OUR TOWN 
 
 UGENE WOOD 
 
Copyright N" J 
 
 COPyRIGHT DEPOSrr, 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
Mt.&HAvra 
 " Samatter witches? " you'd say. 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 BY 
 
 EUGENE WOOD 
 
 Author of "Back Home" 
 
 Illustrated by 
 J. R, Shaver and Horace Taylor 
 
 RICHARD G. BADGER 
 
 BOSTON 
 
Copyright, 1913, by Richard G. Badger 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall 
 
 T^^'^^OS 
 
 0^1^ 
 
 \^i^ 
 
 The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 
 
 / 
 
 ©CI.A351928 
 
TO 
 
 THE FOLKS OF 
 
 OUR TOWN 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Glorious Fourth 13 
 
 The Old Time Revival 49 
 
 The Drama in Our Town 89 
 
 The Campaign Back Home 137 
 
 The Parlor Back Home 169 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 '' Samatter witchesf '' youd say . . . . Frontispiece "^ 
 
 And will blow on it to see 17 
 
 You felt the shivers running all over you . . .27 
 
 Elsie, in her stars-and-stripes dress 3^ 
 
 Took delight in wrestling 90 
 
 They had to buy melodeons and pianos .... 92 
 
 ISlow, take the Swiss Bell-ringers 94 
 
 The elocution teacher came to town .... 95 
 
 The fellow that played the " tooby " could go down 
 to the barn 9^ 
 
 Has to keep one ear hung out for the rattle of a 
 wagon 99 
 
 He crashes through the hazel bush lOi 
 
 You heard what Brother Longnecker said about that 103 
 
 '" Goin to the Opry-House to-night f . . . .105 
 
 To set a good example to the young ill 
 
 " Au, that aint nothing/^ said he 1 14 
 
 One day the man that papered your house left a 
 ticket for you 122 
 
 You were in the front row 123 
 
 The colored band from the South End . . . .125 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 To be continued in our next 127 
 
 When was it you began to subscribe for a theatrical 
 paper? 131 
 
 Its petals were kind of droopy 171 
 
 D'ye reckon Barzillai'll come in for his sheerf . .175 
 
 No good at all for chewing wax 182 
 
 There were haircloth sofas 185 
 
 Her husband was afraid 190 
 
 / dont know what kinds of yarbs 197 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
 [ 
 
 THEY say every dog has his day. I 
 don't remember just when the dog-days 
 come — some time in hot weather, I be- 
 lieve — but I'll swear the Fourth of 
 July isn't one of them. 
 
 I never had a hunting-dog, so I am prepared 
 to believe that one of them might put up with the 
 boisterous noises that gunpowder makes. Per- 
 haps he might even come to find that the shot- 
 gun's disconcerting bang! which at first made him 
 jump part way out of his hide, imparted to his 
 nerves a titillating rasp, very desirable. But 
 when I consider the Fourth of July as related to 
 dogs I have in mind the ordinary four-legged 
 garbage-can, the dear companion of our youth, 
 Maje, or Tige, or Bounce, or Gyp, or Fido, or 
 Spot, or whatever he was named, that long ago 
 has gone before us in the way we too must walk 
 one day. Poor old dog! When he laid his muz- 
 
 13 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 zle on our knee, and looked so longingly at us 
 with his big brown eyes, I know his soul flung it- 
 self despairingly at the thin partition of speechless- 
 ness that separated him from us. Poor old dog! 
 He was neither useful nor ornamental. He was 
 just a hanger-on, and could pay for his keep only 
 with his company, but he was none the less beloved 
 for all that. Lots of men have no better excuse 
 for being. 
 
 On other feasts and fasts, when anything was 
 going on, he was right there, Johnny-on-the-Spot, 
 close to the footlights in the center of the stage, 
 but on the Nation's Birthday his native modesty 
 asserted itself and he withdrew from public gaze. 
 
 *' How would it be," we asked each other after 
 the first few firecrackers, when an awfully funny 
 notion struck us, " how would it be if we took and 
 tied — " The knowing look passed from eye to 
 eye. "Where is he? H-yuh Spot! H-yuh 
 Spot! H-yuh! H-yuh! Whoo-eet! " 
 
 Wouldn't he act funny, though? He wouldn't 
 know what struck him. H-yuh Spot! Why, 
 where was the darn dog? 
 
 14 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
 For he came not bounding to us, wiping his 
 paws on our clean waists that our Ma had put on 
 us that day with: "Now, don't burn any holes 
 in that," and *' Don't you get it to looking like a 
 mop inside of five minutes." He did not leap 
 upon us, licking our faces in moist caress. We 
 hunted him high and low. 
 
 "H-yuh Spot! H-yuh Spot!— The bam! 
 Betchy anything he's in under the barn." 
 
 We sought the hole he usually crawled in. 
 Away, 'way over in the far corner we made out 
 two flaming red disks, that bashfully averted them- 
 selves when we began our blandishments. 
 
 '* Noi-oi-oice old doggie ! Ya-a-ase, he was a 
 noice old fellah. Come here. Come here." In 
 vain we fluted the word " Come " and expressed 
 an almost tearful affection. We could hear his 
 tail thump, and he whined as much as to say he'd 
 like awfully to oblige, but really we'd have to ex- 
 cuse him this time. 
 
 Now, what I want to know Is : What put him 
 wise to what we were up to? Was it talked 
 around in dog society about firecrackers tied to 
 
 15 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 tails? There was a forsaken, homeless fice came 
 down South Main Street on a Fourth, and made 
 friends with a fellow in front of Ryan's place, a 
 fellow with a keen sense of humor, who would 
 sacrifice a whole pack of firecrackers as lief as not. 
 Well, sir, that dog just about tore up the earth 
 getting away from there when the popping began. 
 He banged into everything, and squalled " Ah- 
 oop ! Ah-oop ! " in shrill falsetto. The funniest 
 thing you ever heard of. Aaron Williams, who 
 kept the tin-shop, like to hurt himself laughing. 
 He screamed, and slapped his legs, and stamped 
 on the ground in an ecstasy of mirth. The fice 
 crawled under the tin-shop (which was right next 
 to the cooper-shop) and it promptly took fire and 
 burned to the ground. Aaron laughed out of the 
 other side of his mouth at that. 
 
 But, even suppose Spot had heard talk of that, 
 how could he remember? It's a mighty long time 
 from one Fourth of July to another, I'll have you 
 understand. (Or at least it used to be so. It's 
 got so now they whiz a-past so fast you get a crick 
 in the neck from watching them.) Why should 
 
 i6 
 

 And will blow on it to see. 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
 a dog remember that firecrackers are dangerous 
 things, when a boy can't? I'll bet you any money 
 that this coming Fourth there'll be at least half a 
 dozen boys who will wonder (all new, as if it had 
 never been done before) if the fuse of a giant fire- 
 cracker hasn't gone out, and will blow on it to see, 
 and will find it hasn't gone out, and — well, don't 
 let's begin the horrible part of it so soon. 
 
 Only, I marvel why Spot should have crawled 
 under the barn before the day got really good and 
 going. 
 
 And, now that I think of it, I don't remember 
 seeing much of the cat on that day either. Come 
 anywhere near him ordinarily, and he would thin 
 his body upward, and rub his hairs off on your leg, 
 purring like a coffee-mill, but if you saw him this 
 day, he was all scrooched up, and gave you a malig- 
 nant glare, as much as to say: "You're the 
 young divvle that tied my feet up in papers, ain't 
 ye? You dast to lay a hand on me — " And as 
 you took one step toward him, he was gone like 
 lightning in a cloud. 
 
 I seem to recollect a buggy splintered and slid- 
 
 19 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 ing on Its side, with a man dragged by the lines, 
 his face as white as putty except for a thin trickle 
 of blood on the forehead. It seems to me I smell 
 firecrackers as I see this, but whether In memory 
 or imagination I cannot say for certain. Never- 
 theless, I believe that dogs and cats and horses 
 and Mas do not approve of the Glorious 
 Fourth. 
 
 However It might be with them, it was certainly 
 the Day of Days for the rest of us. Other festi- 
 vals connoted hatreds of the other fellows, pen- 
 ning the flock off into little coops of ancient re- 
 ligious and racial spats and feuds. But on Our 
 Country's Birthday all these partitions and spite- 
 fences came down. Rich and poor, high and low, 
 white and black, Republican and Democrat, Jew 
 and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, native-born 
 and foreign-born forgot for once their petty anti- 
 social meannesses, and joined In the celebration of 
 the day whereon a whole people cried out In the 
 hearing of an unbelieving world that God had 
 made all men free and equal, and bestowed upon 
 them rights that cannot be bargained away or 
 
 20 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
 overridden by force — the rights to life and 
 liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Everywhere 
 floated the Flag " whose banners make tyranny 
 tremble," and in every home Ma tied up burnt 
 fingers with apple-butter and a rag. 
 
 It is fine to think that upon this day, all over 
 this broad land of ours, we lay aside our business 
 and pay our homage to a doctrine that we respect 
 even if we do think it is too righteous to be prac- 
 tical. '^ All over this broad land," did I say? 
 Ah, me ! I wish it were so. But they tell me that 
 in southern Indiana Fourth of July is little thought 
 of, not half so much as the Annual Celebration 
 of the Morehead Settlement, whatever that may 
 be. They shut up the stores, it's true, but they 
 save their shooting crackers and their fireworks 
 for Christmas Day! For Christmas Day! 
 Isn't that Hoosier for you? Why, punk-sticks 
 and scraps of red paper smoldering in the gutter, 
 and empty Roman candle tubes that you can blow 
 on like a bottle belong in hot weather, not when 
 there's snow on the ground. They can't make 
 me think Indiana Is really civilized, I don't care 
 
 21 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 how many literary geniuses come from there, when 
 the people act like that. 
 
 Speaking of Christmas Day, Fourth of July re- 
 sembles it in just one respect, early rising. On 
 Christmas Day you want to; on Fourth of July 
 you have to. You may be having ever so thrill- 
 ing a dream; you may be clinging by finger-hold 
 to the slanting top of a granite cliff nine miles 
 high, and polished like Colonel Hoosey's monu- 
 ment in the cemetery. You can't go on with your 
 dream after that vociferous '* Boong! " that rat- 
 tles on your windows just before sunup. " Yes ! " 
 you cry, " I'm up ! " your daily lie, this morning 
 utterly unnecessary, as you sheepishly realize the 
 moment after. It's a waste of time to try to turn 
 over for another nap. In the early days of our 
 Republic you might have counted off thirteen loud 
 " Boongs " and composed yourself for more slides 
 over the edges of granite cliffs ; but now that there 
 are — How many are there now? Be-switched 
 if I can keep track of 'em. 
 
 And, by the way, did you know that one Fourth 
 they wouldn't shoot off but twelve guns? The 
 
 22 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
 old Confederation had petered out, and all but 
 little Rhody had come under the " new roof " 
 of the Constitution. In those days there wasn't 
 any Senator Aldrich to hold the rest of the coun- 
 try up by the tail, and the other folks were pretty 
 hot about such carryings-on. If little Rhody 
 hadn't come right down off her perch, and acted 
 white in a hurry, they were going to put up tariff 
 walls against her goods, and let her flock all by 
 herself and see how she liked it. 
 
 In the matter of our national salute at dawn 
 I feel a sense of deep personal humiliation. 
 Other people can tell you interesting stories about 
 the cannon they had in their town " back home," 
 and how there was a rivalry between the Hill 
 crowd and the Valley crowd as to which should 
 get hold of it, and hide it from the others. They 
 can tell you all about Who's-this-now that was 
 In such a hurry he didn't swab out the gun good, 
 and when What's-his-name was ramming home the 
 charge, blamed if she didn't go off, ker-boongi 
 and there was his arm gone, slick as a whistle. 
 And they felt so terrible that they went away 
 
 23 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 and left the cannon, and the other fellows got 
 it and kept it for two years. Two years! What 
 do you think of that? We didn't have any can- 
 non. Kind of a one-horse place, I'm afraid. And 
 even if we had had one, my folks wouldn't have 
 let me have anything to do with it. (I never had 
 any kind of a time at all.) To this day, I don't 
 know the first thing about loading up an anvil and 
 shooting it off on the Fourth of July. I don't 
 even know which is the trigger end of an anvil. 
 But I'm fairly well posted on firecrackers, little 
 square flat packs, you know, with a thin red paper 
 stuck on, stamped with a gilt dragon and funny 
 letters that didn't spell anything. Each of us got 
 a whole single pack and two punk-sticks, and that 
 had to last out the day. Down-town after dark, 
 wild fellows that had lots of money to spend used 
 to set off a whole pack at a time. That was reck- 
 less extravagance, but it was splendid on that ac- 
 count. Who cares for ten cents? Plenty more 
 where that came from ! And to hear the snap- 
 ping like corn in a popper, only more so, and to 
 see the flashes of light in the darkness, jerking 
 
 24 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
 this way and that! Gur-reat! Great! And, 
 after you'd think the whole pack was gone, there'd 
 be one solitary snap as much as to say: " Here! 
 I'm in this too. You don't want to overlook me.'^ 
 It was great. There's no two ways about it; it 
 was great. But that was for the evening and 
 somebody else. In the morning we had our own 
 firecrackers while our enthusiasm still had a cut- 
 ting edge, and we were careful in disentangling 
 the crackers' little tails from the braided fuse with 
 which they interwove. When we shot one off it 
 was with a screwed-up wincing face and we tasted 
 a fearful joy. We used to heap up forts of dust, 
 and p'tend the cannons were pointing out through 
 " embrasures." (They had " embrasures " in 
 "The History of the Great Rebellion.") The 
 worst of It was that the siege-guns would destroy 
 the illusion by all coming apart. If you broke 
 off the end of one and touched the punk-stick to 
 the black dust in the muzzle of the gun It would 
 shoot out fire just as in the picture of the Monitor 
 and the Merrimac, but It was only a " fizzer," and 
 anyhow you don't touch off a real cannon from the 
 
 25 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 front end. Still, you could piece out a good deal 
 with imagination, and, after all, that's where the 
 fun comes in. I pity the poor young ones these 
 days that have toys and playthings that look ex- 
 actly like real things. 
 
 It was also kind of exciting to stand on a fire- 
 cracker and feel the pleasant jolt it gave when it 
 exploded. That is, it was pleasant if you had 
 shoes on; it kind o' stung if you were barefooted. 
 
 And you could light one and hold it In your 
 fingers until je-e-e-est the last fractional part of 
 a second when the fuse was beginning to act hys- 
 terical and fidgety, and then you flung It up high 
 and It was " the bomb bursting in air," as it says 
 In the *' Star-spangled Banner." Out of this prac- 
 tise developed a test of heroism similar in spirit 
 to the sun-dance of the Indian braves. You held 
 one in your fingers (as far off as you could, and 
 with your eyes all squinched up) and felt the shiv- 
 ers running all over you as the fuse began to 
 sputter, and when you lived through the shock of 
 the explosion, how happy you were ! That called 
 
 26 
 
You felt the shivers running all over you. 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
 for real courage, and in some cases, if I mistake 
 not, it called for witch-hazel too. 
 
 And there was an intellectual problem in con- 
 nection with firecrackers. Why was there one in 
 the pack sometimes that was wrapped with green 
 paper instead of red? I have puzzled over that 
 no little, and it still remains the dark mystery it 
 always was. What was there about it that de- 
 served the green paper? It wasn't louder than 
 the others; it wasn't weaker than the others, for 
 those who said it always was a fizzer generalized 
 from insufficient data, as boys are wont to do. All 
 our lives long we are jostled and elbowed by rid- 
 dles we cannot solve, and this is one of them. 
 Old Maje, who cannot talk, and we who cannot 
 understand — we're all alike. 
 
 Firecrackers are the norm of Fourth of July. 
 On the timid side, explosives shade off into the 
 pink paper disks that your little brother shoots 
 in a brown varnished cast-iron dummy pistol. 
 
 " Now don't you go pointing that at people," 
 excitedly cries your mother. 
 
 " Aw ! That cain't shoot nothin'," you explain, 
 
 29 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 scandalized at her crass ignorance. *' Can't you 
 see it don't go through from the cap place to the 
 barrel?" 
 
 " You don't know what might happen," she 
 persists, in her unreasoning way. *' You hear tell 
 of lots of people getting killed with guns that 
 weren^t loaded. What ever possessed you. Pa, 
 to go and get that boy a pistol beats me. You 
 know he just delights in running headlong into 
 danger. It would serve you right if he was 
 marked for life with that thing. Mercy me I 
 I'll be glad when this day's over. Elsie ! Come 
 here to me. Come away from that firecracker." 
 
 (Women are awful foolish. They haven't got 
 near the sense of us men-folks.) 
 
 Elsie, in her Stars-and-Stripes frock, has these 
 twisted white paper torpedoes, that crack when 
 you throw them hard down on the sidewalk. 
 They're very nearly as loud as a parlor match 
 and a little safer. They fretted your mother as 
 much as the firecrackers though; they mussed up 
 the place so. There's nothing that makes a front 
 
 30 
 
Elsie, in her stars-and-stripes dress. 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
 porch look so slack as scraps of paper and little 
 bits of gravel. 
 
 Beyond the firecracker on the bold side was the 
 bottle of powder. With that you could lay a 
 train to where you had poured out quite a little 
 heap of powder and covered it with dirt. That 
 was a rebel fort you were going to blow up. It's 
 fine sport, and if you should ever meet a man with 
 a glass eye and a lot of blue specks in his face, 
 you ask him if he doesn't think so, for it is almost 
 certain that he played that very game when he was 
 young. 
 
 But away, 'way out on the bold side is the re- 
 volver. Not one of these brown varnished cast- 
 iron things where it doesn't go through from the 
 cap place to the barrel, but the real thing, a re- 
 volver that you can put real " cattridges " in made 
 out of real lead bullets, one that you can kill peo- 
 ple with, and can carry around in your hip-pocket. 
 It must give a fellow a lot of moral courage to 
 have one. You could bend down the front of 
 your Johnny Jones hat, and smack it up behind, 
 and kind of slouch it over one eye, and you'd rock 
 
 33 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 your head a little from side to side, and talk out of 
 the corner of your mouth. *' Samatter witches? " 
 you'd say. Just like that. And if anybody got 
 too gay or anything, you wouldn't have to call 
 out: " Quit now! Quit, I tell you. Now you 
 just leave me be I " No. You'd smile a baleful 
 smile, and press the cold ring of the muzzle into 
 his quivering flesh and coldly remark: " That'll 
 be about all from you. Un'stand? " And he'd 
 understand right away. 
 
 Why, talk about learning how to box so as to 
 be able to protect yourself, a revolver has the 
 manly art of self-defense beaten to a stiff froth. 
 I don't care how handy with your fists you might 
 be, the other fellow might be handier, or he might 
 be bigger, or he mightn't fight according to the 
 Marquis of Queensbury. And anyways, you'd be 
 sure to be rumpled up some before you got 
 through, your nose bleeding, or one eye a little 
 puffy. But with the revolver you just go Bang! 
 Bang! and there he is flat on the sidewalk. 
 
 Any day in the year a revolver is a fine thing 
 for a boy to have, but especially is it a fine thing 
 
 34 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
 on the Fourth of July. It puts you right up where 
 you belong, among the nobility and gentry. It 
 takes you out of the ranks of mere kids that play 
 with firecrackers. An old-maidish and fussy pub- 
 lic opinion prescribes blank cartridges when one 
 shoots to make the occasion gay with noise. I 
 suppose it's well to defer for the sake of keeping 
 out of trouble; but if it was me, I'd shoot real 
 bullets. I should think it would sound nicer, and 
 there' d be more excitement in it. I should try not 
 to kill anybody, of course, but — 
 
 I don't know of anything that more effectively 
 convinces the man who has grown up and come to 
 New York to live that the country is going to the 
 dogs as fast as the wheels of time can carry it than 
 the horrifying discovery that the metropolitan 
 young ones begin the firecracker season along about 
 Decoration Day, and keep it up till some time in 
 August. Well, maybe, it isn't quite as bad as that, 
 but when you're positive that the country is going 
 to the dogs, you've simply got to make your state- 
 micnts a leetle strong in order to arouse the people 
 to their lost condition. And that the firecracker 
 
 35 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 season should be prolonged by even so much as 
 one day is enough to make any peace-loving citizen 
 tremble for our institutions. Oh, my unhappy 
 country! For anything they do in New York is 
 sure to become all the go in the outlying districts 
 one of these days. And then what will be the 
 use in fixing your vacation so that you will get the 
 Fourth out in the country? Why, in my day and 
 time, a boy that would shoot off a firecracker on 
 the third of July was a sneak. It was just as bad 
 as peeking on a Christmas Eve. And a boy that 
 would shoot off a firecracker on the fifth of July 
 was green and behind the times. To be sure, if 
 you happened to find in the dewy grass the next 
 morning a firecracker with its fuse half-burnt, you 
 were allowed to put it out of its misery, and a 
 waif and stray you might set off. But that was 
 only to prevent a wicked waste. It was on the 
 same principle that you eat when you are so full 
 you can hardly crowd it down; you suffer, so that 
 the food won't have to be thrown away. But 
 to deliberately buy shooting-crackers and set 
 them off a day before or a day after the Fourth 
 
 36 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
 — The mind reels with horror from the bare 
 suggestion. And yet such is the degeneracy of 
 the age, they do that very thing in New York 
 City year by year and never bat an eye. 
 
 Along about dinner-time — well, lunch-time, 
 then, if you're possessed to put on airs; you know 
 what I mean, noon — the day sort of petered out. 
 The firecrackers were all gone, and excessively 
 early rising was getting in its deadly work. But 
 the main reason, I do believe, was the same that 
 makes the grocery man put in only about two inches 
 of sweet sugar on the top of the barrel, and fill 
 up the rest with sugar that has a kind of bitterish, 
 cloying taste. Nothing can be more delightful 
 than an irregular series of sharp explosions; but 
 it's like everything else, " there comes a time." 
 If I were a free man, and could be as psycho- 
 logical as I dog-gone pleased, nothing would 
 suit me better than to cut loose right here, and 
 show you the cause of this tendency on the part 
 of metropolitan children to prolong the excite- 
 ment of the firecracker season; how, deprived as 
 they are of all the fun that they really ought to 
 
 37 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 have, they seek violent and unwholesome stimula- 
 tion; and to point out that I wasn't altogether 
 fooling when I talked about the degeneracy of 
 the age. But they dock my pay every time I get 
 serious. So you'll have to figure it out for your- 
 self, or else read about it in some big book with 
 " subjective " and " objective " and ^' telic " and 
 " genetic " and all such cruel and unusual words 
 In It. 
 
 The afternoon of the Fourth of July has a 
 strong tendency to be poky. To avert this ca- 
 tastrophe many devices have been introduced. 
 One of them is to have a picnic. Now, there are 
 two opposing and mutually exclusive schools of 
 thought in re the Fourth of July picnic. The one 
 school holds that It always rains on that afternoon; 
 the other denies that proposition, and maintains 
 that those who so vividly recall standing under a 
 tree — a tree as a shelter when It rains pitchforks 
 and feather-beds is the rankest kind of a swindle, 
 and something ought to be done about It — stand- 
 ing under a leaky tree and watching " the little 
 men " jumping In the lemonade-tub while the 
 
 38 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
 table-cloths soak into sodden rags, and the 
 layer cake pitifully dissolves, are really thinking 
 of the annual Sabbath-school picnic, when of course 
 it rains. I dislike very much to take sides on 
 any question. I am like the politician who was 
 campaigning in a neighborhood divided on en- 
 tirely non-political lines into two parties, one 
 maintaining that it was just foolishness to say 
 that the earth turned clear over every day, and 
 the other that it must be so because it said so in 
 the geography book. *' You know about such 
 things," they asked him. *' Now, does it? It 
 don't, does it? Not clear over? " 
 
 "Well. ... Ha! ... It does a little," he 
 said. 
 
 I will concede this much : That in view of the 
 grea-eat concussion of the atmosphere on the 
 Glorious Fourth, due to the well-nigh universal ex- 
 plosion of firecrackers, cap-pistols, anvils, and all 
 such, it is not antecedently impossible — mark my 
 words — it is not antecedently impossible that 
 here and there some rain might be joggled loose 
 from whatever it is stuck to up there in the sky. 
 
 39 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 And If the picnic were announced for a consider- 
 able period of time beforehand, I think It ex- 
 tremely likely that it would rain. If it was got 
 up on short notice, why, the weather might be 
 taken by surprise and so not be able to squeeze 
 out a shower. Still, I shouldn't like to commit 
 myself either way. I'm only telling you. 
 
 I suppose that away back in the early days they 
 had regular celebrations of the day In which the 
 school children took part and sang the grand old 
 patriotic airs, of which we know the tune but not 
 the words. Indeed, in the song-book they had In 
 the schools there was a piece that seemed to have 
 been made on purpose for the Fourth of July. 
 The Continental Congress wouldn't let a living 
 soul know what was going on, but the people 
 felt kind of Interested to know whether or not 
 they were to be broken off from the old country. 
 It being a hanging matter, and so the Congress 
 strained a point and agreed to have the bell rung 
 In case the Declaration was passed. Now, away, 
 'way up in the belfry (and if you've ever been In 
 Independence Hall you know It is a terribly tall 
 
 40 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
 building — I guess, anyways, three stories tall 
 without the belfry) there was the sexton and — 
 But I'd better quote a verse of the song: 
 
 High in the belfry the old sexton stands, 
 
 Grasping the rope In his thin, bony hands; 
 
 Fixed Is his gaze, as by some magic spell, 
 
 Till he hears the welcome tidings: " Ring, ring the bell! " 
 
 Chorus — "Ring the bell, grandpa! Ring! Ring! 
 
 Ring!" 
 Yes, yes, the good news is now on the wing. 
 Yes, yes, they come! And with tidings to tell, 
 Glorious and blessed tidings ! " Ring, ring the bell ! " 
 
 You see, it was his little grandson that told him 
 when to ring, and — well, it was a nice song, 
 but we never got a chance to sing it on the Fourth 
 of July, because school was let out then, and they 
 never had regular doings on that day, " back 
 home." 
 
 Oh, yes, they did too. Now that I think of it, 
 they did celebrate the Birthday of the Nation once 
 by a regular program. They had a sack race, and 
 a three-legged race, and a potato race, and a fat 
 men's race, and a slow race, and a ladies' race, 
 
 41 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 which Is not the same thing as a slow race. And 
 they chased the greased pig, which was funny be- 
 cause the pig was thoroughly excited, and squealed 
 hysterically, and tripped people up and played 
 hob generally. And they had climbing the greased 
 pole, which wasn't nearly as funny as you'd think 
 it would be. And the band played and played 
 and played till, when it was all over, not one of 
 them except the two men on the battery could 
 have whistled if It was to save his life. Hadn't 
 any lip. Or rather they had too much lip, for 
 every horn-player's mouth looked as if it had been 
 stepped on and had had time to swell. It was a 
 grand time, and the Examiner said It was " a cele- 
 bration worthy of the festive occasion." 
 
 I forgot whether they had strawberry short- 
 cake that night for supper or not. That's kind 
 of stupefying, you know. Anyhow there was 
 something we could eat a lot of, something 
 that made a snug fit for our appetites after 
 such a busy day, so that after dark began to 
 fall, it seemed a long, long time since we had 
 jumped to hear the window-rattling " BoongI '* 
 
 42 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
 of the first gun of the national salute. Pap gave 
 us an imitation of a skyrocket by knocking the 
 dottle from his pipe, and pretty soon away off 
 down-town the real rockets began to garter- 
 snake their upward way through 
 the air, opening up when they had 
 climbed their height, and fling- 
 ing colored jewels by the reckless 
 handful, red, and green, and blue 
 and white, sometimes broadcast, 
 and sometimes strung upon a 
 thread, as it were, a broken neck- 
 lace on the dusky bosom of the 
 night. For a while we wondered 
 at the sheer beauty of it all, and 
 then a little longer we amused 
 ourselves with mimicking them, 
 *^ s-s-s-s Tockf Look out for the 
 stick!'' But more and more the 
 lovely vision melted into reverie. 
 The fire balloons drifted farther 
 and farther, low-hanging, flicker- 
 ing stars that seemed to beckon Q 
 
 43 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 our ambition toward the conquest of the kingdom 
 of the air. . . . We sighed ... we longed with 
 longing, somehow gently sad until — until — 
 
 "Here, mister! Time for you to be in bed. 
 Pillows a-hollerin' for you." 
 
 You may have noticed that I haven't said a 
 word about the public reading of the Declaration 
 of Independence. It didn't happen. Never in 
 my life have I heard that read aloud, clear 
 through. When that Immortal statement was 
 first put forth, nobody dreamed that those who 
 worked for wages had any rights. In those cruel 
 days, ere ever compassion had been born, the ne- 
 gro slave was better off than the poor wretch 
 who owned no property. The ballot was later 
 given to him grudgingly, but this government of 
 ours didn't become his and Isn't now. It Isn't 
 meant to be. The way we live, the average 
 wages of the men and women who take the raw 
 earth that God Almighty gave to all His children 
 for a heritage, and turn it into what we eat and 
 wear and take our comfort from, the average 
 
 44 
 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
 
 wages of the men and women who put all the value 
 into anything that has a value, is about $400 a 
 year. Some get more; more get less. Figure 
 to yourself how much of life a man can have on 
 $400 a year; how much of liberty; how he can 
 pursue happiness after his board and keep are paid 
 for. In the census year of 1900 those who have 
 only themselves to sell made in this country thir- 
 teen billions of dollars' worth of goods; out of 
 that thirteen billion dollars' worth they got two 
 billion dollars. Who got the other eleven billion 
 dollars? I'll take my oath it wasn't George the 
 Third. Caesar had his Brutus, Charles his Crom- 
 well, George the Third his Washington, and 
 — if that be treason, make the most of it. 
 
 It didn't do to read the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence. It made folks uneasy. That Smith 
 who had been rescued from the obscurity native to 
 Smiths by his ferocious soubriquet of "Hell-roar- 
 ing Jake" did the State some service when he de- 
 scribed the Declaration of Independence as " a 
 damned incendiary document." That's just what 
 it is. Particularly that part where it says that 
 
 45 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 whenever a government does not preserve to all 
 the people their rights to life and liberty and hap- 
 piness, it is about time to change the form of gov- 
 ernment and get the kind that will preserve them. 
 
 I think it would be a good thing to revive the 
 practise of reading aloud the essay of that red- 
 headed fiddler fellow from Virginia. It is 130 
 years old, I know, but it is so far from being 
 out of date that these restless days of ours are 
 the days when it is most likely to be realized in 
 full. 
 
 On its Inspiration we did the business for 
 George the Third. It seems to me it's good for 
 one more whirl. 
 
 46 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 WHENEVER anybody begins to com- 
 plain about " nowadays," we wink at 
 those of our own generation and 
 start in to be funny. 
 *' Well, now, grandpap," we ask, with a ro- 
 guish look at the others, " do you really think 
 water is quite as wet now as it was in your young 
 days?" 
 
 Because, you know, if anybody says that this 
 present age is in any wise inferior to any age that 
 ever went before — that it is not superior to all 
 the ages that ever went before lumped in one 
 lump, why, that's a sure sign that he is getting 
 childish and failing very fast. 
 
 And yet we cannot talk long with those who 
 linger with us for more than threescore years and 
 ten ere we discover that something they had is 
 lacking with us, something of which our children 
 have scarce a glimmer. 
 
 49 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 My old grandmother said to me one day: *' Ah, 
 they don't have the good times in religion that 
 they used to have." It's a good joke, that about 
 water not being as wet as it once was, but there 
 are times when it just doesn't seem to come in 
 quite right. Somehow it made me sigh as I be- 
 thought me of the protracted meetings I had been 
 to when I was a little fellow — you went with me, 
 don't you recollect? It might not have been in 
 the same meeting-house, or the same town, or 
 the same State, or the same year, and yet it was, 
 too. It was in the old meeting-house " back 
 home," and the time was just the same, '* when 
 we were little." And then I bethought me of a 
 modern revival meeting I had attended but a 
 short time before. When I compared the two, it 
 seemed to me I understood how it was that 
 the world to-day, so bright and active, scuttling 
 across the landscape under the hissing trolley-wire, 
 and glowing with the golden radiance and the 
 violet splendor of electric lamps, should seem to 
 the older ones a dull, gray world, no longer in- 
 teresting, because no longer Interested in what they 
 
 50 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 deemed a far more vital matter than heaping to- 
 gether that which perishes with the using. 
 
 The protracted meeting I attended lately 
 wasn't in a meeting-house, but in a church, a splen- 
 did structure, through whose pictured windows 
 the sunlight shines on Sunday mornings. Cush- 
 ioned pews semicircle on a slanting floor. Above 
 the preacher's rostrum is a gallery with a valance, 
 behind which, during the sermon, hide the four 
 hired singers whose well-trained voices blend so 
 smoothly. 
 
 The modern revival that I attended was not 
 held in this spacious auditorium, but in a smaller 
 basement room, where, I think, they hold the 
 " donkey parties " and the " socials." Even this 
 room was plenty large. No utter stranger came 
 and threw his arms around my neck and asked 
 me to go up to the mourners' bench. There was 
 no mourners' bench. There was a row of or- 
 chestra chairs, whereat some knelt. Seemingly 
 kneeling is not clean gone out of fashion. They 
 kneeled, backs to the pulpit, in the good old way. 
 I felt a little more at home when I saw that. But 
 
 51 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 still I missed the '* workers " with the roving, 
 piercing eyes, which fell upon the conscious-smit- 
 ten and made them blanch and cower. And I 
 missed the band of saints and new-rejoicing, 
 thronged about the altar, singing, praying, encour- 
 aging, pointing the way to those who still sought 
 assurance of their sins forgiven. No two began 
 to lead In prayer or raise the tune at the same 
 time. Nobody did anything till he was called 
 upon. Nobody interjected heartening " Amens '* 
 or *' Hallelujahs." Nobody sobbed or groaned 
 aloud in the extremity of his grief; nobody shouted 
 or clapped his hands in his joy unspeakable and 
 full of glory. It was very calm, very sedate, 
 almost repressed. It was still even in the back 
 seats by the door. They were empty. I won- 
 dered If I had missed my directions. The only 
 sign outside the church door was an undertaker's 
 sign. It seemed ominous. 
 
 What I missed most of all was the old-time 
 hearty singing. Perhaps that was mere bawling, 
 and a little off the key. No matter. It was 
 alive. I missed the old-time, sturdy, manly tunes, 
 
 52 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 that came out of a live man's heart, worthy of 
 the noble words that voiced the loftiest aspiration 
 of the human soul, seeking after God, if haply 
 it might find Him. Instead there were the fee- 
 blest possible, soppy, sentimental little verses, set 
 to the feeblest little sentimental tunes — I could 
 make better out of putty — and invariably ac- 
 companied on the piano. On the piano! It 
 needed only that ! 
 
 " Ah ! they don't have the good times in re- 
 ligion that they used to." You remember those 
 good times, don't you? In the old meeting-house 
 back home, when we were little, where they had 
 a reed-organ, if they had any; where they had a 
 volunteer choir, if they had any, that rose to 
 " Cast Up the Highway " on festival occasions, 
 like the annual conference, where Brother John 
 Snodgrass led the singing with his down, left, 
 rigb^ up, and his f a-so-la-mi-f a ; or, maybe, it 
 wa ' "r Jim.my Carhart, who despised organs, 
 
 anv often as he dared, broke out with: 
 
 " Let's have some singin', now, without the mu- 
 sic," meaning for Minnie De Wees to sit still 
 
 53 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 there on the organ stool and look as if she could 
 bite nails; in the old meeting-house back home, 
 where, when we were little, everybody turned 
 around and kneeled flat on the bare floor, face to 
 the back of the bench, to pray, and followed every 
 word of the petition with moving lips, groaning 
 aloud with the intensity of supplication, or cheer- 
 ing the one who " led " with loud-resounding cries 
 of: '' Yes, Lord! " '' Lord grant! " " A-a-a- 
 a-men!" *' Hallelujah! " "Glory to God!" 
 "Praise His Name!"; where nearly everybody 
 stayed to class-meeting, which to Brother F. P. 
 Morgan was the best thing in religion, and at 
 which old Uncle Billy Nicholson used always to 
 begin his testimony with: "Feller sinners an' 
 dyin friends-ah. It's been forty years, down In 
 Hanks's schoolhouse, sence God, for Christ's sake, 
 spoke peace to m' soul," and always ended with: 
 " Pray for me, brothers and sisters, that I may 
 always prove faithful and finally meet you all in 
 heaven, where we shall strike glad hands, where 
 parting is no more." 
 
 There was some little talk then about a man 
 
 54 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 named Darwin that had some crazy notion or 
 other about monkeys turning into men, and a light- 
 headed fellow named Tyndall, or some such name, 
 that had the audacity to propose that an experi- 
 ment be tried of all the world praying for the 
 patients in one ward of a hospital and not pray- 
 ing for the patients in another ward, and see which 
 set of sick folks got well first, but no serious 
 attention was paid to his wanderings. The 
 Higher Criticism had not been heard of then, 
 and if at the annual conference some one preached 
 a sermon mentioning Renan and Strauss, why, 
 everybody knew how godless a Frenchman like 
 Renan must be, and the only known Strauss was 
 he that kept the One Price Clothing Store. 
 
 In those days the bending heavens came down. 
 God walked with men. He was very near, al- 
 most like one of the neighbors. He was a kind 
 and loving Father, but He was a father and 
 spared not the rod. He was a jealous God, and 
 when a mother idolized her child too much. He 
 took it from her to show her where to set her af- 
 fections. His arm was not shortened in those 
 
 55 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 days, and many were the signal instances of an- 
 swers to the prayer of faith. 
 
 In those days, the protracted meeting was no 
 timid, half-way thing. Its immediate beginnings 
 we were too little to know, you and I. It was 
 not — and then suddenly it was. There was 
 snow on the ground, we remember, but whether 
 the protracted meeting began with the Week of 
 Prayer, or whether the shortening days had some- 
 thing to do with it, who shall say? The shorten- 
 ing days were favorable, for then all the crops 
 were in, and all the corn was husked, and to feed 
 the stock and to dawdle over some few chores, to 
 sleep and eat was all there was to do, week in, 
 week out. The lengthening nights were favor- 
 able, wherein one read with difficulty, and all there 
 was to read was " Dr. Chase's Receipt Book," 
 and the " Works of Flavius Josephus," and the 
 " Autobiography of Hester Ann Rogers," and 
 Nelson's " Cause and Cure of Infidelity." The 
 soul had time for introspection. Then the pro- 
 tracted meeting came along. Children could stay 
 up till all hours, half past nine and even ten — 
 
 56 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 yes, even later still, if they " went forward." 
 There was meeting six nights of the week — Sat- 
 urday the preacher had to have to himself so as 
 to think up what to say on Sunday morning. 
 Seven sermons a week he preached, besides " ex- 
 horting." 
 
 The first part of a protracted meeting was just 
 like any other, singing and praying and reading 
 out of the Bible and preaching. They had the 
 organ for the hymns, and the prayers were not 
 especially exciting, but the sermons were a little 
 out of the common. Part of one still clings to 
 my memory. There were four D's in it. One 
 was Dreadful, one was Dismal, one was Doomed, 
 and, I won't be sure, but I think the fourth D was 
 Devilish. Nothing about birds and flowers and 
 sunset glow. But thrilling as this was, we waited 
 with eager anticipation for what was to come 
 after, when the organ should be silent, and re- 
 straint laid off, as one lays off a garment. The 
 sermon ended with fearful warnings to hardened 
 impenitents; with joyful hopes to such as forsook 
 their evil ways; with stirring appeals to every 
 
 57 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 spark of one's better nature; with mention of the 
 prayers of mothers clinging to the knees of God 
 and beseeching Him to be mindful of their way- 
 ward sons. "Won't you come? Won't you 
 come? " 
 
 And then broke out forthwith that hymn which 
 seems to me instinct with all the heart's devotion : 
 
 " I am coming, Lord, 
 Coming now to thee; 
 Wash me, cleanse me in the blood, 
 That flowed on Calvary." 
 
 Or It might be that the hymn was older and 
 went back to the heroic age of American history, 
 to the days of coonskin hats and apple-cuttings 
 and log huts and " fever and ager," to days when 
 they really did have '' good times in religion." 
 It might have been a tune that Peter Cartwright 
 sung, or Russell Bigelow, or Elijah Hedding, or 
 any of the preachers that studied at " Brush Col- 
 lege " and rode Circuit. Perhaps It was: 
 
 " Come, humble sinner, in whose breast, 
 A thousand thoughts revolve, 
 
 58 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 Come with your guilt and fear oppressed, 
 And make this last resolve: — 
 
 "I'll go to Jesus, though my sin 
 Like mountains round me close; 
 I know His courts; I'll enter in 
 Whatever may oppose." 
 
 No tinkling, feeble, soppy sentimentality about 
 that. 
 
 After this hymn, the true meeting begins. All 
 that was before was the mere preface, endured 
 for the sake of what Is now to come. Look with, 
 all your eyes; listen with all your ears. As the 
 hymn rises, the workers disperse themselves 
 throughout the congregation and toward the back 
 of the house. The rearmost bench of all is the 
 seat of the scornful, the boys with long white 
 crooked hairs sparse upon their chins, with Adam's 
 apples that bob up and down on their throats; 
 boys with quacking voices; boys that can chew to- 
 bacco without breaking out all over In a cold sweat; 
 boys that have graduated beyond " Gosh ! " and 
 " Jeemses Rivers! " and are now clumsily trying 
 other expletives, not without a vague fear of being 
 
 59 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 struck by lightning. They're all smart boys. 
 Nobody could possibly know as much as they do. 
 You couldn't fool them, betch life. You couldn't 
 get around them none, and tole 'em up to no 
 mourners' bench. They know too much. And 
 just to show the real manly spirit and spunk they 
 have, all the time the preacher is telling about 
 this place of the four D's, they are scuffling with 
 each other in their hobbledehoy way, pinching, 
 tickling, and cackling with laughter. Afraid? 
 No, sirree. Bob ! Neither is the man afraid that 
 whistles going through the graveyard after dark. 
 But just the same they sit close together, for 
 there is something, they don't know what, that 
 draws them to these meetings, something that 
 fascinates, something they are afeared of because 
 it is not of earth. If they were separated one 
 from the other, they know that it would get them. 
 Wait but a little and you shall see it. What? 
 Can it be seen? Can one see the wind that shakes 
 the wheat field? 
 
 " Sing some more ! " commands Sister Becken- 
 baugh, from the pew-end of the seat of the scorn- 
 
 60 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 ful, where she Is arguing with that wild and 
 reckless boy of hers. He looks down sheepishly, 
 steals a glance at the others, a grin ready on his 
 face, should he find one on theirs. They are 
 quite grave, for in our day it didn't do to be dis- 
 respectful to other boys' mas. He listens to her. 
 He doesn't " sass," or call her an old fool here, 
 as he does at home. He just holds out stub- 
 bornly, sure of applause when she has given up 
 and gone away. 
 
 *' Sing some more!" (Sister Beckenbaugh is 
 of those who hold that music is meant only to be 
 a background for conversation.) 
 
 She argues, she pleads, she threatens with the 
 four D's. All over the meeting-house this is go- 
 ing on. You stretch your neck this way and that 
 to see what's happening, and all of a sudden you 
 jump as If you were shot to find somebody's hand 
 upon your shoulder. 
 
 "Brother, are you a Christian?" 
 " Well, no, sir, not exactly." 
 " Don't you think you'd ought to be?" 
 You snicker foolishly: "Th-n-nnnn!" and 
 
 6i 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 look down. The sweat comes on the back of 
 your neck. 
 
 " You mean to be one some day, don't you? " 
 
 " Well, yes. Some day. Not now.'* 
 
 "Why not now?" 
 
 He looks you In the eye. " Why not now? " 
 Something within you, not yourself, that makes 
 for righteousness, echoes the question: "Why 
 not now? " Are the things whereof your con- 
 science doth accuse you — are your darling sins so 
 great a comfort to you that you must cling to them 
 a little longer? The man looks at you with 
 earnest eyes. You cannot stand his steady gaze. 
 You hang your head and fiddle with the pew-back. 
 
 " Why not now? What do you gain by wait- 
 ing?" 
 
 " Well, I won't go now. Not to-night," and 
 you smile a feeble, foolish smile. Inside of you 
 something Is saying: "Yes. Go on. Go on. 
 Now's the time." But you hold back. What 
 holds you back? I wonder. 
 
 " To-morrow may be too late. There may be 
 no to-morrow. God may require your soul of 
 
 62 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 you this very night. How will it be with you if 
 you reject Him? " 
 
 Ah! He has missed his opportunity. If he 
 had just kept on with "Why not now?" you 
 would have yielded, but that you should die now, 
 or at any other time, is too absurd. " A thou- 
 sand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy 
 right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee." 
 
 " Think about this, my brother," he says, and 
 lays his hand again upon you. His eyes leave 
 you and wander to another, though he still talks 
 to you. (Will he never have done?) At last 
 he goes, and you draw a long breath, and look 
 around with a faint smile for some one's approval 
 of your manly course. If there is a Something 
 not of earth that draws one to a better life, what 
 is this other Something, also not of earth, that 
 holds one back? Who of us but really wants to 
 be a better man or woman? What Is it, then, 
 that makes us mullshly balk against the gracious 
 leading? It is a mystery to us now; it was no 
 mystery to us then. We knew right well It was 
 the Old Boy in us, as big as an alligator. 
 
 63 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 The singing is ended. From the altar comes 
 the command: " Brother Snyder, lead us in 
 prayer/' 
 
 • Brother Snyder is gifted that way. He begins 
 slowly and with impressive dignity: ''High! 
 Holy! Almighty! Everlasting God! we come 
 before Thee this evening," etc. Then, as the 
 formal address and introduction conclude, he be- 
 comes more eloquent, more impassioned. His 
 voice falls into the old-time swing, almost a chant, 
 and the vocal recoil after each period or phrase 
 becomes more audible: " They's sinners here to- 
 night-ah," he cantillates, " that's a-haltin' betwix' 
 two opinions-ah. They's sinners here to-night-ah 
 that's a-swingin' to and fro-ah, like a do-o-o-o-or 
 on its hinges-ah. WAKE 'EM UP-ah ! WAKE 
 'EM UP, OL-o-o-rd-ah!" 
 
 "Amen, a-a-a-amen!" cries the enthusiastic 
 and tumultuous chorus. 
 
 " Let 'em feel, O Lord-ah, the awful peril they 
 are in-ah, like men a-walkin' in a fog-ah on the 
 brink of a terrible clift-ah. WAKE UP these 
 sinners-ah and show 'em, O Lord-ah, where they 
 
 64 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 are at-ah! Hang 'em over HELL FIRE-ah, for 
 a spell-ah. Give 'em a good strong whiff o' brim- 
 stone-ah! Let 'em have no peace from this time 
 forth untell they find it in Thee-ah. Let not the 
 prayers of godly fathers, the tears and groans of 
 praying mothers-ah, go unanswered any longer. 
 Strike — deep — conviction into their hearts, O 
 Lord-ah!" 
 
 With every petition rises a louder and mtDre 
 tumultuous chorus of cheering and encouraging 
 approbation until the prayer is ended. While 
 they still kneel, some one starts up a hymn. It 
 may be that touching one of John Wesley's : 
 
 " Take my poor heart and let it be 
 Forever closed to all but thee, 
 Seal thou my breast and let me wear 
 That pledge of love forever there." 
 
 Again they pray, and then they rise and sing. 
 The emotions, the sympathies are stirred to their 
 profoundest depths by this thrilling oratory, by 
 the regular, recurring accent of the hymn, by some- 
 thing else more mysterious, more profound, some- 
 thing that thrills by anticipation. Only a few are 
 
 6s 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 at the altar now, but there is something in the air, 
 as it were the Spirit of God brooding over the 
 face of the waters. The workers redouble their 
 appeals. The hymns beat more lustily. Two or 
 three are praying at once. No matter for that. 
 It's coming. It's coming. Pretty soon you will 
 see them flock as doves to their windows. 
 
 " I am coming, Lord, 
 Coming now to thee. 
 Wash me, cleanse me in the blood 
 That flowed on Calvary. 
 
 Nay, but I yield, I yield, 
 I can hold out no more, 
 
 I sink by dying love compelled 
 And own thee conqueror. 
 
 " I am coming, Lord — — " 
 
 '' Bless God, there's one coming I Bless God! 
 Hallelujah to the Lamb I " 
 
 " That flowed on Calvary." 
 
 " Isn't there another? Isn't there another that 
 will declare : ' I care not for what others may 
 
 66 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 do or say, but as for me and my house, we will 
 serve the Lord?* Isn't there another? God 
 bless you, my brother ! " 
 And as the hymn repeats : 
 
 " I am coming, Lord," 
 
 the eager eyes of the watchers note a young man 
 trembling, moving uneasily where he stands, look- 
 ing down, passing a shaking hand over his face. 
 He starts forward, but stops. You can see him 
 swallow hard. Then, suddenly breaking as if by 
 force from some unseen grip, he almost runs for- 
 ward to the mourners' bench, stumbling, blinded 
 by his tears, sobbing, as he casts himself down: 
 " God be merciful to me a sinner! " 
 
 And there's another. And there's another. 
 And yonder's another. The hymn swells with 
 enthusiasm, almost with holy laughter. Why are 
 you not among those? A subtle uneasiness over- 
 spreads you. Not to-night. Some other time. 
 (The Old Boy snickers behind his hand.) 
 There's another going forward. Two more. 
 
 Away with modern tunes. Let's get back to 
 
 67 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 the ones they used to have when they had good 
 times In religion. Brother Miller starts up: 
 
 " Sing on, pray on, we're a-gainin' ground, 
 Glory, hallelujah! 
 The power of the Lord is a-comin' down, 
 Glory, hallelujah!" 
 
 "That's it! that's It! Sing It again. Isn't 
 there one more? We are going to pray pretty 
 soon now again. We are going tp pray for these 
 penitent souls, that they may know that their sins, 
 which were many, are all forgiven. Who else 
 will come ? Ah, here is one for whom many have 
 been praying. Right here, kneel right down 
 here." Ah, this Is good times in religion! 
 
 " Glory to the Lamb ! 
 Glory to the Lamb! 
 Glory to the Lamb! 
 The world is overcome, 
 Glory to the Lamb ! " 
 
 And when you hear that tune, know that, then 
 and there, there are good times In religion, and 
 that the mysterious influence is abroad. Nobody 
 
 68 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 ever made that tune. Nobody composed that on 
 
 any parlor organ. It came. V^eird, mysterious, 
 
 almost formless, unlike any other earthly tune, 
 
 something of that which lies Behind the Veil is 
 
 in it. The ecstasy of the Beatific Vision pervades 
 it. 
 
 *' And I shall overcome, 
 Glory to the Lamb! 
 Glory to the Lamb ! " 
 
 How many saintly souls, now gone to glory, 
 have hymned that aspiration! How many re- 
 deemed and blood-washed! It is *' some sweet 
 fragment of the songs above." It is some broken 
 echo of the melody chanted by the white-robed 
 multitude around the crystal sea, the multitude 
 which no man can number, harping ceaselessly on 
 golden harps. 
 
 Tumult now follows; one leading in prayer, 
 as if to take the kingdom of heaven by storm, 
 two or three at once following him In just as 
 fervent supplication, while the faithful pray al- 
 most as loudly to themselves, or groan in earnest- 
 ness, or shout enthusiastic approval of petitions, 
 
 69 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 amid the confused murmur of the workers about 
 them, teaching the mourners to pray, pointing them 
 to that Cross whereon He suffered once for all, 
 and for all men. Let us a little withdraw 
 ourselves and ask: What mean ye by this 
 service? 
 
 For the first time In all his life this young man, 
 now agonizing at the mourners' bench, feels to 
 the full how he has slighted God, how often he 
 has rejected tendered mercy. Perhaps It Is too 
 late now. There Is a sin for which there is no 
 pardon, let him cry never so loudly and weep 
 never so bitterly. What this sin may be Is merci- 
 fully hidden from us, but it is surmised It Is re- 
 sisting the influences of the Spirit. He has done 
 that how often ! Is that Dark, that Dismal, that 
 Doomed, and Devilish Pit to be his habitation for 
 all eternity, while overhead the company of the 
 blessed chant everlastingly, all forgetful of his 
 misery? Is he never to see again the sweet face 
 of that praying mother of his, whose last whis- 
 pered word to him was: " Meet me . . .*' and 
 who then, when she could not finish out the sen- 
 
 70 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 tence, looked upward to tell him where? Lost I 
 Lost! Forever lost! 
 
 Some one kneels beside him and whispers to 
 him the comfortable words: " God so loved the 
 world, that he gave his only begotten Son, 
 that whosoever — whosoever believeth in Him 
 should not perish, but have everlasting 
 life." Whosoever . . . Whosoever? Why . . . 
 Why — . . . Why, that's me! Can it be that 
 there is pardon for such a guilty wretch as I am? 
 Hark! They are singing: 
 
 " Depth of mercy ! Can there be 
 Mercy still reserved for me? 
 Can my God His wrath forbear — 
 Me, the chief of sinners, spare? 
 God is love, I know, I feel, 
 Jesus weeps, and loves me still, 
 Jesus weeps, He weeps, and loves me still." 
 
 And all of a sudden there comes that joy that 
 cannot be told of in words. Sorrow and heavi- 
 ness flee away. The burden falls off. That 
 Dark, that Dismal Place no longer menaces. 
 Saved! Saved from a never-ending Hell! Oh, 
 
 71 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 glory to the kind, forgiving God! Glory! You 
 saw this young man a little while ago, trembling, 
 hesitating, torn by conflicting fears. You saw 
 him agonizing on his knees. Look at him now. 
 He starts up, his hands clenched, his eyes closed, 
 a rapt expression on his face that shines as if by 
 inward light. "Glory!" he shouts, ^' Glory /'^ 
 louder still, my brother, "GLORY!" Every 
 muscle quivers with tension. He cannot shout 
 louder, but joy must be expressed in some way. 
 He beats his palms together with the intensity 
 of rapture. The others embrace him. Oh, the 
 happiness of that moment! He bursts into the 
 holy laugh. Others get their souls on fire. 
 Others " come through " and join him in rejoic- 
 ing in a new-found Saviour. Those who are al- 
 ready saved feel their hearts warm, and they, too, 
 get to shouting and " striking glad hands," and, 
 casting off the fear of what the world may say or 
 think, " have good times in religion." 
 
 Sometimes they swooned away in ecstasy. I 
 saw a girl lie thus for hours together, supine, her 
 arms wide-spread. Her face was flushed and 
 
 72 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 she breathed hard. A few stood about her, but 
 they did nothing to revive her. It was all right. 
 It occasioned no surprise, for in the earlier days 
 there were such blessed trances in which favored 
 ones had seen what lies Behind the Veil; had 
 shuddered at the Dismal, Doomed, Dreadful, 
 and Devilish Pit; had caught a glimpse of daz- 
 zling glories and heard " sweet fragments of the 
 songs above " ere the pearly gates swung shut 
 again, and they descended all unwillingly to the 
 dull earth once more, but knowing thereafter what 
 joys awaited there, what radiancy of glory, what 
 bliss beyond compare. I was eager to know if to 
 this young woman was vouchsafed any such boon, 
 but I could get no word whatever. It seems to 
 me now that they put me off. Boys were used to 
 that In those days. 
 
 In such exuberance of enthusiasm, when, as it 
 were, the soul runs wild and naked in its innocency, 
 so many things occur to twitch the corners of the 
 mouth, that the *' holy laugh " would have had to 
 be invented if It did not exist. 
 
 They tell the story of a man who went up for- 
 
 73 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 ward night after alght, night after night through 
 all the meetings. The last night found him still 
 seeking. No one could make much out of him, 
 but at this last meeting some one put his arms 
 about him and pityingly said: " What's the mat- 
 ter, my dear brother? Why is It you can't come 
 through? " 
 
 The consciousness that the harvest was passed 
 and the summer ended, the kindly sympathy — 
 something, anyway — broke the man's heart. 
 *' Oh, I'm converted all right, all right, 
 I guess," he sniffled, and then he broke Into a reg- 
 ular, square-mouthed bawling spell. " Bub-but 
 . . . ah-hoo-hoo-hoooooo I I jist caint make a 
 prayer fit fer a daw-aw-awg! " 
 
 It Is of record that among the Puritans of old 
 New England were very wonderful and gracious 
 conversions at six years, at four years, and even at 
 two years and seven months. Nevertheless I 
 seem to remember that there was some grumbling 
 when Sister Moots and Sister Hoover made such 
 a strenuous campaign among the little folks in 
 Sunday-school. Sister Boggs, who taught the In- 
 
 74 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 fant class, was quite outspoken against such do- 
 ings. 
 
 '' What do them little things know about sins 
 forgive, and all such truck as that?" she angrily 
 demanded. (Righteous anger, understand.) 
 " Don't it say that their angels do always behold 
 the face of the Father? Well, then. And what 
 if they are naughty? Bless their bones, I 
 wouldn't give two pins for a young one that 
 didn't tear up Jack once in a while. No, I 
 wouldn't. Why, lawsadaisy! What have they 
 got to repent of? Trackin' in mud an' chasin' 
 the chickens and such capers. Worst they ever 
 did ud be all right if you'd turn 'em up and smack 
 'em, and kind o' loosen their hides so's they'd 
 grow good. Well, s'posin'. S'posin' they was 
 to die in their sins. What. of It? They'd go to 
 heaven, right spang! Oh, hush up ! I don't 
 want to hear any more talk about it." 
 
 But Sister Moots and Sister Hoover persevered, 
 and I'll never be able to tell you just how a whole 
 pewful of these young seekers looked one time 
 when Brother Snyder got good and going about 
 
 IS 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 the "sinners here to-nlght-ah, a-haltin' betwix' 
 two opinions-ah, and a-swingin' to an' fro-ah, like 
 a do-o-o-o-or on its hinges-ah." They were weep- 
 ing and wailing for their wicked sins, for they were 
 in danger of hell-fire, every one of them having 
 many times said to his brother: " Thou fool! " 
 Each had a wet and wadded handkerchief and 
 was scrubbing away industriously. They heard, 
 without heeding, Brother Snyder's long-drawn can- 
 tillation, but when he came to: "WAKE 'EM 
 UP-ah! Hang these sinners over HELL-FIRE 
 a spell-ah! Give 'em a good strong WHIFF 
 of brimstone-ah ! " if you could have seen that 
 row of round and red-rimmed eyes pop up from 
 behind the pew-back with such a " What's-up- 
 now? " expression, you would have felt the urgent 
 need of the holy laugh yourself. 
 
 Just before the close of the meeting the mourn- 
 ers sit up, and they and others give in their " ex- 
 perience." The older ones know what to say 
 from having been often at love-feast and prayer- 
 meeting when " the meeting is now in your 
 hands." But, it being their first essay as public 
 
 76 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 speakers with the little folks, they sit and study, 
 furtively watching their turn draw fearfully nearer 
 and nearer. Still sobbing and holding their hand- 
 kerchiefs before their eyes, they hunch their neigh- 
 bor with: "Hay! How's this? *I am trying 
 to serve the Lord/ 'LI that do, d'ye reckon?" 
 The first quarterly meeting after the revival, 
 who can forget it? For the first time in his life 
 the boy stays through the entire service. The 
 solemn words are spoken. The strange and sub- 
 tle fragrance of the sacramental wine distils upon 
 the quiet air. The railful waits the words of 
 dismissal, the short address concluding with these 
 words: " Rise, brethren. Go in peace, and live 
 for Him who died for you." As another railful 
 presses forward is sung a verse of " There is a 
 Fountain Filled with Blood " to that sweet tune 
 built on the five-toned scale that touches the heart 
 so with its repetition of the words: 
 
 " And there may I, though vile as he, 
 Lose all my guilty stains." 
 
 It is solemn, sacramental, ritualistic, definitely pre- 
 
 77 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 scribed; It is the antipodes of the free, untram- 
 meled expression of the emotions; It is the priestly 
 contrasted with the prophetic. 
 
 But in the love-feast In the afternoon, after the 
 prefatory little blocks of bread and sups of water, 
 the prophetic once more resumes Its sway. It is 
 the sacrament of the lay people. They rise to 
 tell of what the Lord has done for them : here the 
 young soldier just admitted on probation, at the 
 end of whose words, spoken with quivering chin, 
 is sung: " I've 'listed in the holy war," and 
 yonder the old veteran, soon to enter into his 
 eternal possessions, for whom is sung: 
 
 " My days are gliding swiftly by, 
 
 And I, a pilgrim stranger, 
 Would not detain them as they fly, 
 
 Those hours of toil and danger. 
 For oh, we stand on Jordan's strand, 
 
 Our friends are passing over. 
 And just before the shining shore 
 
 We may almost discover." 
 
 Ah, they had good times in religion in those 
 days, so it seemed to us. But in the Amen Corner 
 
 78 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 there were those who shook their heads and 
 sighed, recalling what it was like in their day. 
 When their folks moved here from Clark 
 County, one time Pap was gone to the mill and 
 wouldn't be back for three days, it was such a far 
 ways in those days, and Mother was left alone 
 with two little ones, and she could hear the wolves 
 " hollering " in the woods over by where Mc- 
 Kinnon's is now, and there was just a quilt hung 
 up for a door to the cabin. When they had love- 
 feast then -a woman couldn't get into it if she had 
 a flower or a ribbon in her bonnet, and men didn't 
 find peace to their souls till they had ripped from 
 their shirt-bosoms the ruffles they were so proud of. 
 No one then dreamed of asking if one might not 
 take a hand at cards, or read a novel, go to a 
 dance or to the playhouse, and still be a " pro- 
 fessor." Then they generally fasted once a week 
 and always fasted the Friday before quarterly 
 meeting. They had good times in religion then, 
 but even that was nothing to what they had heard 
 Pap and Mother tell about in the days when 
 Daniel Boone and Lewis Wetzel and Captain 
 
 79 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 Crawford and Simon Kenton and sinister Simon 
 GIrty, the renegade, were not mere names of 
 demigods, but neighbors and acquaintances. In 
 that heroic age, what was in our degenerate days 
 a midwinter luxury, was common fare. 
 
 At every preaching then " the slain of the Lord " 
 fell in windrows to the ground, struck down by 
 mighty power. Then men, under conviction, 
 wandered in solitary places, moaning and crying, 
 ''Lost! Lost! Forever lost!" Then the 
 shouts of the redeemed and blood-washed could 
 be heard for miles as they went spinning round the 
 camp-ground like a top. Mysterious and inex- 
 plicable " exercises " attended the preaching of 
 the Word. Saplings had to be cut off at the right 
 height to give those affected by the " jerks " some- 
 thing to hold on by while, from the waist upward, 
 they flung themselves back and forth with such 
 uncontrollable violence that the women's bonnets 
 and combs flew every which way, and their long, 
 loosened locks cracked like a carter's whip. 
 Around these saplings the ground was all torn 
 up as if It had been a hitching-post In fly-time. 
 
 80 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 Men taken with the " barking exercise " would 
 run on all fours, yelping and howling, and crying 
 that they had the devil " treed." The old men 
 dreamed dreams and the young men saw visions; 
 sons and daughters prophesied, and children seven 
 and eight years old preached to sinners and con- 
 verted many, exhorting until they collapsed from 
 sheer fatigue. The end of the world was thought 
 to be at hand, for these were the signs of the last 
 days. 
 
 And in truth the end of the world they knew 
 was at hand, and these were the last days of their 
 age. The new age was struggling to be born, a 
 new age grander far than any that had ever been 
 before — than all that had ever been before. A 
 new nation founded, not upon authority, but upon 
 the Equal Rights of Man, had come into being 
 on this side of the Atlantic. On the farther side 
 what change was being wrought in their day we 
 may know from the fact that the flag of this Amer- 
 ican nation is now the oldest one that floats. 
 
 A waft of air stirs just before the dawn of day. 
 It was so then. Men drew in their breath and 
 
 8i 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 their bosoms swelled with lofty purpose to do 
 something for their fellows, something to hasten 
 on the dawning of the day. A thousand Instances 
 show this, none more heart-touching than that of 
 Johnny '* Appleseed." It was not much that he 
 could do to help along, but at least he could 
 bring apple seeds from far across the mountains 
 and sow them in the dark forests of Ohio. He 
 could lend, leaf by leaf, his books to the soul- 
 hungry backwoodsmen. The heavens be his bed 
 for that! 
 
 Never before did such a Macedonian cry go up 
 as from these pioneers. They had battled with 
 appalling hardships to win them homes in the far 
 wilderness. There grew up fathers of families 
 who had never heard a sermon or a prayer of- 
 fered to God. To them came the circuit-riders, not 
 aged men, as we are wont to picture them, but 
 almost beardless youths, filled with a youth's god- 
 like fervency of spirit. Within them the thirst 
 for souls raged like a fever. Thousands of miles 
 they rode each year, sleeping where night over- 
 took them, sometimes in the lone woods, sometimes 
 
 82 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 in vermin-ridden cabins, preaching four times each 
 day, and oftener if they could. Their nominal 
 stipend was $64 a year and find themselves; their 
 real income never touched that figure. It was 
 for no earthly recompense they wrought, but for 
 an amaranthine crown. What pay could tempt 
 a fever-stricken man to lie for weeks upon three 
 chairs in a crowded cabin? That was a common 
 experience with them. Starved out sometimes, 
 they " located " till they could get new clothing 
 and a fresh horse, and then — Once more into 
 the field! Most of them died young, many of 
 them among strangers; and not for years after- 
 ward did their relatives hear how, when they were 
 too weak even to sit up in bed, they yet gathered 
 the people round them and told them of the Cross 
 and Him that hung thereon. V^ith them it was 
 no mere pious aspiration, but their heart's desire 
 and prayer to God: 
 
 " Happy if with my latest breath 
 I may but gasp his name; 
 Preach Him to all, and cry in death: 
 'Behold! Behold the Lamb!'" 
 
 B3 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 Never before was there such a spreading of the 
 Gospel. The aureoled saints that converted 
 Europe were but a feeble folk beside them, 
 slow-motioned, temporizing. They were un- 
 learned men, these circuit-riders. As one of 
 them has said, they " murdered the king's Eng- 
 lish at every lick," but they had power given unto 
 them to move the hearts of men, such power as 
 we can only estimate by first reading the accounts 
 of camp-meetings In the *' airly days," and then 
 going to a modern one, thinly attended and only 
 by the very old, at that, and deadly with a dulness 
 that no brass quartet, or hired singers of religious 
 ballads, or frequent jingling of tawdry " gospel 
 hymns " can lighten in the least degree. In the 
 old days whole settlements were utterly deserted 
 to attend camp-meeting, and if the rowdies came 
 and brought their whisky-bottles and made dis- 
 turbances, that also was good times In religion. 
 A mighty power could smite them senseless to the 
 ground, if not the preacher's fist on *' the burr of 
 the ear," as Peter Cartwrlght calls It. (Says he: 
 *' I did not permit myself to believe that any man 
 
 84 
 
THE OLD-TIME REVIVAL 
 
 could whip me till it was tried.") But the mighty 
 power could always be depended on, and if " the 
 slain of the Lord " did not keel over by the hun- 
 dred under his preaching, the circuit-rider exam- 
 ined his heart to find out why. 
 
 It needs must be that the age thus ushered in 
 should be the grandest that the world has ever 
 seen. These were the Voices of the Wilderness 
 crying: *' Prepare ye the way of the Lord." 
 And like their prototype, the man of Jordan, 
 plain-spoken and uncouth as they, there came a 
 time when they saw with sadness that they must de- 
 crease, and what they had forerun must increase. 
 Peter Cartwright prayed: "Lord, save the 
 Church from desiring to have pews, choirs, organs, 
 or instrumental music and a congregational min- 
 istry, like the heathen churches round about! " 
 And, even as he prayed, he must have seen that 
 the prayer was foreordained never to be an- 
 swered. Something of desperation was in his 
 cry: " The educated ministry, the settled pastor- 
 ate, has been tried time and again, and every 
 time has proved to be a perfect failure." It was 
 
 85 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 the bitter anger of a man that clearly foresees de- 
 feat that made him scorn the theological semi- 
 naries as " preacher factories," and compare their 
 finished products to so many " goslings that have 
 got the straddles from wading In the dew." 
 
 And yet, if he could come back to earth, not as 
 he left It, a weary, worn-out man, but as when, a 
 mere stripling, he heard a voice from heaven call- 
 ing, "Peter I Look up!" if he could return to 
 us, nineteen years old again, with all the godlike 
 fervency of youth, and all the good, hard com- 
 mon sense that was his, he would be none of those 
 who shake their heads and " deplore the tendency 
 of the age," as if God were an old man now, no 
 longer knowing His own business! These have 
 been twaddling their tinkling little " gospel 
 hymns " so long that they have forgotten the 
 sturdy lines that stayed and comforted so many 
 In the days when they had good times In religion : 
 
 " We'll praise Him for all that is past, 
 And trust Him for all that's to come." 
 
 86 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 WHAT was the first real " the-ay-ter " 
 play you ever went to? 
 I can hear you say " 0-o-o-oh. 
 . . ." in a long-drawn sigh. I can 
 see you close your eyes, and a faint smile come 
 over your face, as you recall that night. It is 
 the first time you have thought of it in many a 
 day. Wasn't it just gra-and? 
 
 I suppose that when they come to our age, the 
 children of this day and generation will hardly 
 be able to remember with as much distinctness 
 their first real play. They see so many of them; 
 so much is done for them that it wasn't thought 
 well to do for us, and they live in a world at all 
 points so widely different from that of ours " back 
 home." And even so, that world was somewhat 
 emancipated as compared with the one in which 
 Grandpap lived when he was young. In those 
 days Grandpap was a fine, strong, husky fellow 
 
 89 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 (so other people have told me; he never said 
 much about it himself), and took great delight In 
 wrestling. But he got to thinking it over, and 
 
 Took delight in wrestling. 
 
 the upshot was that he stopped wrestling, right 
 square off. He applied the moral touchstone 
 of his day: If a thing is good fun, then it is 
 wicked. I mind the first time Grandpap ate a 
 
 90 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 dish of ice-cream. It tasted so good he knew it 
 must be bad for the health. So he went and took 
 a pill to counteract the evil. 
 
 In his young days all that people could do — 
 nice people, I mean, not the rough element — was 
 to attend to business, farming or shoemaking or 
 housekeeping or whatever; and to try to be good 
 men and women. What kind of a life is that? 
 When folks don't do anything foolish, but just 
 attend to business and try to be good — why, 
 they might as well be dead. That's the way I 
 look at it. The rough element might go to 
 dances, might play euchre and seven-up; might 
 read novels; might fiddle; might go to horse-races 
 and the playhouse; might wear gold and silver 
 and costly apparel, such as gold collar-buttons, 
 and neckties, and artificial flowers, and ruffles, 
 and ribbons and beads, and all such dew-dabs ; but 
 not nice people, not people that wanted to be 
 somebody. And here's a funny thing: In spite 
 of the fact that the girls wore no ruffles and beads 
 and ribbons and artificial flowers, but went around 
 in plain straight skirts and slat sunbonnets, they 
 
 91 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 all got married. Some of them, two or three 
 times. Now, how do you account for that? 
 
 This thing of being sensible and good went well 
 enough while everybody lived in log cabins, but 
 
 They had to buy melodeons and 
 pianos. 
 
 after the War was over, and the men that had 
 been sleeping out of doors for four years and 
 living a pretty strenuous life came home and be- 
 gan to put the same energy into business that they 
 had put into fighting, things began to hum. The 
 country went ahead like a scared rabbit. People 
 
 92 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 made money so fast that they had to put some of 
 it on their backs. They had to buy melodeons 
 and pianos. Now, pretty nearly the first thing 
 you learn when you take music lessons is the 
 " Sack Waltz." As a natural consequence, when- 
 ever you'd find half a dozen girls together, one of 
 them would have her skirts drawn up to her shoe- 
 tops, so the others could see how she moved her 
 feet, and she'd be counting, '' One, two, three, 
 One, two, three." It wasn't long before they 
 got in a real organ, and a paid choir, and stained- 
 glass windows, and a carpet on the floor. I 
 shouldn't wonder if even the U. P's had organs 
 now in the meeting-houses. 
 
 Well, you know what all that leads to. You 
 might stave it off a little while, you might titivate 
 yourself with lectures on '' Does Death End All? " 
 by the Rev. Joseph Cook, but you had to own up 
 that you liked John B. Gough a lot better. He 
 — er — er — (Out with it!) — Well, he kind o' 
 acted it out more. Now, take the " Swiss Bell- 
 ringers," for example. The music was lovely and 
 elevating to the mind, and all like that, but the 
 
 93 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 fellow that was, with them — what was his name, 
 now? Sol. Smith Russell. That's the man — 
 He was a heap more interesting. He acted it out. 
 And then, about that time along came a lecturer 
 on " Richard Brinsley Sheridan." Sheridan was 
 a man that wrote plays, yes, I know, but don't 
 
 Jtr^^^. 
 
 Now, take the Swiss> Bell-ringers. 
 
 you see? It was English Literature the man was 
 lecturing about, and it was merely incidental that 
 he should tell about the characters. Bob Acres, and 
 Sir Lucius O^ Trigger, and the rest. He did it 
 very well, and you could tell right away which 
 was which character, but it kind of made you wish 
 that . . . that . . . 
 
 94 
 

 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 Just about that time, too, the elocution teacher 
 came to our town. A lot of people learned from 
 him how to talk like a dry cistern. I won't be 
 sure, but I think he was the first to start the fash- 
 ion of saying " i-ther " and '' thurfore," two pro- 
 nunciations which confer distinction upon any 
 discourse, I think even more so than " dlsremem- 
 ber." (There was something so dressed up about 
 *' disremember." So much more refined than 
 ^' ferglt.") You remember the elocution teacher, 
 and his plug hat, and his ginger-colored whiskers 
 dyed a crape black up to within an eighth of an 
 Inch of the roots. You remember his explosives 
 and effusives, his gutturals and pectorals, his oro- 
 tunds and orals, his "Ho! Ha! Hee! 
 Hoo ! " his wavlngs and weavlngs of hands, " from 
 the shoulder always; never from the elbows." 
 You remember his : 
 
 " Rrrrrrr-owj^ h-ye Ro-MUNS? H-rrrrrr- 
 ouse ye sul-LAVES ! " his: 
 
 " Hn-thy liver loves-zh, CUR-few SHALLLL 
 LL//11 not ha-rrrrringngng to NIGHTTTT-t!" 
 and his: 
 
 97 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 " Hea-ea-ear the sledgeeswiththeirbellllllls, 
 SEE-eelver belllUlls!" 
 
 Quite a few in our town took lessons from him. 
 The worst of it was that a body could never get 
 a chance to practise. The girl that took piano 
 
 The fellow that played the '' tooby 
 could go down to the barn. 
 
 lessons might clatter and boom up and down 
 the scale in contrary motion from breakfast till 
 bedtime, and nobody noticed it; the fellow that 
 played the " tooby " in the band could take the 
 lantern and go down to the barn and snort by the 
 hour " Poomp ! Poomp ! Poom-poom-poom- 
 poomp ! " and nobody made fun of him. But let 
 
 98 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 an elocution student start in with '* Ho ! Ha 1 
 Hee! Hoo!" and Pap would fling down his 
 Examiner with " Aw, let up on that! " and if you 
 persevered, he would bawl out, " Give that calf 
 more room I " There'd be a crowd out on the 
 
 Has to keep one ear 
 hung out for the rat- 
 tle of a wagon. 
 
 front sidewalk in no time, mocking you, and mak- 
 ing that sound with their soft palates, a kind of 
 snoring laugh which is so chilling to the artistic 
 temperament. If he goes out to the woods pas- 
 ture to practice, he has to keep one ear hung out, 
 even in his intensest moments, for the rattle of a 
 
 99 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 wagon jingling down the big road, carrying a 
 worthy but wholly inartistic couple or this will 
 ensue : 
 
 "Whoa! Ho, there! Stand still, can't ye? 
 . . . Mother, did you hear that? They're killin' 
 somebuddy In yan ! " 
 
 "Why, Pap!" 
 
 " Yes, sir, they are. Why, jls listen to him 
 holler. My Lord! Oh, I can't stand this." 
 
 " Now, Pap — " 
 
 " Don't hang onto me thataway. Leggo." 
 
 " Now, Pap, now don't ye go fer to git mixed 
 up in no muss 'at don't concern you, runnin' head- 
 long Into danger like that. Now, Pap! An' a 
 mortgage on the farm, smf! an' me left all, all 
 alone In the world with four little helpless, Inno- 
 cent children, ahoo! an' the milk o' five cows to 
 'tend to — Aw, now. Pap ! " 
 
 " Mother, It ain't human for me to drive apast 
 and leave that pore bein' to his fate. Now. It 
 won't do, I tell you, to wait till we git to the 
 Squire's. It'll be too late then. Whoa, Fan! 
 Whoa, girl! You set right still and keep a-holt 
 
 100 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 o' them lines. I'll be right back. LET THE 
 MAN ALONE ! " 
 
 He crashes through the hazel-brush with the 
 noise of a yoke of oxen, while his poor wife sits 
 perched up there, sniffling and " all of a trimble," 
 
 He crashes through the 
 hazel-brush. 
 
 till he comes back, mad as a hornet and red in the 
 face. 
 
 " Aw, just some fool in there speakin' a piece ! 
 Go on. Fan! Ck! Ck! Half a cent I'd 'a' 
 broke his neck for him. D-tarn . . . fool ! " 
 
 But while " Kentucky Belle " and " Lasca " and 
 
 lOI 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 " The Polish Boy " were exciting and all that, 
 something was lacking. There wasn't any dressing 
 up; there wasn't any painting your face; there 
 wasn't any curtain to go up and come down (which 
 is perhaps the most important of all, since a cur- 
 tain means mystery, and charm, and magic). But 
 there was missing, too, the reckless deviltry, the 
 risk of something which I will not further hint 
 at than to say that these blue-tipped matches put 
 you in mind of it, the state of mind associated 
 with euchre in the haymow, and novels. 
 
 Ah, the first novel ! I don't mean " Antelope 
 Abe," but the first hound novel. In vain you 
 argued with your mother that George Eliot's 
 Works were entirely fit and proper reading for 
 the young. She took the book and turned over 
 to the title page and pointed her accusing finger at 
 the black and shameless words, " Adam Bede, a 
 Novel." She had you there. You might pro- 
 test. " Oh, well, it ain't a dime novel." It was 
 " A Novel " just the same, and there her finger 
 stayed. Something sank within you. You might 
 talk and talk, but you could not evade the fact. 
 
 102 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 You could not but stare where the finger pointed. 
 You, yoii were reading novels. False, false to the 
 vows you had made! Knowing the good and 
 choosing the evil. This was not your first step 
 downward. Before this, you had borrowed from 
 
 You heard what Brother Longenecker 
 said about that. 
 
 a neighbor Shakspere's Plays. You heard what 
 Brother Longenecker said about that only last 
 Sunday. He said, " Shakspere is the Devil's 
 Bible ! " And you had borrowed that book, bor- 
 rowed it, when you had Butler's " Analogy of 
 Revealed Religion," Nelson's " Cause and Cure 
 of Infidelity," " The Autobiography of Hester 
 
 103 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 Ann Rogers," and other good books about the 
 house, scarcely opened. Scarcely opened. What 
 did you suppose was going to become of you if 
 you kept on like that? The next thing, you'd be 
 wanting to go to the the-ay-ter. And something 
 within you thrilled in answer, although you 
 knew then and know now that the word, es- 
 pecially when pronounced with the accent on 
 the second syllable, connotes, as no other 
 word in our language does, hardened impenitence 
 that can look reproach in the eye and say, " Well, 
 what of it?" 
 
 That is why we have so few theaters in this 
 country and so many Opera-Houses. So much 
 of conscience is left to us yet, that though we may 
 do the deed, we dare not speak the word. Hence 
 such conversations as: 
 
 " Goin' to the Opry-House to-night? " 
 
 " Why, I hadn't thought. What is it? " 
 
 " Uncle Tom's Cabin." 
 
 Perhaps it was not all your fault that the Old 
 Boy leaped up in you at the bare mention of the 
 the-ay-ter. The dialogues at the Sunday-school 
 
 104 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 exhibitions might have fostered in you the wish to 
 see and hear character impersonated. The min- 
 strel show your daddy took you to, not long after 
 your curls were cut off, first showed you the luxury 
 
 Goin to the Opry-House to- 
 night f " 
 
 of the sight of others' miseries (when they art* 
 feigned). It was in the old Melodeon Hall. 
 That was before Judge Rodehaver built the Opry- 
 House. All the comedy went by you, and you 
 wondered and wondered what the folks were 
 
 105 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 laughing at. But the afterpiece you understood. 
 It showed how It would be away, 'way off in the 
 future, In 1909, when the colored folks, so lately 
 freed, would have the upper hand and would then 
 give the white folks a taste of their own medicine. 
 A lot of nig — Sh ! How many times have I 
 got to speak to you about that word? It's very 
 low, and rude. Only Democrats say that — A 
 lot of colored gentlemen were having a fine dinner, 
 when In comes a poor white man all wrapped up 
 In a quilt, his cold pink legs showing underneath. 
 He begged them for something to eat. He 
 couldn't have it. 
 
 *' What did you eat last? " 
 
 " I had a peanut last week." 
 
 Aw, the poor man ! You felt so sorry for him. 
 And just when you were wishing they would tell 
 him to draw up and eat himself done, Bang ! went 
 a cannon or a pistol or something, and the curtain 
 came down, shutting off the colored gentlemen, 
 and the man threw off his quilt, and there he was 
 all in pink tights and spangles, and dancing to 
 the music. And coming home, your father ex- 
 
 106 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 plained to you that the man was only pretending. 
 He wasn't really hungry. 
 
 And then the pammer-ammer of " The Pil- 
 grim's Progress " gave you an inkling of 
 scenic effect. ^' Pilgrim's Progress " is (or 
 was) a boys' book all full of fighting and ad- 
 ventures. It only had a few black and white 
 pictures in it. The pammer-ammer was a 
 whole, whole lot of colored pictures, big ones 
 that they rolled past whenever the man 
 clapped his hands. And maybe Apollyon wasn't 
 a fierce-looking critter, all green and scaly, and 
 an arrow-headed stinger on the end of his tail! 
 But It was the effects that interested you. For in- 
 stance, when Christian first started out, it came 
 up to storm, and they turned down the gas, and 
 the piano went whanga, whanga, whanga on the 
 bass notes, just exactly like thunder. And then 
 Christian meets Evangelist and asks the way, and 
 Evangelist says, *' Do you see yonder shining 
 light? " and Christian says, " I think I do." 
 Well, I should think so too, for there was a hole 
 cut in the canvas, and just then somebody put a 
 
 107 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 light behind It, so that you couldn't help but see it. 
 There were a lot of those things, but the best of 
 all was the Grand Transformation Scene at the 
 last. Christian and Hopeful swum the River of 
 Death. It seemed as if they swum standing up 
 and kind of cow-fashion, but we didn't mind that, 
 we were so interested in seeing how the story came 
 out. And sure enough, they got to Heaven. In 
 the next scene there they were, being pulled up 
 by a wire, and two angels, also on wires, came in 
 from the sides, blowing on horns. And there was 
 the Celestial City, all gold and white, splendid, 
 if a little skimpy. "» 
 
 And here's something they had in our town that 
 I don't think they had in yours. Just as Christian 
 and Hopeful started to wabble upward, a painted 
 scene-cloth all blazing at the edges swung across 
 the opening. The lecturer gave a kind of jump, 
 but kept right on talking, and pretty soon he 
 bowed and smiled, and the curtain came down, 
 and the piano started up a grand march, and the 
 people put on their things and sauntered out talk- 
 ing about how lovely it all was, and how much 
 
 io8 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN^ 
 
 better they understood it now than they ever had 
 before. Apparently it never crossed their minds 
 — it certainly did not cross mine — that possibly 
 the blazing scene-cloth might not have been down 
 on the program as a scenic effect; that while the 
 lecturer was bowing and smiling he was scared 
 half to death, and if the piano had played a shade 
 less loudly, I might have heard them behind 
 scampering here and there for buckets of water, 
 and stamping out the blazing canvas. So far as 
 I know, never a word got out that would make 
 people understand how near they came to being 
 burned alive or trampled to death that night. 
 
 And speaking of fire makes me think of red 
 fire and the entertainment they got up for Center 
 Street M. E. when they were going to build the 
 new church. It ran for three nights. They 
 called it '' Tableaux Vivants." When I say 
 " they," I mean the bills, for the people just 
 skipped those words. That is, all of them did 
 except those folks who always make fun of every- 
 thing stylish. They said, " Tab-lokes Vi-vance ! 
 What in tunket is tab-lokes vi-vance? " In case 
 
 109 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 you don't know what these words mean, Til ex- 
 plain that it's where you get folks to dress up and 
 stand just so and not move, and then you pull the 
 curtain up, and when they can't stand it any longer 
 without breathing, you let the curtain down, and 
 you burn red fire so's the light will shine on them. 
 The reason why you mustn't breathe is, that if 
 you do, the smoke of the red fire will make you 
 cough. I don't know whether, when you saw 
 these . . . er . . . these what-you-may-callums, 
 they had what they had the night I went. The 
 program said: "Poses Statuesques — Ajax De- 
 fying the Lightnings — Cain Killing Abel — The 
 Dying Gladiator." Well, sir, when the curtain 
 went up, there stood a man without anything on 
 but a suit of union underwear, no pants or shirt 
 or anything but just this white suit of underclothes, 
 looked like it was all in one piece, and his face 
 was all white, and he had kind of cotton-batting 
 hair, and he looked for all the world like a marble 
 statue, like that one on the Clayton Monument 
 down at the cemetery, only that is a marble angel 
 with a nightgown on, and kind of holes cut in the 
 
 no 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 back to let the wings go through, though how they 
 get the feathers through without rumpling them all 
 up, I never could see. This man I'm telling you 
 about was a fine-looking young man and very well- 
 built but — Well, what's your opinion? Do you 
 
 To set a good exam- 
 ple to the youngf 
 
 think such a thing is calculated to set a good ex- 
 ample to the young? There was a good deal of 
 talk about it at the time, I remember, especially 
 among the old stick-in-the-muds up in the Amen 
 corner, and I heard that old Aunt Betty Mooney 
 went so far as to threaten to take out her letter. 
 She said such goings-on were perfectly scandalous, 
 
 III 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 and If that was the way they were going to do, 
 she just wouldn't stand it. Now! 
 
 But there could be no possible complaint as 
 to the last thing on the program. When the cur- 
 tain went up, there were potted palms on the stage, 
 and a rubber plant tied with a red ribbon. That 
 was to show It was In the tropics somewhere. 
 Then a lot of the Company K fellows marched in 
 with their guns, only they wore red-and-yellow 
 uniforms and carried a flag that made you think 
 of a horse-blanket. It was yellow and had two 
 narrow red stripes, one at each end, like a horse- 
 blanket. And there was a man led out with his 
 hands tied behind him and a handkerchief over 
 his eyes. Then we knew what It was. It was 
 down In Cuba that time they were going to shoot 
 a revolutionist. The captain said: " Read-ay- 
 ay! Aim!" and just as he was going to say: 
 " Fire," and the women started to put their fin- 
 gers In their ears, here came Abel Horn — Oh, 
 sure, he was in It. He was in everything — here 
 came Abel Horn and threw the American flag over 
 the man as much as to say: " You just dare! " 
 
 112 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 And while the captain was studying whether he'd 
 better or not, down dropped what they call a 
 " tar-po-le-on " that they had hung up at the back 
 of the stage, and there stood Jenny Snodgrass 
 with her hair let down, and a kind of a skating- 
 cap on her head, and a big shield that came up so 
 she could rest her hand on it, and all dressed up 
 in the American Flag, low-neck-and-short-sleeves 
 and a trail, or would have been a trail if she 
 hadn't been standing on a white box, kind of. 
 Well, sir, that just settled it. They dassent to 
 shoot the man then, and they lighted the red fire, 
 and the piano started to play, " O, say, can you 
 see," and the people clapped and stomped like 
 everything. But I tell you it was a mighty near 
 thing for that fellow with his hands tied. Little 
 more, and he'd have been a goner. It was bully. 
 Coming home with George Donnyhew that 
 night, I said as much. Now, George was a boy 
 that had been around a good deal. He had been 
 down to Columbus twice, and I think he had been 
 as far as Circleville. " Aw, that ain't nothin'," 
 says he. " You ought to see a real the-ay-ter 
 
 113 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 play once." At that moment Satan entered into 
 me. I fought against the entrance. I knew how 
 wicked it was to think of such things, let alone 
 going to them. But I also knew (rejoicing and 
 despairing In spirit at once), that a day would 
 
 Aw, that aint nothin/' 
 says he. 
 
 come when I should be among those who sat and 
 saw the Devil's Bible acted out on a stage by peo- 
 ple painted up and dressed up to look the way 
 they did in those days. I knew, too, that very 
 likely I should sink so low as to attend a " variety 
 show," and that, as you know, scrapes on the bot- 
 tom, for the ladies wear short skirts and kick up 
 
 114 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 their heels, as bold as brass. It all came true, I 
 regret to say. But I shall also have to tell you 
 that even in a " variety show " I never saw any 
 '' Poses Statuesques," In union underwear. 
 
 In another place I have written about William 
 B. Bradbury and the great work he did for this 
 country's musical development by his composition 
 of sacred songs, whose bass was invariably do, 
 sol, and fa, so that any young man who learned 
 those three tones of the scale could join in without 
 having to sing " air.'* Bradbury did something 
 which contributed more to the dissipation of the 
 old fogy notion that we are here to attend to 
 business and try to be good, than any other one 
 thing. He composed " Esther, The Beautiful 
 Queen." It was all about Esther, and Mordecai, 
 and the Israelites, and that rapscallion of a 
 Hainan. Being from the Bible, it took the peo- 
 ple off their guard, don't you see? Musically, the 
 work compares favorably with '' Work for the 
 Night is Coming," and '' Shall We Gather at the 
 River?" and that is a great convenience in the 
 matter of amateur productions. And you can 
 
 115 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 make the costumes out of cheesecloth, blue and red 
 and yellow, and all such ; and it's great fun getting 
 it up, and taking the girls home after the re- 
 hearsals, and there are more solos for more dif- 
 ferent people than you can shake a stick at; and 
 there are no end of chances to work in all the 
 nice-looking little boys and girls in town as pages 
 and train-bearers, and so all the fathers and moth- 
 ers, and brothers and sisters, and husbands and 
 wives, and uncles and aunts and cousins, to the 
 fifth remove, and relations of every degree, and 
 friends and acquaintances of everybody that 
 " takes part " all buy tickets, and the Opry-House 
 is chock-a-block for the three nights. It could run 
 longer, but everybody in it is just played out with 
 excitement and can't stand any more. There is 
 acting in it, and scenery, and costumes, and you 
 paint your face, and the curtain goes up, and all 
 like that, but it isn't a the-ay-ter. Not at all. 
 
 It's all singing. So it can't be a the-ay-ter. 
 
 Well, if it's acting and costumes, and the cur- 
 tain goes up and down, and it's all singing, it must 
 be an opera. 
 
 Ii6 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 No. It's about the Bible, so it can't be an 
 opera. 
 
 Well, what is it, then? 
 
 It's a cantata. Something entirely different 
 from an opera or a play. 
 
 Right here I must confess my entire unfitness 
 to write on this subject. I supposeT am the only 
 man in the United States of America, able to sing 
 the scale in C, who not only has never taken part 
 in " Esther, The Beautiful Queen," but who has 
 never even witnessed a performance of that great 
 work. I never had the chance. I suppose I 
 ought to feel proud of the distinction, but I'm not. 
 It makes me feel lonesome. You saw it, and I 
 didn't. You were in it, and I wasn't. I'll bet 
 that at times you find yourself whistling that about: 
 '* Ever the dutiful more than the beautiful," and, 
 " I'll go unto the King, though not according to 
 the Law." Oh, well, that's the way of it in this 
 world. Some have everything nice, and some 
 don't have anything but trouble. 
 
 But I saw " The Drummer-boy of Shiloh," just 
 the same as you did. Laura Hornbaker, who had 
 
 117 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 been Esther, was the girl that Mose Coogler 
 wanted to get, and that Johnny Durfee got. Mose 
 was afterward Prosecuting Attorney, you remem- 
 ber. He played the part of the Rebel Colonel, 
 and was In command of AndersonvUle, and who 
 should turn up among the Union prisoners but 
 Johnny Durfee that got engaged to Laura before 
 the War broke out. She mittened Mose because 
 he talked so against the Old Flag. Harry Det- 
 wUer that played the Dutch Recruit wasn't In the 
 prison scene at all because he was such an awful cut- 
 up you couldn't help laughing at him, and this scene 
 wasn't intended to be a bit funny. The Company 
 K boys were all in rags, and chalked up to look pale 
 and starved to death. In walks Mose Coogler 
 with a bucket, and they all clamor for something 
 to eat, and he scatters wet sawdust like it was 
 chicken feed. They made out it was cornmeal. 
 And the boys grabbled for it with their hands like 
 they were crazy to get It, and pretended to eat it. 
 (Oh, it made you wild to see 'em.) Johnny Dur- 
 fee was supposed to be too sick to be able to get 
 his share (he had such pretty black eyes and mus- 
 
 Ii8 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 tache!). So Little Jimmy, the Drummer-boy of 
 Shiloh, who was supposed to be the brother of 
 Johnny Durfee (young Loosh Benson played the 
 part) , he up and asks Mose for something for his 
 poor sick brother. That was Mose's chance to 
 get even with Johnny for cutting him out with 
 Laura. So he roars out; "No, you Yankee 
 dogs ! No-o ! Right here in this prison pen you 
 shall rot, starve, and die!'' (Oo-oo! You 
 ought to have heard the people grit their teeth 
 at that.) So Loosh he throws himself at Mose's 
 feet and begs and pleads with him. But Mose 
 was a coward as well as a villain, and he shot the 
 poor boy dead. That is, he did on the nights when 
 the blame thing would go off. Sometimes it 
 wouldn't, and young Loosh would have to stagger 
 and fall and struggle and die just the same as if 
 he had been shot. Heart failure, you know. 
 Abel Horn was in that, too, and after Johnny 
 Durfee said: " My G — ! Little Jimmy dead? 
 This will kill poor mother! " iVbel had a speech 
 like this: " Comrades, unknown to you all I have 
 kept concealed next to my heart — " But wait 
 
 119 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 till I tell you. One night he forgot to put the 
 folded-up flag inside his shirt-bosom, so when he 
 came to feel for it there, he didn't find it. — " Next 
 to my heart," says he, hunting wildly, and reach- 
 ing way down. — " Next to my heart " — (then he 
 whispered: *' Where is it? Quick, you fel- 
 lows!") — "Next to my heart — next to my — 
 my heart" — Abel was getting rattled. Finally 
 he fished it out of his pistol pocket where he had 
 thoughtlessly stowed it. — " Next to my heart the 
 dear Old Flag. Let us spread it over Little 
 Jimmy for Little Jimmy is dead." 
 
 Now you might say that was a the-ay-ter. It 
 was a regular play, costumes and everything, and 
 all spoken except in the last act where Laura sings 
 " There will be one Vacant Chair," with that kind 
 of a tremble in her voice that she got right after 
 she began to take vocal of old Prof. Minetti who 
 plays the organ in St. Bridget's Church. Yes, 
 but don't you see, these were our boys, the Com- 
 pany K boys, and we wanted to help 'em along. 
 It wasn't like upholding regular actors, trapesing 
 around the country, too lazy to make a living in an 
 
 I20 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 honest way. And besides, it was about the War, 
 and that's the next thing to a Bible story. Peo- 
 ple went to see it and laughed till they got to 
 coughing at Harry Detwiler trying to make his 
 blanket cover both his head and toes at once when 
 his stuffed stomach made the blanket too short, — 
 people that would no more have gone to a regular 
 the-ay-ter than they would have walked into 
 Oesterle's and ordered a glass of that mixture of 
 yeast and quinine that Oesterle called beer. 
 
 All this time, whenever they threw show-bills' 
 over into your front yard, you studied them till 
 you almost knew them by heart. They were 
 these long narrow bills that they don't have any 
 more. Now and again there would be a picture 
 on one of them of people with their hands clasped 
 in agony while they saw somebody running a 
 butcher-knife into somebody else. How you did 
 wish you knew the story of it, and how it all came 
 out ! But it was wicked to go, and it cost money. 
 But one day the man that papered your house, who 
 was also a bill-poster, left a complimentary ticket 
 for you. He said he didn't care much for that 
 
 121 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 kind of a show, but he thought maybe you would. 
 Would you? Aw-haw-haw-aw-aw I Would youl 
 Would a duck swim? Could you? That was 
 the question. Well — er — er — seeing that It 
 said " Complimentary " on it, why, it would be 
 
 One day the man that papered your 
 house left a ticket for you, 
 
 kind of ill-mannered not to go. Oh, goody! 
 Goo — But — er — er — ' How about your get- 
 ting home? Because It would be pretty late at 
 night. Oh, you'd come right home as soon as It 
 was out. Yes, mam. You wouldn't loiter? No'm. 
 Well — er — er — Wouldn't you be afraid to be 
 
 122 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 alone on the street so late at night? Ah, afraid! 
 You afraid! What of, for pity's sakes? Well, 
 you know you always said the covered bridge was 
 so spooky after dark. Oh, well! That was a 
 good while ago. That was along last spring when 
 you were littler. And besides, there would be 
 
 You were in the front row. 
 
 people coming home from the the-ay — from the 
 entertainment, and you could come along with 
 them. What time did it begin? " Doors open 
 at 7:30. Performance begins promptly at 8." 
 
 The doors did open at 7 130, didn't they? You 
 were there and saw 'em open. In those days there 
 weren't any reserved seats, no boxes, or orchestra 
 
 123 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 seats, or " parkay," or balcony, or even gallery. 
 There was just the flat floor of the Opry-House, 
 and rows of wooden chairs nailed to scantlings. 
 First come, first served, and you were in the front 
 row, so close that you could just see over the edge 
 of what the janitor called " de flat-fawm." You 
 stared at the drop curtain with its view of Swiss 
 scenery tastefully bordered with painted advices 
 like: " Go to J. P. Runkle's for your Hardw're, 
 Stoves and Tinw're "; " Highest Prices for Coun- 
 try Produce at Rouse & Walker's Grocery Store, 
 Main St. opp. P. O." 
 
 Dinny Lynch's orchestra must have been play- 
 ing for a dance that night somewhere, so the 
 " troupe " engaged the nig — the colored band 
 from the South End, and whenever they got to 
 going, the windows of the hall would bulge out- 
 ward, and little flakes of whitewash floated down 
 on you from the ceiling. That helped to pass 
 the time a little, though if anybody asks you if 
 you have any notion of how long a thousand years 
 is, you can tell *em, Yes, you have. It's just 
 about as long as from 7 130 till 8, the first time 
 
 124 
 
'^ 
 e 
 
 ttq 
 
 o 
 Co 
 
 o 
 
 hi 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 you ever saw a real the-ay-ter play. But you en- 
 joyed yourself in anticipation — until you heard 
 something that made your heart sink within you. 
 Right back of you sat two farmers, come into 
 town to *' set " on the Grand Jury. One of them 
 
 To be continued in our next.' 
 
 said to the other: " Tell you what, I jist bet you 
 anything 'at when it gets along to the excitin' part, 
 they'll come out an' say, ' To be continued in our 
 next,' like they do in them weekly paper stories." 
 Gosh all fish-hooks ! If they did that ! And your 
 " Complimentary " was for one night only. 
 Even a thousand years will pass if you wait 
 
 127 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 long enough, and finally the curtain did go up, and 
 there on a green sofa sat the Lady of Lyons with 
 a bunch of hat-trimmings in her hand, saying: 
 " I cannot think who it is sends me these beautiful 
 flowers every day." Got you interested right 
 from the word go. And she had such pretty rosy 
 cheeks! And wasn't Claude Melnotte perfectly 
 elegant? And that Mossoo Bo-se-ong, I just de- 
 spised that man, didn't you? Think of him draw- 
 ing a revolver on a lady! That's no way to act. 
 And then, when he got left after all, and he says: 
 " K-hairses on ye both! " that old fellow (I can't 
 think of his name now), he jumps up and cracks 
 his heels, and he says to him: "Curse away! 
 But remember that curses are like chickens and 
 always come home to roost." And that's just 
 about so, too. 
 
 So far from the story being " continued in our 
 next," it was completed that night, and more also, 
 for they had another one, a short one, about a 
 lady that took in roomers, and she rented out the 
 same room to two men, one that worked nights, 
 and the other days. They didn't know she did 
 
 128 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 that, but they suspicloned something was wrong, 
 and finally, one day, the man that worked days 
 got laid off or something, and came home unex- 
 pected, and here was this other fellow in his room. 
 Well, sir, if they didn't have it hot and heavy 
 there for a while ! 
 
 Don't you remember? Sure, you do. Well, 
 maybe it wasn't " The Lady of Lyons." Maybe 
 it was '' East Lynne," or " The Marble Heart," 
 or Maggie Mitchell in " Fanchon the Cricket," 
 or even " Uncle Tom's Cabin." No matter. It 
 was the most entrancing thing that ever was. 
 George Donnyhew was right when he said of the 
 tableaux vivants: "Aw, that ain't nothin'. You 
 want to see a real the-ay-ter play." 
 
 Let me see, now — How long was it after that 
 before you said to yourself, " I could do as well 
 as that"? And when was it you began to sub- 
 scribe for a theatrical paper and read with eager 
 interest the news-notes from Ishpeming and Canal 
 Winchester, like '' Giddy Girls comb. i6 to fair 
 house. Leap for Life co. 21 failed to show^ up 
 and house dark. Next wk. Sharon's U. T. C. co. 
 
 129 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 28-29"? How you pondered on "WANTED 
 
 — AT ONCE. For Bigelow Bros'. Refined 
 Wagon Show, leading juvenile. Must be neat 
 dresser and double in brass, willing to eat and 
 sleep on lot. We PAY, not promise. Mashers 
 and boozers, first offense, BingI Address Bige- 
 low Bros., Jefferson Center, Shelby County, Ind." 
 You came very near writing to them, didn't you? 
 " Wait a while," says you to yourself. You have 
 been waiting ever since. The birthdays have 
 come and come, each one a little swifter-footed 
 than its predecessor, each one exhaling a faint 
 sigh, as it found you less likely to do what you had 
 dreamed so vividly of doing — er — (Whisper) 
 
 — going on the stage. You could do as good as 
 some of them. You could do it better now than 
 ever; could put more intelligence into it, more 
 feeling, but — (Whisper again) — you're bigger 
 around the waist. 
 
 Wouldn't you like to see again that first real 
 the-ay-ter play of yours, if you could see it with 
 the same eager interest, if once again you could 
 sit there tranced, your lips moving as the actors 
 
 130 
 

 
 o 
 
 Vj 
 
 
THE DRAMA IN OUR TOWN 
 
 spoke their lines? Wouldn't you like to see 
 " The Drummer-boy of Shiloh " once more if you 
 could laugh at Harry Detwiler's fooling and 
 grit your teeth at Mose Coogler's villainy? 
 Wouldn't you like to take the girls home from the 
 rehearsal of " Esther," singing, through the quiet 
 streets, '' Go thou unto the King " ? I think I'd 
 like to see the pammerammer of " The Pilgrim's 
 Progress " again if I could also see a resemblance 
 in the tremolando of the bass notes of the piano 
 to the rolling thunder, and if I were right sure 
 they would have ''Poses Statuesque — Ajax De- 
 fying the Lightnings — Cain Killing Abel — The 
 Dying Gladiator," and it was for the new Center 
 Street M. E. I believe I'd buy a ticket to the 
 " Tableaux Vivants," and go, even if the smoke of 
 the red fire, " the incense of the scene," as Abel 
 Horn called it, did make me cough. Alive yet? 
 Yes, indeed. Abel's in the insurance business up 
 in the northern part of the State somewhere. 
 Alive? Well, I guess. Just married his third 
 wife the other day. Who was this that was 
 telling me? 
 
 133 
 
THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 
 
THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 
 
 GENTLE READER: Up to now you 
 and I have walked along, in our jour- 
 neyings back home, with our arms in- 
 terlocked upon each other's shoulders, 
 thicker than thieves. Whenever I have given my 
 experience, and told my " tribbles and trialations," 
 as Brother John Warnock said in class meeting 
 one time, you have grinned all over your face and 
 wagged your head and agreed: " Yes, sir, that's 
 so. Now, that's jist the way it was." 
 
 I don't know how it is with you, but I begin 
 to feel kind of uneasy about that sort of thing. 
 I'm so constituted that it's bad for my health 
 to have folks agree with me all the time. It gets 
 so monotonous. I don't see but what you and I 
 will have to have a row. It's bound to come 
 sometime and we might as well have it over and 
 done with. And yet I shouldn't like it to be any- 
 thing more than a boyish spat, like those we used 
 
 137 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 to have coming home from school, when I'd black 
 your eye and you'd send me in bawling to my ma, 
 with my hand held like a cup under my nose, and 
 the next morning when you passed my house you'd 
 yodel for me the same as ever, and I'd snatch up 
 my books and tear out of the house so as to walk 
 with you. 
 
 Let me see now — what Is there we can quarrel 
 about? 
 
 I might pick a fuss by calling you names. I 
 might chant at you, 
 
 or, 
 
 "Moore! Moore! 
 Rick-rlck-store ! " 
 
 Fie, for shame! Fie, for shame! 
 Everybody knows your name ! " 
 
 But I don't know that your name is Moore, or, 
 Indeed, what it is at all. 
 I might tease you with 
 
 " Black eye ! Black eye ! 
 Turn around and tell a lie." 
 or, 
 
 " Blue-eyed beauty! 
 Run home and do your mammy's duty!" 
 
 138 
 
THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 
 
 which Is a terrible Insult and Implies that you 
 help your mother with the dishes, an aspersion 
 which you would have to " take up " or be for- 
 ever disgraced. But I don't know the color of 
 your eyes. 
 
 I might bristle up to you and say, " I kin lick 
 you. You think you're smart." That isn't done, 
 though, to pick a fuss, but to get acquainted, and 
 we don't need an introduction. Gentle Reader. 
 And, besides, it would be just like you to sniffle, 
 ''You lea' me be, now; you big stiff! Mai 
 Ma-ma ! " and run home bawling. 
 
 Let me see, now — isn't there something we 
 can squabble about, just like boys, and be just as 
 unreasonable and loyal to our side? Let me see 
 — let me see — 
 
 I have It — politics. 
 
 And since I proposed the game It's my first 
 choice of sides. I choose Republican. 
 
 Hee ! Hee ! I've got the advantage of you 
 from the very first. I've got something to holler 
 at you, and you haven't anything to holler back 
 at me. 
 
 139 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 " Sixteen rats! Sixteen cats! 
 Sixteen dirty Democrats!" 
 
 I knew that would grind you. Your side hasn't 
 any poetry like that. Not smart enough. The 
 nearest you ever came to it was a long time ago 
 when you could say " 329 " to us, and we'd get 
 fighting mad in a second. So many of these 
 young whiffets don't know what that means that 
 we'll have to explain to them. It seems that one 
 time Congress voted to raise its own salary, and 
 dated the raise far enough back so that each con- 
 gressman would have $329 that he hadn't figured 
 on. But it was such an unpopular move that a 
 statesman, afterwards nominated for President, 
 covered back his grab into the Treasury. The 
 worst thing he could have done ! The very worst 
 thing he could have done! Because (if you're 
 a politician) when you get caught with the goods 
 on, the thing to do is to make out that you are 
 working in the best interests of the country, and 
 stick it out that it was your plain duty to do that 
 very thing. And for this statesman to run like 
 a whitehead at the very first holler, and go put 
 
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 the money back where he got it — oh, that was 
 too mortifying! And your side was just mali- 
 cious enough to see it and to take advantage of 
 it. Bad little boys thought 329 was a new 
 naughty word, and chalked it on the fences and 
 on the sidewalks, to the horror and disgust of all. 
 You saw it everywhere. Going home from 
 church you'd see it, and if you were walking with 
 a lady you'd have to say: "Oh, what a funny 
 looking cloud that is ! " to divert her attention. It 
 was everywhere. People who lived at No. 329 
 Main Street had to petition the Common Council 
 to change their house number to 3 27 A. They 
 couldn't stand it. In the early part of the cam- 
 paign it looked as if our candidate was going to 
 be defeated, but after this 329 movement got good 
 and going, the moral sentiment of the country 
 was awakened and our candidate was triumphantly 
 vindicated by being elected. He's dead now, and 
 he's got a far finer monument than the ramshackle 
 factory chimney made out of brickbats they put 
 up for Lincoln. 
 
 That was the only popular cry you ever got on 
 
 141 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 us, and It taught you a lesson, seemingly. It 
 taught you your place. And when we shout at 
 you 
 
 "Sixteen rats! Sixteen cats! 
 Sixteen dirty Democrats! " 
 
 you take your medicine In silence, the same as 
 Tom Lee did when we gathered outside his laun- 
 dry and declared, " Chlnymen eat rats!" I al- 
 ways associated the two cries. 
 
 I suppose most people have an Uncle Jack, 
 the same as I did. Uncle Jack's Christian name 
 was not John. It was ... I kind of hate to 
 tell you . . . His initials were A. J. . . . Well, 
 I might as well out with It, I suppose. His 
 name was Andrew Jackson, and they called him 
 Jack for short. So — so you may guess what his 
 politics were. There's black sheep in every fam- 
 ily and It's no use trying to make out different. 
 As you go through the world you learn to have 
 more charity for others' failings, and you try to 
 think It Isn't always their fault, even though It 
 does make you hang your head a little. 
 
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 It was to my Uncle Jack that I made my first 
 political argument. I didn't realize what a sock- 
 dolager it was until afterwards, when I heard my 
 daddy telling it around and laughing about it and 
 saying what a smart child I was for my age. If 
 Uncle Jack hadn't been another Ephraim joined to 
 idols, that argument should have set him to think- 
 ing. 
 
 I was just at that place in the First Reader 
 where it says, *' See the fat pig. Can the pig run? 
 No, the pig is too fat to run," and when Uncle 
 Jack, who had come to town all dressed up, with 
 a ribbon pinned on his coat, bade me sit on his 
 short, round knee while he felt around in his 
 pockets to see if he couldn't find a stick of red 
 striped candy somewhere on him, I thought of 
 how Uncle Jack would look if he should try to 
 run, for he was what you would call " a fleshy 
 man " if you picked your words, and " a pussy 
 man " if you didn't. He made inquiry as to the 
 progress of my education, and let on to be much 
 surprised that I knew my letters. To prove it, 
 I called off the big capitals printed on the strip 
 
 143 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 of muslin tacked on the bottom of the big flag 
 hung across Main Street, from the window over 
 Case's Drug and Book Store to the window above 
 Mr. Mornlngred's New York One Price Clothing 
 Store. 
 
 *'And what does that spell?" I asked my 
 Uncle Jack. 
 
 " That spells ' Democratic County Conven- 
 tion,' " answered my Uncle Jack, with a pride [ 
 thought unseemly. 
 
 " Yes, but what you got it on the Union flag 
 for?" I demanded to know. *' Why ain't you 
 got it on the Copperheads' flag? Ain't the Demo- 
 crats Copperheads? " Uncle Jack got red as fire, 
 but he said: *' We're all under the one flag, my 
 boy. We all want to do what's best for our coun- 
 try, whether we're Democrats or Republicans." 
 When they come at you with talk like that, what 
 can you say? When they get the quiver in their 
 voices, I mean. I knew as well as I knew any- 
 thing that Uncle Jack had been a Copperhead; 
 that he believed that when the people of a State 
 vote of their own free will and accord to come 
 
 144 
 
THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 
 
 into the Union, they have the same right to go 
 out of it if they vote to do so of their own free 
 will and accord; and you know that's not only 
 nonsense — it's treason. 
 
 Wait a minute. Say! You and I once came 
 to blows about politics. Yes, you do too remem- 
 ber it, if you'll just stop and think. It was when 
 we were in Miss Munsell's room. There was a 
 Democratic rally, and big Pat McManus was one 
 of the marshals, with a sash on him and all. And 
 he came riding past the school yard when we were 
 out at recess, and we hooted at him that about 
 rats and cats and Democrats; and just to show 
 that we weren't all Black Republicans you hol- 
 lered: '^ Hurrah for " (whoever it was that was 
 running for President and Vice-President on the 
 Democratic ticket — they didn't get elected, I 
 know) , and quick as a flash I added, " And a rope 
 to hang 'em ! " And quick as another flash you 
 hauled off and hit me in the mouth, and I hit you 
 on the head and knocked your cap off, and you 
 hit me — no, that time it went right past my ear; 
 never touched me — and I hit you in the face, and 
 
 145 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 the other boys came a-running and shouted, " A 
 fight! A fight! " And I was whirhng my fists 
 around each other Uke the real fighters do and 
 studying where I'd paste you if I got a good 
 chance, when Enos Barker came up and stopped 
 It. I was kind of glad of It, for my lip was bleed- 
 ing, and the blood was red just like it is when it 
 comes out of an artery, but the other boys were 
 plum disgusted at Eeny. He was an awful bossy 
 boy, anyhow, and he was bigger than most of us, 
 and he had just joined the church and was what 
 they call "an influence for good." Why, look! 
 If he caught you at it, he'd make you give back 
 the marbles you had won, and he wouldn't even 
 let you say " Gosh ! " You'd have to say '' Good- 
 ness! " Last I heard of Eeny, he was running 
 one of these county history enterprises. Say; but 
 he did everlastingly soak those farmers up in 
 Clark County! "All the traffic will bear!" 
 was Eeny's motto. 
 
 So he went and tattled on us to Miss Munsell, 
 and she had us both up before her desk. She told 
 us we mustn't fight over our " political prefer- 
 
 146 
 
THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 
 
 ences." (I remember that expression as plain as 
 If It was only yesterday) , and said she would let 
 us off this time, but the very next time — she 
 wanted the whole school to pay attention — the 
 very next time she caught anybody, it didn't make 
 any difference who, quarreling over politics, why 
 — she hoped a word to the wise would be suf- 
 ficient. By golly! she was a terror when It came 
 to whaling a boy. When she got done with him 
 he was as ridgy as a wash-board. 
 
 She had to say that because, theoretically at 
 least, Democrats do have some rights, but I could 
 see she was with me, heart and soul. The others 
 were, too, and all but said, " Goody! Goody! " 
 when I told how I had capped your sentiment 
 with "And a rope to hang 'em!" So I went 
 back to my seat with a swelling heart. My lip 
 was swelling some too. 
 
 That night there was a drunk man on the 
 street. That's the kind of folks Democrats are! 
 That's why the Democrats like to see it rain, for 
 rain makes corn, and corn makes whisky and 
 whisky makes Democrats. 
 
 147 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 Hear also what Horace Greeley saith: "All 
 Democrats are not horse-thieves; but all horse- 
 thieves are Democrats." (That was before he 
 ran for President on the Democratic ticket.) I 
 feel sorry for you fellows. Honest, I do. And 
 I felt sorry for my Uncle Jack and troubled in 
 spirit about him, because he was a nice man, and 
 a good-living man, and a sweet singer, and could 
 tell such beautiful, scary Indian stories, when I 
 went out there to visit his boys, that when It came 
 bedtime Aunt Caroline would have to hold my 
 hand all the way upstairs. It was a shame he was 
 a Democrat — a blame shame, so It was. He 
 was no drunk man, neither was he a horse-thief, 
 and It got me why he should want to associate, 
 even politically, with such a crowd. 
 
 They were a distinctly Inferior class of people, 
 and always had bad luck. They had to get up 
 that cheerful saying about rain, because whenever 
 they had a rally or anything it almost always 
 rained. Their sky-rockets weren't near so pretty 
 as ours and didn't go half so high. 
 
 And when they had the band It didn't blow as 
 
 148 
 
THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 
 
 loud for them as for us, or play such nice tunes. 
 And you could see the band felt ashamed to have 
 to turn out for Democrats, and always made a 
 point of giving them " Columbia, the Gem of the 
 Ocean," because in the first line of the second 
 verse there is a distinct allusion to Democrats. 
 You never thought of it? Why, it says as plain 
 as anything: 
 
 " The wine-cup, the wine-cup bring hither," 
 and if that isn't hinting pretty strong I don't 
 know what is. 
 
 Their torchlight parades were regular fizzles. 
 " About a hundred men and boys in line," the Ex- 
 aminer said about them always. But our parades 
 were fine. Sometimes there would be about a 
 million in line. Well, of course, not quite as 
 many as that, but pretty nearly though — pretty 
 nearly. 
 
 We'd be up on Richardson's steps on Main 
 Street, where we could see 'way, 'way down to the 
 South End. It would be all dark except for the 
 coal-oil lamps in the windows of the stores and 
 on the wooden posts at the street corners. Every 
 
 149 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 once in a while we'd stand on our tiptoes to see 
 if they weren't coming yet, and the grown folks 
 would give us an impatient shake and say, " No, 
 child, not yet — not for a good while yet," and 
 go on talking the inconsequential foolishness that 
 grown folks will talk when they get together, 
 about how old man Dietrich wasn't expected to 
 live, and how they had telegraphed for Jinny and 
 Ed, and all such stuff as that. And we'd gape 
 till the tops of our heads seemed likely to come off, 
 and mother would say, " I don't know what pos- 
 sessed me to bring these young ones out. They 
 ought to be in bed this minute. It's just the ru- 
 ination of children to keep 'em up so late, but they 
 teased so to come along that there wasn't any liv- 
 ing with 'em, so they'll just have to prop their 
 eyes open the best way they can," and we'd chirp 
 up, " Oh, I ain't — hee-hy. Ho-hum ! — sleepy a 
 bit," and try not to gape, or if we had to, we did 
 it mannerly behind our hands. And pretty soon 
 somebody would say, "Hark! what's that?" 
 And away off somewhere you could hear: 
 " Boomp ! — Boomp ! — Boomp-boomp-boomp ! 
 
 150 
 
THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 
 
 Boomp ! — Boomp ! — Boomp-Boomp-Boomp I " 
 The bass-drum! (I always get excited when I 
 hear the bass-drum. Something doing!) And it 
 would keep getting a little louder and a little 
 louder and a little louder; and we kept getting 
 more and more excited, and just at the psycholog- 
 ical moment the line turned into Main Street at 
 Mad River Street, and the drums began to roll — 
 " prrrrrrrr-rum-pum ! Boong! " and the solo 
 cornet to go — " Tantara-tantara-TAH ! Teedle- 
 eedle-TAH ! " That's the introduction, and that 
 grand old patriotic air, " Marching Through 
 Georgia,'* would set the pulses to leaping. 
 
 It's strange, when you think of it, that of all the 
 fine tunes made during the war-time that alone 
 should have lived. I don't think it begins to be 
 as pretty as: 
 
 " Brave boys are they! 
 
 Gone at their country's call! 
 But yet, but yet, we can not forget 
 That many brave boys must fall ! " 
 
 And in lofty sentiment I don't think *' Marching 
 Through Georgia " is quite up to " The Battle 
 
 151 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 Hymn of the Republic." But that's only a funny 
 song nowadays about a man named John Brown, 
 or some such name. The real patriotic air is 
 " Marching Through Georgia." I once knew a 
 man that was in the march to the sea. He 
 brought home three gold watches from it. He 
 always liked that tune a lot. 
 
 Well as I was saying, around the corner came 
 the rows on rows of sparkling lights, with all the 
 sinuous, wavy motion of one of these woolly 
 " Fever-'n-ager " caterpillars, moving up and 
 down as the men kept step, and moving to this 
 side and that as the men dodged the mud-puddles. 
 Farther back in the line, where part of the time 
 the men heard the music of the cornet band, and 
 part of the time the music of the fife-and-drum 
 corps there was a sort of joint (as we could see 
 from Richardson's high steps) where the line of 
 lights joggled and wabbled. Uncle Mose Strayer 
 always had charge of the fife-and-drum corps un- 
 til he got the rheumatism so bad that Aunt Becky 
 wouldn't let him march through the wet any more. 
 I reckon that man knew more nice tunes on the fife 
 
 152 
 
THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 
 
 than any other man before or since. He knew 
 " The Irish Washerwoman," and " The Fisher's 
 Hornpipe," and " Money Musk," and " Bona- 
 parte Over the Rhine," and " St. Patrick Was a 
 Gentleman," and '' The British Grenadiers," and 
 " The Frozen Leg," and — oh, a whole, whole 
 lot of tunes that would make your foot go in spite 
 of itself. 
 
 Summer nights, just at dusk, when it would 
 be all still, you could hear him from far across 
 the prairie. After he had done a lot of these 
 *' quick and devilish " airs he'd stop, and we'd 
 know, just as if we'd been there to see, that he had 
 run the fife through his hands a couple of times 
 and put it away, and gone and got his old Ger- 
 man flute with the one brass C-sharp key and the 
 finger-holes all worn white. And then he'd play 
 this here soft, sweet music that makes your throat 
 all swell up and hurt you, and you sit and wish 
 for something, you don't know what. 
 
 " Oh, father, dear father, come down. 
 Come down and open the door." 
 
 and 
 
 ^S3 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 " Fly away to my native land, sweet bird, 
 Fly away to my native land." 
 
 He'd always wind up with the old familiar words : 
 
 " Believe me if all those endearing young charms that I 
 gaze on so fondly to-day," 
 
 because that was Aunt Becky's favorite. The 
 summer after she died he didn't play on his fife 
 at all, but one evening we heard him with his 
 flute awhile. He ran a scale or two on it and 
 then he began, " Believe me if all those endearing 
 young charms," but he didn't get very far with it. 
 He stopped. We listened for him to go on, but 
 he never did. As we waited I heard my mother 
 draw a kind of a long breath and sigh it 
 out. After a little my father said, as if she had 
 asked him something, " Yes, he thought an awful 
 lot of Aunt Becky." The old man didn't live a 
 great while after that. 
 
 I don't know why it is that I keep wandering 
 from the subject so. Seems as if I couldn't stick 
 to my text when I get to talking about the old 
 times. You remember, though, that when the 
 
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THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 
 
 whole long line of torches got into Main Street 
 you wondered why it didn't make everything as 
 bright as day. They must have had a thicker 
 kind of darkness at night In those times. It 
 soaked up more light! You wouldn't believe! 
 
 It was only when they got right close to that 
 you could see the tin cans of the torches wabbling 
 In the crotches of the staves, and the red and 
 white and blue oilcloth capes of the different com- 
 panies: and only when they were right In front 
 of Richardson's could you recognize the boys you 
 knew walking along with their pas, holding hands 
 with them, or else clinging to their cape-corners. 
 Other boys' pas let them march; It was a funny 
 thing you couldn't ever get to go. Mud up to 
 your knees — nothing ! You'd look where you 
 were going. 
 
 But even If we could not march and go help 
 our side win, we could cheer and wave our hand- 
 kerchiefs and hope our side would win. It almost 
 always did. It could all the time, but It got to 
 be such a sure thing that sometimes the Republi- 
 cans would say, " Oh, I guess I'll stay home and 
 
 1551 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 clean out the furnace. They don't need my vote/' 
 and that time the Democrats would win. They 
 always voted. Sometimes they voted two or three 
 times apiece, which is no fair. But that is a Dem- 
 ocrat trick, and you've always got to be on the 
 lookout for it. And if they won, why, there 
 would be the dickens and all to pay. The weather 
 would be so bad that the farmers wouldn't make 
 more than half a crop; or else it would be so 
 confoundedly good that they would raise too much, 
 so that they couldn't get hardly anything for it. 
 And there would always be hard times in business 
 as soon as ever the Democrats got in. Sometimes 
 the hard times would come just because the Demo- 
 crats wanted to get in. The bare suspicion that 
 there was the least show for them to elect any- 
 body was enough to give commercial prosperity 
 a hard chill and send it to bed with a hot brick 
 to its feet. The Democratic legislatures and con- 
 gresses would do the foolishest things. You'd 
 read about it in the Examiner and wonder how 
 people could be so foolish. And the mystery deep- 
 ened that nice men like Uncle Jack could go right 
 
 156 
 
THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 
 
 along voting the Democratic ticket and upholding 
 these fellows in trying to ruin the country. If 
 they'd only stop taking their silly Democrat pa- 
 pers and read the Examiner they'd see it. They 
 couldn't help but see it. 
 
 When we got older, so that we could sit up till 
 nine o'clock, we went to the meetings in the Opry- 
 house, where they explained all about it. It was 
 a hardship to give up the splendid miles and miles 
 of torches, and the funny transparencies, with 
 their comical digs at the Democrats; but if we 
 waited for all that the place would be full before 
 we got there. One look at a Republican meeting 
 and another look at a Democratic meeting should 
 decide any fair-minded person which party he ought 
 to belong to. At the Republican meeting, up on the 
 stage where the table was, with the white pitcher 
 of water and the glass tumbler, were the finest men 
 in town. There was the President of the Na- 
 tional Bank, who was dead down on the Green- 
 back heresy. And old Judge Rodehaver would 
 be right next to him. He is Probate Judge now. 
 Before that he was County Clerk, and before that 
 
 157 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 he was County Auditor, and before that he was — 
 well, I guess he's always been in what you might 
 call " public life." A fine-looking man, with 
 thick, white hair and a clean-shaven face and the 
 appearance of a Roman senator. And the Post- 
 master is there. He's a very able man they say. 
 He knows better than anybody else in the county 
 how to get out the vote. And Caleb Dyer is 
 there. He is one of our leading citizens, having 
 started from nothing, as you might say — an ex- 
 ample to any ambitious young man who wants to 
 rise in the world. He is a little, small, dried-up 
 runt of a fellow with a gray goatee on his chin. 
 He lives in the big fine house on North Main, 
 the one with the cu-pa-lo on top of it. He owns 
 a lot of property around town, and several farms, 
 and every once in a while he gets another farm. 
 What does he do? Why, he doesn't do anything. 
 He's not that kind. He's a capitalist. He lends 
 people money and takes a mortgage, and then 
 when they can't pay up he gets the farm or what- 
 ever they gave for security. He's very " s'rood 
 in business," if you know what that means. 
 
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THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 
 
 And there is Major Drew. He Isn't really a 
 major, but they call him that because he was in 
 the war and looks exactly like a military man of 
 high rank, with his white mustaches and imperial, 
 his erect and soldierly carriage, and his loud, brusk 
 voice. When the enemies of our country fired 
 on Sumter, he promptly responded to the call of 
 duty. I don't know for sure what branch of the 
 service he was In, but he was one of those gallant 
 men they call sutlers. You ought to hear him 
 make the Decoration Day Speech. He's grand. 
 He owns the woolen mill, and when the hands 
 tried to get up a union, so that they could strike 
 and gouge more wages out of him, he mighty soon 
 put a stop to It. There's where his military train- 
 ing came in. No Insubordination In the ranks. 
 It was his business and he proposed to run It In 
 his own way and not be dictated to by anybody. 
 Why, If he went and paid them more wages they 
 wouldn't be satisfied. They'd want more pretty 
 soon. And they'd only spend It In beer. And 
 If he cut their hours down to ten, that would only 
 be so much more time for them to loaf around 
 
 159 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 the street corners and pass remarks on the ladles 
 that went by. When he was their age, before 
 he got his start during the war, he worked fourteen 
 and fifteen hours a day and thought nothing of it. 
 And so would they, if they weren't so lazy and do- 
 less. So he fired the ringleaders so quick it made 
 their heads swim. That put a stop to their non- 
 sense mighty sudden. 
 
 The people that you saw at the Republican 
 meetings were of the better class, don't you know. 
 Nice people, white-handed people with clean col- 
 lars and pearly finger-nails; employers of labor who 
 gave the common folk jobs and thus kept life in 
 their bodies; store-keepers; all who frowned upon 
 the saloon, and were so intimate with the druggist 
 that he would let them come back where he made 
 up the prescriptions. The Republican Party is 
 the party of Progress, the party that has been in 
 control since we have begun to make things by 
 machinery and accumulate wealth so rapidly. 
 
 On the other hand the crowd at your Demo- 
 cratic meeting was composed of low, common, 
 working people that applauded by " stomping " 
 
 1 60 
 
THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 
 
 their feet and squalling *'Hoo-ee!" They had 
 on hickory shirts without any collars, except some 
 few of the politicians who wore long-tailed black 
 coats, black slouch hats, and narrow black string 
 neckties. All of them chewed tobacco, the poli- 
 ticians using fine-cut and the hickory-shirt fellows 
 navy plug. They left the Opry-house looking 
 like a hog-pen. The hickory-shirt crowd not only 
 had blue finger nails and calloused hands, but they 
 bragged about It. " Horny-handed sons of toil," 
 their speakers called them, and they cheered as 
 if that were anything to their credit. " The 
 great unwashed," was what the Examiner called 
 them. They had no big bugs to sit up on their 
 platform, only yo-haw farmers with their pants in 
 their boots, saloon-keepers, and the lawyers that 
 got what criminal practise there was going. 
 When they weren't talking flub-dub about indi- 
 vidual liberty (which meant for the rough element 
 to have their beer whenever they wanted It) , they 
 were opposing the Republicans just out of pure 
 contrariness, and sneering at them because they 
 were nice people — " the God-and-morality party," 
 
 i6i 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 they called us. (I don't see that that is anything 
 to be ashamed of.) They seemed out-of-date, 
 behind the times. They seemed to belong to An- 
 drew Jackson's day. 
 
 Andrew Jackson was all right, and the move- 
 ment he headed was all right, for It took the man- 
 agement of the Government from the hands of 
 the landlords and propertied class and put it into 
 the hands of the small farmers and the men with 
 little, hand-powered industries. But another rev- 
 olution has occurred since then, the transfer of 
 ruling authority Into the hands of the railroad 
 magnates and the big manufacturers, a transfer 
 that began during the Great Rebellion, a period 
 the Democrats do their best to Ignore for good 
 and sufficient reasons. The business Interests of 
 the country were just naturally afraid of the Dem- 
 ocrats as reactionaries and Bourbons that never 
 learned and never forgot. When Cleveland 
 barely scraped through the first time he was 
 elected, and It was doubtful If he would scrape 
 through, the professor of moral philosophy in my 
 college got down on his knees in the classroom and 
 
 162 
 
THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 
 
 besought the Almighty to avert this terrible ca- 
 tastrophe from our beloved country. That shows 
 you. 
 
 I hope, my Democratic friend, that I have got 
 you good and riled. I hope you are just hopping 
 mad, and ready to tear me limb from limb. That 
 is what our great statesmen like to see. Anything 
 but *^ apathy." Apathy is a terrible thing. Sup- 
 pose you were at school and a boy came into the 
 yard before the last bell rang with a big red apple 
 in his jacket pocket that you figured would just 
 about fit you. And suppose you should say to 
 him. " Oh, looky ! Looky at that funny bird up 
 in the tree yonder ! See him? " And suppose the 
 boy was apathetic about funny birds up in trees, 
 what chance would there be of your getting his 
 big red apple without a fuss? It just spoils every- 
 thing when people are apathetic about politics. 
 And that's another symptom of the degeneracy of 
 the age which we must all deplore. I have known 
 Republicans of late to vote for a Democrat be- 
 cause they thought he was an honest man. It 
 wasn't that way " back home." Party spirit ran 
 
 163 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 high there. Why, I remember one time there 
 was a Presidential campaign, and it looked as if 
 there was a chance that the Democrats might get 
 In and ruin the country. A young fellow I knew 
 was a pretty good musician. He was a Repub- 
 lican and engaged to a Republican girl, but some- 
 how or other he had Democratic friends. They 
 were going to get up a glee club, and they asked 
 him If he wouldn't coach them in some songs. He 
 said he would, not thinking there would be any 
 harm in it if he merely coached them and didn't 
 actually sing, himself. Well, it just broke off the 
 match, that's all. She cut him dead in the street; 
 wouldn't have anything more to do with him. 
 
 When you have party spirit like that it sim- 
 plifies things immensely, not only for the politi- 
 cians but for the voters too. There's no need 
 of you spraining your mind thinking what you 
 ought to do. Just vote the straight ticket and 
 that's all about it. Why, what does all this talk 
 about a candidate's being honest amount to, any- 
 how? How are you going to tell whether a man's 
 honest or not? Maybe he hasn't had a chance to 
 
 164 
 
THE CAMPAIGN BACK HOME 
 
 be anything but honest. And what difference 
 does it make to you whether he's honest or not, 
 when he votes in the interest of his class and 
 against the interest of your class? It comes to 
 the same thing as far as you're concerned. 
 
 And I hope, too, my Republican friend, that 
 you have seen that all the time that I was giving 
 it to the Democrats so hot and heavy I was mak- 
 ing what Brother John Warnock would call 
 " mean, little insinuendoes " at you, too. If 
 they're behind the times, why so are you. If 
 they're still hurrahing for Andrew Jackson be- 
 cause he got manhood suffrage, why, so are you 
 still hurrahing for Abraham Lincoln because he 
 freed the slaves. The world keeps moving on. 
 New occasions bring new duties. There's one 
 more transfer of power has to be made. A big 
 one — the biggest ever. The right to vote isn't 
 all there is to liberty. There's more! The 
 right to live and to bring up your children half- 
 way decent anyhow, the right to have some little 
 time to yourself, to be something besides a mere 
 machine. All these great inventions, all these 
 
 i6s 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 economics of production and distribution — we 
 ought to be getting the good out of them. We 
 aren't. Why not? Who is? 
 
 • • • • • • • 
 
 I hope IVe stirred you up, whether you are a 
 Republican or a Democrat. If I had to make 
 you angry at me in order to stir you up, well and 
 good. But rd rather you wouldn't stay pouty 
 with me very long. I meant it only to be a boyish 
 quarrel, so that the next time I came past your 
 house and yodeled, you'd grab your books and 
 slate and come tearing out to meet me. 
 
 i66 
 
THE PARLOR BACK HOME 
 
THE PARLOR BACK HOME 
 
 OF the old-time home the Parlor was the 
 pinnacle and blossom. How com- 
 pletely that has faded and gone is 
 shown by the fact that the very name 
 of " parlor " seems kind of old-fashioned and be- 
 hind the times. Drawing-room, reception-hall, 
 library, but not parlor. In my day I have seen it 
 depart. Even when I was a little boy, I remem- 
 ber, its petals were kind o' droopy compared with 
 their stiff rigidity out at Aunt Katy's. 
 
 Aunt Katy was a step-relation twice removed. 
 She wore caps with wide strings untied and floating, 
 which identifies her period; mine was that wherein 
 " The Pilgrim's Progress " was still a rattling 
 good adventure story, ere ever Antelope Abe had 
 escaped from the circle of bloodthirsty redskins, 
 who sought to cut his raw young heart out, by the 
 ingenious device of turning handsprings and kick- 
 ing Flying Arrow right spang in the nose. 
 
 169 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 *''UghI' exclaimed the discomfited chieftain 
 as the brave boy — " 
 
 But I digress. 
 
 Aunt Katy had a parlor. The inquisitiveness 
 of youth elicited this fact, which seemed to be of 
 the nature of a guilty secret, for the motto was: 
 " Keep it dark." When In later years I encoun- 
 tered the line In the carol about the three kings 
 of Orient, 
 
 Myrrh Is mine, Its bitter perfume 
 
 I understood at once how a perfume can be bitter, 
 for I remember the day I first stepped into Aunt 
 Katy's parlor and, stealthily closing the door be- 
 hind me, inhaled the chill, strange aroma — not 
 aroma, not scent, not odor; these names are all 
 too gross and heavy-handed for that faint, elusive 
 quality that the air had. In the cellar below for 
 years and years there had been apples stored away. 
 Was It the ghosts of these apples, since gone to 
 their long home? Was it the pale spook of lav- 
 ender from the clothes-press In the spare bedroom 
 off the parlor? Was It the trapped essences of 
 
 170 
 
■♦o 
 
 Si 
 
 
 o 
 Co 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 V. 
 
 
 
THE PARLOR BACK HOME 
 
 cakes and pies and quince preserves that had 
 thinly crept in through the door-crack and sought 
 in vain to find their way out? Was it all these 
 together, or was it that the air, prisoned and shut 
 away from the glad light of day, had turned sad 
 and regretful, calling to mind the times when it had 
 whooped and screamed across all the white fields 
 that lay between Aunt Katy's house and the far 
 country of the Northern Star; when it had played 
 ring-around-the-rosy with the romping leaves; 
 when it had rumpled the white petticoats of mod- 
 est poplars, the while the thunder growled its 
 surly disapproval of such carryings-on; when it 
 had swooned in ecstasy over the blossoming apple- 
 trees? 
 
 It was lonely for the air in Aunt Katy's parlor, 
 waiting, waiting. Sometimes a lone fly, arrived 
 there by some miracle impossible to believe, 
 buzzed on the pane behind the thick blue paper 
 shades with a blast so loud it seemed a trombone's. 
 And presently the fly died out of pure ennui and 
 lonesomeness. The air crept languidly about the 
 room, with a motion to which a clock-hand's were 
 
 173 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 hurried and Impetuous, vainly seeking an exit. 
 There were only two occasions whereon it might 
 be free to come and go. One of them was past 
 forever. The nest was empty; the birds were 
 flown. There was none left to " stand up " now 
 with anybody while Brother Longenecker read the 
 binding words and glad dishes rattled in the din- 
 ing-room. All that the poor, pale air in Aunt 
 Katy's parlor had to look forward to was the day 
 when horses and buggies would be hitched to the 
 front fence as if Aunt Katy's were the meeting- 
 house, and when the folks would have their Sun- 
 day clothes on, although it was a week-day, and 
 would speak subduedly and with many a sigh such 
 words as : "A shock of corn fully ripe," and 
 " Oh, well, she's better off, I s'pose," and *' We 
 all have to go when our time comes," and " D'ye 
 reckon Barzillai'll come in for his sheer, after 
 all?" 
 
 A narrow strip of land, the North Atlantic sea- 
 board not only considers itself (i) a part of the 
 United States, but also that is (2) the United 
 States, the mountain-chain to the westward of it 
 
 174 
 
THE PARLOR BACK HOME 
 
 being practically the " take-off " for the jumplng- 
 off place. Against the pestilential heresy of 
 Proposition Number 2 I wish to raise my feeble 
 typewriter in earnest protest. In the matter of 
 Proposition Number i, I am open to argument. 
 Technically speaking, I suppose Til have to grant 
 that the North Atlantic States are pro forma In the 
 Union; aside from the legal fiction, I deny that 
 the inhabitants thereof are our kind of folks at all. 
 For peace' sake, we put up with them; we listen 
 to what they have to say, and try hard to remem- 
 ber our manners and not let them know what we 
 think of them. But there comes a time (and this 
 Is such a time) when the truth must come out. 
 If you must know, we think they're scarcely hu- 
 man, let alone fellow-citizens. Americans? Not 
 by a jugful. They may think so, but they're not. 
 They can't even speak the language. " Quite 
 some snow!" Is that our mother-tongue? Is 
 " burla " comprehensible to reasoning beings? 
 That's what they say when they mean *' boiler." 
 They call a swing a *' scup." The land! And 
 claim kin with us! They may claim it. 
 
 177 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 In that arrogant and stuck-up land I s'pose they 
 do not prize the Parlor, because they've always 
 had it. I reckon when the moving-vans drove up 
 from the water-front with the Pilgrim Fathers' 
 household goods aboard, there were haircloth 
 sofas, and marble-topped center-tables, and real 
 hand-painted pictures with which to dike out the 
 Parlor, or what they, like enough, called the " best 
 rum "; but it wasn't so in the real United States, 
 where the people come from that amount to some- 
 thing. I remember Aunt Katy telling about how 
 it was when she married her first husband and 
 moved up from Clark County. Her man had to 
 go to mill, which took him the best part of two 
 days, and there was she, all alone, in a log cabin 
 that hadn't any door except a quilt hung up. And 
 she could hear the wolves howling over there In 
 the woods where the Stillwell place is now. 
 
 " Tell some more. Aunt Katy. Tell about 
 bears. Did you ever see a bear. Aunt Katy? 
 You did? Wasn't you afraid it would bite? " 
 
 And Aunt Katy told about a lady she knew that 
 killed a bear with the ax. All by herself, so she 
 
 178 
 
THE PARLOR BACK HOME 
 
 did. Her husband was afraid, and run and hid. 
 " Hit him ag'in, Polly! " he'd holler. 
 
 '' And, one time, when Pap was alive — " 
 But, laws-a-me ! PU never get through if I keep 
 wandering from my text this way. 
 
 However, you can see that in a one-room cabin 
 with a floor of hewed-out slabs, a quilt hung up 
 for a door, and mud chinking between the logs — 
 they still have some of these old cabins back home, 
 and use 'em for cow-houses — there wasn't much 
 of a chance for a Parlor. The country had to be 
 settled up, and folks had to make arrangements 
 to sleep, and get dough to put in the bake-kettle 
 and cover up with coals, and meat to hang up In 
 front of the fireplace to roast, before they began 
 to put on style. First the essentials of existence, 
 then Art. 
 
 I suppose it is up to me now to define Art. 
 Just how dangerous it is to attempt this, especially 
 when the word is spelled with a capital A, I trust 
 I am fully sensible. It is a sort of Intellectual 
 shooing the chickens out of the garden through a 
 narrow gate. While you are getting one through 
 
 179 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 (while you are delimiting one field of Art) the 
 others are back among the cabbages tenfold more 
 the children of the Bad Place than they were be- 
 fore. And while you are chasing them, the one 
 chicken comes through the gate again. Also, the 
 job is complicated by the row of distinguished citi- 
 zens leaning on the garden fence, sneering at the 
 futility of all your efforts, most of them in Wind- 
 sor ties, velvet jackets, and painty pants, with a 
 sprinkling of those whose inky middle finger be- 
 trays the fact that they are not artists, but chron- 
 iclers of artists' doings. Nevertheless, I am going 
 to try it If I break a trace. 
 
 Art Is a subject of which we can all truly say: 
 " I know well enough what It is, but I can't ex- 
 press myself." 
 
 I think I can come a little closer to the bull's 
 eye than that. I should say: Art is what you 
 would put in the Parlor. 
 
 For instance: The almanac, hung by a string 
 by its northwest corner to the mantel, was in the 
 sitting-room. But Fox's " Book of Martyrs " 
 (wherein were pictures of folks undergoing the 
 
 i8o 
 
THE PARLOR BACK HOME 
 
 same rough-house for conscience' sake that had 
 evidently been the unhappy fate of the gentleman 
 on the second page of the almanac) was in the 
 Parlor at Aunt Katy's. Her Testament, worn 
 and brown and tattered at the place where the 
 good words are that begin: '* Let not your heart 
 be troubled," was In the window of the sitting- 
 room. The big pictorial Bible, bought of a stu- 
 dent who was working his way through college 
 and expected to become a minister of the Gospel, 
 but found that it paid better to sell Bibles on sub- 
 scription, was on the center-table in the Parlor. 
 It was a magnificent affair weighing eighteen 
 pounds, had lids embossed in high and scooped- 
 out curves, was " profusely embellished with high- 
 class reproductions of the Old Masters," and had 
 enormous ornamental initial letters to each chap- 
 ter. There was one big A that was a tent, and a 
 soldier was throwing a spear, the spear making 
 the crosspiece of the A. It looked interesting, but 
 the reading said, " And these are the names of the 
 men that shall stand with you : of the tribe of Reu- 
 ben; Elizur the son of Shedeur. Of Simeon; She- 
 
 i8i 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 lumiel the son of Zurishaddai — " Oh, a whole 
 lot more like that, and nothing about the man in 
 the tent and what he was going to do with the 
 spear. 
 
 No good at all for chewing-wax. 
 
 Aunt Katy's work-basket, with her spools of 
 thread, and papers of needles, her scissors, and 
 the ball of beeswax (no good at all for chewing- 
 wax; it crumbs up so in the mouth), was in the 
 sitting-room. But the alum basket was in the 
 
 182 
 
THE PARLOR BACK HOME 
 
 Parlor, as befitted its station as a Work of Art. 
 To begin with, it was a basket of corn-husks, 
 deftly woven and fashioned to look like those in 
 the steel engraving frontispieces of the Ladies' 
 Repository, wherein girls in low-neck-and-short- 
 sleeve dresses, gathered at the waist and made 
 full in the skirt, without a smidgen of trimming 
 or ruffles, sit on a mossy bank holding this kind 
 of a flaring, shallow, and spilly basket full of 
 pretty posies. Also the little bits of girls in the 
 kind of pictures in the Department for the Young, 
 the ones that wear white stockings and slippers, 
 held on by tapes crossed over their extremely nar- 
 row insteps, carried this kind of a basket with 
 flowers in it, unless they held a watering-pot over 
 a flower-bed fenced in with little hoops. If those 
 little girls weren't all dead and gone by this time, 
 I should hesitate to add what I am going to; but 
 they had on short skirts widely buoyed out by — 
 I feel so sort of red in the face and bashful — 
 what shall I call 'em? Let me see. Trouserines 
 would be a good name. Very wide and full they 
 were, and came down nearly to the ankles in 
 
 183 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 points that were all punched full of round holes. 
 I have heard say that these confections were tied 
 on at the knee. Fancy! 
 
 You know what alum is that you get at the 
 drug-store. It's good when your store-teeth don't 
 fit right and hurt your month, or if you are learn- 
 ing to play the guitar and your fingers get sore 
 at the tips. Dip 'em into alum-water, and it 
 toughens them so you can twang away all day and 
 never feel it. And I think they use, It, too, when 
 they put up these little cucumber pickles, but I 
 won't be sure. Well, anyways, you take a good 
 deal of this alum and some water and cook them 
 together till they're done. I don't remember now 
 how you tell that. . . . No, I don't think 
 you use a broom-straw; as I recollect, that's for 
 cake. But when the stuff is done, you put the 
 corn-husk basket In It and put it away somewhere 
 in a still place where nothing will bother It. As 
 the hot liquor cools, the alum settles on the basket, 
 and in a few days the graceful, curving lines of 
 the basket are all hidden by sharp-pointed, clear 
 chunks of alum, most beautiful to behold. The 
 
 184 
 
I 
 
 o 
 
 v.. 
 -5i 
 
THE PARLOR BACK HOME 
 
 last time, though, that I saw Aunt Katy's alum 
 basket, its glory was departing. Some of the 
 crystals had come away, betraying the sordid sub- 
 structure of corn-husk, and such as remained were 
 dusty and had lost their pristine ruggedness of 
 contour. Too many pink tongues had been sur- 
 reptitiously extended in the pursuit of trustworthy 
 information as to whether it tasted as much like 
 rock-candy as it looked. 
 
 Up in Aunt Katy's garret hung bunches of 
 boneset (the tea of which will cure 'most any- 
 thing, or ought to, for it's bitter enough), sage, 
 pennyroyal, mint, catnip — I don't know what all 
 kinds of '* yarbs," good to make the dinner smell 
 good, or to stew up in a tin cup on the back of 
 the stove when anybody about the house was 
 grunty. These were useful, don't you see? In 
 the Parlor, on a black velvet stand on the marble- 
 topped center-table, covered with a glass bell, was 
 another " yarb," which could by no possibility Ke 
 of the least account. It was a Work of Art. The 
 plant had been cast into scalding water and left 
 there until its green flesh had come off its poor lit- 
 
 187 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 tie bones, which had then been bleached to snowy 
 whiteness and fastened up for exhibition as a 
 " skeletonized plant." From what I hear it must 
 have taken particular skill to get it to look right. 
 
 We are now in a position to generalize still 
 further on Art. Art is what you would put in 
 the Parlor; and you would put in the Parlor that 
 which is of no earthly account but has had as much 
 skill and time put on it as if it were. Also, this 
 skill and time must be plainly apparent. It must 
 advertise that the person creating it could do a 
 first-rate job of useful work if he had a mind to, 
 but that he doesn't have to, being a peg above that 
 station of life. 
 
 As a sort of radio-active energy. Art percolated 
 through the walls of the Parlor backward through 
 the house — the kitchen, which was the most useful 
 room, getting least of those enlivening and beau- 
 tifying rays. There the rag carpet was a hlt-or- 
 miss. In the sitting-room red and yellow and blue 
 stripes with their gay chains did what they could 
 to dispel the horrid thought that Aunt Katy was 
 using up her old clothes, and her three dead hus- 
 
 i88 
 
THE PARLOR BACK HOME 
 
 bands' old clothes, and all the rags she could lay 
 her hands on honestly to cut up Into strips and 
 sew together, end to end, that she might have 
 something to cover the floor and keep it warm. 
 But in the Parlor, entirely free from the least sus- 
 picion of economy or usefulness, was a beautiful 
 ingrain of such reds and greens that I deny the 
 imputation that the shades were drawn to keep 
 the sun from fading them. That was done, not 
 out of consideration for the ingrain, but for the 
 sun; the colors would have hurt his eyes and likely 
 put him out of business. 
 
 Similarly with the quilts about the house. 
 Deeply do I regret my ignorance of all the dif- 
 ferent patterns of quilts. The Log Cabin I know, 
 the Eight-pointed Star I know, the Hen and Chick- 
 ens, and the Mexican Feather; but when I go out 
 in company and the conversation turns on quilts, 
 I have to sit there with my jaw hanging, and not 
 a word out of me because I don't want to let on 
 how green I am. But this much I can safely say: 
 that the quilts that were meant for use, and where 
 company wasn't supposed to look, were made up 
 
 189 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 of scraps, this from Adonlram's '' wammus," and 
 that from Trypheny's " tier," and t'other from 
 
 Her husband was afraid. 
 
 the old blue dress that faded so ; whereas the quilt 
 upon the bed in the spare bedroom off the Parlor 
 was made out of calico bought a-purpose. I wish 
 I could show you one such, pieced so long ago 
 
 190 
 
THE PARLOR BACK HOME 
 
 that the frail fingers which made those fine and 
 even stitches are now fully restored to the earth 
 from whence they came. But the colors, printed 
 in another age, as you might say, are just as bright 
 to-day as ever. As for the weavers of old blue- 
 and-white bedspreads with their pretty patterns, I 
 suppose they have clean vanished from the earth. 
 I have one that says in the corner: " Pyna Rose, 
 Wove by Joseph Buechel, 1847." I wonder what 
 he'd think to find it a portiere, a sort of curio, 
 something they don't have nowadays. 
 
 If they don't have such colors in ingrain car- 
 pets and in calicos as they used to have, neither 
 do they have them in pictures. I don't mean 
 hand-painted pictures, but the colored lithographs 
 that used to be before steel engravings with their 
 cool grays conferred distinction on the Parlor. I 
 don't mean chromos, either; I mean the real old 
 lithographs, published by Currier & Ives, of Nas- 
 sau Street, New York City. When you looked 
 upon those pictures you realized that " Gotham " 
 could not be so utterly and entirely a wicked city 
 as was portrayed in " Sunshine and Shadow of 
 
 191 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 New York," all about Harry Hill's, and the-ay- 
 ters, and the Five Points, where they would knock 
 you down as quick as look at you, and take your 
 pocketbook away from you, and all like that. 
 There must have been some nice people there; at 
 any rate, Mr. Currier and Mr. Ives must have 
 been nice people, or they wouldn't and couldn't 
 have made such nice pictures. 
 
 There was " Esther," for example, a fine-look- 
 ing lady, in a short-waisted dress cut low in the 
 neck, her hair done up high and a big shell comb 
 to hold it, and three large, fat curls, glossy like 
 stovepipe hats, hanging in front of each ear. And 
 there was " General Winfield Scott," whose only 
 fault was that his hair was a deep blue, like the 
 ocean wave. And there was " The Sale of the 
 Pet Lamb," which deplored the commercial spirit 
 of the age, for it depicted in startling colors the 
 greed for gold that would actuate an inhuman 
 parent to sell to a cold-hearted butcher a house- 
 hold pet, in spite of the obvious fact that the 
 three children of the said household, each arrayed 
 in a red, yellow, or blue frock, were weeping 
 
 192 
 
THE PARLOR BACK HOME 
 
 copiously into a handkerchief of the same color 
 as their respective frock. And when I use the ex- 
 pression " startling colors," pray do not mistake 
 it for a flower of rhetoric. The colors were 
 startling. Never were such reds, so red and in- 
 flammatory, such blues, so like Itahan skies, such 
 yellows, so " yaller." 
 
 It was of another product of these purveyors 
 of Art that Christina Moots told, when she cele- 
 brated the glories of Mrs. Hanks's Parlor. Being 
 *' Pennsylwany Dutch," she was a little mixed as 
 to the genders of personal pronouns, but she knew 
 what she liked in Art, for she declared, " Ach, 
 my! Such a pretty picture she has hangin' up! 
 All about Chesus an' her mammy." 
 
 Female beauty, historical portraiture, and moral 
 and religious sentiment had their appeals, but no 
 true American (by which I mean an American 
 boy) could gaze unmoved upon another picture 
 from the gifted hands of Mr. Currier and Mr. 
 Ives. I now refer to the Work of Art entitled: 
 " The Gallant Charge of the Kentucky Cavalry 
 under Colonel Marshall at the Battle of Buena 
 
 193 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 Vista." Oh, say! Now, that was all right. 
 Horses, you know. United States horses and Mex- 
 ican horses charging at each other llckety-spllt, 
 and our brave heroes with their s-words slashing 
 at the darn Mexicans, who don't fight fair at all, 
 consarn their pictures! Whaddy you think? 
 •They had big, long spears that they poked our 
 fellows with, so that they could run a spear clear 
 through a United Stateser and have It come out 
 at his back (unless It got caught on a rib, of 
 course) before he could get close enough with his 
 s-word to haggle up the Mexican's features. Do 
 you call that fair? Well, I don't. It didn't say 
 on the picture how it all came out, but our side 
 won; it always does, because we're always right, 
 and always fighting for liberty; but the way they 
 did It, I guess, was this : Now, s'posin' I was the 
 United States man and you were the Mexican man. 
 And you'd go to stick me with your spear. And 
 I'd grab a-holt of it just like this, and kind of pull 
 you along, changing my hold on your spear, till I 
 got you close up to me, and then I'd hit you a 
 clout, just like that! Oh, excuse me! I didn't 
 
 194 
 
THE PARLOR BACK HOME 
 
 go to hurt you. I was just trying to show you 
 how it was. Why! Does your nose bleed as 
 easy as all that? 
 
 But the appeal of the primary colors, real 
 red, and real blue, and real " yaller," is too di- 
 rect, and in the process of time *' Esther " and 
 '' The Sale of the Pet Lamb " and '' The Gallant 
 Charge of the Kentucky Cavalry under Colonel 
 Marshall at the Battle of Buena Vista " drifted 
 back into the sitting-room and the kitchen even, 
 before the cold-toed onslaught of the high-class 
 steel engraving. When I gaze upon a steel en- 
 graving I feel guiltily conscious of my lowly be- 
 ginnings. I am reminded that I say, " I reckon 
 so," unless I am very careful, when I should say, 
 " I presume so." I was never compelled when 1 
 was little to go to dancing-school, never forced to 
 sit on a piano-stool and drudge at Richardson's 
 School for the Piano-forte (to this day I can 
 scarcely remember that it's thumb under for F in 
 the right hand). I never had early advantages, 
 and the steel engraving looks over my head with 
 the cold hauteur of the better classes who do not 
 
 195' 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 know that common folks exist. Far, far above 
 my rank In life are those who have " Washington 
 and his Generals " and " Lincoln and his Cab- 
 inet " in their parlors, the latter especially inter- 
 esting on account of Mr. Seward, who seems to 
 be wondering if there isn't gas escaping somewhere, 
 or If the folks haven't had picked-up codfish lately. 
 There were no molten or graven images with 
 their attendant moral obliquities about Aunt 
 Katy's parlor, unless you choose to include a shiny 
 china object upon the mantelpiece, which was be- 
 lieved and asserted to be a dog, but which one 
 might have bowed down to and served with a 
 clear conscience, for it was not the likeness of any- 
 thing in the heaven above, or the earth beneath, 
 or the waters under the earth. It was an orna- 
 ment, just as were the conch-shells with their 
 glossy, flesh-hued lining. Like them, the china 
 • dog demanded service, imperious care lest it be 
 broken, meticulous wipings with a damp cloth, 
 and ritual dustings. But there was a distinction 
 between them. The china dog was of the very 
 highest order of aristocracy; it rendered nothing in 
 
 196 
 

THE PARLOR BACK HOME 
 
 exchange for all this care. It didn't even pretend 
 to. It was exactly in the position of those who 
 have '* an independent income." The conch-shells 
 were a grade below that. They had to make 
 some slight effort to pay their way. 
 
 You must remember that while the people 
 round about had never seen a body of water 
 larger than Silver Lake, they were all descendants 
 of seafolk. The sea was home to us, and so eager 
 were we for any news from there that we main- 
 tained the conch-shells in high honor, because if 
 we held them to the ear and barkened closely they 
 told us what the sea said. We could hear the roar 
 of waves which the shells transmitted to us au- 
 thentically, having that strange power. We after- 
 ward found out it was but the rushing of our own 
 blood we heard — the salt sea within us. 
 
 There are some that say the Parlor's doom was 
 sealed the day a carpenter named Carhart first 
 took notice that his accordion sounded louder and 
 finer when the wind was sucked through the reeds 
 instead of being squeezed through them. That 
 meant the discovery of the parlor organ. Preg- 
 
 199 
 
OUR TOWN 
 
 nant event! Away went tinkling dulcimers to the 
 garret — always out of tune, and poor things at 
 the best. The parlor organ compelled the change 
 of the piano from a luxury possible only to the 
 rich into a necessity of life, within the reach of 
 common folks. It made the piano a whole lot 
 better instrument in the process of leveling down. 
 Make a note of that. But whether Pa could af-. 
 ford a piano or had to get the cheaper organ, the 
 shades in the Parlor had to be rolled up each day, 
 and in cold weather there had to be a fire there, 
 so that Elizabeth Jane could do her practising, 
 thumb under for F in the right hand, thumb under 
 for G in the left hand. And when Elizabeth Jane 
 got so that she could play a " piece " without too 
 many mistakes, it was fare ye well forever to the 
 cold and aristocratic aloofness of the Parlor from 
 the daily round, the common task. 
 
 Carhart helped; I grant you that. But I main- 
 tain that the disappearance of the Parlor was cos- 
 mic, elemental, the outworking of great economic 
 forces, one manifestation of the spirit of the age 
 which summons up on quo warranto proceedings 
 
 200 
 
THE PARLOR BACK HOME 
 
 every man-made Institution, and would have it 
 show cause why It should longer stay on the pay- 
 roll. '^ What good are you? " It wants to know 
 of every man and every set of men. The old- 
 time aristocratic, Idle, useless Parlor went because 
 It was more bother than It was good. Take warn- 
 ing, all In the same line of business ! 
 
 I never could see that the Idling-place about a 
 house had any better right to be prettier than the 
 working-place about the house. Whether It was 
 the First Isaiah or the Second Isaiah that wrote the 
 fortieth chapter of the book of that name, I don't 
 know or care. He had good Ideas, whichever one 
 he was, and when he says : " Every valley shall 
 be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be 
 made low," I'm right with him, whether the sen- 
 timent apply to house-furnlshing or — or — other 
 matters. 
 
 201 
 
SlP 23 1913 
 
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