So far I had had more good fortune than falls to the lot of most youths starting in life; now I was to taste ill luck and be tried as with fire. I had been so taken up with my own concerns that I had hardly given a thought to public affairs; now I was forced to take a wider view. One day Kate told me that Willie was heavily in arrears: he had gone back to Deacon Conklin's to live on the other side of the Kaw River and I had naturally supposed that he had paid up everything before leaving. I found that he owed the Gregorys sixty dollars on his own account, and more than that on mine.
I went across to him really enraged. If he had warned me, I should not have minded so much; but to leave the Gregorys to tell me made me positively dislike him, and I did not know then the full extent of his selfishness. Years later my sister told me that he had written time and again to my father and got money from him, alleging that it was for me and that I was studying and couldn't earn anything.
«Willie kept us poor, Frank,» she told me, and I could only bow my head; but if I had known this fact at the time, it would have changed my relations with Willie. As it was, I found him in the depths.
Carried away by his optimism, he had bought real estate in 1871 and 1872, mortgaged it for more than he gave, and as the boom continued, he had repeated this game time and again till on paper and in paper he reckoned he had made a hundred thousand dollars. This he had told me and I was glad of it for his sake, unfeignedly glad. It was easy to see that the boom and inflation period had been based at first on the extraordinary growth of the country through the immigration and trade that had followed the Civil War. But the Franco-German war had wasted wealth prodigiously, deranged trade, too, and diverted commerce into new channels. First France and then England felt the shock:
London had to call in moneys lent to American railways and other enterprises. Bit by bit even American optimism was overcome, for immigration in 1871 1872 fell off greatly and the foreign calls for cash exhausted our inks. The crash came in 1873; nothing like it was seen again in these states till the slump of 1907, which led to the founding of the Federal Reserve Bank. Willie's fortune melted almost in a moment: this mortgage and that had to be met and could only be met by forced sales, with no buyers except at minimum values.
When I talked to him, he was almost in despair; no money; no property: all lost; the product of three years' hard work and successful speculation all swept away. Could I help him? If not, he was ruined.
He told me he had drawn all he could from my father: naturally I promised to help him; but first I had to pay the Gregorys, and to my astonishment he begged me to let him have the money instead. «Mrs.
Gregory and all of 'em like you,» he pleaded. «They can wait, I cannot; I know of a purchase that could be made that would make me rich again!» I realized then that he was selfish through and through, conscienceless in egotistic greed. I gave up my faint hope that he would ever repay me: henceforth he was a stranger to me and one that I did not even respect, though he had some fine, ingratiating qualities. I left him to walk across the river and in a few blocks met Rose. She looked prettier than ever and I turned and walked with her, praising her beauty to the skies, and indeed she deserved it; short green sleeves, I remember, set off her exquisite, plump, white arms. I promised her some books and made her say she would read them; indeed, I was astonished by the warmth of her gratitude. She told me it was sweet of me, gave me her eyes, and we parted the best of friends, with just a hint of warmer relationship in the future.
That evening I paid the Gregorys Willie's debt and my own and did not send him the balance of what I possessed, as I had promised, but instead a letter telling him I had preferred to cancel his debt to the Gregorys. Next day he came and assured me he had promised moneys on the strength of my promise, had bought a hundred crates, too, of chickens to ship to Denver, and had already an offer from the mayor of Denver at double what he had given. I read the letters and wire he showed me and let him have four hundred dollars, which drained me and kept me poor for months; indeed, till I brought off the deal with Dingwall, which I am about to relate, and which put me on my feet again in comfort. I should now tell of Willie's misadventure with his carload of chickens: it suffices here to say that he was cheated by his purchaser and that I never saw a dollar of all I had loaned him. Looking back, I understand that it was probably the slump of 1873 that induced the Mayhews to go to Denver; but after they left, I was at a loose end for some months. I could not get work, though I tried everything: I was met everywhere with the excuse, «Hard times!
Hard times!» At length I took a place as waiter in the Eldridge House, the only job I could find that left most of the forenoon free for the university. Smith disliked this new departure of mine and told me he would soon find me a better post; and Mrs. Gregory was disgusted and resentful-partly out of snobbishness, I think. From this time on I felt her against me, and gradually she undermined my influence with Kate. I soon knew I had fallen in public esteem, too, but not for long. One day in the fall Smith introduced me to a Mr. Rankin, the cashier of the First National Bank, who handed over to me at once the letting of Liberty Hall, the one hall in the town large enough to accommodate a thousand people: it had a stage, too, and so could be used for theatrical performances. I gave up my work in the Eldridge House and instead used to sit in the box office of the hall from two every afternoon till seven, and did my best to let it advantageously to the advance agents of the various traveling shows or lecturers. I received sixty dollars a month for this work and one day got an experience which has modified my whole life, for it taught me how money is made in this world and can be made by any intelligent man.
One afternoon the advance agent of the Hatherly Minstrels came into my room and threw down his card. «This old one-hoss shay of a town,» he cried; «should wear grave-clothes.» «What's the matter?» I asked. «Matter!» he repeated scornfully. «I don't believe there's a place in the hull God d-d town big enough to show our double-crown bills! Not one: not a place. I meant to spend ten thousand dollars here in advertising the great Hatherly Minstrels, the best show on earth. They'll be here for a hull fortnight, and, by God, you won't take my money. You don't want money in this dead and alive hole!» The fellow amused me: he was so convinced and outspoken that I took to him. As luck would have it, I had been at the university till late that day and had not gone to the Gregorys for dinner: I was healthily hungry. I asked Mr. Dingwall whether he had dined. «No, Sir,» was his reply. «Can one dine in this place?»
«I guess so,» I replied. «If you'll do me the honor of being my guest, I'll take you to a good porterhouse steak at least,» and I took him across to the Eldridge House, a short distance away, leaving a young friend, Will Thomson, a doctor's son whom I knew, in my place.
I gave Dingwall the best dinner I could and drew him out. He was indeed «a live wire,» as he phrased it, and suddenly, inspired by his optimism, the idea came to me that if he would deposit the ten thousand dollars he had Balked of, I could put up boardings on all the vacant lots in Massachusetts Street and make a good thing out of exhibiting the bills of the various traveling shows that visited Lawrence. It wasn't the first time I had been asked to help advertise this or that entertainment. I put forward my idea timidly, yet Dingwall took it up at once. «If you can find good security, or a good surety,» he said, «I'll leave five thousand dollars with you. I've no right to, but I like you and I'll risk it.» I took him across to Mr. Rankin, the banker, who listened to me benevolently and finally said he'd go surety that I'd exhibit a thousand bills for a fortnight all down the chief street on boardings to be erected at once, on condition that Mr. Dingwall paid five thousand dollars in advance; and he gave Mr. Dingwall a letter to that effect, and then told me pleasantly he held five thousand and some odd dollars at my service.
Dingwall took the next train west, leaving me to put up boardings in a month, after getting first of all permission from the lot owners.
To cut a long story short, I got permission from a hundred lot owners in a week through my brother Willie, who as an estate agent knew them all. Then I made a contract with a little English carpenter and put the boardings up and got the bills all posted three days before the date agreed upon. Hatherly's Minstrels had a great fortnight and everyone was content. From that time on I drew about fifty dollars a week as my profit from letting the boardings, in spite of the slump.
Suddenly Smith got a bad cold: Lawrence is nearly a thousand feet above sea-level and in winter can be as icy as the Pole. He began to cough, a nasty little, dry, hacking cough. I persuaded him to see a doctor and then to have a consultation, the result being that the specialists all diagnosed tuberculosis and recommended immediate change to the milder east. For some reason or other, I believe because an editorial post on the Press in Philadelphia was offered to him, he left Lawrence hastily and took up his residence in the Quaker City.
His departure had notable results for me. First of all, the spiritual effect astonished me. As soon as he went, I began going over all he had taught me, especially in economics and metaphysics. Bit by bit I came to the conclusion that his Marxian communism was only half the truth and probably the least important half. His Hegelianism, too, which I have hardly mentioned, was pure moonshine in my opinion, extremely beautiful at moments, as the moon is when silvering purple clouds. «History is the development of the spirit in time; nature is the projection of the idea in space,» sounds wonderful, but it's moonshine, and not very enlightening. In the first three months of Smith's absence, my own individuality sprang upright like a sapling that has long been bent almost to breaking, so to speak, by a superincumbent weight, and I began to grow with a sort of renewed youth. Now, for the first time, when about nineteen years of age, I came to deal with life in my own way and under this name, Frank.
As soon as I returned from the Eldridge House to lodge with the Gregorys again, Kate showed herself just as kind to me as ever. She would come to my bedroom twice or thrice a week and was always welcome, but again and again I felt that her mother was intent on keeping us apart as much as possible, and at length she arranged that Kate should pay a visit to some English friends who were settled in Kansas City. Kate postponed the visit several times, but at length she had to yield to her mother's entreaties and advice. By this time my boardings were bringing me in a good deal, and so I promised to accompany Kate and spend the whole night with her in some Kansas City hotel. We got to the hotel about ten and bold as brass I registered as Mr. and Mrs. William Wallace and went up to our room with Kate's luggage, my heart beating in my throat. Kate, too, was «all of a quiver,» as she confessed to me a little later, but what a night we had! Kate resolved to show me all her love and gave herself to me passionately, but she never took the initiative, I noticed, as Mrs. Mayhew used to do. At first I kissed her and talked a little, but as soon as she had arranged her things, I began to undress her. When her chemise fell, all glowing with my caressings, she asked,
«You really like that?» and she put her hand over her sex, standing there naked like a Greek Venus. «Naturally,» I exclaimed, «and these, too,» and I kissed and sucked her nipples until they grew rosy-red.
«Is it possible to do it-standing up?» she asked, in some confusion. «Of course,» I replied. «Let's try! But what put that into your head?» «I saw a man and a girl once behind the church near our house,» she whispered, «and I wondered how-» and she blushed rosily. As I got into her, I felt difficulty: her pussy was really small and this time seemed hot and dry: I felt her wince and, at once, withdrew. «Does it still hurt, Kate?» I asked. «A little at first,» she replied. «But I don't mind,» she hastened to add, «I like the pain!» By way of answer, I slipped my arms around her, under her bottom, and carried her to the bed. «I will not hurt you tonight,»
I said, «I'll make you give down your love-juice first and then there'll be no pain.» A few kisses and she sighed: «I'm wet now,» and I got into bed and put my sex against hers. «I'm going to leave everything to you,» I said, «but please don't hurt yourself.»
She put her hand down to my sex and guided it in, sighing a little with satisfaction as bit by bit it slipped home. After the first ecstasy, I got her to use the syringe while I watched her curiously.
When she came back to bed, «No danger now,» I cried, «no danger; my love is queen!» «You darling lover!» she cried, her eyes wide, as if in wonder. «My sex throbs and itches and oh! I feel prickings on the inside of my thighs: I want you dreadfully, Frank,» and she stretched out as she spoke, drawing up her knees. I got on top of her and softly, slowly let my sex slide into her and then began the love-play. When my second orgasm came, I indulged myself with quick, short strokes, though I knew that she preferred the long slow movement, for I was resolved to give her every sensation this golden night, When she felt me begin again the long slow movement she loved, she sighed two or three times and putting her hands on my buttocks, drew me close but otherwise made little sign of feeling for perhaps half an hour. I kept right on; the slow movement now gave me but little pleasure: it was rather a task than a joy; but I was resolved to give her a feast. I don't know how long the bout lasted, but once I withdrew and began rubbing her clitoris and the front of her sex, and panting she nodded her head and rubbed herself ecstatically against my sex, and after I had begun the slow movement again, «Please, Frank!» she gasped, «I can't stand more: I'm going crazy- choking!»
Strange to say, her words excited me more than the act: I felt my spasm coming and roughly, savagely I thrust in my sex at the same time, kneeling between her legs so as to be able to play back and forth on her tickler as well. «I'll ravish you!» I cried and gave myself to the keen delight. As my seed spirted, she didn't speak, but lay there still and white; I jumped out of the bed, got a spongeful of cold water and used it on her forehead. At once, to my joy, she opened her eyes. «I'm sorry,» she gasped, and took a drink of water,
«but I was so tired, I must have slept. You dear heart!» When I had put down the sponge and glass, I slipped into her again and in a little while she became hysterical: «I can't help crying, Frank, love,» she sighed. «I'm so happy, dear. You'll always love me? Won't you? Sweet!» Naturally, I reassured her with promises of enduring affection and many kisses. Finally, I put my left arm round her neck and so fell asleep with my head on her soft breast. In the morning we ran another course, though, sooth to say, Kate was more curious than passionate. «I want to study you!» she said, and took my sex in her hands and then my balls. «What are they for?» she asked, and I had to explain that that was where my seed was secreted.
She made a face, so I added, «You have a similar manufactory, my dear, but it's inside you, the ovaries they are called, and it takes them a month to make one egg, whereas my balls make millions in an hour. I often wonder why?» After getting Kate an excellent breakfast, I put her in a cab and she reached her friend's house just at the proper time, but the girl friend could never understand how they had missed each other at the station. I returned to Lawrence the same day, wondering what fortune had in store for me! I was soon to find out that life could be disagreeable. The University of Kansas had been established by the first western out-wanderers and like most pioneers they had brains and courage; and accordingly they put in the statutes that there should be no religious teaching of any kind in the university; still less should religion ever be exalted into a test or qualification. But in due course Yankees from New England swarmed out to prevent Kansas from being made into a slave-state, and these Yankees were all fanatical so-called Christians belonging to every known sect, but all distinguished, or rather deformed, by an intolerant bigotry in matters of religion and sex. Their honesty was by no means so pronounced: each sect had to have its own professor: thus history got an Episcopalian clergyman who knew no history, and Latin a Baptist who, when Smith greeted him in Latin, could only blush and beg him not to expose his shameful ignorance; the lady who taught French was a joke but a good Methodist, I believe; and so forth and so on: education degraded by sectarian jealousies. As soon as Professor Smith left the university, the faculty passed a resolution establishing «college chapel» in imitation of an English university custom. At once I wrote to the faculty, protesting and citing the statutes of the founders. The faculty did not answer my letter and instituted roll call instead of chapel; and when they got all the students assembled for roll call, they had the doors locked and began prayers, ending with a hymn. After the roll call, I got up and walked to the door and tried in vain to open it. Fortunately, the door on this side of the hall was only a makeshift structure of thin wooden planks. I stepped back a pace or two and appealed again to the professors seated on the platform. When they paid no heed, I ran and jumped with my foot against the lock. It sprang and the door flew open with a crash. Next day by a unanimous vote of the faculty, I was expelled from the university and was free to turn all my attention to law. Judge Stephens told me he would bring action on my behalf against the faculty, if I wished, and felt sure he'd get damages and reinstate me. But the university without Smith meant less than nothing to me, and why should I waste time fighting brainless bigots? I little knew then that that would be the main work of my life; but this first time I left my enemies the victory and the field, as I probably shall at long last. I made up my mind to study law, and as a beginning induced Barker of Barker amp; Sommerfeld to let me study in his law office. I don't remember how I got to know them, but Barker, an immensely fat man, was a famous advocate and very kind to me, for no apparent reason. Sommerfeld was a tall, fair, German-looking Jew, peculiarly inarticulate, almost tongue-tied, indeed, in English; but an excellent lawyer and a kindly, honest man who commanded the respect of all the Germans and Jews in Douglas County, partly because his fat little father had been one of the earliest settlers in Lawrence and one of the most successful tradesmen. He kept a general provision store and had been kind to his compatriots in their early struggling days. It was an admirable partnership. Sommerfeld had the clients and prepared the briefs, while Barker did the talking in court with a sort of invincible good humor, which I never saw equalled save in the notorious Englishman, Bottomley. Barker before a jury used to exude good nature and common sense and thus gain even bad cases. Sommerfeld I'll tell more about in due time. A little later I got depressing news from Smith: his cough had not diminished and he missed our companionship. There was a hopelessness in the letter which hurt my very heart, but what could I do? I could only keep on working hard at law, while using every spare moment to increase my income by adding to my boardings in two senses. One evening I almost ran into Lily.
Kate was still away in Kansas City, so I stopped eagerly enough to have a talk, for Lily had always interested me. After the first greetings she told me she was going home. «They are all out, I believe,» she added. At once I offered to accompany her and she consented. It was early in summer but already warm, and when we went into the parlor and Lily took a seat on the sofa, her thin white dress defined her slim figure seductively. «What do you do,» she asked mischievously, «now that dear Mrs. Mayhew's gone? You must miss her!» she added suggestively. «I do,» I confessed boldly. «I wonder if you'd have pluck enough to tell me the truth,» I went on.
«Pluck?» She wrinkled her forehead and pursed her large mouth.
«Courage, I mean,» I said. «Oh, I have courage,» she rejoined.
«Did you ever come upstairs to Mrs. Mayhew's bedroom,» I asked,
«when I had gone up for a book?» The black eyes danced and she laughed knowingly. «Mrs. Mayhew said that she had taken you upstairs to bathe your poor head after dancing,» she retorted disdainfully, «but I don't care: it's nothing to do with me what you do!» «It has too,» I went on, carrying the war into her country. «How?» she asked.
«Why the first day you went away and left me, though I was really ill,» I said, «so I naturally believed that you disliked me, though I thought you lovely!» «I'm not lovely,» she said. «My mouth's too big and I'm too slight.» «Don't malign yourself,» I replied earnestly,
«that's just why you are seductive and excite a man.» «Really?» she cried, and so the talk went on, while I cudgelled my brains for an opportunity but found none, and all the while was in fear lest her father and mother should return. At length, angry with myself, I got up to go on some pretext and she accompanied me to the stoop. I said good-bye on the top step and then jumped down by the side with a prayer in my heart that she'd come a step or two down, and she did.
There she stood, her hips on a level with my mouth; in a moment my hands went up her dress, the right to her sex, the left to her bottom behind to hold her. The thrill as I touched her half-fledged sex was almost painful in intensity. Her first movement brought her sitting down on the step above me and at once my finger was busy in her slit.
«How dare you!» she cried, but not angrily. «Take your hand away!» «Oh, how lovely your sex is!» I exclaimed, as if astounded. «Oh, I must see it and have you, you miracle of beauty,» and my left hand drew down her head for a long kiss while my middle finger still continued its caress. Of a sudden her lips grew hot and at once I whispered, «Won't you love me, dear? I want you so: I'm burning and itching with desire. (I knew she was!) Please; I won't hurt you and I'll take care. Please, love, no one will know,» and the end of it was that right there on the porch I drew her to me and put my sex against hers and began the rubbing of her tickler and front part of her sex that I knew would excite her. In a moment she came and her love-dew wet my sex and excited me terribly; but I kept on frigging her with my man-root while restraining myself from coming by thinking of other things, till she kissed me of her own accord and suddenly moving forward pushed my prick right into her pussy. To my astonishment, there was no obstacle, no maidenhead to break through, though her sex itself was astonishingly small and tight. I didn't scruple then to let my seed come, only withdrawing to the lips and rubbing her clitoris the while, and, as soon as my spurting ceased, my root glided again into her and continued the slow in-and-out movement till she panted with her head on my shoulder and asked me to stop. I did as she wished, for I knew I had won another wonderful mistress. We went into the house again, for she insisted I should meet her father and mother, and, while we were waiting, she showed me her lovely tiny breasts, scarcely larger than small apples, and I became aware of something childish in her mind which matched the childish outlines of her lovely, half-formed hips and pussy. «I thought that you were in love with Mrs. Mayhew,» she confessed, «and I couldn't make out why she made such funny noises. But now I know,» she added, «you naughty dear, for I felt my heart fluttering just now and I was nearly choking.» I don't know why, but that ravishing of Lily made her dear to me. I resolved to see her naked and to make her thrill to ecstasy as soon as possible, and then and there we made a meeting place on the far side of the church, whence I knew I could bring her to my room at the Gregorys in a minute; and then I went home, for it was late and I didn't particularly want to meet her folks. The next night I met Lily by the church and took her to my room. She laughed aloud with delight as we entered, for indeed she was almost like a boy of bold, adventurous spirit. She confessed to me that my challenge of her pluck had pleased her intimately. «I never took a 'dare'!» she cried in her American slang, tossing her head. «I'll give you two,» I whispered, «right now: the first is, I dare you to strip naked as I'm going to do, and I'll tell you the other when we're in bed. Again she tossed her little blue-black head. «Pooh,» she cried, «I'll be undressed first,» and she was. Her beauty made my pulses hammer and parched my mouth. No one could help admiring her: she was very slight, with tiny breasts, as I have said, flat belly and straight flanks and hips: her triangle was only brushed in, so to speak, with fluffy soft hairs, and, as I held her naked body against mine, the look and feel of her exasperated my desire. I still admired Kate's riper, richer, more luscious outlines: her figure was nearer my boyish ideal; but Lily represented a type of adolescence destined to grow on me mightily. In fact, as my youthful virility decreased, my love of opulent feminine charms diminished and grew more and more to love slender, youthful outlines with the signs of sex rather indicated than pronounced. What an all-devouring appetite Rubens confesses with the great, hanging breasts and uncouth fat pink bottoms of his Venuses!
I lifted Lily on the bed and separated her legs to study her pussy. She made a face at me; but, as I rubbed my hot sex against her little button that I could hardly see, she smiled and lay back contentedly. In a minute or two, her love-juice came and I got into bed on her and slipped my root into her small cunt; even when the lips were wide open, it was closed to the eye and this and her slim nakedness excited me uncontrollably. I continued the slow movements for a few minutes; but once she moved her sex quickly down on mine as I drew out to the lips, and gave me an intense thrill. I felt my seed coming and I let myself go in short, quick thrusts that soon brought on my spasm of pleasure and I lifted her little body against mine and crushed my lips on hers: she was strangely tantalizing, exciting like strong drink. I took her out of bed and used the syringe in her, explaining its purpose, and then went to bed again and gave her the time of her life! Lying between her legs but side by side an hour later, I dared her to tell me how she had lost her maidenhead. I had to tell her first what it was. She maintained stoutly that «no feller» had ever touched her except me and I believed her, for she admitted having caressed herself ever since she was ten; at first she could not even get her forefinger into her pussy she told me. «What are you now?» I asked. «I shall be sixteen next April,» was her reply.
About eleven o'clock she dressed and went home, after making another appointment with me. The haste of this narrative has many unforeseen drawbacks: it makes it appear as if I had had conquest after conquest and little or no difficulty in my efforts to win love.
In reality, my half-dozen victories were spread out over nearly as many years, and time and again I met rebuffs and refusals quite sufficient to keep even my conceit in decent bounds. But I want to emphasize the fact that success in love, like success in every department of life, falls usually to the tough man unwearied in pursuit. Chaucer was right when he makes his Old Wyfe of Bath confess, And by a close attendance and attention Are we caught, more or less the truth to mention. It is not the handsomest man or the most virile who has the most success with women, though both qualities smooth the way, but that man who pursues the most assiduously, flatters them most constantly, and always insists on taking the girl's «no» for consent, her reproofs for endearments, and even a little crossness for a new charm. Above all, it is necessary to push forward after every refusal, for as soon as a girl refuses, she is apt to regret and may grant then what she expressly denied the moment before. Yet I could give dozens of instances where assiduity and flattery, love-books and words were all ineffective, so much so that I should never say with Shakespeare, «He's not a man who cannot win a woman.» I have generally found, too, that the easiest to win were the best worth winning for me, for women have finer senses for suitability in love than any man. Now for an example of one of my many failures, which took place when I was still a student and had a fair opportunity to succeed. It was a custom in the university for every professor to lecture for forty-five minutes, thus leaving each student fifteen minutes at least free to go back to his private classroom to prepare for the next lecture. All the students took turns to use these classrooms for their private pleasure. For example, from eleven forty-five to noon each day I was supposed to be working in the junior classroom, and no student would interfere with me or molest me in any way. One day, a girl Fresher, Grace Weldon by name, the daughter of the owner of the biggest department store in Lawrence, came to Smith when Miss Stephens and I were with him, about the translation of a phrase or two in Xenophon. «Explain it to Miss Weldon, Frank!» said Smith, and in a few moments I had made the passage clear to her. She thanked me prettily, and I said, «If you ever want anything I can do, I'll be happy to make it clear to you, Miss Weldon; I'm in the junior classroom from eleven forty-five to noon, always.» She thanked me and a day or two later came to me in the classroom with another puzzle, and so our acquaintance ripened.
Almost at once she let me kiss her, but as soon as I tried to put my hand up her clothes, she stopped me. We were friends for nearly a year, close friends, and I remember trying all I knew one Saturday, when I spent the whole day with her in our classroom till dusk came, and I could not get her to yield. The curious thing was, I could not even soothe the smart to my vanity with the belief that she was physically cold. On the contrary, she was very passionate, but she had simply made up her mind and would not change. That Saturday in the classroom she told me if she yielded she would hate me: I could see no sense in this, even though I was to find out later what a terrible weapon the confessional is as used by Irish Catholic priests.
To commit a sin is easy; to confess it to your priest is for many women an absolute deterrent. A few days later, I think, I got a letter from Smith that determined me to go to Philadelphia as soon as my boardings provided me with sufficient money. I wrote and told him I'd come and cheered him up. I had not long to wait. Early that fall Bradlaugh came to lecture in Liberty Hall on the French Revolution-a giant of a man with a great head, rough-hewn, irregular features and stentorian voice: no better figure of a rebel could be imagined. I knew he had been an English private soldier for a dozen years, but I soon found that, in spite of his passionate revolt against the Christian religion and all its cheap moralistic conventions he was a convinced individualist and saw nothing wrong in the despotism of money which had already established itself in Britain, though condemned by Carlyle at the end of his French Revolution as the vilest of all tyrannies. Bradlaugh's speech taught me that a notorious and popular man, earnest, and gifted, too, and intellectually honest, might be fifty years before his time in one respect and fifty years behind the best opinion of the age in another province of thought. In the great conflict of our day between the «Haves» and the «Have-nots,» Bradlaugh played no part whatever. He wasted his great powers in a vain attack on the rotten branches of the Christian tree, while he should have assimilated the spirit of Jesus and used it to gild his loyalty to truth. About this time, Kate wrote that she would not be back for some weeks: she declared she was feeling another woman. I felt tempted to write, «So am I, stay as long as you please,» but instead I wrote an affectionate, tempting letter, for I had a real affection for her, I discovered. When she returned a few weeks later, I felt as if she were new and unknown and I had to win her again; but as soon as my hand touched her sex, the strangeness disappeared and she gave herself to me with renewed zest.
I teased her to tell me just what she felt and at length she consented. «Begin with the first time,» I begged, «and then tell what you felt in Kansas City.» «It will be very hard,» she said. «I'd rather write it for you.» «That'll do just as well,» I replied, and here is the story she sent me the next day. «I think the first time you had me,» she began, «I felt more curiosity than desire:
I had so often tried to picture it all to myself. When I saw your sex I was astonished, for it looked very big to me and I wondered whether you could really get it into my sex, which I knew was just big enough for my finger to go in. Still I did want to feel your sex pushing into me, and your kisses and the touch of your hand on my sex made me even more eager. When you slipped the head of your sex into mine, it hurt dreadfully; it was almost like a knife cutting into me, but the pain for some reason seemed to excite me and I pushed forward so as to get you further in me; I think that's what broke my maidenhead. At first I was disappointed because I felt no thrill, only the pain; but, when my sex became all wet and open and yours could slip in and out easily, I began to feel real pleasure. I liked the slow movement best; it excited me to feel the head of your sex just touching the lips of mine and, when you pushed in slowly all the way, it gave me a gasp of breathless delight: when you drew your sex out, I wanted to hold it in me. And the longer you kept on, the more pleasure you gave me. For hours afterwards, my sex was sensitive; if I rubbed it ever so gently, it would begin to itch and burn. «But that night in the hotel at Kansas City I really wanted you and the pleasure you gave me then was much keener than the first time. You kissed and caressed me for a few minutes and I soon felt my love-dew coming and the button of my sex began to throb. As you thrust your shaft in and out of me, I felt a strange sort of pleasure: every little nerve on the inside of my thighs and belly seemed to thrill and quiver; it was almost a feeling of pain. At first the sensation was not so intense, but, when you stopped and made me wash, I was shaken by quick, short spasms in my thighs, and my sex was burning and throbbing; I wanted you more than ever. «When you began the slow movement again, I felt the same sensations in my thighs and belly, only more keenly, and, as you kept on, the pleasure became so intense that I could scarcely bear it.
Suddenly you rubbed your sex against mine and my button began to throb; I could almost feel it move. Then you began to move your sex quickly in and out of me; in a moment I was breathless with emotion and I felt so faint and exhausted that I suppose I fell asleep for a few minutes, for I knew nothing more till I felt the cold water trickling down my face. When you began again, you made me cry, perhaps because I was all dissolved in feeling and too, too happy. Ah, love is divine: isn't it?» Kate was really of the highest woman-type, mother and mistress in one. She used to come down and spend the night with me oftener than ever and on one of these occasions she found a new word for her passion. She declared she felt her womb move in yearning for me when I talked my best or recited poetry to her in what I had christened her holy week. Kate it was who taught me first that women could be even more moved and excited by words than by deeds.
Once, I remember, when I had talked sentimentally, she embraced me of her own accord and we had each other with wet eyes. Another effect of Smith's absence was important, for it threw me a good deal with Miss Stephens. I soon found that she had inherited the best of her father's brains and much of his strength of character. If she had married Smith, she might have done something noteworthy; as it was, she was very attractive and well-read as a girl and would have made Smith, I am sure, a most excellent wife. Once and once only I tried to hint to her that her sweetness to Smith might do him harm physically; but the suspicion of reproof made her angry and she evidently couldn't or wouldn't understand what I meant without a physical explanation, which she would certainly have resented. I had to leave her to what she would have called her daimon, for she was as prettily pedantic as Tennyson's Princess, or any other mid-Victorian heroine. Her brother, Ned, too, I came to know pretty well. He was a tall, handsome youth with fine grey eyes; a good athlete, but of commonplace mind. The father was the most Interesting of the whole family, were it only for his prodigious conceit. He was of noble appearance: a large, handsome head with silver grey hairs setting off a portly figure well above middle height. In spite of his assumption of superiority, I felt him hide-bound in thought, for he accepted all the familiar American conventions, believing, or rather knowing, that the American people, «the good old New England stock in particular, were the salt of the earth, the best breed to be seen anywhere.»
It showed his brains that he tried to find a reason for this belief. «English oak is good,» he remarked one day sententiously, «but American hickory is tougher still. Reasonable, too, this belief of mine,» he added, «for the last glacial period skinned all the good soil off of New England and made it bitterly hard to get a living; and the English who came out for conscience sake were the pick of the Old Country; and they were forced for generations to scratch a living out of the poorest kind of soil with the worst climate in the world, and hostile Indians all round to sharpen their combativeness and weed out the weaklings and wastrels.» There was a certain amount of truth In his contention, but this was the nearest to an original thought I ever heard him express; and his intense patriotic fervor moved me to doubt his intelligence. I was delighted to find that Smith rated him just as I did: «A first rate lawyer, I believe,» was his judgment;
«a sensible, kindly man.» «A little above middle height,» I interpreted; and Smith added smiling, «And considerably above average weight: he would never have done anything notable in literature or thought.» As the year wore on, Smith's letters called for me more and more insistently and at length I went to join him in Philadelphia.
Frank Harris
My Life and Loves, v1 Chapter XIII. New Experiences: Emerson, Walt Whitman, Bret Harte SMITH MET ME at the station. He was thinner than ever and the wretched little cough shook him very often in spite of some lozenges that the doctor had given him to suck. I began to be alarmed about him, and I soon came to the belief that the damp climate of the Quaker City was worse for him than the thin, dry Kansas air.
But he believed in his doctors! He boarded with a pleasant Puritan family in whose house he had also got me a room, and at once we resumed the old life. But now I kept constant watch on him and insisted on rigorous self-restraint, tying up his unruly organ every night carefully with thread, which was still more efficient (and painful) than the whipcord. But now he didn't improve quickly: it was a month before I could find any of the old vigor in him; but soon afterwards the cough diminished and he began to be his bright self again. One of our first evenings I described to him the Bradlaugh lecture in much the same terms I have used in this narrative. Smith asked: «Why don't you write it? You ought to: the Press would take it.
You've given me an extraordinary, life-like portrait of a great man, blind, so to speak, in one eye, a sort of Cyclops. If he had been a Communist, how much greater he'd have been.» I ventured to disagree and we were soon at it hammer and tongs. I wanted to see both principles realized in life, individualism and socialism, the centrifugal as well as the centripetal force, and was convinced that the problem was how to bring these opposites to a balance which would ensure an approximation of justice and make for the happiness of all.
Smith, on the other hand, argued at first as an out-and-out Communist and follower of Marx, but he was too fair minded to shut his eyes for long to the obvious. Soon he began congratulating me on my insight, declaring I had written a new chapter in economics. His conversion made me feel that I was at long last his equal as a thinker. In any field where his scholarship didn't give him too great an advantage, I was no longer a pupil but an equal, and his quick recognition of the fact increased, I believe, our mutual affection.
Though infinitely better read, he put me forward in every company with the rarest generosity, asserting that I had discovered new laws in sociology. For months we lived very happily together, but his Hegelianism defied all my attacks: it corresponded too intimately with the profound idealism of his own character. As soon as I had written out the Bradlaugh story, Smith took me down to the Press office and introduced me to the chief editor, a Captain Forney: indeed, the paper then was usually called «Forney's Press,» though already some spoke of it as the Philadelphia Press. Forney liked my portrait of Bradlaugh and engaged me as a reporter on the staff and occasional descriptive writer at fifty dollars a week, which enabled me to save all the money coming to me from Lawrence. One day Smith talked to me of Emerson and confessed he had got an introduction to him and had sent it on to the philosopher with a request for an interview. He had wished me to accompany him to Concord. I consented, but without any enthusiasm: Emerson was then an unknown name to me.
Smith read me some of his poetry and praised it highly, though I could get little or nothing out of it. When young men now show me a similar indifference, my own experience makes it easy for me to excuse them.
They know not what they do! is the explanation and excuse for all of us. One bright fall day Smith and I went over to Concord and next day visited Emerson. He received us in the most pleasant, courteous way, made us sit, and composed himself to listen. Smith went off at score, telling him how greatly he had influenced his life and helped him with brave encouragement. The old man smiled benignantly and nodded his head, ejaculating from time to time, «Yes, yes!» Gradually Smith warmed to his work and wanted to know why Emerson had never expressed his views on sociology or on the relations between capital and labor. Once or twice the old gentleman cupped his ear with his hand, but all he said was, «Yes, yes!» or «I think so,» with the same benevolent smile. I guessed at once that he was deaf, but Smith had no inkling of the fact, for he went on probing, probing, while Emerson answered pleasant nothings quite irrelevantly. I studied the great man as closely as I could. He looked about five feet nine or ten in height, very thin, attenuated even, and very scrupulously dressed.
His head was narrow, though long, his face bony; a long, high, somewhat beaked nose was the feature of his countenance. A good conceit of himself, I concluded, and considerable will power, for the chin was well-defined and large. But I got nothing more than this; and from his clear, steadfast grey eyes I got an intense impression of kindness and good will, and-why shouldn't I say it?-of sweetness even, as of a soul lifted high above earth's cares and stragglings. «A nice old fellow,» I told myself, «but deaf as a post.» Many years later his deafness became to me the symbol and explanation of his genius. He had always lived «the life removed» and kept himself unspotted from the world: that explains both his narrowness of sympathy and the height to which he grew! His narrow, pleasantly smiling face comes back to me whenever I hear his name mentioned.
But at the time I was indignant with his deafness and out of temper with Smith because he didn't notice it and seemed somehow to make himself cheap. When we went away, I cried: «The old fool is as deaf as a post!» «Ah, that was the explanation then of his stereotyped smile and peculiar answers,» cried Smith. «How did you divine it?» «He put his hand to his ear more than once,» I replied. «So he did,» Smith exclaimed. «How foolish of me not to have drawn the obvious inference!» It was in this fall, I believe, that the Gregorys went off to Colorado. I felt the loss of Kate a good deal at first, but she had made no deep impression on my mind, and the new life in Philadelphia and my journalistic work left me but little time for regrets; and as she never wrote to me, following doubtless her mother's advice, she soon drifted out of my memory. Moreover, Lily was quite as interesting a lover and Lily too had begun to pall on me. The truth is, the fever of desire in youth is a passing malady that intimacy quickly cures. Besides, I was already in pursuit of a girl in Philadelphia who kept me a long time at arm's length, and when she yielded I found her figure commonplace and her sex so large and loose that she deserves no place in this chronicle.
She was modest, if you please, and no wonder. I have always since thought that modesty is the proper fig leaf of ugliness. In the spring of this year, 1875,1 had to return to Lawrence on business connected with my boardings. In several cases the owners of the lots refused to allow me to keep up the boardings unless they had a reasonable share in the profits. Finally I called them all together and came to an amicable agreement to divide twenty-five per cent of my profit among them, year by year. I had also to go through my examination and get admitted to the bar. I had already taken out my first naturalization papers and Judge Bassett of the district court appointed the lawyers Barker and Hutchings to examine me. The examination was a mere form. They each asked me three simple questions, I answered them, and we adjourned to the Eldridge House for supper and they drank my health in champagne. I was notified by Judge Bassett that I had passed the examination and told to present myself for admission on the twenty-fifth of June, I think, 1875. To my surprise, the court was half full. Judge Stephens even was present, whom I had never seen in court before. About eleven the judge informed the audience that I had passed a satisfactory examination and had taken out my first papers in due form, and unless some lawyer wished first to put questions to me to test my capacity, he proposed to call me within the bar. To my astonishment, Judge Stephens rose. «With the permission of the court,» he said, «I'd like to put some questions to this candidate who comes to us with high university commendation.» (No one had heard of my expulsion, though he knew of it.) He then began a series of questions which soon plumbed the depths of my abysmal ignorance. I didn't know what an action of account was at old English common law: I don't know now, nor do I want to. I had read Blackstone carefully and a book on Roman law, Chitty on evidence, too, and someone on contracts-half a dozen books, and that was all. For the first two hours Judge Stephens just exposed my ignorance: it was a very warm morning and my conceit was rubbed raw when Judge Bassett proposed an adjournment for dinner. Stephens consented and we all rose. To my surprise Barker and Hutchings and half a dozen other lawyers came round to encourage me. «Stephens is just showing off,» said Hutchings. «I myself couldn't have answered half his questions!»
Even Judge Bassett sent for me to his room and practically told me I had nothing to fear, so I returned at two o'clock, resolved to do my best and at all costs to keep smiling. The examination continued in a crowded court till four o'clock and then Judge Stephens sat down.
I had done better in this session, but my examiner had caught me in a trap on a moot point in the law of evidence, and I could have kicked myself. But Hutchings rose as the senior of my two examiners who had been appointed by the court, and said simply that now he repeated the opinion he had already had the honor to convey to Judge Bassett, that I was a fit and proper person to practice law in the state of Kansas.
«Judge Stephens,» he added, «has shown us how widely read he is in English common law, but some of us knew that before, and in any case his erudition should not be made a purgatory to candidates. It looks,» he went on, «as if he wished to punish Mr. Harris for his superiority to all his classmates. «Impartial persons in this audience will admit,» he concluded, «that Mr. Harris has come brilliantly out of an exceedingly severe test; and I have the pleasant task of proposing, your Honor, that he now be admitted within the bar, though he may not be able to practice till he becomes a full citizen two years hence.» Everyone expected that Barker would second this proposal, but while he was rising, Judge Stephens began to speak.
«I desire,» he said, «to second that proposal, and I think I ought to explain why I subjected Mr. Harris to a severe examination in open court. Since I came to Kansas from the state of New York twenty-five years ago, I have been asked a score of times to examine one candidate or another. I always refused. I did not wish to punish western candidates by putting them against our eastern standards. But here at long last appears a candidate who has won honor in the university, to whom, therefore, a stiff examination in open court can only be a vindication; and accordingly I examined Mr. Harris as if he had been in the state of New York; for surely Kansas too has come of age and its inhabitants cannot wish to be humored as inferiors.
«This whole affair,» he went on, «reminds me of a story told in the east of a dog fancier. The father lived by breeding and training bull dogs. One day he got an extraordinary promising pup and the father and son used to hunker down, shake their arms at the pup and thus encourage him to seize hold of their coat sleeves and hang on.
While engaged in this game once, the bull-pup, grown bold by constant praise, sprang up and seized the father by the nose. Instinctively, the old man began to choke him off, but the son exclaimed, 'Don't, father, don't for God's sake! It may be hard on you, but it'll be the making of the pup.' So my examination, I thought, might be hard on Mr.
Harris, but it would be the making of him.» The court roared and I applauded merrily. Judge Stephens continued. «I desire, however, to show myself not an enemy but a friend of Mr. Harris, whom I have known for some years. Mr. Hutchings evidently thinks that Mr. Harris must wait two years in order to become a citizen of the United States. I am glad from my reading of the statute laws of my country to be able to assure him that Mr. Harris need not wait a day. The law says that if a minor has lived three years in any state, he may on coming of age choose to become a citizen of the United States; and if Mr. Harris chooses to be one of us, he can be admitted at once as a citizen; and if your Honor approve, be allowed also to practice law tomorrow.»
He sat down amid great applause, in which I joined most heartily.
So on that day I was admitted to practice law as a full fledged citizen. Unluckily for me, when I asked the clerk of the court for my full papers, he gave me the certificate of my admission to practice law in Lawrence, saying that as this could only be given a citizen, it in itself was sufficient. Forty odd years later the government of Woodrow Wilson refused to accept this plain proof of my citizenship and thus put me to much trouble by forcing me to get naturalized again! But at the moment in Lawrence I was all cock-a-hoop and forthwith took a room on the same first floor where Barker amp; Sommerfeld had their offices and put out my shingle. I have told this story of my examination at great length because I think it shows as in a glass the amenities and deep kindness of the American character. A couple of days later I was again in Philadelphia.
Towards the end of this year, 1875,1 believe, or the beginning of 1876, Smith drew my attention to an announcement that Walt Whitman, the poet, was going to speak in Philadelphia on Thomas Paine, the notorious infidel, who, according to Washington, had done more to secure the independence of the United States than any other man. Smith determined to go to the meeting, and if Whitman could rehabilitate Paine against the venomous attacks of Christian clergymen who asserted without contradiction that Paine was a notorious drunkard and of the loosest character, he would induce Forney to let him write an exhaustive and forceful defence of Paine in the Press. I felt pretty sure that such an article would never appear, but I would not pour cold water on Smith's enthusiasm. The day came, one of those villainous days common enough in Philadelphia in every winter: the temperature was about zero with snow falling whenever the driving wind permitted. In the afternoon Smith finally determined that he must not risk it and asked me to go in his stead. I consented willingly, and he spent some hours in reading to me the best of Whitman's poetry, laying especial stress, I remember, on When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. He assured me again and again that Whitman and Poe were the two greatest poets these States had ever produced, and he hoped I would be very nice to the great man. Nothing could be more depressing than the aspect of the hall that night: ill-lit and half-heated, with perhaps thirty persons scattered about in a space that would have accommodated a thousand. Such was the reception America accorded to one of its greatest spirits, though that view of the matter did not strike me for many a year. I took my seat in the middle of the first row, pulled out my notebook and made ready. In a few minutes Whitman came on the platform from the to say just what he had to say, neither more nor. He walked slowly, stiffly, which made me grin, for I did not then know that he had had a stroke of paralysis, and I thought his peculiar walk a mere pose. Besides, his clothes were astonishingly ill fitting and ill suited to his figure.
He must have been nearly six feet in height and strongly made; yet he wore a short jacket which cocked up behind in the perkiest way. Looked at from the front, his white collar was wide open and discovered a tuft of grey hairs, while his trousers that corkscrewed about his legs had parted company with his vest and disclosed a margin of dingy white shirt. His appearance filled me-poor little English snob that I was-with contempt: he recalled to my memory irresistibly an old Cochin-China rooster I had seen when a boy; it stalked across the farmyard with the same slow, stiff gait and carried a stubby tail cocked up behind. Yet a second look showed me Whitman as a fine figure of a man with something arresting in the perfect simplicity and sincerity of voice and manner. He arranged his notes in complete silence and began to speak very slowly, often pausing for a better word or to consult his papers. Sometimes hesitating and repeating himself-clearly an unpracticed speaker who disdained any semblance of oratory. He told us simply that in his youth he had met and got to know very well a certain colonel in the army who had known Thomas Paine intimately. This colonel had assured him more than once that all the accusations against Paine's habits and character were false-a mere outcome of Christian bigotry. Paine would drink a glass or two of wine at dinner like all well-bred men of that day; but he was very moderate and in the last ten years of his life, the colonel asserted, Paine never once drank to excess. The colonel cleared Paine, too, of looseness of morals in much the same decisive way, and finally spoke of him as invariably well conducted, of witty speech and a vast fund of information, a most interesting and agreeable companion. And the colonel was an unimpeachable witness, Whitman assured us, a man of the highest honor and most scrupulous veracity. Whitman spoke with such uncommon slowness that I was easily able to take down the chief sentences in longhand: he was manifestly determined to say just what he had to say, neither more nor less, which made an impression of singular sincerity and truthfulness. When he had finished, I went up on the platform to see him near at hand and draw him out if possible. I showed him my card of the Press and asked him if he would kindly sign and thus authenticate the sentences on Paine he had used in his address. «Aye, aye!» was all he said; but he read the half dozen sentences carefully, here and there correcting a word. I thanked him and said Professor Smith, an editor of the Press, had sent me to get a word-for-word report of his speech, for he purposed writing an article in the Press on Paine, whom he greatly admired.
«Aye, aye!» ejaculated Whitman from time to time while his clear grey eyes absorbed all that I said. I went on to assure him that Smith had a profound admiration for him (Whitman), thought him the greatest American poet and regretted deeply that he was not well enough to come out that night and make his personal acquaintance. «I'm sorry, too,» said Whitman slowly, «for your friend Smith must have something large in him to be so interested in Paine and me.» Perfectly simple and honest Walt Whitman appeared to me, even in his self-estimate an authentic great man! I had nothing more to say, so hastened home to show Smith Whitman's boyish signature and to give him a description of the man. The impression Whitman left on me was one of transparent simplicity and sincerity: not a mannerism in him, not a trace of affectation, a man simply sure of himself, most careful in speech, but careless of appearance and curiously, significantly free of all afterthoughts or regrets. A new type of personality which, strangely enough, has grown upon me more and more with the passing of the years and now seems to me to represent the very best in America, the large unruffled soul of that great people manifestly called and chosen to exert an increasingly important influence on the destinies of mankind.
I would die happily if I could believe that America's influence would be anything like as manful and true and clear-eyed as Whitman's in guiding humanity; but alas!… It would be difficult to convey to European readers any just notion of the horror and disgust with which Walt Whitman was regarded at that time in the United States on account merely of the sex poems in Leaves of Grass. The poems to which objection could be taken don't constitute five per cent of the book, and my objection to them is that in any normal man love and desire take up a much larger proportion of life than five per cent. Moreover, the expression of passion is tame in the extreme. Nothing in Leaves of Grass can compare with half a dozen passages in the Songs of Solomon: think of the following verse: I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night… My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him. And then the phrases: «her lips are like a thread of scarlet… her love like an army with banners,» but American Puritanism is more timid even than its purblind teachers.
It was commonly said at the time that Whitman had led a life of extraordinary self-indulgence: rumor attributed to him half a dozen illegitimate children and perverse tastes to boot. I think such statements exaggerated or worse: they are no more to be trusted than the stories of Paine's drunkenness. At any rate, Horace Traubellft later declared to me that Whitman's life was singularly clean, and his own letter to John Addington Symonds must be held to have disproved the charge of homosexuality. But I dare swear he loved more than once not wisely but too well, or he would not have risked the reprobation of the unco guid. In any case, it is to his honor that he dared to write plainly in America of the joys of sexual intercourse. Emerson, as Whitman himself tells us, did his utmost all one long afternoon to dissuade him from publishing the sex-poems, but fortunately all his arguments served only to confirm Whitman in his purpose. From certain querulous complaints later, it is plain that Whitman was too ignorant to gauge the atrocious results to himself and his reputation of his daring, but the same ignorance that allowed him to use scores of vile neologism in this one instance stood him in good stead. It was right of him to speak plainly of sex; accordingly he set down the main facts, disdainful of the best opinion of his time. And he was justified; in the long run it will be plain to all that he thus put the seal of the Highest upon his judgment. What can we think, and what will the future think, of Emerson's condemnation of Rabelais, whom he dared to liken to a dirty little boy who scribbles indecencies in public places and then runs away, and his contemptuous estimate of Shakespeare as a ribald playwright, when in good sooth he was «the reconciler» whom Emerson wanted to acclaim and had not the brains to recognize? Whitman was the first of great men to write frankly about sex and five hundred years hence that will be his singular and supreme distinction. Smith seemed permanently better, though, of course, for the moment disappointed because his careful eulogy of Paine never appeared in the Press, so one day I told him I'd have to return to Lawrence to go on with my law work, though Thomson, the doctor's son, kept all my personal affairs in good order and informed me of every happening. Smith at this time seemed to agree with me, though not enthusiastically, and I was on the point of starting when I got a letter from Willie, telling me that my eldest brother, Vernon, was in a New York hospital, having just tried to commit suicide, and I should go to see him. I went at once and found Vernon in a ward in bed. The surgeon told me that he had tried to shoot himself and that the ball had struck the jaw-bone at such an angle that it went all round his head and was taken out just above his left ear: «It stunned him and that was all; he can go out almost any day now.»
The first glance showed me the old Vernon. He cried, «Still a failure, you see, Joe: could not even kill myself, though I tried!» I told him I had renamed myself Frank; he nodded amicably, smiling.
I cheered him up as well as I could, got lodgings for him, took him out of the hospital, found work for him, too, and after a fortnight saw that I could safely leave him. He told me that he regretted having taken so much money from my father: «Your share, I'm afraid, and Nita's, but why did he give it to me? He might just as well have refused me years ago as let me strip him, but I was a fool and always shall be about money. Happy go lucky, I can take no thought for the morrow.» That fortnight showed me that Vernon had only the veneer of a gentleman; at heart he was as selfish as Willie but without Willie's power of work. I had overestimated him wildly as a boy, thought him noble and well read; but Smith's real nobility, culture and idealism showed me that Vernon was hardly silver-gilt. He had nice manners and good temper and that was about all. I stopped at Philadelphia on my way to Lawrence just to tell Smith all I owed him, which the association with Vernon had made clear to me. We had a great night and then for the first time he advised me to go to Europe o study and make myself a teacher and guide of men. I assured him he overestimated me because I had an excellent verbal memory, but he declared that I had unmistakable originality and fairness of judgment, and above all, a driving power of will that he had never seen equaled. «Whatever you make up your mind to do,» he concluded,
«you will surely accomplish, for you are inclined to under-rate yourself.» At the time I laughed, saying he didn't even guess at my unlimited conceit, but his words and counsel sank into my mind and in due course exercised a decisive, shaping influence on my life. I returned to Lawrence, put up a sofa-bed in my law room and went to the Eldridge House nearby for my meals. I read law assiduously and soon had a few clients, «hard cases» for the most part, sent to me, I found, by Judge Stephens and Barker, eager to foist nuisances on a beginner. An old mulatto woman kept our offices tidy and clean for a few dollars monthly from each of us, and one night I was awakened by her groans and cries. She lived in a garret up two flights of stairs and was evidently suffering from indigestion and very much frightened, as colored folk are apt to be when anything ails them.
«I'm gwine to die!» she told me a dozen times. I treated her with whisky and warm water, heated on my little gas-heater, and sat with her till at length she fell asleep. She declared next day I had saved her life and she'd never forget it. «Nebber, fo' sure!» I laughed at her and forgot all about it. Every afternoon I went over to Liberty Hall for an hour or so to keep in touch with events, though I left the main work to Will Thomson. One day I was delighted to find that Bret Harte was coming to lecture for us: his subject: «The Argonauts of '49.» I got some of his books from the bookstore kept by a lame man named Crew, I think, on Massachusetts Street, and read him carefully. His poetry did not make much impression on me-mere verse, I thought it; but The Outcasts of Poker Flat and other stories seemed to me almost masterpieces in spite of their romantic coloring and tinge of melodrama. Especially the description of Oakhurst, the gambler, stuck in my mind: it will be remembered that when crossing the «divide,» Oakhurst advised the party of outcasts to keep on traveling till they reached a place of safety. But he did not press his point: he decided it was hopeless, and then came Bret Harte's extraordinary painting phrase: «Life to Oakhurst was at best an uncertain sort of game and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the dealer.»
There is more humor and insight in the one sentence than in all the ridiculously overpraised works of Mark Twain. One afternoon I was alone in the box office of Liberty Hall when Rose came in, as pretty as ever. I was delighted to renew our acquaintance and more delighted still to find that she would like tickets for Bret Harte's lecture. «I didn't know that you cared for reading, Rose,» I said, a little surprised. «Professor Smith and you would make anybody read,» she cried; «at any rate you started me.» I gave her the tickets and engaged to take her for a buggy ride next day. I felt sure Rose liked me, but she soon surprised me by showing a stronger virtue than I usually encountered. She kissed me when I asked her in the buggy, but told me at the same time that she didn't care much for kissing.
«All men,» she said, «are after a girl for the same thing; it's sickening; they all want kisses and try to touch you and say they love you; but they can't love and I don't want their kisses.» «Rose, Rose,» I said, «you mustn't be too hard on us: we're different from you girls and that's all.» «How do you mean?» she asked. «I mean that mere desire,» I said, «just the wish to kiss and enjoy you, strikes the man first, but behind that lust is often a good deal of affection, and sometimes a deep and sacred tenderness comes to flower; whereas the girl begins with the liking and affection and learns to enjoy the kissing and caressing afterwards.» «I see,» she rejoined quietly. «I think I understand: I am glad to believe that.»
Her unexpected depth and sincerity impressed me and I continued:
«We men may be so hungry that we will eat very poor fruit greedily because it's at hand, but that doesn't prove that we don't prefer good and sweet and nourishing food when we can get it.» She let her eyes dwell on mine. «I see,» she said, «I see!» And then I went on to tell her how lovely she was and how she had made a deathless impression on me, and I ventured to hope she liked me a little and would yet be good to me and come to care for me; and I was infinitely pleased to find that this was the right sort of talk, and I did my best in the new strain. Three or four times a week I took her out in a buggy and in a little while I had taught her how to kiss and won her to confess that she cared for me, loved me, indeed, and bit by bit she allowed me the little familiarities of love. One day I took her out early for a picnic and said, «I'll play Turk and you must treat me,» and I stretched myself out on a rug under a tree. She entered into the spirit of the game with zest, brought me food, and at length, as she stood close beside me, I couldn't control myself; I put my hand up her dress on her firm legs and sex. Next moment I was kneeling beside her. «Love me, Rose,» I begged, «I want you so: I'm hungry for you, dear!» She looked at me gravely with wide open eyes. «I love you too,» she said, «but oh! I'm afraid. Be patient with me!» she added, like a little girl. I was patient but persistent and I went on caressing her till her hot lips told me that I had really excited her.
My fingers informed me that she had a perfect sex and her legs were wonderfully firm and tempting; and in her yielding there was the thrill of a conscious yielding out of affection for me, which I find is hard to express. A soon persuaded her to come next day to my office. She came about four o'clock and I kissed and caressed her and at length in the dusk got her to strip. She had the best figure I had ever seen and that made me like her more than I would have thought possible; but I soon found when I got into her that she was not nearly as passionate as Kate even, to say nothing of Lily. She was a cool mistress but would have made a wonderful wife, being all self-sacrifice and tender, thoughtful affection. I have still a very warm corner in my heart for that lovely child-woman and am rather ashamed of having seduced her, for she was never meant to be a plaything or pastime. But incurably changeable, I had Lily a day or two afterwards and sent Rose a collection of books instead of calling on her. Still I took her out every week till I left Lawrence and grew to esteem her more and more. Lily, on the other hand, was a born «daughter of the game,» to use Shakespeare's phrase, and tried to become more and more proficient at it: she wanted to know when and how she gave me the most pleasure, and really did her best to excite me. Besides, she soon developed a taste in hats and dresses, and when I paid for a new outfit, she would dance with delight. She was an entertaining, light companion, too, and often found odd little naughty phrases that amused me. Her pet aversion was Mrs. Mayhew: she called her always «the Pirate,» because she said Lorna only liked «stolen goods» and wanted every man «to walk the plank into her bedroom.» Lily insisted that Lorna could cry whenever she wished, but had no real affection in her, and her husband filled Lily with contempt. «A well-matched pair,» she exclaimed one day, «a mare and a mule, and the mare, as men say, in heat-all wet,» and she wrinkled her little nose in disgust. At the Bret Harte lecture both Rose and Lily had seats and they both understood that I would go and talk with the great man afterwards. I expected to get a great deal from the lecture and Harte's advance agent had arranged that the hero of the evening should receive me in the Eldridge House after the address.
I was to call for him at the hotel and take him across to the hall. When I called, a middle-sized man came to meet me with a rather good looking, pleasant smile and introspective, musing eyes. Harte was in evening dress that suited his slight figure, and as he seemed disinclined to talk, I took him across to the hall at once and hastened round to the front to note his entrance. He walked quite simply to the desk, arranged his notes methodically and began in a plain, conversational tone, «The Argonauts,» and he repeated it, «The Argonauts of '49.» I noticed that there was no American nasal twang in his accent, but with the best of will, I can give no account of the lecture, just as I can give no portrait of the man. I recall only one phrase, but think it probably the best. Referring to the old-timers crossing the great plains, he said, «I am going to tell you of a new crusade, a crusade without a cross, an exodus without a prophet!» I met him ten years later in London when I had more self-confidence and much deeper understanding both of talent and genius, but I could never get anything of value out of Bret Harte, in spite of the fact that I had then and still keep a good deal of admiration for his undoubted talent. In London later I did my best to draw him out, to get him to say what he thought of life, death and the undiscovered country, but he either murmured commonplaces or withdrew into his shell of complete but apparently thoughtful silence. The monotonous work and passionate interludes of my life were suddenly arrested by a totally unexpected happening. One day Barker came into my little office and stood there hiccoughing from time to time. «Did I know any remedy for hiccoughs?» I only knew a drink of cold water usually stopped it. «I've drunk every sort of thing,» he said,
«but I reckon I'll give it rest and go home and if it continues send for the doctor!» I could only acquiesce. Next day I heard he was worse and in bed. A week later Sommerfeld told me I ought to call on poor Barker, for he was seriously ill. That same afternoon I called and was horrified at the change: the constant hiccoughing had shaken all the unwieldy mass of flesh from his bones; the skin of his face was flaccid, the bony outline showing under the thin folds. I pretended to think he was better and attempted to congratulate him, but he did not even try to deceive himself. «If they can't stop it, it'll stop me,» he said, «but no one ever heard of a man dying of hiccoughs, and I'm not forty yet.» The news came a few days later that he was dead-that great fat man! His death changed my whole life, though I didn't dream at the time it could have any effect upon me. One day I was in court arguing a case before Judge Bassett. Though I liked the man, he exasperated me that day by taking what I thought was a wrong view. I put my point in every light I could, but he wouldn't come round and finally gave the case against me. «I shall take this case to the Supreme Court at my own expense,» I explained bitterly, «and have your decision reversed.» «If you want to waste your time and money,» he remarked pleasantly, «I can't hinder you.» I went out of the court and suddenly found Sommerfeld beside me. «You fought that case very well,» he said,
«and you'll win it in the Supreme Court, but you shouldn't have told Bassett so, in his own-» «Domain,» I suggested, and he nodded.
When we got to our floor and I turned towards my office, he asked, «Won't you come in and smoke a cigar? I'd like a talk.»
Sommerfeld's cigars were uniformly excellent, and I followed him very willingly into his big, quiet office at the back that looked over some empty lots. I was not a bit curious, for a talk with Sommerfeld usually meant a rather silent smoke. This time, however, he had something to say and said it very abruptly. «Barker's gone,» he remarked in the air, and then: «Why shouldn't you come in here and take his place?» «As your partner?» I exclaimed. «Sure,» he replied, «I'll make out the briefs in the cases as I did for Barker and you'll argue them in court. For instance,» he added in his slow way, «there is a decision of the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio that decides your case today almost in your words, and if you had cited it you'd have convinced Bassett,» and he turned and read out the report. «The state of Ohio,» he went on, «is one of the four states, as you know (I didn't know it), that have adopted the New York code-New York, Ohio, Kansas and California»-he proceeded, «the four states in a line across the continent; no one of these high courts will contradict the other. So you can be sure of your verdict. Well, what do you say?» he concluded. «I shall be delighted,» I replied at once. «Indeed, I am proud to work with you: I could have wished no better fortune.» He held out his hand silently and the thing was settled. Sommerfeld smoked a while in silence and then remarked casually, «I used to give Barker a hundred dollars a week for his household expenses: will that suit you?» «Perfectly, perfectly,»
I cried. «I only hope I shall earn it and justify your good opinion.»
«You are a better advocate than Barker even now,» he said, «but you have one drawback.» He hesitated. «Please go on,» I cried,
«don't be afraid! I can stand any criticism and profit by it-I hope.»
«Your accent is a little English, isn't it?» he said. «And that prejudices both judge and jury against you, especially the jury: if you had Barker's accent, you'd be the best pleader in the state.»
«I'll get the accent,» I exclaimed. «You're dead right: I had already felt the need of it, but I was obstinate. Now I'll get it, you may bet on that, get it within a week.» And I did. There was a lawyer in the town named Hoysradt who had had a fierce quarrel with my brother Willie. He had the most pronounced western American accent I had ever heard, and I set myself the task every morning and evening of imitating Hoysradt's accent and manner of speech. I made it a rule, too, to use the slow western enunciation in ordinary speech, and in a week no one would have taken me for anyone but an American.
Sommerfeld was delighted and told me he had fuller confidence in me than ever and from that time on our accord was perfect, for the better I knew him, the more highly I esteemed him. He was indeed able, hardworking, truthful and honest-a compact of all the virtues, but so modest and inarticulate that he was often his own worst enemy.