CHAPTER LV

That evening at seven I carried my bags down to the great Union Station, feeling that I was a failure. Other men had money; they need not thus go jerking about the world seeking a career. So many youths and maids had all that was needful to their case and comfort arranged from the beginning. They did not need to fret about the making of a bare living. The ugly favoritism of life which piles comforts in the laps of some while snatching the smallest crumb of satisfaction from the lips of others was never more apparent to me. I was in a black despair, and made short work of getting into my berth. For a long time I stared at dark fields flashing by, punctuated by lamps in scattered cottages, the gloomy and lonely little towns of Illinois and Indiana. Then I slept.

I was aroused by a ray of sunshine in my eyes. I lifted one of my blinds and saw the cornfields of Northern Ohio, the brown stumps of last year’s crop protruding through the snow. Commonplace little towns, the small brown or red railway stations with the adjoining cattle-runs, and tall gas-well derricks protruding out of dirty, snowless soil, made me realize that I was approaching the end of my journey. I found that I had ample time to shave, dress and breakfast in the adjoining buffet—a thing I proposed to do if it proved the last pretentious, liberal, courageous deed of my life.

For I was not too well provided with cash, and was I not leaving civilization? Though I had but a hundred dollars, might not my state soon be much worse? I have often smiled since over the awe in which I then held the Pullman car, its porter, conductor, and all that went with it. To my inexperienced soul it seemed to be the acme of elegance and grandeur. Could life offer anything more than the privilege of riding about the world in these mobile palaces? And here was I this sunny winter morning with enough money to indulge in a breakfast in one of these grand ambling chambers, though if I kept up this reckless pace there was no telling where I should end.

I selected a table adjoining one at which sat two drummers who talked of journeys far and wide, of large sales of binders and reapers and the condition of trade. They seemed to me to be among the most fortunate of men, high up in the world as positions go, able to steer straight and profitable courses for themselves. Because they had half a broiled spring chicken, I had one, and coffee and rolls and French fried potatoes, as did they, feeling all the while that I was indulging in limitless grandeur. At one station at which the train stopped some poor-looking farmer boys in jeans and “galluses” and wrinkled hats looking up at me with interest as I ate, I stared down at them, hoping that I should be taken for a millionaire to whom this was little more than a wearisome commonplace. I felt fully capable of playing the part and so gave the boys a cold and repressive glance, as much as to say, Behold! I assured myself that the way to establish my true worth was to make every one else feel small by comparison.

The town of Grand Rapids lay in the extreme northwestern portion of Ohio on the Maumee, a little stream which begins somewhere west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and runs northeast to Toledo, emptying into Lake Erie. The town was traversed by this one railroad, which began at St. Louis and ended at Toledo, and consisted of a number of small frame houses and stores, with a few brick structures of one and two stories. I had not arranged with Michaelson that he should meet me at any given time, having been uncertain as to the time of my departure from St. Louis, and so I had to look him up. As I stepped down at the little depot. I noted the small houses with snow-covered yards, the bare trees and the glimpse of rolling country which I caught through the open spaces between. There was the river, wide and shallow, flowing directly through the heart of the town and tumbling rapidly and picturesquely over gray stones. I was far more concerned as to whether I should sometime be able to write a poem or a story about this river than I was to know if a local weekly could subsist here. And after the hurry and bustle of St. Louis, the town did not impress me. I felt now that I had made a dreadful mistake and wondered why I had been so foolish as to give up the opportunities suggested by my friends on the Republic, and my sweetheart, when I might have remained and married her under the new editorial conditions proffered me.

Yet I walked on to the main corner and inquired where my friend lived, then out a country road indicated to me as leading toward his home. I found an old rambling frame house, facing the Maumee River, with a lean-to and kitchen and springhouse, corncribs, a barn twice the size of the house, and smaller buildings, all resting comfortably on a rise of ground. Apple and pear trees surrounded it, now leafless in the wind. A curl of smoke rose from the lean-to and told me where the cookstove was. As I entered the front gate I felt the joy of a country home. It told of simple and plain things, food, warmth, comfort, minds content with routine. Michaelson appeared at the door and greeted me most enthusiastically. He introduced me to his family with the exuberant youthfulness of a schoolboy.

I met the father, a little old dried-up quizzical man, who looked at me over his glasses in a wondering way and rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. I met the mother, small, wizened, middle-aged, looking as though she had gone through a thousand worries. Then I met Michaelson’s wife, a dark, chubby, brown-skinned woman, stocky and not over-intelligent. They asked me to make myself at home, listened to an account of my experiences in getting there, and then Michaelson volunteered to show me about the place.

My mind revolted at the thought of such a humdrum life as this for myself, though I was constantly touched by its charm—for others. I followed the elder Mrs. Michaelson into the lean-to and watched her cook, went with Michaelson to the barn to look over the live stock and returned to talk with Michaelson senior about the prospects of the Republican party in Ohio. He was much interested in a man named McKinley, a politician of Ohio, who had been a congressman for years and who was now being talked of as the next candidate of the Republican party for the Presidency. I had scarcely heard of him up to that time, but I gave my host my opinion, such as it was. We sat about the big drum sheet-iron stove, heated by natural gas, then but newly discovered and piped in that region. After dinner I proposed to my friend that we go into the village and inspect the printing plant which he had said was for sale. We walked along the road discussing the possibilities, and it seemed to me as we walked that he was not as enthusiastic as he had been in St. Louis.

“I’ve been looking at this fellow’s plant,” he said vaguely, “and I don’t know whether I want to give him two hundred down for it. He hasn’t got anything. That old press he has is in pretty bad shape, and his type is all worn down.”

“Can we get it for two hundred?” I asked innocently.

“Sure, two hundred down. I wouldn’t think of giving him more. All he wants now is enough to get out of here, some one to take it off his hands. He can’t run it.”

We went to the office of the Herald, a long dark loft over a feed store, and found there a press and some stands of type, and a table before the two front windows, which looked west. The place was unlighted except by these windows and two in the back, and contained no provision for artificial light except two or three tin kerosene lamps. Slazey, the youthful editor, was not in. We walked about and examined the contents of the room, all run down. The town was small and slow, and even an idealist could see that there was small room here for a career.

Presently the proprietor returned, and I saw a sad specimen of the country editor of those days: sleepy, sickly-looking, with a spare, gaunt face and a head which had the appearance of an egg with the point turned to the back. His hair was long and straight and thin, the back part of it growing down over his dusty coat-collar. He wore a pair of baggy trousers of no shape or distinguishable color, and his coat and waistcoat were greasy. He extended a damp, indifferent hand to me.

“I hear you want to sell out,” I said.

“Yes, I’m willing to sell,” he replied sadly.

“Do you mind showing us what you have here?”

He went about mechanically, and pointed out the press and type and some paper he had on hand.

“Let me see that list of subscribers you showed me the other day,” said Michaelson, who now seemed eager to convince himself that there might be something in this affair.

Slazey brought it out from an old drawer and together we examined it, spreading it out on the dusty table and looking at the names checked off as paid. There were not more than a thousand. Some of them had another mark beside the check, and this excited my curiosity.

“What’s this cross here for?”

“That’s the one that’s paid for this year.”

“Isn’t this this year’s list?”

“No. I just thought I’d check up the new payments on the old list. I haven’t had time to make out a new one.”

Our faces fell. The names checked with a cross did not aggregate five hundred.

“I’ll tell you what we’d better do,” observed Michaelson heavily, probably feeling that I had become suddenly depressed. “Suppose we go around and see some of the merchants and ask them if they’ll support us with advertising?”

I agreed, feeling all the while that the whole venture was ridiculous, and together we went about among the silent stores, talking with conservative men, who represented all that was discouraging and wearisome in life. Here they stood all day long calculating in pennies and dimes, whereas the city merchant counted in hundreds and thousands. It was dispiriting. Think of living in a place like this, among such people!

“I might give a good paper my support,” said one, a long, lean, sanctimonious man who looked as though he had narrow notions and a firm determination to rule in his small world. “But it’s mighty hard to make a paper that would suit this community. We’re religious and hard-working here, and we like the things that interest religious and hard-working people. Course if it was run right it might pay pretty well, but I dunno as ’twould neither. You never can tell.”

I saw that he would be one hard customer to deal with anyhow. If there were many like him—— The poor, thin-blooded, calculating world which he represented frightened me.

“How much advertising do you think you could give to a paper that was ‘run’ right?”

“Well, that depends,” he said gloomily and disinterestedly. “I’d have to see how it was run first. Some weeks I might give more than others.”

Michaelson nudged me and we left.

“I forgot to tell you,” he said, “that he’s a Baptist and a Republican. He’d expect you to run it in favor of those institutions if you got his support. But all the men around town won’t feel that way.”

In the dusty back room of a drugstore we found a chemist who did not know whether a weekly newspaper was of any value to him, and could not contribute more than fifty cents a week in advertising if it were. The proprietor of the village hotel, a thick-set, red-faced man with the air of a country evil-doer, said that he did not see that a local newspaper was particularly valuable to him. He might advertise, but it would be more as a favor than anything else.

I began to sum up the difficulties of our position. We should be handicapped, to begin with, by a wretched printing outfit. We should be beholden to a company of small, lean-living, narrow men who would take offense at the least show of individuality and cut us off entirely from support. We should have to busy ourselves gathering trivial items of news, dunning hard-working, indifferent farmers for small amounts of money, and reduce all our thoughts and ambitions to the measure of this narrow world. I saw myself dying by inches. It gave me the creeps. Youth and hope were calling.

“I don’t see this,” I said to myself. “It’s horrible. I should die.” To Michaelson I said: “Suppose we give up our canvassing for today?”

“We might as well,” he replied. “There’s a paper over at Bowling Green for sale, and it’s a better paper. We might go over in a day or two and look at it. We might as well go home now.”

I agreed, and we turned down a street that led to the road, meditating. I knew nothing of my destiny, but I knew that it had little to do with this. These great wide fields, many of them already sown to wheat under the snow, these hundreds of oil or gas-well derricks promising a new source of profit to many, the cleanly farmhouses and neatly divided farms all appealed to me, but this world was not for me. I was thinking of something different, richer, more poignant, less worthy possibly, more terrible, more fruitful for the moods and the emotions. What could these bleak fields offer? I thought of St. Louis, the crowded streets, the vital offices of the great papers, their thrashing presses, the hotels, the theaters, the trains. What, bury myself here? I thought of the East—New York possibly, at least Cleveland, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia.

“I like the country, but it’s a hard place to make a living, isn’t it?” I finally said.

“Yes,” he assented gloomily. “I’ve never been able to get anything out of it—but I haven’t done very well in the city either.”

I sensed the mood of an easily defeated man.

“I’m so used to the noise and bustle of the streets that these fields seem lonely,” I said.

“Yes, but you might get over that in time, don’t you think?”

Never, I thought, but did not say so; instead I said: “That’s a beautiful sky, isn’t it?” and he looked blankly to where a touch of purple was creeping into the background of red and gold.

We reached the house at dusk. Going through the gate I said: “I don’t see how I can go into this with you, Mich. There isn’t enough in it.”

“Well, don’t worry about it any more tonight. I’d rather the girl wouldn’t know. We’ll talk it over in the morning.”