CHAPTER XXXV

The LaClede, as I have indicated, was the center of all gossiping newspaper life at this time, at least that part of it of which I knew anything. Here, in idling groups, during the course of a morning, afternoon or evening, might appear Dick or Peter, Body, Clark, Hazard, Johnson, Root, Johns Daws, a long company of excellent newspaper men who worked on the different papers of the city from time to time and who, because of a desire for companionship in this helter-skelter world and the certainty of finding it here, hung about this corner. Here one could get in on a highly intellectual or diverting conversation of one kind or another at almost any time. So many of these men had come from distant cities and knew them much better than they did St. Louis. As a rule, being total strangers and here only for a short while, they were inclined to sniff at conditions as they found them here and to boast of those elsewhere, especially the men who came from New York, Boston, San Francisco and Chicago. I was one of those who, knowing Chicago and St. Louis only and wishing to appear wise in these matters, boasted vigorously of the superlative importance of Chicago as a city, whereas such men as Root of New York, Johnson of Boston, Ware of New Orleans, and a few others, merely looked at me and smiled.

“All I have to say to you, young fellow,” young Root once observed to me genially if roughly after one of these heated and senseless arguments, “is wait till you go to New York and see for yourself. I’ve been to Chicago, and it’s a way-station in comparison. It’s the only other city you’ve seen, and that’s why you think it’s so great.” There was a certain amount of kindly toleration in his voice which infuriated me.

“Ah, you’re crazy,” I replied. “You’re like all New Yorkers: you think you know it all. You won’t admit you’re beaten when you are.”

The argument proceeded through all the different aspects of the two cities until finally we called each other damned fools and left in a huff. Years later, however, having seen New York, I wanted to apologize if ever I met him again. The two cities, as I then learned, each individual and wonderful in its way, were not to be contrasted. But how sure I was of my point of view then!

Nearly all of these young men, as I now saw, presented a sharp contrast to those I had known in Chicago, or perhaps the character of the work in this city and my own changing viewpoint made them seem different. Chicago at that time had seemed to be full of exceptional young men in the reportorial world, men who in one way or another had already achieved considerable local repute as writers and coming men: Finley Peter Dunne, George Ade, Brand Whitlock, Ben King, Charles Stewart, and many others, some of whom even in that day were already signing their names to some of their contributions; whereas here in St. Louis, few if any of us had achieved any local distinction of any kind. No one of us had as yet created a personal or literary following. We could not, here, apparently; the avenues were not the same. And none of us was hailed as certain to attract attention in the larger world outside. We formed little more than a weak scholastic brotherhood or union, recognizing each other genially enough as worthy fellow-craftsmen but not offering each other much consolation in our rough state beyond a mere class or professional recognition as working newspaper men. Yet at times this LaClede was a kind of tonic bear garden, or mental wrestling-place, where unless one were very guarded and sure of oneself one might come by a quick and hard fall, as when once in some argument in regard to a current political question, and without knowing really what I was talking about, I made the statement that palaeontology indicated so-and-so, whereupon one of my sharp confrères suddenly took me up with: “Say, what is palaeontology, anyhow? Do you know?”

I was completely stumped, for I didn’t. It was a comparatively new word, outside the colleges, being used here and there in arguments and editorials, and I had glibly taken it over. I floundered about and finally had to confess that I did not know what it was, whereupon I endured a laugh for my pains. I was thereafter wiser and more cautious.

But this, in my raw, ignorant state, was a very great help to me. Many of these men were intelligent and informed to the cutting point in regard to many facts of life of which I was extremely ignorant. Many of them had not only read more but seen more, and took my budding local pretensions to being somebody with a very large grain of salt. At many of the casual meetings, where at odd moments reporters and sometimes editors were standing or sitting about and discussing one phase of life and another, I received a back-handed slap which sometimes jarred my pride but invariably widened my horizon.

One of the most interesting things in my life at this time was that same North Seventh Street police station previously mentioned, to which I went daily and which was a center for a certain kind of news at least—rapes, riots, murders, fantastic family complications of all kinds, so common to very poor and highly congested neighborhoods. This particular station was the very center of a mixed ghetto, slum and negro life, which even at this time was still appalling to me in some of its aspects. It was all so dirty, so poor, so stuffy, so starveling. There were in it all sorts of streets—Jewish, negro, and run-down American, or plain slum, the first crowded with long-bearded Jews and their fat wives, so greasy, smelly and generally offensive that they sickened me: rag-pickers, chicken-dealers and feather-sorters all. In their streets the smell of these things, picked or crated chickens, many of them partially decayed, decayed meats and vegetables, half-sorted dirty feathers and rags and I know not what else, was sickening in hot weather. In the negro streets—or rather alleys, for they never seemed to occupy any general thoroughfare—were rows or one-, two-, three-and four-story shacks or barns of frame or brick crowded into back yards and with thousands of blacks of the most shuffling and idle character hanging about. In these hot days of June, July and August they seemed to do little save sit or lie in the shade of buildings in this vicinity and swap yarns or contemplate the world with laughter or in silence. Occasionally there was a fight, a murder or a low love affair among them which justified my time here. In addition, there were those other streets of soggy, decayed Americans—your true slum—filled with as low and cantankerous a population of whites as one would find anywhere, a type of animal dangerous to the police themselves, for they could riot and kill horribly and were sullen at best. Invariably the police traveled here in pairs, and whenever an alarm from some policeman on his beat was turned in from this region a sergeant and all the officers in the station at the time would set forth to the rescue, sometimes as many as eight or ten in a police wagon, with orders, as I myself have heard them given, “to club the —— heads off them” or “break their —— bones, but bring them in here. I’ll fix ’em”; in response to which all the stolid Irish huskies would go forth to battle, returning frequently with a whole vanload of combatants or alleged combatants, all much the worse for the contest.

There was an old fat Irish sergeant of about fifty or fifty-five, James King by name, who used to amuse me greatly. He ruled here like a potentate under the captain, whom I rarely saw. The latter had an office to himself in the front of the station and rarely came out, seeming always to be busy with bigwigs of one type and another. With the sergeant, however, I became great friends. His place was behind the central desk, in the front of which were two light standards and on the surface of which were his blotter and reports of different kinds. Behind the desk was his big tilted swivel chair, with himself in it, stout, perspiring, coatless, vestless, collarless, his round head and fat neck beady with sweat, his fat arms and hands moist and laid heavily over his protuberant stomach. According to him, he had been at this work exactly eight years, and before that he had “beat the sidewalk,” as he said, or traveled a beat.

“Yes, yes, ‘tis a waarm avenin’,” he would begin whenever I arrived and he was not busy, which usually he was not, “an’ there’s naathin’ for ye, me lad. But ye might just as well take a chair an’ make yerself comfortable. It may be that something will happen, an’ again maybe it won’t. Ye must hope fer the best, as the sayin’ is. ’Tis a bad time fer any trouble to be breakin’ out though, in all this hot weather,” and then he would elevate a large palmleaf fan which he kept near and begin to fan himself, or swig copiously from a pitcher of ice-water.

Here then he would sit, answering telephone calls from headquarters or marking down reports from the men on their beats or answering the complaints of people who came in hour after hour to announce that they had been robbed or their homes had been broken into or that some neighbor was making a nuisance of himself or their wives or husbands or sons or daughters wouldn’t obey them or stay in at night.

“Yes, an’ what’s the matter now?” he would begin when one of these would put in an appearance.

Perhaps it was a man who would be complaining that his wife or daughter would not stay in at night, or a woman complaining so of her husband, son or daughter.

“Well, me good woman, I can’t be helpin’ ye with that. This is no court av laaw. If yer husband don’t support ye, er yer son don’t come in av nights an’ he’s a minor, ye can get an order from the judge at the Four Courts compellin’ him. Then if he don’t mind ye and ye waant him arrested er locked up, I can help ye that way, but not otherwise. Go to the Four Courts.”

Sometimes, in the case of a parent complaining of a daughter’s or son’s disobedience, he would relent a little and say: “See if ye can bring him around here. Tell him that the captain waants to see him. Then if he comes I’ll see what I can do fer ye. Maybe I can scare him a bit.”

Let us say they came, a shabby, overworked mother or father leading a recalcitrant boy or girl. King would assume a most ferocious air and after listening to the complaint of the parent as if it were all news to him would demand: “What’s ailin’ ye? Why can’t ye stay in nights? What’s the matter with ye that ye can’t obey yer mother? Don’t ye know it’s agin the laaw fer a minor to be stayin’ out aafter ten at night? Ye don’t? Well, it is, an’ I’m tellin’ ye now. D’ye waant me t’lock ye up? Is that what ye’re looking fer? There’s a lot av good iron cells back there waitin’ fer ye if ye caan’t behave yerself. What’re ye goin’ t’do about it?”

Possibly the one in error would relent a little and begin arguing with the parent, charging unfairness, cruelty and the like.

“Here now, don’t ye be taalkin’ to yer mother like that! Ye’re not old enough to be doin’ that. An’ what’s more, don’t let me ketch ye out on the streets er her complainin’ to me again. If ye do I’ll send one av me men around to bring ye in. This is the last now. D’ye waant to spend a few nights in a cell? Well, then! Now be gettin’ out av here an’ don’t let me hear any more about ye. Not a word. I’ve had enough now. Out with ye!”

And he would glower and grow red and pop-eyed and fairly roar, shoving them tempestuously out—only, after the victim had gone, he would lean back in his chair and wipe his forehead and sigh: “’Tis tough, the bringin’ up av childern, hereabouts especially. Ye can’t be blamin’ them fer waantin’ to be out on the streets, an’ yet ye can’t let ’em out aither, exactly. It’s hard to tell what to do with ’em. I’ve been taalkin’ like that fer years now to one an’ another. ’Tis all the good it does. Ye can’t do much fer ’em hereabouts.”

It was during this period, this summer time and fall, that I came in contact with some of the most interesting characters, newspaper men especially, flotsam and jetsam who drifted in here from other newspaper centers and then drifted out again, newspaper men so intelligent and definite in some respects that they seemed worthy of any position or station in life and yet so indifferent and errant or so poorly placed in spite of their efforts and capacities as to cause me to despair for the reward of merit anywhere—intellectual merit, I mean. For some of these men while fascinating were the rankest kind of failures, drunkards, drug fiends, hypochondriacs. Many of them had stayed too long in the profession, which is a young man’s game at best, and others had wasted their opportunities dreaming of a chance fortune no doubt and then had taken to drink or drugs. Still others, young men like myself, drifters and uncertain as to their future, were just finding out how unprofitable the newspaper game was and in consequence were cynical, waspish and moody.

I am not familiar with many professions and so cannot say whether any of the others abound in this same wealth of eccentric capacity and understanding, or offer as little reward. Certainly all the newspaper offices I have ever known sparkled with these exceptional men, few of whom ever seemed to do very well, and no paper I ever worked on paid wages anywhere near equal to the services rendered or the hours exacted. It was always a hard, driving game, with the ash-heap as the reward for the least weakening of energy or ability; and at the same time these newspapers were constantly spouting editorially about kindness, justice, charity, a full reward for labor, and were getting up fresh-air funds and so on for those not half as deserving as their employees, but—and this is the point—likely to bring them increased circulation. In the short while I was in the newspaper profession I met many men who seemed to be thoroughly sound intellectually, quite free, for the most part, from the narrow, cramping conventions of their day, and yet they never seemed to get on very well.

I remember one man in particular, Clark I think his name was, who arrived on the scene just about this time and who fascinated me. He was so able and sure of touch mentally and from an editorial point of view, and yet financially and in every material way he was such a failure. He came from Kansas City or Omaha while I was on the Republic and had worked in many, many places before that. He was a stocky, dark, clerkly figure, with something of the manager or owner or leader about him, a most shrewd and capable-looking person. And when he first came to the Republic he seemed destined to rise rapidly and never to want for anything, so much self-control and force did he appear to have. He was a hard worker, quiet, unostentatious, and once I had gained his confidence, he gradually revealed a tale of past position and comfort which, verified as it was by Wandell and Williams, was startling when contrasted with his present position. Although he was not much over forty he had been editor or managing editor of several important papers in the West but had lost them through some primary disaster which had caused him to take to drink—his wife’s unfaithfulness, I believe—and his inability in recent years to stay sober for more than three months at a stretch. In some other city he had been an important factor in politics. Here he was, still clean and spruce apparently (when I first saw him, at any rate), going about his work with a great deal of energy, writing the most satisfactory newspaper stories; and then, once two or three months of such labor had gone by, disappearing. When I inquired of Williams and Wandell as to his whereabouts the former stared at me with his one eye and smiled, then lifted his fingers in the shape of a glass to his mouth. Wandell merely remarked: “Drink, I think. He may show up and he may not. He had a few weeks’ wages when he left.”

I did not hear anything more of him for some weeks, when suddenly one day, in that wretched section of St. Louis beloved of Dick and Peter as a source of literary material, I was halted by a figure which I assumed to be one of the lowest of the low. A short, matted, dirty black beard concealed a face that bore no resemblance to Clark. A hat that looked as though it might have been lifted out of an ash-barrel was pulled slouchily and defiantly over long uncombed black hair. His face was filthy, as were his clothes and shoes, slimy even. An old brown coat (how come by, I wonder?) was marked by a greenish slime across the back and shoulders, slime that could only have come from a gutter.

“Don’t you know me, Dreiser?” he queried in a deep, rasping voice, a voice so rusty that it sounded as though it had not been used for years “—Clark, Clark of the Republic. You know me——” and then when I stared in amazement he added shrewdly: “I’ve been sick and in a hospital. You haven’t a dollar about you, have you? I have to rest a little and get myself in shape again before I can go to work.”

“Well, of all things!” I exclaimed in amazement, and then: “I’ll be damned!” I could not help laughing: he looked so queer, impossible almost. A stage tramp could scarcely have done better. I gave him the dollar. “What in the world are you doing—drinking?” and then, overawed by the memory of his past efficiency and force I could not go on. It was too astonishing.

“Yes, I’ve been drinking,” he admitted, a little defiantly, I thought, “but I’ve been sick too, just getting out now. I got pneumonia there in the summer and couldn’t work. I’ll be all right after a while. What’s news at the Republic?”

“Nothing.”

He mumbled something about having played in bad luck, that he would soon be all right again, then ambled up the wretched rickety street and disappeared.

I hustled out of that vicinity as fast as I could. I was so startled and upset by this that I hurried back to the lobby of the Southern Hotel (my favorite cure for all despondent days), where all was brisk, comfortable, gay. Here I purchased a newspaper and sat down in a rocking-chair. Here at least was no sign of poverty or want. In order to be rid of that sense of failure and degradation which had crept over me I took a drink or two myself. That any one as capable as Clark could fall so low in so short a time was quite beyond me. The still strongly puritan and moralistic streak in me was shocked beyond measure, and for days I could do little but contrast the figure of the man I had seen about the Republic office with that I had met in that street of degraded gin-mills and tumbledown tenements. Could people really vary so greatly and in so short a time? What must be the nature of their minds if they could do that? Was mine like that? Would it become so? For days thereafter I was wandering about in spirit with this man from gin-mill to gin-mill and lodging-house to lodging-house, seeing him drink at scummy bars and lying down at night on a straw pallet in some wretched hole.

And then there was Rodenberger, strange, amazing Rodenberger, poet, editorial writer and what not, who when I first met him had a little weekly editorial paper for which he raised the money somehow (I have forgotten its name) and in which he poured forth his views on life and art and nature in no uncertain terms. How he could write! (He was connected with some drug company, by birth or marriage, which may have helped to sustain him. I never knew anything definite concerning his private life.) As I view him now, Rodenberger was a man in whom imagination and logic existed in such a confusing, contesting way as to augur fatalism and (from a worldly or material point of view) failure. He was constantly varying between a state of extreme sobriety and Vigorous mental energy, and debauches which lasted for weeks and which included drink, houses of prostitution, morphine, and I know not what else.

One sunny summer morning in July or August, I found him standing at the corner of Sixth and Chestnut outside the LaClede drugstore quite stupefied with drink or something.

“Hello, Rody,” I called when I saw him. “What’s ailing you? You’re not drunk again, are you?”

“Drunk,” he replied with a slight sardonic motion of the hand and an equally faint curl of the lip, “and what’s more, I’m glad of it. I don’t have to think about myself, or St. Louis, or you, when I’m drunk. And what’s more,” and here he interjected another slight motion of the hand and hiccoughed, “I’m taking dope, and I’m glad of that. I got all the dope I want now, right here in my little old vest pocket, and I’m going to take all I want of it,” and he tapped the pocket significantly. Then, in a boasting, contentious spirit, he drew forth a white pillbox and slowly opened it and revealed to my somewhat astonished gaze some thirty or forty small while pills, two or three of which he proceeded to lift toward his mouth.

In my astonishment and sympathy and horror I decided to save him if I could, so I struck his hand a smart blow, knocking the pills all over the sidewalk. Without a word of complaint save a feeble “Zat so?” he dropped to his hands and knees and began crawling here and there after them as fast as he could, picking them up and putting them in his mouth, while I, equally determined, began jumping here and there and crushing them under my heels.

“Rody, for God’s sake! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Get up!”

“I’ll show you!” he cried determinedly if somewhat recklessly. “I’ll eat ’em all! I’ll eat ’em all! G—— D—— you!” and he swallowed all that he had thus far been able to collect.

I saw him dead before me in no time at all, or thought I did.

“Here, Johnson,” I called to another of our friends who came up just then, “help me with Rody, will you? He’s drunk, and he’s got a box of morphine pills and he’s trying to take them. I knocked them out of his hand and now he’s eaten a lot of them.”

“Here, Rody,” he said, pulling him to his feet and holding him against the wall, “stop this! What the hell’s the matter with you?” and then he turned to me: “Maybe they’re not morphine. Why don’t you ask the druggist? If they are we’d better be getting him to the hospital.”

“They’re morphine all right,” gurgled the victim. “Dont-cha worry—I know morphine all right, and I’ll eat ’em all,” and he began struggling with Johnson.

At the latter’s suggestion I hurried into the drugstore, the proprietor and clerk of which were friends to all of us, and inquired. They assured me that they were morphine and when I told them that Rodenberger had swallowed about a dozen they insisted that we bring him in and then call an ambulance, while they prepared an emetic of some kind. It happened that the head physician of the St. Louis City Hospital, Dr. Heinie Marks, was also a friend of all newspaper men (what free advertising we used to give him!), and to him I now turned for aid, calling him on the telephone.

“Bring him out! Bring him out!” he said. Then: “Wait; I’ll send the wagon.”

By this time Johnson, with the aid of the clerk and the druggist, had brought Rodenberger inside and caused him to drink a quantity of something, whereupon we gazed upon him for signs of his approaching demise. By now he was very pale and limp and seemed momentarily to grow more so. To our intense relief, however, the city ambulance soon came and a smart young interne in white took charge. Then we saw Rodenberger hauled away, to be pumped out later and detained for days. I was told afterward by the doctor that he had taken enough of the pills to end him had he not been thoroughly pumped out and treated. Yet within a week or so he was once more up and around, fate, in the shape of myself and Johnson, having intervened. And many a time thereafter he turned up at this selfsame corner as sound and smiling as ever.

Once, when I ventured to reproach him for this and other follies, he merely said:

“All in the day’s wash, my boy, all in the day’s wash. If I was so determined to go you should have let me alone. Heaven only knows what trouble you have stored up for me now by keeping me here when I wanted to go. That may have been a divine call! But—Kismet! Allah is Allah! Let’s go and have a drink!” And we adjourned to Phil Hackett’s bar, where we were soon surrounded by fellow-bibbers who spent most of their time looking out through the cool green lattices of that rest room upon the hot street outside.

I may add that Rodenberger’s end was not such as might be expected by the moralists. Ten years later he had completely reformed his habits and entered the railroad business, having attained to a considerable position in one of the principal roads running out of St. Louis.