.' ' '-' 
 
LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 IN Ml MORY "I 
 
 STEWART 8. How. i; 
 
 FOURNALISM CLASS OF ls>28 
 
 STBVART S. HOWE FOUNDATION 
 
 813 
 R9.1 7£ 
 
 1 o n o o • 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/lakefrontOOruss 
 
L 
 
 AKE FRONT 
 
T5o 
 
 My Sister Cecilia 
 
 Whose faith and love 
 created this book. 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 RUTH RUSSELL 
 
 Wood Cuts by 
 
 RUTH KELLOGG 
 
 THOMAS S 
 
 ROCKWELL COMPANY 
 
 CH I C AGO 
 1931 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1 93 1, BY 
 
 THOMAS S. ROCKWELL COMPANY 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 Printed in United States of America 
 

 Since this is the story of a city, 
 truth to the lives of individuals 
 has been subordinated to truth to 
 the life of the city. 
 

L 
 
 AKE FRONT 
 
E 
 
 ROLOGUE 
 
Li\c a letter N 
 the boy sat in 
 the deep 
 embrasure 
 
 ANNO DOMINI 
 SIXTEEN HUNDRED 
 SEVENTY-FIVE 
 
 E 
 
 ERHAPS they would roast 
 him alive. Nose in pamphlet, the boy read the last installment 
 of the Jesuit Relations. The giant Brebeuf was in the camp 
 of the Hurons at Point St. Ignace, farthest west in the new- 
 found world. "The Iroquois are coming; escape while you 
 can," some one whispered to the priest. "I stay here," Brebeuf 
 
 13 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 answered. Hurrah for the Norman! Down the lake point 
 sneaked the enemy, while the Hurons seemed drugged. From 
 bark hut to bark hut, Brebeuf strode and found warriors — 
 would you call them that? — asleep in smoky huts, kicking 
 mangy dogs, or scratching bugs that ran on their red bodies 
 . . . Of course, the Iroquois beat. 
 
 To a stake, the Iroquois bound the black robe. They thrust 
 iron bars in fire, and when the iron was white-red, they branded 
 him. The captive Hurons could smell the flesh sizzle. Water, 
 they boiled and poured it steaming on his head. "Baptism!" 
 they shrieked. Then out flashed the Iroquois knives, whetted 
 bright and thin. Zip through the flesh they went; red blood 
 they drew, but no white cries. "We'll make you plead for 
 mercy," the Iroquois boasted. Nearer to the heart, they cut 
 with knives. Still no cry. Too near they went. Brebeuf 
 was dead. ... So they ate his heart and burned him up 
 to ashes. 
 
 Torture was nothing. 
 
 All you had to do, thought the boy Jacques Marquette, was 
 remember, "Just a few minutes more and I'll be with God and 
 Our Lady forever." 
 
 Like the letter N, the boy sat in the deep embrasure; his 
 toes and his thin stooped back pressed hard against the stone. 
 He closed his black blazing eyes, and under his bristly dark 
 hair his ivory face was tense. . . . White and shining, God 
 and Our Lady welcomed a martyr to Heaven. . . . 
 
 What would his father say if his son declared, "I want 
 
 14 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 to be a priest." . . . Through the leaded diamond panes, 
 across the gray drizzle, the boy looked down the rocky slopes 
 of Laon. High fort walls angled up the mountain; beneath 
 the walls were sharpened stakes for enemies to fall on . . . 
 Time out of mind, what fighting had been there! And always 
 his forbears in the thick of the battle! 
 
 What would his fighter-father say? . . . That night, 
 the boy sat on a stool before the wide fireplace. Red were 
 the flames beneath the great stone chimney breast. . . . To 
 his left his mother, in a spreading dress of dull shiny wine- 
 colored silk with a fan of lace behind her head, was enthroned 
 on a carved chair; her feet you could not see at all for they 
 were lifted on the hassock that showed just a little beneath 
 her skirts. . . . To his right, his sister bent her head — the 
 hair all gathered in a pearl snood — over her embroidery. . . . 
 Beyond her, near a pointed window, his four brothers 
 talked of King's Guardsmen and Cardinal's Musketeers. . . . 
 A lackey lit the candles. 
 
 Like a soldier on the march, his father came down the room 
 from the door behind them. His broad plumed hat was in 
 his hand; his long black cape, a-swing. 
 
 Tall and thin in his brown doublet and hose, the boy turned 
 his back to the fire and faced his father. 
 
 "I want to go to be a Jesuit," he said, straight out. 
 
 In his forward march, his father lost a step; through the 
 corners of his eyes, the boy saw the women look up astonished; 
 behind him, he could hear his brothers gasp and snicker. . . . 
 
 15 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Down toward the fire, beyond the boy, the father paced his 
 way and took a broad stance before the flames. His head 
 was bent. Suddenly he faced the lad and looked him up 
 and down as though he was new to the house. 
 
 "So. You want to be a teacher? Or a courtier-priest? 
 Or a choir-stall poet, perhaps?" There was scorn in his tones, 
 as if those were aims that weak men nursed in their hearts. 
 
 "No, my father. Missioner in New France." 
 
 The boy could hear his brothers hit each other's backs and 
 chortle. He could see the wave of his mother's white hand 
 as she dismissed them from the room. He glimpsed his sister's 
 lifted face — eyes and mouth like three round o's. 
 
 His father drew his lifted lip down and caught it with his 
 lower teeth. His steely eyes grew kindly. A soldier priest, 
 in the roughest camp in the world — that was a calling worthy 
 of a man. . . . He took the boy's hand in the two of his; 
 if there was awe in his eyes, there was also something like a 
 threat, as if he said: 
 
 "Remember a soldier takes the luck of the camp and field, 
 and never turns back." 
 
 G 
 
 fOLD and fresh-smelling was 
 the cedar-bark chapel at Point St. Ignace. 
 
 Before a picture of the blue-robed Virgin — it was painted 
 on Chinese taffeta by nuns in France — knelt the young 
 
 16 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 missioner. This was the Feast of her Immaculate Conception, 
 and he wanted to give her a feast-day present. 
 
 "I would go farther west to new tribes," he said. 
 
 She was his Lady. More to him than mother and sister, 
 and they would have her more. What proof of love for her 
 could he give in a wilderness already gained by Brebeuf? 
 
 Cries of the Hurons sounded from the beach, cries of 
 greeting. The gritty noise of a canoe being shelved on the 
 sands — "Pardon, Marie." 
 
 By the canoe, on the snow-driven strand, was a young man 
 in fur cap and short fur coat. 
 
 "Sieur Joliet!" the priest exclaimed and ran to embrace his 
 young friend from Quebec. Friends you could touch, here 
 and now, they were good too. 
 
 Joliet was breathless, excited, laughing. 
 
 "You're to come with me," he said. "I have letters." 
 
 "Where, then?" 
 
 "The river to the west — we're both to explore it." 
 
 Sealed and stamped, the letters. Commissions from a vice- 
 roy or the Queen of Heaven? "Merci, Marie. . . ." 
 
 In May, the month of Mary, they pushed off. . . . 
 Indian-fashion, the priest knelt on the rushes in the canoe 
 and dipped his paddle in the clear blue water till Ignace was 
 gone, and the green turtle-back island below it. . . . 
 
 Swampy portage. . . . The great river! It gave him joy 
 he could not utter for this was the way to new tribes to be 
 won. . . . Long easy floating till the canoes were seized by 
 
 17 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 the turbid waters of an in-rushing river. . . . "Frenchmen, 
 how bright the sun shines when you come to visit us!" 
 exclaimed the Illinois Indians, sun- worshippers; to them, the 
 black robe made the promise that he would come back and 
 make a mission for them. . . . 
 
 Marshy shores with feathery foliage. . . . Stifling bayous 
 where mosquitos buzzed and bit. . . . Strange tribes that 
 threatened them, then feasted them with dog. . . . These 
 Indians told them: "The mouth of the river is in the Gulf 
 of Mexico. The Spaniards are there." . . . Not through 
 California, not through Virginia, but straight to the Gulf 
 rolled the great river. . . . With the long-wanted knowledge 
 gained, they turned north, joyful. 
 
 The Grand Monarch would be pleased. Small matters 
 like empires satisfied grand monarchs. But only souls mattered 
 to God and Our Lady. ... It was time then to keep the 
 promise with the Illinois. 
 
 October leaves were red when he and his two donnes took 
 the trail again. . . . How soon the roll of the canoe on the 
 surf turned his stomach queasy! Swamps and dog diet don't 
 improve digestion. . . . November came, and to their right 
 were black trees and white cliffs set between gray sky and 
 gray lake. . . . 
 
 One day, with his cloak pulled close against cold, he walked 
 the sands. He felt he could no longer suffer the roll of the 
 boat. . . . Alone, he felt a parching thirst, saw a red-blood 
 hemorrhage, fell prostrate, then rose and stumbled on. . . . 
 
 18 
 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Health of the sick, pray for us." 
 
 Chicagou was near. It was a place with a river that led to 
 the portage, and on the river the canoe could lie quiet and he 
 could rest. With hope, he looked ahead at the wind-swept 
 sand dunes and the stunted trees along the river banks. 
 
 "Regard the river which is frozen," sang out Pierre Porteret 
 as the two donnes swung toward shore. 
 
 "No more canoe!" called Jacques. "We can no longer use 
 the canoe." 
 
 "Then our legs, let us use them," smiled the sick man. 
 
 Spiky were the bare twigs he grasped, hard were the trees he 
 leaned against, frozen the earth lumps beneath his feet. 
 "Comfort of the afflicted, pray for us." Now the main stem 
 of the river right-angled into the north and south branches. 
 Was there question in the eyes of the donnes? He nodded 
 south. On to the portage! 
 
 With the portage in sight, what a time to sink to the 
 ground. . . . "Mother of good counsel, pray for us." . . . 
 Yes, they might build him a shelter. . . . All winter they 
 were held to the cabin; outside were the snow on the prairie 
 and the stiff black trees. . . . Would death come? "Gate 
 of Heaven, pray for us." Would he get strength to make the 
 mission? "Virgin most powerful, pray for us." . . . With 
 March, new health, and each said to the other: 
 
 "When shall we go?" 
 
 "At once," the river answered. 
 
 Early one March morning, the river rose and flooded them 
 
 19 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 out of the cabin. . . . Whipping, shuddery winds at dawn; 
 pools black in the melting snow. . . . The priest's feet 
 slopped through slush and were sucked down by muddy 
 ooze. . . . His shoulder packet galled him to breathless- 
 ness. . . . On to the people of the place! . . . 
 "Morning star, pray for us." 
 
 20 
 
Whipping, shuddery winds at dawn; pools blac\ in the melting snow 
 
 21 
 
B 
 
 ART ONE 
 

 

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 &*^^yjv3r^ 
 
 
 ^^ I *_^^^^ • » K\. 1 ^i^U\ 
 
 
 K.-/^ JIVING 
 
 
 1 _^ j .^ ^^^^^B 
 
 
 
 
 ■ J W Am 
 
 
 W ^M ^1 ■, \V ^^B 
 
 
 I ^^r i ' V ^m J v» ^fl 
 
 
 
 
 A 
 
 Starey bright on 
 the paper beneath 
 the clocks shelf 
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 THIRTY-FIVE 
 
 YELLOW glow spread out 
 from behind them like the light from saints in holy pictures. 
 
 Not that her mother — 
 
 "You see now," her mother said; with her white head lifted — 
 it was early white — she stood proud in her ill-gotten linsey- 
 woolsey dress, "there's not the place you said." 
 
 25 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 At that she pressed the candle closer to the wall till it must 
 be starey bright on the paper she had pinned beneath the 
 clock shelf. 
 
 "Indeed and there is," answered Uncle James, determined 
 for a change. Once in a while, he stood up to her, and her 
 getting gabby, but most of the time he held his tongue, humble- 
 like. That came along of being too religious. 
 
 "Then find Chicago on it," ordered her mother, scornful; 
 was that how she got her way — by making other people feel 
 like worms? 
 
 "It's only not marked," answered her uncle and moved from 
 the paper to the table where the rest of the family sat. How 
 his big canal boots clumped! His fingers were black-nailed — 
 you could see that as he took the quill pen out of the box of 
 shot and jabbed it into the ink-pot. 
 
 When he knelt down at the map and studied it, the fifteen 
 year old girl leaned forward to look. A map of America — 
 Atlantic to Mississippi. East to west, the map seemed shaded, 
 dark gray to white. Crowds of names along the coast and 
 no names at all in the West. 
 
 "Here, mind you, is the place." With that, her uncle put 
 an x west of the base of the lake that hung down like a mitten 
 on a line. 
 
 "Is it certain you are?" asked her mother, sharp. 
 
 "Didn't Jim Tully have a map marked by his cousin, the 
 shiphand in Buffalo, and wasn't Jim after showing it to me?" 
 
 The two of them began to talk so low that the girl could catch 
 
 26 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 only a word now and again. . . . Dropping her knitting, 
 she sat idle and watched the shadows that jumped about with 
 every move of her mother's candle. Shadows, big and fear- 
 some, that rose up and down over the three rough wood doors 
 and the bristly plaster wall to her right; shadows that flew 
 like bats through the brown timbers of the slanting half-a-roof 
 covering the kitchen; shadows that crept along the floor and 
 tried to smother out the red strips of light cast by the stove 
 to the left. . . . Her mother made shadows. 
 
 Was her uncle telling the things the shiphand said? "No 
 danger from the Indians any more. . . . Treaty had been 
 made. . . . Town just got charter. . . . Canal to be 
 dug at portage. . . . People buying land, crazy-like. . . . 
 Solicitors earned $500 a day with land deeds. . . ." 
 
 They must be planning to go to this place, yet her Aunt 
 Ellen, opposite, sat with no interest in her; her head bent down 
 till her black cap had slid on her forehead, her eyes were on 
 her work, her knitting needles were icicles melting into a 
 stocking — as long as she could look after her sister's children, 
 one place was like another to her. . . . 
 
 Now her mother spoke: "Good place for boarding-house 
 then? . . . They could go after Easter. . . . When would 
 Whitsunday be?" With that she reached to the clock shelf 
 for the prayer-book and almanac and placed them in Uncle 
 James' hands, the while she held the light for him to read. . . . 
 "Whitsunday in the Table of Movable Feasts. ... In 
 May? . . . Now the weather forecast. . . . Fair? . . . 
 
 27 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Had he really advised going?" 
 
 Her uncle answered: "Indeed and he had. . . . The 
 farther west you went, the better chance you had. . . . 
 Nobody asked who you were — just want to know what you 
 could do. ... A chance for everyone. . . . No 
 nabobs. . 
 
 No nabobs! How she hated them! They rode in their 
 carriages in Utica and turned up their noses at the "ignorant 
 Irish." Suddenly the girl writhed, and the short leg of her 
 stool hit the planking with a little bang. . . . Had it been 
 her fault she was taken out of school? But James — she'd see 
 James got his chance and show the world all the Irish needed 
 was education. 
 
 While her mother kept on at the map, Uncle James clutched 
 his great coat from the rack between the clock and the door. 
 Just like the nice big clumsy man of him, he did not notice 
 that he was getting the coat on so that the high waist line was 
 crooked and the wide collar caught under the shoulders. . . . 
 Without a word, he took her mother's candle and brought it 
 to the lantern of black tin with holes in it. He slid up the 
 hatch of the lantern and lit the tallow dip inside. Yellow 
 specks jumped over his smooth tanned face with the white 
 hair above it. Giving back the candle, he clicked up the 
 latch of the door and was gone. ... A gust of air, cold 
 but fresh and with the smell of turned fields in it, blew into 
 the kitchen. 
 
 With the gust, the flame of the table-candle swept across 
 
 28 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 the hot tallow and pushed a bright drip down the side, a 
 shiny drip that hardened into bumpy yellow-brown. . . . 
 When her mother turned and blew out her candle, she looked, 
 stern, across the room at her fifteen-year old daughter. . . . 
 What was the trouble now? . . . Oh, yes. The knitting. . . . 
 Her mother slammed the tin candle-stick on the deal table 
 and pinched the red wick as if she liked to kill out 
 things. . . . 
 
 Since she was going in to Utica to evening Ash Wednesday 
 services, she went to the coat rack for her cape and bonnet. . . . 
 That cape and bonnet! All the other Irishwomen of the parish 
 wore shawls on them, but her mother? Never. Shawls, her 
 mother said, reminded her of bogs and poverty — so with her 
 first saved money she bought the wrap and the linsey-woolsey 
 dress. To save money faster, she had taken her two daughters 
 out of school before they'd scarce learned their letters. . . . 
 Now that she wanted a black silk gown and a gold chain, 
 would she sell James' chance for him too? . . . She would 
 not. Not as long as her daughter lived to prevent it. 
 
 Big and black, the bonnet went on first. How careful she 
 was to tie the stiff ribbons a little to one side of her chin. 
 After that, she swung her cape about her like as if it was a 
 royal mantle, lifted it at the nape of the neck, and pulled the 
 front down smooth. . . . Outside, the rig gritted in the mud, 
 and a wheel grated along the porch step. . . . Now they 
 were to be rid of her. . . . Not yet. On her way out, her 
 mother suddenly cut to the right and tried the pantry door. 
 
 29 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Still locked. Last night she had turned the key in it, and 
 since then not one of them had had a crumb to eat, not even 
 eleven-year-old James. Her mother was the kind people liked 
 to say, "Mrs. O'Mara is a good Catholic, surely; she keeps 
 a strict Black Fast in her house, come Ash Wednesday." 
 
 Before she left the door, her mother spoke sharp to Aunt 
 Ellen: 
 
 "See Jane hurries with that knitting and send the other two 
 to bed." 
 
 The door banged, and James rose from his place. His 
 poem paper was limp from his holding it — he was studying 
 for the Friday afternoon program — and his lips still were 
 mouthing, "The rank is but the guinea stamp; a man's a man 
 for a' that." . . . There he'd gotten clear across the floor 
 to the third door at the right, still muttering his piece, but 
 saying no good-night. . . . Had his feet dragged a little? 
 Was he very hungry? Aunt Ellen watched him too and 
 wondered the same things, perhaps. ... If you could only 
 be sure she was with you and the children. . . . Suddenly 
 he turned, and with the smile made you think you could never 
 do enough for him, he said, "Good night." 
 
 Mary Ellen was different. From her place facing her aunt, 
 she did not stir but sat with her pink hands folded on the 
 bundle of gray rags she was supposed to be braiding into a 
 rug. Her dark eyes were dreamy, and her head was a little 
 bent so you could see most the part in her brown hair. 
 
 "Time to go to bed, Mary Ellen," reminded her aunt. 
 
 30 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 How quick her head came up! 
 
 "When I haven't had breakfast yet, how should I know 
 it's time to go to bed?" She cocked one eye at her aunt and 
 laughed, impertinent. Then she jumped up — she was only 
 thirteen but was fast getting to look like a woman grown — 
 threw her arms about her aunt's neck, and ran off. 
 
 Did Aunt Ellen wince? It was always hard to understand 
 what Aunt Ellen thought. . . . Only that morning, Aunt 
 Ellen had taken the children to Utica to the early Ash 
 Wednesday services. Knelt at the altar they had while the 
 priest dipped a thumb in ashes and rubbed it in the shape of 
 a cross on each forehead, saying Latin words that meant, 
 "Remember, man, thou art but dust, and into dust thou shalt 
 return." Then the priest, he had given a sermon and talked 
 about Lenten penances. "In honor of the Forty Days Christ 
 fasted in the desert," he said, "restrain some natural desire — 
 something that will come hard." That seemed like a word 
 direct to her to stop her feelings toward her mother. . . . But 
 weren't her feelings right? . . . Should you pretend a person 
 was good, when there was an evil power in her to keep people 
 down for the sake of her pride? 
 
 Some people said your mother stood in the place of God 
 to you — how could that be, for God was good. . . . Even 
 her father, easier on children than most fathers, had always 
 told her to be careful to obey her mother. How she missed 
 him! Sometimes she thought he had died out of loneliness 
 for Donegal. Often he had talked of the place, gray boulders, 
 
 31 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 brown bog, and pools purply-like. No little thing about 
 Donegal had he forgot, nor big one: The fierce wet winds 
 that whipped him as he trudged to school and carried his two 
 blocks of peat for the school fire. The curlews that swooped 
 about his head as he stood bare-legged in the sea at sunset. 
 The black kelp he wrenched from the sea floor and slapped 
 into his rush basket. The rich neighbor who had educated 
 him. His own return from school to the row of white, thatched 
 cabins. The people of the place, stand-offish till they were 
 sure he had not grown proud. At last, his wife saying, "For 
 the sake of the children you should earn the high wage paid 
 to laborers on the Erie Canal." So he had come. And died, 
 lonely. 
 
 Aunt Ellen, too, said a mother had to be respected. Once 
 the girl had burst out to her aunt, "I hate my mother." What 
 a whiteness in her aunt's face while she said cold: "Remember 
 the commandment, 'Honor thy father and mother.' And the 
 next time you go to confession, tell what you said." So the 
 girl had, and the priest, taking his stand with all other grown 
 people, had given her the Stations of the Cross for a penance. 
 
 All that bother for her mother. Yet it made the girl think 
 twice before she spoke up to her parent. Besides, there was 
 something about her mother — 
 
 Was Aunt Ellen going to bed? There she was putting her 
 work on the table. W^ny was her mouth straight as a minus 
 sign? Now she rose like someone who had work that wouldn't 
 wait. Turned now she was and walking toward the clock — 
 
 32 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 quickly so that her gray house shawl stood out from her billowy 
 skirts. Her arm was raised; her thumb and finger were like 
 pincers, shadow-white, as they went back of the clock. They 
 had fastened on something and pulled at it. There it was, 
 long, dark, rusty — the key to the pantry door. 
 
 A laugh gulped in her throat as she heard Aunt Ellen say: 
 "Call the children, Jane; I'm going to give them bread and 
 milk." 
 
 She dared her sister for the sake of the children, did she? 
 Then she'd be your ally against your mother and for Mary 
 Ellen and James. Especially for James. 
 
 S3 
 
// drcsscd-up man he 
 was, with a high sil/{ hat 
 
 CHAPTER TWO 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 THIRTY-FIVE 
 
 L 
 
 1 ADIES and gentlemen, we are 
 now approaching the greatest town in the west," the land agent 
 shouted. A dressed-up man he was, with a high silk hat — 
 what if a wind came up sudden? — and with red-jowled cheeks 
 that waggled the white collar points of his black stock as he 
 
 34 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 talked. Since he'd gotten on the boat at Milwaukee, he talked 
 Chicago steady. 
 
 " 'Twill be the New Orleans of the North," he cried, and 
 held up a paper unrolled while people crowded round to look. 
 It was a big plat that showed the city streets in white, parks 
 in green, church lots in yellow, schools in red, and the great 
 port in blue. 
 
 " 'Twill be the gateway to the West," he went on. As she 
 looked at the plat, she could see fine buildings, ships at anchor., 
 and, through the streets, processions of canvas-covered wagons 
 going west. 
 
 " 'Twill be the Odessa of the West," he exclaimed. What 
 was Odessa? He said it was the great grain center of 
 Russia. . . . Why didn't the others of her family listen to 
 him? James watched the foam the side wheel churned in the 
 smooth water. Mary Ellen couldn't keep her eyes off the 
 white woman who nursed a baby black as the ace of spades. 
 Their aunt and uncle were in the hold getting their traps 
 together, but their mother was all ready to leave, down to the 
 lace mitts of her — the mitts must be turning green, and her 
 standing at the prow in full sunlight. 
 
 "Sixty dollars for this lot, ladies and gentlemen," said the 
 agent, his dirty finger on the map. "Your last chance. As 
 the poet so truly says, "They'll cost more, On Shore.' " 
 
 Sixty! You'd think he was selling a whole farm instead 
 of a small lot. People hooted at him. No wonder. . . . 
 
 "There it is! There's Chicago." 
 
 35 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 At the shout, what a thrill shot through her! Quick, she 
 ran to the rail, and people pressed from behind till she thought 
 her ribs would snap. 
 
 Chicago! Place she'd dreamed about ever since she'd heard 
 there were no nabobs here, and everyone was after getting his 
 chance. And now — all that was off to the southwest was a bit 
 of a white shine between the flat low beach and the trees. . . . 
 A fort and a lighthouse, whitewashed. . . . To the right of 
 them, a blue river with its mouth cut through a yellow sand- 
 bar. . . . To the right again, a log house with four poplars 
 at a front fence, the little home stiff as a child's Noah's Ark. 
 
 "Haw! Haw!" some people guffawed, as they turned to 
 the man in the silk hat, "sixty for a lot in the wilderness!" 
 
 Surely the land agent had said more'n was in his 
 prayers. . . . Through the cut in the sand, they were going 
 now. The boat sloshed water up and down the piles. . . . 
 A sunny haze was over the trees ahead. . . . How flat 
 the shores seemed, dark brown shores with fat oniony shoots 
 along them! ... It was breathless hot and smelly between 
 the trees. . . . Now a half-breed in a deerskin jacket — 
 almost hairless it was — ran out on a wood boat-landing and 
 called "Ben venoo!" . . . 
 
 Along the walk, iris spikes with their deep purple blossoms. 
 Ahead, a jack-knife bridge with its blades in the air. . . . 
 At the left end of the bridge, people were bunched up to 
 watch the boat go by; their hands were over their eyes; some 
 of the crowd spied friends and ran down the shore toward 
 
 36 
 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 them. . . . "Hello! Hello!" they cried, excited. . . . 
 As the boat went through, the people on shore hurried west 
 to the landing-place. 
 
 Red Indians beyond the bridge. . . . No welcome from 
 them. . . . Their toes sunk in the muck, some Indian boys, 
 stark naked, watched at the river edge. ... In the grassy 
 spot behind them were tepees. . . . Slinging a black kettle 
 onto a tripod, a squaw stood with her back to the boat. . . . 
 A brave harnessed a horse to poles; the poles dragged on the 
 ground and were joined from earth to horse's tail with flat 
 boards. . . . On this slanting platform, a squaw, holding a 
 bound papoose, climbed. . . . "That's the way they hit the 
 trail," called someone; "They better hit it damned soon." 
 
 Arms held out for boat ropes, the men at the landing dock 
 waited, watchful. ... A crowd, and beyond them, flat 
 ox-carts with two disc-wheels. . . . Light, low horse carts 
 with rims round the edge and hay inside to soften the jolts for 
 the passengers. . . . "This way to the best hotel in town," 
 shouted a man in the driver's seat of a big wagon with planks 
 laid across it. ... A negro dressed in red rode a horse that 
 had red clothes on too — he was the land-sales shouter. . . . 
 
 South lay a dirt road that ran with the river. On the far 
 side of the street was a string of slab- fronts, squatty they were; 
 looked like the prairie was sucking 'em in. . . . 
 
 Time to go below. . . . Everyone was carrying things, 
 everyone jabbing his neighbor in the dark. . . . Some 
 dragged strapped trunks with brass studs that shone in the 
 
 37 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 blackness of the hold; others carried bundles on poles. . . . 
 When you came out on the gang-plank, you had to blink 
 against the light. . . . 
 
 "Here, my good man, come get my trunk for me," shouted 
 a proud Easterner to an idler on the wharf. 
 
 "Me?" shouted the idler, as loud as could be. "Ain't 
 nobody's servant but my own." 
 
 How the crowd laughed, while the proud man looked red 
 and mad. Everybody here was like her, and hated folks that 
 talked airy. 
 
 With her elders, she sat on their baggage, and the two 
 children perched at the rear of the cart, dangling their feet 
 over. . . . "Giddap," shouted the driver who was to take 
 them to the Mokopo. . . . Gobs of dirt under the pawing of 
 the horses, then the wagon jolted west on the river road. 
 
 "Pret' muddy hereabouts." The driver was a man liked to 
 chat. "But not so bad as a few months back. Why, last 
 February I saw a head bobbing up and down out of a puddle 
 on this here South Water street, and I says, 'Stranger, need 
 help?' and he answers back, 'Don't mind me, partner; I'm 
 riding a good horse.' " 
 
 Not a scrap of attention was her mother paying but talking 
 she was in low tones with Uncle James. 
 
 "Is there any ready-built cabin for sale here?" Uncle James 
 asked. 
 
 "Why yes," the driver answered, "I got a two-room cabin 
 with a loft. During the land rushes, I use the loft for boarders." 
 
 38 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 At that, her mother primed up her lips and looked, meaning, 
 at her brother. Uncle James asked the price and found it 
 too high. 
 
 "Too high!" exclaimed the driver, angry. "Top-notch, all 
 prices are, these days. This ain't '31 when the land that 
 Tremont's on, sold for a cord of wood. Nor '34 when it 
 bought a yoke of steers. No, this is — well, you being a stranger 
 can't realize. But come round tonight and look at the place. 
 North of the river — after you cross the bridge, anyone'll tell 
 you where Jim Bell lives." 
 
 Stores had big platforms before them; one window was full 
 of blue and pink calico, all festooned. . . . What was that, 
 that came behind their wagon and looked like a pony with 
 wings? Not wings at all, but just big leather bags. . . . 
 A short stocky man led the beast. . . . 
 
 "If there ain't Looie, the mail-man," cried the driver, joyful, 
 as the short man came alongside. "Got a letter for me? No? 
 Well, go back and get one. Can't ride no more, can you? 
 When you going to get a stage?" 
 
 A pony mail-carrier! . . . Yes, James was watching. . . . 
 Ahead was a crowd who cheered the mail man and he coming 
 toward them, waving. . . . The people swarmed about him 
 till he disappeared in the midst of them. . . . Now the 
 wagon was near the gathering; beyond was the log-cabin store 
 with the U. S. Postofnce lettered on the window. . . . On 
 the low porch, a big man with a full beard had already opened 
 a bag and thrown a newspaper to its owner. . . . 
 
 39 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Read it!" the idlers yelled, and shoved the man to a dry- 
 goods box sunk in the mud. Willy-nilly, he had to mount. . . . 
 What was he reading? . . . "Harrison" was a word she 
 caught, and then there came a hoot and hiss through the 
 crowd. . . . Democrats they were then, for Van Buren and 
 against Harrison. . . . All at once, a single voice sang out, 
 "Hooray for Harrison!" and with no time lost, a hand shot 
 out, and you could hear it crack on the jaw of the man who 
 shouted; the shouter fell back stiff as a plank. . . . You 
 could see his straight blond hair fly up and settle smooth again 
 as he plopped in the mud. . . . 
 
 Suddenly she laughed. . . . Maybe the place was small, 
 sunk in the mud, not the great city some people made out. 
 What did that matter? Already she loved this place where 
 people spoke out free. What was a beating or two if you 
 could have your say? Oh, this was a town that gave all their 
 chance; it was the place for James. . . . She laughed, glad 
 her family had come here. 
 
 "Hold on," shouted the driver. 
 
 Boxes tottered with the turn! She clutched the driver's seat, 
 while James twisted his head to laugh. Why not indeed? 
 "This is your town, James." South they rode now, and off 
 to the right was a green scummy slough. 
 
 At the corner of the next cross road was a tavern, long, gray, 
 two-story with blue shutters, square-paned windows, and a 
 center doorway with a sill edged with glass. Set slantwise, 
 the place was as if it had been put up before the roads came. 
 
 40 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Yonder's the Mokopo!" exclaimed the driver. 
 
 'Twould be by far the biggest house she'd ever slept in; 
 yet, surely, the brick hotels of Utica, put next this, would 
 cast shadows over it. Lots of space about the building — to 
 the south were far houses, scattered haphazard; to the west, 
 cows and trees, along the shimmery edges of the river. . . . 
 Round the half -circle of rut before the tavern door, the cart 
 drove. A fat, jolly, dark man in a blue coat with brass 
 buttons stood on the step. . . . Like a play actor, he threw 
 out his arms in welcome. . . . 
 
 "Monsieur DuBois himself," exclaimed the driver and swept 
 his hand from his hat outwards. 
 
 "B'jour," the innkeeper answered, short, to the man. A 
 French word, maybe. "The guests? They wish perhaps to 
 know my charge? Bien! One dollar a big folk the day, and 
 the boy and the girls I throw out, by gar." 
 
 One dollar! How costly! Half the price of a calico dress! 
 Would they stop! Surely not. Yes, her mother nodded to 
 Uncle James, who said to the innkeeper, "We'll stay." 
 
 "The rooms," went on the host, "they are not ready yet, 
 but the dinner, I go tell the kitchen you are arrived. Then I 
 will help put the boxes inside." 
 
 "Take the baskets in, Jane," ordered her mother. The girl 
 lifted two — how the reed handles cut into the flesh! . . . She 
 scraped her muddy shoes on the metal bar fixed to the step 
 and put her hand to the knob. Alone, she was going in to 
 a strange place, opening a new door. 
 
 41 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 On the other side came a voice, the innkeeper's high-pitched. 
 
 ". . . an Irish widow-woman for you, Lannon." 
 
 Confused by the new place, she did not really see the 
 Lannon man but thought that in this big room, all white and 
 black, he might be the blot on the rear wall. An Irish widow- 
 woman? Did he mean her mother. Could it be a woman, 
 already white-haired, would re-marry? This! When things 
 looked most promising. . . . 
 
 As if he had said nothing at all, the innkeeper bowed 
 polite and pointed to the bar at the left where baskets might 
 be laid. Then, dancing, he crossed the room and went out 
 the back center door. . . . She turned left, toward the 
 untended bar. Gritty, the plank floor with its long-dried rnud. 
 Littered, the bar — whips, guns, umbrellas, candle-boards; 
 unwashed glasses, filmy with liquor and finger-prints, sat plain 
 in the noon-light from the windows behind the bar. . . 
 Shoving a lantern aside, she slid the baskets on to the counter. 
 
 Now when she turned about, she would face right and see 
 this man the innkeeper had spoken to. . . . With one 
 arm slung over the back of the split-log bench and with both 
 legs stretched out, he was big and wide-sitting. . . . Perhaps 
 there was some other widow. ... As she reached the 
 door, there was her mother pushing it back and holding it 
 open for Aunt Ellen and the children; everyone but her 
 mother carried things. 
 
 "One basket left," said mother to eldest daughter, "get it." 
 
 Her mother might have brought it in, easy enough. . . . 
 
 42 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 As the girl went out, she saw the wagon rattling north and 
 the luggage left lying around on the grass. Round from the 
 kitchen leaped the Frenchman to help Uncle James. . . . 
 The innkeeper poked a fat finger in Uncle James' ribs, while 
 Uncle James looked surprised and stern as a Trappist. 
 
 "Monsieur Lannon prayed for an Irish widow," the host 
 declared, "and the good God sent Mrs. O'Mara." 
 
 What did her Uncle James think of that? With her basket 
 lifted, she stopped to stare at her uncle. . . . No word 
 did he say. Was he overcome, like her? Or did he think 
 his sister was an answer to no one's prayer? . . . Surely 
 he would hate a stranger in the house, though he might be 
 too meek ever to say so. . . . 
 
 As she turned back toward the house, the meddlesome man 
 was behind her. She held the door open for him since he 
 carried a load on his shoulder. Down on the floor near the 
 bar, he slammed the box; nearby, her mother searched for 
 something in the willow baskets. Rising, he spoke to her 
 mother: 
 
 "Madame, I like it that the people of my house are known, 
 one to the other. Behind you, Monsieur Lannon waits to 
 meet you." 
 
 Chuckling, the host watched the Lannon man jump from 
 the back bench, stride across the room, shaking the cold gray 
 stove in the sand-box as he came. . . . Her mother bowed, 
 cold and polite, but there was a look in her eyes like the new 
 man was a bit of meat on the butcher's block, and she figuring 
 
 43 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 on it. . . . Broadcloth, he wore, and he was fatter than 
 those who must work hard. 
 
 "I'm waiting for my daughters," he said through his big 
 brown beard. "We came here from Vincennes; now they're 
 out of the convent, we'll settle here." 
 
 Just as he spoke, the two daughters opened the second door 
 in the wall to the right. . . . Behind them was a wooden 
 walled staircase. . . . Nice enough they were, though 
 frail-looking; their arms, bare beneath puffed sleeves, had less 
 shape than stripped chicken wings, and their collar-bones, 
 showing plain above the round -topped blue cashmeres, were 
 covered by stretched skin only and no flesh at all. . . . 
 Mary Ellen stared at the embroidery on their pantalets as 
 though she wanted to copy it. . . . "This is Agnes," said 
 the man, "and this is Jean." As he named them, they bobbed 
 their heads, and their ringlets jumped up and down. 
 
 The door banged till you thought the glass in the sill would 
 shatter. Men came in for dinner: One with knives in his 
 belt — a trapper? One with canvas apron — a trader? . . . 
 The girls, who knew everybody, said the one-legged man was 
 a writer who'd ridden horseback all the way from York 
 state. . . . Now a giant sat on the puncheon bench, jerked 
 off his boots, pattered to the shelf to the right of the back 
 door, and chose a pair of slippers from the pile there. . . . 
 Others stamped to the deal table between the two doors on 
 the right wall. . . . Here they splashed water from tin 
 pitchers into tin basins and fingered up soft soap from the 
 
 44 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 near-by dishes. . . . How black the suds turned! After 
 they rinsed their hands, they washed the dirty water over their 
 faces and beards. . . . Eyes all screwed, they felt for the 
 soiled towels. . . . 
 
 Clang sounded the dinner-bell! Outside the front door, 
 Mrs. DuBois swung the bell till you'd think all Chicago 
 heard. . . . What a rush to the dining room on the 
 right. . . . The man with the crutch went fastest because 
 you can step wider with a crutch. . . . For the newcomers 
 the host was waiting; at the head of one table, he placed her 
 mother; then he pushed Lannon into the chair at one side of 
 her, and hee-hawed. The Lannon girls sat alongside of him. 
 Across from the Lannons were aunt, uncle, and the chil- 
 dren. . . . The host sat at the head of the other table, 
 and, as he looked at the food, he rubbed his fat stomach. . . . 
 But before he could eat, a voice called through the window 
 near him: 
 
 "Bridge is out of order. People want you to ferry 'em 
 across." 
 
 The host sliced a leg off a roasted chicken and said no 
 word at all. 
 
 "But — party's in a rush." 
 
 "But — I'm ver' busy; I keep tavern like hell." 
 
 "Just a few minutes " 
 
 "Oh, come in and have a little quelque chose." 
 
 What was quelque chose? Many things were on the table — 
 fried bass, roast duck and chicken, ham, hot cornbread, maple 
 
 45 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 syrup, melty butter that had black flies caught in it; already 
 the green oilcloth table-cover was greasy and crumbed. . . . 
 Perhaps these girls with their education would know about 
 quelque chose. But they were talking to Mary Ellen, and 
 shaking their heads backwards toward the other table, never 
 once looking around. 
 
 "Find the one with the blond hair," said Agnes, her eyes 
 bright. "He's the son of a New York banker, and he's asked 
 me to the dance tonight." 
 
 "Look at the one that's a little short and wears glasses," 
 begged Jean before Mary Ellen could spy out the blond. "He's 
 a medic from Edinburgh, and I'm going to the dance with 
 him." 
 
 "What dance?" asked Mary Ellen, excited. 
 
 "Here. Tonight. And you've got to come because there 
 won't be near enough girls to go round." 
 
 Mary Ellen squealed like a little pig, the way she did when 
 she was glad. . . . Her older sister thought, "This is a 
 wonderful place for everybody." . . . Looking about her, 
 she saw workers, educated folks, rich people, and all equal 
 like the Declaration of Independence said. . . . 
 
 That night, branches of trees with thin new leaves on them 
 were nailed at the ends of the bar and over the doorways of 
 the tavern. Whale-oil lamps cast a yellow-gray light through 
 the room, a light not strong enough to keep the moon from 
 shining in squares on the floor. . . . All was ready for 
 the dance . . . except Mary Ellen. . . . 
 
 46 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Oh, I can't dance," she protested, her voice squeaky -high; 
 then she made as if to run up the stairs. The Lannons rushed 
 after. They could spare their pains — nothing but an act of 
 God or her mother would keep Mary Ellen away. 
 
 "Anyone with two feet can do a Virginia reel," Agnes told 
 her. 
 
 "But we just came, and we don't know anybody," objected 
 Mary Ellen who was like to know everyone by his first name 
 before the evening was up. 
 
 "Everyone in this town has just come," returned Agnes. 
 
 Was the whole town here? The Lannons, "Yes, and more 
 beside." 
 
 The men in gray with red sashes were voyageurs, back from 
 the Missouri; they were passing on the river, and when some 
 one shouted to them about the dance, they shot their canoe 
 up on shore and ran in. . . . That was the biggest man 
 in the world, the one with the broghans and the linsey-woolsey 
 coat that had buttons placed high at the back of it; he was 
 the editor of the weekly paper — it wouldn't be out this week 
 because the paper rolls were stuck in the mud somewhere 
 between Niles and Chicago. . . . That girl with the white 
 bent-over shoulders was a Southerner, and the gray haired 
 man was her father. . . . "Look at the woman with the 
 glass beads round her neck, the neck of a turkey," the older 
 O'Mara girl exclaimed to her sister. . . . Those men with 
 heavy boots were harbor workers. ... A fort officer wore 
 a blue uniform with gold-fringed epaulets. . . . What 
 
 47 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 faces painted on those Indians — yellow and red crescents like 
 big grin wrinkles. . . . 
 
 Cutting through the crowd, the banker's son came for Agnes, 
 and the young doctor, for Jean. . . . For them? The 
 whole floor to choose from! Such choosing, with everybody 
 watching, made you feel hot and as if you'd like to run 
 off. . . . The men who were left cried out to DuBois: 
 
 "We want partners!" 
 
 DuBois shook his stubby hands at them, but he wasn't mad 
 at all. At once he left by the back door and soon returned 
 calling out as loud as he could: 
 
 "Regardez, messieurs!" 
 
 He stood to one side and bowed as if the Queen of Spain 
 and her daughters were soon to come in. . . . Everybody 
 fixed eyes on doorway, and Madame DuBois and her three 
 kitchen girls, all red and smiley, entered. Quicker'n you could 
 say Jack Robinson, the girls were snapped up. . . . Through 
 the front way, someone ran in and shouted: 
 
 "They're coming up Lake Street." 
 
 Like one man almost, the crowd rushed out to welcome the 
 guests of honor — a couple, new-engaged, a daughter of a 
 Pottawattamie chief and her man, a postal clerk. Now the 
 crowd backed into the room and cheered the advancing couple. 
 
 The Indian girl held her head high. Even in that short 
 black dress and those unshaped beaded leggins, she was 
 stately. But the young man, he was flustered as a hen in a 
 pond. No wonder. Men were calling out: 
 
 48 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Haven't got my invite to the wedding yet, Watkins." 
 
 "Not going to leave me out, are you, Watkins?" 
 
 Worried, the postal clerk flapped his hand in the air for 
 silence; then he explained: 
 
 "Thought I'd gotten round to everybody. Had fifty cards 
 printed this week and fifty more, Monday. Didn't I, Jim?" 
 He spoke to the big editor who grinned yes. . . . But the 
 calls commenced again: 
 
 "I want to go particular." 
 
 "You'll let me in, won't you, Watkins?" 
 
 Then the Indian girl, calm beside the nervous little man, 
 said: 
 
 "WTiy not invite them all?" 
 
 When the hurrahing died down, DuBois got up on a chair 
 behind the bar and cried: 
 
 "Take partners!" 
 
 Like a ball of yarn being untangled, the people went from 
 a bunch into two straight lines; one line was all men; the 
 other, part men, and part girls. Even Aunt Ellen was up 
 because she was too gentle to refuse the urgings. But the 
 girl's mother sat on the puncheon bench with Mr. Lannon; 
 was she finding out if he was rich? 
 
 The voyageurs, with no time to waste on a dance without 
 partners, were off to "paddle another pipeful," and then DuBois 
 began to play. Oh, what dance in those fiddle strings! People 
 began to laugh and clap their hands and tap the floor in 
 time to the beat. As they did so, they bent and twisted so 
 
 49 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 they could see who were the leaders in the lines, to count 
 when their turns would come. 
 
 "First couple," called DuBois to the music, "forward and 
 back!" 
 
 As she watched the bowing couple, Aunt Ellen's cheeks 
 were pink. 
 
 "Second couple, forward and back!" 
 
 Mary Ellen clasped her hands and sighed relieved: 
 
 "Oh, I can do that." 
 
 "First couple, dos-d-dos." . . . 
 
 Here was a town! No nabobs here! 
 
 This was the place for them, for James. 
 
 SO 
 
Rising winds from the west hac\ through the logs 
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED THIRTY-SIX 
 
 R 
 
 ITCH black, and yet her 
 mother already called to her from the bed across the room. 
 . . . Yes, she would get up — she would — though a whole 
 sky of cold and darkness pressed through the cabin down on 
 her, though the warm breath came cold from her nostrils. Yes, 
 she would get up — she had risen — she was in the kitchen 
 where the stove glowed and the coffee boiled. 
 "Jane!" 
 
 51 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Again the name. Why, she was not up at all. Now or 
 never — covers off — shock of cold — blind feeling for clothes — 
 trembling fingers — icy porcelain knob — kitchen window white 
 in the blackness — west wind that knived through the chinks 
 in the logs. 
 
 A wraith of warmth floated in the room. Clank of opening 
 stove door, gray-red of banked fire, wound in the stabbed 
 coals, leaping flame of kindled wood, scuttling of coals on 
 to the flames, all these came before the heat. . . . Hard it 
 was to get up, but there was triumph in making a fire on a day 
 like this. 
 
 Out of the numb darkness, life to the house. "Winds from 
 the west, rising winds from the west, hack through the logs. 
 We can fight too. Out of the blackness, I have brought life 
 to the house." 
 
 The bright morning sun reflected from the snow through 
 the west window and filled the room of brown mortised logs 
 with soft light, light streaked with the bacon smoke of a break- 
 fast long past. 
 
 Aunt Ellen's eyes were red, no doubt of it. . . . And all 
 at once the girl feared, wondering would she lose her Aunt 
 Ellen, her ally. She thought, "If Aunt Ellen would smile, 
 I would not be afraid." 
 
 At the end of the long deal table to the left of the window, 
 Mary Ellen washed the dishes, and Aunt Ellen dried them; 
 the water wouldn't stay hot, and a rim of cold grease circled 
 above the water. . . . Even reminding Aunt Ellen about 
 
 52 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 the pioneer who had a dog named Nine Waters did not make 
 her smile — the pioneer always told people his dishes were clean 
 as Nine Waters could make them. 
 
 With mittens on his hands and a black wool shawl about his 
 shoulders, young James sat at the center of the plank bench 
 behind the table and recopied his exercises for the school, the 
 one across from the Fort; people said James could stump the 
 master. ... It was too cold and dark for him at that 
 place at the table, but where else could he sit? 
 
 At the right of the window, between the window and the 
 stove, her mother sewed on her new black silk dress of a weave 
 so stiff it could stand alone. Again she was in a hurry to 
 change the first profits into clothes, but what did fine feathers 
 matter as long as James stayed at school? His sister would 
 be glad to work her fingers to the bone if only he could get 
 his book-learning. . . . 
 
 Up the ladder on the center of the opposite wall she swung, 
 up through the square-cut hole. How cold and fusty! That 
 slit of an east window made a light so blinding that it black- 
 ened the rest of the room. . . . Mattresses sagged as if 
 the sleepers had dug into the warmth as far as they could, 
 and when the mattresses fell, the burlap beneath them must 
 be tightened. So she must twist the bed-screws that wound 
 the rope that held the burlap. . . . Would her stiff fingers 
 crack? Now she must rise slowly or she would bump her 
 skull and catch her hair on the rafters. . . . Water in the 
 pitchers? Frozen solid. . . . 
 
 53 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Jane," her mother said while the girl still clung to the 
 ladder, "you and Mary Ellen might be after walking part the 
 way to school with James this morning. Then you can cross 
 the bridge, get the coffee, and rent me another book. But 
 mind, no book that has poor people in it." 
 
 Coffee? They wouldn't scrape the bottom of the sack for 
 two days, and the book was not important. Asking them to 
 go on errands on a day like this looked as though her mother 
 wanted to get rid of them, so that she might talk to Aunt 
 Ellen about something. . . . She hoped the words would 
 make Aunt Ellen smile again. . . . 
 
 But cold and all, it would be fun to go. Her mother reached 
 into her reticule and to her daughter gave a Spanish piastre, 
 a York shilling, and a piece of scrip written with the words, 
 "Good for five pounds of coffee — Smithson." What mixed 
 moneys in the West! 
 
 Once outside, they felt the sharp air needle their lungs and 
 the bright light glue their eyelids together. With the wind 
 behind them, the going was not hard. . . . Only one set 
 of wagon tracks, but foot and hoof prints mingled in the middle 
 of the road. Some of the scattered houses had sidewalks, and 
 some had not, so walking at the side of the snow-covered road 
 would mean stubbed toes. 
 
 James yoo-hooed at Agnes' house, but there was no answer. 
 In the brown logs, the front frosted window was like the white 
 spot in the eye of a blind horse. Agnes liked her new home, 
 but missed her sister who had married too and gone farther 
 
 54 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 west. In the spring, Agnes would have a baby. . . . 
 Bent till they could not see his face, a man came toward them; 
 his right hand held a pail of hot coals; his feet shuffled up a 
 cloud of snow. 
 
 What were the bells for, and the shouting from the river? 
 The sounds came from down near the bridge. Now they 
 could see two red-tasseled carioles with Thenardier's French 
 pony harnessed to one, and Hanchett's Mississippi roan to the 
 other. Inside were men fat with Canadian furs and covered 
 with buffalo robes. They were going to pace the horses on 
 the river. "Run fast, horses. It's too cold to watch." . . . 
 Here was the bridge where they would part from James. 
 
 "Good-bye, James, and don't open your mouth as you get 
 near the lake or the dampness will go down your throat and 
 make you sick." 
 
 There would be better schools soon; now there was only a 
 stable turned into a school, with store-boxes for desks. . . . 
 How the wind swept down the river! "Hold to the railing, 
 Mary Ellen; pull yourself across." . . . An Indian with 
 his blanket dragged close about him, dodged into a dram-shop 
 on South Water Street. . . . On to Lake Street, and a 
 little west. Not a wagon to be seen! This was the place. 
 "Snow is in triangles across the square panes." 
 
 How the stove in the sto~e pulled you to it! About it, other 
 people rubbed their hands or their ears and talked: 
 
 "Three of Gale's hens frozen on the roost." 
 
 "Young cow of Markham's stiff in the stall." 
 
 55 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Wolves getting thicker." 
 
 "Martineau saw a bear." 
 
 As he ground the coffee, the merchant made the cold place 
 smell of some warm country. . . . The bright bolts of red 
 and blue flannel, of striped ticking were good to look at today. 
 . . . There were some new black wool stockings hanging 
 from a shelf that were straight up and down in the length of 
 them; once the shopkeeper had said, "It's a poor leg can't 
 shape its own stocking." 
 
 Then, quick, a blast of cold air. A man banged the door 
 behind him. His eyes looked so wide and starey that every- 
 body stopped talking. 
 
 "Bosworth, out hunting," gasped the new man as if the 
 words were bloody tissue torn from him, "and found a woman 
 frozen to death — on the prairie. She'd fallen with her head 
 toward Chicago. Coming for food, maybe." 
 
 Without any words between them, the girls fought their way 
 home against wind that whipped their shawls open and cut 
 their necks between bonnet and shawl — sharp as a guillotine, 
 French king beneath it. . . . 
 
 No one to help against the West Wind but yourself and 
 God. When the woman stumbled, had He been asleep? He 
 seemed to leave her for the cold and winds to kill. . . . 
 When they entered the house, their mother, her fine black 
 sewing on her lap, looked up and said: 
 
 "Put those things away; I have something to tell you." 
 
 As soon as the coffee and book were in their places, the two 
 
 56 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 girls stood before their mother like children ready for a 
 lesson. . . . Aunt Ellen sat on the plank bench against 
 the wall, and though it was dark there, her eyes showed red. 
 
 "I'll marry Mr. Lannon when Thursday is a week," an- 
 nounced her mother, matter-of-fact as could be, and all the 
 time keeping at work on the silk. 
 
 "Mother!" burst out the older girl, while her sister opened 
 her mouth more surprised at the protest, perhaps, than at the 
 news. From the bench, Aunt Ellen shook her head. The 
 girl's mother snapped up her eyes from her sewing, and said 
 sharp : 
 
 " 'Twill be best for all of you; he's rich so's he could buy and 
 sell us ten times over." . . . Again a warning head shake 
 from Aunt Ellen. . . . Why did the woman on the snow 
 and Aunt Ellen seem one and the same? . . . 
 
 Gray weather it was that day when they went to the church 
 for the marriage. Unpainted frame, steepleless, with no bell, 
 the church was just a plain clapboard house, except that it had 
 bigger windows than other houses. 
 
 Inside, by the dull light from the windows, you could see 
 the rough boards of the unplastered walls. Benches, no pews, 
 and just a linen-covered table toward which the white-robed 
 priest was facing. At the little rail between the benches and 
 the table, knelt her mother and the stranger. 
 
 At a wedding, everyone was supposed to be gay. Uncle 
 James looked like a funeral. . . . Now they straggled 
 home in pairs, up to the bridge street, across the bridge. . . . 
 
 57 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 She was with Aunt Ellen, sure help in strange times; Aunt 
 Ellen would always 
 
 "Perhaps I'd better be telling you, Jane," Aunt Ellen con- 
 fided, while she looked straight ahead and her niece could not 
 see her face because of her poke bonnet. "Your uncle holds 
 there is no need of him here now there's to be another man 
 in the house; so we'll stay with Agnes a while and be leaving 
 in the spring." 
 
 The suddenness of her words made the girl stand stock still. 
 
 "But you'll stay with us, Aunt?" 
 
 "I — he'll be alone the rest of his life unless I go with him." 
 
 "Oh, Aunt Ellen! You wouldn't leave us. You love us 
 best, you know I need your help more than Uncle James." 
 They were children in the house of a strange man and woman, 
 while he was strong and could shift for himself. What would 
 Mary Ellen and young James do without their aunt? More 
 than their mother was their aunt to them. Then the thought 
 of young James put an idea in the girl's mind, "Oh, I guess 
 I understand. I would not want young James to go off 
 alone. . . ." 
 
 Through their two shawls, the girl felt for her aunt's hand. 
 . . . Afterwards she wondered if the words or the touch 
 had made her aunt want to part with only truth between them. 
 
 "That's not all, child," her aunt went on. After a silence, 
 she spoke at last, "If I tell you, Jane, it's because I want you 
 to know always, that I never wanted to leave you children 
 of my own free will." 
 
 58 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Free will? Who'd forced her? Her sister? The child's 
 mouth tightened. These two gentle good things who had 
 done so much for the whole family bowed before her mother's 
 wish as though it were the will of God. . . . Her aunt 
 turned and saw the girl's hard face. 
 
 "But you must not hold what I say against your mother, 
 nor speak of it to her. You must promise me that." 
 
 "What did she do?" 
 
 Her aunt was not to be put off: 
 
 "Jane, I won't tell unless " 
 
 "If you make me promise, I will." 
 
 "She said we could see there wouldn't be room here any 
 more." 
 
 And that was the way things were then. If she was to help 
 Mary Ellen and James, she must face her mother alone. 
 
 59 
 
Li\e the Devil who too\ 
 the Lord to a high 
 mountain 
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 FORTY 
 
 B, 
 
 'LUMP! S— s— s! went her 
 iron hard on the damp shirt. "Why shouldn't I take him?" 
 asked Mary Ellen as she cocked an eye over her darning. 
 
 A great puzzlement the girl was, and no mistake. . . . 
 If only Aunt Ellen were here! . . . Surely it seemed the 
 child didn't love the man; whenever the little wizened-up 
 
 60 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 suitor came, Mary Ellen drew back her head and looked at 
 him from under her lids. To her sister's notion, Mary Ellen 
 loved Jerry, the blacksmith's helper, but the wedding with 
 the nabob had been promised for the spring, come Mary Ellen's 
 seventeenth birthday. . . . Today her mother was having 
 dinner at the hotel with the little man's parents — they were 
 on their way back to Philadelphy after a visit to their silver 
 mines in Mexico — and she would come back swollen-like with 
 pride that her daughter was to marry rich and fine. . . . 
 If, for true, the girl loved him, then her sister would have 
 naught to say. But Mary Ellen was a girl who liked to please 
 the people round her and make them smile. When she acted 
 bold, as she did sometimes, it was because her acting so drew 
 laughter; there was no boldness in her. Since the one thing 
 she hated most in the world was an angry word, it might be 
 she took him rather than stand up to her mother. Yet if 
 she hated him, wouldn't she be sad? And she was not sad 
 at all. . . . Something you should say so that she might be 
 sure to marry the one she loved; yet what could you tell a 
 girl, and her wrapped in a cloak of laughter? ... It was 
 stifling in the room. The calico dress of the girl who ironed 
 stuck to her shoulders. Dust pitted the west window. Since 
 the middle of July, dust, dust, dust, and no rain at all, till 
 now it was late September with the sun bright and the winds 
 high. . . . Just when Chicago, gone flat after too much 
 wild-cat speculation, needed crops most, the grain was parched 
 to husks in the fields. . . . Perhaps, since the wind was not 
 
 61 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 coming from the south, the door could be left ajar. . . . 
 "What can I say?" the ironer wondered as she banged the 
 door open. 
 
 Outside a haze of dust whirled in the midafternoon glare. 
 What few wispy leaves swung on the cottonwood in the front 
 yard were gray with dust. The path to the street was a hard 
 groove, wind-blown. The road ditch had been drunk by the 
 earth — all but the green scum, and even the dirt couldn't 
 stomach that. In the spring the street had been plowed up 
 to a fat black round; now it was sunk flat except for gray 
 baked ruts. Passing teams pulverized the dirt and manure 
 till the earth was gritty with dry filth. Pouf! . . . "Soon 
 that woman will be home," she thought as she kicked the 
 door shut. 
 
 Blump! S — s — s! 
 
 "Is it because he is rich, Mary Ellen?" 
 
 Mary Ellen turned to her sister, and her sister, who felt 
 foolish whenever she talked of intimate things, stared down 
 at her ironing. 
 
 " 'Twill be nice not to work so hard," Mary Ellen answered 
 and shrugged her shoulders, "and to have pretty clothes." 
 
 "But " her sister hesitated. Why was it that the things 
 
 you meant most seemed least when said aloud? Why was 
 it that matters that sounded like earthquakes in your mind 
 were like wet powder when you tried to make others hear 
 them? "But those things are nice only when you love the 
 man who has 'em to give." 
 
 62 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Mary Ellen made a mouth and laughed. 
 
 "Well, of course." 
 
 Pretending, she was, and her pretense opened her sister's 
 mouth at last: 
 
 "You love Jerry, Mary Ellen." 
 
 Laughter left the child's face. Wide-eyed, she stared 
 
 Over the dusty floor the door grated open. Their mother's 
 cape flew in before her. Then she slammed the door behind 
 her to shut out the wind that had taken liberty with her best 
 clothes. At once she untied her bonnet and shook it, gently, 
 upside down. Then she hung it with the cape on the door, 
 peeled off her mits, pulled them flat, and patted them into a 
 square. . . . Whatever Mary Ellen had been going to say 
 would not be heard now. Her mother was like a jar to the 
 oven, bread rising in it. 
 
 In the dark corner near the door, her mother's silk dress 
 shone blackly, her gold chain flashed, her white head was 
 thrown back, as she grew ready to tell them of the wonders 
 of her visit. . . . 
 
 "The jewels of the woman!" You could feel the lust in the 
 woman's mind as it thought on wealth. "When they were 
 down in Mexico, his mother bought them cheap of a Spanish 
 grandee. Made by the royal jeweler in Madrid they were, 
 and shining till they'd blind you. All kinds of precious stones 
 put in the shape of fruits — pears, grapes, cherries — and she 
 with not just one piece, but a whole set, tiara, earrings, necklace, 
 bracelets, and stomacher." 
 
 63 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Dry wind rattled the stove-pipe that led up through the 
 wooden chimney. Burnt crops. The year without a harvest. 
 . . . No fruits but jeweled ones. . . . And this woman 
 laying them out before the girl to get her. . . . Her mother 
 was like the Devil who took the Lord to a high mountain and 
 showed Him the kingdoms of the earth. . . . Only all her 
 mother tempted was a little girl who liked to please. . . . 
 The older girl lifted her eyes, bold, toward her mother and 
 wondered, "Shall I tell her what I think?" But telling would 
 only make Mary Ellen marry the man quicker than ever to 
 get scenes done with. . . . 
 
 Seeing dispute in her daughter's face, the mother grew large 
 with anger till there was no crease left in her bodice, till her 
 lips were like the smooth side of a seam, till her eyes were deter- 
 mined as — Lady Macbeth's. . . . Last winter at Mechanics' 
 Hall, a great scholar from Boston had talked on Lady Macbeth 
 and called her the Masterful Woman. There, near the door, 
 stood another Lady Macbeth, though she had committed no 
 murders except of dear wishes. . . . 
 
 Her mother turned now and swished into the next room 
 to put her best dress away. As careful as could be, it would 
 be placed in the half-sheet in the bottom drawer of the dresser. 
 . . . She left the door open so the girls could not talk 
 free. . . . "Don't you remember, Mary Ellen," thought the 
 older sister, "you believed a girl should marry for love? When 
 I had those four proposals, you said, 'They're the kind of 
 men who want a strong back and a weak mind. With your 
 
 64 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 mind, you wouldn't be happy with any one of them. Wait for 
 a man that loves you.' ' . . . Then last year, during the 
 Black Cholera, they talked with awe about real love. . . . 
 When the shacks of canal and harbor workers were filled with 
 stench from bodies blackened with disease, stretcher-bearers 
 had come to a woman's cabin and said, "We will take your 
 husband to the pest-house." The pest-house where everyone 
 died! Straight in the doorway the woman stood and defied 
 them, "You'll not take him but over my dead body." Afraid 
 they were and went away, leaving the woman to cure the 
 man. . . . That was a woman, and that was love! . . . 
 "You yourself, Mary Ellen," thought the girl, "you agreed 
 to that." 
 
 Mary Ellen had begun to take the clothes off the line to put 
 them away. Suddenly with her arms full of fresh things, 
 she turned and bent over the ironing board. As she looked 
 up at her sister, a tear that grayed the scorched ironing board 
 dropped from her eyes. Yet she laughed a little and whis- 
 pered: 
 
 "Won't I look grand in a stomacher?" 
 
 There was no making out the girl. 
 
 It was hard to help her so. 
 
 65 
 
A red petticoat! The sign of 
 
 contempt for the "old woman candidate" 
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 FORTY 
 
 M 
 
 .ARY ELLEN took up a post 
 near the door. There was a big autumn moon and stars 
 bright as Spanish coins. Did she want to look at them, or 
 did she wait to see the nabob pass, and he a leader in the 
 procession? 
 No, her head was not up to the stars, nor west toward the 
 
 66 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 promised route of the procession, but — queer enough — east 
 toward the weeds in the vacant lot. Her cheek curved as if 
 she smiled at some one out there. 
 
 "That's right. Wait for him, Mary Ellen," urged her 
 mother, who sat near the lamp with her back to the door. 
 "And don't forget to wave when he goes past." 
 
 "No, mother," answered the girl with a catch in her voice. 
 Was it a catch of trouble or laughter? Since the hot day they 
 had talked together, Mary Ellen had held her sister off. . . . 
 Mary Ellen. . . . And now James, he not having been at 
 home to his supper that night. 
 
 " 'Twill be the biggest procession this town has ever seen," 
 Mr. Lannon said as he sat on the plank bench and pressed his 
 shadow against the cabin wall. Sometimes his wife and he 
 said good words for the opposing side because that was wise 
 for people in the pay of the general public. Though, surely, 
 there was no need to smile for coins now; the railroad was to 
 be laid down this street and soon her mother would be rich past 
 her best dreams, past her knowing, perhaps. . . . Things 
 were like that here: Old John Purcell of South Water Street had 
 someone count up the money Purcell had made in land, a 
 million it was; "My God, Quigg," he gasped, bewildered, 
 "that's a lot of money." . . . But for every dollar gained, 
 her mother wanted another one. 
 
 Soon that parade must come. . . . Never through all 
 the country had there been such a campaign — every paper said 
 that. And Chicago, far away and all as it was, was rowdier than 
 
 67 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 all the rest. . . . What did that matter, as long as people 
 could say who their ruler would be. . . . The city was cut 
 in two, with the Yankees and Southerners stopping their fights 
 to support the Whig candidate Harrison, while the Irish and 
 other workers came out solid for the Democrat, Van Buren. 
 
 Tonight near the Tremont Hotel — had young James gone 
 there? — the Democrats would have their say; Douglas would 
 speak — Judge Douglas, the Little Giant. 
 
 "The harbor workers won't let the Whigs pass in peace," 
 declared her mother. 
 
 "Why wouldn't they?" asked Mr. Lannon, as he pulled his 
 beard till the lower lip showed red. "Won't they be one and 
 all at the Douglas meeting? 
 
 "No. Three harbor workers and Jerry, the blacksmith's 
 helper, were along the road this day," remarked her mother, 
 lifting her left hand to the table and tapping her points. At 
 the mention of Jerry's name, Mary Ellen tilted her head listen- 
 ing. How quick she was to hear his name! "They looked first 
 to one side, then to the other. Plain as could be, they were 
 planning something." 
 
 "Where to buy a lot, maybe," suggested Lannon easily. 
 
 Mary Ellen's shoulders laughed. 
 
 Jerry buying, with scarce a penny to bless himself with! 
 
 Was that the parade, with those far-away shouts, and jangled 
 cow-bells, and squawking horns, and banged-on kettles? . . . 
 Mary Ellen did not seem to hear till her sister roused her in 
 passing. ... As they hugged themselves against the cool 
 
 68 
 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 air, the family rushed out past the bony shadows of the 
 cottonwood tree to the wooden sidewalk. . . . 
 
 Toward the west, flat places whitened by the moon; above, 
 the blue of the sky, ail starred; in between, the black of the 
 trees. Against this blackness, orange torches smoked, the 
 greasy things. Now out of the tree shadows swayed the high 
 yokes, the curved horns, and the broad noses of the oxen. 
 
 "Thirty yoke to drag the dray with the cabin on it!" ex- 
 claimed her stepfather with scorn in his voice, as if, come 
 opposition, his anti-Whig feeling galled him. "Pity they 
 couldn't be put to some good purpose." 
 
 "One — two — three " counted Mary Ellen as the pairs of 
 
 oxen lumbered by. She had taken a stand on the east of the 
 sidewalk next the vacant lot. When the cabin came, she 
 pointed at it so hard you would think she was trying to get 
 people's minds off some other things. . . . Why had she 
 looked into the lot so long? There seemed to be no one there. 
 
 "Oooh!" cried Mary Ellen. "See the hickory tree at the 
 corner of the cabin and the two stuffed coons stuck up in the 
 branches! There they are! A barrel of cider before the door! 
 And did you ever — the latch-string's out!" 
 
 Men and boys, all out of breath, ran along the edge of the 
 procession, jumped the road ditch, joggled the people on the 
 walks. Horseback riders paced by, and most of them sat 
 their mounts as if poured on. All but the silversmith! He 
 clung to his high pommel like it was the first rock after ship- 
 wreck. Now the coming band struck up. Horses pranced. 
 
 69 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Stick on, silversmith." Whup! His beast was over the ditch. 
 
 "Horse sense, not to stay with the Whigs," muttered Lannon. 
 
 What a marching air! Mary Ellen marked time and edged 
 toward the vacant lot. . . . Now came a great wonder 
 under the moon! Six gray horses pulled a big flat wagon with 
 the government yawl dry-docked on top of it. The band was in 
 the middle of the boat; you could see the brass instruments flash. 
 
 And at the prow! There was Mary Ellen's nabob dressed 
 up like a ship's commander. For all the world like the other 
 little man, Napoleon, his right hand was thrust in the coat that 
 covered his puffed-out chest. Something he lacked to be Na- 
 poleon. Was it the chin? . . . He forgot his pose to 
 sweep off his hat to Mary Ellen. 
 
 Would she wave? Yes, her hand was lifted. Her left hand, 
 the one near the lot. She held a handkerchief in it, and of a 
 sudden it dropped down. . . . Just then, the big dry weeds 
 to the east of the house moved as if they were alive. They 
 were! With men! Crouching shapes dogged their way to 
 the road. Black with them the place was, and before the older 
 girl could so much as exclaim, the figures leapt out on the white 
 road and surrounded the yawl. . . . 
 
 They swarmed up the sides of the dray. They stomached 
 themselves over the boat rim. Music snapped off. Scuffling, 
 dodging, punching, and cracking of blows, but few cries. . . . 
 Black arms in the air, and about the front mast, the fighters 
 formed a peak. Someone had shinnied part way up the mast. 
 He was big enough to be Jerry — and had fastened something 
 
 70 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 there. What was it? A red petticoat! The Democrats' sign 
 of contempt for the "old woman candidate," a red petticoat. 
 
 Barely was the skirt nailed than the Whigs from the first 
 of the procession headed by the men on horseback, cried, 
 "Rescue!" . . . They came like mad to save the yawl. 
 . . . Invaders, their job done, jumped from the boat and 
 scuttled back the way they had come. 
 
 "Easy scared!" 
 
 "Not hard to make a Democrat turn tail!" 
 
 Shouts like these sounded above the noise of the procession 
 as it pulled back to order. . . . The nabob rose again at 
 the prow, his hat awry, his chest flat. 
 
 With their minds on the retreaters, the Whigs had not 
 noticed that at half-mast still fluttered the old red petti- 
 coat. . . . 
 
 Lannon pointed. . . . Mary Ellen looked demure in the 
 moonlight. Had she signaled the men in the weeds, signaled 
 to Jerry? Or was she sorry for the nabob? If she wouldn't tell, 
 she wouldn't. . . . The air tonight! What a frosty tang 
 in it that made you quiver as if something was about to happen 
 to you! What was it? More street fights! Or something new 
 to the world? . . . "Tush! Keep your mind on things. 
 Watch out for Mary Ellen, and where is James at all?" 
 
 71 
 
Tfii< would be no two- 
 nun fight, but twelve tu one 
 
 CHAPTER SIX 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 FORTY 
 
 L 
 
 fANNON pointed at the petti- 
 coat banner and laughed out loud. As soon as Lannon 
 laughed, a man lurched out the fag end of the procession, 
 stumbled across the road ditch and onto the sidewalk till he 
 faced Lannon. 
 
 "Laugh at the Whigs?" he hiccoughed. Stragglers closed 
 
 12 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 in to see the fun; a last horseman wheeled his beast, dismounted 
 the other side of the ditch, and grinned. 
 
 "Didn't the dam' Irish come through here, too?" he asked 
 turning shakily to the stragglers. 
 
 "Yes, you're right," yelled the little crowd. 
 
 "Not for Harrison, are you?" The drunken man thrust his 
 shaggy face at Lannon, who lifted his upper lip and snarled-like, 
 bay y are it y are. 
 
 Bulge went Lannon's shoulders, and his arms elbowed out. 
 . . . A two-man fight would be fair enough. 
 
 "Didn't Harrison beat the Indians at Tippecanoe?" This 
 the Whig asked with an air of "Let's reason with the man." 
 Then he flopped his arm in the air and cried to his followers, 
 "G'im the campaign cry." 
 
 Loud the answer: 
 
 "Tippecanoe, 
 
 And Tyler, too." 
 
 "You didn't join in," his sigh was reproachful-like. Then 
 suddenly he cried angry, "Here's western won't vote for western. 
 Teach him how to vote. Got a blanket? Throw him up in 
 blanket." 
 
 Haw-haw went the men, and looked about. Who had a 
 blanket? 
 
 "I got one," called the rider and bent to unbuckle the belly- 
 strap of the saddle so he could pull out the robe. 
 
 Would they toss old Lannon up? All those men against 
 
 one! 
 
 73 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Watchers jumped the ditch. ... In the moonlight, 
 Lannon was bent forward like a bull ready to charge. . . . 
 This would be no two-man fight, but twelve to one. . . . 
 Before she knew what she was doing, her hand shot out to 
 a hard arm near her. 
 
 "Don't let 'em do it!" she ordered. 
 
 Who was he? . . . She looked up. ... A stranger 
 to this town. . . . Young. . . . Tall. ... In sailor 
 hat and cloak. Their eyes met. . . . Kind his eyes were, 
 and gay; they laughed. What fun in laughing under the 
 moon! . . . Almost she forgot that she asked him, but 
 he nodded quick, and jumped in front of Lannon; then he 
 called out in a deep voice that beat in waves through her, 
 that beat with her heart and became one with her pulsing 
 blood: 
 
 "The Tremont! On to the Tremont!" 
 
 The Tremont? That was where the Douglas meeting was. 
 Did he want to break it up? Small chance — it would be too 
 big. At any rate, his cry was like a gunshot for turning their 
 attention. Facing east in a hurry, they repeated the cry: 
 
 "The Tremont!" 
 
 Slipping the blanket under the saddle again, the horseman 
 snapped the buckle, mounted, and galloped away. Surely 
 now the drunken man was sad as he dragged himself after 
 and whined and threatened: "Aw please put him in a blanket. 
 . . . Come back here, damn your hides." 
 
 There on the sidewalk, Lannon shook his fist after the 
 
 74 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Whigs, while Mary Ellen and her mother tried to pull him 
 in the house again. . . . 
 
 The best thing was the young man had not gone. . . . 
 After all the sounds, the prairie had gone still, once more. 
 . . . Only the young man and she were left on the curving 
 world. . . . Her eyes on him, she walked slowly back 
 into the spreading oblong light that came through the open 
 door. . . . Blue eyes. . . . Red bristly curls under the 
 dark cap. . . . Frame that could heave a helm, come 
 rough seas. . . . Footsteps light as a girl's, and she 
 timid. . . . Why had she walked from him, when there was 
 great peace in having him near? . . . 
 
 "May I come back some time?" he asked as if he feared 
 she would say no. 
 
 Words were always hard for her; they meant so little. . . . 
 The white moon above him. The stars — there was shining 
 up among the stars. You could feel the world turning. In 
 the whirling dark before things began, God conceived this 
 man for her. This man, from the hand of God. Oh, that 
 she could kneel to him! Oh that she could touch the hem of 
 his cloak, kiss it, and pray him to come back to her! 
 
 Forgetting Mary Ellen, forgetting her brother, James, she 
 said, "Yes." 
 
 75 
 
She would have to order from the water cart next day 
 
 CHAPTER SEVEN 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED FORTY 
 
 W. 
 
 HAT a soft glow in the brown 
 room! Drawing a long breath, she looked about from her 
 seat on the bench near the wall. No such glory had been in 
 this room before. Then she saw Mary Ellen, opposite, looking 
 under lashes at her sister, and smiling, as if she said: "I 
 know. You hear within you, 'He is the one.' " 
 
 How could the child realize, her with two men, and in 
 doubt? . . . Oh, if she felt like this towards one or the 
 
 76 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 other, let her speak up and take him. . . . Had the others 
 noted the young man? They said nothing. Was the passing 
 of the men along the streets still in their minds? . . . 
 
 Snap of the door latch! Her heart leaped up as though 
 the young man might be back again. Where had her good 
 sense gone to? 
 
 In walked James. . . . Ashamed she was that she had 
 let him go completely from her mind. . . . His dark eyes 
 were important. . . . 
 
 "Tell me," ordered his stepfather as he rose at once from 
 his place near the wall, while his shadow got up behind him, 
 "were you after trailing that drunken lot of processioners 
 through the streets of this city?" 
 
 What was the matter with the boy? Most always he was 
 ready with his tongue, but now, before he could answer, he 
 had to wrench his mind from some matter he liked better than 
 his stepfather. At last, he answered: 
 
 "No sir; I was listening to Judge Douglas." At that Lannon 
 sat down sudden, as if most the anger had gone out of him. 
 The boy went on: "He said Van Buren ought to be elected 
 because he wants each state to decide its own business." 
 
 As soon as he mentioned Douglas' name, he took fire-like. 
 He swelled up his chest and sunk his chin into his collar; 
 when next he spoke, he threw himself about like a prize-fighter. 
 That was the way, said the Easterners, that Douglas talked. 
 Yes, James thought he was Douglas, now, and that his listeners 
 were the Douglas crowd. 
 
 77 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Do you know what the Whigs want?" he asked as he stood, 
 lean and tall, his black hair thrown back from a face that was 
 clear without color. Then he leaned forward as if to say, 
 I'll tell you: "To have all the power at Washington." As he 
 slowly rose, he kept his brown eyes on them — for all the world 
 like a real orator — and demanded, "Then what will happen? 
 This: Washington won't have any more interest in Illinois 
 
 than London has in Ireland. Illinois " he pointed to earth 
 
 with his left hand — "will have no more power to govern her- 
 self than that ill-fated island." With the last words, he flung 
 his right arm toward the east. 
 
 But now that his speech was over, James seemed to remember 
 that he was not a big statesman yet, but only a boy who had 
 not been home for supper. . . . His stepfather spoke up 
 short: 
 
 "Get along to bed. Never go out nights without saying 
 where you're going; mind that, James O'Mara." 
 
 Why was Lannon's voice not harsh at all? Maybe because 
 James had been with the Democrat. . . . When the lad 
 mounted to the loft and lowered the hatch, Lannon's red lips 
 pushed back his gray beard, and he smiled at his wife and said: 
 
 "Did you mark the rolling voice of him? What a preacher 
 he'd make!" 
 
 Swift her mother raised her head. She seemed to say, "Are 
 you mad, man? The schooling will cost mints of money just 
 when he's old enough to help. How can children be a man's 
 best investment if they run up great bills instead of working 
 
 78 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 for their parents? . . . Yet, a priest in the family would give 
 us, among the Irish at any rate, a standing that we don't have 
 now. Perhaps " 
 
 "If he'd be a priest now," Lannon went on, "I'd find him 
 money for all the education he wants. What do you say to 
 that, Mrs. Lannon?" 
 
 Her mother dropped her eyes piously, and asked: 
 
 "Who's to stand against a vocation?" 
 
 Mr. Lannon's right palm slapped the table. He said: 
 
 "I'll see to it tomorrow." 
 
 Everything as good as decided, but all without James. Had 
 he ever felt a call to the priesthood? . . . That night, how 
 had he pictured himself as he stood before them, statesman, 
 lawyer, preacher? Statesman, she thought. . . . Statesman, 
 it was. She knew through her love for him. He might not be 
 sure yet, being young. He might say, "Yes, I will be a priest." 
 She'd let him, knowing he would get his education so, but 
 there would come a day when he would tell them all, "I have 
 no vocation." WTiat would Lannon and her mother do then? 
 Whatever happened, no matter what it was, she'd stand by 
 the boy. 
 
 C-c-c-c! Her stepfather wound the Connecticut clock on the 
 south wall. ... It was time for her to jump up and un- 
 cover the water pails on the bench near the door to see how 
 much she would have to order from the water cart next day. 
 Mary Ellen wrapped a second red table-cloth about the big 
 pan of buckwheat batter for fear the frost of the night would 
 
 79 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 kill the rise. Her mother lifted the lid of the stove, and the 
 red shone on her face; then she threw the darkening ashes on 
 the fire. 
 
 Glad she was that she'd met the strange young man, but 
 troubled about Mary Ellen and James. 
 
 80 
 
Horses strained 
 and splattered 
 mud to no avail 
 
 CHAPTER EIGHT 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 FORTY-ONE 
 
 H, 
 
 .E, THE sailor, Michael 
 Moran, was there in the church behind her; she could feel 
 his eyes on her. 
 
 Before his boat had left in the autumn, he had called, and 
 her mother had been stiff and proud before him, he a plain 
 sailor only. Her mother had said as soon as the door had 
 closed behind him, "I hope you'll never take a poor man as 
 long as you can stay in this house and be sure of eating your 
 supper." . . . "Aye," the girl returned, "and of cooking it, 
 too." ... It wasn't that she minded hard work. To herself 
 the girl said, "She knows I care naught for wealth. Why 
 
 81 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 then should she stand in the way of this marriage — as God 
 grant it may be! — unless she hates to give up an unpaid cook?" 
 
 Now it was spring, with his boat in. . . . Yellow candles 
 were on the altar table. . . . Dusty gold was the air this side 
 the window panes. . . . From the slough at the east of the 
 church, the mating birds called; the girl remembered a word 
 a farm woman said, "There's no lone thing in Nature." . . . 
 Her calf-skin prayer book was opened at the Vesper service; 
 she read, "A light has risen in the darkness." . . . 
 
 After Vespers she was to stand as godmother for her step- 
 sister Agnes' second child. She'd almost forgot the mite. 
 . . . Now the service was over, Agnes' husband edged along 
 the bench and put the baby in her lap. . . . Sudden, her arms 
 wanted to press the child close, close, close. What a rough 
 whim! Let her not scare it now, new and all to the world as 
 it was. But if she did, surely it must feel the joy in her. 
 
 Ready they were to go up to the front inside the altar rail. 
 When a person genuflected before the Tabernacle, he should 
 remember God only, forgetting His creatures. . . . "We 
 adore Thee, O Lord, in the sacrament of the altar; do You see 
 the sailor there behind me?" Some old woman shuffled up to 
 the altar rail, keeping the church side. How old women loved 
 baptisms! Like fairy-tale hags that gave first christening wishes, 
 they hovered there — a dumpy squaw with black braids that 
 lay over her greasy, beaded skin-jacket and a French woman 
 in bulky black; both of them sighed to see a baby given its 
 legs so young. An Irish woman with a white ruche about 
 
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 her bonnet whispered, "Don't mind should the baby cry when 
 the priest puts salt on its tongue; 'tis a sign he'll be a good 
 man." . . . Forward came the new French priest in his white 
 alb with the lace on it and said some solemn Latiny words that 
 James could tell the meaning of, and he coming home from 
 school. . . . After Agnes' husband took the baby again, they 
 went down the aisle and out on the stoop. There the priest, 
 and his alb off, talked with them. . . . Surely the new French 
 priest had a way with him so he did not seem new at all; he 
 was the same with everyone and gave as many words to the 
 sailor as to her mother. He mixed with people more'n you'd 
 think a nobleman would. 
 
 At hitching-post in the mud in front of the church, the 
 team and cart waited. . . . Michael would be at the baptism 
 party because she had got Agnes to invite him. ... It was 
 good they were to drive. Her mother was a stickler for old 
 country custom, and that custom said, "A man and a girl 
 who walk out together have announced their engagement." 
 Driving but not walking, she could be with Michael. . . . 
 Lannon held the reins, his wife next. On the first plank 
 across the wagon sat Mary Ellen in between Agnes' husband 
 and the little man from Philadelphy. . . . Only a fortnight 
 more and Mary Ellen would be married to the nabob. On 
 the second, she sat with Michael, and on the third, some other 
 guests. ... As Lannon slapped the reins, they all bowed 
 good-by to the French priest. Good-by? Stuck fast the wagon 
 was! Horses strained and splattered mud to no use at all. 
 
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LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Put the sailor at the helm," called the French priest, laugh- 
 ing. "You need a navigator." 
 
 Smooth enough the road was once they had pulled up on 
 the new plank way on Lake Street. Horses' hoofs made hollow 
 sounds, for there was a trough dug beneath and all the yards 
 drained into it. That was why the place smelted so bad. . . . 
 Some one called, "Hold your noses here." 
 
 Through the black soup they squirged once more as they 
 turned north to the bridge? To her mind the shouts of the 
 joking people in this cart were far away as the swashing lake 
 waves on the sand. . . . Along the river the spiky twigs of 
 trees had pale green-like clouds about them. The sunset haze 
 ran yellow through, soft as the cool air about them. 
 
 "It's nice tonight," she said at last. 
 
 "Uh-huh," answered the sailor. "There's my boat." 
 
 His ship lay quiet on the west of the bridge on a river, all 
 gold now with brown streaks through it. . . . What a little 
 ship, come big storms! For its weakness his strength must 
 make up. She could feel his shoulder like iron, next to her. 
 Oh, better than anything else in the world it was to have 
 your own man near you! 
 
 " 'Tis a wee thing surely," she told him. . . . You were 
 a brave man if you earned your living by going to sea in that 
 sort of a shell and, the while, you laughed like Michael. . . . 
 Michael was his name; the archangel with the great sword was 
 called Michael. 
 
 "Wouldn't you be afraid and it so small?" She asked 
 
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LAKE FRONT 
 
 with real wonder in her, but knowing all along he had no fear. 
 He smiled as if he thought she was making game of him, 
 but he had no time to talk of that; ships were far out of his mind. 
 
 Now the sailor sat closer and bent his head so no one would 
 hear what he was going to say except her. She could smell 
 the tobacco smoke that clung to his clothes. She could see 
 the little bristles in his tanned cheeks and feel her hand move 
 because it wanted to feel the prickle under her fingers. His 
 voice trembled a little while his blue eyes twinkled and his 
 pointed lips pushed upwards as if he made fun of his own 
 inside shakiness. Surely if she loved him brave, she loved 
 him more, trembly. 
 
 "The night I met you," he said, "I ran down here. The 
 mate was on board, and he said, 'You look happy.' And I 
 
 told him " The sailor gulped as though the saying came 
 
 hard. Did a little pain come before all joy that the joy might 
 seem the greater? The thing he would speak of was his love 
 for her. "And I told him, 'Man dear, happy is it? Haven't 
 I met the girl's to be my wife?' ' Why was it, when she was 
 glad, that her breath came sharp as a sob in her? Then he 
 ended, "Tomorrow night I will come to your house to ask your 
 mother for you." 
 
 Longing she was to put her arms about him and hold him 
 tight, not from love only but from some quick fear he might 
 be taken from her. Whatever her mother said, her daughter 
 would have him and no other. 
 
 On the seat ahead, her mother sat black against the sun. 
 
 85 
 
// was not too late, for wagon trains were slow 
 
 CHAPTER NINE 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED FORTY-ONE 
 
 E 
 
 RESH wetness of early morn- 
 ing flooded through the warped logs, and the dawn came in 
 the oblong slit of a window in the girls' half of the divided 
 loft. . . . This was the day he would ask her mother, 
 thought the older girl as she lay and looked at the light. . . . 
 Why was she uneasy this morning, as well as joyful? . . . 
 Something, she believed, had roused her during the night, 
 and hardly waked, she had fallen back to sleep. . . . 
 
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LAKE FRONT 
 
 But why should she conjure up worries, this day of all days? 
 Her lips formed the words, "Tonight he will ask for me, Mary 
 Ellen." But no sound came. . . . Last night, Mary Ellen had 
 been strange, and yet the strangeness was only fully coming 
 to her now. Was her love for Michael blinding her to all else? 
 She could still feel Mary Ellen's good-night hug, a tight hold 
 about her shoulders that had pinned her arms to her side; she 
 could still feel the lips that pressed against her cheeks until her 
 heavy netted roll of hair had touched her back; she could still 
 see the dropping arms and the bent head. . . . Had the 
 girl been trying to say something with her arms that her lips 
 refused to say? Had her loneliness talked with her body? 
 . Whether Mary Ellen would put her off again or not, 
 she would speak once more: 
 
 "You're sure you're happy, Mary Ellen?" 
 
 The girl did not answer. Perhaps the sleep was still on her. 
 For an instant, her sister listened tense to hear deep breaths 
 of sleep. . . . Was there no sound? ... A hollow- 
 ness in her, she twisted suddenly throwing her left arm across 
 the bed. Mary Ellen's place was flat, and in the gray light, 
 she saw only a mass of twisted covers — sheet, drab comfort, 
 and red crazy-quilt. 
 
 Jumping up, she ran to the loft-edge. Cold and splintery 
 the wood beneath her bare feet. She knelt down and bent 
 so that she could see into all the shadowy corners. No one 
 could be there; yet she called soft, "Mary Ellen." No answer 
 came but the ticking of the clock. . . . Why did she feel 
 
 87 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 like a cold hand clutched her when it might well be she had 
 gone to Agnes' house to get breakfast for her, since Agnes was 
 still abed, feverish after childbirth. Surely Mary Ellen must 
 be there. Surely? Everything in the world seemed all at once 
 no more sure than a slough. . . . 
 
 Now that she was in the kitchen, she could be certain that no 
 one was there. Fearing to wake her mother who was in the room 
 to the left, she tiptoed to the front door. Unlatched! Opening 
 the door, she could see by the foggy light, some dark places 
 on the beaded moisture of the new board walk, footsteps 
 
 "Where are you going?" 
 
 Her mother, behind her, asked the question. . . . In a 
 voice that sounded like someone else's, a voice strange as the 
 dawn, that queer time between life and death, the girl heard 
 herself answer: 
 
 "Mary Ellen — where is she?" 
 
 "Mary Ellen?" her mother responded in plain sensible tone 
 that showed she had no fear that a girl about to make a good 
 match had gone far. "To get Agnes' breakfast, I suppose." 
 
 Of course. . . . That must be it. . . . Yet. . . . 
 It was not. . . . 
 
 "I — Let me go find out for sure." 
 
 "Have sense! She's not gone far. Would you leave me 
 with all the boarders coming in?" 
 
 The clock said half-past five. The habit of the early rush 
 was on her. Fire that blazed in the stove, pans that sizzled 
 with frying bass, griddle that was smeared with pork rind till 
 
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LAKE FRONT 
 
 the iron smoked blue — so much was done. . . . How 
 hollow batter sounded when you stirred it! . . . Little 
 bubbles in the gray-brown pancake rounds showed they were 
 ready to be flapped. . . . Now the boarders from the 
 east wing were coming; they scraped their muddy shoes on the 
 doorstep; they clumped to their places and straddled the plank 
 benches, then threw both legs under the table, while they said 
 the few heavy words of early morning. . 
 
 Last stack of pancakes on the table, and she was out the door. 
 . Her mother's voice boomed after her, but the girl 
 did not hear the words, nor stop. Now she was on the side- 
 walk; with each quick step, the mud spurted up between the 
 cracks and spattered her clothes. . . . At a space of wet 
 earth the dirt was glue about her shoes. . . . Fog and 
 mud heavied her dress. . . . 
 
 Blinking, Agnes' husband stood at the door of their house 
 and shook his head, "No," he said, "Mary Ellen is not 
 here, not yet." 
 
 Without a word, for no more time must be lost, the girl 
 turned back. ... If Mary Ellen had gone off, it was not 
 with the nabob. Hoping that her mother would not see her, 
 the girl ran past her own house a way. Near the open door 
 of the blacksmith's shop, she slowed her step and walked, 
 quiet, by. Red flare, clang of iron, sharp smothery smell of 
 burned flesh, shaggy farm horses waiting, big leather-aproned 
 blacksmith — all these, but no Jerry. . . . Her mother 
 must not miss her nor suspect about Jerry, for Mary Ellen 
 
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LAKE FRONT 
 
 might not be gone. . . . To make up for the time taken 
 to walk to the blacksmith's, she ran home. 
 
 Once inside the door, she tried to make herself take little 
 ordinary breaths when her lungs wanted long ones. ... At 
 least her step-father had not noted her lack of wind, in his 
 hurry to get ready for his drive up the north branch for fresh- 
 killed meat. . . . And though her mother, who sat at the 
 head of the littered table and clinked board-money into piles, 
 looked up and down with scorn, she did not see the hard 
 breathing. 
 
 "What will the neighbors say," she asked, "you going off 
 in your figger?" The neighbors? Bah! They had more to do 
 this time of day than to see those who went out of doors without 
 a shawl. Customs meant more than children to her. Neigh- 
 bors she thought of, with Mary Ellen gone 
 
 "Mary Ellen's not at Agnes'." 
 
 Her mother grew stern, not as one who faces any last thing, 
 but as one who grows angry at a child's prank. She seemed 
 
 to be thinking, "Wait till that girl gets back ." Then, 
 
 as if she must be extra hard on the girl that was present, she 
 ordered : 
 
 "Get to those beds quick. I'll attend to her, and she get- 
 ting home." 
 
 Not knowing just then what to do except obey, the girl 
 climbed to the loft. It was easier to see there now, though 
 the day was a dark one. ... As she kneed her way onto 
 the loft edge, her eye caught sight of the open dresser drawer, 
 
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LAKE FRONT 
 
 Mary Ellen's own drawer. . . . Tripping on her skirt in 
 her hurry to get across the room, she found the drawer empty. 
 
 The girl bit her lips so that she would not cry out. She 
 turned her head from one side of the room to the other, as if a 
 dead room could tell what had gone on within its walls. 
 . There. . . . On the bed! Just below Mary 
 Ellen's pillow. . . . As if it had slipped onto the sheet. 
 . A piece of paper. . . . Her hand clutched it 
 as if it might get away like Mary Ellen; then, in six steps, she 
 was near the light, kneeling at the low window to read the 
 scrawl : 
 
 "Dear Jane, Jerry and me are going with the wagon train 
 that sets out on the Rock River trail at dawn. We will be 
 married this side of Ioway. We are going to stake out a claim. 
 You would have said stay, so I could not tell you nor fight 
 with mother. I'll write. M. E." 
 
 Mary Ellen, who loved to be with people, to talk to them, 
 to do things for them; Mary Ellen out on some staked plain 
 where there'd be no one but Jerry, and he in the fields all day 
 long. . . . Why shouldn't she stay here, and have a wed- 
 ding like other girls, and a home near her friends; why should 
 she run through fear of her mother and her nabobs? It was 
 not too late, for wagon trains were slow. . . . With the 
 light cart, she might be able to catch the girl. . . . 
 
 Thrusting the note in between the buttons of her bodice, 
 she snatched up her shawl and looked down in the kitchen. 
 Her mother must be in her own room. . 
 
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LAKE FRONT 
 
 That was good, for words now would be a waste of time 
 only. With her head turned toward the door as she came down 
 the ladder, the girl gasped at her good luck. The light cart, 
 ready for Lannon's trip up the north shore, stood before the 
 door. . . . Let him take another of his wagons. 
 
 She flew through the kitchen, grabbed up her skirts, put 
 one foot on the axle, the other over the wheel into the cart, 
 and slapped the reins so the horse jumped. . . . Off she 
 was to the west. . . . The thin wheels sliced the thick mud 
 and slashed through the water, but did not sink as far as wheels 
 of covered wagons would. . . . 
 
 Over the pole bridge. . . . How high the river was. 
 
 What was that long box riding the rough gray waters? 
 Another coffin loosened by spring freshets from some north 
 branch burying ground. One had come down the river yes- 
 terday, God rest the restless! . . . Straight west now. 
 
 Prairie, prairie, as far as you could see. Prairie that drew 
 the sky to earth and muddied it. . . . Mary Ellen, alone 
 on a prairie, sick, perhaps, and no one but a big ham-fisted 
 blacksmith near. . . . People said some women went mad 
 on the prairies. . 
 
 Smirrs of rain roughed the gray puddles, and then seemed 
 to stop, while the place grew lighter. . . . Wild primroses, 
 washed-out yellow in the green fields. Was the sun trying to 
 get through? 
 
 She turned — Lot's wife turned. There it was, as pale as a 
 shilling in a noonday well. 
 
 92 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 That for looking back! The cart lurched, and she was al- 
 most thrown out of it. One wheel was up to hub, and the 
 others almost the same. The horse stood still; it could do 
 nothing. She must jump clear and push. The mud pulled 
 at her shoes, while her long skirts drank up black water and 
 slapped at her legs. . . . Pushing did no good. . . . 
 Shouldering did no good. ... By the time the farmer 
 helped her, she had lost three sun hours. 
 
 But perhaps the wagons, too, were stuck somewhere. . . . 
 Why should she give up till she had to? . . . The pale 
 sun followed the trail and seemed to go west faster than she 
 did. . . . Here was the mark of one wagon that had 
 turned to the side of the road, and the animals' pawing showed 
 that it had stopped. Was there a farm-house? Yes, a three- 
 sided log cabin on the unfenced prairie. . . . Since the 
 day was getting late, she could not follow much longer. There 
 was only this chance of asking for news. Following the ruts 
 that served for a lane, she came to the cabin; its fourth side 
 was made of hide with a middle strip rolled up. Beyond the 
 fingered greasy edges of the skin sill, she could see a woman 
 laying a farmer's mid-afternoon snack on a table. 
 
 "Good-evening, ma'am," called the girl. 
 
 Shuffling, the woman came to the wet brown edge of the 
 plank floor and peered out. She did not look to have much 
 sense. Her drab hair, hazy about her head, seemed as though 
 it had not been combed for days. Suspiciously, the pale blue 
 eyes squinted in the flabby yellow cheeks, but the mouth was 
 
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LAKE FRONT 
 
 loose and twitchy as if, whatever the eyes thought, nothing 
 would be done. . . . Sacking for an apron was pinned 
 high over a gray wrapper — her form was as flat as a plank — 
 and apron and wrapper were splotched with dirt and grease 
 where the woman had leaned and knelt against things as 
 she worked. 
 
 "Was there a covered wagon stopped here, ma'am?" 
 
 "Yes," drawled the woman. 
 
 "Did you see the people in it? Was there a young girl? 
 Brown hair and eyes, and a brown shawl about her?" 
 
 "Was you looking for some one the like of that?" 
 
 "My sister." 
 
 "Oh," the woman cackled, her eyes suddenly open and oily 
 as if she and this girl before her now shared some lewd secret, 
 "running away, was she?" 
 
 Feeling sick, the girl nodded. 
 
 "Well, I thought so," the woman giggled, and hugged her 
 flat breast with her bony arms. "She was so smiley. . 
 Wagon stopped for a strap a long time back. Don't expect 
 to catch her with that shaky-legged mare of yours, do you? 
 . . . Yes, siree. I says to myself she was running off, she 
 laughed so. . . Well, it is kinda fun at first. I know. 
 
 I ran off." 
 
 Wisps of hair stuck cold to her damp cheeks, the girl huddled 
 up under her shawl on the driver's seat and felt her skirts 
 dank and pully with mud that would not dry. She shuddered 
 with the little icy drafts that shot in through the folds of her 
 
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 shawl and up the sleeve of her driving arm. . . . East 
 sky, black. . . . 
 
 The mad prairie woman had said, "I ran away." The 
 hazy-haired woman who lived in a three-walled cabin with 
 a hide curtain, a flapping hide that knocked all day though 
 no one came in but the prairie or its spawn. . . . During 
 all the lone woman-hours, the prairie, death-cold or fever-hot, 
 would enter Mary Ellen's cabin and sit there telling her 
 black lonely things. 
 
 If Mary Ellen had only spoken up. Or, if she could not 
 do so, if her sister had only listened to the child's mind. Some- 
 times you could hear another's thought. Was it happiness 
 or hard work that made her too dull-witted to hear Mary Ellen's 
 mind talk? She had started out knowing the child loved Jerry. 
 . All the days and all the nights Mary Ellen kept 
 her secrets in her heart till it must well-nigh have split, 
 but always thinking, "Better this than to have the anger of 
 my mother." 
 
 Her mother? A chill took the girl by the shoulders and 
 twisted her. Was her mother human at all? Surely she 
 drove all good from her as if she were evil. . . . The 
 catechism said, "God is everywhere." But there were people 
 and there were places where you could not find Him. Sucking 
 sloughs. Shuddery cold. Black of eastern sky. 
 
 At last, she saw the lights of the town ahead, orange color, 
 close to the ground, like low-burned candles. . , . Even as 
 she watched, some of the lights went out. . . . Now the 
 
 95 
 
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 dark river with a few lights shattered to bits in its ripples. 
 The shaky pole bridge. . . . Was something the matter? 
 . . . What made the horse rear? It plopped its feet in 
 puddles but could not move. At the horse's head, stood a 
 figure, black against blackness. . 
 Jane! 
 
 The deep soft voice she'd almost forgotten in all her despair. 
 
 "Michael!" 
 
 When he sprang up and took the reins, she could feel his 
 hands, pocket-warm, against her cold fingers. To the depth 
 of her soul, she was glad he was there. She was cold, and he 
 brought warmth; she was weary, and he brought rest; she was 
 disappointed cruel as could be, and he brought comfort; 
 she was afraid of the strangeness of the world and the evil in 
 it, and he — strangeness fled before him. As if to make surer 
 of his presence, she brushed her damp cheek against his rough 
 shoulder. 
 
 "You been a long time gone," he said, gently. 
 
 "All day." 
 
 "You did not find her?" 
 
 "No, Michael. How did you know?" 
 
 "I took a bent bar to the blacksmith the day. He told me 
 Jerry had gone off with Mary Ellen — and you had shot pell- 
 mell after them." 
 
 The laugh she gave sounded more like a cry. Maybe it 
 was, but that was the great comfort of Michael — he would 
 be glad or sorry whichever you needed; you could be sure. 
 
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LAKE FRONT 
 
 "And since then," he went on, "I sat in the boathouse near 
 the river waiting for you. I thought you'd come sooner." 
 
 A great long hard day indeed, but with Michael at the 
 
 end . Suddenly she stiffened. "Look, Michael," she said, 
 
 low. . . . The door of her house was open, and there 
 her mother stood, her shadow falling before her. . . . 
 
 When they pulled up before the house, they heard her voice, 
 cold as the prairie night, say: 
 
 "Come in out of that. Don't mind the mare now." 
 
 It was the kind of voice meant to bring you to your knees. 
 . . . What for? . . . The woman stood back against 
 the door to let them pass; her head was thrown back, her 
 nostrils were wide, and her upper lip lifted, as if she despised 
 them. . . . Even the sailor not knowing her ways, felt 
 her scorning for he wrinkled his brow at her, puzzled. 
 
 When they were in, her mother kicked the door shut with 
 her heel. With an iron sound, the latch caught, and for 
 one second, the girl, with the weary-wild day on her again, 
 thought, "Let me tear that latch open, and get out of this 
 place forever." . . . But Michael — that would seem 
 mad to Michael. 
 
 Near the door they stood, in the full light of the lamp on 
 the table. But the woman swept to the center of the room 
 where she turned about, and with her hands folded at her 
 waist and her whole self held like a judge who has himself 
 been wronged, she bent her brows on them. 
 
 "So," she said, while anger made her voice shake. "You 
 
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LAKE FRONT 
 
 come in this time of night after gallivanting all day with 
 this sailor off the lake." 
 
 The charge in the words knocked the girl breathless. 
 
 "Michael," she answered when she could, "met me just 
 now at the bridge." 
 
 "Did he indeed? . . . Mary Ellen, you — all these things 
 to come on one day to a woman building up good fame " 
 
 A cry leaped in the girl's heart. Always this woman came 
 first to her, never her children. Good fame meant so much 
 to her that customs broken meant morals gone; that's why 
 she scorned the two of them. . . . What did the sailor 
 think now? . . . His eyes were hot as he said, hoarse: 
 
 "Tonight I came to ask you could I marry Jane after Lent 
 
 is over." 
 
 "When Lent is over?" The woman's voice rose, mocking. 
 "It's tomorrow morning you'll marry her." 
 
 A chill shook the girl like the chill on the dark prairie. 
 Then, like a kerosene flame, a heat leapt through her. Here 
 was Evil in human shape; yet she would stand up and speak her 
 mind full and free at last. Then she would go, and be 
 forever free. 
 
 With deep breath drawn, she bent from her waist, her eyes 
 on her mother's. . . . Had she been silent so long that 
 her mouth was locked? . . . The words were in her 
 mind, but her mouth would not say them. . . . Her 
 nails dug in her palms. . . . Her whole frame shivered 
 with the will to utter, but no sound came. . . . Why, 
 
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 then, did her mother fall back a step? . . . Did her eyes 
 say what her lips would not? You bought your fine clothes, 
 but you left us unlettered. 
 
 Her mother's hand passed over her gold chain and held it 
 fast. 
 
 — you used my uncle and my aunt, and drove them out. 
 
 The chin of her mother rose in the air, and her eyes glittered 
 steely. 
 
 — you got your nabobs, but you lost your daughter. 
 
 Across her breast, her mother folded her arms. 
 
 — James and me are left. You won't touch him; you won't 
 touch me nor this love of mine. 
 
 Did a shudder seize her mother, her finding silence worse 
 than sound? 
 
 The girl touched his arm; then she clicked up the iron latch, 
 the first noise since her mother's words. . . . 
 
 Forgetting it, the girl left the door open. As she went 
 toward the street with Michael, she could feel her mother 
 coming behind them, stopping at the threshold, filling the strip 
 of light with her shadow. 
 
 99 
 
Swing out 
 
 over blac\ waters 
 
 CHAPTER TEN 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 FORTY-FOUR 
 
 X 
 
 HE lake lapped the sand. . . . 
 From her gardening, she could look up across the blue water 
 to watch for the boat due this day. . . . 
 
 Her mother had never come in body to see her at this 
 place, but the home was not free of her presence. . . . 
 When the first child grew ill and died of the child's plague 
 then running through the town — even then, her mother had 
 not come, but to a good gossip she had said, "It is the judgment 
 of God that the child died. Its mother defied the superiors 
 put over her by Heaven." 
 
 As to the defiance, well, true enough. That night she had 
 come back from looking for Mary Ellen, she would have gone 
 
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 to the ends of the earth with Michael and asked no shrift of 
 parents, place, nor priests. . . . But without her thinking 
 where they were going, Michael had led her to the French 
 priest's door, and knocked. . . . First, when the priest 
 asked her to go home for a little space, she shook her head 
 till the fireplace before her seemed to grow wide. "No," she 
 had exclaimed. "No, no!" A little space, he urged, was 
 not long in a lifetime and it would give him time to see her 
 parents and publish the banns. . . . " 'Twill be better," 
 he said, quiet, "to go back again and part this time in 
 gentleness." . . . When she had looked up at Michael, 
 he too seemed to ask her. James'd be the same. So little 
 they realized her mother. . . . Yet, as she had listened 
 to the priest — and she could remember nothing of what he 
 said, only the sound of the rise and falling of his voice — a 
 sort of understanding had come to her: There could be evil 
 in people, and they, perhaps, under some spell they would 
 want as well as you to be rid of. . . . While she viewed 
 her mother helpless, a pity had come in the girl's mind. . . . 
 And at last there seemed a Presence in the room that saw 
 into her eyes and made her feel hot and ashamed for so great 
 hate; then she had said, "I will go." . . . Though the 
 Presence seemed real enough then, where was It in her home? 
 The only spirits there were those of them who'd left the 
 place. ... As for herself, she seemed a servant-stranger 
 only, working with a woman who let her stay there only 
 because the priest had so ordered. . . . Sometimes, it 
 
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 seemed the silence must smash like glass. . . . You could 
 say with your mouth and your mind, "I forgive her," but 
 your heart snapped, "You lie!" . . . Then the space of 
 time was gone at last, and the wedding, as the French priest 
 planned, took place with her mother and stepfather present in 
 the church. . . . The judgment of God that the child had 
 died? . . . This starey sun! Perhaps with the new child 
 in her, she should not work so long in this white heat. . . . 
 No. God was not like that. He had not killed the first-born 
 for judgment, though her mother might say so, claiming God 
 for her side. How could she, when evil dwelt in her, and 
 evil, in some dark way, had made the child die. . . . Oh, 
 there was no reason now that she should think on such hating 
 things. . . . Why should she twist the Devil by his tail? 
 . . . Maybe she'd even pity her mother the day James 
 would tell her, "I'll be no priest." 
 
 Flowers were hard to raise in this sandy soil along the north 
 shore, but with the black earth she had lugged from inland 
 and placed in a strip along the south wall of the house, they 
 were doing well. The climbing nasturtiums made a bright 
 show; the orange blooms were halfway up the door to the 
 west and the window to the east; scarlet geraniums grew in 
 clumps along the base of the cabin. Would Michael notice 
 the stones she had picked up along the shore and used to 
 outline the garden strip? . . . Their one-room cabin with 
 its lean-to was the least sort of house in the cluster of shacks 
 in the Irish harbor-workers settlement, but it was a sanctuary 
 
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 for him, and he coming back over the rim of the lake. . . . 
 To tell the truth, she was grateful her mother had not set 
 foot here — 'T would be sacrilege of a sort. . . . Not 
 kneeling to the love in the place, she would scoff at the poorness 
 that was there: The bed was smooth beneath its blue and 
 white spread, but it had only a straw mattress. The Franklin 
 stove was well blacked but second-hand as the dents showed. 
 The table was pumiced white, but not a new thing at all. . . . 
 Her mother's rich air would say, "How do these houses come, 
 ten-a-penny?" 
 
 Way off to the northeast, was that a speck on the blue 
 shining waters? 
 
 Michael would be home soon now. Michael. What a 
 queer humbleness she felt before him, till she might have 
 forgotten she had any worth at all except for the odd little 
 ways he needed her care. Once she had found him circling 
 a stocking hole with thread and drawing the thread tight. 
 That was what he called darning. "All sailors sew," he said. 
 Sew, did they call it? With them handling a needle like a 
 crowbar and a spool like a capstan? 
 
 The speck was growing large and black. It was his boat. 
 
 Within their own door they were, his arms about her. . . . 
 When his hold loosened, he looked into her eyes as if he 
 could see all that had happened in her mind since he had left, 
 down to her hate of her mother and her black judgments — 
 though such thoughts were faint when he was there, she feeling 
 his protection. . . . 
 
 103 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Her fingers touched his red hair. . . . Laughing with 
 joy at his presence, she thought at the same moment, "Why 
 should he ever leave me?" Though that was a foolish question, 
 at least she might ask him when he would go off long again. 
 The query in her mind, she feared to ask it, for that would 
 bring them to future things, and this best present time of his 
 return would be gone forever to the past. . . . True though 
 this was, she felt her hands slide down his rough sleeves till 
 she held his hard fingers and heard her voice say: 
 
 "When will you go off long again?" 
 
 He moved his hands over hers, smiling: 
 
 "In September, but I'll be back for Christmas with you." 
 
 At the child's first Christmas. 
 
 "With us," she said, smiling but a little tired. Surely he'd 
 seen. 
 
 The grasp of his hands tightened. . . . Her weakening 
 body cried out within her its gladness to feel his strength. . . . 
 She swayed toward him, and he kissed her forehead softly 
 while her too-loving, too-hating heart rested in his tenderness. 
 
 As October came on, the little snatches of sumach along the 
 dunes were every leaf red. Blue with piled white clouds was 
 the sky, and the sun was bright as though it refused to leave 
 the world to winter. A light surf only on the water. . . . 
 Every night she prayed good weather should continue, and 
 every day in October the sun shone, and the lake lay smooth 
 and sparkly. Even in the last two months of the year, though 
 the sky was often overcast, the gray lake was quiet. 
 
 104 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 One afternoon about the middle of December, James came 
 to see her, unexpected. He had been to his parents to tell 
 them that he had no vocation, and they had told him that 
 there'd be no more college. . . . There was nothing to 
 show that he minded not finishing, except that he turned, 
 sudden, and strode up and down the room. . . . As he 
 reached the west wall, he found himself before a shelf with 
 a few books on it; over the backs of these, he passed his long 
 white fingers in the same loving way DuBois touched his 
 fiddle. . . . Then, with the singing sound that cloth book 
 makes against cloth book, he pulled out a lavender-brown 
 volume with sprawly gold letters, Memoirs of Robert Emmet t. 
 . . . Facing her, he thumbed the pages, and at last read 
 aloud a little, the while she thought, "You have two minds, 
 one is on your reading and the other, on your college." The 
 reading was about the hiding of Emmett in the cockloft of a 
 public house with the British in pursuit. Backed by his men, 
 a red-coat officer, stood on the first step of the loft, but the 
 woman of the house had said, "Oh, sir, don't go up there, or 
 you may fall through and be killed." So he had not gone 
 up, and Emmett had been saved. . . . All of a sudden, 
 James thrust the book back and began walking with long 
 steps about the room as though the thought of a great man 
 had pricked him like a spur. . . . As well as if she were 
 her brother, she knew the desire for big deeds was on 
 him. . . . And surely you could feel a flame in him that, 
 fanned, might leap up and light far places in the world. . . . 
 
 105 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Though it was not her way to promise without seeing her 
 way clear — a promise was an oath to her — the words said 
 themselves without her, "I'll help you get college, James." 
 
 It was that night, after James had gone, that the winds and 
 the waves began to rise. . . . She rose from her chair near 
 the table, where she had sat knitting the scarf for Michael's 
 Christmas present. Passing the stove, she went around the 
 end of the bed that, covering her eyes against the light, she 
 might see through the window into the darkness. Like white 
 teeth, the wave tops gnashed. 
 
 Z-z-z-z! The hissing of the wind grew louder. 
 For those who go down to the sea in ships, O Lord! . . . 
 An iciness chilled through the room. . . . Extra wood 
 on the fire. . . . The blanket drape for the window was 
 in the bottom drawer of the dresser on the south wall. After 
 slipping the curtain on its wooden pole, she placed it at the 
 top of the low window. . . . 
 
 But just that blanket could not keep out the whistling of 
 the wind nor the lashing of the lake. . . . From the biggest 
 waves, spray pelted the logs behind her. . . . She counted; 
 it was every third wave seemed big. ... In the troughs 
 of such waves a wee small freighter dipped. . . . On the 
 freighter, a sailor bent against the knife wind, slipping on 
 the frozen deck, climbing a mast that swung out over black 
 waters. . . . 
 
 Another picture came that made her rise from her place. 
 . . . Whatever happened, she must not let her mind see 
 
 106 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 such things again. There were other things, that would take her 
 attention more than knitting: when she had taken out the 
 drape, she had seen Michael's old brown wallet; just to touch 
 it would make him feel close to her again. She brought it 
 to her place at the table. . . . The brown skin was smooth; 
 it squeaked when you squeezed it, and it smelled of good hide 
 leather and tanning. . . . Within was no money — that was 
 in the sugar-bowl — but there were three letters from his people 
 in Ireland. Once he had told her to read them if she felt so 
 minded. 
 
 One of these she took out of the wallet, and carefully lifted 
 the fold of the foolscap to which still clung bits of red sealing- 
 wax. Then she laid the letter flat on the table, smoothing 
 back the turned-in edges of the paper. Trying to forget all 
 but the words before her, she read: 
 
 My Dear Child, we have received your long arid wished 
 for letter. After the lapse of twelve month which we all thought 
 you were not existing but thanks be to the Living God that 
 you are in good health which is a lenthing to our days. . . . 
 // you take my advise you will come home and do not run 
 the hasard of your Life any Longer in that wilderness of a 
 contery what is the worald to you if you take sick far from 
 your friends. . . . Dear Michael, I hope this Letter will 
 rech you you are in a very dangres employment which makes 
 us all very uneasy. . . . I have one remark to make to you 
 that is that on the 6th of January there did a great storm arise 
 that leveled houses and tore up trees out of the earth and 
 there was a great many vesals lost on Sea the Ded bodys coming 
 
 in for a long time 
 
 107 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Quick, she slapped her hands over the letter as if they could 
 blot out that picture. Was it everywhere? Then she lifted 
 her hands, and with trembling fingers, put the letter back in 
 the wallet. After she had placed the wallet back in the dresser, 
 she found herself slamming the drawer tight shut. . . . 
 She must not be imagining things, but putting the place ship- 
 shape, man o'war fashion, and going to bed. Near her pillow 
 she placed the big bell she had to warn her neighbor in case 
 of the child's coming, and under the pillow she placed the 
 midwife's fee. . . . 
 
 Her lips all pursed up to blow out the candle, the flame 
 warm at her mouth, no breath came. . . . Without the 
 light, wouldn't the wind's shriek be more eerie, and the lake's 
 boom, stronger? . . . Was she a child, then, or wife to 
 the man who was fighting wind and water with his bare 
 hands? . . . Quiet came the puff from her lips, and the 
 light went out. . . . 
 
 For a long time, she lay in her bed and tried to say a rosary 
 for him. But the words died on her lips and in her mind 
 as she listened, listened, listened, with her head light on the 
 pillow. . . . What good in her listening? . . . Nothing 
 but prayer could help. . . . She pinched each bead of 
 the rosary so the hurt would keep her mind on her prayers. 
 . . . "Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at 
 the hour of our death." 
 
 At last she dozed. Then, early in the night, she started 
 up from her bed with a gasp that tore her. Terror gripped 
 
 108 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 her in its hands. . . . She had dreamed, only, and dreams 
 weren't real. . . . This was real, this blanket rough beneath 
 her hand. . . . Now as she grew surer of her surroundings, 
 she told herself shivering, "Don't fear dreams." 
 
 But so near to truth did mind-sight seem in the darkness 
 that she rose to light the candle, build the fire, and sit by the 
 friendly red gleams till the white light of a quiet morning 
 rayed about the edge of the blanket at the window. "Don't 
 fear dreams," she said more firmly, now the light had come. 
 
 With force she put all the strange visions of the night aside, 
 and went about her work; practical things, she thought of, 
 like plans for the birth of the child. Winifred Culhane would 
 come to her. Winifred's cheeks were snow-apple red, her back 
 was as broad and strong as a man's, and her words were full 
 of good common sense. ... As the day went into early 
 darkness, the girl clung more and more to the thought of 
 Winifred, her health and muscle and sense. 
 
 Come dusk, a knock at the door. Never had neighbor been 
 more welcome! The girl hurried across the room to unlatch 
 the door. At the threshold stood a woman whose shawl hooded 
 a white face, hollowed by shadow. Slow and even like a ghost 
 walking, she entered the room and stood silent. It was only 
 the next-door woman. In her hand there was a covered plate 
 of some delicacy but she did not seem to know how to offer 
 it nor what to say. . . . Well, the girl had words that 
 tumbled from her mouth so glad was she to be rid of them: 
 
 "Oh, it's good you've come. I had a terrible dream last 
 
 109 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 night. Michael, I saw in a shipwreck; in rough black water 
 
 he was, his arm round a spar. He was calling my name " 
 
 The neighbor's eyes were circles of terror; a cry strangled 
 in her throat; her dish fell with a crash; she turned and fled 
 from the room. Behind her, the door banged, and then swung 
 there, to and fro. 
 
 110 
 
Clar\ Street, at the public square 
 
 CHAPTER ELEVEN 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED FORTY-FOUR 
 
 I 
 
 .N THE white storm on the 
 black waters, Michael had gone down. . . . No, this was 
 no judgment of God. . . . She could see the storm before 
 her and in it was her mother. . . . How cold it was in 
 this place! How plain she could hear people scrunching on 
 the walk. . . . When had she opened the door? 
 
 Many women with fear in their faces were coming into her 
 house. . . . What were they afraid of? For she knew 
 the great thing and all they could tell her now was the time 
 and the place. . . . Winifred Culhane was with them. . . . 
 
 Ill 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Why was it when her mind felt the need of great rest, her 
 body would give her none? . . . Now Winifred was 
 sending all but three of the women away, and the girl had 
 to laugh a little so much did Winifred seem like some big 
 farm woman shooing chickens out of a house they had 
 wandered into. . . . One of the three was the little old 
 woman — of Connaught — who chanted prayer at childbirths. 
 WTiy should Winifred be so cross to her, saying, "Can you 
 give us no help at all?" . . . Chant and yellow light and 
 spasms of tearing pain, they were in a whirl together. . . . 
 That chant she knew, where Christ spoke to His Mother and 
 said: 
 
 " 'O Mary, succour this woman 
 Who is in fear of death.' * 
 And Mary answered, sharp: 
 
 " 'Succour her thyself, O Son, 
 Since it falls to thee. 
 Baptism for the birth 
 And bring the woman safe.'' 
 Everyone was gone now but Christ and His Mother. In 
 a gutter He stood and held a great heavy cross away from 
 His shoulder for His mantle was jagged upen there, and below 
 in the flesh was a raw splintered red bloody wound. His 
 eyes — His eyes were like Michael's till Christ seemed Michael 
 and Michael, Christ — looked at His Mother, she pressing 
 close to Him. Clasped were her hands, and they were saying 
 to Him, "Pain in my body is less to me than pain in Yours." 
 
 112 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Love, love, love for the Son of Man, it was in Mary, it was 
 in her. ... A soldier stumbled on the end of the cross and 
 the angle hacked down on the red bloody flesh. . . . Above 
 the jagged pain, their love for each other. . . . 
 
 Light from the snow outside flooded up white into the dark 
 places of the roof above her. In sleep a great peace had come 
 on her. . . . Worrying words could not break it. . . . 
 They came to her, the neighbors, and said, "There's small 
 money left in the broken sugar-bowl. Your mother says she'll 
 let go the cook and take you back? What is there else for 
 you to do?" . . . Though the young mother could not 
 answer yet, she put her arm about her child as though she 
 would protect it, and, clear, to her mind, came the promise she 
 had made to James about his schooling. ... If she went 
 back to her mother, they'd all be under her mother's will — 
 James, the baby, and her. A promise it was she'd made to 
 James, a promise she would keep. He'd have his chance in 
 this town. 
 
 By middle January, she rented the main room of her cabin 
 to a widow-woman, while she herself took up quarters in the 
 lean-to. And by that time too, she had found work, finishing 
 trousers at the top and at the gaitered ends for a Jew tailor 
 on Clark Street. . . . 
 
 Now that she had begun her new work, the dark came all 
 too soon, her wanting to burn daylight and not candles at all. 
 The widow in the big room had a light — you could see the 
 streak beneath the door. . . . "You don't mind this place, 
 
 113 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 do you, child?" she asked the baby on the bed; "Christ was 
 born in a stable." . . . There was a small mound on the 
 dresser; that was James' wash, ready to be brought to him at 
 the new St. Mary's of the Lake university. Between her sewing 
 and his tutoring, they would get him through no matter 
 what. . . . 
 
 When she came to take the trousers back, she found the 
 bundle heavy, but she had her strength again and was glad 
 she still had people she loved to work for. ... A thaw 
 had melted the snow; then there'd been sleet and weather 
 below zero. Puddles were ice now, and the wind snapped 
 glazed twigs down to the ground. 
 
 As she crossed the Clark Street bridge, she stared down at 
 the cakes of ice below and the dark water between them. The 
 sight made her think of Michael; the tears froze on her cheeks, 
 and she caught her lips to keep down the sob that came with 
 the old prayer, "May the souls of the faithful departed through 
 the mercy of God, rest in peace." 
 
 The city was blurred, her looking at it, but she blinked the 
 tears out, saying, "Michael, dear, pray for us." Then the 
 city got clear again, and she felt better seeing it only. . . . 
 Covered-wagon people on their way through here often scorned 
 this place out loud, said it was good for an outfitting point 
 only, declared they wouldn't take a quarter-section for a gift. 
 Now she'd got to Lake Street, she could see down to Michigan 
 where the big twenty-five foot reservoir rose above the ground; 
 its iron pipe went out 150 feet into the lake, and its steam 
 
 114 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 engine pump sent water through bored logs to Chicago 
 homes. . . . Would the places these wagon-folk were going 
 have improvements like that? . . . And now the panic 
 years were over, work was opening up here: Just this year, 
 Wadsworth and Dyer, out on the south branch, had packed 
 the first tierce of beef for the foreign market — you could get 
 the dirty salt taste of slaughter-houses even in this cold air. 
 And just outside the town, farmers begged for hands to mow 
 grain and husk corn; last year only, they had to turn cattle 
 out in the ripe fields, all for lack of men to hire. . . . 
 
 At Randolph Street, she walked west, taking the center part 
 that was already roughened by horses' hoofs; there was less 
 chance to slip there. She watched a merchant come out on 
 the wooden platform in front of his store and throw garbage 
 into the road; two black grunters found it, rooting for dainties. 
 Against the law for almost two years now, letting hogs run 
 in the public streets, but with nothing fenced in, it was hard 
 enough to keep animals at home. "The whole place is like 
 a common," said the people from New England. What of it? 
 A common was better than a walled estate, wasn't it? 
 
 Plenty of balloon frames on Randolph; people from other 
 towns called this building, a house on a platform above the 
 earth, ramshackle. But such homes were just the thing for 
 this locality; they had no cellars because basements here became 
 just water-holes, and though a balloon-frame might look frail, 
 every part of it was spiked together and held tight against the 
 worst of the prairie winds. . . . Back in '35, there had been 
 
 115 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 no spires showing above the trees, but now there were, and 
 often the churches beneath them were made of brick or stone — 
 St. Mary's, which was on Wabash and Madison, was no 
 log cabin now, but a stately place with a porch that had 
 Greek columns on it. Rush Medical College, over on Dearborn 
 and Indiana, had a dome like the Pantheon in Rome. There 
 were even some residences that had had architects to plan 
 them out. . . . 
 
 Here she was at Clark, at the public square with its one- 
 story-and-basement courthouse; brick it was, with four big 
 windows along the side. Since Henry Brown had led out some 
 volunteers to plant trees and put up a picket fence, the place 
 looked better. That was the way here. People gave services 
 as free as could be. And money too. That last crowd of 
 immigrants, starved in the Irish famine, had scarcely entered 
 the town before Chicago subscribed several thousand dollars 
 to give them a start in life. O, this was a city where every 
 man was given his chance! 
 
 Aye. It was not the lake, the river in the shape of a wavy 
 T, the country roads diagonaling in from rich fields, nor the 
 square blocks of scattered houses that made this town. It was 
 the people. Of course, there were some like her mother, close, 
 out for themselves, and let the devil take the hindmost, but 
 they were overbalanced by the others; James, he had the making 
 of a true Chicagoan. . . . What if the city did look rough, 
 and the people too. They were real; they cared for things that 
 mattered. There was no place as fine in all the world. . . . 
 
 116 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 She went up the stairs to the tailor's loft. In the reek of 
 the wool, damp under the hot iron, she stood, a little breathless 
 while the small man with the black skull cap and the grizzled 
 beard bent over the trousers and looked with care at the finishing 
 she'd done. ... At last he said, "What you sew this fine 
 for?" . . . Let God bless him. That meant she could 
 work faster and make more money for the boy and for James. 
 
 117 
 
B 
 
 ART TWO 
 

In the muc\ 
 of the road 
 below pigs rooted 
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 FIFTY-FOUR 
 
 I, 
 
 ,F JANE could only be here 
 today. Charley Freeman and he would hang out their shingle, 
 and if his commencement day had brought tears of joy to her 
 eyes, today would mean even more. 
 
 He'd write her everything. Letters were all she would take 
 in payment. While Charley and he were working as scriveners 
 
 121 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 in a law firm, he had earned enough to pay her, but she had 
 refused him, saying that she and her boy Michael had enough 
 to get along on now. 
 
 And of course they had, for, in order to secure the boy's 
 future, she had married a second time. She found that sewing 
 brought in only an uncertain income, that slack seasons cut 
 in on savings; so, at last she had married a Welsh farmer 
 from down Aurora way, a farmer with two sons who needed 
 to be looked after, a farmer with two hundred acres of black 
 Illinois soil that would mean sure food, at least, for Michael. 
 
 Jane, thought the young lawyer as he sorted out the drawers 
 of the second-hand walnut table they had bought for the new 
 Clark Street office, Jane had always understood. She had 
 realized how he felt about not wanting to be a priest when 
 he had no vocation, and she would know now how he felt 
 about the Freemans. She had already said old Freeman 
 reminded her of her mother. Of course he was the poor 
 member of the firm and glad enough to get a start here; 
 Charley, backed by his father, the Senator, was the rich partner. 
 Should they try to dictate opinions and acts to him — why 
 should they want him to be a Fusionist like them — why should 
 he join with that lot of Whigs, and Know-Nothings, and 
 disaffected Democrats when he was still strong for Douglas? 
 Why should Freeman Senior urge him to cultivate men who 
 could give cases to the new firm, to stay away from the 
 unmoneyed and uneducated? 
 
 That would mean he would have to stay away from his own 
 
 122 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 people. But should he worry about insinuations? He'd wait 
 for an issue. 
 
 Now that the table was in order, he strode to the front of 
 the office and opened the center of the three front windows. 
 Charley perched on the table and watched him make ready 
 to put out the heavy black and gold sign, "Freeman and 
 O'Mara, Attorneys at Law." . . . He paused for a moment 
 at the window — the view was strange enough for a city office. 
 
 Though the building was only seven blocks straight away 
 from the courthouse, it was almost out in the country. In the 
 muck of the road below pigs rooted, grunting as they poked 
 their noses in slops thrown from neighbors' shanties. Fat, 
 round cows ran from a herder's pointed stick, jogged north 
 toward homes that waited supper milk. Was the beast with 
 ribs that stuck out like the laths of a corn-crib, a waif from 
 some Texas herd? Across the street were tar-paper shanties 
 and other sorts of hide-aways which were built on floors 
 laid direct on top the muck. Beyond these was the flat gleam 
 of the river, and beyond the river the red fires of the last 
 Pottawattamie camp; these fires were grayed by the haze of the 
 late spring afternoon. 
 
 A rough town in a raw country? Well, that was all that 
 some people saw. For himself — suddenly he caught his breath, 
 sucked in his lips to keep them from trembling with emotion — 
 for himself, he saw a God-like place. Before Chicago, as before 
 God, people were equal. Chicago believed in democracy, 
 Chicago had given him and most of the rest their chance. If 
 
 123 
 
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 it had not been for Chicago, where would he have been? 
 Dragging kelp from the Atlantic to fertilize a stony brown 
 field in Donegal? Migrating for work to an English farm 
 and living in a dark damp Paddy-house? Saying "Please 
 sir" to some New York master? . . . 
 
 Of course, there were odd, here-and-there people like the 
 Freemans who wanted to create caste in Chicago; there were 
 still others who were jealous of the quick advance of newcomers 
 like himself; members of the Know-Nothing party, for instance, 
 wanted to down the foreigners, the Germans and the Irish. 
 However, most of the people here didn't ask what a man was; 
 they were with Douglas, defied the Know-Nothings, and asked 
 fair play even for "dirty foreigners." . . . 
 
 Douglas stuck to his friends in spite of opposition. . . . 
 Douglas championed the Irish. . . . 
 
 With vigor he lifted out the sign and whacked in the long 
 nails that would hold the iron arm of the sign in its place. 
 The sound rang far, echoed. . . . Just as his job was nearly 
 through, a man with a hairy face slouched along in the street 
 below; now he stared up vacantly. Why it was that fellow 
 Kearney again, Kearney, the drunken Irish inventor who'd 
 been dogging his footsteps ever since it had become known 
 there was to be a "Freeman and O'Mara" firm. Kearney, it 
 was said, had a big case against Matthis, the railroad man; 
 Kearney muttered continuously about Matthis, the railroad 
 man, stealing an invention from him, about Matthis throwing 
 him out of work when his wife lay dying. As he looked down 
 
 124 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 on the pale, hairy face now numbed with drink, the young 
 man thought; 
 
 "If you've got a case, Kearney, speak up! I'll take it." 
 
 Pulling his head in from the open window, he straightened 
 his six-foot-two, shook the black hair out of his eyes, and spoke 
 to his partner, saying, "Kearney's still hanging around." 
 Charley, on the walnut table, felt about the crackly bundles 
 there till he found the glass tobacco jar; then he leisurely thrust 
 in his pipe and thumbed dry brown leaf into the bowl. After 
 lighting the tobacco, he lifted gray eyes, sucked in his pink 
 cheeks, heaved shoulders fat beneath the bright blue coat with 
 the velvet collar. At last, he puffed out contemptuously. 
 
 "Oh, Kearney's cracked!" 
 
 But wasn't everyone who disagreed with Charley, cracked? 
 . . . Charley looked — so fat — so settled. The real reason 
 he didn't hold with Douglas was that Douglas used to take 
 his coat off when he talked in Congress and "threw himself 
 about like a prize-fighter." . . . But why must he always 
 return to the differences between Charley and him? He shoved 
 the hammer on the table, marched across the red carpet, and 
 turned on the water in the marble washstand in the corner. 
 Brown fishy water gushed out, and he thought, "I'll write to 
 Jane we even have chowder piped to our rooms." . . . 
 Charley had twisted toward the stove. In the darkening room 
 the glow showed faintly on his face. But warmth came from 
 within too. The eyes shone, the lips worked about the pipe 
 stem. At last he spoke. 
 
 125 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "I'll bet," he declared, "I'll bet the Senator could get us 
 Matthis for a client. Railroad work! And all the big guns 
 are in it. Lincoln, Thomas, and the rest. We must get 
 Matthis!" 
 
 Work for Matthis! What had made him think of Matthis? 
 Oh yes, the conversation about Kearney. . . . And he, 
 himself, had been thinking of taking Kearney's case. . . . 
 No need to worry about one or the other. The firm would 
 probably get neither. . . . 
 
 He crossed the room to the back wall, knelt before the 
 bookcase of nailless dove-tailed mahogany, and muttered, "At 
 $2.50, Charley, this was a great bargain, second-hand." But 
 Charley still chewed his pipe and looked into the fire. Did 
 he dream of big cases, goldbacks, and fame? . . . 
 
 Still kneeling, his partner pulled out the tight drawer at 
 the base of the bookcase with such sudden strength that the 
 skull, placed for decoration on the top, rocked and teetered. 
 Then he took the drawer over to the stove at the south wall, 
 drew up a walnut cane-bottomed chair, and placed the drawer 
 back-end up, between his knees. After that, he thrust a 
 pen-knife into stove embers, and at last began to scorch letters 
 into the wood of the drawer. Very slowly, he burned in the 
 brown lines, "Freeman and O'Mara, 1854." Freeman and 
 O'Mara, firm which aided poor people to get their chance, to 
 take their right places in a democracy. . . . 
 
 126 
 
G 
 
 A white jace 
 circled by a 
 dar\ bonnet 
 
 CHAPTER TWO 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 FIFTY-FOUR 
 
 fURIOSITY seemed to make 
 Charley break the silence, slide from the table lounge toward 
 the stove, and look at the lettering on the wood. He scoffed, 
 "History!" 
 
 Then shrugging his shoulders, he said something about a 
 promise to get more books, and at once left the room. . . . 
 
 127 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 The other put the drawer away. The darkening room was 
 very still now. Dusk made him lonely. Standing at the 
 window, he saw that the gray was suffused with yellow kerosene 
 light from one of the little shanties below; a man cut across 
 the prairie, toward the light, going home. . . . 
 
 The watcher had had no home since his mother had returned 
 to Utica, to spend her money, to ride in a carriage, to patronize 
 those who had once scorned her as "one of the ignorant 
 Irish." . . . No, no home. A boarding house room, 
 instead. . . . He'd been right to turn from the priesthood, 
 for he was not born for celibacy; he wanted his own home and 
 his family inside it. But he knew well enough he must not 
 think of marriage or even courtship till his firm was well 
 established. He owed that to himself, to the girl, whoever 
 she might be, to Jane. . . . Not even parties — Why, who 
 were they? 
 
 As he looked out of the window, he saw two ladies; their 
 wide swaying skirts were light colored against the black road. 
 They picked their way, one after the other on the planks laid 
 down for a walk. They were not women of the shanties, for 
 wrappers and shawls were the wear there. Why were the 
 two way out in this part of town? 
 
 They neared the office building; they could not be coming 
 to it, for none of the rooms were rented except this office. 
 Surely they could not. The slighter one of the two stopped 
 and lifted her head; he could see a white face circled by a 
 dark bonnet. Actually she seemed to peer up at the gold 
 
 128 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 letters of their sign. She couldn't — they couldn't — clients 
 never came to lawyers on their first day. 
 
 Hurriedly, he glanced about the room. Much too dark. 
 The glow of the stove was the brightest light. . . . He 
 lit two jets on the inverted T-square of a central chandelier, 
 and the greenish light gave an iridescent look to the red-wailed 
 room. . . . Then he swept the center table clear of papers, 
 stuffed them into the waste-paper basket. But now the place 
 looked too neat. A few books on the table. 
 
 However if the women were really coming, there was no 
 time. . . . He bounded to light the gas in the outer office, 
 and as he entered the room, he heard steps on the stairs. Two 
 sets of steps, one that creaked and one that touched. Listening 
 in unbelief, he let the match burn down to his fingers. . . . 
 Nearer, nearer. The doorknob turned. The door opened, 
 and the ladies entered. 
 
 He stepped on the fallen match and bowed. He had never 
 seen the two before but guessed that they were mother and 
 daughter. Both had the same blue eyes but the mother's were 
 direct, and the daughter's, brightly evasive. Both had firm 
 chins, but the mother held hers in such a decided way that the 
 hair on a chin mole stood out almost at right angles. In a 
 mannish voice, the mother spoke, saying, "I am Mrs. Fitzgerald. 
 This is my daughter, Marie. Are you Mr. O'Mara?" 
 
 "Yes, mother," responded the girl before he had a chance 
 to speak. "He's the one I heard at the debating club last 
 week." 
 
 129 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 He smiled at her, surprised. He had been judge at the 
 club last week, but considering the topic, he would not have 
 expected her there; they'd talked on "Resolved that the geolog- 
 ical assumption of the earth's pre-Adamic age is supported by 
 reliable data." Wondering why she had gone, he looked at 
 her again and he was glad she had come through the dusk here. 
 
 "Won't you be seated in the inner office?" he asked them. 
 Inner office, he thought meanwhile, had an impressive sound. 
 As he led the way, he added to Mrs. Fitzgerald, "I hope your 
 daughter was not bored. I don't want to disparage us debaters, 
 but I can't help wondering why she came " 
 
 "To hear you," boomed the woman. "She likes your 
 speeches " 
 
 "Mother!" 
 
 "Well, it's true isn't it?" 
 
 The girl's face disappeared somewhere in her poke bonnet. 
 And the woman, with the same air of speaking out and not 
 caring, continued: "But that's not the real reason we chose 
 you. Nor on account of having heard of the Freemans; oh, 
 I expect a good many people will come to young Charley 
 because of the old man. I won't. I refuse to deal with a boy 
 who has to rely on his father; feel I'd have to deal with two 
 instead of one." 
 
 While the ladies sat down near the table-desk and spread 
 their skirts out beyond their chairs, he waited to see the girl's 
 eyes again; she would lift them soon. She must be little more 
 than fifteen, a child, and to a child there was always a glamor 
 
 130 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 about the people who sat up on a stage. Was he a disappoint- 
 ment to her now? 
 
 "My daughter and I are here to talk about a small inherit- 
 ance," the mother went on. 
 
 Then she explained. Her father in Liveipool — Liverpool 
 accounted for her English-Irish accent since there were many 
 Irish there — had left her two thousand dollars. The Liverpool 
 barrister wished to arrange matters through a legal man here. 
 
 "So if you will write " He would. . . . From time 
 
 to time as the mother talked, he looked at the girl in a kind 
 of astonishment, not recalling ever having seen any one quite 
 like her ever before. Was she as lovely as he thought her, or 
 was he grateful because she had come at dusk when he was 
 lonely? Then astonishment seemed lost in a sense of peace 
 and completion; his deep breaths said to him, "She is the one." 
 
 "You must come and see us," thundered Mrs. Fitzgerald. 
 
 "Thank you " 
 
 "And I don't invite unless I mean people to come." 
 
 He wanted to promise. . . . The soft curve of Marie's 
 cheek was pink against her bonnet. . . . But just before 
 she had entered, hadn't he told himself he must wait for a 
 while till the firm was established. Surely, however, the firm 
 would be on its feet by the time a sailing vessel had got to 
 Liverpool and back! 
 
 "I'll call," he answered, and felt the woman's eyes studying 
 him, "when I hear from Liverpool." He thought she looked 
 faintly amused and not disapproving. 
 
 131 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Reluctantly, he opened the door and waited at the head of 
 the stairs while they descended. . . . Before they reached 
 the vestibule, someone held back the street door for them; it 
 was Charley, returning with one arm full of books. Why 
 did he have to come just then; now he'd seen the girl, he'd 
 want to meet her. . . . 
 
 But even as the other questioned him, he forgot Charley; 
 he was thinking, "Think what a man could do with a girl 
 like that to go back to." 
 
 132 
 
A backboard scraped 
 up to the curb 
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 FIFTY-FOUR 
 
 Th 
 
 .HIS appointment of his with 
 Freeman Senior worried him a bit; he had an idea why the 
 old man had sent for him. Of course it was not on account 
 of the failure of the new firm to do business, for the two 
 beginners had almost been swamped with work in this boom- 
 town. Hadn't he been thinking he'd not have to wait for 
 the Liverpool boat to be back before he called at the Fitz- 
 geralds? Charley had met her and was calling on her. . . . 
 Just as he arrived at Clark and South Water Streets, at the 
 
 133 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 corner opposite to Freeman's office, he heard someone shout, 
 "Hi there!" 
 
 With that, a rickety blackboard scraped up to the curb, and 
 a great overgrown cabin boy in overalls put out a hand shiny 
 with axle grease. No mistaking the black hair that bristled 
 under the workman's cap, the eyes that laughed, the open 
 blue shirt. Tim, Mary Ellen's oldest boy; he'd left the Iowa 
 farm to work on the lakes and was often in and out of Chicago. 
 
 "You'll come to the Irish meeting tonight, Jim?" 
 
 If old man Freeman was looking down out of the window, 
 he would probably think, "More of Jim's shanty-Irish friends." 
 The boy had a rough enough appearance, and yet he had a 
 glow about him, a delight in life, in the nearness of a friend, 
 in the bigness of ideals like the Fenians' fight for an Irish 
 Republic. 
 
 His uncle answered yes. The boy exclaimed, "Tonight then," 
 slapped the reins and rattled away into the traffic. . . . 
 
 What did the old man want? Probably to talk about this 
 matter of Douglas, of not meeting the Little Giant at the 
 station tonight. Yet now that most of the city was turning 
 against Douglas and his Kansas-Nebraska bill, friends should 
 stand by. Douglas had championed the Irish in their need; 
 now let the Irish champion him in his. Tonight let Douglas 
 come back to his city, let him win it once again. 
 
 He ran up the outside steps of the plain red brick building 
 to the first story, and then up the gritty inside wooden stairs 
 to Freeman's office. The room was imposing — high-ceilinged, 
 
 134 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 yellow, with brown velvet window draperies at the walnut 
 windows, with a large white marble bust of Demosthenes in a 
 corner. . . . His big frame padded with fat, Freeman 
 Senior stood near a window. In the afternoon light, the 
 snuff-spots on the old man's wrinkled vest showed gray-brown; 
 at the sides of his vest his frock coat sagged loosely. His head 
 was bent, and gray-blond hair fell in wisps over his forehead. 
 Through his hanging brows, his pale blue eyes looked sharp; 
 between the heavy lines made by the weight of the pouches of 
 his yellow cheeks, his bloodless lips curved in scorn. 
 
 "Saw you down below. Was that another of your — friends?" 
 The other stiffened and answered: 
 "That was Tim, son of my sister, Mary Ellen." 
 Freeman lifted his large fat-fingered hand and dropped it, 
 as if to say he meant no harm but why have relatives like that. 
 Watching the heavy paw hit against the old frock coat, the 
 other thought, "The old man affects disorder in his clothes 
 to get the political approval of workingmen, to show he is one 
 of them; but really he hates them." . . . Freeman pushed 
 back the skirts of his frock coat and thrust his hands in his 
 trousers pockets and plunged in his subject : 
 
 "I hear you're going to meet Douglas at the station tonight." 
 The other nodded, and the old man went on with a mildness 
 his eyes belied: 
 
 "Well, I wish you wouldn't. You'll endanger the firm." 
 It was true the firm might be endangered. And, God knew, 
 he didn't want it to be; he wished to keep on smoothly, to be 
 
 135 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 able to see Marie, to At once, Freeman seemed to note the 
 
 gravity of the young man and to take the opportunity of 
 pressing home his point. 
 
 "And the people here are quite right," Freeman's indignation 
 had a platform manner about it. "This town won't stand for 
 the Kansas-Nebraska bill; it won't let northern territory go 
 slave." 
 
 Fah! What did old Freeman care about slaves? He was 
 with the big wigs who made their money from factories, who 
 wanted tariff country extended and anti-tariff country kept 
 from growing. As the young man's lips curved to show doubt 
 of Freeman's sincerity, Freeman observed the expression, sent 
 a flying line of brown saliva into a cuspidor, and smiled as if 
 to say, "I'm glad you're smart. I like smart people and get 
 along with them." Then his smile disappeared and he leaned 
 forward in grave fatherly fashion and said, "Don't go, Jim; 
 your friends'll understand." 
 
 What did he know about friendship! Up to last spring 
 when the Little Giant began to lose popularity, he'd been 
 fawning on Douglas. The young man faced his problem. 
 Douglas and belief in his principles, or the Freemans and dis- 
 belief in theirs. Just then, the big walnut door of the office 
 burst open, and a thin little man with a tense white face 
 catapulted himself into the room. As he ran up to Freeman, 
 he waved a newspaper in the air. Hitting this sheet with the 
 nails of his left hand, he shouted, "We must prevent him! 
 We must prevent him!" Then he threw back his head so that 
 
 136 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 he could read through the small steel -rimmed spectacles that 
 held to the thin nose at the distended nostrils. He quoted 
 loudly: "Anti-Christ in the person of Stephen A. Douglas 
 must never be allowed to pollute the pure air of Illinois with 
 his perfidious breath " 
 
 "Good-bye, Jim," Freeman broke in hurriedly. "Good-by. 
 Come in soon again." The young man laughed to see the 
 haste of the politician to separate two men of opposing parties, 
 his haste in conducting the Douglas man to the hall while the 
 anti-Douglas man kept on shouting. . . . 
 
 Arrived in the hallway, old Freeman fixed his hair-hung eyes 
 on the lawyer. His eyes threatened, "I will not have the success 
 of my son risked; let him who loves the danger, perish in it." 
 His mouth simply said, "That man in there means every tap 
 of his finger-nails, and he's just a sample of the people in this 
 city. I tell you, Douglas will be rotten-egged by Chicago 
 tonight. The city's through with him, and you can't buck 
 up against a whole town." 
 
 The young man stood a moment out on the porch of the 
 building. Early evening filmed the blue September sky above; 
 below express wagons harnessed to mules rattled past, and two- 
 wheeled drays blocked the passage of a carriage. . . . He 
 looked at a city turned against Douglas. . . . 
 
 As he stood on the porch, he heard the turntable of the 
 bridge behind him, begin to creak. He faced about to see the 
 structure pivot and the boat appear. . . . Down the right 
 lane of the river glided a large freighter; its flag hung heavy 
 
 137 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 at half-mast. Curious, he leaped down the stairs and ran up 
 the ramp-like road that led to the bridge. 
 
 "Who's dead?" he called to a sailor in the bow of the 
 departing boat. 
 
 "Douglas!" bellowed the sailor through cupped hands. 
 "Didn't you know it?" 
 
 Scantlings, waste paper, garbage, boiled in the wake of the 
 vessel. . . . What a sewage smell from the river! . . . 
 Across the green and purple water lane puffed a tug with a 
 great mashed nose; after it, slid a scow. Tied up at sloped 
 landings or against grain elevators opposite were more 
 freighters, and in the darkening air, more flags at death 
 height. . . . 
 
 Little sheds, tall elevators, five story buildings — the sky-line 
 seemed a thing jagged out by a child's scissors. . . . The 
 white letters of advertisements on the black granaries opposite 
 were still readable : Red Jacket Bitters, Root and Jewett Stoves. 
 . . . WTiy was a bell tolling? Too slow and solemn for 
 the courthouse fire bell. And now the sound swelled until it 
 seemed as though all the bells in town joined in the dirge. . . . 
 Hie man, once the city's hero, was dead to it. 
 
 When the bridge swung back, a herd of cattle sidled across. 
 People and traffic had seemed to disappear with the coming 
 of the night. Only beasts were left. . . . Lake, as well 
 as South Water, was deserted. ... In the splutter of his 
 torch, a lone boy zig-zagged back and forth across the broad 
 plank road and clattered his lighter into the gas lamps. . . . 
 
 138 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 He wandered down this show street with its red brick or Lamont 
 marble buildings, its wide wooden walks yellow with light from 
 the shop windows, its display of chased gold watches, bolts of 
 rose silk and other rich things. But now, aside from himself, 
 there was no one to see it all except a rat that scurried along 
 the gutter — you could hear its quick claws. . . . Had all 
 the town gone to the station to hiss Douglas? 
 
 Ahead of him, he saw a wooden Indian with his hatchet in 
 air, black against the glare of the Imported Havana Segar 
 Store. . . . Now, from beyond the Indian reeled a large 
 figure that bulged out a tight suit; its head was bushy under 
 a little hat. Kearney! Always drunk in this great grog- 
 shop by the lake. To the lawyer, he stuttered. "They g-goin' 
 drive him down this street? Well, don't let 'em." 
 
 Up to the north sky, he lifted a shaky finger: "There! See 
 all men." 
 
 As the other noted dark figures that moved along the white 
 coping above, Kearney added: "C-crates rotten apples, I was 
 in alley when they brought 'em up. Don't let Douglas this 
 way." 
 
 His eyes were big and solemn like a child's in fear, and 
 he staggered back to a building and flopped on a doorstep as 
 if he had no bones at all. . . . Were Kearney and he the 
 only two friends Douglas had left? . . . 
 
 The crowds were on the Avenue. As he turned south, he 
 thought most of the city must be parading along the west side 
 of the street. In the gas-light that flecked through the shade 
 
 139 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 trees, people kept passing up and down the walk. Ladies' wide 
 skirts had swept the boards almost clean of leaves. West of 
 the walk were turreted square-built homes, and on their 
 verandahs, people crowded. Even on the steps of a church 
 that looked like the Parthenon with a spire clapped to it, men 
 and women assembled. Was she among them? Why did 
 they watch so intently? Douglas wasn't due just yet. . . . 
 Suddenly he realized. The street was the dividing line. Only 
 Douglas men crossed the road to the lakefront railway station, 
 and none were going now. Had all the few remaining Doug- 
 lasites been told as he had been they mustn't buck this town? 
 . . . Only Douglas men? He was a Douglas man. Then 
 it was his turn now. He faced east. It was a solitary going. 
 "Oooh!" cried a girl, who pointed a fan at him. Someone 
 cried, "It's O'Mara!" Well, now they knew! he'd cross the 
 Avenue. He'd gone Douglas and she — Marie would approve. 
 
 140 
 
On the la\e edge lay the lighted station 
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED FIFTY-FOUR 
 
 o, 
 
 N THE lake edge lay the 
 lighted station. Figures, about a hundred of them, moved 
 around it, . . . this station up an inclined cinder path 
 and road, set in the midst of waste. To the right was a large 
 lagoon bordered on the west by pig sty and stable dumps. 
 Oil lamps, with their new reflectors tinny yellow against the 
 red frame depot, shone on the men who shouted welcome at 
 the newcomer. "Hurrah for O'Mara!" called the Americans. 
 
 141 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Up O'Mara!" huzzaed the Irish. And the coachman on the 
 Douglas barouche with six stamping horses waved his whip. 
 . . . Once in the crowd, he heard the snatches of its talk: 
 "Won't take long before Douglas has 'em on the other side 
 of the fence." " — given fair play. . . ." "Change for us 
 Democrats." " 's truth. Once we could have elected the town- 
 pump mayor. . . ." "Lucky if we get out alive tonight." 
 "Are they armed?" " 'think this is? A prayer-meeting? 
 'course they're armed." 
 
 Scottan, campaign manager, took the young lawyer's elbow 
 — he was always taking someone's elbow — and led him round 
 south of the depot. This fat man, whose small features were 
 minor matters centered in the rolls of flesh on his face, always 
 whispered things that could be announced from housetops. 
 All that he wanted now was to assign him to the front left 
 corner of the phalanx that would be formed round the Douglas 
 barouche. . . . To the south gleamed the double track of 
 rails that lay on the stone crib built along the shore. . . . 
 The plash of the water against the piles sounded soft and 
 slow — a cool, lulling noise on a night warm as this one. . . . 
 As they talked, a boy pulled a hand cannon round, ready for 
 the salvo. 
 
 Yellow blur to the south. . . . Rush of the crowd 
 round the end of the station. . . . Yes, the blur was the 
 headlight of the Douglas train which even now walked the tight 
 rope of the stone crib between the lake and the lagoon. White 
 steam wisped from the chimney with the wasp waist. . . . 
 
 142 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Unprotected on his open platform, the engineer thumbed back 
 to the cars and grinned. Those actions were his signs that 
 the Douglas was aboard. . . . Stubbing their toes on the 
 rocks between the ties, the men ran the length of the coaches; 
 through the looped and tasseled curtain of each small window, 
 they looked for Douglas. There he was, holding on the iron 
 rail of the very back platform, his small dark figure rounded 
 by the oil light from a car window. 
 
 Alertness of the lion head, captaincy in the eyes below the 
 thick arched eyebrows, downrightness in the big nose and 
 mouth, energy that burst from the small frame — no wonder they 
 called him Little Giant. . . . From the hearty way he 
 shook hands, you would think he never missed all the people 
 that ought to be there and weren't. . . . As he descended, 
 the crowd pushed closer. ... A boy shouted, "Traitors 
 round here! Somebody spiked the cannon!" As if he would 
 spy out the scoundrels, the boy tiptoed, stretching his head 
 above the crowd. As he looked south, you could see the flash 
 of fire reflected in the boy's eye; you could hear him shout, 
 "What's that?" 
 
 Everyone swung south. There, on the edge of the lagoon, 
 kerosene flames licked the night air, lapped the water, leaped 
 about a scarecrow figure with outstretched arms. 
 
 "Oh, that!" laughed Douglas. "That's probably me." 
 
 The boy, and others, swelled with anger and threw their 
 weight on their forward feet as if they would run to trample 
 out flames and fire-makers. But at a word from the Little 
 
 143 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Giant, they heeled as quick as privates to general. . . . 
 Command. . . . What was it in this leader made other 
 men's hands shoot up to salute? ... In the orange light, 
 they could see Douglas' lip curl, his nostrils widen, his eyes 
 laugh, as he said : "Let it stay there. I miss those things when 
 they're not around. All the way from Washington, I've read 
 my paper by the light of my own burning effigies." 
 
 "Ha! Ha! Did you hear him? That's a good one!" they 
 exclaimed and slapped the other's backs. High good humor 
 took the place of anger on the men's faces; they formed their 
 phalanx with the spirit of those who go to conquer. Left, left, 
 left-right-left! down the incline toward the city. Most of the 
 people had deserted the Avenue: to go to the hall, perhaps. 
 . . . West, then north across the bridge, on to Market Hall. 
 As the phalanx reached the river, the lawyer saw some men 
 duck from the bridge shadows and dart north. Scouts, per- 
 haps; they kept their hands clapped over their hip pockets. 
 Said the man next him, "Watch those boys, Jim; they're quick 
 on the trigger." 
 
 Two blocks from the hall, the marchers came plump on a 
 mass of people who milled toward the speaking-place. . . . 
 Ghastly green in the gas-light, green and angry with dead coal 
 eyes, these people turned and hissed and booed and groaned 
 and raised their fists. Shock of shoulder against shoulder as 
 they rushed the phalanx. But the barouche? Untouched, 
 even by the backward push, and the horses clop-clopped on 
 to the hall. . . . 
 
 144 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Before the door, the phalanx halted. Men of the guard, 
 with heads and chests held high, made a path for Douglas. 
 Scottan, Douglas, then the lawyer strode up the narrow wooden 
 steps to the second-story. The entrance was set between the 
 stage and audience. "Douglas!" shouted the crowd and trailed 
 the last letter into a hiss. With the cry, they rose and surged 
 forward. So quick were the newcomers forced back that the 
 men behind them had to snatch at stair banisters to keep from 
 falling. . . . 
 
 "In the good name of Chicago, quiet!" The mayor on the 
 stage was pale to his whisker roots; he raised his hands. Mut- 
 tering, the crowd retreated and sat down reluctant on their 
 chairs. . . . Out of the silence, the gun steps of Douglas 
 as he ran up the wooden steps on to the stage. . . . Goss, 
 leader of the opposition, friend of old Freeman, sat at the press 
 table up there, and his handsome face triumphed. . . . 
 Douglas got to the center of the stage and began, straight as 
 a shot: "You have been told the Kansas-Nebraska bill leg- 
 islates slavery into territory now free. It does no such thing " 
 
 "S — s — s slaves!" the crowd sibilated. 
 
 From the hisses you'd think you'd gotten in a snake-pit. 
 . . . Blue tobacco smoke layered about the center gas- 
 jets; you could smell the acrid odor though the windows, both 
 sides, were open. . . . "Judas Iscariot!" . . . Had 
 the reptile sound recalled the doggerel aimed at the Douglas 
 compromise with the South? Stamping out the rhythm, the 
 crowd beat out the words : 
 
 145 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 D'ye know if the snake that made the track 
 Is going south or coming back? 
 
 All the giant rose in Douglas till he seemed to grow in size 
 to meet this opposition with his body. Above the din, he bel- 
 lowed: "I will stay here till I'm heard." 
 
 Front rows got the words and passed them back — waves of 
 heads that turned and heads that bent. Then through the 
 din, the sound of growing song. Now the whole hall joined 
 in the mocking verses: 
 
 We wont go home until morning, 
 Till daylight doth appear. 
 
 As they stopped to smile at the close of the song, Douglas 
 boomed out: "Since most of you have never read that bill, I 
 will read you that part that has been slandered. ... It 
 will be seen the bill leaves the people free." 
 
 "Save your breath! We can read!" someone shouted. 
 
 In the midst of the groaning came a few odd cheers. . . . 
 Gray copy paper in hand, the editor Goss sauntered behind 
 Douglas, down the steps, along an aisle. Groups circulated 
 about him; people stood close to talk and cupped their ears to 
 get his answers. Sometimes they glanced toward the stage and 
 laughed. A man patted a bulging hip pocket. All the while, 
 the Little Man gouged the editor with his sharp eyes; then 
 Goss, his smile partly concealed with his hand, mounted the 
 stage, and Douglas' body froze in irony. He sneered, "Your 
 efficiency in getting an armed mob to put me down has been 
 entirely successful." 
 
 146 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Goss dropped his hand, snapped up his head, shouted: 
 "False! Every word false, sir!" 
 
 Anxious to hear, the audience hushed itself. Frock coat 
 flying, Douglas swirled to take advantage of the silence: "It 
 is perfectly natural for those who have slandered me to be 
 
 unwilling to hear me. But I am in my own home " When 
 
 groans rose high, he thundered : "I know my rights, and though 
 personal violence has been threatened me, I am determined — " 
 
 Waves of racket swept the hall. . . . This wasn't fair 
 play. . . . Douglas must have a chance to be heard. 
 . . . If he couldn't hold his Illinois stronghold, how could 
 he keep the country? And if he couldn't keep the country, 
 who else could preserve it in peace and democracy? . . . 
 
 Close to midnight? Still the crowd yelled. Now Douglas 
 unbuttoned his coat and pulled out a heavy gold watch. The 
 people, curious, grew silent. And Douglas hurled this last 
 scorn of them, "It is now Sunday morning. I'll go to church, 
 and you can go to hell." . . . 
 
 "Get in the rig. He wants to see you. Quick! the mob will 
 rush us." 
 
 As he spoke, Scottan leaped up with the driver — lightly for 
 a fat man. With the crack of the whip, the horses plunged 
 forward. . . . The rig jumped along like a toy dog that 
 a running boy pulls after him with a string. . . . Those 
 in the rig braced themselves and ducked their heads. . . . 
 Through the air whizzed the slush of rotten apples, sounded 
 the "Yah!" of the mob. 
 
 147 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 The bridge lay ahead. Out of his high little house at the 
 right the bridge tender leaned. And Scottan screamed with 
 all his might to him, "Turn the damned thing." Had the 
 man heard? They'd no sooner reached the shore than the 
 bridge began to pivot. The rig was on the south side. The 
 pursuers, on the north. And the river, in between! . . . 
 
 "You see," remarked Douglas, as the slower gait of the 
 horses let him rise a little and shake a spoiled apple from 
 the skirt of his coat, "what a lot of rotten opposition we 
 have to meet." 
 
 The other laughed. He liked a man who joked at the 
 enemy. He loved this man's courage. It had championed 
 his people. 
 
 "Tomorrow I begin to stump the state," said Douglas, 
 "but I want speakers here. I hear you've helped keep the 
 Irish for the bill. Get 'em all, and more beside. Will you?" 
 
 With a sharp intake of breath, the other saw Freeman's 
 hair-hung eyes saying no — cold eyes; and he saw, too, a 
 girl's mouth saying yes; he answered, "Yes, I will, sir." Doug- 
 las' hand shot out; in the dark, the young man felt the warm 
 blood of the man's hand, the throb of his enthusiasm. . . . 
 
 He had been lonely when he crossed the Avenue by him- 
 self, but now he seemed to have become part of a great force 
 that could not be beaten. 
 
 148 
 
They dawdled 
 li]{e lovers 
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 FIFTY-FIVE 
 
 I 
 
 .N SPITE of his holding out 
 for Douglas, the firm was not dissolved. For Douglas had 
 won his power back again and would be, people prophesied, 
 the next President of these United States. Freeman the Elder 
 seemed to have forgotten that he had been against the Little 
 Giant, that he had tried to threaten the firm into being anti- 
 Douglas; nowadays he said, "I hope Douglas will remember 
 what we've done for him." 
 
 With business going well, with the letter from the Liver- 
 
 149 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 pool barrister finally arrived, the young man found himself 
 on the top of the steps at the Fitzgerald's two-story frame 
 house on Washington Street, wondering, "Is Marie in? Has 
 she forgotten?" 
 
 His ring unanswered, he opened the front door, village- 
 fashion, and called up the front stairs. "Directly!" Mrs. 
 Fitzgerald's deep voice responded; not so much as the tap 
 of a light heel, however, showed Marie to be there. 
 
 And in this sneezy room there was no hint of her freshness; 
 bad housekeeping — probably only another sign of the man- 
 nishness of Mrs. Fitzgerald's nature. Slits of the spring 
 sunshine came through the gray Nottingham curtains, lay 
 across an east wall, showed the skinny ribs of laths beneath 
 the thin green-calcimined plaster; dust accented these lath 
 lines and lay thick along the dark carpet near the baseboard. 
 On one side the dingy black iron mantel hung dauguerro- 
 types in chipped oval frames. On the other side was a wall- 
 pocket of muddled gray newspapers and in a corner beyond 
 was a triangular what-not hung on walnut cut to look like 
 ribbon. The treasures on the shelves were California nug- 
 gets, everlastings under a glass dome, knuckly shells of a pink- 
 ish yellow color — the kind in which you were supposed to 
 hear the sea and didn't. 
 
 Still no hostess. ... In the corner between the fold- 
 ing doors of the dining room and those of the hall stood a 
 megatherium, a square piano before which the Indians would 
 have worshipped. And in the corner beyond the hall doors 
 
 ISO 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 was a low marble-topped table cluttered with the Fireside 
 Magazine. . . . 
 
 Now the doors opened and Mrs. Fitzgerald strode in, 
 with the march of a man masquerading in skirts. . . . 
 They sat in the high-backed chairs with the silly little arms and 
 talked business near the low fire. She showed herself to be 
 full of plain, shrewd sense; perhaps she realized her manner 
 and her mind were masculine, for once she softened for a 
 second to say as a sort of explanation: "Since my husband 
 died, I must be father as well as mother to my child." . . . 
 
 "Good afternoon," spoke a light voice behind them. 
 
 Against the dark door was Marie, her chestnut hair softly 
 rumpled and her bonnet held by its blue ribbons. Glow 
 of the violet eyes, sheen of the smooth young skin, lift of 
 the moist red lips — she was lovelier than he remembered. And 
 she did recall him. And she was glad to see him! . . . 
 He heard her mother begin to speak, and turning, saw the 
 older woman, with eyes on her daughter as if she would read 
 the girl's mind if she could and do the girl's least wish. 
 
 "I'll leave you two," boomed the mother, "while I make tea." 
 
 The girl's silky blue skirts puffed and billowed as she 
 sank into a chair near the window. The sun was soft yellow 
 on the parted hair, on the shoulder curl. She held herself 
 erect with her hands folded, but though her attitude was primly 
 female seminary, her eyes were welcoming. After his winter of 
 haranguing hairy-faced men in political halls, her beauty was 
 a sort of miracle. 
 
 151 
 
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 "You're getting famous." She smiled as if she were glad; 
 he noted the clear curve of her lips. "People say you'll get 
 what you want when Douglas gets in." 
 
 It was good to have her seem to care about his future — 
 who else did, except Jane? — but it was odd to have this pretty 
 child prophesying what politics would bring him — Politics? 
 He thought of shaggy men seen from a platform and her! 
 He laughed, then saw at once he'd done the wrong thing; 
 her lips pressed together, and her lashes dropped over her 
 cheeks; her voice was cold and she asked, "Won't you?" 
 
 Repentant for a moment, he answered solemnly, "It's all 
 a game, you know. Maybe he won't get in after all; some- 
 times they don't, you know." 
 
 Her eagerness returning, she protested, "Oh, but he must; 
 then you can be in — in the cabinet." 
 
 That was too much for his solemnity and he laughed again, 
 "Doesn't being in the cabinet sound a trifle — shut in? Be- 
 sides, I'm only twenty-seven." 
 
 Then she had revenge, for with her red lips round, she 
 breathed, "Only!" 
 
 How old she made him feel! It was true twenty-seven 
 was a great age to come to and find your hands empty of 
 any big accomplishment. He must work harder. . . . 
 Then the girl studied him a time, seemed to want to press 
 her revenge, saying, unexpectedly, "I know a little about 
 politics; Mr. Freeman talks to be about them." 
 
 "Tea!" exclaimed Mrs. Fitzgerald as she bumped open 
 
 152 
 
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 the door. She carried a large tray laden with many things 
 — a spotted tea-cozy, fat over the tea-pot, assorted cups and 
 saucers, a bread board with loaf, knife, and butter, and a 
 plate of fruit-cake slices curling up with dryness. With a 
 despatch that prevented aid, she clattered the tray on the 
 piano, crossed the room to the marble-topped table, tipped 
 the magazines on to the floor, and dragged the table, with 
 its white casters squeaking, over to the fire. Then she banged 
 the tray on the table. After throwing the fat tea-cozy on 
 the floor and pouring out the steamy tea, she seemed to no- 
 tice the little something of a strain in the air and said in a 
 tentative way: 
 
 "Marie — and I — take great interest in your speeches." 
 But the girl would say nothing more about politics; she 
 chatted about her seminary, of a Girl Who'd Been to Europe, 
 of a Girl Who Could Waltz, of a Girl Whose Mother Be- 
 lieved in Dress Reform. It seemed to him she talked a little 
 defensively as if she said, "Since you think these are the only 
 things I should talk about, I will satisfy — I'll keep big topics 
 for Charley Freeman." 
 
 Wondering how he could right himself, he turned toward 
 Mrs. Fitzgerald. She was looking at the girl as if in surprise 
 at her chatter; then her shrewd eyes narrowed, and she asked 
 suddenly: "Don't you think the prairie's dangerous, Mr. 
 O'Mara? Marie wants to practice with the Holy Family 
 choir Sunday afternoons, and I tell her she shouldn't go off 
 on those wilds near Twelfth Street all by herself." 
 
 153 
 
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 Grateful, he asked quickly: "May I call for her next 
 Sunday?" 
 
 That last Sunday in April was blizzardy. 
 
 The sun was dazzling on the snow. Crystals lay coarse on 
 the low picket fence, on the unshoveled path with its dark 
 frozen footmarks. The snowfall was not so deep, however, 
 that tall grass blades didn't pierce it, grass blades and green 
 buds on the boughs of the trees. 
 
 Bright red in her winter coat and little hat with ostrich 
 plumes, she stood at the top of the stoop set to the left of 
 the two-story frame and blinked her eyes against the glare; 
 her brow couldn't wrinkle, but it puckered like a baby's. . . . 
 
 How would they go? Across the Washington Street bridge 
 and south along the river road? . . . She almost fell at 
 the holes beneath the snow, so he took her arm. How tiny 
 she was! Now the child shivered with cold. That coat of 
 hers was probably too pretty to be warm. His cape — There, 
 that covered her, and dragged in the snow. . . . 
 
 She assented gravely to his words; so he talked on and on 
 and at last, he told her that most secret holy thing he be- 
 lieved he would say to no one — that he wanted to win rights 
 for his own people, to fight for democracy. Again and again 
 her brown eyes looked at him, saying, "I know. I know." A 
 man could dare anything with understanding like hers be- 
 hind him. . . . 
 
 She was so young that he felt he must not speak of love 
 as yet to her, but they dawdled like lovers, and when they 
 
 154 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 arrived at the church all the singers were coming down the steps. 
 
 That evening, however, when she had left the room, he 
 told Mrs. Fitzgerald that he wanted to marry her daughter, 
 and she, looking at him keenly but in a kindly way, answered 
 frank enough: 
 
 "She likes you best, I think, Jim, but I want to see you 
 better established. I want her to be sure of a good income. 
 If you can't get one, I'll give her to Charley Freeman or 
 someone like him. You see I love her better than anybody 
 and yet I know she's just a girl that wants things nice." 
 
 He stared at the woman for a long time. Mothers could 
 be blind to their children; his had been. And yet, how could 
 she be so ignorant of the response to ideals in Marie, of the 
 unearthly inspiration in her. . . . 
 
 For a year, on Sundays, he walked with Marie to choir 
 practice, but never till today had she shown petulance. No, 
 there was no topic that would please her. Had she changed 
 in her feeling toward him? Did she love Freeman better? 
 Or had he hurt her? . . . To his words, she shrugged 
 her shoulders or shook her Easter bonnet with impatience. 
 . . . Generally, she had seemed pleased at some little 
 personal thing — 
 
 "Your shoes," he protested as the small side-laced boots 
 sank in the sludge, "are too thin for a muddy walk like this." 
 
 With her voice almost sobbing, she gasped, "How — ter- 
 ribly romantic!" 
 
 155 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Romance? To a girl her age, romance probably meant 
 things like pressed flowers. 
 
 "Violets are out? Shall I?" 
 
 "Oh, of course," she burst out, as if he should have been 
 about the matter long before. 
 
 Puzzled, he hunted for her flowers. From time to time, 
 he half-knelt and from beneath the broad leaves of a plant 
 he would pull the small blooms. When his left hand could 
 hold no more, he rose and, since she asked for romance, he 
 swept his large black hat from his head and bowed very low 
 in presentation of the bouquet. 
 
 Fingers of both her hands closed over his. Then she took 
 the flowers and lifted them to inhale their perfume. . . . 
 Suddenly she crushed the blossoms to her lips, and as she 
 did so, she looked up with eyes full of tears. . . . Real 
 or imagined, some feeling caused her pain. 
 
 "Why, Marie dear," he pitied her in wonder, and as if 
 she had been Jane's small boy, he placed an arm over her 
 shoulders. At once, her body leaned against his; he could 
 feel the little spasms of her sobs. . . . 
 
 How small she was! He felt iron in his arms. He had 
 power to shield her from this and from all things. Both arms 
 went around her, and he caught her to him and kissed her 
 again and again. . . . 
 
 On the following Sunday, Mrs. Fitzgerald, though not 
 granting him consent, gave him encouragement and warning. 
 
 "I like your prospects, Jim O'Mara," she admitted in her 
 
 156 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 deep, husky voice. "But don't go relying on politics for 
 advancement; that's too uncertain. Rely on the Freemans. 
 The old man knows how to make things come his way." 
 
 In the manner of a lecturer, she folded her arms across 
 her large bosom. . . . But, he thought, he might for 
 the sake of political or other principles have to separate from 
 the Freemans. Why did she insist so on money? Marie 
 herself would rather have truth to ideals. 
 
 As if she read his thought, Mrs. Fitzgerald drew in her 
 mouth till the hairs on her mole of her chin rose to right 
 angles and spoke: "Don't be so damned visionary, Jim 
 O'Mara." 
 
 157 
 
f ■ ™ — • ■ ■ • — 
 
 
 
 il'i 
 
 
 
 4^ P. 1 
 
 
 
 ^A.\ 
 
 TA<f clatter of 
 bricks, the sawing 
 of boards 
 
 CHAPTER SIX 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 FIFTY-SIX 
 
 T 
 
 .HERE was nothing visionary 
 about his financial success; soon Mrs. Fitzgerald would have 
 to give her consent. Everything was coming his way, even 
 building. Outside was the clatter of bricks, the scrape of 
 trowel on mortar, the sawing of boards. Charley, who sat at 
 the shiny new desk in the corner of the room, was becoming 
 paunched with prosperity; soon he would be wedged perma- 
 
 158 
 
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 nently between the arms of his chair, forever condemned to 
 desk work. . . . 
 
 Silk from a prairie pod floated through the open window. 
 . . . Next Sunday, Marie's fall choir practice would com- 
 mence again 
 
 At that moment the Negro porter put his woolly head in 
 at the door, and talking with his lower lip, announced: "Sen- 
 ator Freeman's coming up the stairs." 
 
 Immediately Charley twisted about and studied the office 
 critically; he liked everything to be just so when his father 
 came. . . . 
 
 "Pff! This air!" protested Charley. The wind had veered 
 to the south and drove in the smell of the shambles, of a river 
 thick with decayed offal. Wrenching himself from his chair, 
 Charley rose and banged down the windows. 
 
 Then the Senator entered; his step had the firmness of one 
 who has special business to do, but his face was peevish with 
 some late annoyance. 
 
 He began: "Kearney's hanging round that door again. 
 Gives a bad look to the place to have that drunkard out in 
 front?" 
 
 Charley shrugged his fat shoulders: "Friend o' Jim's, sir." 
 
 So his partner added: "Sort of shadow, sir. I can't get 
 rid of him. I've tried it." 
 
 Testily, the old man waved the matter to one side. Then 
 turning to his son's partner, he said: "Just saw Matthis of 
 the X Y Z railroad, Jim, and he told me he had a case for you." 
 
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LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Matthis, and the X Y Z!" exclaimed Charley, delighted 
 even if the case hadn't been referred to him. "Why, didn't 
 I say the Senator would get us work with him?" 
 
 He jumped up to get the other's hat. Certainly he must 
 be driven by strong emotion for only that would have un- 
 wedged him a second time from that chair. 
 
 "There's money in railroads, Jim. There'll be tracks from 
 coast to coast, from Great Lakes to Gulf. Here's your hat. 
 Skip." 
 
 In the same warning way that he had looked at his son's 
 partner on the night of Douglas' return to town, Freeman 
 Senior glared through his eyebrows; he seemed to say. "You've 
 got to get this case and win it. I want railway work for my 
 son s firm. . . . 
 
 Outside, the sun -white air was gritty with prairie pollen 
 and with building sand. . . . His mind on his errand, 
 he stepped absently over the planks put up for hod-carriers 
 and avoided the splash of lime vats. . . . If he won this 
 case, there was no doubt but that Mrs. Fitzgerald would 
 give her consent. . . . But Bill Matthis? One of the 
 hardest men in town; from the beginning he had had a hard 
 fight: a run-away from a broken home, a half-starved beggar 
 on a country road, an apprentice under a cruel master in a 
 blacksmith shop, a mechanic, and at last a railway president 
 . . . head, too, of a concern that made railroad parts; he 
 had no idea in life but wealth. . . . Stale smells floated 
 from lager beer parlors along Clark Street. Suits that hung 
 
 160 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 ouside second-hand stores flapped limp in the warm air. The 
 sun shone on gold letters "Why Not?" that were printed on 
 the drawn blue curtains of a brothel. . . . 
 
 Someone was following him. He turned about and there 
 was poor broken Kearney. . . . Here was the car parts 
 building; here he could find Matthis. ... As he en- 
 tered the dark, set-in steps of the Matthis building, he heard 
 a smothered cry behind him. . . . The drunken inven- 
 tor shuffled forward. Eyes staring wide, he clutched the other 
 by the sleeve, his outstretched hand palsied with terror. 
 
 "Don't go in there," he whispered with his head so close 
 the young man smelled the fetid breath and the rancid hair. 
 "Spies are in there. Spies! Spies! Spies!" 
 
 Had long drink made the man mad? Undoing the dirty 
 fingers, the other soothed him, saying: "Don't get scared, 
 Kearney. I'll be going back soon." 
 
 As he went under the shadow sharp on the staircase, he 
 looked back at the figure — blind hands uplifted, red lips that 
 trembled in the ragged beard and brown eyes shocked into 
 something like sense. . . . 
 
 This north office of Matthis was dark with walnut. Long 
 narrow windows hung with dark rose drapery admitted little 
 light. . . . Past the windows, he could see the mast of 
 a freighter in dock and the flash of sea-gulls that planed, now 
 white, now gray. . . . 
 
 Between the two river windows stood a gloomy secretary 
 with a small gold wreath at the top, then a horsehair chair 
 
 161 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 for Matthis; it was backed by a table spread with a dark 
 rose cover that hung to the floor. On the room side of the 
 table was a caller's chair that faced the desk. West were 
 street windows; south, the entrance door, and east, the office 
 of a secretary. 
 
 Now voices sounded from behind the secretary's door. 
 Matthis entered, his dark eyes pouncing on the lawyer. The 
 black pompadour of the young man was oiled and long; the 
 bilious skin, a lemon yellow; the cheeks above the undershot 
 jaw, hollow. Between the satin stock and the lustrous broad- 
 cloth buttoned tight over his bulky frame, there was the V 
 of a linen shirt, finely pleated. 
 
 "Hello, Jim." In spite of the pioneer greeting with the 
 first name, there was no cordiality in the words; it was ground 
 from the mouth by the iron in the man. With the wave of 
 a wide hand that had a deep red intaglio ring on one of its 
 stubby fingers, he invited the other to sit down at the table. 
 
 "Of course," he observed as he sat in the chair near the 
 desk, "this is just a small case, but, if matters turn out to be 
 satisfactory to us both, I'll retain you and Freeman per- 
 manently. I know young men's ambition. There is nothing 
 a young man can't do. 
 
 "Now you see the case is this." Matthis spoke low and 
 bent over the table. "About two years ago, one of our 
 workmen made an invention that will probably revolutionize 
 the car industry. He asked us for a certain sum for it, and 
 this we were quite willing to pay. Then, after leaving our 
 
 162 
 
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 employ and listening to bad advice, he went up in his terms. 
 These demands I will not pay. 
 
 "The trouble is here: Sometime ago, the man patented a 
 small part of his invention. Now will his getting a patent 
 for that part, interfere with our getting a patent for the whole 
 invention?" 
 
 "But you said he refused to sell his whole invention." 
 
 The lips disclosed crooked yellow teeth. "We have de- 
 tails of a similar invention." 
 
 Just then, sounds of scuffling came from the room to the 
 east, and a cry like that of shaken grief. The two men rose 
 to their feet. The door burst open, and there, with his eyes 
 on the lawyer, was Kearney, breathing hard. 
 
 "Look out, Jim! Here's where they stole it from me." 
 
 A pale trembling young man followed Kearney and apolo- 
 gized to Matthis : "He entered by the wharf door, sir." 
 
 Matthis fixed his eyes on the wreck and snarled: "Get 
 out of here, Kearney!" 
 
 The ragged man shrank. Afraid and limp, he looked at 
 Matthis. Then as he turned to the other, courage and bone 
 came back to him. "Jim," he wavered as he pointed at the 
 secretary, "he's the one stands back of the door and takes 
 down what you say." 
 
 Again Matthis snarled: "Get out of here, Kearney!" 
 
 And as if he could no longer resist the strong will in the 
 room, the big shapeless figure slumped, and stumbled out 
 of the room. 
 
 163 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 At once Matthis looked straight at the lawyer and sneered, 
 "Do you want the case of that drunken sot or me?" 
 
 In a flash the young man thought of the Freemans eagerly 
 waiting him, of Mrs. Fitzgerald demanding wealth, but then 
 of Marie, and her wanting him to stand by principle. With 
 exhilaration he answered: "Kearney's looks stronger, Bill." 
 
 The sun shone through the spring trees on the yellow stone 
 of the big new courthouse. . . . Though the court was 
 not in session yet, the people had commenced to gather for 
 the last day of the Kearney case; some leaned against the 
 picket fence, some lingered on the long entrance walk, some 
 trod on the thin new grass to sit on the edge of the dry foun- 
 tain, some waited on the high steps. There were ladies out 
 for a day's shopping with their tiny parasols cocked against 
 the sun; there were the Zouaves who, slim in their blue uni- 
 forms with the white belts, drilled at the corner. There were 
 members of the athletic society who practised relays round 
 the courthouse block, their loose shirts filled with wind. But 
 most of the people near the courthouse waited for the case 
 to begin. Men in these parts feared the railroads and loved 
 the underdog. . . . 
 
 As the young man bounded up the stairs, people called 
 good will to him. Case would be sure enough if it were in 
 the hands of the whole city. . . . The courtroom was 
 sunny and breezes fresh from the lake blew through it. The 
 fine day made Matthis look grimmer and more powerful than 
 
 164 
 
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 ever. He vibrated with domination. Before it, the attor- 
 neys at his table almost salaamed, the judge deferred, the 
 people at the rear of the room shrank. There was power in 
 Matthis, like that in the lawyer's mother, but stronger, 
 greedier. . . . 
 
 The Freemans were in chairs for visiting attorneys. If 
 they wouldn't sit at his table, that was their concern. Of course 
 the old man had said that Matthis' case should have been 
 taken, adding, "The moral responsibility, if there is any, is 
 with him, and guilty or innocent, he has a right to advice." 
 As you would expect, Charley followed his father's lead. . . . 
 
 At the young man's table huddled his client, Kearney. 
 Clean, shaved, but still tremulous, he kept his eyes averted 
 from Matthis. . . . Now the court rose for the judge, the 
 clerk called his "Oyez," and the jury filed in. . . . 
 
 ". . . my poor client, gentlemen of the jury, then left 
 the office of this president of two great businesses. He had 
 to return home. He knew that his wife, lying ill there, was 
 hoping, was praying for his success. He knew he would have 
 to tell her that for this invention that would revolutionize 
 railroads, he had been offered a pittance and the chance to 
 keep his job. If he refused, he would get nothing and would 
 lose his position. 
 
 "What, gentlemen of the jury, did this brave woman say? 
 Tight for your right,' she told him; 'you'll get justice in the 
 end/ But she grew worse from the bad news, from the lack 
 of doctor and medicine — she refused to have what they could 
 
 165 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 not pay for. Then she died, and from that time my client 
 became, as Matthis here so justly described him, a drunken 
 sot. . . . 
 
 "Now all I ask you, gentlemen of the jury, is this question: 
 Shall that brave woman's words come true — shall Kearney 
 get justice in the end?" 
 
 Tears ran down Kearney's cheeks, people cheered, the judge 
 whacked for order. . . . Before the jury came back, the 
 judge said sternly that any man who clapped or cheered the 
 verdict, whatever it might be, would be thrown out by the 
 bailiff. But when the foreman declared the case to be Kear- 
 ney's, the little bailiff was no match for the shouting room 
 that surged over the low fence to grasp the young lawyer's 
 hand. ... If Marie were only here. . . . 
 
 On the other side of the courtroom, the lawyers gathered up 
 their papers. Freeman Senior bent over Matthis' chair. Why 
 was that? . . . Now the crowd had thinned out, and 
 he could see — of all people! — Mrs. Fitzgerald; she stood near 
 the door and leaned on her parasol as if she waited for him. 
 Had she seen and heard them and had she, too, been swayed? 
 Wondering, he hurried to speak to her; as he drew near, he 
 thought her face looked sunken, like that of one from whom 
 all feeling has been drained. 
 
 They walked out into the cool dark foyer while she spoke 
 with slow decisiveness. "If you think you won this case, Jim 
 O'Mara, you're a fool before the world. Kearney has his 
 judgment. The crowd had a good time. You got some 
 
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 kind words. But you can bet your bottom dollar, if you 
 have one, that we're no nearer democracy nor justice to the 
 poor than we were before. Power stays with the men you 
 split with." 
 
 She snapped up her parasol and went down the steps. The 
 blue light waved over her face. ... At the bottom of 
 the steps, she stood stock still. If her eyes were averted and 
 her deep voice husky, her words were nevertheless firm as 
 before: "J" 11 ' ^ Detter sav k now. I've told you before, but 
 you don't seem to understand. Marie's just one who wants 
 pretty things, and she's got to have some one who can give 
 'em to her. Can you? Why, just at present, Jim O'Mara, 
 you're headed for the poorhouse and none of those you help 
 will ever lift a hand to get you out. No, I like you Jim, 
 but keep away from my girl, Marie." 
 
 167 
 
A fugitive slave, 
 
 his feet bound in rags 
 
 CHAPTER SEVEN 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 FIFTY-SEVEN 
 
 H, 
 
 .ER words had shocked him for 
 a time, but when the shock wore off, they had a strange effect. 
 They made him determined to prove his ideal real; Marie 
 herself would want him to do that, and tonight a chance 
 would come. . . . 
 As for money, there would be enough of that later, and 
 
 168 
 
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 Mrs. Fitzgerald would grant permission for the marriage. He 
 was sure of that even in these panic times. The office was 
 cold and twilight now; coal and candles were at peak prices 
 these days. However, there was light enough for him to 
 scratch his daily entry in his journal, "Gas turned off. Tobacco 
 out. Darky getting insolent. No clients; no appointments 
 except with Mary Ellen's Tim who wants me to meet Martin 
 of the Irish Republican Brotherhood tonight." . . . 
 
 Finishing, he pushed the ledger-like book back on the desk 
 and went on thinking, feeling. ... At dusk, especially, 
 he longed for the fireside on Washington Street; some evenings, 
 when desire was greatest, he strode by her house, but always 
 passed without going in. Some men, he knew well enough, 
 would disregard the mother; why shouldn't he? At times 
 the question shook his body violently. Marie cared for him 
 — she'd shown that the day he'd kissed her, the evening at 
 the door when she had suddenly caught his hand in both of 
 hers, her lips quivering, her eyes bright, her whole self startled 
 at her own sudden action. . . . He could see the color 
 of her hair with the hall light behind it, the purple depth 
 of her eyes, the parting of her moist red lips, the bend of the 
 slight body above her wide skirts, the tremulousness of her 
 manner 
 
 He jumped from his chair, strode to the stove. If he asked 
 it, he knew that she would elope with him. But afterward — 
 in times like these? No, he must not let her know extreme 
 poverty; she was no powerful pioneer woman like Jane, but a 
 
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 frail school girl. No, not yet. The agony of denial shot 
 through him; with his bare hands he gripped the top of the stove. 
 The iron was only slightly warm; he shook the stove a little 
 and a glare of red flashed behind the isinglass doors and died 
 down again. Then he wheeled from the stove, marched to 
 the windows, looked at the bank of clouds that slanted across 
 the green horizon, glanced below at the passers-by. A pro- 
 cession of wretches shuffled past. . . . 
 
 All the feeling he suppressed seemed to go now to swell 
 his distress at the sight. Democracy! Let the people rule! 
 Who can rule when he has no food in him? Who can rule 
 when he must sleep under wooden walks with the rats and 
 roaches? There were plenty of his own among the twenty 
 thousand out of work, desperate, drinking to forget. 
 
 What could he do here? What had he done? Why, he'd 
 kept Kearney out of that crowd, that was all. Kearney had 
 married a good plain woman who spent her time keeping her 
 husband from grog-shops and from giving away all his new- 
 found money to anyone who asked. Kearney, however, was 
 gone — his inventive power at least; he would sit at his work- 
 table for hours, frowning, not seeming to recall what his tools 
 were for. In a sense all his struggle for Kearney had been 
 useless, for Matthis had already killed the best in the man 
 . . . and yet, though Matthis had done that murder, 
 Charley, on his return from the grand tour of Europe with 
 his father, would join the firm of lawyers retained by Matthis. 
 
 Yes, he'd kept Kearney out of the crowd, Kearney's shell. 
 
 170 
 
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 That was all. . . . But tonight his chance to do more 
 would come. He must hurry to that appointment with Tim. 
 . . . Out on the street the town-crier clanged his bell and 
 droned out about a wandering child, "Lost! Lost! Lost!" A 
 fugitive slave, his clothes jagged by brambles, his feet bound 
 by rags, slunk along in the gutter. A covered wagon that 
 headed east down a side street, lumbered over the frozen No- 
 vember ruts; letters were black on the wagon canvas, "Pike's 
 Peak or Bust," and below, "Busted, by Gosh." ... A 
 drunkard lurched from a Clark Street groggery, and the light 
 from the window showed his face marked by the erysipelas 
 spread by the garbagey river among those already weakened 
 by hunger. . . . 
 
 The sights seemed to rub his soul to soreness till he felt 
 he must act. . . . Here was the hotel where he was to 
 meet Tim and the Fenian. . . . He ran up the square, 
 iron-railed porch of the hotel and entered the lobby. . . . 
 In the jumpy light of gas affected by the first hard frost, this 
 room had the air of appearing and disappearing; now the 
 brass cuspidors, horse-hair chairs, stoves, marble floor, red- 
 carpeted staircase leaped into existence and now there was 
 blackness only. ... As he waited, he picked up an ad- 
 vertisement from a near-by table; the dodger described the 
 hotel: "A bijou of architecture and taste. . . . An exuber- 
 ant larder. . . . Exquisite cuisine. ... A great 
 high school of refinement in which the most hopeless case of 
 mauvaise honte gets his appetites rounded off. A man or 
 
 171 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 woman will learn more of the je ne sais quoi which distinguishes 
 the cosmopolite from the countryman by a brief residence at 
 such an hotel than by making the grand tour of Europe." 
 . . . Chicago, he thought as he listened to the shambling 
 of feet on the wooden walks outside, has forgotten democracy 
 and is putting on airs. . . . 
 
 A blast of cold air made him look up. Tim had entered. 
 He was just off a lake trip, and his cap and clothes were shape- 
 less from wet lake air; his cheeks were unshaved, but his whole 
 face glowed with the freshness of the night and the excite- 
 ment of the evening. He was breathing fast, exhilarated by 
 the prospect of spending an evening with the Fenian and his 
 uncle, perhaps. . . . Coming close, the boy whispered : 
 
 "He's here. Outside. Waiting." 
 
 How real the boy's enthusiasm was! It was something you 
 could hold to; it would keep one from slipping into a nothing- 
 ness where aims threatened to never be realized. 
 
 "He doesn't want to come in — gotten the habit of keeping 
 out of lit-up places — scared of spies, I guess." 
 
 They left the hotel and found the Fenian as he stood on 
 the edge of a circle of light cast by a street lamp. . . . 
 In the flare-up of the street gas, he saw the eyes of the Fenian, 
 shining eyes like Tim's; the hollow cheeks; the strong chin 
 that pushed out the top fold of a long knitted muffler wound 
 round his throat. . . . The eyes shining like Tim's. . . . 
 
 The Fenian took his hand; the other could feel an assured 
 eagerness in the clasp, as if Fenian said, "I, who fought in 
 
 172 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 the Irish rebellion of '48, who was sent in a convict ship to 
 Van Dieman's Land, I have the right to ask help for this 
 cause and expect to get it." 
 
 As the three walked west, on and on till they reached the 
 open prairie, the high wind blew rifts in the black sky. If the 
 cold cut through the tweed suit, the Fenian gave no sign; he 
 was too much concerned with his work to know. 
 
 "Irishmen," the Fenian declared, "must no longer be subject 
 but free, and they must have the chance to be free in their 
 own republic." 
 
 The other breathed sharp and deep; the beat of his heart 
 seemed timed to that of this man he had just met. . . . 
 Continuing, the Fenian told of men all over the world who, 
 roused by news of evictions in the old country, were ready 
 to fight for Irish freedom, to strike at England, to get Canada; 
 there were men who drilled on the slob land near Cork, men 
 who plotted in the Roman-walled town of Chester, men who 
 evaded the "Who goes there?" of the citizen police of Canada, 
 men who plotted for the liberty of Ireland as they worked 
 in the Australian bush. . . . 
 
 Standing on the dark curve of this prairie, you could feel 
 the world turn, and, as it turned, you seemed to breathe the 
 breath of those men sworn to the cause of freedom. . . . 
 
 "We want Americans," the Fenian's voice went on, "to drill 
 men here, to be ready to come over when ordered." 
 
 "To come over" — to go to Ireland — to make Irishmen free. 
 "When ordered" — if he swore the Fenian oath, he would have 
 
 173 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 to go, even if by that time, he had married Marie. . . . 
 Again, he thougnt of the purple blue eyes, and desire shook 
 him, and desire, suppressed, seemed again to return to swell 
 the great demand within him for action. He asked brief 
 questions — recruiting — time of revolt. And all the while with 
 a sort of abrasive pain below his exaltation he thought, "She 
 would have me do what I started out to do." 
 
 174 
 
Douglas sat 
 astride the 
 small chair 
 
 CHAPTER EIGHT 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 FIFTY-SEVEN 
 
 D, 
 
 URING their talk, the men 
 had turned citywards again. Chicago's light sputtered dimly 
 against the dark eastern sky. . . . Now their footsteps 
 echoed on the elevated wooden walks; now, on wooden steps 
 going down to road level. . . . The streets were almost 
 deserted. . . . 
 
 As they neared the hotel, a large figure jounced the steps. 
 A red cigar lit up a shiny face whose small features were al- 
 
 175 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 most lost in rolls of fat. Scottan. Douglas' aide. Was the 
 Little Giant in town then? . . . 
 
 "O'Mara!" Scottan exclaimed; his cigar nearly fell from 
 his mouth; he caught it, knocked at the end with a pudgy finger; 
 and all the time kept approaching with his usual air of special 
 confidence. "Why, I been looking for you all evening. Chief 
 want to see you." 
 
 Douglas wanted to see him? Instinctively, he took a long 
 step toward the hotel, but at once conscious of the questioning 
 eyes of Tim and the Fenian, he stopped, then said, "I'll join 
 you within the hour at Tim's." 
 
 Scottan whispered the Chief's room number, and waved 
 his cigar spark in good night. . . . Within the hotel, gas 
 had completely sputtered out; so a sleepy bell-boy took a lamp 
 whose brown-orange chimney smoked greasily, and lit him up- 
 stairs to Douglas, room. From inside the room, came a pene- 
 trating voice: "Well, Stephen, I thought I was right when 
 I violated that injunction but I was never sure till I heard 
 your speech of defense." . . . On a sofa to one side 
 the fire sat a former mayor, thin, tall, chiefly arms and legs. 
 His gray hair shot up stiff from his forehead; his cheek lines 
 were sunken arcs; his mouth was an inverted U. . . Doug- 
 las sat astride a small chair and grasped the back as if it were 
 the high pommel of a western saddle. His shapely head in 
 air, his small solid figure upright, he might almost have been 
 a model for some equestrian monument with the chair tem- 
 porarily substituting for the horse. . . . 
 
 176 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 The newcomer drew a tufted chair across a carpet of sprawly 
 scrolls, sat himself in the semicircular glow of the fireplace, 
 and waited expectantly. Why did his host want to see him? 
 For nothing, except to chat? Douglas' words were about Kan- 
 sas only, and Kansas was getting to be an old topic. But 
 the Chief talked on : 
 
 "If President Buchanan, as a Southern Democrat, tries to 
 make Kansas decide for a slave constitution, what's left for 
 us Northern Democrats but to break with him? 
 
 "Like the President, the Republicans, too, are after the flesh- 
 pots of Kansas, and they march down there with their Sharpe's 
 rifles to make sure of getting what they want. It's not that 
 way war can be avoided. Best way to silence 'em is to speak. 
 
 "Do you know Abraham Lincoln who does work for the 
 Illinois Central? He says the Union can't go on being half 
 slave and half free — it can't, of course, if Democrats like the 
 President, and these new Republicans won't wait. Well, Lin- 
 coln and I are going to do a little debating; perhaps, then, 
 these extremists may be quieted, and war may be prevented." 
 
 The lawyer jerked out an "Of course war will be prevented." 
 Douglas, a statesman known to America and to all the courts 
 of Europe, a man who had the Presidency within his grasp, 
 would down Lincoln, a virtual nobody. Yet repeating "of 
 course," his mind, in spite of the fact of the presence of Doug- 
 las, kept forgetting him and reverting to the Fenians . . . 
 Australia . . . Canada . . . South America. . . . Silence 
 for a moment; then Douglas asked suddenly: 
 
 177 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "If war broke out, what would the Irish do?" 
 
 The young man snapped to attention. "If war broke out " 
 
 Douglas, the great compromiser, spoke as if there were an 
 actual possibility of war! The Little Giant leaned forward; 
 he still looked as though he were mounted and had now as- 
 sumed command. 
 
 "I warn you," he went on, "secession of the southern states 
 will mean a country broken up, the experiment of democracy 
 definitely ended. I do not know how you feel, but whatever 
 happens to me, personally, I shall continue to believe in de- 
 mocracy and the Union." 
 
 Startled, the young man looked straight into Douglas' 
 eyes. Yes. Douglas believed war possible . . . believed 
 the Union must be saved if the experiment of democracy were 
 to go on. . . . "What would the Irish do?" He thought 
 of the Irish in all the parishes, north, west, southwest, along 
 Archer Road; he thought of Martin and Tim. Ireland. But 
 America, America had meant the only freedom the Irish had 
 known for a thousand years. Almost without volition the words 
 came, like an oath of support: "I, for one, would go, sir." 
 
 Then Douglas said slowly: "I — think — you may — have 
 your chance. . . ." 
 
 178 
 
'The papers don't sound pro-Douglas' 
 
 CHAPTER NINE 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED FIFTY-EIGHT 
 
 Wh 
 
 HEN the debates between 
 Douglas and Lincoln came, Tim, the Fenian, and Jim watched 
 the papers closely. By that time the panic had subsided, and 
 Chicago, less hit than other cities of the world, was returning 
 quickly to normal conditions; such conditions had brought so 
 many cases into his office that he had written to Mrs. Fitzgerald, 
 telling her of his financial condition and asking permission 
 to call again. 
 
 179 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Today, Tim and Martin faced him across a table littered with 
 gray sleazy newspaper, and they, as usual, took the position 
 that Douglas was winning, that there would be no war, for 
 their hope blinded them. They wanted Douglas to win so 
 that there would be no war for the Union and the Irish here 
 would be free to go back to fight for Ireland. . . . But 
 they would be free only after this war was over. 
 
 "But look at this," Tim protested, and pointed a large hard 
 index finger at a paper — The Times, of course. The Times 
 was the Democratic paper. The article told of the last debate 
 in an Illinois town, of the cold September night, of the driz- 
 zling rain, of Douglas, victor over men and weather! Douglas 
 met by crowds carrying a thousand torches! 
 
 In answer, Tim's uncle indicated another sheet; The Tribune, 
 Republican, had counted only seventy-four torches at that 
 same meeting. 
 
 "One hundred and fifty guns were fired in Douglas' honor!" 
 went on Tim as he kept his eyes off the Tribune and read 
 from some other Democratic paper. 
 
 In answer again, Tim's uncle read another item to show 
 the difficulty Democrats had in getting up enough money for 
 the salvo: "For the past month, Democrats have been scrap- 
 ing together all the spare dollars, shillings, dimes, and six- 
 pences that could be obtained . . . bought enough gun 
 powder for the Utah war and shot it off last night." 
 
 Tim was silent. Then the Fenian spoke. His eyes were 
 hard, his chin protruded, his voice was cold. He would have 
 
 180 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 to be convinced; he would not give up hope of immediate 
 victory for the Fenians without fight; he had gone through 
 too much to weaken now. 
 
 "Have you gone Republican perhaps?" 
 
 "No; I shall go Republican when Tim goes Know-Nothing." 
 
 "Your quotations from the papers don't sound pro-Douglas." 
 
 "They weren't. I'm trying to show Tim that Douglas 
 may be losing." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because I think he is." 
 
 "You're not with him!" 
 
 The other, who'd proved his fidelity, tautened, and then re- 
 laxed. How could a stranger know? Besides, it was impor- 
 tant that this man should understand. If he didn't, he might 
 carry off many Irish when they were needed here. 
 
 "Yes, I am. I, too, say, 'Wait; don't go to war.' ' 
 
 "Slavery " 
 
 "Slavery's not the issue; the North had slaves till it found 
 that the wage system was cheaper in the end; it knows the 
 South will eventually find out the the same thing." 
 
 "Then what is " 
 
 "Protective tariff; has been since '28." 
 
 "And given time, the South " 
 
 "The South, too, will take to free labor, factories and pro- 
 tective tariff." 
 
 "Given time!" Tim burst in. "The South'll get time! The 
 Democrats of the North and South together can beat any 
 
 181 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 party going. Douglas '11 be the next President, and he'll 
 give the South time." 
 
 His uncle looked at the boy patiently: "But Douglas as 
 much as said just the other day that a territory can exclude 
 slaves. Hie Southern Democrats won't choose him now; don't 
 you see they won't?" 
 
 He watched realization spread over their faces: The Re- 
 publicans would win because the Democrats would be split 
 into two camps, Southern Democrats and Douglas Democrats. 
 
 But still the Fenian's eye was hard, and now his voice rasped 
 with an insistence borne of years of devotion to one cause: 
 "Whatever happens," he declared; "I will hold that every 
 Irishman's first duty is to Ireland." 
 
 The air of the room was tense; the answer called for caution, 
 if the Irish were not to be divided. . . . The uncle felt 
 rather than saw that his nephew had leaned forward, troubled. 
 Two allegiances. What was a man to do then? To the 
 uncle, the boy seemed like all the Irish in Chicago, merged 
 for a moment into one person. . . . 
 
 At last, the lawyer looked into the Fenian's eyes and asked : 
 "What good are untrained Irishmen to Ireland?" 
 
 With cold eyes kindling, the Fenian studied him: "You 
 mean the Irish should get their training in this war, and then 
 come to fight for Ireland?" 
 
 The other nodded. 
 
 "Would you come?" 
 
 Again, the other nodded. 
 
 182 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 And after a pause, the Fenian said slowly, "I'm likely, then, 
 to offer no opposition." 
 
 Tim was breathing hard. Now, his voice shaky with emo- 
 tion at having two desires reconciled, he put his big hard hand 
 across the table to his uncle. 
 
 "I'll be with you both places, Jim." 
 
 183 
 
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 aa^"^S3 ^s^~ ^L 
 
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 ,i. * • - 
 
 PqbbdbdqS 
 
 "a ki ■* •» w . 
 
 1*11 1 i 
 
 il 
 
 T/it Wigwam, big and barn-like, with imitation turrets 
 
 CHAPTER TEN 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED SIXTY 
 
 A, 
 
 .ND on the day that he resolved 
 to see Mrs. Fitzgerald and to repeat to her that he was doing 
 well in business and meant to marry her daughter, he received 
 a strange note from her. It read: 
 
 "Jim O'Mara, If I was the man Matthis is, I'd hold out. 
 But you're doing better in business, and my girl likes you still. 
 Call soon." 
 
 He went that evening. Through the thin June leaves of 
 the branches of the trees on Washington Street, the moon 
 fell white. Now at an open space you could see the stars; 
 
 184 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 in the blue fabric of the sky, threads had snapped so that 
 the light of heaven came through. 
 
 The Fitzgeralds must be having a party. Windows, and 
 the space in front of the wide open door were yellow with 
 gas light. Like clouds, the skirts of ladies drifted across 
 the lawn; in a game of moonlight croquet, balls cracked to- 
 gether. From within came the tinkle of the megatherium 
 in "Buffalo Gal," and the sound of voices and laughter. 
 
 There stood Marie, on the last doorstep, as if she were 
 waiting. Her white tarlatan caught with rosebuds was airy 
 in the door light. Her high-built hair was covered with fresh 
 flowers. Her pink cheeks were touched by tendrils of curls. 
 Her lips trembled, and her eyes said, "I love you best." 
 
 His hands caught hers, pressing them tight. He held his 
 breath; then he said, "It's been so long, Marie. But now, 
 you will come to me now? You will marry me?" She bent 
 her head, but whether in consent or not, he did not know, 
 only remembering then, that he must add, "I will go to 
 war when it comes." 
 
 She looked up smiling. And he knew, as he felt he had 
 always known, that she would have him hold to his purpose 
 in life, that marriage to her was marriage with his ideal. . . . 
 
 Now out of the doorway sauntered guests, each his plate 
 of slippery ice-cream dotted with red berries. . . . Couples 
 nodded as they passed but kept on with their talking: "See 
 the Madeira Pet? It's just in from Liverpool." . . . "He 
 took all the prizes at the pigeon -shooting match." . . . 
 
 185 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Oh, that night of the bobsled ride!" . . . "And how 
 could I move with my hoop caught on the stair?" 
 
 While the couples went by, she stood so near he felt the 
 tarlatan, harshly soft. All this life he loved because it sur- 
 rounded her. . . . The couples with their lips apart in 
 laughter, with their voices low or lilting. . . . How green 
 came the smell of the fresh-cut flowers! . . . How bright 
 swished the dresses, and how soft and still they became in 
 the darkness! . . . All kept passing down the steps into 
 the shadows of the lawn. . . . Yet she stayed by him, 
 and that alone mattered. . . . 
 
 "Twenty-one!" she exclaimed. "Do you want to marry such 
 an old lady?" 
 
 "Twenty-one" in her mouth had the sound of slapping car- 
 pet-slippers and clattering canes. . . . 
 
 Tonight they stood again on the porch steps, their en- 
 gagement had been announced, and soon they'd have their 
 wedding. Marriage to her was marriage to his ideal. 
 
 Then when the guests again came out, there was only one 
 topic: "Shall you have people with you during the con- 
 vention?" . . . "Railway rates are down; the place will 
 be packed with hurrah-boys." . . . "There'll be forty 
 thousand coming to this town." 
 
 "The vote's being taken!" 
 
 Human telegraph wired word round the city. Everyone 
 who could leave his work went to the Wigwam. . . . 
 
 186 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Here was a cobbler with nails in his mouth. . . . Here was a 
 waiter with a towel on his arm. . . . Here was a clerk 
 with a pencil over his ear. . . . The new State Street 
 horse-cars were jammed till the driver was squeezed to the 
 dashboard; streaks of sweat blackened the brown hair of 
 the horses. Omnibuses were so crowded you'd think the back 
 doors would crash open and the passengers roll out. . . . 
 
 "Sidewalks up, and sidewalks down!" "Yes," one exclaimed 
 to breathless visitors, "Chicago is raising the level some ten 
 feet. She's getting out of the mud." This sidewalk was still 
 down a level with the lake; the next was on piles. This street 
 lay in mud, but the next one was graded. . . . Here was 
 a big hotel that looked as though it had sunk and forced the 
 ground up about it — all the places round were raised. . . . 
 
 The Wigwam! Big and barn-like, with slits of windows 
 and imitation turrets, the frame convention hall threw back 
 the glare of the morning sun of June. . . . Dapper east- 
 erners had stovepipe hats at angles to ward off the sun. Far 
 westerners in furry chaps had five-gallon sombreros to shade 
 their eyes. . . . Round the doors, people were wedged 
 tight. The warmth of the day boiled all the odors. Musk 
 on a dandy's handkerchief was an oily smudge on the air. 
 Sweat on the body and gore on the boots of a stockyards 
 sticker were salty strong. . . . How the scabbard of a 
 trapper's knife dug in the lawyer's hip! The point of a solemn 
 man's cane jabbed the toe of the lawyer's boot. ... A 
 red bandanna mopped the brow of the Hoosier trader in 
 
 187 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 front of him. . . . Silence, till you could hear the click 
 of the telegraph inside the hall. . . . Then the thun- 
 der of a voice followed by shrieks of, "Lincoln! Lincoln! 
 Lincoln!" 
 
 Boom! Cannon at the courthouse, just a block away, let 
 out a blast that reverberated through the plank walk up into 
 their bodies. . . . Cane and red bandanna flew in the 
 air. The dandy kissed the solemn man. The trapper hugged 
 the stockyards killer. . . . Out surged the crowd, people 
 with lifted heads, flushed faces, and eyes a-shine, shouted: 
 "Lincoln! Lincoln! Lincoln!" 
 
 The wires were hot with the news, east and — south. 
 
 188 
 
Greatness 
 cost pain 
 
 CHAPTER ELEVEN 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 SIXTY-ONE 
 
 R 
 
 RISMS of glass, pendant from 
 the chandelier, shone and twinkled in the breeze that blew 
 through the open windows. The looped lace curtains billowed. 
 And the warm spring air murmured with the voices of the 
 mass of people in the street below. 
 
 But Douglas, in the parlor off the Tremont balcony, was 
 
 189 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 not yet ready to speak to them. It was as though he wished 
 to linger with the old friends. Holding to the marble mantel, 
 he chuckled as he told a story to show how he'd swung his 
 aid to the Union: "We came out for the Inauguration oath. 
 I was near the President and saw he held his silk hat, not seem- 
 ing to know what to do with it. So I took and held it for him." 
 
 Never in all his life had be seemed more of a giant than 
 now when he'd given up all hope of fulfillment of the great 
 ambition and granted full help to his rival. . . . Yet, 
 in spite of all the chuckling, there was a peakedness in the 
 swarthy face, a whiteness near the lips, a sinking-in near the 
 temples, a stretching of skin over nose and cheekbones, a 
 flabbiness of flesh about the collar. Greatness cost pain. 
 
 Slowly Douglas strode through the open doors out on 
 the balcony. . . . Down below, the street was massed 
 with faces, these within circles of light from street lamps, 
 and those in squares of light from windows. These people 
 who looked for guidance from this man again, were prayer- 
 fully quiet now. . . . The deep resounding voice: "If 
 war must come, if the bayonet must be used to maintain the 
 Constitution, I can say before God, my conscience is clear. 
 I have struggled long for a peaceful solution of the difficulty. 
 . . . But now, are we to allow our Union to be stricken 
 down?" . . . 
 
 After the speech, Douglas sat at a marble-topped table and 
 wrote a letter to Lincoln; he asked for leave for "James O'Mara 
 to raise a brigade of Irish to fight for the Union." . . . 
 
 190 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 And leave no sooner came than he commenced recruiting. 
 He made a dodger that boys threw on every Irish doorstep: 
 "Rally! All Irishmen in favor of forming a regiment of Irish 
 volunteers to sustain the government of the United States in 
 and through the present war, will rally at North Market Hall 
 the evening of April 20. Come all. For the honor of the 
 Old Land, Rally! Rally for the defense of the New!" 
 
 The regiment was filled that spring evening. . . . 
 
 191 
 
He fell near 
 
 Kernstown 
 
 in the Shenandoah 
 
 CHAPTER TWELVE 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 SIXTY-ONE 
 
 I 
 
 .T WAS to say good-bye Jane 
 had come to the city for, not to cry out, "Don't be going to 
 your death, James. It wasn't for that I worked day and night 
 in the lean-to." He was in the right of it, right being what 
 a man decided between himself and God. 
 
 But as to believing with him that this was a war would 
 keep democracy alive, she thought nothing of the sort. How 
 could that happen, when those who believed in democracy 
 went off to be killed, and those who had no use for democracy, 
 
 192 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 people like Matthis and Freeman, stayed home to survive? 
 
 With all the work he had to do, clearing up his law cases 
 and drilling his men, she couldn't be letting him take the long 
 trip out in the country to see her. So small time he had, indeed, 
 that Agnes said to her, "Let's be driving him to his home 
 and we can talk to him then." 
 
 So Agnes and she rode to the barracks in their surrey. 
 Barracks, was it? An old brewery only. A deserted German 
 brewery on Polk Street, with the sun yellow on the red bricks 
 and on the painted statue of a figure drinking out of a gold 
 goblet, the statue above the doorway. . . . Dust and all, 
 the big windows blazed with the light of the sun, and it 
 going down. . . . 
 
 The surrey stopped in front of the open door, and she could 
 see into a great bare room with strips of light through it. She 
 could hear the scrape of boots gritty on the floor. ... At 
 last the sound of a loud command and of arms being stacked. 
 . . . Then the men came out. Poor Irishmen in poor 
 clothes. Not a bit of money nor uniforms had Washington 
 sent; yet here they were leaving jobs and babies to go off with 
 James. Oh, he must be sure, to take men off so. . . . 
 
 Was he never coming at all? It was hard to tell himself, 
 her eyes not as good as they were. Her hand, grasping the 
 black enamel support of the surrey-top, shook, and the fringe 
 on the canopy swung, for there he was at last with the two 
 hands of him stretched out to her. She wanted to leap out 
 the rig and throw her arms around his neck and cry, "Oh, 
 
 193 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 you'll not be going, James! Tell me you'll not be going!" 
 But before she'd let her tongue say that she'd bite it through. 
 No, she'd sit tight in the buggy, not seeming to care too much, 
 though she couldn't help her lips twitching, nor her voice 
 coming hard as if her throat had turned to metal; all she said 
 was, "J 311168 * dear! It's good to see you." . . . 
 
 Back on the farm, night after night, she sat thinking. . . . 
 Alone. . . . This was the day James and his regiment 
 went off among the first, in box cars toward Missouri. . . . 
 After that, all she knew of what happened was from the 
 dispatches from Wilkie, daily, in the Times. . . . Now 
 they were throwing up a breastworks near Coppertown, Mis- 
 souri, and now the Confederates, three times their force, were 
 closing in on them. . . . Today the Confederates cut them 
 off from the river, and the next day under a hot sun, they 
 stood siege, and the next and the next and the next till the 
 hurt men tried to drink the water their wounds were washed 
 in. . . . Today, no relief, nor the next nor the next, though 
 a neighboring city swarmed with Union soldiers wanting action; 
 at last, on the ninth day, surrender. . . . Then the exchange 
 of prisoners, and James coming home, thank God! 
 
 The city itself went mad over the men; they being untrained 
 soldiers who had resisted a long siege. That was the spirit 
 of the Union, the city said — all but a few Know-Nothings who 
 hated the honor James got, called him a foreigner, a damned 
 Irish Catholic, demanded troops be officered by "white men," 
 and said to Lincoln, it was rumored, "Don't let foreigners 
 
 194 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 organize again. Military law says, a captured regiment can 
 not be re-mustered." 
 
 Well, thank God for the Know-Nothings! was what she 
 thought. . . . Why should James return? He'd done 
 enough. All the beauty and fineness of him, and him to be 
 killed only! If he went this time, he'd not be coming back 
 again. . . . These thoughts were in her mind night after 
 night on the farm, her being the last one up, her pulling the 
 kitchen lamp down on its metal chains, blowing it out, and 
 standing there with blackness rising round her. 
 
 But James, not to be put down, went straight to Lincoln and 
 soon from Washington came a big letter addressed in James' 
 black firm hand, and she was afraid to crack it open. When 
 the foolscap was before her, all the words swam together, but 
 she passed the back of her hand across her eyes. . . . What 
 was it then? . . . He'd seen Lincoln. . . . "Lincoln 
 said, 'Don't know where we're going to get the money to pay 
 all the troops.' Then he walked down the room, and when 
 he turned, he added gloomily, 'The bottom will fall out of 
 this pot, by jingo!' Stopping before me, he went on, 'O'Mara, 
 we have plenty of men; I'll make you a brigadier and let the 
 regiment go.' I shook my head and answered, 'The regiment 
 stayed with me when I had no money to pay it; now I'll stay 
 with the regiment/ At last Lincoln said, 'Colonel, you're an 
 Illinois lawyer and out in Illinois you know, they have mast- 
 fed hogs and corn-fed hogs, and the corn-fed hogs are the 
 best. Now I'm only a mast-fed lawyer in these military 
 
 195 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 questions. See McClellan; he's a corn-fed lawyer, and what- 
 ever he does will be all right.' 
 
 "So I saw McClellan and he re-instated the regiment. . . ." 
 
 And then things happened as she knew they would. He 
 fell near Kernstown in the Shenandoah. They brought him 
 back. That was something. Wasn't Mary Ellen's Tim buried 
 where he lay, in an unmarked grave? Him and hundreds 
 more? 
 
 Aye, now the time was here, everything seemed as if it had 
 all taken place before, so often she was dull from it. . . . 
 
 She rode in the steam cars to Chicago for the funeral, 
 feeling as if she had never entered the place before, looking 
 at it, listening to things said about it as if she was a stranger. 
 . . . "Nine roads entering the city now." . . . Agnes 
 drove her from her place on the north side to the house on 
 Washington Street. . . . 
 
 A steamy hot July morning it was, the mist holding down 
 the street and river smells and making her, fresh from the 
 country, feel sick; as they crossed the pivot bridge at Clark, 
 there was the sewer odor, and as they came on the south side, 
 the stockyards. Many of the stockyards had come together 
 now, putting down better roads and drawing up better water 
 for cattle than the humans in the city had. . . . 
 
 Heavy dust from the unswept dirt and manure of the road 
 rose in clouds and stuck to her hot face. . . . They passed 
 Lake Street, the best business street, looked well with its four- 
 story buildings. . . . Then the rig jerked over the horse-car 
 
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LAKE FRONT 
 
 tracks at Randolph Street, and after Randolph, Clark was paved 
 with wooden blocks instead of cobblestones; the driving was 
 quieter, but there were many lurching holes. . . . 
 
 To the right was the big stone courthouse with its basement 
 and the three stories and high tower from which you could look 
 out at all the city. . . . The fountain in the square was dry, 
 and the grass and trees, seared-looking. . . . Not so long 
 ago, she'd been to the top of the courthouse. She'd seen 
 blocks and blocks of houses, square blocks as if they'd been 
 laid out by the carpenter's rule; the streets were settled almost 
 solid three miles from the center, and there were four or five 
 roads like Clark that had houses much farther out. . . . 
 Near at hand were the flat roofs of business buildings with 
 high points like the Sherman House, and the grain elevators, 
 and the shot tower over west; factories strung along the south 
 branch. . . . Some of the new buildings looked fine enough 
 with heavy cornices that seemed to be of carved stone, but 
 sometimes heavy cornices rattled to the ground, come a high 
 wind, and anybody could see they were of hollow tin only. 
 . . . The square had changed little during the war. Here 
 on Clark were business buildings; on Washington, original 
 prairie a dozen feet below street level; on LaSalle, forsaken 
 homes; on Randolph, between upstanding corner buildings, 
 two-story tumble-down frames that had been there since the 
 thirties; now they had the greasy windows of free-lunch resorts 
 below, and above, the shingles of shyster lawyers. . . . 
 
 Now and again Agnes pointed out people on the street. 
 
 197 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 There was a bounty broker who dealt in human flesh for the 
 war. There were Canadians down for the big war-wages. . . . 
 "See that man?" asked Agnes. "He's the biggest banker in 
 town." And she whispered in an awed way as if he was God 
 Almighty. . . . Then she threw her hand out southeast 
 in the direction where the new marble terraces were; they were 
 homes set in a row flush with the street, not like decent homes 
 by themselves in big yards with trees around them, but 
 glittering palaces that flaunted their riches on the curbstone. 
 "The Freemans and Matthis live over there." 
 
 And James? James was gone. He was dead in this house 
 they'd just stopped at. . . . Rigs and people were thick 
 about the place. The grass in front was matted from people 
 standing on it. She got out, with them all stiff and silent — 
 They'd know better what to do if she cried or fainted. . . . 
 
 From an open window came the cry of James' baby, a 
 boy. . . . 
 
 The whimper rose to a whine till you'd say the child was a 
 weakling only, and none of James in him. 
 
 198 
 
B 
 
 ART THREE 
 
The fountain 
 Cupid had a 
 white cap and 
 epaulets 
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 SEVENTY-SEVEN 
 
 A 
 
 SOLDIER'S son shouldn't 
 mind about being poor," thought the seventeen-year-old boy 
 as he sat on the hard carpet seat of the street car, beside him 
 the box of New Year's cards his mother wanted him to deliver, 
 "and saints don't. And I'm going to be a saint." 
 The starched ends of his frayed collar prickled his neck. 
 
 201 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 The icy air from the window crack behind him got under his 
 thin suit and settled like damp cold underwear next his skin. 
 He kicked his numb feet in the musty straw of the street car 
 floor; then he twisted sidewise so that his back would be against 
 the stove. 
 
 This was the street! He jumped up. The driver shouted, 
 "Whoa!" The car jerked to a stop, and the tinkle on the 
 horse's collar stopped. He plunged off. Just like a Sunday 
 morning. Quiet. All the way from State Street to the Avenue, 
 his feet were the first to make holes in the dry sugar-dusty snow. 
 
 The Avenue, too, was still. On the east, piles of snow that 
 the railway trains had plowed clear, and a lake that seethed 
 under ice cakes. On the west side was this flat-faced stone 
 row of houses. He had to leave a card here. As he dropped 
 the greeting into the basket of gilded grass that hung on the 
 door, he thought, "Not everyone who lives here is rich." This 
 family, having lost much money in the panics of the seventies, 
 kept boarders, or companions as they were called on the Avenue, 
 and tried to keep up appearances. But next door lived the 
 wealthy Mrs. Byers, guardian of Elizabeth, the little orphan 
 girl his mother said she hoped he'd marry some day. Elizabeth 
 was rich. That was why. 
 
 Kicking the snow, he came to a large house with a mansard 
 roof, entered the south gate and went up the drive. What a 
 big place! There were mounds of snow; the fountain Cupid 
 had a white cap and epaulets, and a conch shell filled with 
 drift. Behind a barred basement window beneath a high 
 
 202 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 verandah, a hired girl ironed at a padded table; she never had 
 to answer the doorbell for there was a butler there, Chicago's 
 first butler. . . . What if the owner, Mr. Matthis, were 
 you, and you had all those servants to do your bidding. Your 
 chest swelled at the thought. People said that Mr. Matthis 
 wanted to marry your mother. That wouldn't be right; a long 
 time ago, your father had fought Matthis in the courts. 
 However, your mother urged, "Let bygones be bygones. I'm 
 sure Mr. Matthis will be very glad to give you a start when 
 the time comes." . . . Somehow the place took the boy's 
 mind off wanting to be a saint; it thrilled him, down to his very 
 hands so that his fingers stretched out as if they wanted to 
 grasp things. When he left the gate, he shuddered a little, 
 feeling as if he had been on a high mountain with the devil 
 showing him the kingdoms of the earth. . . . 
 
 Across the street, the glass domes of the Exposition building 
 were bright in the sun. He recalled all the machinery and 
 pictures he had seen exhibited inside and remembered the big 
 sign hung with red bunting; it ran: "Chicago Smelts for 
 Colorado and Four Iron Regions, Tans for Texas and the 
 Northwest, and Packs for All Christendom." . . . After 
 boarding a car at Washington Street, he went through the 
 tunnel under the river and came out at a place on the West 
 Side where factories were mixed up with shops and shacks. 
 He looked at the skinned carcasses hanging before meat shops, 
 heard noon church bells ring, and began to say the Angelus, 
 "The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary. . . ." Here 
 
 203 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 was a tar-paper shanty black against the snow; thin smoke 
 spread out from a tin-capped chimney; a goat huddled near 
 the door. The Kearneys lived here. Old man Kearney had 
 gone through his little money and died; the son followed you 
 about at school. Leave a card? They'd like it, and why not 
 the poor as well as the rich? 
 
 Then over to Ashland Boulevard where the Kentuckians 
 lived. . . . And home. . . . The story-and-a-half 
 house was way out on Wabash Avenue; beyond were bigger 
 residences, shadows in oak groves. . . . Within his home, 
 he found everything in readiness for the afternoon callers, 
 even to the fine fire blazing on the hearth. He looked about: 
 The Nile green carpet, the William Morris brown paper, the 
 cheesecloth curtains that draped the long front windows. The 
 second-hand spinning wheel to one side the iron mantel, and 
 the pink bow that tied up the fuzzy gray spindle. The brown 
 sewer-tiling filled with cat-tails and the gilded chopping bowl 
 on the mantel with the plaque of purple pansies hanging just 
 above. The armless ebonized chairs with backs that slanted 
 till they made you feel as if you were at the dentist's. The 
 gilded milking stool gartered with pink ribbon. . . . He 
 did not like this room. 
 
 As he spread out his red tendony fingers over the fire, he 
 heard his grandmother and mother move about upstairs; they 
 were putting on their best dresses. . . . Slow drag of a 
 velvet train on the stairs, then his mother appeared at the 
 brown chenille portieres with the air of one who waits to be 
 
 204 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 admired; the chestnut curls in the waterfall coiffure still bobbed 
 a little. How white her bosom was against that square-cut 
 black gown! As she swept into the room, he could see by 
 the harsh early afternoon light that the dress was old, that 
 the pile was worn off at the elbows and at the folds of the 
 big bustle. . . . She exclaimed "James dear, just in time! 
 Get the ink. My right elbow is showing through. See where 
 the white speck is." How he hated the feel of velvet against 
 his finger-nails! And how he liked her gallantry! 
 
 After he had inked the spot, she asked him to shutter the 
 windows and light the gas for the party. And then he had 
 to dress. The scorch he'd made when he pressed that suit 
 last was very noticeable. Even in the gas light you could 
 see the pointed brown mark on the wiry gray and black mixture. 
 However, he'd have to wear it. He must be above poverty. 
 Like great men. Like saints. When he opened the door, let 
 all guests look! Why should he care? 
 
 Jingle of sleigh-bells stopped before the house. Now the 
 shadow of a man zig-zagged across the glass — someone who'd 
 taken too many egg-nogs with the Kentuckians on Ashland 
 Boulevard. Now ladies in tilted plumed hats, in fur coats 
 frou-froued up the stairs. Often the door-opening flashed white 
 and cold; often the hallway seemed darker than before, with 
 starey white lumps of snow melting on the carpet. 
 
 This marble seat of the hat-stand was cold. And these 
 hillsides of coats smelled damp. Surely no more guests would 
 come now. He would go in. To the right of the door, Mrs. 
 
 205 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Byers stood near her brother, Mr. Gregor — Matthis' rival in 
 the car-parts business. He was a stocky red-faced man with 
 a loud voice and sharp eyes. Now he stared at a florid woman 
 with jewels on her bare neck and snorted, as Mrs. Byers tried 
 to hush him, "Diamonds on raw beef!" 
 
 To the left of the door, an Indian fighter, stiff from old 
 wounds, jerked himself into the circle about the boy's mother, 
 bowed till his brown beak and white goatee were close above 
 her hand, and tremuloed, "Sheba's queen had not a tithe your 
 charm." 
 
 Then he passed two men, one of whom said, "John, the 
 banker, is a good man and keeps the Sabbath." And the other 
 returned, "Aye, and every other dom thing he can lay his 
 hands on." 
 
 A large woman, with a Get-thee-behind-me-Satan manner, 
 decreed, "No one who goes to see Sarah Bernhardt is a fit 
 guest for my dinner table." 
 
 When he had nearly reached the fireplace, a sudden move- 
 ment in the room caused him to turn. He saw the portiere whip 
 back as though someone had left in a rush. A girl's voice 
 rose high from the hallway, "Don't! Don't! My mamma won't 
 like it!" Then some big bass boomed, "O, to hell with your 
 mama! 
 
 Sounded like the packer. Of course, no one would say 
 anything to him because he was rich and important. . . . 
 It must be fun to keep people cowed by your power. Why 
 was it that whenever he was with people like these, the desire 
 
 206 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 to become very rich almost overwhelmed him? The thought 
 was a temptation, and saints fled from temptation. . . . 
 Turning from the fireplace, he hurried to his room, the center 
 of the three under the roof. The place was dark, and, as 
 usual on a party day, his mother had filled his room with all 
 the unpresentable furniture of the house. After he lit the 
 gas, he sank into one of the old chairs, plucked at the shreds 
 of fabric on the arms. He watched the saw-tooth of yellow 
 flame and the shine it made on the green-painted slope of the 
 wall, on the snow-laden glass of the sky-light. . . . 
 
 Up here he could think of the world he would help make, 
 where there would be no poverty, but well-being only, no hate 
 but love instead. Impossible? Why nothing was impossible 
 with God! 
 
 207 
 
The high chimneys 
 of the great Reaper 
 plant 
 
 CHAPTER TWO 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 EIGHTY-SIX 
 
 N, 
 
 INE years passed. . . . 
 Some of his hours he spent at the Chicago University, near 
 the blue lake, under the scrub oak trees; the rest of the day, 
 he gave to newspaper assignments. In these slack times, he 
 would not have had even this reporting job if it hadn't been 
 for Michael, Aunt Jane's son. And of course, he must work 
 
 208 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 his way, but strikes, strikes, strikes — Was there no other news 
 in town? 
 
 Now, out on the prairie, somewhere along Blue Island 
 Avenue, perhaps near the Black Road, he must find a mob 
 of men and their anarchist leaders. . . . Day after day, 
 he was in the thick of the fighting; he heard the strikers call 
 for dynamite to throw at the rich, he saw the police club and 
 shoot the strikers, he watched the men on the paper write such 
 things as "Feed these men out of work — feed 'em strychnine — 
 feed 'em lead." . . . Nowadays some people were turning 
 atheist because of Bob Ingersoll's lectures at the Haverly Opera 
 House. But it was clash like this fighting for food in a land 
 of plenty that made you doubt. 
 
 This avenue diagonaled from the city away out across the 
 countryside. It was a rutty road, with puddles whipped to 
 silver cord, or gray-white with scudding clouds. Occasional 
 stores pressed close to the wooden walk, and you got the dry 
 smell of hay-and-feed shops or leathery whiffs from saddleries; 
 next these, were vacant lots that lay lower than the walk, vacant 
 lots where grass was green beneath the brown criss-crossed 
 stems of last year's weeds. Far down the road against a white 
 horizon jutted a bridge over the southwest river branch, and 
 to the right of the bridge smoked the high chimneys of the 
 great Reaper plant. Since the Civil War, factories had risen 
 here in no time, as if soot specks from the city were so many 
 fertile spores that sank to the ground and grew to be smoke 
 stacks. ... It was smoke from these river chimneys that 
 
 209 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 smarted the eyes of the strikers. Scabs ran the place full blast. 
 Union men had been out since February, striking for shorter 
 hours. And now May was at hand. . . . 
 
 Who was that man ahead? The gray-streaked beard that 
 blew back over the bent shoulders had a familiar look; to 
 whom did it belong? To Harris? Once Harris had been a 
 weaver in Lancashire and now he was an anarchist-saint in 
 Chicago. This venerable an anarchist? It was as hard to 
 give him the name as it was easy to grant it to leaders like 
 Glomski, the iron-forger from Poland, or to Frederic, the 
 illegitimate son of a German noble. . . . He caught up 
 to the weaver. "Hello." 
 
 "Why are you here?" The patriarch gimleted the reporter 
 with his eyes, but everyone knew this man's fierceness never 
 lasted; sight of his opponent always changed his mind; he 
 seemed to think, "Another mortal is nothing to fight with. 
 . . ." He liked to be with this old man who, though he 
 was no believer in God, wanted the Brotherhood of Man right 
 enough. 
 
 "I'm here to earn my pay-check," answered the young man. 
 That was the truth. So much did he hate these clashes that 
 he wished at times to shrink in size and hide away in some 
 dark spot forever. This thought recurred lately as if he once 
 had been happy in such hiding and longed to be again — a 
 dark place that fitted closely round him. . . . Saints 
 wouldn't hide away. But saints were sure of God and lately 
 he — he was sure of nothing, feared everything. 
 
 210 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "There'll be no trouble today," said Harris pulling his 
 flying coat about him, "unless your police start it." 
 
 His police? Even as a child, he'd shrunk from them as 
 he had from teachers — people who could make you do what 
 you didn't want. Now, overwrought from his double work 
 on the paper and at the university, he felt terror at bluecoats 
 and strikers till the whole city seemed a huge kennel where 
 dogs snarled, sprang at one another's throats, chewed bloody 
 flesh down to the bone. Dog eat dog. Sometimes he found 
 himself suddenly awake in the night time, thinking of jaws 
 that dripped, of a world that smelled of blood and death. 
 
 "If you want a real strike story," Harris went on, "get away 
 from the noise; get into the homes around. Think of Glomski's 
 wife, sick, hungry, but telling him to go fighting " 
 
 Fah! Even if the Pole hadn't struck, the chances were he'd 
 be without work. What with panics, with new machinery, there 
 were few jobs left. And small hope of betterment now in the 
 West. The frontier was gone for good; men had to stay home 
 and grab from one another. . . . Yet it was nice of the 
 old man to feel that people mattered; if they did, perhaps a 
 God made 'em. 
 
 He must remember this drug store with its mortar and 
 pestle that swung dirty gold against the gray slab-front, with 
 its glass globes red and blue in the window; he could telephone 
 his story in from there. . . . How bright green the branches 
 of that stunted prairie tree! . . . Here were strikers' homes, 
 a row of cottages with gray paint washed thin by rains and 
 
 211 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 blistered to bare spots by summer suns; from the sidewalk, 
 gangways led across yards to front doors; next the gangways 
 were steps that went down to the yards. On one of these 
 stairways stood a woman whose loose gray wrapper was pulled 
 close by the wind; she was a pregnant woman, ugly molder 
 of the striking breed, and one with the prairie, one with the 
 wind. . . . 
 
 Why did she gnaw the knuckles of her red hand and stare 
 this way and that through her blowing wisps of hair? Now 
 she extended her foot on the wood, threw her whole weight on 
 it till the gray felt slipper spread as far as it would go; yet 
 she held back as if she were chained. 
 
 As the woman recognized the old man, she tossed up big 
 arms bare to the elbows, clasped her hands, and whimpered 
 with relief. Padding forward, she jerked her head toward the 
 house and cried, "Glomski, his wife, she dying. I'm afraid. 
 Come in to her." 
 
 On his run to the steps, Harris stopped short and said to 
 the young man — was it with a sneer or with a hope that sight 
 of these homes might make reporters different? "Here is a 
 story for you, 'Wife of Strike Leader Dies as He Harangues 
 Mob.' " 
 
 Mud bubbled round the plank that led to the gangway to 
 the basement door, in the narrow hallway you could discern 
 the smudge that ran hand-high along the white-washed wall. 
 Now the fresh wind eddied through the place, and now the 
 stale sweetish smell of poverty filled your nostrils. . . . 
 
 212 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 How dark and still the back room was! When a person was 
 dying, didn't breath come hard? But as they paused in the 
 darkness, he could hear no sound. . . . Pin pricks of light 
 showed through the window shade; the old man shuffled across 
 the bare floor and jerked at the blind. How heavy-handed 
 he was. With loud clicks, the thing snapped up and spun 
 round and round and round. But he couldn't stare forever 
 at the shade. . . . 
 
 On a mattress in the corner, a woman lay with her light hair 
 spread about the pillow ticking. . . . His nails jabbed into 
 his palms as if to hold a scream there. ... A brown blanket 
 was drawn over her; a clay-colored wrapper was about her 
 shoulders, but it was undone, and at her breast a baby sucked; 
 you could see the soft roundness move with the infant's lips, 
 but of itself the white curve did not move. . . . 
 
 213 
 
A mass of upraised fists, then Frederic rose above them 
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED EICHTY-SIX 
 
 H 
 
 .ALF-SOBBING, James ran 
 toward the strikers' mob. The woman back there lay dead. 
 He must find the Pole and tell him to go home to her. 
 
 Rumble of thunder or men sounded close at hand, and at 
 the next side road he turned right. ... A great lager beer 
 goblet sign hung out over the porch of the corner roadhouse 
 and creaked in the wind. How littered the backyard was with 
 tin cans and papers! But who minded anything that happened 
 away out here? . . . 
 
 After that back room, he thought he'd be glad to be with 
 
 214 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 the mob again, with people who lived and breathed, but now 
 that he saw it as it swayed there on the prairie, he feared it, 
 wanted to flee from it. It was a monster made of men. . . . 
 Jumping the road ditch, he sank into the spongy green and 
 then sped around the edge of the thousands gathered there. 
 . . . He searched the crowd with his eyes, for the Pole 
 might be among these men here. No? Perhaps, then, he 
 was with the speakers. . . . Behind the ladder used as a 
 rostrum, there was a place he could get through. Fah! The 
 smell of these strikers was the smell of a herd. With their 
 shaggy beards and nodding heads, these men were buffalo 
 who stamped and bellowed, ready to charge. Nothing but 
 clash here, nothing but hate. Would life ever be anything 
 else but this? . . . 
 
 Caught midway in the crowd, he heard the thick voice of 
 the speaker as he ended his harangue, "No more words! Let 
 us henceforth speak with guns!" Then the agitator turned 
 to jump from the ladder. Glomski! You could tell by the 
 yellow stubble on the bullet head, by the red scar on the pallid 
 cheek -hide. "Glomski!" But the wind carried the sound away. 
 Then the mob surged forward to hear the new man, and 
 swallowed up the other. . . . Even when he'd fought through 
 to the front, he could not find the one he must speak to. . . . 
 
 He mustn't look any more, for he had his job, and this 
 anarchist now on the ladder always made copy; he was a 
 man who did more than talk bombs, he made them, fashioned 
 them with those tapered fingers that rested white on the ladder 
 
 215 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 top. Did they touch lightly on wood only? They'd seem 
 in their right place if they clutched at throat flesh. . . . 
 Tawny, Frederic's hair and beard waved in the wind there; 
 eyes a-slant in his pointed face, glared blue and malignant; 
 curve of the body made you think of steel springs. . . . 
 Now the crowd was quiet, he molded words and flung them 
 out as far as they would go; he said: "Dynamite in a lead 
 bomb is more powerful than guns. Don't forget it." That 
 was all. He leaped to earth. But with one sharp thrust, he'd 
 forked the cattle hide. 
 
 Now, O God, the herd stampeded with the cry : "On to the 
 factory! Get the damned scabs!" The mob struck the ladder, 
 which toppled but couldn't fall because of the men beneath. 
 
 Hurled across the prairie against a wooden walk, he kneed 
 his way up and stood to search the crowd below. . . . 
 There was someone he must find; it was important. . . . 
 Now he was flung into the watery road ditch, but he clutched 
 the street stones and got to his feet. Why did his hands 
 hurt? All skinned and bloody. His body shivered as the 
 wind struck his wet clothes. "Where's Glomski?" No man 
 answered, but the monster mob roared out, "Scabs! Scabs! 
 Get the damned scabs!" And all the while, the woman lay 
 dead on the mattress. "Where is Glomski?" 
 
 Smoke from the factory chimneys ahead was black as 
 anarchists' flags. . . . Clashes were his job. Not caring. 
 What did the dead wife of a Polak matter? Wasn't the 
 rule of life, "Kill, or be killed?" His work was to get the 
 
 216 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 setting for the slaughter. . . . Up on the turret of the 
 main plant, a man bent to shout below. This side the iron 
 bridge — you could see the masts of a river boat — the mob 
 swept toward the factory at the right. Horses being driven 
 from the stable-office building near the street, reared in the 
 air. Freight-handlers on the platform of the receiving-house 
 ahead jumped within doors and crashed them shut. The 
 engineer of a train that puffed out between receiving-shed 
 and main plant, jammed on the brakes; you could hear clash 
 after clash of the couplings of the cars behind; you could 
 see the engineer leap and run from the cab. Men, Pinker- 
 tons, maybe, watched from the covered bridges flung from 
 shed to factory. 
 
 Now the scene was set, the act would commence. "Feel 
 like an old reporter, scornful and apart, and your job won't 
 hurt you so." ... A mass of upraised fists, then Fred- 
 eric rose above them, must be up on the receiving platform. 
 . . . Some men, crowding forward, tripped and fell on 
 the steel tracks of the yards. Now Frederic shot up a hand, 
 and the yelp of "Scab!" was cut off as with a valve. Silence 
 obtained — Silence? Whistles of the factory were opened, fog- 
 horn on the river was let loose. . . . The man on the 
 platform did not wait long for the sound to cease but jumped 
 down into the mob and rose with a jagged rock held high 
 in his hand. Sign enough for the strikers; they squatted along 
 the railway ties and clawed for stones. . . . The fight 
 was on. . . . 
 
 217 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 He ran to the office building, opened a door, slammed it, 
 tried the next, and found it locked. Trapped like a rat in 
 the vestibule, he crouched, watched a panel of the outer door 
 crack as a stone was heaved against it, saw splinters of wood 
 needle into the dark. He listened to sounds as they fought 
 one another. Shriek of whistle, moan of foghorn against 
 clang and batter and crash of rocks, then there was a sudden 
 let-up in the roar, and sharp scattered shouts of warning. 
 . . . Opening the door a slit, he saw workers drop their 
 stones, bend, and run toward the bridge, or back away with 
 their hands in the air. . . . Like a man possessed, a 
 yellow-haired worker shook his fist toward the north. . . . 
 Bluecoats! By the hundreds, afoot, and in open patrols. Po- 
 lice in a wagon raised their guns, and before he'd banged 
 the door shut, he'd seen a body curl and drop. . . . Now 
 the reporter pressed back against the cold plaster wall of the 
 vestibule and retreated at the crack of guns. . . . Should 
 he be out there? He had something to tell someone. Quite 
 important. . . . When quiet came too soon, he leaned 
 heavily on the doorknob. "Turn it now; will you never get 
 out?" . . . How clear a cloudy day could be! Though 
 the light was gray, it denned the bodies with great distinctness. 
 . . . God! He'd nearly tripped on a dead man whose coat 
 had flopped up till you could see the suspenders brown against 
 his blue shirt. . . . Here and there, men who were only 
 wounded, tried to stomach themselves away unseen; you could 
 see the flash of an eye near the ground and the inching 
 
 218 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 along of the body. . . . To the right, before the stable 
 door, police stood over a dark heap, and a voice triumphed 
 on the wind: "It was me who got him." ... As the 
 reporter joined the group, a policeman turned the body over 
 with his foot; and in the turning, cinders squeaked and the 
 man's trousers, stiff and rusted, with holes burnt in them, 
 stuck up oddly; the yellow head plopped back on a heap of 
 flattened horse manure; you could see the pale cheek had 
 a deep scar. . . . The man was the iron-forger. . . . 
 Trie man was Glomski! . . . 
 
 "Hurry up if you want to make the next edition. Who 
 are the rest of the dead?" . . . Names in his pocket, he 
 ran down the street to telephone. . . . News banged in 
 his head, trying to get out — yet there had been something 
 he'd meant to do, important, too. What was it? . . . 
 See the lone stunted prairie tree that lies in the wind there. 
 It was near the cottage where he'd been this afternoon. A 
 woman had died. Then her husband had been shot. Some- 
 one in that house would want to know and get his body 
 from the morgue. . . . 
 
 He jumped down the steps, and knocked. The basement 
 door opened to a yellow crack only, but the scared eye of 
 the neighbor woman recognized him. No sooner had he 
 said, "Glomski," however, than she burst into foreign jabber 
 and prevented his news. Perhaps there would be some one 
 in the back room 
 
 From behind the closed door of the front half of the base- 
 
 219 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 ment sounded the sawing of boards. . . . Did very poor 
 people make coffins for their dead? . . . Across the 
 threshold of the back room a soft light trembled, and when 
 he entered there, he saw that candles had been placed at 
 each side the mattress; a clean sheet had been drawn over the 
 dead woman and on the smudged whitwashed wall above 
 her head, a crucifix had been nailed — the white china Christ 
 almost breathed in the candle light. . . . Against the 
 glow, knelt broad peasant women who mumbled the rosary 
 and counted Aves on big black beads — one woman without 
 beads used her blunt fingers. 
 
 To their prayers, the wind outside wailed an antiphon. 
 As he listened, he grew rigid. Other sounds came from with- 
 out, and he distinguished them; he knew why the neighbor 
 woman had refused to heed the name of Glomski, why there 
 was quick sawing of the coffin boards. The law might come 
 and accuse her of scheming with agitators. So she would 
 remove all trace of them. From the yard, the plunge of a 
 spade in the earth, the grate of dirt against iron, the thud 
 of spadefuls on the ground. 
 
 220 
 
"Metal stars! 
 Police'. Here 
 they cornel" 
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 EIGHTY-SIX 
 
 Th 
 
 .HE dodger in the reporter's 
 pocket read, "Revenge." Haymarket Square swam in the 
 wet dusk, the windows of the buildings like eyes of dead fish. 
 All kinds of buildings were there — rough gray stone places 
 like the big meat market, a few red brick piles like the soap 
 store, and little frame shops. . . . 
 
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 A horse clunked down the wooden ramp of a livery stable, 
 then clanged its hoofs on the stone cobbles. A farmer led 
 the beast to one of the produce wagons in the Square, backed 
 it between the shafts, snapped the harness buckles, and stepped 
 from the axle to the high seat. Before he rattled away, he 
 stuck out his hand as though he was sure the rain must 
 fall at last. . . . 
 
 Cobbles were littered with hay that speared from little light- 
 colored drifts. Egg-shells were in sharp white bits. Papers 
 stuck like skin to the street. . . . Overhead, the telegraph 
 wires on the stark poles buzzed, and at hand the water in the 
 iron fountain gurgled. . . . 
 
 After watching the water swill over the brim of the horses' 
 trough, the reporter idly squeezed the brass ears of the faucet 
 on the sidewalk half of the fountain. He listened to liquid 
 hit tin, and when the cup was filled, he suddenly let it clatter 
 the length of its brass chain. 
 
 Then, at once, as if he must go back to what was there, 
 his freed right hand plunged into his pocket. Feeling the 
 limp sheet there, he saw it again in fancy, its big black word, 
 "Revenge!" It sentences read, "Your masters sent out their 
 bloodhounds, the police . . . they killed six of your 
 brothers at the Reaper factory. . . . To arms!" 
 
 "They'll meet tonight. Here!" he agonized, "Why do you 
 stand doing nothing!" To the south of him on Desplaines 
 Street, was the police station. He'd just been there, found 
 it crammed with five companies held in reserve; police on 
 
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 edge with long strike hours, police craving the word go. One 
 man had said, "Gatlings do good jobs on streets full of 
 strikers." Another, his voice frayed like the end of a new- 
 cut picture wire, had jabbed your ear with, "Wish we'd get 
 a thousand of 'em without their women or damned brats about. 
 We'd make short work." 
 
 To the north on Desplaines, a little beyond the Square was 
 the place the meeting would be held. To the north — why, 
 there was Frederic! Like a Lincoln Park lion, he curved about 
 the warehouse on the northeast corner and went up Des- 
 plaines Street. . . . "You're following, you fool. You 
 want to talk to him, this anarchist never known to open his 
 mouth to reporters; you think that even if he won't listen to 
 words, he must heed the horror in you " 
 
 Why shouldn't he listen to you? You understood how 
 things were with him. A copper had told you about that 
 packet of letters that showed how the anarchist had begged 
 his mother to get his birth legalized, how the woman, after 
 long delay, had made her working-man husband swear that 
 her child by the nobleman had been his. But that paper- 
 certificate — that had been no shield against the knife-word, 
 bastard. That slit through his sullen strength, made him 
 scream out cries, never about the thing that hurt, always of 
 wrongs done to mobs. . . . 
 
 You followed him into the dark street. . . . Deserted 
 factories entombed the road, and street lamps were like candles 
 set apart in a crypt. . . . This man ahead walked to 
 
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 the rhythm of his creed, "Masters own our tools, can give us 
 bread or keep it; gunpowder granted the middle class freedom; 
 dynamite will free us." . . . 
 
 But — What? — Between you and the man you trailed ran 
 a third form, came at you, collided, cursed. Dim gold laurel 
 wreath and shiny stiff visor of a cap, breath from hot nostrils. 
 Desplaines officer. Had he darted from some alleyway? He 
 panted, "O'Mara! This meeting's a blind. Their real plan's 
 to attack the yards tonight." And then he rushed on south 
 toward the station. Hadn't he seen the man ahead? 
 
 Now the anarchist's figure was clear in the green-yellow 
 light from the window of the saloon at the corner. . . . 
 What a sick odor of old garbage here! Alley, back of ware- 
 house. . . . Then someone else — companion of the officer, 
 perhaps? — emerged from the muddy alleyway, pulled his foot 
 to the walk as though he drew it from black dough. Man 
 from the Times. "Bunk to watch this place. They'll be 
 out near the Reaper factory, out near the Black Road tonight." 
 Then he swerved toward the Square and disappeared. . . . 
 And Frederic, too, was gone. . . . 
 
 Had he turned the corner or entered the saloon? . . . 
 Rail yards. Black Road? Where the story would be the 
 man you followed knew. WTiat the story would be — he knew 
 that, too. . . . Beyond the corner was no sign of him. 
 The saloon then? For an instant you stopped at the window 
 to get your procedure straight. . . . Beyond the glass, 
 you noticed a paper bill poster of Forepaugh's circus slung 
 
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 over the brown-draped pole; it was a picture of a woman 
 balanced tip-toe on a galloping white horse. . . . Once 
 inside the saloon, you would phone the office the tips about 
 the railyards and the Black Road. . . . "But you know 
 that's not why you turn the knob of this frosted glass door." 
 
 A long narrow room spotted with gas flares smearing re- 
 flections in dusty mirrors — yes, though you could not find 
 him yet, he was here and marked your coming with hate and 
 suspicion. Where could he be? . . . Here to the left 
 was the bartender. Ha! Ha! You were glad to see how 
 comical he looked — that chestnut hair parted in the middle, 
 smoothed, then twisted back in a semi-curl. Over the bar, 
 he pushed a free-lunch sandwich with fat white ham flopping 
 beyond the edge of rye bread. No one was there to take 
 the thing. . . . To the right at a table near you was a 
 man who stopped blowing beer-froth to glare. Beyond, at 
 the other tables were men who set their glass mugs down, 
 held their pretzels unbitten. Could Frederic be in one of the 
 three-sided compartments over there near the wall. . . . 
 "The phone's on the panel beyond the bar." 
 
 While you wound the signal bell and stared at the mermaid 
 painted on the panel, you felt the hate in that room like a 
 hot fire at your back. His hate, their hate; workers thought 
 reporters used phones to call police. . . . Newspaper men 
 had phoned at Meyer's drug store, and Meyer's had been 
 smashed to bits. ... In the course of life here, men 
 were slugged for a ten-spot; in a cause, for nothing. . . . 
 
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 A man's steps across the floor — you could hear his heels thud 
 sawdust, click on bare wood, then stop. . . . Receiver 
 to ear, you turned about slowly, saw the sloppy drain 
 board back of the bar, the laces of bartender's shoes, the 
 brown splashes on his apron. Then swift, your eyes slanted 
 up across the bar. On the other side crouched — "Hello! 
 Hello!" . . . 
 
 You banged the receiver on the hook. Breathing deep and 
 fast, prickling with sweat, you walked in the silence of that 
 room down toward him. Tawny beard. Evil eyes. Horror 
 met hate now. Though he never spoke, though you had no 
 words, horror and hate talked in their own tongues: 
 
 "Anarchist!" 
 
 "Dirty spy!" 
 
 "You think a lead bomb will change a city." 
 
 "Fear makes concessions." 
 
 "You have only a mob behind you — unarmed." 
 
 "But mighty in numbers." 
 
 "And in the end, they'll hang you by the neck till you're 
 dead." 
 
 "Never that, spy, never that." 
 
 His eyes spluttered like a red fuse that sparks down close to 
 the dynamite. . . . 
 
 Hot with knowledge that was not knowledge, you went 
 out of doors again and sweat dried on you. . . . People — 
 Who are marked for death tonight? — gathered in the street, 
 dark figures except now and then, a woman in a light dress, 
 
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 a man in his shirtsleeves. Down the street, this side the alley, 
 a staked truck had been dragged. Old Harris was on top. 
 You wanted to throw your head back and laugh. That ancient 
 lamb yoked in people's minds to the young lion back there! 
 Oh, very funny! . . . 
 
 Bumping through the crowd — There must be two thousand 
 here now — you crossed the road, nearly tripped in a deep 
 gouge in the stone street, and took a stand on the low step 
 of a fire-escape on a building nearly opposite the wagon. You 
 felt the iron banister cold and wet beneath your hot hands. 
 "Sh!" people hissed, and then old Harris began to speak. 
 . . . He mentioned the name of the magnate Matthis, 
 and people near the wagon yelled out, "Hang him!" 
 
 A plain clothes man — there must be many in the crowd — 
 was near the fire escape, noted the cry, moved south toward 
 the police station. . . . Couldn't God stand in the Square 
 tonight between the station and this mob? . . . But many 
 people here — did the plain clothes men see? — were unmoved 
 by the speech. For instance the boy who laughed and shrilled 
 "Hang him!" as periods to all the old man's sentences? The 
 girl who pleated a Revenge circular into a fan? The German 
 who muttered, "Ach! Why did I come!" The prosperous 
 man who puffed the word "Tame!" out with his cigar smoke? 
 . . . Tame — as yet. You took out your watch, opened 
 the lid, let the light shine on the crystal. The long thin hands 
 pointed to ten o'clock 
 
 A sudden wind blew cold down the street. People pulled 
 
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 at their coat collars and drifted north and south, going home. 
 "Thanks for coming, cold wind." Pointing up to the storm 
 sky, one man called, "Let's adjourn to Zepf's hall." But 
 someone else behind bellowed, "Can't. Furniture workers 
 got a meeting there." So a few hundred stayed and listened 
 longer to the old man. . . . Ten after ten now. Would 
 they never go? You looked about the street. This way. 
 That way. . . . 
 
 As you turned south, your eye was caught by a row of tiny 
 gleams, tiny gleams away across the Square, "Metal stars! 
 Police! Here they come. . . . And here, somewhere in 
 the darkness, Frederic! . . . Oh, keep them apart now, 
 God, and . . ." 
 
 Stretching across the street, a whole rank of police emerged 
 into the light of the Square. Another rank followed that, 
 and another, and another. The whole five companies, of 
 police! People craned their necks, some shrieked and scat- 
 tered, some stood their ground. 
 
 Clubs at their sides, guns on their hips, the helmeted police 
 marched past you, on to the wagon where the old man stood. 
 Club upraised, the Captain commanded, ". . . Disperse." 
 And the old man protested, ". . . Peaceable." Nearly two 
 hundred coppers here, Anarchist. Two hundred clubs. Two 
 hundred guns. "Where are you now, Anarchist?" 
 
 Out from an alley, it raced through the air. Cigar butt. 
 Baseball. Rocket. Then with a burst and bang of yellow 
 light, it smashed between two companies of police. Lead bits, 
 
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 and blackness. Now the air was cut with gun flash. People 
 fell to the street. . . . "They'll get you now, Anarchist. 
 They'll make you talk at last. Police have their ways. . . . 
 They beat you till you bleed and say what they want you to. 
 . . . Blood like dark red pancake batter on the dirty floor. 
 I saw a man they did that to. I saw his blood there." 
 
 Blind with horror, you ran by the building wall, on toward 
 the Square. A man with his legs shot, pulled himself moaning 
 along with his hands. ... As you fled, your foot crushed 
 his fingers against a basement grating. . . . 
 
 229 
 
"/ said they would 
 not hang me, Spyl' 
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 EIGHTY-SIX 
 
 Tk 
 
 .HEY caught Frederic and 
 jailed him. But some friend smuggled a bomb to him and 
 he had lit it and placed it in his mouth. Now he lay shattered 
 but still living. 
 
 Tonight the city editor said, "Go see if the count's cashed 
 in yet." 
 
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 And so you went, though you were almost blind with weari- 
 ness and your brain seemed noisy as if it were being hammered 
 with too many new impressions. Noisy? Loud as a boiler 
 factory. Perhaps two jobs — school and this — were getting 
 too much. 
 
 Here was the jail. Now you were inside it, smelling the 
 chlorine and privy odors of the jail. You stared down at 
 the sodden brown boards and you thought, "Soon I have to 
 look at the wreck." There he was on the high bed. Arm 
 stumps tied. Jaws a mass of sunken bandages. Eyes hollows 
 of hate. 
 
 What eyes! There seemed to be a kind of remembering 
 triumph in them. Eyes — you could not turn away. They 
 seemed to talk, just as on the night of the riot. They spoke: 
 
 "I said they would not hang me, Spy." 
 
 And your eyes answered: 
 
 "Anarchist, why did you do it?" 
 
 "They called me bastard, Spy. I'm even now." 
 
 "All the dead! — and you blown to pieces!" 
 
 "Learn to kill, Spy. Get what you want, Fool. What 
 you want is all there is." 
 
 "So you didn't care about the men you preached to? You 
 said they suffered " 
 
 "Yeah. And deserve to. Damned cowards. Won't act 
 unless a hand is at their throats." 
 
 The reporter felt ill, he couldn't think of a response right 
 away. At last: In a sinking kind of way: 
 
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 "Once — once Christ acted for them." 
 
 "Did he? Well, any other fool who does will get nailed up, 
 too. Nails. And nothing after. No. Get what you want." 
 
 The reporter felt nausea. From the smells, he thought. 
 Then he seemed to himself to be falling through space with 
 nothing to hold to. . . . 
 
 After a while, from a long distance off, someone said some- 
 thing about a glass of water. 
 
 For several weeks after he had fainted in the jail, he con- 
 tinued his work in a daze. When he went out on assignments, 
 a deadly fear came over him. Would he remember the ques- 
 tions he meant to ask? If he didn't, would the people he 
 interviewed think he was mad? Finally he devised the plan 
 of writing questions on a bit of paper he could hold in his 
 palm. . . . Then the strange thing was that neither ques- 
 tions nor answers seemed to mean anything. And not only 
 they seemed unreal. Often on the way back to the office he 
 would find himself staring at things, a car stove or a passing 
 dray, and wondering if they actually existed. Was he going 
 crazy? Would people soon whisper about him, and have 
 him put away some place? He hated and feared people. 
 He suspected everyone including his mother. . . . Maybe 
 people weren't real either. Nothing real, nothing to hold to. 
 Falling through black space. . . . 
 
 But though he hated and suspected people, he did what 
 they told him. His will seemed gone. His mother, the only 
 
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 person who realized that something was wrong, suggested 
 that as soon as his June examinations were over, he should go 
 out in the country and visit his Aunt Jane. And he obeyed 
 docilely, although he had no desire to go. . . . Aunt Jane's 
 husband had died, and now she managed a couple of hundred 
 acres of mid-Illinois land with the help of two hired men 
 and a girl. . . . She fixed him a spot on the south 
 porch where he could rest in the sun, and as the days of quiet 
 succeeded each other, the noise in his brain, as of hammers 
 pounding, grew less and less. He began to hear the little 
 sounds of the prairie, and his mind became clear about him- 
 self. . . . The reason, he thought, why this sense of fall- 
 ing through space persisted was because he was in that con- 
 dition, mentally. That was it. He was falling between two 
 ideas: Belief in God, and belief in riches as all there was 
 worth while in life. He must decide to hold to one or the 
 other. Decide or go mad. 
 
 Every day after the midafternoon snack, she came out to 
 sit on the porch with him. She did not seem to think him 
 queer, but only tired. Maybe she was only tactful. Once 
 she talked of early days in Chicago, recalled the Mokopo Tav- 
 ern, and added, "Your father and I called Chicago our city." 
 Then she shut her lips tight, narrowed her eyes so that she could 
 catch the tears on the lashes, and grew silent. She was not 
 inclined to talk though she thought a great deal; he could 
 tell that by the way she would ask him questions about some 
 chance remark of his, long after he had made it. Generally, 
 
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 after a few words, she would take a rosary out of her pocket 
 in her black silesia apron, and pass the cocoa beads slowly 
 through her fingers. . . . 
 
 He looked at the large upright figure with the yellow haze 
 of the afternoon sun about it, and experienced a kind of envy. 
 What illusions she had to hold to, big ones about earth and 
 heaven! He had no belief, no center, he could not hold to 
 religion. How could he believe in a God who would make a 
 world like this one? No, he felt a violent revulsion of feeling 
 at having been taken in by a visionary unworkable philosophy 
 of life. Of life? Christianity, actually followed, led to death 
 only. His father had been no great saint, but he had answered 
 the demands his ideals made on him as far as he was able, 
 and he'd been killed, and his family left to struggle on alone. 
 
 As he regarded his aunt, fingering her beads there, he 
 suddenly hated her, despised all religious people who pretended 
 that Christianity was possible. Why not admit that the law 
 of Nature was the only law — "Get what you want; kill or be 
 killed." In spite of the hypocrisies that people practised, that 
 law was the only one ever kept. The thing to do was to 
 follow it frankly. . . . And yet, Christianity had seemed 
 beautiful to him once, and love possible. . . . 
 
 She made a slow large sign of the cross, and now she spoke: 
 "So," she said to him, "you are going to be a lawyer like 
 your father." 
 
 In the sudden uncontrollable way that most of his replies 
 came of late, he burst out : "No, not like my father." 
 
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 She sat almost as if she had been struck, while he continued : 
 "No, I'm going to make money, to have things." 
 
 Now that she knew what he had in mind, she did not seem 
 surprised; she actually nodded as though she had expected 
 for a long time that he would express himself just like that; 
 all she said was, "Oh!" 
 
 And, of course, she shouldn't be surprised for there were 
 money makers in the family, his grandmother in Utica, for 
 instance, who had invested luckily and left a tidy fortune to 
 charity — to charity because she disliked her family and enjoyed 
 the publicity given large donors. . . . Odd! His aunt 
 was staring at him, and there were tears in her eyes. Then 
 the queer thought crossed his mind, "She thinks I'm like her 
 mother." ... At last, quietly, but almost as if she were 
 pleading, she asked: "Will money be enough, do you think?" 
 
 Would it? He didn't know. Probably not. But at least 
 money was real, and Christianity did not even exist. . . . 
 Then, since he had seemed to decide for money, how could 
 he begin to get it? Once his mother had said that Matthis 
 would help start him in life. Well, why not let him? . . . 
 Still the old woman with the rosary was studying him as if she 
 could find some way to soften him, and at last she startled 
 him by asking if he ever thought of getting married. . . . 
 
 He returned home, sunburned, a little heavier, and with his 
 mind still oscillating like a hit pendulum between old desires 
 and new. With purpose unfixed, he could not work. Why 
 should he solemnly pretend to interests he did not have? 
 
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 Nevertheless, since his will appeared gone, he agreed to the 
 proposal that his mother made. She had in desperation, 
 perhaps, seen Matthis who told her he would talk to the 
 young man and maybe place him in the firm that handled 
 the Matthis car-parts cases. 
 
 The appointment was at a hotel for dinner, and when the 
 time came, the obstacles in the way of going seemed tremen- 
 dous. The day — the city — meeting more people 
 
 As he arrived in town, dust whirled in his face, between his 
 lips — dry manure, street dirt, soot. It clogged his nostrils 
 and lodged between his collar and his neck; he could feel 
 the stiff linen rub in the dirt. And every particle, tiny though 
 it might be, reminded him of the meaningless horror of life. 
 
 Hand on derby crown, eyelids drawn close, he went on, 
 shrinking from the mobs released from offices. Deserts must 
 be good places, he thought. Here he must do as the hordes 
 he hated did, must hear and see what they heard and saw. 
 . . . On his way down Randolph, he stepped over a skid 
 thrown from a wagon to an open cellar way. He rounded 
 hogsheads stored on the pavement. He avoided an unhitched 
 horse that wandered out of an alley way. He listened to the 
 shriek of an orchestrion of a merry-go-round. He zig-zagged 
 his way through the wagons, drays, grip-cars, as he crossed 
 the road, going south on State. 
 
 There was the hotel. He did not want to go in. He 
 imagined people in public places observed him and his cheap 
 clothes, saying to themselves, "How queer he is." But they 
 
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 who were caught in life not knowing nor caring what it was 
 all about — weren't they the mad ones? He approached the 
 hotel with its sooty gray stone cornices, its peaked doortops 
 with fat classic figures lying on the slants, its dirt-encrusted 
 plate glass windows. 
 
 No, he didn't want to go in. He was conscious of his 
 clothes. And did he need a shave? Hurriedly he put his 
 hand to his face for he knew that of late he forgot details like 
 that. His face was stubbly, so he entered the famous barber 
 shop with the silver dollars laid in the flooring. . . . 
 
 He went out of the barber shop into the hotel hallway, 
 passing along the backs of shops. This was the bar — What 
 a whisky smell! — and beyond the slat door sounded the "Aylee, 
 Aylee, Olee Man." . . . This was the billiard room where 
 men bent over green baize tables, men who talked and laughed 
 as if they weren't afraid of life. . . . Half -hiding behind 
 a palm, he watched the lobby for Matthis. The spot was a 
 good one, for he could see without being seen. Once there, 
 he though in contempt, "People are ugly, inconsequential. Why 
 should I care what they think?" . . . A fat man in dress 
 suit and satin waistcoat lounged near the velvet curtains of 
 the dining room: near him was some blondined coryphee, 
 probably from Rice's "Evangeline." "Old Hutch" who'd 
 cornered wheat shuffled by . . . "Old Hutch," who, 
 with Kerby and Murray made the Board of Trade Trinity. 
 Two strangers gaped at the grand staircase, exclaiming, "Two 
 million dollars worth of marble." A man in a checked suit 
 
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 complained loudly to his friend, "I want to go to Sam T. Jack's 
 but the wife says no. It's the panorama of Gettysburg for us." 
 A woman's voice rose, "We're going to see everything tonight 
 — even the Cheyenne district." And a man answered, "Well, 
 don't play poker, and look out for Big Mag." 
 
 At last you could see Matthis getting out of his brougham. 
 With one hand he clung to a plaid shawl that whipped out 
 in the wind; with the other he pushed down his hat, forcing 
 the straggly lock over his yellow face. One onlooker ex- 
 claimed, "There's old Matthis. They'll have to shoot him 
 at the Judgment." Though he wasn't so old. 
 
 A hush came over the place when Matthis entered. People 
 whispered his name. They watched Matthis; stared at 
 you as you came forward, and how you looked made no dif- 
 ference now, for you shared in the awe given to the rich. 
 There was warm comfort in such an atmosphere. It would be 
 pleasant to live surrounded with deference. 
 
 After a grunt of acknowledgment of your presence, Matthis 
 led the way into the dining room; its big windows were hung 
 with velvet, its walls broken by fluffed columns — the whole 
 place done in rose and gold. Matthis glared about for the 
 new head waiter from London who ran forward and bowed 
 deep. You knew him: once the city editor had sent you to 
 write a feature story on "Why do Chicagoans call the new 
 head waiter at the Blank hotel, Mister?" Then he had sniffed 
 at your wrinkled reporter garb; now he included you in his 
 best bows. 
 
 238 
 
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 He led you into a private dining-room, a place done in 
 bronze and black with ebony chairs and a sideboard inlaid 
 with mother-of-pearl, and as he drew out the chairs for you, 
 he suggested, "Buffalo tongue, bear loins, — brown, black or cin- 
 namon, — and antelope steak are good tonight." . . . 
 Matthis gave the order with the air of hitting an animal on 
 the snout. 
 
 "And for dessert," he concluded, "I don't want any of those 
 green and purple ices nor any of those cakes with red, white, 
 and blue frosting. I want an apple. An apple with skin 
 on it. I want to cut it in two and scrape it. Is that clear?" 
 
 Then Matthis threw his Scotch plaid over the Egyptian 
 chair and got ready to eat. As he tucked his napkin under 
 his chin and carried his spoon to his mouth, an old intaglio 
 ring slipped about on one of his fingers; he guzzled his soup, 
 tipped his plate for the last drop, tongued the lip-ends a-blob 
 with white cream. He did what he liked. 
 
 Matthis asked many questions. You answered mechan- 
 ically, only one query remaining with you, "Are you willing 
 to learn everything about my business, even to the running 
 of a locomotive?" And under the spell of the vitality in him, 
 you replied yes. 
 
 You remembered how you'd once delivered New Year's 
 cards at his door and had thought him sinfully rich. He 
 seemed to be the devil pointing out all the kingdoms of the 
 world and offering them to you in exchange for your soul. 
 Now he no longer seemed a devil, but — since you habitually, 
 
 239 
 
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 though unbelievingly, used Biblical phrases — more like an angel 
 come to grant you strength. Being with him caused you a 
 strange exaltation. 
 
 His eyes never kindled. They were eyes that might well have 
 faced desperation, black nothingness? Nevertheless, out of 
 nothingness, this man, forgetting fear, had created his own 
 world. 
 
 240 
 
Past straight lines of shadow into the May sun 
 
 CHAPTER SIX 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED EIGHTY-EIGHT 
 
 D, 
 
 URING the first year in the 
 law firm, the young man slaved with intensity, driving himself 
 with the words, "Money and position — that's all there is to 
 life." Day by day, the determination to make a fortune bigger 
 than Matthis' grew until it obsessed him. 
 
 Matthis, apparently pleased at the young man's zeal for 
 work, forwarded his interests and saw that his salary was 
 increased. . . . 
 
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 But his mother, who still watched him with a dissatisfied 
 air, spoke as soon as the salary raise came, saying, "You 
 should marry, James." 
 
 The remark annoyed and distracted him. He refused to 
 discuss the matter and yet it remained below the surface of 
 his mind to disturb him. And then a thought, all formed, 
 came frankly to him. "Some day your mother will die. Who 
 will look after the little things for you then? You must have 
 your mind free for your new work." 
 
 So when she spoke again, he listened. She said, "You 
 should marry Elizabeth Cousins, James. Mrs. Byers' niece, 
 I mean. She'll be graduated from the convent this June." 
 
 Then he remembered. Elizabeth Cousins was the girl his 
 mother had always wanted him to marry. He recalled that 
 once in church he had seen her gazing at him and he had 
 thought her angel-like. The child was rich, and riches would 
 help. ... As for Mrs. Byers, she was willing, for she 
 wanted to go to Europe that next summer and had, he gathered, 
 no desire to take her ward with her. So the match was arranged, 
 and on the following Sunday, Mrs. Byers, his mother and 
 he drove to the west side convent. . . . They sat in Mrs. 
 Byers' victoria, and he was hunched, somewhat uncomfort- 
 ably, on the little let-down seat. 
 
 Over the river to the West Side — the green water was spotted 
 with iridescent slime. To the right was a bony black railway 
 bridge, and on the far bank were railroad yards with straight 
 steel tracks shining against the black cinders, with cabooses 
 
 242 
 
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 that had back porches, stove pipes, and little windows, with 
 roofless freights, car after car of dirty red. From the river 
 to the south came the smell of the slaughterhouses, and now 
 from these blocks of square factories beyond the bridge rose 
 the odor of hides and sawdust. In between buildings, the 
 week's factory smoke lay gray and low. . . . 
 
 The sound of horses' hoofs echoed hollowly through the 
 empty Sunday streets. Time after time the carriage drove 
 past straight line of shadow into May sun. Both Mrs. Byers 
 and his mother looked hot as they sat in their heavy passemen- 
 teried silks against plum-colored upholstery. Though sitting 
 on bustles tilted them a little forward, they seemed most erect, 
 with bonnet aigrettes held high. 
 
 Was it only the heat that made them uncomfortable, or 
 did they feel now that the time had come for the formal en- 
 gagement to marry, that they were hurrying the girl too 
 much? Were they a little uneasy, too, at their ulterior motives 
 in the marriage? . . . Mrs. Byers' curls, which were like 
 white zeros below her bonnet, lay damp on her pink forehead. 
 Her mouth, determined though it was, twitched, and the 
 hair-lines converged. When the carriage rolled into the sun- 
 light, her hand jerked the black silk parasol with the pink 
 ruffles as if it were the sunshade's fault it was in the wrong 
 place. 
 
 "Of course," she broke out at last, "if the doctor hadn't 
 ordered me to Baden, I should never have suggested that 
 the wedding be so soon. But anyway, she's not been raised 
 
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 to decide such matters for herself. The French nuns at her 
 convent believe in having marriages arranged." 
 
 Then she looked away; a fold of her chin caught in die 
 trefoil cameo that closed her collar. She seemed to be think- 
 ing, seeking for greater justification, and suddenly she bent 
 forward till her padded-looking bosom rose close to her collar. 
 She added softly : 
 
 "She's always been attracted to you, James. She always 
 noticed you at church, and once she said, 'He's a nice boy, 
 isn't he? Is he a saint?' ' 
 
 As the vehicle jolted over the rough roads, he held to the 
 seat, felt its line of scratchy braid. Would they never come 
 to the place? The smell of hides, the black and white of 
 sun and shade, the meaningness voice of this woman seemed 
 never ending. At last. Here was the place — a gray brick 
 fence that enclosed a little park of trees, and a gray building 
 that had a front peak topped with a gold cross. . . . They 
 mounted the horseshoe staircase, and at the door a wizened 
 portress bowed bon jour; then, beads a-jingle, she soft-shoed 
 down the hallway to pull the call-bell. One — two — three — 
 
 They went into the parlor. The shutters of the south win- 
 dows were folded completely back and the sun lay bright on 
 the waxed floor, making the rest of the room seem dark. Near 
 the walls were little groups, each with its pupil in black uniform 
 or its nun in black habit. . . . North doors were thrown 
 wide; beyond them were open windows through which came 
 the smell of green things and the plash of a fountain. . . . 
 
 244 
 
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 Elizabeth entered through the north door. She stood slim 
 and tall in her black uniform and gloves against the light 
 from the north windows. In spite of all her shy reserve, she 
 radiated the shining excitement of being called to the parlor, 
 this time of all times. . . . Was the guardian right? and 
 was this girl really drawn toward him? 
 
 She kissed Mrs. Byers, first on one cheek and then on the 
 other, convent-fashion. Wistfulness was in the act, as if she 
 said to her guardian, "I wish you really cared." He thought, 
 "Orphan. Lonely." Still holding her aunt's hand, she in- 
 quired eagerly about her Uncle Gregor, "Is he well? When 
 is he coming to see me?" 
 
 Then she courtesied to his mother, and after that, eyes 
 lowered, lips smiling, she bowed to him. . . . 
 
 Above her chair was an oil painting of a young saint look- 
 ing at a crucifix with love. ... As she conversed rather 
 breathlessly, he watched her, the quick change of light on the 
 smooth dark hair, the sparkle of the brown eyes, the curve 
 of the white smooth cheeks. Now, when her guardian spoke 
 of the European tour, the girl remarked: 
 
 "Why, you're going to all the places we pretend to write 
 letters from. Madam Gounoud teaches us Travel Letters. 
 She has traveled — well, not very much of course. Only from 
 St. Louis here — by night." 
 
 And after Mrs. Markham mentioned the graduation gown 
 and others being made by the fashionable Nellie Lorden on 
 Archer Road, Elizabeth laughed: 
 
 245 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Soon I'll have to keep a scrapbook of dresses. Madame 
 Genet did. She has pieces of all the gowns she wore when 
 she was a belle in New Orleans." 
 
 But when her guardian talked at last of the wedding, the 
 girl had no words at all. Her eyes lowered, to rise again, 
 shining. . . . 
 
 If he had believed in love, he would have said there was 
 promise of love in them. 
 
 
 246 
 
Passing the wall- 
 niches with 
 Greel^ statues in them 
 
 CHAPTER SEVEN 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 EIGHTY-EIGHT 
 
 K 
 
 .E THOUGHT of her often 
 during the month, her youth, her desire for love. Should he, 
 when he could not share her illusion of love, marry her? But, 
 he countered in his own mind, neither could she share his 
 illusion of power. If, however, he allowed her to build her 
 own world as he expected to build his, why shouldn't he 
 
 247 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 marry her? He knew of no one else who would do. It 
 might as well be she. 
 
 Another question that came to his mind was that of being 
 married in church. His revulsion of feeling against religion 
 told him to have nothing to do with a church, but he decided 
 there was no reason for letting his emotion on the question 
 get the better of him for such a lack of control would stand 
 in the way of his material advancement. Refusal to be a 
 church member meant at least partial ostracism from society 
 in this town, and people withheld business from atheists. He 
 would then be conventional. 
 
 So one morning in late June, Elizabeth and he were married 
 in St. John's church. He watched as though the ceremony 
 centered about someone other than himself. He noted the 
 reflections of candle light in the altar and the bright-colored 
 discs of light thrown by the stained glass windows in the 
 east wall. He smelled the incense, regarded the churchman 
 in his white vestments coming from the altar to marry them, 
 made responses, walked down the aisle with Elizabeth, and 
 looked with curiosity at the women in the congregation who 
 were wiping away their tears. . . . 
 
 In Mrs. Byers' house on the Avenue, breakfast tables were 
 wedged tight in all the first floor rooms. The large gilt-framed 
 mirrors in the double front parlor reflected the white tables, 
 piled high at the centers with smilax, white ribbons, and 
 roses. Mrs. Byers, rustling busily about in her gray silk gown, 
 directed the bride and groom to the table in the front parlor 
 
 248 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 where they sat near the big window hung with heavy English 
 lace, their backs to the last of the morning sun. . . . Eliz- 
 abeth was full of little gasps and trills of pleasure; she 
 seemed not only to be happy herself but to want others to share 
 her feeling. She clung in an odd way to his Aunt Jane, and 
 he had said, "She's the right girl, isn't she, aunt?" To which 
 his aunt, stark in her black gown, had dourly answered, "I'm 
 hoping you're the right man." ... At the girl's right, 
 sat her Uncle Gregor, a bull-necked fighter who would wipe 
 out you and Matthis if the occasion came. . . . When 
 Elizabeth noticed her husband's nostrils contract at the sight 
 of Gregor, she spoke to him at once: 
 
 "I'm sorry you don't like him, Jim. A good many people 
 don't at first, because he's so blunt, but I'm sure you'll grow 
 to like him. He's been so good to me — like a real parent. 
 I couldn't love a father more." 
 
 Her feeling for the loud wary-eyed fellow astonished him 
 into looking in Gregor's direction again. She continued: 
 
 "He's devoted to those he loves — works night and day so 
 as to have a big business to hand on to his son, John." 
 
 She stirred a little petulantly, and then she smiled: 
 
 "O, you will like him, won't you, Jim?" 
 
 He hadn't meant to be noticeably averse to the man; a 
 bad manner might well be a business disability. . . . Now 
 she was talking to her uncle; was she bringing him to task, too? 
 Gregor did not look converted; he stared in your direction 
 as if he were sizing you up again; with his collar as tight as 
 
 249 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 it was, he looked a good deal like a dog held in leash. . . . 
 From the landing came strains of the violinist's, "Oh Promise 
 Me." Once in a while a loud pioneer laugh would hee-haw 
 through the chatter. He could hear one woman affecting a 
 broad eastern a. At his left, his mother explained: "The 
 crowd had to be a bit mixed. Mrs. Minster divides her par- 
 ties, inviting her rich friends one day and her poor friends 
 the next. But you can't be married on two days in succession, 
 can you?" . . . His eyes kept turning back to Elizabeth. 
 . . . Beauty . . . Kindness . . . Was he get- 
 ting soft? Better look at old Gregor. . . . 
 
 Friendship with Gregor might well be an opportunity. 
 . . . Suppose Gregor and Matthis, instead of being rivals, 
 combined. Combination was in the air. The South Improve- 
 ment Company had been made by the combination of rivals. 
 . . . New combinations sometimes extended from the state 
 throughout the nation. . . . 
 
 You became genial to Gregor, asked him about his son, 
 John. . . . Elizabeth leaving to change her gown grate- 
 fully pressed your hand. 
 
 During her absence, he talked to some purpose to Gregor, 
 and to general questions on the subject of combinations, Gregor, 
 who also unbent, answered, not without interest: 
 
 "Yes. I see some sense in mergers." 
 
 When, however, there was a movement of the crowd 
 toward the staircase to watch the bride come down again, 
 Gregor had no eyes except for the slight girl descending the 
 
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 cherry staircase, passing the wall-niches with Greek statues 
 in them. 
 
 "My Elizabeth!" Gregor breathed and tears were in his 
 eyes. Soft. Like the old women in the church. 
 
 She wore a long trailing bustled dress of canvas and 
 brown velvet; her tiny bonnet with the yellow flowers had a 
 wide ribbon bow beneath her chin. She was well-dressed, dis- 
 tinguished, but her chief characteristic just then was aware- 
 ness of him as he waited in the hall for her. 
 
 Her last farewell kiss, she kept for her uncle Gregor. Then 
 she placed her white gloved hand on her husband's arm, and 
 they walked down the carpeted stairs to the carriage. . . . 
 They were off now, but she did not look back. Did the past 
 hold so little for her, and the future so much? 
 
 "What a beautiful day!" she exclaimed as if the words 
 burst from her; with a wave of her hand, she included the 
 blue sky, the green trees, the horses clicking along the hard 
 white macadam of the Avenue, but the gesture seemed to 
 have a larger meaning — June and life and him. 
 
 They turned from the Avenue at Oakwoods and then on to 
 Drexel Boulevard with its flowered park strip down the center. 
 With what odd sympathy she looked at all the people who 
 drove by, as if she understood them all and wished them joy 
 — the old codger in the white linen duster who chirped to 
 his bony nag, the young man who sat on his box and held 
 his reins and whip just so, the woman in the surrey who 
 clucked to a long-tailed beast. . . . When the carriage 
 
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 drove east on a wide road set in a prairie and dotted with 
 scattered homes, she breathed deep with pleasure. She looked 
 at the wild roses pink against dark leaves, at the young leaves 
 of the cottonwood as they blew white in the soft breeze, and 
 at the blue lake ahead. Turning toward him, she rejoiced, 
 "Oh, I'm glad we're going to be out here in the country!" 
 
 A few blocks short of the lake, the rig drove south down 
 their street. There was the occasional frame house with porch, 
 and trees. On the main street of the village, the spire of the 
 church rose above elm trees. Beyond was a row of new cot- 
 tages, with the paint starey fresh, with the little lawns newly 
 sodded, with the young maple trees freshly planted. The car- 
 riage wheels scraped against the curb of the second cottage 
 from the corner. . . . 
 
 Breathing fast, feeling for his hand, she left the carriage and 
 mounted the high stairs of their new home with him. She 
 entered the tiny linoleum-covered vestibule with awe, almost 
 as if she was going into a church. 
 
 But the sight of all the furnishings his mother and Mrs. 
 Byers had arranged for them made her laugh again. She ran 
 into the small parlor, clasped her hands over the rose trellis 
 wall-paper, felt the white applique curtains on the two long 
 front windows, tried the bristling scrolled ingrain carpet with 
 the toe of her shoe. For one moment she sat down approv- 
 ingly in a high-backed chair with its panel of fruit tapestry 
 edged with red velvet, but the next moment she was up and 
 away through the folding doors into the back parlor so swiftly 
 
 252 
 
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 that her train bobbed and showed the billows of dust ruffles 
 underneath. 
 
 At a rosewood music box near the west window, she stopped, 
 lifted the lid, pulled the lever, watched the pins of the turning 
 brass cylinder as they snapped the teeth of the metal comb 
 into a quavering tune. She turned about to face him, and 
 suddenly looked as though she were going to cry; her eyes 
 puckered a little and her teeth bit her lower lip; then she 
 gasped, "I'm not really crying. I'm glad — I have a real home." 
 And stretched out her arms to him. 
 
 How gold the sunlight was about her slimness — The last of 
 the sunlight! There was always a fear about the last of the 
 day's sun as though it urged, "Hurry! Hurry! Take what 
 you can for soon the darkness and death you know so well 
 will come again!" He caught her in his arms, glad to feel her 
 slight body; it was real, real; he could feel it was real. Things 
 you could touch, they were all there was to life. Though she 
 drew her breath quick at his suddenness, she was limp with 
 complete surrender and trust. . . . She thought he was 
 in love with her. In love. In fear — fear of nothingness. 
 . . . He held her tight as though she kept him from an 
 abyss. 
 
 2Si 
 
He stared at the waters until they were no longer la\e 
 
 CHAPTER EIGHT 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED EIGHTY-NINE 
 
 E, 
 
 fLIZABETH proved always to 
 be hungry for affection, or what passed for it, but when she 
 did not receive it, she seemed to regard his restraint as proof 
 of an ascetic nature. And he, he was always afraid of losing 
 his Matthis-like hardness, of becoming soft and incompetent 
 like the sloppy mediocrities of which the world was full. 
 
 She was all the more reliant on him for affection, since 
 she had no child to love. 
 
 254 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Strangely enough, though she did not seem greatly inter- 
 ested in his business success, she had, nevertheless, been of 
 great aid to him. Thanks to her, Gregor had become friendly 
 and had listened to a proposal for a merger with Matthis. 
 The combination had been so successful up to date that the 
 two backed him in a furtherance of the merger. Thereupon 
 he invited the larger companies throughout the state to "come 
 in;" some hotly refused, saying, "We'll not be in any trust." 
 So he went then to railroads and got them to give a secret 
 low freight rate to the combination. This low rate enabled 
 the combine to undersell and freeze out the little firms. Soon 
 he'd extend the combination across the country; there'd be a 
 nation-wide trust. 
 
 "Do that," Matthis said to him — and Matthis was the larg- 
 est of all the producers of car-parts, "and I'll see you're made 
 president of the nation-wide merger." 
 
 Returning home tonight along the lake on the Illinois Cen- 
 tral, he kept thinking, "I will have the presidency, and one 
 of the greatest fortunes in the country besides." 
 
 That early summer evening, Elizabeth and he sat out on 
 the high step. He did not tell her of Matthis' promise, but 
 only said: "I expect we can move into a better house soon." 
 
 Startled, she turned toward him. 
 
 "But I like this place, Jim. You know. It's my first real 
 home. You'd call that just sentiment maybe." 
 
 Then, as if she were afraid she might have hurt him, she 
 bent toward him earnestly and said: 
 
 255 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "Jim I'm — I'm awfully proud of your success." And a 
 minute later, she said almost abjectly: "I guess it's being 
 where you are that makes home." 
 
 Nevertheless, she clasped her hands over the knees of her 
 lavender surah gown and watched with new intensity the little 
 familiar evening ritual of the neighborhood. Next door to 
 them, a householder held his thumb over the end of his hose 
 and wavily sprayed his grass till now the water overflowed 
 on the walk, turned the gray cement brown, and gurgled into 
 the sewer. Across the street, a man in shirt-sleeves raked the 
 grass he had just cut — the fresh odor reached you; beyond 
 the shadows of his open barn door, a horse whinnied and 
 stamped against mosquitoes. Now women were turning their 
 porch chairs around and tipping them against the wall. Then 
 there was the sound of keys clicking in front door locks — it must 
 be nine o'clock — and hall-lights went out. The whole place 
 became as still as open country. Its stillness almost lulled 
 the will to sleep. 
 
 Alone there, they watched the yellow moon rise over the 
 young maples, they watched the rich black shadows that it 
 cast. Why did the earth seem so close to you that you could 
 almost feel it stir to fulfillment? . . . She had come nearer 
 to him; he smelled her sweet warmth, saw the rise and fall 
 of her bosom. He trembled with resistance to her, to the 
 gentleness she roused in him. . . . Wealth was all there 
 was. He must remember that. 
 
 "I do appreciate all you've done, Jim." Why was it that 
 
 256 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 all her protestations made him positive that money meant al- 
 most nothing to her? "So does Uncle Gregor. He said, 'Jim 
 has brains and uses them.' ' 
 
 Just the name of someone connected with his work roused 
 all the hot ambition of the day in him so that he forgot to 
 listen to her, conscious only that she continued to talk. Then, 
 all at once, he started to attention as if some inner self prompted, 
 "Wake up and listen, you day-dreaming fool, hear this!" 
 
 "At first," she was saying, "I was surprised that Uncle 
 Gregor joined with Mr. Matthis. Everyone knew his dearest 
 dream was to place his son, John, at the head of his company. 
 
 "But now I see the reason why he went in. So he could 
 put John at the head of a much larger business." 
 
 It was all so simple and clear that he hadn't even seen it. 
 Gregor meant to let you do all the spade work and when the 
 hard, dirty jobs were over, he would make his son, John, 
 head of the combination. He stiffened; she seemed to interpret 
 the action as a slight shrinking from her, and, inordinately 
 sensitive, she jumped up at once: 
 
 "I'm sorry, Jim. I've talked and talked like an old woman. 
 Now I'll let you think in peace." 
 
 With that, the light dress whisked over the threshold. . . . 
 
 It was as well to know now. . . . His fingers rapped 
 his knees, till he became too nervous to remain sitting there 
 any longer. Suddenly he leaped to his feet, ran down the 
 front stairs, and began to walk rapidly away. He was only 
 half aware that he was leaving her, that he was striding far: 
 
 257 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Grit of gravel beneath his feet. Hollow echo of his shoes on 
 a wooden walk. The lighted saloons along the old pony post 
 road. The dredge of his boots through the shore sand. . . . 
 Tired, he sat down to rest on a log near the lake. . . . He 
 must not endanger the young merger by acting against 
 Gregor now. . . . 
 
 The moon had gone behind a cloud. The dark waves 
 washed in and out, time after time, time after time. For a 
 long period he stared at the waters until they were no longer 
 lake, but the blackness through which he fell alone that day 
 he had fainted at the jail. . . . Shuddering at the recol- 
 lection, he nevertheless remembered the great thing that being 
 with Matthis had taught him. There was only one thing to 
 hold to, work and what you got for it. . . . 
 
 He'd work. He'd get all there was. He'd freeze out Gregor 
 and his parasitic son. Slowly. He'd get that presidency for 
 himself and what happened to them was no look-out of his. 
 
 258 
 
When you grow up you can say you saw the Fair' 
 
 CHAPTER NINE 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED NINETY-THREE 
 
 F« 
 
 OR him, the informal little 
 party at the World's Fair tonight was in the nature of a 
 celebration. 
 
 Elizabeth stood at the door of the library of their new house, 
 saying, "I'm ready." In the wide doorway between the 
 mahogany wainscoted walls, she looked like a young girl. 
 She was gowned with taste — not overdressed like many of 
 the new rich here; she wore a simple three-cornered blue hat 
 
 259 
 
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 with a high silk bow, a blue suit that had a short coat with 
 leg o' mutton sleeves and broad white lapels. She watched a 
 little tensely to see if he approved of her appearance or not, 
 and noting that he did, relaxed. 
 
 They crossed the hallway, its new dark hardwood spread 
 with Kazak rugs of bold design. The new butler opened the 
 door of the porte-cochere; the coachman waited with the vic- 
 toria and the horses stamped the cement drive, anxious to 
 get away. ... As they drove off, he looked back at 
 the big gray stone house that loomed large in the early Sep- 
 tember dusk. Seen through the foliage of the trees on the 
 green lawn, the place was like a small chateau, a place run, 
 like his business, with all the efficiency of an Amberg file. There 
 was achievement. And there would be more to come now 
 that Gregor had definitely — perhaps he should tell her. 
 
 "Your uncle," he said at last, "sold out to us today." 
 
 She started more than he supposed she would. 
 
 "Oh, I'm glad you spoke of him, Jim. He hasn't been to 
 see us in the longest time, and I've been worried. I couldn't 
 stand it any longer so I called him up today. He said nothing 
 was wrong; he'd just been busy " 
 
 Her husband verified her uncle's statement with a nod. 
 She continued: 
 
 "Just as he hung up the receiver, he happened to say he was 
 going to Old Vienna, too, tonight." 
 
 Then she paused looking at him almost breathlessly to see 
 if he knew whether or not all were well with her uncle. 
 
 260 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 "He seemed satisfied with the new arrangement." He had 
 appeared satisfied — almost too content; had the old dog some 
 new trick in mind? "You know, Elizabeth, your uncle decided 
 he did not like the combination because it didn't give him 
 quite enough assurance that his son, John, would be the 
 new president." 
 
 "And didn't it?" There was an air of surprise about her, 
 as if she could not imagine her uncle Gregor not getting 
 his way. 
 
 "No. So when Matthis agreed to buy him out at a very 
 handsome figure, he agreed." 
 
 "But what will John and he do now? Go back by them- 
 selves?" 
 
 "Certainly not. Don't you see that might be fatal for 
 the merger? He is strong here. If he beat us on our own 
 ground, we should be weakened with the rest of the country." 
 
 She looked as though she were trying to understand. He 
 continued : 
 
 "So, on receiving his money, he signed an agreement that 
 he would never go back in the car-parts business." 
 
 That was something that was quite clear. She leaned for- 
 ward: 
 
 "But, Jim. What'llhedo? That was his life." 
 
 To tell the truth, he had been astounded at Gregor's will- 
 ingness to sign. Her hand touched his: 
 
 "You're sure, Jim, that he's — satisfied." 
 
 "I think I have said so," he returned peevishly. If Gregor 
 
 261 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 turned out not to be satisfied — well, the paper was signed, 
 and the law could take its course. There were enough diffi- 
 culties for the future without mulling over those of the past: 
 money was tight, and labor was restless at the new mergers 
 with their power to blacklist and to dictate wages. But he'd 
 fight through hell now the presidency was clearly ahead. 
 
 Her brow puckered, she leaned back again and said nothing 
 until they had taken their wheel chair in the Court of Honor 
 for their last look at the Fair. Then in the light from the 
 electric fountains, she studied his face and said in a low 
 voice, earnest to the point of quavering: 
 
 "You know, I don't know what it's all about, but I'm sure 
 you'll see that things are right for him. He's very dear to me." 
 
 Then, with an assured air that since she had spoken to him 
 everything was settled, she began to look about her. . . . 
 A young mother wheeled a baby carriage past them and 
 chanted to the child, "Now when you grow up, you can say 
 
 you saw the Fair. Now when you grow up, you can " 
 
 . . . Elizabeth smiled at the child, sighing a little. . . . 
 
 As dusk settled over the white Grecian buildings and the 
 dark lagoon, as the fountains played and the gondolas plashed 
 by, he watched her. Her clear-cut beauty belonged in this 
 Court of Honor. . . . Then they turned down the Mid- 
 way, and saw the roof lines of German village, Irish castle, 
 Egyptian temple, Japanese houses, Dahomey huts against the 
 pale western sky. Strange people passed them: a Bedouin 
 in flowing white garments. A Swami in orange robes. A 
 
 262 
 
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 Chinese with hands tucked into large sleeves. A Laplander 
 with fur hood dropped back from broad sweating face. 
 
 After the quiet of the Court, the noise here jangled: There 
 was the whinny of a slant-rumped Arabian horse. The roar 
 of a lion in a zoo. The chant of the man at the Turkish candy 
 bazaar, "Bon bon, very bon bon." The squeak of the reed 
 instrument as a girl before a dime museum did a hootchy- 
 kootchy dance. The pound, pound, pound of a Dahomey 
 drum. ... It came with the persistency of the thought 
 that Gregor was beating him. . . . 
 
 At last they rolled up the road to Old Vienna. And 
 no sooner had they gotten out of the chair than a man came 
 toward them — seemed to come from behind one of the tall mo- 
 tionless Viennese guards at the door — and stood, hat in hand : 
 
 "Mr. O'Mara!" 
 
 Some fellow from the office! Elizabeth went on a little. 
 
 "Excuse me, sir, but Mr. Matthis said you expected to be 
 here tonight — told me to tell you Gregor's wagons were on 
 the street this afternoon." 
 
 Gregor on the street! Hadn't Elizabeth said her uncle would 
 dine here tonight? He wheeled abruptly and followed Eliza- 
 beth. 
 
 "What is it, dear?" she questioned, putting out both hands. 
 
 For a moment they stood in the glare of the light from the 
 restaurant door and he looked down at her, only vaguely 
 seeing her, and only dimly hearing the orchestra playing the 
 "Blue Danube." . . . He must see Gregor at once. 
 
 263 
 
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 They entered the big room. He was conscious of a hush, 
 of some person saying, "It's O'Mara!" But he kept on, 
 following the waiter and searching the tables for Gregor. As 
 he looked intently here and there, he saw little bits of the 
 scene: A woman with piled up brown hair, head held high 
 above the pearl collar about her neck. A goateed man. . . . 
 He listened for voices and heard little scraps of conversation 
 "It's so nice the very best people from New York came to the 
 Fair." "Of course, Chicago's only an overgrown village." 
 
 Now he could feel a pair of eyes staring at him. He 
 looked across the room, and there he saw Gregor and his son 
 John at a table for two. At the same moment, Elizabeth 
 exclaimed, "Why, there's uncle. Do go and bring him over." 
 
 "You sit here," he answered. "I'll go see your uncle." 
 
 His head stuck out from his bull neck, his eyes narrowed, 
 Gregor kept watching the other's advance. Somewhere near 
 him, the boy John looked, too, but he wasn't worth a glance. 
 . . . Gregor did not rise; the newcomer snapped: 
 
 "Your wagons were on the street today. You seem to 
 forget you signed an agreement never to go into the car-parts 
 business again." 
 
 Lifting his lip over the left eye tooth, Gregor snarled out 
 of that corner of his mouth : 
 
 "And I'm not in business. But my son John is. And he 
 can have every damned cent I've got." 
 
 There was nothing to be said at such a complete checkmate 
 as this. He heeled about, and with every step his cold rage 
 
 264 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 grew more intense. He returned to Elizabeth's table, almost 
 without realization that she was there, until she made him 
 start by speaking: "Isn't uncle coming to dine with us?" 
 
 He stared at her incredulously and answered, "No." 
 
 She studied his face, her eyes becoming more and more 
 troubled. Let them. His course was set. 
 
 "Jim," she pleaded, "tell me what's the matter between uncle 
 and you. I can't bear — I love you both — Tell me." 
 
 "All right," he answered shortly. "I'll tell you. Your 
 uncle's tricked us — gone back into business." 
 
 She cocked her head on one side and turned her hands palms 
 upward on the table, as if to say, "Well, what does that 
 matter?" 
 
 "But, Jim dear, don't you see you couldn't expect a man 
 like him to sit quietly at home?" 
 
 He glared steadily at her. Her eyes growing wide as if 
 she saw something like murder in him, she leaned forward, 
 and demanded: 
 
 "What are you going to do, Jim?" 
 
 Her voice had begun bravely, then quavered. It was as 
 though she saw at last that beside his business, neither she nor 
 her dear ones mattered to him. Her illusion would be shattered 
 now and she, too, would know what it was to be cast into 
 darkness. He answered: 
 
 "I am going to wipe him out." 
 
 265 
 
He made them 
 part of the machine 
 
 CHAPTER TEN 
 EICHTEEN HUNDRED 
 NINETY-FOUR 
 
 E 
 
 OR a year he had fought 
 Gregor and now, he thought, he had him. 
 
 Though Elizabeth was keenly conscious of the struggle and 
 knew well enough now that business meant more to him than 
 she did, her world did not seem to be shattered for her. There 
 was no doubt but that she experienced blackness, but she 
 apparently argued to herself, her sight, not her world, was gone. 
 She realized his indifference to those she loved and to her, 
 
 266 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 but thought that, unknown to himself, he cherished love for 
 her. On that thought, she appeared to live. 
 
 This trouble, and the carrying of her child, had changed 
 her from girl to woman. . . . His mother would be unable 
 to be in the house during the birth of the child, for, she said, 
 she was ill; however, he suspected that she merely disliked 
 assisting on such occasions. At her suggestion, and to 
 Elizabeth's pleasure, he had sent for his Aunt Jane. . . . 
 She had arrived that morning in her black poke bonnet and 
 her long black cape, firmly resolved to do her work unimpressed 
 at the grandeur of his house; she looked about at the French 
 gilt furniture in the double parlors as if she were grimly 
 remarking to herself, "What shall it profit a man though 
 he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" 
 
 Her coming left him free for the fight. If he could show 
 himself stronger than Gregor, the car-parts concerns throughout 
 the country would say, "Our merger's safe with him." And 
 now, he thought, the time had come. Labor troubles were 
 breaking fast. Workers were restless at the panic times, at 
 mergers and wage-cuts. Out at Pullman such big cuts had 
 been made that the laborers declared they might as well starve 
 striking as working. Then, one fine day, a tall, thin monk-like 
 labor leader had come to town. "Unfetter the slaves out at 
 Pullman," he begged the railmen's union. "If necessary, strike 
 with them. Give them strength. Refuse to move Pullman 
 palace cars. If your road fires you, all the men on that road 
 will go out. Merger against mergers. Fight. Win." 
 
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 During the first comparatively orderly days of the strike, 
 Gregor sent out his daily train. So did Matthis. Even when 
 the mobs of the unemployed and of left-over World's Fair 
 crooks swarmed the yards, tipped cars, burned them, smashed 
 red and green lights, spiked switches and blocked trains with 
 their bodies, Gregor kept on. One train a day. But this 
 morning, his engineer had been shot, and Gregor, soft-hearted 
 fool, swore he'd send out no more men. 
 
 Then, to beat Gregor, Matthis' train must go through. 
 However, though the hot July sun was already coming through 
 the west windows of his factory office, he had as yet been unable 
 to make arrangements. This afternoon, he had no engine 
 left but Hoodoo Fifty-nine, a locomotive no blue-lipped scab 
 had been able to urge farther than the city limits; no one 
 would touch it any more, saying "It has a jinx." 
 
 Bah! Machines were not to blame for the things that 
 happened to them, only the man who ran them. . . . Could 
 you, yourself, take it out? Once you'd made a run. Matthis 
 had some pioneer notion you should show men you could do 
 all they did and more, and he had persuaded you to learn 
 
 Through the open windows came the stench of a carload 
 of dead cattle that the strikers would not move. The murmur 
 of the mob, too. Now it rose to the taunting shriek of, "Get 
 y'r God-dam train out!" 
 
 He looked through the window. Out in the gritty glare, 
 the crowd pawed the bottom of the cinder railroad siding and 
 screamed at the watchman, Peg Leg Kearney, as he stumped 
 
 268 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 between the rails. A woman whose flat clay-colored face was 
 slimed with heat, menaced him with her fists until her big bosom 
 shook; a man who wore the strike sympathizer's white ribbon 
 tied to the suspender over his sweat-blackened shirt, spat in 
 Kearney's direction and called out, "Son of a bitch!" Only 
 the armed deputies at the top of the track held the mob back 
 from Kearney. . . . 
 
 What had the fool gone out for? . . . Through a cloud 
 of dust south on the track, a fellow riding a hairy-hoofed 
 nag gradually emerged. Looked like the reporter from the 
 Item. Yes, he had his coil of wire and sounder hung on his 
 chest, and the mob was shouting, "Liar!" Easy enough to 
 guess what he'd come to ask, "Will you try to get Hoodoo 
 Fifty-nine out tonight?" Well, Kearney would not tell him 
 anything that would cause him to climb a telegraph pole and 
 call a despatcher. . . . But Fifty-nine would run. Strike 
 or no strike, his works had stopped for no one — beat of the 
 machines below was steady as a pulse throb — and his daily 
 train had gone out. . . . 
 
 Sound of Kearney's peg leg knocking up the wooden stairs. 
 . . . Though he sympathized with the strikers, he stayed 
 with you. He worshipped Curtin, strike leader, fanatic, but 
 had some sentiment about sticking — you'd given him the 
 watchman job after a train wreck had ended his days as engine 
 foreman; his father had been in the O'Mara post, and Peg 
 Leg himself, had an eager, hungry look as if he wanted to give 
 you the same sort of veneration his father had offered yours. 
 
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 . . . Perhaps the fool thought you too believed in the 
 rights of man. . . . 
 
 Now Kearney leaned against the door jamb; sweat banged 
 the short, thin brown hair on the hat-ringed forehead; the dust 
 of the yards was black paste on his red face; as he fanned 
 himself with his dingy straw hat, he said, "Item man didn't 
 have much to say. Only that the strike leaders have promised 
 to get that dead-cattle train out of here by four tomorrow 
 morning — it's due in a rendering plant at Junosville." 
 
 And as you looked at Kearney you felt disgust. No wonder 
 the man was still a watchman! Under his eyes, you turned 
 to look at a railway map that hung on the west wall and hunted 
 with your finger for Junosville. How hot and sticky the 
 glazed surface was! On the L. M. T. A straight, easy run, 
 entering no big yards. Then, since the track would be cleared 
 for the union train, you could follow — not too closely — to, say, 
 three stations this side of Junosville and hand the train over 
 to a crew you could have waiting there. . . . 
 
 The phone rang. It must wait. 
 
 You told Kearney that you'd take the jinx out, and he 
 almost insisted on going with you. Then he stumped away 
 to get your supper. That would take some time. He'd have 
 to buck up against part of the mob at least, and besides, since 
 the short-order houses in the neighborhood would not sell to 
 company men, he would have a long walk. For all that, he 
 would get no more for his dog-like devotion; all you wanted 
 was machine-like service, and you could always buy that. . . . 
 
 270 
 
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 The phone rang again. You would not answer. No one 
 but Kearney should know you were there. With the coming 
 of darkness, the mob died away, but before you lit the gas, 
 you pulled down the shades for fear of a chance shot. In 
 the event of a train wreck, there were matters here to be seen 
 to, instructions to leave for your secretary. . . . Work 
 done, you turned out the light. Window curtains edged 
 with red! You jerked up a shade, listened to engines clanging 
 as to a 4-11 fire alarm. What a red glare in the sky! Must 
 be the Keokuk yards with all the freights a-blaze. . . . 
 Let 'em blaze! 
 
 Burn and riot! My night shift keeps at work. Hear the 
 throb below! That pulse is mine. . . . 
 
 High-flung leather belts whirr up to ceiling cobwebbed in 
 blackness and down again to lathe wheels — he could see it in 
 his mind's eye. Workers stand in long rows, tables behind 
 them and machines before. They put rough steel molds under 
 grinding teeth that gnaw off rust. They shoot the steel on 
 to the next process till it is loaded on the waiting cars. . . . 
 Every day. The freights must go out every day. 
 
 Once when he was young, he thought, he'd wanted to help 
 the human race. Now with no such sentimental aspirations, 
 he aided them in the way he knew was best. He made them 
 part of the machine, part of the steel they worked with — 
 speedy efficient cogs to be scrapped when useless. The day 
 would soon come when men could live only if they were 
 machine-like; the day would soon come when the loop of the 
 
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LAKE FRONT 
 
 "L" would be tightened round the throat of the city till 
 emotional men died, and mechanical men only, went on living. 
 And without feeling, life was easier. He knew. . . . 
 
 Yes, tonight that train will go out. No rioters will stop me. 
 Their life or mine. I beat Gregor. I get my merger. 
 
 Again the phone, pleading sharply. 
 
 272 
 
No sound but the 
 ringing in an empty room 
 
 CHAPTER ELEVEN 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 
 NINETY-FOUR 
 
 s, 
 
 'INCE James had sent to the 
 country for her, Jane had spent most her time in this big 
 darkened room, looking at the girl who lay there, fanning 
 her, hoping with her that James would come. 
 
 The older woman knew from that Christmas time long ago 
 what it was to come to such a time, her own man not near 
 her. . . . But Michael had loved her. . . . Whereas 
 this boy James. . . . 
 
 273 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Elizabeth kept her face toward the wall though now and 
 again she would be feeling for your hand to see were you 
 there. Her hair lay flat and dark on her hot forehead and 
 the young cheeks were sunk as though the new life within 
 drew hard indeed. Again she pressed your hand, but all the 
 while it was James she wanted, longing for him till all around 
 her could feel the hurt in her. . . . You knew; you had 
 loved Michael so. That night, after you'd been told he had 
 gone down with his boat, you seemed to see your mother, the 
 spirit in the storm that brought him to his death. . . . 
 Was the evil that was in her, in Jim too? Were she and her 
 grandson the same? 
 
 From out in the hallway came the voices of the nurse and 
 the doctor. Two maids brought in a clothes basket with wet 
 sheets in it; they would hang these in the room to make it 
 cooler. . . . Once you'd feared your mother would dominate 
 all you had, would make you and the child come back to live 
 with her and work out your board, you lacking any other 
 place to go; you'd feared she'd deny James, your brother, his 
 schooling as soon as he said he had no vocation. But you 
 had earned your living yourself and you had gotten James 
 through the university. You had won against that spirit of 
 evil, and now you felt as if it was close to you again, and you 
 doing nothing. 
 
 As soon as she seemed to doze, you would go try to get 
 James on the phone. He was young; he couldn't be all hard 
 yet. . . . There was no answer. . . . You thought to slip 
 
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LAKE FRONT 
 
 back to your place with her not knowing you'd been gone, but 
 when you came close to the bed again, her eyes were on yours 
 asking was he coming, and when you said something soft to put 
 her off, her eyes half-shut to keep the tears in, and she turned 
 toward the wall again. . . . 
 
 It was when the girl's pain began, you tried the phone once 
 more. . . . No sound but the ringing in the empty room. 
 . . . After the boy was born, you saw the tiredness heavy 
 on her; weary she was, but not with the pain of the body only. 
 Too worn-out to fight, she died. . . . 
 
 And for the last time, you tried the phone, and it rang in 
 the darkness like it might be your mother laughing at you. 
 
 275 
 
Long, thin arms raised, he threw himself in the gap 
 
 CHAPTER TWELVE 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED NINETY-FOUR 
 
 I, 
 
 .N THE bloody light, you 
 could see Kearney's face at the door. He whispered, "Hear 
 the puffing? Cattle car's leaving the spur ahead. I just 
 phoned a deputy up the track to make sure." 
 
 You felt your way down the dark stairs and went out a 
 door that led into an uncovered passage between the north and 
 
 276 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 south plants. Above was the moon in the paling sky; to the 
 west, a barred gate, and to the east, the loaded cars. The 
 plant doors were open, and the gas lights lay a thinning 
 yellow on the red brick walk. A vagrant early breath of 
 coolness touched you and was gone. . . . 
 
 While Kearney swung a lantern for a last look at the 
 couplings, you went on to the engine. ... In its stenciled 
 whiteness, the hoodoo number, Fifty-nine, stared at you from 
 the oblong strip beneath the cab windows, but jinx figures had 
 no effect on you. This engine was a battered hulk with a 
 top-heavy look; nevertheless, its high boiler and firebox on 
 top the frame had set a railroad style some thirteen years ago 
 and the thing was still good. . . . Kearney had built a 
 fire fit to burn the crown sheet. . . . There he was, alongside 
 now, sniffing the air. . . . "Don't smell carcass now, do 
 you? Guess we can go all right." 
 
 Fifty-nine was out on the open track. It jumped a frog, 
 nearly cracked your head on the cab top. It slued and 
 wobbled. . . . Look! From a shanty, a man, still snapping 
 his suspenders up, ran out, pointed, yelled to someone inside 
 the hut. No, you spy, this isn't the cattle car scheduled to 
 go through. It's a scab train. Telephone ahead, will you? 
 Get your mob farther up the tracks. Go on, if you want to. 
 We stop for no one. 
 
 Cab was hot as the red sun in the misty east. . . . Here 
 was a stretch of dirty red brick factories with gray frame houses 
 stuck between. . . . Now the high, long fences about the 
 
 277 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 stock yards, with square pens beyond, with runways to the 
 slaughterhouses. . . . Safe past the yards, and still the 
 track was clear. . . . 
 
 What was Kearney thinking? This was the district of his 
 striker friend, Curtin. Curtin, the fanatic. . . . Red 
 windows in the wooden homes and flats; gray weeds in the 
 vacant lots. . . . "Look! The bell rope of that ditched 
 locomotive is whipping up and down. A boy is leaning out 
 the window. Has he given an alarm?" Far down along the 
 tracks, springing up from nowhere were people, white, black, 
 and yellow. They hurled themselves up the side of the tracks, 
 shook their fists, w-ed ahead of the freight train. Scared of 
 the speed, were they? Afraid of sure death? They failed to 
 join the U on the tracks, failed to block the train with their 
 bodies. 
 
 All afraid? No. There was one man. Bearded fanatic. 
 Long thin arms raised, he threw himself in the gap. Kearney 
 jerked himself from the window, screamed, "O Christ, stop," 
 reached for the throttle. . . . "Shut me off, will you?" 
 You pushed him to the wall. Now the fender caught the 
 madman on the tracks, hurled his body into the clear. . . . 
 Kearney groaned as if the heart had been wrenched out of him, 
 "God have mercy!" 
 
 Roar of the mob behind, and then the straight stretch through 
 the baked prairie; leaves hang long and limp near cornstalks. 
 . . . There was a dead man back on the siding, a fool to 
 get in the way. . . . 
 
 278 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Even out here there was trace of the vandals. Sometimes a 
 car tipped over on the other track, sometimes a half -burned 
 switch-house or a charred upright that must have held a 
 watchman's tower once. Here a farmer in a broad peaked 
 straw hat pulled up a team that reared at the train going 
 through. . . . Next station would be yours. . . . Up 
 there at the red depot, your crew waved its caps. You choked 
 the engine, lurched to a standstill. ... As you clambered 
 from the cab, your body still vibrated, the air felt cold. You 
 staggered across the gray splintery planks and fell on to a 
 bench next the station, a hard bench sectioned off with iron 
 arms. Across your knees, the shadow of the deep roof 
 projection made a sharp line. What did Kearney matter? 
 
 His face gone white, he slumped on the station step, mur- 
 mured the name "Curtin" over and over. Had you 
 
 Suddenly you leaned forward. What was that sound? A 
 train in the east. Had the white-livered crew gone into reverse? 
 No. At last, nose-foremost, this train chugged across the 
 prairie into sight. Soldiers on the cow-catcher, soldiers on 
 the coal truck, soldiers on the car tops, Chicago-bound, sent 
 by the President. . . . 
 
 Victory was sure then. Your train daily! You'd beat 
 Gregor! Your merger was assured. 
 
 They took him back on these cars, back toward Chicago. 
 . . . As he rode, he thought of the approaching city with 
 an enthusiasm unusual in him. He saw the place in his mind, 
 its bony black bridges, its big-bellied freighters painted white, 
 
 279 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 black and red and riding on the river, its cobblestone streets, 
 its dark gray or brown stone buildings; these buildings were 
 five stories for the most part with high points like the Montauk, 
 the Auditorium Tower, and the nineteen flights of the Masonic 
 Temple. . . . From the tower, you could see out to the 
 new south limits at 138 Street, a city gridironed with railroads 
 and crowded with factories, granaries, freight-houses, and 
 chimneys belching smoke; a city marked with car-lines and 
 elevated roads on which people came back and forth to work, 
 to work on the big new machines, to become like them, efficient, 
 unemotional, scrapped when useless. . . . 
 
 It was an ugly city. Its lines were hard and sharp. Its 
 color, smoke. Its air, gritty. Its noise, strident. Its smell, 
 salt with the blood of slaughterhouses. Its people, pale and 
 hurried. 
 
 But Chicago would become the first of all cities. . . . 
 
 World's Fair prophets promised that Chicago would one 
 day build bridges across its river more beautiful than those 
 across the Seine; that, abating its smoke, it would erect sky- 
 scrapers higher than the Temple, buildings of the whites and 
 pale grays of Paris; that it would connect its great parks with 
 green boulevards; that it would make land in the lake and 
 create with its own hands a shore lovely as the Riviera; that 
 it would buy the forest encircling the city as a playground 
 for the fifty million people who would be here before another 
 century passed by. Dreams? Dreams that the growth of 
 industry and wealth here would make possible. He, and others 
 
 280 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 here, had shown industry could be made to grow, whatever the 
 obstacles. In a short time, Chicago would become the center 
 of the industrial world and that would mean the leading city 
 of the globe, for soon the entire world would go over to the 
 machine. . . . Then heads of industry here would control 
 the world. . . . And he, still young, was one of these. . . . 
 There was the city, in reality, before them. . . . Soon 
 everyone would know that he had won. . . . 
 
 281 
 
E 
 
 PILOGUE 
 
Stucl{ up the 
 guy, told him 
 to beat it 
 
 T 
 
 HE foreman piped your fake 
 foot, gave your runt shape the double-o, and sneered. You 
 might go higher and get leave to stay. Who'd you see? 
 O'Mara III? Oh, yeah! "What the hell can I do?" asked 
 the foreman. So you were canned with the T. B. guy, junked 
 with the cougher. Tonight the last night for both of you. . . . 
 
 285 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Morning was sure slow on its feet, always had been. . . . 
 You looked at the windows stuck up high along the north 
 wall of the grinding shed — the yellow light in the box of the 
 hanging conveyor outside streaked back and forth. . . . 
 
 You jammed another dulled steel tooth into the clamp of 
 the grinder. . . . "Push the slant-end next the emery wheel; 
 step on the pedal." G-r-rh! . . . Sparks flew red and died 
 black against the goggles, overalls, and bare forearms; the air 
 was thick with muck. . . . "Unclamp the sharpened tooth, 
 limp across the earthen floor, slam the bar on the table top, 
 grab another from the shelf below, go back to your line of 
 twenty." . . . "Yell your head off, you lousy foreman. Let 
 the wops wait to fill their damned barrows. Why should I 
 hurry?" . . . 
 
 Night faded away. You got paid off, you left at the south 
 gate, crossed the street at the end of the car tracks. . . . 
 October blew cold across that west prairie; nothing to hold 
 the wind back except the street signposts of the new subdivision. 
 . . . Job or no job, you gave the newsboy his nickel; cripple 
 too. . . . "American Restaurant" was in shiny raised letters 
 on the window of the corner store; just as soon as you sat on 
 your high stool, Nikolas the Greek pushed your coffee over the 
 porcelain counter. To hell with that mirror opposite! You 
 ain't wanting to stare at no outa work bum. . . . You 
 flapped your fin about the straight thick mug, propped the 
 paper against the tall glass sugar bowl with the patent spill 
 and read, "Gangster Kills as He Hijacks Liquor Truck." . . . 
 
 286 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 What was there to do but go home and tell 'em you'd lost 
 your job? You dragged along to the "L"; only a few night 
 workers slumped around in the straw seats, but as soon as 
 flats and factories got thick, people crammed on so tight they 
 couldn't fall unless they busted through the iron platform 
 gates — products on spool conveyors going to the next depart- 
 ment, only products had room. . . . 
 
 Click of the "L" wheels made you think of the sound of 
 the yellow ducks that jerked along the end wall of Nigger 
 Jim's shooting gallery. Remember the big guy there who'd 
 tried to swipe a prize you'd won? You'd banged him on the 
 bean, and a big bull had pinched you for assault with intent 
 to kill. When you stood before the bench, his Honor couldn't 
 see you, had to rise and peer over before he could find the 
 killer. Even the flatfoots laughed. . . . Well, you'd seen 
 a bird could be so dumb he didn't know you had rights till 
 you'd shown him; so after that you'd packed a mean rod. . . . 
 
 Sluice off at the transfer station; your home is next door. 
 . . . You lagged along, not wanting to go in. . . . 
 Pink gum wrappers on the "L" stairs; little girl with greasy 
 bakery bag coming out the first floor delicatessen's; two birds 
 swinging their lunch pails down the darkness of the narrow 
 stairway. 
 
 Slow, you stuck your key in the door. . . . You had 
 the back rooms in the long flat and your wife and mother sure 
 kept 'em nice; those two scrubbed the floors raw, hung up 
 stiff clean curtains every two weeks, burned a red light on 
 
 287 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 top the golden oak desk before the picture of the Sacred Heart. 
 Besides keeping house, they went to work too, sure did their 
 
 share. They'd feel awful bad about your . . . Sudden, 
 
 you slid out your key. You'd get your job first. The hell 
 you'd go in! 
 
 All day you answered ads. Once you passed along the 
 flops on West Madison street, and the sunk look on the down- 
 and-outs made you work fast. ... It was ten or eleven 
 that night before you thought of a fellow you knew who worked 
 in a Gold Coast hotel; maybe he could tip you off to some- 
 thing. . . . 
 
 Feeling wanted as the small-pox, you moseyed down a dark 
 street where row after row of the old stone homes had gone 
 rooming-house. In some of the greasy windows, lights burned, 
 and you could see food-boxes parked on the ledges. . . . 
 Two guys passed holding on to a fat man who looked half-shot, 
 took him down the alley, probably to frisk him. ... In 
 this house was a black hole where a basement laundry used 
 to be — wouldn't stand for the racket, so it was busted in with 
 a pineapple. . . . Seems like there was still one way to 
 make money. . . . You felt your rod. . . . 
 
 Just as you got under the alley arc lights, a big truck tried to 
 back up to the service entrance of the hotel. You were ready 
 to call, "All right, Pull her straight now" when you saw the 
 tarpaulin had slipped; the truck was loaded with liquor. One 
 man on the seat. Nobody around. You had your gun. . . . 
 You hopped to the box, stuck up the guy, told him to beat it. 
 
 288 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 Did he? And how! . . . You drove the truck up Nigger 
 Jim's Alley. . . . 
 
 Forty grand in all for that, but you split with the three who 
 helped you get rid of the stuff. Afraid your mother would be 
 suspicious, you'd bought a florist shop and told your family 
 a guy had staked you to it. Later you rented an apartment 
 off the Drive. . . . 
 
 Your mother looked worried as though she'd rather keep 
 on working and living in a cockroach flat. But your wife — 
 Why, she just naturally took to class, bought a floor lamp and 
 pianola, got you to wear a Tuxedo at dinner, and to ride 
 horseback mornings in the park. . . . Being on the up 
 and up yourself, you sent the crippled boy on Nikolas' corner 
 to a famous doctor, you shipped the T.B. guy out to a ranch 
 in Arizona. . . . 
 
 Though you shot for business reasons only, you found the 
 time soon came when the little gangs in the beer and alky 
 racket were wiped out, and just the Big Three were left — 
 you on the North Side, Weinstein on the West, and Di Julio 
 on the South. The same day you got square with Di Julio — 
 his Frank Lombroso had shot your Bay City Louie — you got 
 the big idea. One of your swell customers put you next. . . . 
 
 The day after you'd opened up on Frank, you got word 
 to Weinstein and Di Julio. Di Julio seemed to like the idea, 
 and, just by way of showing that he knew you had to shoot, 
 sent you a thousand dollars for flowers for Lombroso's funeral. 
 . . . Weinstein put it there. Date was made, and you 
 
 289 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 ordered feedbags for three at one of the classiest of the Michigan 
 Boulevard hotels. You had a merger all doped out. It would 
 regulate prices, increase profits, wipe out shooting, and this 
 last, of course, would cut out the chief high cost of protection. 
 
 Weinstein came in with the new beard he was hiding behind. 
 Di Julio was late. At last he sent big Carlo in to say that old 
 lady Lombroso had set up a yowl and that he'd have to go 
 see her. But, he promised, he'd give his answer later. . . . 
 
 Little habit of yours never to get in your private can — pale 
 gray outside and in, German silver fittings and a purple robe — 
 without wondering if you were going on a one-way trip. "Cut 
 the tragedy. When the merger goes through, things'll be 
 different." . . . Chimes like Sunday came from the gold- 
 topped tower of the Straus place. Your car rode along the 
 roof-top shadows of the buildings on the west. Grant Park 
 was green on the east, new stone viaducts crossed the train tracks 
 out to the made land, out to the little old blue lake. . . . 
 Now, way ahead, was the tile of the Wrigley buildings, and 
 the stone of the Tribune Tower, white, gray, against the blue 
 sky. . . . Here was the boulevard bridge. Some bridge! 
 Its fence hit the graveyard monuments at the corners and then 
 swept back in big curves; its stone stairs led down to the green 
 river. River was about done for; it interfered with street traffic 
 and would soon be filled in. . . . 
 
 Just a fancy of yours to feel under the counter that had the 
 trailing arbutus on it to see if the extra gat was still there. . . . 
 Then you looked over the wreaths and broken pillars that 
 
 290 
 
LAKE FRONT 
 
 were ready for the Lombroso funeral, all lined up near the 
 window, convenient for Di Julio's men whenever they would 
 come. You pulled a brown petal from a pink rose, you fixed 
 a fern. . . . 
 
 A woman, looked like your mother, went up the steps of 
 the yellow stone cathedral opposite. She'd got on to you all 
 right, all right. Didn't care about cops so much as about God, 
 and spent all her time praying. . . . Would she rather 
 have you lie down in some flop and bellyache instead? . . . 
 God, what else was there? 
 
 Lookit the can stopping at the door. Big Carlo and two 
 other Di Julio men got out smiling. When they entered, you 
 said, "Hello, boys; come for the flowers?" Big Carlo stuck 
 out his friendly paw. Then — froze to your hand! Guns out. 
 Put on the spot 
 
 Woman on the church steps. . . . God, I ask You? . . . 
 
 291 
 

 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA 
 
 813R917L C001 
 
 LAKE FRONT CHGO