Title:      Of Time and The River (1935)
            A Legend of Man's Hunger in his Youth
Author:     Thomas Wolfe
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Language:   English
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Date first posted:          July 2003
Date most recently updated: July 2003

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To

MAXWELL EVARTS PERKINS

A GREAT EDITOR AND A BRAVE AND HONEST MAN, WHO STUCK TO THE WRITER OF THIS BOOK THROUGH TIMES OF BITTER HOPELESSNESS AND DOUBT AND WOULD NOT LET HIM GIVE IN TO HIS OWN DESPAIR, A WORK TO BE KNOWN AS "OF TIME AND THE RIVER" IS DEDICATED WITH THE HOPE THAT ALL OF IT MAY BE IN SOME WAY WORTHY OF THE LOYAL DEVOTION AND THE PATIENT CARE WHICH A DAUNTLESS AND UNSHAKEN FRIEND HAS GIVEN TO EACH PART OF IT, AND WITHOUT WHICH NONE OF IT COULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN

"Crito, my dear friend Crito, that, believe me, that is what I seem to hear, as the Corybants hear flutes in the air, and the sound of those words rings and echoes in my ears and I can listen to nothing else."

"Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn,
Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen glühn,
Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht,
Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht,
Kennst du es wohl?
      Dahin! Dahin
Möcht' ich mit dir, O mein Geliebter, ziehn!

Kennst du das Haus, auf Säulen ruht sein Dach,
Es glänzt der Saal, es schimmert das Gemach,
Und Marmorbilder stehn und sehn mich an:
Was hat man dir, du armes Kind, getan?
Kennst du es wohl?
      Dahin! Dahin
Möcht' ich mit dir, O mein Beschützer, ziehn!

Kennst du den Berg und seinen Wolkensteg?
Das Maultier sucht im Nebel seinen Weg,
In Höhlen wohnt der Drachen alte Brut,
Es stürzt der Fels und über ihn die Flut:
Kennst du ihn wohl?
      Dahin! Dahin
Geht unser Weg; O Vater, lass uns ziehn!"

. . . of wandering for ever and the earth again . . . of seed-time, bloom, and the mellow-dropping harvest. And of the big flowers, the rich flowers, the strange unknown flowers.

Where shall the weary rest? When shall the lonely of heart come home? What doors are open for the wanderer? And which of us shall find his father, know his face, and in what place, and in what time, and in what land? Where? Where the weary of heart can abide for ever, where the weary of wandering can find peace, where the tumult, the fever, and the fret shall be for ever stilled.

Who owns the earth? Did we want the earth that we should wander on it? Did we need the earth that we were never still upon it? Whoever needs the earth shall have the earth: he shall be still upon it, he shall rest within a little place, he shall dwell in one small room for ever.

Did he feel the need of a thousand tongues that he sought thus through the moil and horror of a thousand furious streets? He shall need a tongue no longer, he shall need no tongue for silence and the earth: he shall speak no word through the rooted lips, the snake's cold eye will peer for him through sockets of the brain, there will be no cry out of the heart where wells the vine.

The tarantula is crawling through the rotted oak, the adder lisps against the breast, cups fall: but the earth will endure for ever. The flower of love is living in the wilderness, and the elm-root threads the bones of buried lovers.

The dead tongue withers and the dead heart rots, blind mouths crawl tunnels through the buried flesh, but the earth will endure for ever; hair grows like April on the buried breast and from the sockets of the brain the death flowers grow and will not perish.

O flower of love whose strong lips drink us downward into death, in all things far and fleeting, enchantress of our twenty thousand days, the brain will madden and the heart be twisted, broken by her kiss, but glory, glory, glory, she remains: Immortal love, alone and aching in the wilderness, we cried to you: You were not absent from our loneliness.

About fifteen years ago, at the end of the second decade of this century, four people were standing together on the platform of the railway station of a town in the hills of western Catawba. This little station, really just a suburban adjunct of the larger town which, behind the concealing barrier of a rising ground, swept away a mile or two to the west and north, had become in recent years the popular point of arrival and departure for travellers to and from the cities of the east, and now, in fact, accommodated a much larger traffic than did the central station of the town, which was situated two miles westward around the powerful bend of the rails. For this reason a considerable number of people were now assembled here, and from their words and gestures, a quietly suppressed excitement that somehow seemed to infuse the drowsy mid-October afternoon with an electric vitality, it was possible to feel the thrill and menace of the coming train.

An observer would have felt in the complexion of this gathering a somewhat mixed quality--a quality that was at once strange and familiar, alien and native, cosmopolitan and provincial. It was not the single native quality of the usual crowd that one saw on the station platforms of the typical Catawba town as the trains passed through. This crowd was more mixed and varied, and it had a strong colouring of worldly smartness, the element of fashionable sophistication that one sometimes finds in a place where a native and alien population have come together. And such an inference was here warranted: the town of Altamont a mile or so away was a well-known resort and the mixed gathering on the station platform was fairly representative of its population. But all of these people, both strange and native, had been drawn here by a common experience, an event which has always been of first interest in the lives of all Americans. This event is the coming of the train.

It would have been evident to an observer that of the four people who were standing together at one end of the platform three--the two women and the boy--were connected by the relationship of blood. A stranger would have known instantly that the boy and the young woman were brother and sister and that the woman was their mother. The relationship was somehow one of tone, texture, time, and energy, and of the grain and temper of the spirit. The mother was a woman of small but strong and solid figure. Although she was near her sixtieth year, her hair was jet-black and her face, full of energy and power, was almost as smooth and unlined as the face of a girl. Her hair was brushed back from a forehead which was high, white, full, and naked-looking, and which, together with the expression of her eyes, which were brown, and rather worn and weak, but constantly thoughtful, constantly reflective, gave her face the expression of straight grave innocence that children have, and also of strong native intelligence and integrity. Her skin was milk-white, soft of texture, completely colourless save for the nose, which was red, broad and fleshy at the base, and curiously masculine.

A stranger seeing her for the first time would have known somehow that the woman was a member of a numerous family, and that her face had the tribal look. He would somehow have felt certain that the woman had brothers and that if he could see them, they would look like her. Yet, this masculine quality was not a quality of sex, for the woman, save for the broad manlike nose, was as thoroughly female as a woman could be. It was rather a quality of tribe and character--a tribe and character that was decisively masculine.

The final impression of the woman might have been this:--that her life was somehow above and beyond a moral judgment, that no matter what the course or chronicle of her life may have been, no matter what crimes of error, avarice, ignorance, or thoughtlessness might be charged to her, no matter what suffering or evil consequences may have resulted to other people through any act of hers, her life was somehow beyond these accidents of time, training, and occasion, and the woman was as guiltless as a child, a river, an avalanche, or any force of nature whatsoever.

The younger of the two women was about thirty years old. She was a big woman, nearly six feet tall, large, and loose of bone and limb, almost gaunt. Both women were evidently creatures of tremendous energy, but where the mother suggested a constant, calm, and almost tireless force, the daughter was plainly one of those big, impulsive creatures of the earth who possess a terrific but undisciplined vitality, which they are ready to expend with a whole-souled and almost frenzied prodigality on any person, enterprise, or object which appeals to their grand affections.

This difference between the two women was also reflected in their faces. The face of the mother, for all its amazing flexibility, the startled animal-like intentness with which her glance darted from one object to another, and the mobility of her powerful and delicate mouth, which she pursed and convolved with astonishing flexibility in such a way as to show the constant reflective effort of her mind, was nevertheless the face of a woman whose spirit had an almost elemental quality of patience, fortitude and calm.

The face of the younger woman was large, high-boned, and generous and already marked by the frenzy and unrest of her own life. At moments it bore legibly and terribly the tortured stain of hysteria, of nerves stretched to the breaking point, of the furious impatience, unrest and dissonance of her own tormented spirit, and of impending exhaustion and collapse for her overwrought vitality. Yet, in an instant, this gaunt, strained, tortured, and almost hysterical face could be transformed by an expression of serenity, wisdom and repose that would work unbelievably a miracle of calm and radiant beauty on the nervous, gaunt, and tortured features.

Now, each in her own way, the two women were surveying the other people on the platform and the new arrivals with a ravenous and absorptive interest, bestowing on each a wealth of information, comment, and speculation which suggested an encyclopædic knowledge of the history of every one in the community.

"--Why, yes, child," the mother was saying impatiently, as she turned her quick glance from a group of people who at the moment were the subject of discussion--"that's what I'm telling you!--Don't I know? . . . Didn't I grow up with all those people? . . . Wasn't Emma Smathers one of my girlhood friends? . . . That boy's not this woman's child at all. He's Emma Smathers' child by that first marriage."

"Well, that's news to me," the younger woman answered. "That's certainly news to me. I never knew Steve Randolph had been married more than once. I'd always thought that all that bunch were Mrs. Randolph's children."

"Why, of course not!" the mother cried impatiently. "She never had any of them except Lucille. All the rest of them were Emma's children. Steve Randolph was a man of forty-five when he married her. He'd been a widower for years--poor Emma died in childbirth when Bernice was born--nobody ever thought he'd marry again and nobody ever expected this woman to have any children of her own, for she was almost as old as he was--why, yes!--hadn't she been married before, a widow, you know, when she met him, came here after her first husband's death from some place way out West--oh, Wyoming, or Nevada or Idaho, one of those States, you know--and had never had chick nor child, as the saying goes--till she married Steve. And that woman was every day of forty-four years old when Lucille was born."

"Uh-huh! . . . Ah-hah! the younger woman muttered absently, in a tone of rapt and fascinated interest, as she looked distantly at the people in the other group, and reflectively stroked her large chin with a big, bony hand. "So Lucille, then, is really John's half-sister?"

"Why, of course!" the mother cried. "I thought every one knew that. Lucille's the only one that this woman can lay claim to. The rest of them were Emma's."

"--Well, that's certainly news to me," the younger woman said slowly as before. "It's the first I ever heard of it. . . . And you say she was forty-four when Lucille was born?"

"Now, she was all of that," the mother said. "I know. And she may have been even older."

"Well," the younger woman said, and now she turned to her silent husband, Barton, with a hoarse snigger, "it just goes to show that while there's life there's hope, doesn't it? So cheer up, honey," she said to him, "we may have a chance yet." But despite her air of rough banter her clear eyes for a moment had a look of deep pain and sadness in them.

"Chance!" the mother cried strongly, with a little scornful pucker of the lips--"why, of course there is! If I was your age again I'd have a dozen--and never think a thing of it." For a moment she was silent, pursing her reflective lips. Suddenly a faint sly smile began to flicker at the edges of her lips, and turning to the boy, she addressed him with an air of sly and bantering mystery:

"Now, boy," she said--"there's lots of things that you don't know . . . you always thought you were the last--the youngest--didn't you?"

"Well, wasn't I?" he said.

"H'm!" she said with a little scornful smile and an air of great mystery--"There's lots that I could tell you--"

"Oh, my God!" he groaned, turning towards his sister with an imploring face. "More mysteries! . . . The next thing I'll find that there were five sets of triplets after I was born--Well, come on, Mama," he cried impatiently. "Don't hint around all day about it. . . . What's the secret now--how many were there?"

"H'm!" she said with a little bantering, scornful, and significant smile.

"O Lord!" he groaned again--"Did she ever tell you what it was?" Again he turned imploringly to his sister.

She snickered hoarsely, a strange high-husky and derisive falsetto laugh, at the same time prodding him stiffly in the ribs with her big fingers:

"Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi," she laughed. "More spooky business, hey? You don't know the half of it. She'll be telling you next you were only the fourteenth."

"H'm!" the older woman said, with a little scornful smile of her pursed lips. "Now I could tell him more than that! The fourteenth! Pshaw!" she said contemptuously--"I could tell him--"

"O God!" he groaned miserably. "I knew it! . . . I don't want to hear it."

"K, k, k, k, k," the younger woman snickered derisively, prodding him in the ribs again.

"No, sir," the older woman went on strongly--"and that's not all either!--Now, boy, I want to tell you something that you didn't know," and as she spoke she turned the strange and worn stare of her serious brown eyes on him, and levelled a half-clasped hand, fingers pointing, a gesture loose, casual, and instinctive and powerful as a man's.--"There's a lot I could tell you that you never heard. Long years after you were born, child--why, at the time I took you children to the Saint Louis Fair--" here her face grew stern and sad, she pursed her lips strongly and shook her head with a short convulsive movement--"oh, when I think of it--to think what I went through--oh, awful, awful, you know," she whispered ominously.

"Now, Mama, for God's sake, I don't want to hear it!" he fairly shouted, beside himself with exasperation and foreboding. "God-damn it, can we have no peace--even when I go away!" he cried bitterly, and illogically. "Always these damned gloomy hints and revelations--this Pentland spooky stuff," he yelled--"this damned I-could-if-I-wanted-to-tell-you air of mystery, horror, and damnation!" he shouted incoherently. "Who cares? What does it matter?" he cried, adding desperately, "I don't want to hear about it--No one cares."

"Why, child, now, I was only saying--" she began hastily and diplomatically.

"All right, all right, all right," he muttered. "I don't care--"

"But, as I say, now," she resumed.

"I don't care!" he shouted. "Peace, peace, peace, peace, peace," he muttered in a crazy tone as he turned to his sister. "A moment's peace for all of us before we die. A moment of peace, peace, peace."

"Why, boy, I'll vow," the mother said in a vexed tone, fixing her reproving glance on him, "what on earth's come over you? You act like a regular crazy man. I'll vow you do."

"A moment's peace!" he muttered again, thrusting one hand wildly through his hair. "I beg and beseech you for a moment's peace before we perish!"

"K, k, k, k, k," the younger woman snickered derisively, as she poked him stiffly in the ribs--"There's no peace for the weary. It's like that river that goes on for ever," she said with a faint loose curving of lewd humour around the edges of her generous big mouth--"Now you see, don't you?" she said, looking at him with this lewd and challenging look. "You see what it's like now, don't you? . . . You're the lucky one! You got away! You're smart enough to go way off somewhere to college--to Boston--Harvard--anywhere--but you're away from it. You get it for a short time when you come home. How do you think I stand it?" she said challengingly. "I have to hear it all the time. . . . Oh, all the time, and all the time, and all the time!" she said with a kind of weary desperation. "If they'd only leave me alone for five minutes some time I think I'd be able to pull myself together, but it's this way all the time and all the time and all the time. You see, don't you?"

But now, having finished, in a tone of hoarse and panting exasperation, her frenzied protest, she relapsed immediately into a state of marked, weary, and dejected resignation.

"Well, I know, I know," she said in a weary and indifferent voice. ". . . Forget about it . . . Talking does no good . . . Just try to make the best of it the little time you're here. . . . I used to think something could be done about it . . . but I know different now," she muttered, although she would have been unable to explain the logical meaning of these incoherent and disjointed phrases.

"Hah? . . . What say?" the mother now cried sharply, darting her glances from one to another with the quick, startled, curiously puzzled intentness of an animal or a bird. "What say?" she cried sharply again, as no one answered. "I thought--"

But fortunately, at this moment, this strange and disturbing flash in which had been revealed the blind and tangled purposes, the powerful and obscure impulses, the tormented nerves, the whole tragic perplexity of soul which was of the very fabric of their lives, was interrupted by a commotion in one of the groups upon the platform, and by a great guffaw of laughter which instantly roused these three people from this painful and perplexing scene, and directed their startled attention to the place from which the laughter came.

And now again they heard the great guffaw--a solid "Haw! Haw! Haw!" which was full of such an infectious exuberance of animal good-nature that other people on the platform began to smile instinctively, and to look affectionately towards the owner of the laugh.

Already, at the sound of the laugh, the young woman had forgotten the weary and dejected resignation of the moment before, and with an absent and yet eager look of curiosity in her eyes, she was staring towards the group from which the laugh had come, and herself now laughing absently, she was stroking her big chin in a gesture of meditative curiosity, saying:

"Hah! Hah! Hah! . . . That's George Pentland. . . . You can tell him anywhere by his laugh."

"Why, yes," the mother was saying briskly, with satisfaction. "That's George all right. I'd know him in the dark the minute that I heard that laugh.--And say, what about it? He's always had it--why, ever since he was a kid-boy--and was going around with Steve. . . . Oh, he'd come right out with it anywhere, you know, in Sunday school, church, or while the preacher was sayin' prayers before collection--that big, loud laugh, you know, that you could hear, from here to yonder, as the sayin' goes. . . . Now I don't know where it comes from--none of the others ever had it in our family; now we all liked to laugh well enough, but I never heard no such laugh as that from any of 'em--there's one thing sure, Will Pentland never laughed like that in his life--Oh, Pett, you know! Pett!"--a scornful and somewhat malicious look appeared on the woman's face as she referred to her brother's wife in that whining and affected tone with which women imitate the speech of other women whom they do not like--"Pett got so mad at him one time when he laughed right out in church that she was goin' to take the child right home an' whip him.--Told me, says to me, you know--'Oh, I could wring his neck! He'll disgrace us all,' she says, 'unless I cure him of it,' says, 'He burst right out in that great roar of his while Doctor Baines was sayin' his prayers this morning until you couldn't hear a word the preacher said.' Said, 'I was so mortified to think he could do a thing like that that I'd a-beat the blood right out of him if I'd had my buggy whip,' says, 'I don't know where it comes from'--oh, sneerin'-like, you know," the woman said, imitating the other woman's voice with a sneering and viperous dislike--"'I don't know where it comes from unless it's some of that common Pentland blood comin' out in him'--'Now you listen to me,' I says; oh, I looked her in the eye, you know"--here the woman looked at her daughter with the straight steady stare of her worn brown eyes, illustrating her speech with the loose and powerful gesture of the half-clasped finger-pointing hand--"'you listen to me. I don't know where that child gets his laugh,' I says, 'but you can bet your bottom dollar that he never got it from his father--or any other Pentland that I ever heard of--for none of them ever laughed that way--Will, or Jim, or Sam, or George, or Ed, or Father, or even Uncle Bacchus,' I said--'no, nor old Bill Pentland either, who was that child's great-grandfather--for I've seen an' heard 'em all,' I says. 'And as for this common Pentland blood you speak of, Pett'--oh, I guess I talked to her pretty straight, you know," she said with a little bitter smile, and the short, powerful, and convulsive tremor of her strong pursed lips--"'as for that common Pentland blood you speak of, Pett,' I says, 'I never heard of that either--for we stood high in the community,' I says, 'and we all felt that Will was lowerin' himself when he married a Creasman!'"

"Oh, you didn't say that, Mama, surely not," the young woman said with a hoarse, protesting, and yet abstracted laugh, continuing to survey the people on the platform with a bemused and meditative curiosity, and stroking her big chin thoughtfully as she looked at them, pausing from time to time to grin in a comical and rather formal manner, bow graciously and murmur:

"How-do-you-do? ah-hah! How-do-you-do, Mrs. Willis?"

"Haw! Haw! Haw!" Again the great laugh of empty animal good nature burst out across the station platform, and this time George Pentland turned from the group of which he was a member and looked vacantly around him, his teeth bared with savage joy, as, with two brown fingers of his strong left hand, he dug vigorously into the muscular surface of his hard thigh. It was an animal reflex, instinctive and unconscious, habitual to him in moments of strong mirth.

He was a powerful and handsome young man in his early thirties, with coal-black hair, a strong thick neck, powerful shoulders, and the bull vitality of the athlete. He had a red, sensual, curiously animal and passionate face, and when he laughed his great guffaw, his red lips were bared over two rows of teeth that were white and regular and solid as ivory.

--But now, the paroxysm of that savage and mindless laughter having left him, George Pentland had suddenly espied the mother and her children, waved to them in genial greeting, and excusing himself from his companions--a group of young men and women who wore the sporting look and costume of "the country club crowd"--he was walking towards his kinsmen at an indolent swinging stride, pausing to acknowledge heartily the greetings of people on every side, with whom he was obviously a great favourite.

As he approached, he bared his strong white teeth again in greeting, and in a drawling, rich-fibred voice, which had unmistakably the Pentland quality of sensual fullness, humour, and assurance, and a subtle but gloating note of pleased self-satisfaction, he said:

"Hello, Aunt Eliza, how are you? Hello, Helen--how are you, Hugh?" he said in his high, somewhat accusing, but very strong and masculine voice, putting his big hand in an easy affectionate way on Barton's arm. "Where the hell you been keepin' yourself, anyway?" he said accusingly. "Why don't some of you folks come over to see us sometime? Elk was askin' about you all the other day--wanted to know why Helen didn't come round more often."

"Well, George, I tell you how it is," the young woman said with an air of great sincerity and earnestness. "Hugh and I have intended to come over a hundred times, but life has been just one damned thing after another all summer long. If I could only have a moment's peace--if I could only get away by myself for a moment--if they would only leave me alone for an hour at a time, I think I could get myself together again--do you know what I mean, George?" she said hoarsely and eagerly, trying to enlist him in her sympathetic confidence--"If they'd only do something for themselves once in a while--but they all come to me when anything goes wrong--they never let me have a moment's peace--until at times I think I'm going crazy--I get queer--funny, you know," she said vaguely and incoherently. "I don't know whether something happened Tuesday or last week or if I just imagined it." And for a moment her big gaunt face had the dull strained look of hysteria.

"The strain on her has been very great this summer," said Barton in a deep and grave tone. "It's--it's," he paused carefully, deeply, searching for a word, and looked down as he flicked an ash from his long cigar, "it's--been too much for her. Everything's on her shoulders," he concluded in his deep grave voice.

"My God, George, what is it?" she said quietly and simply, in the tone of one begging for enlightenment. "Is it going to be this way all our lives? Is there never going to be any peace or happiness for us? Does it always have to be this way? Now I want to ask you--is there nothing in the world but trouble?"

"Trouble!" he said derisively. "Why, I've had more trouble than any one of you ever heard of. . . . I've had enough to kill a dozen people . . . but when I saw it wasn't goin' to kill me, I quit worryin'. . . . So you do the same thing," he advised heartily. "Hell, don't worry, Helen! . . . It never got you anywhere. . . . You'll be all right," he said. "You got nothin' to worry over. You don't know what trouble is."

"Oh, I'd be all right, George--I think I could stand anything--all the rest of it--if it wasn't for Papa. . . . I'm almost crazy from worrying about him this summer. There were three times there when I knew he was gone. . . . And I honestly believe I pulled him back each time by main strength and determination--do you know what I mean?" she said hoarsely and eagerly--"I was just determined not to let him go. If his heart had stopped beating I believe I could have done something to make it start again--I'd have stood over him and blown my breath into him--got my blood into him--shook him," she said with a powerful, nervous movement of her big hands--"anything just to keep him alive."

"She's--she's--saved his life--time after time," said Barton slowly, flicking his cigar ash carefully away, and looking down deeply, searching for a word.

"He'd--he'd--have been a dead man long ago--if it hadn't been for her."

"Yeah--I know she has," George Pentland drawled agreeably. "I know you've sure stuck by Uncle Will--I guess he knows it, too."

"It's not that I mind it, George--you know what I mean?" she said eagerly. "Good heavens! I believe I could give away a dozen lives if I thought it was going to save his life! . . . But it's the strain of it. . . . Month after month . . . year after year . . . lying awake at night wondering if he's all right over there in that back room in Mama's house--wondering if he's keeping warm in that old cold house--"

"Why, no, child," the older woman said hastily. "I kept a good fire burnin' in that room all last winter--that was the warmest room in the whole place--there wasn't a warmer--"

But immediately she was engulfed, swept aside, obliterated in the flood-tide of the other's speech.

"--Wondering if he's sick or needs me--if he's begun to bleed again--oh! George, it makes me sick to think about it--that poor old man left there all alone, rotting away with that awful cancer, with that horrible smell about him all the time--everything he wears gets simply stiff with that rotten corrupt matter--Do you know what it is to wait, wait, wait, year after year, and year after year, never knowing when he's going to die, to have him hang on by a thread until it seems you've lived forever--that there'll never be an end--that you'll never have a chance to live your own life--to have a moment's peace or rest or happiness yourself? My God, does it always have to be this way? . . . Can I never have a moment's happiness? . . . Must they always come to me? Does everything have to be put on my shoulders? . . . Will you tell me that?" Her voice had risen to a note of frenzied despair. She was glaring at her cousin with a look of desperate and frantic entreaty, her whole gaunt figure tense and strained with the stress of her hysteria.

"That's--that's the trouble now," said Barton, looking down and searching for the word. "She's . . . She's . . . made the goat for every one. . . . She . . . she has to do it all. . . . That's . . . that's the thing that's got her down."

"Not that I mind--if it will do any good. . . . Good heaven's, Papa's life means more to me than anything on earth. . . . I'd keep him alive at any cost as long as there was a breath left in him. . . . But it's the strain of it, the strain of it--to wait, to wait year after year, to feel it hanging over you all the time, never to know when he will die--always the strain, the strain--do you see what I mean, George?" she said hoarsely, eagerly, and pleadingly. "You see, don't you?"

"I sure do, Helen," he said sympathetically, digging at his thigh, and with a swift, cat-like grimace of his features. "I know it's been mighty tough on you. . . . How is Uncle Will now?" he said. "Is he any better?"

"Why, yes," the mother was saying, "he seemed to improve--" but she was cut off immediately.

"Oh, yes," the daughter said in a tone of weary dejection. "He pulled out of this last spell and got well enough to make the trip to Baltimore--we sent him back a week ago to take another course of treatments. . . . But it does no real good, George. . . . They can't cure him. . . . We know that now. . . . They've told us that. . . . It only prolongs the agony. . . . They help him for a little while and then it all begins again. . . . Poor old man!" she said, and her eyes were wet. "I'd give everything I have--my own blood, my own life--if it would do him any good--but, George, he's gone!" she said desperately. "Can't you understand that? . . . They can't save him! . . . Nothing can save him! . . . Papa's a dead man now!"

George looked gravely sympathetic for a moment, winced swiftly, dug hard fingers in his thigh, and then said:

"Who went to Baltimore with him?"

"Why, Luke's up there," the mother said. "We had a letter from him yesterday--said Mr. Gant looks much better already--eats well, you know, has a good appetite--and Luke says he's in good spirits. Now--"

"Oh, Mama, for heaven's sake!" the daughter cried. "What's the use of talking that way? . . . He's not getting any better. . . . Papa's a sick man--dying--good God! Can no one ever get that into their heads!" she burst out furiously. "Am I the only one that realizes how sick he is?"

"No, now I was only sayin'," the mother began hastily--"Well, as I say, then," she went on, "Luke's up there with him--and Gene's on his way there now--he's goin' to stop off there tomorrow on his way up north to school."

"Gene!" cried George Pentland in a high, hearty, bantering tone, turning to address the boy directly for the first time. "What's all this I hear about you, son?" He clasped his muscular hand around the boy's arm in a friendly but powerful grip. "Ain't one college enough for you, boy?" he drawled, becoming deliberately ungrammatical and speaking good-naturedly but with a trace of the mockery which the wastrel and ne'er-do-well sometimes feels towards people who have had the energy and application required for steady or concentrated effort. "Are you one of those fellers who needs two or three colleges to hold him down?"

The boy flushed, grinned uncertainly, and said nothing.

"Why, son," drawled George in his hearty, friendly and yet bantering tone, in which a note of malice was evident, "you'll be gettin' so educated an' high-brow here before long that you won't be able to talk to the rest of us at all. . . . You'll be floatin' around there so far up in the clouds that you won't even see a roughneck like me, much less talk to him"--As he went on with this kind of sarcasm, his speech had become almost deliberately illiterate, as if trying to emphasize the superior virtue of the rough, hearty, home-grown fellow in comparison with the bookish scholar.

"--Where's he goin' to this time, Aunt Eliza?" he said, turning to her questioningly, but still holding the boy's arm in his strong grip "Where's he headin' for now?"

"Why," she said, stroking her pursed serious mouth with a slightly puzzled movement, "he says he's goin' to Harvard. I reckon," she said, in the same puzzled tone, "it's all right--I guess he knows what he's about. Says he's made up his mind to go--I told him," she said, and shook her head again, "that I'd send him for a year if he wanted to try it--an' then he'll have to get out an' shift for himself. We'll see," she said. "I reckon it's all right."

"Harvard, eh?" said George Pentland. "Boy, you are flyin' high! . . . What you goin' to do up there?"

The boy, furiously red of face, squirmed, and finally stammered:

"Why . . . I . . . guess . . . I guess I'll do some studying!"

"You guess you will!" roared George. "You'd damn well better do some studying--I bet your mother'll take it out of your hide if she finds you loafin' on her money."

"Why, yes," the mother said, nodding seriously, "I told him it was up to him to make the most of this--"

"Harvard, eh!" George Pentland said again, slowly looking his cousin over from head to foot. "Son, you're flyin' high, you are! . . . Now don't fly so high you never get back to earth again! . . . You know the rest of us who didn't go to Harvard still have to walk around upon the ground down here," he said. "So don't fly too high or we may not even be able to see you!"

"George! George!" said the young woman in a low tone, holding one hand to her mouth, and bending over to whisper loudly as she looked at her young brother. "Do you think anyone could fly very high with a pair of feet like that?"

George Pentland looked at the boy's big feet for a moment, shaking his head slowly in much wonderment.

"Hell, no!" he said at length. "He'd never get off the ground! . . . But if you cut 'em off," he said, "he'd go right up like a balloon, wouldn't he? Haw! Haw! Haw! Haw!" The great guffaw burst from him, and grinning with his solid teeth, he dug blindly at his thigh.

"Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi," the sister jeered, seeing the boy's flushed and angry face and prodding him derisively in the ribs--"This is our Harvard boy! k, k, k, k!"

"Don't let 'em kid you, son," said George now in an amiable and friendly manner. "Good luck to you! Give 'em hell when you get up there! . . . You're the only one of us who ever had guts enough to go through college, and we're proud of you! . . . Tell Uncle Bascom and Aunt Louise and all the rest of 'em hello for me when you get to Boston. . . . And remember me to your father and Luke when you get to Baltimore. . . . Good-bye, Gene--I've got to leave you now. Good luck, son," and with a friendly grip of his powerful hand he turned to go. "You folks come over sometime--all of you," he said in parting. "We'd like to see you." And he went away.

At this moment, all up and down the platform, people had turned to listen to the deep excited voice of a young man who was saying in a staccato tone of astounded discovery:

"You don't mean it! . . . You swear she did! . . . And you were there and saw it with your own eyes! . . . Well, if that don't beat all I ever heard of! . . . I'll be damned!" after which ejaculation, with an astounded falsetto laugh, he looked about him in an abstracted and unseeing manner, thrust one hand quickly and nervously into his trousers pocket in such a way that his fine brown coat came back, and the large diamond-shaped pin of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity was revealed, and at the same time passing one thin nervous hand repeatedly over the lank brown hair that covered his small and well-shaped head, and still muttering in tones of stupefied disbelief--"Lord! Lord! . . . What do you know about that?" suddenly espied the woman and her two children at the other end of the platform, and without a moment's pause, turned on his heel, and walked towards them, at the same time muttering to his astonished friends:

"Wait a minute! . . . Some one over here I've got to speak to! . . . Back in a minute!"

He approached the mother and her children rapidly, at his stiff, prim and somewhat lunging stride, his thin face fixed eagerly upon them, bearing towards them with a driving intensity of purpose as if the whole interest and energy of his life were focussed on them, as if some matter of the most vital consequence depended on his reaching them as soon as possible. Arrived, he immediately began to address the other youth without a word of greeting or explanation, bursting out with the sudden fragmentary explosiveness that was part of him:

"Are you taking this train, too? . . . Are you going today? . . . Well, what did you decide to do?" he demanded mysteriously in an accusing and challenging fashion. "Have you made up your mind yet? . . . Pett Barnes says you've decided on Harvard. Is that it?"

"Yes, it is."

"Lord, Lord!" said the youth, laughing his falsetto laugh again. "I don't see how you can! . . . You'd better come on with me. . . . What ever got into your head to do a thing like that?" he said in a challenging tone. "Why do you want to go to a place like that?"

"Hah? What say?" The mother who had been looking from one to the other of the two boys with the quick and startled attentiveness of an animal, now broke in:

"You know each other. . . . Hah? . . . You're taking this train, too, you say?" she said sharply.

"Ah-hah-hah!" the young man laughed abruptly, nervously; grinned, made a quick stiff little bow, and said with nervous engaging respectfulness: "Yes, Ma'am! . . . Ah-hah-hah! . . . How d'ye do? . . . How d'ye do, Mrs. Gant?" He shook hands with her quickly, still laughing his broken and nervous "ah-hah-hah"--"How d'ye do?" he said, grinning nervously at the younger woman and at Barton. "Ah-hah-hah. How d'ye do?"

The older woman still holding his hand in her rough worn clasp looked up at him a moment calmly, her lips puckered in tranquil meditation:

"Now," she said quietly, in the tone of a person who refuses to admit failure, "I know you. I know your face. Just give me a moment and I'll call you by your name."

The young man grinned quickly, nervously, and then said respectfully in his staccato speech:

"Yes, Ma'am. . . . Ah-hah-hah. . . . Robert Weaver."

"Ah-h, that's so!" she cried, and shook his hands with sudden warmth. "You're Robert Weaver's boy, of course."

"Ah-hah-hah!" said Robert, with his quick nervous laugh. "Yes, Ma'am. . . . That's right. . . . Ah-hah-hah. . . . Gene and I went to school together. We were in the same class at the University."

"Why, of course!" she cried in a tone of complete enlightenment, and then went on in a rather vexed manner, "I'll vow! I knew you all along! I knew that I'd seen you just as soon as I saw your face! Your name just slipped my mind a moment--and then, of course, it all flashed over me. . . . You're Robert Weaver's boy! . . . And you are," she still held his hand in her strong, motherly and friendly clasp, and looking at him with a little sly smile hovering about the corners of her mouth, she was silent a moment, regarding him quizzically--"now, boy," she said quietly, "you may think I've got a pretty poor memory for names and faces--but I want to tell you something that may surprise you. . . . I know more about you than you think I do. Now," she said, "I'm going to tell you something and you can tell me if I'm right."

"Ah-hah-hah!" said Robert respectfully. "Yes, Ma'am."

"You were born," she went on slowly and deliberately, "on September 2nd, 1898, and you are just two years and one month and one day older than this boy here--" she nodded to her own son. "Now you can tell me if I'm right or wrong."

"Ah-hah-hah!" said Robert. "Yes, Ma'am. . . . That's right. . . . You're absolutely right," he cried, and then in an astounded and admiring tone, he said: "Well, I'll declare. . . . If that don't beat all! . . . How on earth did you ever remember it!" he cried in an astonished tone that obviously was very gratifying to her vanity.

"Well, now, I'll tell you," she said with a little complacent smile--"I'll tell you how I know. . . . I remember the day you were born, boy--because it was on that very day that one of my own children--my son, Luke--was allowed to get up out of bed after havin' typhoid fever. . . . That very day, sir, when Mr. Gant came home to dinner, he said--'Well, I was just talking to Robert Weaver on the street and everything's all right. His wife gave birth to a baby boy this morning and he says she's out of danger.' And I know I said to him, 'Well, then, it's been a lucky day for both of us. McGuire was here this morning and he said Luke is now well enough to be up and about. He's out of danger.'--And I reckon," she went on quietly, "that's why the date made such an impression on me--of course, Luke had been awfully sick," she said gravely, and shook her head, "we thought he was goin' to die more than once--so when the doctor came and told me he was out of danger--well, it was a day of rejoicin' for me, sure enough. But that's how I know--September 2nd, 1898--that's when it was, all right, the very day when you were born."

"Ah-hah-hah!" said Robert. "That is certainly right. . . . Well, if that don't beat all!" he cried with his astounded and engaging air of surprise. "The most remarkable thing I ever heard of!" he said solemnly.

"So the next time you see your father," the woman said, with the tranquil satisfaction of omniscience, "you tell him that you met Eliza Pentland--he'll know who I am, boy--I can assure you--for we were born and brought up within five miles from each other and you can tell him that she knew you right away, and even told you to the hour and minute the day when you were born! . . . You tell him that," she said.

"Yes, Ma'am!" said Robert respectfully, "I certainly will! . . . I'll tell him! . . . That is certainly a remarkable thing. . . . Ah-hah-hah! . . . Beats all I ever heard of! . . . Ah-hah-hah," he kept bowing and smiling to the young woman and her husband, and muttering "ah-hah-hah! . . . Pleased to have met you. . . . Got to go now: some one over here I've got to see . . . but I'll certainly tell him . . . ah-hah-hah. . . . Gene, I'll see you on the train. . . . Good-bye. . . . Good-bye. . . . Glad to have met you all. . . . Ah-hah-hah. . . . Certainly a remarkable thing. . . . Good-bye!" and turning abruptly, he left them, walking rapidly along at his stiff, prim, curiously lunging stride.

The younger woman looked after the boy's tall form as he departed, stroking her chin in a reflective and abstracted manner:

"So that's Judge Robert Weaver's son, is it? . . . Well," she went on, nodding her head vigorously in a movement of affirmation. "He's all right. . . . He's got good manners. . . . He looks and acts like a gentleman. . . . You can see he's had a good bringing up. . . . I like him!" she declared positively again.

"Why, yes," said the mother, who had been following the tall retreating form with a reflective look, her hands loose-folded at her waist--"Why, yes," she continued, nodding her head in a thoughtful and conceding manner that was a little comical in its implications--"He's a good-looking all-right sort of a boy. . . . And he certainly seems to be intelligent enough." She was silent for a moment, pursing her lips thoughtfully and then concluded with a little nod--"Well, now, the boy may be all right. . . . I'm not saying that he isn't. . . . He may turn out all right, after all."

"All right?" her daughter said, frowning a little and showing a little annoyance, but with a faint lewd grin around the corners of her mouth--"what do you mean by all right, Mama? Why, of course he's all right. . . . What makes you think he's not?"

The other woman was silent for another moment: when she spoke again, her manner was tinged with portent, and she turned and looked at her daughter a moment in a sudden, straight and deadly fashion before she spoke:

"Now, child," she said, "I'm going to tell you: perhaps everything will turn out all right for that boy--I hope it does--but--"

"Oh, my God!" the younger woman laughed hoarsely but with a shade of anger, and turning, prodded her brother stiffly in the ribs. "Now we'll get it!" she sniggered, prodding him, "k-k-k-k-k! What do you call it?" she said with a lewd frowning grin that was indescribably comic in its evocations of coarse humour--"the low down?--the dirt?--Did you ever know it to fail?--The moment that you meet any one, and up comes the family corpse."

"--Well, now, child, I'm not saying anything against the boy--perhaps it won't touch him--maybe he'll be the one to escape--to turn out all right--but--"

"Oh, my God!" the younger woman groaned, rolling her eyes around in a comical and imploring fashion. "Here it comes."

"You are too young to know about it yourself," the other went on gravely--"you belong to another generation--you don't know about it--but I do." She paused again, shook her pursed lips with a convulsive pucker of distaste, and then, looking at her daughter again in her straight and deadly fashion, said slowly, with a powerful movement of the hand:

"There's been insanity in that boy's family for generations back!"

"Oh, my God! I knew it!" the other groaned.

"Yes, sir!" the mother said implacably--"and two of his aunts--Robert Weaver's own sisters died raving maniacs--and Robert Weaver's mother herself was insane for the last twenty years of her life up to the hour of her death--and I've heard tell that it went back--"

"Well, deliver me," the younger woman checked her, frowning, speaking almost sullenly. "I don't want to hear any more about it. . . . It's a mighty funny thing that they all seem to get along now--better than we do . . . so let's let bygones be bygones . . . don't dig up the past."

Turning to her brother with a little frowning smile, she said wearily: "Did you ever know it to fail? . . . They know it all, don't they?" she said mysteriously. "The minute you meet any one you like, they spill the dirt. . . . Well, I don't care," she muttered. "You stick to people like that. . . . He looks like a nice boy and--" with an impressed look over towards Robert's friends, she concluded, "he goes with a nice crowd. . . . You stick to that kind of people. I'm all for him."

Now the mother was talking again: the boy could see her powerful and delicate mouth convolving with astonishing rapidity in a series of pursed thoughtful lips, tremulous smiles, bantering and quizzical jocosities, old sorrow and memory, quiet gravity, the swift easy fluency of tears that the coming of a train always induced in her, thoughtful seriousness, and sudden hopeful speculation.

"Well, boy," she was now saying gravely, "you are going--as the sayin' goes--" here she shook her head slightly, strongly, rapidly with powerful puckered lips, and instantly her weak worn eyes of brown were wet with tears--"as the sayin' goes--to a strange land--a stranger among strange people.--It may be a long, long time," she whispered in an old husky tone, her eyes tear-wet as she shook her head mysteriously with a brave pathetic smile that suddenly filled the boy with rending pity, anguish of the soul, and a choking sense of exasperation and of woman's unfairness--"I hope we are all here when you come back again. . . . I hope you find us all alive. . . ." She smiled bravely, mysteriously, tearfully. "You never know," she whispered, "you never know."

"Mama," he could hear his voice sound hoarsely and remotely in his throat, choked with anguish and exasperation at her easy fluency of sorrow, "--Mama--in Christ's name! Why do you have to act like this every time someone goes away! . . . I beg of you, for God's sake, not to do it!"

"Oh, stop it! Stop it!" his sister said in a rough, peremptory and yet kindly tone to the mother, her eyes grave and troubled, but with a faint rough smile about the edges of her generous mouth. "He's not going away for ever! Why, good heavens, you act as if someone is dead! Boston's not so far away you'll never see him again! The trains are running every day, you know. . . . Besides," she said abruptly and with an assurance that infuriated the boy, "he's not going today, anyway. Why, you haven't any intention of going today, you know you haven't," she said to him. "He's been fooling you all along," she now said, turning to the mother with an air of maddening assurance. "He has no idea of taking that train. He's going to wait over until tomorrow. I've known it all along."

The boy went stamping away from them up the platform, and then came stamping back at them while the other people on the platform grinned and stared.

"Helen, in God's name!" he croaked frantically. "Why do you start that when I'm all packed up and waiting here at the God-damned station for the train? You know I'm going away today!" he yelled, with a sudden sick desperate terror in his heart as he thought that something might now come in the way of going. "You know I am! Why did we come here? What in Christ's name are we waiting for if you don't think I'm going?"

The young woman laughed her high, husky laugh which was almost deliberately irritating and derisive--"Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!"--and plodded him in the ribs with her large stiff fingers. Then, almost wearily, she turned away, plucking at her large chin absently, and said: "Well, have it your own way! It's your own funeral! If you're determined to go today, no one can stop you. But I don't see why you can't just as well wait over till tomorrow."

"Why, yes!" the mother now said briskly and confidently. "That's exactly what I'd do if I were you! . . . Now, it's not going to do a bit of harm to anyone if you're a day or so late in gettin' there. . . . Now I've never been there myself," she went on in her tone of tranquil sarcasm, "but I've always heard that Harvard University was a good big sort of place--and I'll bet you'll find," the mother now said gravely, with a strong slow nod of conviction--"I'll bet you'll find that it's right there where it always was when you get there. I'll bet you find they haven't moved a foot," she said, "and let me tell you something, boy," she now continued, looking at him almost sternly, but with a ghost of a smile about her powerful and delicate mouth--"now I haven't had your education and I reckon I don't know as much about universities as you do--but I've never heard of one yet that would run a feller away for bein' a day late as long as he's got money enough to pay his tuition. . . . Now you'll find 'em waitin' for you when you get there--and you'll get in," she said slowly and powerfully. "You don't have to worry about that--they'll be glad to see you, and they'll take you in a hurry when they see you've got the price."

"Now, Mama," he said in a quiet frenzied tone, "I beg of you, for God's sake, please, not to--"

"All right, all right," the mother answered hastily in a placating tone, "I was only sayin'--"

"If you will kindly, please, for God's sake--"

"K-k-k-k-k-k!" his sister snickered, poking him in the ribs.

But now the train was coming. Down the powerful shining tracks a half-mile away, the huge black snout of the locomotive swung slowly round the magnificent bend and flare of the rails that went into the railway yards of Altamont two miles away, and with short explosive thunders of its squat funnel came barging slowly forward. Across the golden pollenated haze of the warm autumnal afternoon they watched it with numb lips and an empty hollowness of fear, delight, and sorrow in their hearts.

And from the sensual terror, the ecstatic tension of that train's approach, all things before, around, about the boy came to instant life, to such sensuous and intolerable poignancy of life as a doomed man might feel who looks upon the world for the last time from the platform of the scaffold where he is to die. He could feel, taste, smell, and see everything with an instant still intensity, the animate fixation of a vision seen instantly, fixed for ever in the mind of him who sees it, and sense the clumped dusty autumn masses of the trees that bordered the tracks upon the left, and smell the thick exciting hot tarred caulking of the tracks, the dry warmth and good worn wooden smell of the powerful railway ties, and see the dull rusty red, the gaping emptiness and joy of a freight car, its rough floor whitened with soft siltings of thick flour, drawn in upon a spur of rusty track behind a warehouse of raw concrete blocks, and see with sudden desolation, the warehouse flung down rawly, newly, there among the hot, humid, spermy, nameless, thick-leaved field-growth of the South.

Then the locomotive drew in upon them, loomed enormously above them, and slowly swept by them with a terrific drive of eight-locked pistoned wheels, all higher than their heads, a savage furnace-flare of heat, a hard hose-thick hiss of steam, a moment's vision of a lean old head, an old gloved hand of cunning on the throttle, a glint of demon hawk-eyes fixed for ever on the rails, a huge tangle of gauges, levers, valves, and throttles, and the goggled blackened face of the fireman, lit by an intermittent hell of flame, as he bent and swayed with rhythmic swing of laden shovel at his furnace doors.

The locomotive passed above them, darkening the sunlight from their faces, engulfing them at once and filling them with terror, drawing the souls out through their mouths with the God-head of its instant absoluteness, and leaving them there, emptied, frightened, fixed for ever, a cluster of huddled figures, a bough of small white staring faces, upturned, silent, and submissive, small, lonely, and afraid.

Then as the heavy rust-black coaches rumbled past, and the wheels ground slowly to a halt, the boy could see his mother's white stunned face beside him, the naked startled innocence of her eyes, and feel her rough worn clasp upon his arm, and hear her startled voice, full of apprehension, terror, and surprise, as she said sharply:

"Hah? What say? Is this his train? I thought--"

It was his train and it had come to take him to the strange and secret heart of the great North that he had never known, but whose austere and lonely image, whose frozen heat and glacial fire, and dark stern beauty had blazed in his vision since he was a child. For he had dreamed and hungered for the proud unknown North with that wild ecstasy, that intolerable and wordless joy of longing and desire, which only a Southerner can feel. With a heart of fire, a brain possessed, a spirit haunted by the strange, secret and unvisited magic of the proud North, he had always known that some day he should find it--his heart's hope and his father's country, the lost but unforgotten half of his own soul,--and take it for his own.

And now that day had come, and these two images--call them rather lights and weathers of man's soul--of the world-far, lost and lonely South, and the fierce, the splendid, strange and secret North were swarming like a madness through his blood. And just as he had seen a thousand images of the buried and silent South which he had known all his life, so now he had a vision of the proud fierce North with all its shining cities, and its tides of life. He saw the rocky sweetness of its soil and its green loveliness, and he knew its numb soft prescience, its entrail-stirring ecstasy of coming snow, its smell of harbours and its traffic of proud ships.

He could not utter what he wished to say and yet the wild and powerful music of those two images kept swelling in him and it seemed that the passion of their song must burst his heart, explode the tenement of bright blood and agony in which they surged, and tear the sinews of his life asunder unless he found some means to utter them.

But no words came. He only knew the image of man's loneliness, a feeling of sorrow, desolation, and wild mournful secret joy, longing and desire, as sultry, moveless and mysterious in its slow lust as the great rivers of the South themselves. And at the same moment that he felt this wild and mournful sorrow, the slow, hot, secret pulsings of desire, and breathed the heavy and mysterious fragrance of the lost South again, he felt, suddenly and terribly, its wild strange pull, the fatal absoluteness of its world-lost resignation.

Then, with a sudden feeling of release, a realization of the incredible escape that now impended for him, he knew that he was waiting for the train, and that the great life of the North, the road to freedom, solitude and the enchanted promise of the golden cities was now before him. Like a dream made real, a magic come to life, he knew that in another hour he would be speeding worldward, lifeward, Northward out of the enchanted, time-far hills, out of the dark heart and mournful mystery of the South for ever.

And as that overwhelming knowledge came to him, a song of triumph, joy, and victory so savage and unutterable, that he could no longer hold it in his heart was torn from his lips in a bestial cry of fury, pain, and ecstasy. He struck his arms out in the shining air for loss, for agony, for joy. The whole earth reeled about him in a kaleidoscopic blur of shining rail, massed heavy greens, and white empetalled faces of the staring people.

And suddenly he was standing there among his people on the platform of the little station. All things and shapes on earth swam back into their proper shape again, and he could hear his mother's voice, the broken clatter of the telegraph, and see, there on the tracks, the blunt black snout, the short hard blasts of steam from its squat funnel, the imminent presence, the enormous bigness of the train.

The journey from the mountain town of Altamont to the tower-masted island of Manhattan is not, as journeys are conceived in America, a long one. The distance is somewhat more than 700 miles, the time required to make the journey a little more than twenty hours. But so relative are the qualities of space and time, and so complex and multiple their shifting images, that in the brief passage of this journey one may live a life, share instantly in 10,000,000 other ones, and see pass before his eyes the infinite panorama of shifting images that make a nation's history.

First of all, the physical changes and transitions of the journey are strange and wonderful enough. In the afternoon one gets on the train and with a sense of disbelief and wonder sees the familiar faces, shapes, and structures of his native town recede out of the last fierce clasp of life and vision. Then, all through the waning afternoon, the train is toiling down around the mountain curves and passes. The great shapes of the hills, embrowned and glowing with the molten hues of autumn, are all about him: the towering summits, wild and lonely, full of joy and strangeness and their haunting premonitions of oncoming winter soar above him, the gulches, gorges, gaps, and wild ravines, fall sheer and suddenly away with a dizzy terrifying steepness, and all the time the great train toils slowly down from the mountain summits with the sinuous turnings of an enormous snake. And from the very toiling slowness of the train, together with the terrific stillness and nearness of the marvellous hills, a relation is established, an emotion evoked, which it is impossible to define, but which, in all its strange and poignant mingling of wild sorrow and joy, grief for the world that one is losing, swelling triumph at the thought of the strange new world that one will find, is instantly familiar, and has been felt by every one.

The train toils slowly round the mountain grades, the short and powerful blasts of its squat funnel sound harsh and metallic against the sides of rocky cuts. One looks out the window and sees cut, bank, and gorge slide slowly past, the old rock wet and gleaming with the water of some buried mountain spring. The train goes slowly over the perilous and dizzy height of a wooden trestle; far below, the traveller can see and hear the clean foaming clamours of rock-bright mountain water; beside the track, before his little hut, a switchman stands looking at the train with the slow wondering gaze of the mountaineer. The little shack in which he lives is stuck to the very edge of the track above the steep and perilous ravine. His wife, a slattern with a hank of tight-drawn hair, a snuff-stick in her mouth, and the same gaunt, slow wondering stare her husband has, stands in the doorway of the shack, holding a dirty little baby in her arms.

It is all so strange, so near, so far, so terrible, beautiful, and instantly familiar, that it seems to the traveller that he must have known these people for ever, that he must now stretch forth his hand to them from the windows and the rich and sumptuous luxury of the Pullman car, that he must speak to them. And it seems to him that all the strange and bitter miracle of life--how, why, or in what way, he does not know--is in that instant greeting and farewell; for once seen, and lost the moment that he sees it, it is his for ever and he can never forget it. And then the slow toiling train has passed these lives and faces and is gone, and there is something in his heart he cannot say.

At length the train has breached the last great wall of the soaring ranges, has made its slow and sinuous descent around the powerful bends and cork-screws of the shining rails (which now he sees above him seven times) and towards dark, the lowland country has been reached. The sun goes down behind the train a tremendous globe of orange and pollen, the soaring ranges melt swiftly into shapes of smoky and enchanted purple, night comes--great-starred and velvet-breasted night--and now the train takes up its level pounding rhythm across the piedmont swell and convolution of the mighty State.

Towards nine o'clock at night there is a pause to switch cars and change engines at a junction town. The traveller, with the same feeling of wild unrest, wonder, nameless excitement and wordless expectancy, leaves the train, walks back and forth upon the platform, rushes into the little station luncheon room or out into the streets to buy cigarettes, a sandwich--really just to feel this moment's contact with another town. He sees vast flares and steamings of gigantic locomotives on the rails, the seamed, blackened, lonely faces of the engineers in the cabs of their great engines, and a little later he is rushing again across the rude, mysterious visage of the powerful, dark, and lonely earth of old Catawba.

Toward midnight there is another pause at a larger town--the last stop in Catawba--again the feeling of wild unrest and nameless joy and sorrow. The traveller gets out, walks up and down the platform, sees the vast slow flare and steaming of the mighty engine, rushes into the station, and looks into the faces of all the people passing with the same sense of instant familiarity, greeting, and farewell,--that lonely, strange, and poignantly wordless feeling that Americans know so well. Then he is in the Pullman again, the last outposts of the town have slipped away from him and the great train which all through the afternoon has travelled eastward from the mountains half across the mighty State, is now for the first time pointed northward, worldward, towards the secret borders of Virginia, towards the great world cities of his hope, the fable of his childhood legendry, and the wild and secret hunger of his heart, his spirit and his life.

Already the little town from which he came in the great hills, the faces of his kinsmen and his friends, their most familiar voices, the shapes of things he knew seem far and strange as dreams, lost at the bottom of the million-visaged sea-depth of dark time, the strange and bitter miracle of life. He cannot think that he has ever lived there in the far lost hills, or ever left them, and all his life seems stranger than the dream of time, and the great train moves on across the immense and lonely visage of America, making its great monotone that is the sound of silence and for ever. And in the train, and in ten thousand little towns, the sleepers sleep upon the earth.

Then bitter sorrow, loneliness and joy come swelling to his throat--quenchless hunger rises from the adyts of his life and conquers him, and with wild wordless fury horsed upon his life, he comes at length, in dark mid-watches of the night, up to the borders of the old earth of Virginia.

Who has seen fury riding in the mountains? Who has known fury striding in the storm? Who has been mad with fury in his youth, given no rest or peace or certitude by fury, driven on across the earth by fury, until the great vine of the heart was broke, the sinews wrenched, the little tenement of bone, blood, marrow, brain, and feeling in which great fury raged, was twisted, wrung, depleted, worn out, and exhausted by the fury which it could not lose or put away? Who has known fury, how it came?

How have we breathed him, drunk him, eaten fury to the core, until we have him in us now and cannot lose him anywhere we go? It is a strange and subtle worm that will be for ever feeding at our heart. It is a madness working in our brain, a hunger growing from the food it feeds upon, a devil moving in the conduits of our blood, it is a spirit wild and dark and uncontrollable forever swelling in our soul, and it is in the saddle now, horsed upon our lives, rowelling the spurs of its insatiate desire into our naked and defenceless sides, our owner, master, and the mad and cruel tyrant who goads us on for ever down the blind and brutal tunnel of kaleidoscopic days at the end of which is nothing but the blind mouth of the pit and darkness and no more.

Then, then, will fury leave us, he will cease from those red channels of our life he has so often run, another sort of worm will work at that great vine, whereat he fed. Then, then, indeed, he must give over, fold his camp, retreat; there is no place for madness in a dead man's brain, no place for hunger in a dead man's flesh, and in a dead man's heart there is a place for no desire.

At what place of velvet-breasted night long, long ago, and in what leafy darkened street of mountain summer, hearing the footsteps of approaching lovers in the night, the man's voice, low, hushed, casual, confiding, suddenly the low rich welling of a woman's laughter, tender and sensual in the dark, going, receding, fading, and then the million-noted silence of the night again? In what ancient light of fading day in a late summer; what wordless passion then of sorrow, joy, and ecstasy--was he betrayed to fury when it came?

Or in the black dark of some forgotten winter's morning, child of the storm and brother to the dark, alone and wild and secret in the night as he leaned down against the wind's strong wall towards Niggertown, blocking his folded papers as he went, and shooting them terrifically in the wind's wild blast against the shack-walls of the jungle-sleeping blacks, himself alone awake, wild, secret, free and stormy as the wild wind's blast, giving it howl for howl and yell for yell, with madness, and a demon's savage and exultant joy, up-welling in his throat! Oh, was he then, on such a night, betrayed to fury--was it then, on such a night, that fury came?

He never knew; it may have been a rock, a stone, a leaf, the moths of golden light as warm and moving in a place of magic green, it may have been the storm-wind howling in the barren trees, the ancient fading light of day in some forgotten summer, the huge unfolding mystery of undulant, oncoming night.

Oh, it might have been all this in the April and moist lilac darkness of some forgotten morning as he saw the clean line of the East cleave into morning at the mountain's ridge. It may have been the first light, bird-song, an end to labour and the sweet ache and pure fatigue of the lightened shoulder as he came home at morning hearing the single lonely hoof, the jinking bottles, and the wheel upon the street again, and smelled the early morning breakfast smells, the smoking wheat cakes, and the pungent sausages, the steaks, biscuits, grits, and fried green apples, and the brains and eggs. It may have been the coil of pungent smoke upcurling from his father's chimney, the clean sweet gardens and the peach-bloom, apples, crinkled lettuce wet with dew, bloom and cherry bloom down-drifting in their magic snow within his father's orchard, and his father's giant figure awake now and astir, and moving in his house!

Oh, ever to wake at morning knowing he was there! To feel the fire-full chimney-throat roar up a-tremble with the blast of his terrific fires, to hear the first fire crackling in the kitchen range, to hear the sounds of morning in the house, the smells of breakfast and the feeling of security never to be changed! Oh, to hear him prowling like a wakened lion below, the stertorous hoarse frenzy of his furious breath; to hear the ominous muttering mounting to faint howls as with infuriated relish he prepared the roaring invective of the morning's tirade, to hear him muttering as the coal went rattling out upon the fire, to hear him growling as savagely the flame shot up the trembling chimney-throat, to hear him muttering back and forth now like a raging beast, finally to hear his giant stride racing through the house prepared now, storming to the charge, and the well-remembered howl of his awakened fury as springing to the door-way of the back-room stairs he flung it open, yelling at them to awake.

Was it in such a way, one time as he awoke, and heard below his father's lion-ramp of morning that fury came? He never knew, no more than one could weave the great web of his life back through the brutal chaos of ten thousand furious days, unwind the great vexed pattern of his life to silence, peace, and certitude in the magic land of new beginnings, no return.

He never knew if fury had lain dormant all those years, had worked secret, silent, like a madness in the blood. But later it would seem to him that fury had first filled his life, exploded, conquered, and possessed him, that he first felt it, saw it, knew the dark illimitable madness of its power, one night years later on a train across Virginia.

It was a little before midnight when the youth entered the smoking room of the Pullman where, despite the lateness of the hour, several men still sat. At just this moment the train had entered the State of Virginia, although, of course, none of the men who sat there talking knew this.

It is true that some of them might have known, had their interest and attention been directed toward this geographic fact, had they been looking for it. Just at this moment, indeed, as the train, scarcely slackening its speed, was running through the last of the Catawba towns, one of the men glanced up suddenly from the conversation in which he and the others were earnestly engaged, which was exclusively concerned with the fascinating, ever-mounting prices of their property and the tempting profits undoubtedly to be derived from real-estate speculation in their native town. He had looked up quickly, casually, and absently, with that staggering indifference of prosperous men who have been so far, so often, on such splendid trains, that a trip across the continent at night toward the terrific city is no longer a grand adventure of their lives, but just a thing of custom, need, and even weariness, and who, therefore, rarely look out of windows any more:

"What is this?" he said quickly. "Oh, Maysville, probably. Yes, I guess this must be Maysville," and had then returned vigorously from his brief inspection of the continent of night, a few lights, and a little town, to the enticing topic which had for several hours absorbed the interests of the group.

Nor was there any good reason why this traveller who had glanced so swiftly and indifferently from the window of the train should feel any greater interest than he showed. Certainly the briefest and most casual inspection would have convinced the observer that, in Baedeker's celebrated phrase, there was "little here that need detain the tourist." What the man saw in the few seconds of his observation was the quiet, dusty and sparsely lighted street of a little town in the upper South. The street was shaded by large trees and there were some level lawns, more trees, and some white frame-houses with spacious porches, gables, occasionally the wooden magnificence of Georgian columns.

On everything--trees, houses, foliage, yards, and street--there was a curious loneliness of departure and October, an attentive almost mournful waiting. And yet this dark and dusty street of the tall trees left a haunting, curiously pleasant feeling of strangeness and familiarity. One viewed it with a queer sudden ache in the heart, a feeling of friendship and farewell, and this feeling was probably intensified by the swift and powerful movement of the train which seemed to slide past the town almost noiselessly, its wheels turning without friction, sound, or vibrancy on the pressed steel ribbons of the rails, giving to a traveller, and particularly to a youth who was going into the secret North for the first time, a feeling of illimitable and exultant power, evoking for him the huge mystery of the night and darkness, and the image of ten thousand lonely little towns like this across the continent.

Then the train slides by the darkened vacant-looking little station and for a moment one has a glimpse of the town's chief square and business centre. And as he sees it he is filled again with the same feeling of loneliness, instant familiarity, and departure. The square is one of those anomalous, shabby-ornate, inept, and pitifully pretentious places that one finds in little towns like these. But once seen, if only for this fraction of a moment, from the windows of a train, the memory of it will haunt one for ever after.

And this haunting and lonely memory is due probably to the combination of two things: the ghastly imitation of swarming life and metropolitan gaiety in the scene, and the almost total absence of life itself. The impression one gets, in fact, from that brief vision is one of frozen cataleptic silence in a world from which all life has recently been extinguished by some appalling catastrophe. The lights burn, the electric signs wink and flash, the place is still horribly intact in all its bleak prognathous newness, but all the people are dead, gone, vanished. The place is a tomb of frozen silence, as terrifying in its empty bleakness as those advertising backdrops one saw formerly in theatres, where the splendid buildings, stores, and shops of a great street are painted in the richest and most flattering colours, and where there is no sign of life whatever.

So was it here, save that here the illusion of the dead world gained a hideous physical reality by its stark, staring, nakedly concrete dimensions.

All this the boy had seen, or rather sensed, in the wink of an eye, a moment's vision of a dusty little street, a fleeting glimpse of a silent little square, a few hard lights, and then the darkness of the earth again--these half-splintered glimpses were all the boy could really see in the eye-wink that it took the train to pass the town. And yet, all these fragmentary things belonged so completely to all the life of little towns which he had known, that it was not as if he had seen only a few splintered images, but rather as if the whole nocturnal picture of the town was instantly whole and living in his mind.

Beyond the station, parked in a line against the curb, is a row of empty motor cars, and he knows instantly that they have been left there by the patrons of the little moving-picture theatre which explodes out of the cataleptic silence of the left-hand side of the square into a blaze of hard white and flaming posters which seem to cover the entire façade. Even here, no movement of life is visible, but one who has lived and known towns like these feels for the first time an emotion of warmth and life as he looks at the gaudy, blazing bill-beplastered silence of that front.

For suddenly he seems to see the bluish blaze of carbon light that comes from the small slit-like vent-hole cut into the wall and can hear again--one of the loneliest and most haunting of all sounds--the rapid shuttering sound of the projection camera late at night, a sound lonely, hurried, unforgettable, coming out into those cataleptic squares of silence in the little towns--as if the operator is fairly racing through the last performance of the night like a weary and exhausted creature whose stale, over-driven life can find no joy in what is giving so much joy to others, and who is pressing desperately ahead toward the merciful rewards of food, sleep, and oblivion which are already almost in his grasp.

And as he remembers this, he also suddenly sees and knows the people in the theatre, and in that instant greets them, feels his lonely kinship with them, with the whole family of the earth, and says farewell. Small, dark, lonely, silent, thirsty, and insatiate, the people of the little town are gathered there in that one small cell of radiance, warmth, and joy. There for a little space they are united by the magic spell the theatre casts upon them. They are all dark and silent leaning forward like a single mind and congeries of life, and yet they are all separate too.

Yes, lonely, silent, for a moment beautiful, he knows the people of the town are there, lifting the small white petals of their faces, thirsty and insatiate, to that magic screen: now they laugh exultantly as their hero triumphs, weep quietly as the mother dies, the little boys cheer wildly as the rascal gets his due--they are all there in darkness, under immense immortal skies of time, small nameless creatures in a lost town on the mighty continent, and for an instant we have seen them, known them, said farewell.

Around the four sides of the square at even intervals, the new standards of the five-bulbed lamps cast down implacably upon those cataleptic pavements the cataleptic silence of their hard white light. And this, he knows, is called "the Great White Way," of which the town is proud. Somehow the ghastly, lifeless silence of that little square is imaged nowhere else so cruelly as in the harsh, white silence of these lights. For they evoke terribly, as nothing else can do, the ghastly vacancy of light without life. And poignantly, pitifully, and unutterably their harsh, white silence evokes the moth-like hunger of the American for hard, brilliant, blazing incandescence.

It is as if there may be in his soul the horror of the ancient darkness, the terror of the old immortal silences, which will not down and must be heard. It is as if he feels again the ancient fear of--what? Of the wilderness, the wet and lidless eye of shame and desolation feeding always on unhoused and naked sides. It is as if he fears the brutal revelation of his loss and loneliness, the furious, irremediable confusion of his huge unrest, his desperate and unceasing flight from the immense and timeless skies that bend above him, the huge, doorless and unmeasured vacancies of distance, on which he lives, on which, as helpless as a leaf upon a hurricane, he is driven on for ever, and on which he cannot pause, which he cannot fence, wall, conquer, make his own.

Then the train, running always with its smooth, powerful, almost noiseless movement, has left the station and the square behind it. The last outposts of the town appear and vanish in patterns of small, lonely light, and there is nothing but huge and secret night before us, the lonely, everlasting earth, and presently Virginia.

And surely, now, there is little more to be seen. Surely, now, there is almost nothing that by day would be worthy of more than a glance from those great travellers who have ranged the earth, and known all its wild and stormy seas, and seen its rarest glories. And by night, now, there is nothing, nothing by night but darkness and a space we call Virginia through which the huge projectile of the train is hurtling onward in the dark.

Field and fold and gulch and hill and hollow, forest and stream and bridge and bank and cut, the huge earth, the rude earth, the wild, formless, infinitely various, most familiar, ever-haunting earth, the grand and casual earth that is so brown, so harsh, so dusty, so familiar, the strange and homely earth wrought in our blood, our brain, our heart, the earth that can never be forgotten or described, is flowing by us, by us, by us in the night.

What is it that we know so well and cannot speak? What is it that we want to say and cannot tell? What is it that keeps swelling in our hearts its grand and solemn music, that is aching in our throats, that is pulsing like a strange wild grape through all the conduits of our blood, that maddens us with its exultant and intolerable joy and that leaves us tongueless, wordless, maddened by our fury to the end?

We do not know. All that we know is that we lack a tongue that could reveal, a language that could perfectly express the wild joy swelling to a music in our heart, the wild pain welling to a strong ache in our throat, the wild cry mounting to a madness in our brain, the thing, the word, the joy we know so well, and cannot speak! All that we know is that the little stations whip by in the night, the straggling little towns whip by with all that is casual, rude, familiar, ugly, and unutterable. All that we know is that the earth is flowing by us in the darkness, and that this is the way the world goes--with a field and a wood and a field! And of the huge and secret earth all we know is that we feel with all our life its texture with our foot upon it.

All that we know is that having everything we yet hold nothing, that feeling the wild song of this great earth upwelling in us we have no words to give it utterance. All that we know is that here the passionate enigma of our lives is so bitterly expressed, the furious hunger that so haunts and hurts Americans so desperately felt--that being rich, we all are yet so poor, that having an incalculable wealth we have no way of spending it, that feeling an illimitable power we yet have found no way of using it.

Therefore we hurtle onward in the dark across Virginia, we hurtle onward in the darkness down a million roads, we hurtle onward driven by our hunger down the blind and brutal tunnel of ten thousand furious and kaleidoscopic days, the victims of the cruel impulse of a million chance and fleeting moments, without a wall at which to thrust the shoulder of our strength, a roof to hide us in our nakedness, a place to build in, or a door.

As the boy entered the smoking compartment, the men who were talking together paused, and looked up at him briefly with the intent, curious, momentary stare of men interrupted in a conversation. The boy, a leggy creature racing into unfledged lengths of shank and arm and shoulder, fumbled nervously in his coat pocket for a package of cigarettes and then sat down abruptly on the upholstered leather seat beside one of the men.

The boy's manner betrayed that mixture of defiance and diffidence which a young man going out into the world for the first time feels in the presence of older and more experienced men. And this was the way he felt. And for this reason in the sharp and casual stare which the men fixed briefly on him there may have been unconsciously something affectionate and tender as each one recalled a moment of his own lost youth.

The boy felt the powerful movement of the train beneath him and the lonely austerity and mystery of the dark earth outside that swept past for ever with a fanlike stroke, an immortal and imperturbable stillness. It seemed to him that these two terrific negatives of speed and stillness, the hurtling and projectile movement of the train and the calm silence of the everlasting earth, were poles of a single unity--a unity coherent with his destiny, whose source was somehow in himself.

It seemed to him that this incredible and fortunate miracle of his own life and fate had ordered all these accidental facts into coherent and related meanings. He felt that everything--the powerful movement of the train, the infinite mystery and lonely wildness of the earth, the feeling of luxury, abundance, and unlimited wealth that was stimulated by the rich furnishings of the Pullman, and the general air of affluence of these prosperous men--belonged to him, had come out of his own life, and were ready to serve him at his own behest and control.

It seemed to him that the glorious moment for which his whole life had been shaped, and toward which every energy and desire in his spirit had been turned, was now here.

As that incredible knowledge came to him, a fury, wild, savage, wordless, pulsed through his blood and filled him with such a swelling and exultant joy as he has never known before. He felt the savage tongueless cry of pain and joy swell up and thicken in his throat, he felt a rending and illimitable power in him as if he could twist steel between his fingers, and he felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to yell into the faces of the men with a demonic glee.

Instead he just sat down quickly with an abrupt, half-defiant movement, lit his cigarette, and spoke to one of the men quickly and diffidently, saying:

"Hello, Mr. Flood."

For a moment, the man thus addressed said nothing, but sat staring at the boy stupidly with an expression of heavy surprise. He was a well-dressed but bloated-looking man in his fifties whose gross figure even in repose betrayed a gouty tendency. His face, which had the satiny rosy texture, veinous and tender, that alcoholism and a daily massage can give, was brutally coarse and sensual, but was given a disturbing and decisive character by his bulging yellow eyeballs and the gross lewd mouth which, because of several large buck teeth whose discoloured surfaces protruded under the upper lip, seemed always to be half opened and half smiling. And it was not a pleasant smile. It was a smile, faint, unmistakably sensual, and rather sly. It seemed to come from some huge choking secret glee and there was in it a quality that was jubilantly obscene.

For a moment more Mr. Flood stared through his bulging eyes at the boy who had just spoken to him, with an air of comical and stupid surprise. Then amiably, but with a puzzled undertone, he said gruffly:

"Hello. Oh, hello, son! How are you?"

And after looking at the boy a moment longer, he turned his attention to the other men again.

It was at just that season of the year when two events which are dear to the speculations of the American had absorbed the public interest. These events were baseball and politics, and at that moment both were thrillingly imminent. The annual baseball contests for "the championship of the world" were to begin within another day or two, and the national campaign for the election of the American president, which would be held in another month, was moving daily to its furious apogee of speeches, accusations, dire predictions, and impassioned promises. Both events gave the average American a thrill of pleasurable anticipation: his approach to both was essentially the same. It was the desire of a man to see a good show, to "take sides" vigorously in an exciting contest--to be amused, involved as an interested spectator is involved, but not to be too deeply troubled or concerned by the result.

It was just natural, therefore, that at the moment when the boy entered the smoking compartment of the train, the conversation of the men assembled there should be chiefly concerned with these twin sports. As he came in, there was a hum of voices, a sound of argument, and then he could see the hearty red-faced man--the politician--shaking his head dubiously and heard him say, with a protesting laugh:

"Ah-h, I don't know about that. From what I hear it's just the other way. I was talking to a man from Tennessee the other day, and from what he says, Cox is gaining everywhere. He said that a month ago he wouldn't have given two cents for his chances, but now he thinks he's going to carry the State."

"It's going to be close," another conceded. "He may win yet--but it looks to me as if he's got a hard uphill fight on his hands. Tennessee always polls a big Republican vote--in some of those mountain districts they vote two to one Republican--and this year it looks as if they're all set for a change. . . . What do you think about it, Emmet?" he said, appealing to the small, swarthy and important-looking little man, who sat there, swinging his short little legs and chewing on a fat cigar with an air of wise reflection.

"Well," that person answered slowly after a thoughtful moment, taking his cigar in his pudgy fingers and looking at it studiously--"it may be--it may be--that the country's ready for a change--now don't misunderstand me," he went on hastily, as if eager to set their perturbed minds at rest--"I'm not saying that I want to see Harding elected--that I'm going to cast my vote for him--as you know, I'm a party man and have voted the Democratic ticket ever since I came of age--but," again he paused, frowned importantly at his cigar, and spoke with careful deliberation--"it may just be that we are due for a change this year--that the country is ready for it--that we need it. . . . Now, I supported Wilson twice, in 1912, when he got elected to his first term of office, and again in 1916--"

"The time he kept us out of war," some one said ironically.

"And," the little man said deliberately--"if he was running again--if he was well enough to run--if he wanted a third term--(although I'm against the third term in principle)," he amended hastily again--"why, I believe I'd go ahead and vote for him. That's how much I think of him. But," again he paused, and meditated his chewed cigar profoundly--"it may be we're due now for a change. Wilson was a great president--in my opinion, the greatest man we've had since Lincoln--I don't believe any other man could have done the job he did as well as he--but," the word came out impressively, "the job is done! The war is over--"

"Yes, thank God!" some one murmured softly but fervently.

"The people want to forget about the war--they want to forget all their sacrifices and suffering--" said this little man who had sacrificed and suffered nothing--"they are looking forward to better times. . . . And in my opinion," he spoke again with his air of slow deliberation, important carefulness--"in my opinion, better times are before us. I think that after this election we are going to witness one of the greatest periods of national development and expansion that the world has ever known. . . . Why, we haven't begun yet! We haven't even started!" he cried suddenly, with a note of passionate conviction in his voice--"Do you realize that this country is only a little more than a hundred years old? Why, we haven't even begun to show what we can do yet! We've spent all that time in getting started--in building cities--settling the country--building railroads and factories--developing the means of production--making the tools with which to work. . . . The resources of this country are scarcely tapped as yet. And in my opinion we are on the eve of the greatest period of prosperity and growth the world has ever known. . . . Look at Altamont, for example," he went on cogently. "Ten years ago, in 1910, the census gave us a population of 18,000. . . . Now, we have thirty, according to government figures, and that doesn't begin to take the whole thing in: it doesn't take in Biltburn, Lunn's Cove, Beaver Hills, Sunset Parkway--a dozen other places I can mention, all really part of the town but not included in the census figures. . . . If all the suburbs were included we'd have a population of at least 40,000 inhabitants--"

"I'd call it nearer fifty," said another patriot.

"And within another ten years we'll go to seventy-five, perhaps a hundred. . . . Why, that town hasn't begun to grow yet!" he said, bending his short body forward in his enthusiasm and tapping his fat knee--"It has been less than eight years since we established the Citizen's Bank and Trust Company with a capital of $25,000 and capital stock at $100 a share. . . . Now," he paused a moment, and looked around him, his swarthy face packed with strong conviction--"now, we have a capital of $2,000,000--deposits totalling more than $18,000,000--and as for the stock--" for a moment the little man's swarthy face was touched with a faint complacent smile, he said smugly, "I don't know exactly how much stock you gentlemen may hold among you, but if any of you wants to sell what he has, I will pay you $1000 a share--here and now," he slapped a fat small hand down upon a fat small knee--"here and now! for every share you own."

And he looked at them steadily for a moment with an air of challenge.

"Not for mine!" the florid heavy man cried heartily. "No, sir! I've only got ten shares, Emmet, but you can't buy it from me at any price! I won't sell!"

And the swarthy little man, pleased by the answer, smiled complacently about him before he spoke again.

"Yes, sir!" he said. "That's the way it is. And the thing that's begun to happen at home already is going to happen everywhere--all over the country. From now on you're going to see a period of rising prices and high wages--increased production, a boom in real estate, stocks, investments, business of all kinds--rising values everywhere such as you never saw before and never hoped to see."

"And where is it going to stop?"

"Stop!" the swarthy little man spoke almost curtly, and then barked, "It's not going to stop! Not during our lifetime, anyway! I tell you, man, we're just beginning! How can there be any talk of stopping when we haven't started yet? . . . There's been nothing like it before," he cried with passionate earnestness--"nothing to match it in the history of the world. We've had wars, booms, good times, hard times, slumps, periods of prosperity--but, I tell you, gentlemen!" and here he smote himself sharply on the knee and his voice rose with the strength of an unshakable conviction--"this thing is different! We have reached a stage in our development that no other country in the world has ever known--that was never dreamed of before--a stage that is beyond booms, depressions, good times, hard times--anything--"

"You mean that after this we shall never be affected by those things?"

"Yes, sir!" he cried emphatically. "I mean just that! I mean that we have learned the causes for each of those conditions. I mean that we have learned how to check them, how to control them. I mean that so far as we are concerned they don't exist any more!" His voice had become almost shrill with the force of his persuasive argument, and suddenly whipping a sheaf of envelopes, tied with a rubber band, out of his inner pocket, and gripping a stub of pencil in his stubby hand, he crossed his short fat legs with an energetic movement, bent forward poised above the envelopes, and said quietly but urgently:

"See here, now!--I'd like to show you a few figures! My business, as you know, is to look after other people's money--your money, the town's money, everybody's money--I've got to keep my fingers on the pulse of business at every moment of the day--my business is to know--to know--and let me tell you something," he said quietly, looking directly in their eyes, "I do know,--so pay attention just a moment while I show these figures to you."

And for some moments he spoke quietly, persuasively, his dark features packed with an energy of powerful conviction, while he rapidly jotted figures down upon the backs of the soiled envelopes, and they bent around him--their medicine-man of magic numerals--in an attitude of awed and rapt attentiveness. And when he had finished, there was silence for a moment, save for the rhythmic clack of wheels, the rocketing sound of the great train. Then one of the men, stroking his chin thoughtfully, and with an impressed air, said:

"I see. . . . And you think, then, that in view of these conditions it would be better for the country if Harding is elected."

The little man's manner became instantly cautious, non-committal, "conservative":

"I don't say that," he said, shaking his head in a movement of denial--"I only say that whoever gets elected we're in for a period of unparalleled development. . . . Now both of them are good men--as I say, I shall probably vote for Cox--but you can rest assured," he spoke deliberately and looked around him in his compelling way--"you can rest assured that no matter which one gets elected the country will be in good hands. There's no question about that."

"Yes, sir," said the florid-faced politician in his amiable and hearty way. "I agree with you. . . . I'm a Democrat myself, both in practice and in principle. I'm going to vote for Cox, but if Harding gets elected I won't shed any tears over his election. We'll have to give the Republicans credit for a good deed this time--they couldn't have made a wiser or a better decision. He has a long and honourable career in the service of his country,"--as he spoke his voice unconsciously took on the sententious ring and lilt of the professional politician--"no breath of scandal has ever touched his name: in public and in private life he has remained as he began--a statesman loyal to the institutions of his country, a husband devoted to his family life, a plain American of simple tastes who loves his neighbours as himself, and prefers the quiet life of a little town, the democracy of the front porch, to the marble arches of the Capitol--so, whatever the result may be," the orator concluded, "this nation need fear nothing: it has chosen well and wisely in both cases, its future is secure."

Mr. Flood, during the course of this impassioned flight, had remained ponderously unmoved. In the pause that followed, he sat impassively, his coarse-jowled face and bulging yellowed eyes fixed on the orator in their customary expression of comic stupefaction. Now, breathing hoarsely and stertorously, he coughed chokingly and with an alarming rattling noise into his handkerchief, peered intently at his wadded handkerchief for a moment, and then said coarsely:

"Hell! What all of you are saying is that you are goin' to vote for Cox but that you hope that Harding wins."

"No, now, Jim--" the politician, Mr. Candler, said in a protesting tone--"I never said--"

"Yes, you did!" Mr. Flood wheezed bluntly. "You meant it, anyhow, every one of you is sayin' how he always was a Democrat and what a great man Wilson is, and how he's goin' to vote for Cox--and every God-damn one of you is praying that the other feller gets elected. . . . Why? I'll tell you why," he wheezed coarsely, "--it's because we're sick an' tired of Woodrow, all of us--we want to put the rollers under him an' see the last of him! Oh, yes, we are," he went on brutally as some one started to protest--"we're tired of Woodrow's flowery speeches, an' we're tired of hearin' about wars an' ideals an' democracy an' how fine an' noble we all are an' 'Mister won't you please subscribe?' We're tired of hearin' bunk that doesn't pay an' we want to hear some bunk that does--an' we're goin' to vote for the crook that gives it to us. . . . Do you know what we all want--what we're lookin' for?" he demanded, glowering brutally around at them. "We want a piece of the breast with lots of gravy--an' the boy that promises us the most is the one we're for! . . . Cox! Hell! All of you know Cox has no more chance of getting in than a snowball has in hell. When they get through with him he won't know whether he was run over by a five-ton truck or chewed up in a sausage mill. . . . Nothing has changed, the world's no different, we're just the same as we always were--and I've watched 'em come an' go for forty years--Blaine, Cleveland, Taft, McKinley, Roosevelt--the whole damned lot of 'em--an' what we want from them is just the same: all we can get for ourselves, a free grab with no holts barred, and to hell with the other fellow."

"So whom are you going to vote for, Jim?" said Mr. Candler smiling.

"Who? Me?" said Mr. Flood with a coarse grin. "Why, hell, you ought to know that without asking. Me--I'm a Democrat, ain't I?--don't I publish a Democratic newspaper? I'm going to vote for Cox, of course."

And, in the burst of laughter that followed, some one could be heard saying jestingly:

"And who's going to win the Series, Jim? Some one told me you're for Brooklyn!"

"Brooklyn!" Mr. Flood jeered wheezingly. "Brooklyn has just the same kind of chance Cox has--the chance a snowball has in hell! Brooklyn! They're in just the same fix the Democrats are in--they've got nothing on the ball. When Speaker and that Cleveland gang get through with them, Brooklyn is going to look just like Cox the day after the election. Brooklyn," he concluded with brutal conviction, "hasn't got a chance."

And again the debate between the men grew eager, animated and vociferous: they shouted, laughed, denied, debated, jeered good-naturedly, and the great train hurtled onward in the darkness, and the everlasting earth was still.

And other men, and other voices, words, and moments such as these would come, would pass, would vanish and would be forgotten in the huge record and abyss of time. And the great trains of America would hurtle on through darkness over the lonely, everlasting earth--the earth which only was eternal--and on which our fathers and our brothers had wandered, their lives so brief, so lonely, and so strange--into whose substance at length they all would be compacted. And the great trains would hurtle on for ever over the silent and eternal earth--fixed in that design of everlasting stillness and unceasing change. The trains would hurtle onward bearing other lives like these, all brought together for an instant between two points of time--and then all lost, all vanished, broken and forgotten. The trains would bear them onward to their million destinations--each to the fortune, fame, or happiness he wished, whatever it was that he was looking for--but whether any to a sure success, a certain purpose, or the thing he sought--what man could say? All that he knew was that these men, these words, this moment would vanish, be forgotten--and that great wheels would hurtle on for ever. And the earth be still.

Mr. Flood shifted his gouty weight carefully with a movement of his fat arm, grunting painfully as he did so. This delicate operation completed, he stared sharply and intently at the boy again and at length said bluntly:

"You're one of those Gant boys, ain't you? Ain't you Ben's brother?"

"Yes, sir," the boy answered. "That's right."

"Which one are you?" Mr. Flood said with this same brutal directness. "You ain't the one that stutters, are you?"

"No," one of the other men interrupted with a laugh, but in a decided tone. "He's not the one. You're thinking of Luke."

"Oh," said Mr. Flood stupidly. "Is Luke the one that stutters?"

"Yes," the boy said, "that's Luke. I'm Eugene."

"Oh," Mr. Flood said heavily. "I reckon you're the youngest one."

"Yes, sir," the boy answered.

"Well," said Mr. Flood with an air of finality, "I didn't know which one you were, but I knew you were one of them. I knew I'd seen you somewhere."

"Yes, sir," the boy answered. He was about to go on, hesitated for a moment, and suddenly blurted out: "I used to carry a route on The Courier when you owned it. I guess that's how you remembered me."

"Oh," said Mr. Flood stupidly, "you did? Yes, that's it, all right. I remember now." And he continued to look at the boy with his bulging stare of comic stupefaction and for a moment there was silence save for the pounding of the wheels upon the rail.

"How many of you boys are there?" The swarthy and important-looking man who had previously been addressed as Emmet now spoke curiously: "There must be five or six in all."

"No," the boy said, "there's only three now. There's Luke and Steve and me."

"Oh, Steve, Steve," the little man said with an air of crisp finality, as if this was the name that had been at the tip of his tongue all the time. "Steve was the oldest, wasn't he?"

"Yes, sir," said the boy.

"Whatever became of Steve, anyway?" the man said. "I don't believe I've seen him in ten or fifteen years. He doesn't live at home any more, does he?"

"No, sir," the boy said. "He lives in Indiana."

"Does he for a fact?" said the little man, as if this was a rare and curious bit of information. "What's Steve doing out there? Is he in business?"

For a moment the boy was going to say, "No, he runs a pool room and lives up over it with his wife and children," but feeling ashamed to say this, he said:

"I think he runs some kind of cigar store out there."

"Is that so?" the man answered with an air of great interest. "Well," he went on in a moment in a conciliatory tone, "Steve was always smart enough. He had brains enough to do almost anything if he tried."

Emmet Wade, the man who had asked the boy all these questions, was a quick, pompous little figure, corpulently built, but so short in stature as to be almost dwarfish-looking. His skin was curiously and unpleasantly swarthy, and save for a fringe of thin black hair at either side, his head was completely bald. In that squat figure, the suggestion of pompous authority and mountainous conceit was so pronounced that even in repose, as now, the whole man seemed to strut. He was, by virtue of that fortuitous chance and opportunity which has put so many small men in great positions, the president of the leading bank of the community. Even as he sat there in the smoking compartment, with his short fat legs crossed, the boy could see him sitting at his desk in the bank, swinging back and forth in his swivel chair thoughtfully, his pudgy hands folded behind his head as he dictated a letter to his obsequious secretary.

"Where's old Luke? What's he doing, anyway?" another of the men demanded suddenly, beginning to chuckle even as he spoke. The speaker was the florid-faced, somewhat countrified-looking man already noted, who wore the string neck-tie and spoke with the rhetorical severity of the small-town politician. He was one of the town commissioners and in his hearty voice and easy manner there was a more genial quality than any of the others had. "I haven't seen that boy in years," he continued. "Some one was asking me just the other day what had become of him."

"He's got a job selling farm machinery and lighting equipment," the boy answered.

"Is that so?" the man replied with this same air of friendly interest. "Where is he located? He doesn't get home very often, does he?"

"No, sir," the boy said, "not very often. He comes in every two or three weeks, but he doesn't stay home long at a time. His territory is down through South Carolina and Georgia--all through there."

"What did you say he was selling?" said Mr. Flood, who had been staring at the boy fixedly during all this conversation with his heavy expression of a slow, intent and brutal stupefaction.

"He sells lighting systems and pumps and farm equipment and machinery--for farms," the boy said awkwardly.

"That's Luke--who does that?" said Mr. Flood after a moment, when this information had had time to penetrate.

"Yes, sir. That's Luke."

"And he's the one that stutters?"

"Yes, sir."

"The one that used to have the agency for The Saturday Evening Post and did all that talking when he sold 'em to you?"

"Yes, sir. That's Luke."

"And what d'you say he's doing now?" said Mr. Flood heavily. "Selling farm machinery?"

"Yes, sir. That's what he's doing."

"Then, by God," said Mr. Flood, with a sudden and explosive emphasis which, after his former attitude of heavy, brutal stupefaction, was startling, "he'll do it!" The other men laughed and Mr. Flood shook his ponderous, crimson head slowly from side to side to emphasize his conviction in the matter.

"If any one can sell 'em, he'll do it," he said positively. "That boy could sell Palm Beach suits to the Esquimaux. They'd have to buy 'em just to keep him from talking them to death."

"I'll tell you what I saw him do one time," said the politician, shifting his weight a little in order to accommodate himself more comfortably to the motion of the train. "I was standing in front of the post office one day talking to Dave Redmond about some property he owned out on the Haw Creek Road--oh, it must have been almost fifteen years ago--when here he comes hustling along, you know, with a big bundle of his papers under his arm. Well, he sails right into us, talking about a mile a minute and going so fast neither of us had a chance to get a word in edgeways. 'Here you are, gentlemen,' he says, 'hot off the press, just the thing you've been waiting for, this week's edition of The Saturday Evening Post, five cents, only a nickel, the twentieth part of a dollar.' By that time," said Mr. Candler, "he had the thing all opened up and shoved up right under Dave Redmond's nose, and he was turning the pages and telling him all about the different pieces it had in it and who wrote them and what was in them, and what a bargain it was for five cents. 'W-w-w-why,' he says, 'if you b-b-b-bought it in a book, why it'd cost you a d-d-d-dollar and a half and then,' he says, 'it wouldn't be half as good.' Well, Dave was getting sort of red in the face by that time," Mr. Candler said, "and I could see he was sort of annoyed at being interrupted, but the boy kept right on with his spiel and wouldn't give up. 'I don't want it,' says Dave, 'I'm busy,' and he tries to turn away from him, but Luke moves right around to the other side and goes after him about twice as hard as before. 'Go on, go on,' says Dave. 'We're busy! I don't want it! I can't read!' he says. 'All right,' says Luke, 'then you can look at the p-p-p-pictures. Why, the pictures alone,' he says, 'are w-w-w-worth a half a dollar. It's the b-b-b-bargain of a lifetime,' he says. Well, the boy was pressing him pretty hard and I guess Dave lost his temper. He sort of knocked the magazine away from him and shouted, 'Damn it, I told you that I didn't want it, and I mean it! Now go on! We're busy.' Well," said Mr. Candler, "Luke didn't say a word for a moment. He took his magazine and put it under his arm again, and he just stood there looking at Dave Redmond for a moment, and then he said, just as quiet as you please, 'All right, sir. You're the doctor. But I think you're going to regret it!' And then he turned and walked away from us. Well, sir," said Mr. Candler, laughing, "Dave Redmond's face was a study. You could see he felt pretty small to think he had shouted at the boy like that, and acted as he did. And Luke hadn't gone twenty feet before Dave Redmond called him back. 'Here, son,' he says, diving his hand down into his pocket, 'give me one of those things! I may never read it but it's worth a dollar just to hear you talk.' And he gave him a dollar, too, and made him take it," Mr. Candler said, "and from that day on Dave Redmond was one of the biggest boosters that Luke had. . . . 'I think you're going to regret it,'" said Mr. Candler again, laughing at the memory. "That's the thing that did it--that's what got him--the way the boy just looked at him and said, 'All right, sir, but I think you're going to regret it.' That did the trick, all right." And pleased with his story and the memory it evoked, Mr. Candler looked mildly out of the window for a moment, smiling.

"That was Luke that done that?" Mr. Flood demanded hoarsely after a moment, with his air of brutal and rather stunned surprise. "The one that stutters?"

"Yes, that's the one all right," said Mr. Candler. "That's who it was."

Mr. Flood pondered this information for a moment with his bulging eyes still fastened on Mr. Candler in their look of stupefied curiosity. Then, as the full import of what he had heard at length soaked into his intelligence, he shook his great coarse head once, slowly, in a movement of ponderous but emphatic satisfaction, and said with hoarse conviction:

"Well, he's a good 'un! If any one can sell 'em, he's the one."

This judgment was followed by a brief but heavy pause, which was broken in a moment by the voice of the pompous, swarthy little man who, in a tone of detached curiosity, said:

"Whatever became of that other boy--the one who used to work there in The Courier office when you owned it? What was his name, anyway?"

"Ben," said Mr. Flood heavily, but without hesitation. "That was Ben." Here he coughed in an alarming, phlegmy sort of way, cleared his throat and spat chokingly into the spittoon at his feet, wiped his mouth with his wadded handkerchief and in a moment, panting for breath, wheezed:

"Ben was the one that worked for me."

"Oh, yes, yes, yes!" the swarthy little man said rapidly, as if now it all came back to him. "Ben! That was the one! Whatever became of him? I haven't seen him recently."

"He's dead," said Mr. Flood, still wheezing rapidly for breath and gazing at the spittoon. "That's the reason you haven't seen him," he said seriously. And suddenly, as if the long-awaited moment had come, he bent over, torn by a fit of choking and phlegmy sounds of really astounding proportions. When it was over, he raised himself, settled back slowly and painfully in his seat, and for a moment, with closed eyes, did nothing but wheeze rapidly. In a moment, still with closed eyes, he gasped almost inaudibly:

"Ben was the one that died."

"Oh, yes! I do remember now," the pompous little man declared, nodding his head sharply with an air of conviction. "That's been some time ago, hasn't it?" he said to the boy.

"He died two years ago," the boy replied, "during the war."

"Oh, that's so, he did! I remember now!" the man cried instantly, with an air of recollection that somehow said that he remembered nothing. "He was overseas at the time, wasn't he?" he asked smoothly.

"No, sir," the boy answered. "He was at home. He died of pneumonia--during that big epidemic."

"I know," the man said regretfully. "That got a lot of the boys. Ben was in service at the time, wasn't he?"

"No," the boy answered. "He never got in. Luke was the one who was in service. Ben tried to get in twice but he couldn't pass the examinations."

"Is that so?" the man said vaguely. "Well, I was mighty sorry to hear about his death. Old Ben was one fine boy!"

Nothing was said for a moment.

"I'll tell you how fine he was," Mr. Flood, who had been wheezing with closed eyes, now grunted suddenly, glaring solemnly about him with an air of brutal earnestness. "Now I think I knew that boy about as well as any man alive--he worked for me for almost fifteen years--started out when he was ten years old as a route-boy on The Courier and kept right on working for my paper until just a year or two before he died! And I'm here to tell you," he wheezed solemnly, "that they don't come any better than Ben!" Here he glowered around him pugnaciously as if the character of a dead saint had been called in question. "Now he wasn't one of your big talkers who'd promise everything and know nothing. Ben was a do-er, not a talker. You could depend on him," said Mr. Flood, hoarsely and impressively. "When he told you he'd do a thing, you'd know it was going to get done! As regular as a clock and as steady as the day is long! And as quiet a fellow as you ever saw," said Mr. Flood. "That was Ben for you! Am I right?" he demanded, suddenly turning to the boy. "Was that Ben?"

"Yes, sir," the boy answered. "That was Ben."

"And until you asked him something he'd go for days at a time without speaking to you, but I knew he didn't mean anything by it, it was just his way. He believed in tending to his own business and he expected every one else to do the same." And for a moment, exhausted by these eulogies, he wheezed rapidly.

"Well, the world would be a lot better off if there were more like him," the pompous, swarthy little man now said virtuously, as if this sentiment expressed his own pious belief and practice. "There are too many people sticking their noses in other people's business, as it is."

"Well, they didn't stick their noses in Ben's business," said Mr. Flood with grim emphasis, "not after the first time, anyway. But they didn't come any better than that boy. I couldn't have thought more of him if he'd been my own son," he concluded piously and then gasped stertorously, lifted his cigar slowly to his lips with the thick, gouty tenderness that characterized all his movements and for a moment puffed slowly, wheezing reflectively over it.

"Not that he was ever much like a boy," he grunted suddenly, with a surprising flash of insight. "He was always more like an old man--didn't ever seem to be a kid like the others. Why," suddenly he chuckled with a phlegmy hoarseness, "I remember when he first began to come down there in the morning as a carrier, the other kids all called him 'Pop.' That was Ben for you. Always had that scowl on his face, even when he was laughing--as serious and earnest as an old man. But he was one of the best--as good as they come." Again he coughed chokingly, bent over with a painful grunt, and cleared his throat phlegmily into the polished brass spittoon beside him. Then, wheezing a little, he drew the wadded silk handkerchief from a side-pocket, wiped his mouth with it, raised himself up in his seat a little, and settled back slowly, tenderly, wheezing, with a sigh! Then for a moment he laboured painfully, eyes closed, with his rapid wheezing breath and finally, when it seemed he must be exhausted by his efforts and done with conversation for the evening, he wheezed faintly and unexpectedly.

"That was Ben."

"Oh, I remember that boy now," the swarthy pompous-looking man suddenly broke in with a flash of recollective inspiration--"Wasn't Ben the boy who used to stand in the windows of The Courier offices when the World Series was being played, and post the score up on the score-board as they phoned it in to him?"

"Yes," wheezed Mr. Flood, nodding heavily. "You got him now, all right. That was Ben."

"I remember now," the swarthy little man said thoughtfully, with a far-away look in his eye. "I was thinking about him the other day when I went by The Courier office. They were playing the Series then. They had another fellow in the window and I wondered what had become of him. So that was Ben?"

"Yes," Mr. Flood wheezed hoarsely again. "That was Ben."

For a moment as the gouty old rake had spoken of the boy's dead brother, the boy had felt within him a sense of warmth: a wakening of dead time, a stir of grateful affection for the gross old man as if there might have been in this bloated carcass some trace of understanding for the