned to look upon her as one of my best friends. When she found that she could trust me she did so implicitly. During the one or two winters that I was with her she gave me an opportunity to go to school for an hour in the day during a portion of the winter months, but most of my studying was done at night, sometimes alone, sometimes under someone whom I could hire to teach me. Mrs. Ruffner always encouraged and sympathized with me in all my efforts to get an education. It was while living with her that I began to get together my first library. I secured a dry-goods box, knocked out one side of it, put some shelves in it, and began putting into it every kind of book that I could get my hands upon, and called it my "library."

Notwithstanding my success at Mrs. Ruffner's I did not give up the idea of going to the Hampton Institute. In the fall of 1872 I determined to make an effort to get there, although, as I have stated, I had no definite idea of the direction in which Hampton was, or of what it would cost to go there. I do not think that any one thoroughly sympathized with me in my ambition to go to Hampton unless it was my mother, and she was troubled with a grave fear that I was starting out on a "wild-goose chase." At any rate, I got only a half-hearted consent from her that I might start. The small amount of money that I had earned had been consumed by my stepfather and the remainder of the family, with the exception of a very few dollars, and so I had very little with which to buy clothes and pay my travelling expenses. My brother John helped me all that he could, but of course that was not a great deal, for his work was in the coal-mine, where he did not earn much, and most of what he did earn went in the direction of paying the household expenses.

Perhaps the thing that touched and pleased me most in connection with my starting for Hampton was the interest that many of the older coloured people took in the matter. They had spent the best days of their lives in slavery, and hardly expected to live to see the time when they would see a member of their race leave home to attend a boarding-school. Some of these older people would give me a nickel, others a quarter, or a handkerchief.

Finally the great day came, and I started for Hampton. I had only a small, cheap satchel that contained what few articles of clothing I could get. My mother at the time was rather weak and broken in health. I hardly expected to see her again, and thus our parting was all the more sad. She, however, was very brave through it all. At that time there were no through trains connecting that part of West Virginia with eastern Virginia. Trains ran only a portion of the way, and the remainder of the distance was travelled by stagecoaches.

The distance from Malden to Hampton is about five hundred miles. I had not been away from home many hours before it began to grow painfully evident that I did not have enough money to pay my fare to Hampton. One experience I shall long remember. I had been travelling over the mountains most of the afternoon in an old-fashioned stage-coach, when, late in the evening, the coach stopped for the night at a common, unpainted house called a hotel. All the other passengers except myself were whites. In my ignorance I supposed that the little hotel existed for the purpose of accommodating the passengers who travelled on the stage-coach. The difference that the colour of one's skin would make I had not thought anything about. After all the other passengers had been shown rooms and were getting ready for supper, I shyly presented myself before the man at the desk. It is true I had practically no money in my pocket with which to pay for bed or food, but I had hoped in some way to beg my way into the good graces of the landlord, for at that season in the mountains of Virginia the weather was cold, and I wanted to get indoors for the night. Without asking as to whether I had any money, the man at the desk firmly refused to even consider the matter of providing me with food or lodging. This was my first experience in finding out what the colour of my skin meant. In some way I managed to keep warm by walking about, and so got through the night. My whole soul was so bent upon reaching Hampton that I did not have time to cherish any bitterness toward the hotel-keeper.

By walking, begging rides both in wagons and in the cars, in some way, after a number of days, I reached the city of Richmond, Virginia, about eighty-two miles from Hampton. When I reached there, tired, hungry, and dirty, it was late in the night. I had never been in a large city, and this rather added to my misery. When I reached Richmond, I was completely out of money. I had not a single acquaintance in the place, and, being unused to city ways, I did not know where to go. I applied at several places for lodging, but they all wanted money, and that was what I did not have. Knowing nothing else better to do, I walked the streets. In doing this I passed by many food-stands where fried chicken and half-moon apple pies were piled high and made to present a most tempting appearance. At that time it seemed to me that I would have promised all that I expected to possess in the future to have gotten hold of one of those chicken legs or one of those pies. But I could not get either of these, nor anything else to eat.

I must have walked the streets till after midnight. At last I became so exhausted that I could walk no longer. I was tired, I was hungry, I was everything but discouraged. Just about the time when I reached extreme physical exhaustion, I came upon a portion of a street where the board sidewalk was considerably elevated. I waited for a few minutes, till I was sure that no passers-by could see me, and then crept under the sidewalk and lay for the night upon the ground, with my satchel of clothing for a pillow. Nearly all night I could hear the tramp of feet over my head. The next morning I found myself somewhat refreshed, but I was extremely hungry, because it had been a long time since I had had sufficient food. As soon as it became light enough for me to see my surroundings I noticed that I was near a large ship, and that this ship seemed to be unloading a cargo of pigiron. I went at once to the vessel and asked the captain to permit me to help unload the vessel in order to get money for food. The captain, a white man, who seemed to be kind-hearted, consented. I worked long enough to earn money for my breakfast, and it seems to me, as I remember it now, to have been about the best breakfast that I have ever eaten.

My work pleased the captain so well that he told me if I desired I could continue working for a small amount per day. This I was very glad to do. I continued working on this vessel for a number of days. After buying food with the small wages I received there was not much left to add to the amount I must get to pay my way to Hampton. In order to economize in every way possible, so as to be sure to reach Hampton in a reasonable time, I continued to sleep under the same sidewalk that gave me shelter the first night I was in Richmond. Many years after that the coloured citizens of Richmond very kindly tendered me a reception at which there must have been two thousand people present. This reception was held not far from the spot where I slept the first night I spent in that city, and I must confess that my mind was more upon the sidewalk that first gave me shelter than upon the reception, agreeable and cordial as it was.

When I had saved what I considered enough money with which to reach Hampton, I thanked the captain of the vessel for his kindness, and started again. Without any unusual occurrence I reached Hampton, with a surplus of exactly fifty cents with which to begin my education. To me it had been a long, eventful journey; but the first sight of the large, three-story, brick school building seemed to have rewarded me for all that I had undergone in order to reach the place. If the people who gave the money to provide that building could appreciate the influence the sight of it had upon me, as well as upon thousands of other youths, they would feel all the more encouraged to make such gifts. It seemed to me to be the largest and most beautiful building I had ever seen. The sight of it seemed to give me new life. I felt that a new kind of existence had now begun--that life would now have a new meaning. I felt that I had reached the promised land, and I resolved to let no obstacle prevent me from putting forth the highest effort to fit myself to accomplish the most good in the world.

As soon as possible after reaching the grounds of the Hampton Institute, I presented myself before the head teacher for assignment to a class. Having been so long without proper food, a bath, and change of clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favourable impression upon her, and I could see at once that there were doubts in her mind about the wisdom of admitting me as a student. I felt that I could hardly blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless loafer or tramp. For some time she did not refuse to admit me, neither did she decide in my favour, and I continued to linger about her, and to impress her in all the ways I could with my worthiness. In the meantime I saw her admitting other students, and that added greatly to my discomfort, for I felt, deep down in my heart, that I could do as well as they, if I could only get a chance to show what was in me.

After some hours had passed, the head teacher said to me: "The adjoining recitation-room needs sweeping. Take the broom and sweep it."

It occurred to me at once that here was my chance. Never did I receive an order with more delight. I knew that I could sweep, for Mrs. Ruffner had thoroughly taught me how to do that when I lived with her.

I swept the recitation-room three times. Then I got a dusting-cloth and I dusted it four times. All the woodwork around the walls, every bench, table, and desk, I went over four times with my dusting-cloth. Besides, every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner in the room had been thoroughly cleaned. I had the feeling that in a large measure my future depended upon the impression I made upon the teacher in the cleaning of that room. When I was through, I reported to the head teacher. She was a "Yankee" woman who knew just where to look for dirt. She went into the room and inspected the floor and closets; then she took her handkerchief and rubbed it on the woodwork about the walls, and over the table and benches. When she was unable to find one bit of dirt on the floor, or a particle of dust on any of the furniture, she quietly remarked, "I guess you will do to enter this institution."

I was one of the happiest souls on earth. The sweeping of that room was my college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination for entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine satisfaction. I have passed several examinations since then, but I have always felt that this was the best one I ever passed.

ENTERING JOURNALISM[19]

JACOB A. RIIS

[Footnote 19: From _The Making of an American_, by Jacob A. Riis. Copyright, 1901, by The Outlook Co. Copyright, 1901, by The Macmillan Co. By permission of Mrs. Jacob A. Riis and of the publishers.]

When at last I got well enough to travel, I set my face toward the east, and journeyed on foot through the northern coal regions of Pennsylvania by slow stages, caring little whither I went, and earning just enough by peddling flat-irons to pay my way. It was spring when I started; the autumn tints were on the leaves when I brought up in New York at last, as nearly restored as youth and the long tramp had power to do. But the restless energy that had made of me a successful salesman was gone. I thought only, if I thought at all, of finding some quiet place where I could sit and see the world go by that concerned me no longer. With a dim idea of being sent into the farthest wilds as an operator, I went to a business college on Fourth Avenue and paid $20 to learn telegraphing. It was the last money I had. I attended the school in the afternoon. In the morning I peddled flat-irons, earning money for my board, and so made out.

One day, while I was so occupied, I saw among the "want" advertisements in a newspaper one offering the position of city editor on a Long Island City weekly to a competent man. Something of my old ambition stirred within me. It did not occur to me that city editors were not usually obtained by advertising, still less that I was not competent, having only the vaguest notions of what the functions of a city editor might be. I applied for the job, and got it at once. Eight dollars a week was to be my salary; my job, to fill the local column and attend to the affairs of Hunter's Point and Blissville generally, politics excluded. The editor attended to that. In twenty-four hours I was hard at work writing up my then most ill-favored bailiwick. It is none too fine yet, but in those days, when every nuisance crowded out of New York found refuge there, it stunk to heaven.

Certainly I had entered journalism by the back door, very far back at that, when I joined the staff of the _Review_. Signs of that appeared speedily, and multiplied day by day. On the third day of my employment I beheld the editor-in-chief being thrashed down the street by an irate coachman whom he had offended, and when, in a spirit of loyalty, I would have cast in my lot with him, I was held back by one of the printers with the laughing comment that that was his daily diet and that it was good for him. That was the only way any one ever got any satisfaction or anything else out of him. Judging from the goings on about the office in the two weeks I was there, he must have been extensively in debt to all sorts of people who were trying to collect. When, on my second deferred pay-day, I met him on the stairs, propelled by his washerwoman, who brought her basket down on his head with every step he took, calling upon the populace (the stairs were outside the building) to witness just punishment meted out to him for failing to pay for the washing of his shirts, I rightly concluded that the city editor's claim stood no show. I left him owing me two weeks' pay, but I freely forgive him. I think I got my money's worth of experience. I did not let grass grow under my feet as "city editor." Hunter's Point had received for once a thorough raking over, and I my first lesson in hunting the elusive item and, when found, making a note of it.

Except for a Newfoundland pup which some one had given me, I went back over the river as poor as I had come. The dog proved rather a doubtful possession as the days went by. Its appetite was tremendous, and its preference for my society embarrassingly unrestrained. It would not be content to sleep anywhere else than in my room. If I put it out in the yard, it forthwith organized a search for me in which the entire neighborhood was compelled to take part, willy-nilly. Its manner of doing it boomed the local trade in hair-brushes and mantel bric-à-brac, but brought on complications with the landlord in the morning that usually resulted in the departure of Bob and myself for other pastures. Part with him I could not; for Bob loved me. Once I tried, when it seemed that there was no choice. I had been put out for perhaps the tenth time, and I had no more money left to provide for our keep. A Wall Street broker had advertised for a watch-dog, and I went with Bob to see him. But when he would have counted the three gold pieces he offered into my hand, I saw Bob's honest brown eyes watching me with a look of such faithful affection that I dropped the coins as if they burned, and caught him about the neck to tell him that we would never part. Bob put his huge paws on my shoulders, licked my face, and barked such a joyous bark of challenge to the world in general that even the Wall Street man was touched.

"I guess you are too good friends to part," he said. And so we were.

We left Wall Street and its gold behind to go out and starve together. Literally we did that in the days that followed. I had taken to peddling books, an illustrated Dickens issued by the Harpers, but I barely earned enough by it to keep life in us and a transient roof over our heads. I call it transient because it was rarely the same two nights together, for causes which I have explained. In the day Bob made out rather better than I. He could always coax a supper out of the servant at the basement gate by his curvetings and tricks, while I pleaded vainly and hungrily with the mistress at the front door. Dickens was a drug in the market. A curious fatality had given me a copy of "Hard Times" to canvass with. I think no amount of good fortune could turn my head while it stands in my bookcase. One look at it brings back too vividly that day when Bob and I had gone, desperate and breakfastless, from the last bed we might know for many days, to try to sell it and so get the means to keep us for another twenty-four hours.

It was not only breakfast we lacked. The day before we had had only a crust together. Two days without food is not good preparation for a day's canvassing. We did the best we could. Bob stood by and wagged his tail persuasively while I did the talking; but luck was dead against us, and "Hard Times" stuck to us for all we tried. Evening came and found us down by the Cooper Institute, with never a cent. Faint with hunger, I sat down on the steps under the illuminated clock, while Bob stretched himself at my feet. He had beguiled the cook in one of the last houses we called at, and his stomach was filled. From the corner I had looked on enviously. For me there was no supper, as there had been no dinner and no breakfast. To-morrow there was another day of starvation. How long was this to last? Was it any use to keep up a struggle so hopeless? From this very spot I had gone, hungry and wrathful, three years before when the dining Frenchmen for whom I wanted to fight thrust me forth from their company. Three wasted years! Then I had one cent in my pocket, I remembered. To-day I had not even so much. I was bankrupt in hope and purpose. Nothing had gone right; nothing would ever go right; and, worse, I did not care. I drummed moodily upon my book. Wasted! Yes, that was right. My life was wasted, utterly wasted.

A voice hailed me by name, and Bob sat up looking attentively at me for his cue as to the treatment of the owner of it. I recognized in him the principal of the telegraph school where I had gone until my money gave out. He seemed suddenly struck by something.

"Why, what are you doing here?" he asked. I told him Bob and I were just resting after a day of canvassing.

"Books!" he snorted. "I guess they won't make you rich. Now, how would you like to be a reporter, if you have got nothing better to do? The manager of a news agency down town asked me to-day to find him a bright young fellow whom he could break in. It isn't much--$10 a week to start with. But it is better than peddling books, I know."

He poked over the book in my hand and read the title. "Hard Times," he said, with a little laugh, "I guess so. What do you say? I think you will do. Better come along and let me give you a note to him now."

As in a dream, I walked across the street with him to his office and got the letter which was to make me, half-starved and homeless, rich as Croesus, it seemed to me. Bob went along, and before I departed from the school a better home than I could give him was found for him with my benefactor. I was to bring him the next day. I had to admit that it was best so. That night, the last which Bob and I spent together, we walked up and down Broadway, where there was quiet, thinking it over. What had happened had stirred me profoundly. For the second time I saw a hand held out to save me from wreck just when it seemed inevitable; and I knew it for His hand, to whose will I was at last beginning to bow in humility that had been a stranger to me before. It had ever been my own will, my own way, upon which I insisted. In the shadow of Grace Church I bowed my head against the granite wall of the gray tower and prayed for strength to do the work which I had so long and arduously sought and which had now come to me; the while Bob sat and looked on, saying clearly enough with his wagging tail that he did not know what was going on, but that he was sure it was all right. Then we resumed our wanderings. One thought, and only one, I had room for. I did not pursue it; it walked with me wherever I went: She was not married yet. Not yet. When the sun rose, I washed my face and hands in a dog's drinking-trough, pulled my clothes into such shape as I could, and went with Bob to his new home. That parting over, I walked down to 23 Park Row and delivered my letter to the desk editor in the New York News Association, up on the top floor.

He looked me over a little doubtfully, but evidently impressed with the early hours I kept, told me that I might try. He waved me to a desk, bidding me wait until he had made out his morning book of assignments; and with such scant ceremony was I finally introduced to Newspaper Row, that had been to me like an enchanted land. After twenty-seven years of hard work in it, during which I have been behind the scenes of most of the plays that go to make up the sum of the life of the metropolis, it exercises the old spell over me yet. If my sympathies need quickening, my point of view adjusting, I have only to go down to Park Row at eventide, when the crowds are hurrying homeward and the City Hall clock is lighted, particularly when the snow lies on the grass in the park, and stand watching them awhile, to find all things coming right. It is Bob who stands by and watches with me then, as on that night.

The assignment that fell to my lot when the book was made out, the first against which my name was written in a New York editor's books, was a lunch of some sort at the Astor House. I have forgotten what was the special occasion. I remember the bearskin hats of the Old Guard in it, but little else. In a kind of haze, I beheld half the savory viands of earth spread under the eyes and nostrils of a man who had not tasted food for the third day. I did not ask for any. I had reached that stage of starvation that is like the still centre of a cyclone, when no hunger is felt. But it may be that a touch of it all crept into my report; for when the editor had read it, he said briefly:--

"You will do. Take that desk, and report at ten every morning, sharp."

That night, when I was dismissed from the office, I went up the Bowery to No. 185, where a Danish family kept a boarding-house up under the roof. I had work and wages now, and could pay. On the stairs I fell in a swoon and lay there till some one stumbled over me in the dark and carried me in. My strength had at last given out.

So began my life as a newspaper man.

BOUND COASTWISE[20]

RALPH D. PAINE

[Footnote 20: From _The Old Merchant Marine_, by Ralph D. Paine, in _The Chronicles of America_ Series. Copyright, 1919, by the Yale University Press. By permission of the author and of the publishers.]

One thinks of the old merchant marine in terms of the clipper ship and distant ports. The coasting trade has been overlooked in song and story; yet, since the year 1859, its fleets have always been larger and more important than the American deep-water commerce nor have decay and misfortune overtaken them. It is a traffic which flourished from the beginning, ingeniously adapting itself to new conditions, unchecked by war, and surviving with splendid vigor, under steam and sail, in this modern era.

The seafaring pioneers won their way from port to port of the tempestuous Atlantic coast in tiny ketches, sloops, and shallops when the voyage of five hundred miles from New England to Virginia was a prolonged and hazardous adventure. Fog and shoals and lee shores beset these coastwise sailors, and shipwrecks were pitifully frequent. In no Hall of Fame will you find the name of Captain Andrew Robinson of Gloucester, but he was nevertheless an illustrious benefactor and deserves a place among the most useful Americans. His invention was the Yankee schooner of fore-and-aft rig, and he gave to this type of vessel its name.[21] Seaworthy, fast, and easily handled, adapted for use in the early eighteenth century when inland transportation was almost impossible, the schooner carried on trade between the colonies and was an important factor in the growth of the fisheries.

[Footnote 21: It is said that as the odd two-master slid gracefully into the water, a spectator exclaimed: "See how she scoons!" "Aye," answered Captain Robinson, "a schooner let her be!" This launching took place in 1713 or 1714. [Author's note.]]

Before the Revolution the first New England schooners were beating up to the Grand Bank of Newfoundland after cod and halibut. They were of no more than fifty tons' burden, too small for their task but manned by fishermen of surpassing hardihood. Marblehead was then the foremost fishing port with two hundred brigs and schooners on the offshore banks. But to Gloucester belongs the glory of sending the first schooner to the Grand Bank. From these two rock-bound harbors went thousands of trained seamen to man the privateers and the ships of the Continental navy, slinging their hammocks on the gun-decks beside the whalemen of Nantucket. These fishermen and coastwise sailors fought on the land as well and followed the drums of Washington's armies until the final scene at Yorktown. Gloucester and Marblehead were filled with widows and orphans, and half their men-folk were dead or missing.

The fishing-trade soon prospered again, and the men of the old ports tenaciously clung to the sea even when the great migration flowed westward to people the wilderness and found a new American empire. They were fishermen from father to son, bound together in an intimate community of interests, a race of pure native or English stock, deserving this tribute which was paid to them in Congress: "Every person on board our fishing vessels has an interest in common with his associates; their reward depends upon their industry and enterprise. Much caution is observed in the selection of the crews of our fishing vessels; it often happens that every individual is connected by blood and the strongest ties of friendship; our fishermen are remarkable for their sobriety and good conduct, and they rank with the most skillful navigators."

Fishing and the coastwise merchant trade were closely linked. Schooners loaded dried cod as well as lumber for southern ports and carried back naval stores and other southern products. Well-to-do fishermen owned trading vessels and sent out their ventures, the sailors shifting from one forecastle to the other. With a taste for an easier life than the stormy, freezing Banks, the young Gloucester-man would sign on for a voyage to Pernambuco or Havana and so be fired with ambition to become a mate or master and take to deep water after a while. In this way was maintained a school of seamanship which furnished the most intelligent and efficient officers of the merchant marine. For generations they were mostly recruited from the old fishing and shipping ports of New England until the term "Yankee shipmaster" had a meaning peculiarly its own.

Seafaring has undergone so many revolutionary changes and old days and ways are so nearly obliterated that it is singular to find the sailing vessel still employed in great numbers, even though the gasolene motor is being installed to kick her along in spells of calm weather. The Gloucester fishing schooner, perfect of her type, stanch, fleet, and powerful, still drives homeward from the Banks under a tall press of canvas, and her crew still divide the earnings, share and share, as did their forefathers a hundred and fifty years ago. But the old New England strain of blood no longer predominates, and Portuguese, Scandinavians, and Nova Scotia "Blue-noses" bunk with the lads of Gloucester stock. Yet they are alike for courage, hardihood, and mastery of the sea, and the traditions of the calling are undimmed.