Part 8

There were not many interruptions at first, but after a while, when I had been appointed as attorney to a humane society, there were times when I had to lay my manuscripts aside. I felt it to be, in a way, my duty to long for such interruptions, but they usually came just at those times when I was most absorbed in my manuscript, so that their welcome, while affectedly polite, was not wholly from the heart. One of these intrusions resulted in a long trial before a justice of the peace; it was a case that grew out of a neighborhood quarrel, and all the inhabitants of the _locus in quo_ were subpœnaed as witnesses. Such a case of course always affords an opportunity to study human nature; but this one, too, had the effect ultimately of bringing in many clients--and, as Altgeld had said, by way of advice to me, got people in the habit of coming to my office. Those witnesses acquired that habit, and since human nature seemed to run pretty high in that neighborhood most of the time, they got into a good deal of trouble; they were most of them so poor that they seldom got into anything else, unless it were the jail or the workhouse, and some of them were always ready to help send others of them to those places. Out of the long file of poor miserable creatures there emerged one day that Maria R---- of whom I spoke. She was a buxom young German emigrant, not long over from Pomerania, and her fair skin and yellow hair, and a certain manner she had, marked her out from all the rest. She came with her children one morning to complain of her husband’s neglect of them; and to her, as to the whole body of society which thinks no more deeply than she did, it seemed the necessary, proper, and even indispensable thing to put Rheinhold--that was her husband’s name--in jail (You should have heard her speak the name Rheinhold, with that delicious note in which she _grasséyéd_ her r’s.) There she sat, on the little chair by the window, with her stupidly staring boy and girl at her knees, but in her arms the brightest, prettiest, flaxen-haired baby in the world, a little elf who was always smiling, and picking at her mother’s nose or cheeks with her fat little fingers, and when she smiled, her mother smiled, too; it was the only time she ever did.

Rheinhold of course drank; he “mistreated” his children--that is, he did not buy them food. And since the Humane Society was organized and maintained for the explicit purpose of forcing people to be humane, even though it had to be inhumane to accomplish its purpose, the duty of its attorney was clear.

Its attorney just then felt in himself a rising indignation, moral of course, yet very much like a vulgar anger. To look at those children, especially at that baby of which Maria was so fond, much fonder it was plain to be seen than of the other two, and to think of a man not providing for them, was to have a rage against him, the rage which society, so remorselessly moral in the mass, bears against all offenders--the rage a good prosecutor must keep alive and flaming in his breast if he would nerve himself to his task and earn his fees and society’s gratitude. And whom does society reward so lavishly as her prosecutors?

However, that is not the strain I would adopt just now. I felt that very rage in myself at that moment, and straightway went and had Rheinhold arrested and haled before a judge in the Municipal Court, charged with the crime of neglecting his children. I can remember his wild and bewildered look as he was arraigned that morning. The information was read to him, and he moved his head in such instant acquiescence that the judge, looking down from his bench, asked him if he wished to plead guilty, and he said “Yes.” It seemed then that the case was to be quite easily disposed of, and the prosecutor might feel gratified by this instant success of his work; and yet Rheinhold stood there so confused, so frightened, with the court-room loungers looking on, that I said:

“He doesn’t understand a word of all you are saying.”

And so the judge entered a plea of “not guilty.”

I knew a young lawyer with rather large leisure, and I asked him to defend Rheinhold. He was glad to do so, and we empaneled a jury and went at what Professor Wigmore calls the “high-class sport.” We became desperately interested of course, and for days wrangled according to the rules of the game over the liberty of the bewildered little German who scarcely knew what it was all about. Now and then he made some wild, inarticulate protest, but was of course promptly silenced by his own lawyer, or by the judge, or by the rules of evidence, which could be invoked--with a deep sense of satisfaction when the court ruled your way--to prevent him from telling something he had on his mind, something that to him seemed entirely exculpatory, something that would make the whole clouded situation clear if it could only find its way to the light and to the knowledge of mankind.

There was a witness against him, a tall, slender young German shoemaker, and it was against him that Rheinhold’s outcries were directed. It was not clear just what he was trying to say, and there was small disposition to help him make it clear. His lawyer indeed seemed embarrassed, as though in making his incoherent interruptions Rheinhold were committing a _contretemps_; he must wait for his turn to testify, that all might be done in order and according to the ancient rules and precedents, and, in a word, as it should be done. Under the rules of evidence, of course, Rheinhold could not be allowed to express his opinion of the shoemaker; that was not permissible. The court could not be concerned with the passions of the human heart; this man before the court had a family, and he had neglected to provide food for it, and for such a condition it was written and printed in a book that the appropriate remedy was a certain number of days or months in the workhouse.

And so while Rheinhold silently and philosophically acquiesced, we tried him during one whole day, we argued nearly all the next day to the jury, and the jury stayed out all that night and in the morning returned a verdict of guilty. And Rheinhold was sent to the workhouse for nine months.

XIX

It was regarded as a triumph for the Humane Society,--the newspapers had printed accounts of the trial,--but it was a victory of which I felt pretty much ashamed; it all seemed so useless, so absurd, so barbarous, when you came to think of it, and what good it had done Maria, or anyone, it was difficult to determine. And so, before very long, I went to the workhouse board and had Rheinhold paroled, and he disappeared, vanished toward the West, and was never heard of more.

Meanwhile Maria lived on in her little house as best she could, and with what assistance we could provide her. The Humane Society helped a little, and my wife made some clothes for the baby, and a good-natured doctor in the neighborhood attended them when they were sick, which was a good deal of the time; and Maria seemed happy enough and contented, relying with such entire confidence on her friends that one cold night she sent for me in great urgency, and when I arrived she pointed to the stove, which was smoking and not doing its work in a satisfactory manner at all. I mended it and got the fire going, and they managed to survive the winter; and when spring came Maria appeared at the office and wished to apply to the courts for a divorce. It seemed as good a thing to do as any, and the evidence of Rheinhold’s cruel neglect was by this time so conclusive that it was not much trouble to obtain a decree, especially as the case came before a delightful old bachelor judge who felt that if people were not divorced they ought to be; and after listening to two of the five or six witnesses I had subpœnaed he granted Maria her freedom.

And the next day she got married again. The bridegroom was that very shoemaker who had testified in Rheinhold’s trial; he lived not far from Maria’s late residence, and the happy event, as I learned then, was the culmination of a romance which had disturbed Rheinhold to such a degree that he had preferred to be anywhere rather than at home; and it seemed now--it was now indeed quite clear--that what he had been trying to explain at the time of the trial was that his fate was involved in the eternal triangle.

I do not know where Rheinhold is now; as I said, he was never heard of more, but I should like to present my apologies to him and to inform him that as a result of that expedition into the jungle of the law in search of justice I discovered that whatever other men might do, I could never again prosecute anyone for anything; and I never did. And I think that most of the attempts men make to do justice in their criminal courts are about as mistaken, about as absurd, about as ridiculous, as that solemn and supremely silly effort we made to deal with such a human complication by means of calf-bound law-books, and wrangling lawyers, and twelve stupid jurors ranged behind twelve spittoons. The whole experience revealed to me the beauty and the truth in that wise passage in Mr. Howells’s charming book, “A Boy’s Town”:

“In fact, it seems best to be very careful how we try to do justice in this world, and mostly to leave retribution of all kinds to God, who really knows about things; and content ourselves as much as possible with mercy, whose mistakes are not so irreparable.”

That passage, I think, contains a whole and entirely adequate philosophy of life; but I suppose that those who shake their heads at such heresies will be equally shocked to learn that Maria’s second venture proved to be a remarkable success.

The shoemaker was a frugal chap,--the evidence discloses, I think, that he had been an unusually frugal lover,--and he had saved some money, which, it seems, he was determined not to spend on his fair one until he could develop some legal claim to her, but he treated her handsomely then, according to his taste and ability. He bought a house in another and better part of town, and he furnished it in a way that dazzled the eyes of those children who had been accustomed to bare floors and had never known the glories of golden oak and blue and yellow and red plush, ingrain carpets, and chenille hangings; and he clothed them all and sent them to school, and finally they all took his name, and, I think, forgot poor Rheinhold altogether. And so, in their new-found prosperity, they vanished out of my sight, and I heard of them no more for years. Then one day Maria’s little daughter, grown into a tall young girl by that time, came to tell me that her mother was dead. Maria had started down town with her husband, on Christmas Eve, to buy the gifts for her children, and in the heavy snow that was falling a defective sidewalk was hidden, and Maria was thrown to the ground and so hurt that she died. Her last words to her daughter had been, so the girl said, “See Mr. Whitlock; he’ll do what should be done.” Her heirs had a clear case against the city, but I had just been elected mayor that autumn and could not prosecute such a claim. Another lawyer did so, and got damages for the children, and even for the husband, and with these funds in a trust company’s keeping the shoemaker educated all the children. And he wore about his hat the thickest hand of heavy crêpe that I ever saw.

It seemed to annoy, and in some cases even to anger, those whom I told of my resolution not to prosecute anyone any more. They would argue about it with me as if it made some real difference to them; if every lawyer and every man were so to decide, they said, who was to proceed against the criminals, who was to do the work of purifying and regenerating society? It has always been, of course, a most interesting and vital question as to who is to do the dirty work of all kinds in this world; but their apprehensions, as I could assure them, were all unfounded, since there are always plenty of lawyers, and always plenty of them who are not only willing but anxious to act as prosecutors, and to put into their work that energy and enthusiasm which the schools of efficiency urge upon the youth of the land, and to prosecute with a ferocity that could be no more intense if they had suffered some injury in their own persons from the accused. And there are even men who are willing, for the most meager salaries, to act as guards and wardens in prisons, and to do all manner of things, even to commit crimes, or at least moral wrongs, in order to put men into prison and keep them there, unless they can kill them, and there are plenty who are willing to do that, if only society provides them with a rope or a wire to do it with.

XX

There was, however, in Toledo one man who could sympathize with my attitude; and that was a man whose determination to accept literally and to try to practice the fundamental philosophy of Christianity had so startled and confounded the Christians everywhere that he at once became famous throughout Christendom as “Golden Rule Jones.” I had known of him only as the eccentric mayor of our city, and nearly everyone whom I had met since my advent in Toledo spoke of him only to say something disparaging of him. The most charitable thing they said was that he was crazy. All the newspapers were against him, and all the preachers. My own opinion, of course, could have been of no consequence, but I had learned in the case of Altgeld that almost universal condemnation of a man is to be examined before it is given entire credit. I do not mean to say that there was universal condemnation of Golden Rule Jones in Toledo in those days: it was simply that the institutional voices of society, the press and the pulpit, were thundering in condemnation of him. When the people came to vote for his reëlection his majorities were overwhelming, so that he used to say that everybody was against him but the people. But that is another story.

In those days I had not met him. I might have called at his office, to be sure, but I did not care to add to his burdens. One day, suddenly, as I was working on a story in my office, in he stepped with a startling, abrupt manner, wheeled a chair up to my desk, and sat down. He was a big Welshman with a sandy complexion and great hands that had worked hard in their time, and he had an eye that looked right into the center of your skull. He wore, and all the time he was in the room continued to wear, a large cream-colored slouch hat, and he had on the flowing cravat which for some inexplicable reason artists and social reformers wear; their affinity being due, no doubt, to the fact that the reformer must be an artist of a sort, else he could not dream his dreams. I was relieved, however, to find that Jones wore his hair clipped short, and there was still about him that practical air of the very practical business man he had been before he became mayor. He had been such a practical business man that he was worth half a million, a fairly good fortune for our town; but he had not been in office very long before all the business men were down on him, and saying that what the town needed was a business man for mayor, a statement that was destined to ring in my ears for a good many years. They disliked him of course because he would not do just what they told him to,--that being the meaning and purpose of a business man for mayor,--but insisted that there were certain other people in the city who were entitled to some of his service and consideration--namely, the working people and the poor. The politicians and the preachers objected to him on the same grounds: the unpardonable sin being to express in any but a purely ideal and sentimental form sympathy for the workers or the poor. It seemed to be particularly exasperating that he was doing all this in the name of the Golden Rule, which was for the Sunday-school; and they even went so far as to bring to town another Sam Jones, the Reverend Sam Jones, to conduct a “revival” and to defeat the Honorable Sam Jones. The Reverend Sam Jones had big meetings, and said many clever things, and many true ones, the truest among them being his epigram, “I am for the Golden Rule myself, up to a certain point, and then I want to take the shotgun and the club.” I think that expression marked the difference between him and our Sam Jones, in whose philosophy there was no place at all for the shotgun or the club. The preachers were complaining that Mayor Jones was not using shotguns, or at least clubs, on the “bad” people in the town; I suppose that since their own persuasions had in a measure failed, they felt that the Mayor with such instruments might have made the “bad” people look as if they had been converted anyway.

It was when he was undergoing such criticism as this that he came to see me, to ask me to speak at Golden Rule Park. This was a bit of green grass next to his factory; he had dedicated it to the people’s use, and there under a large willow-tree, on Sunday afternoons, he used to speak to hundreds. There was a little piano which two men could carry, and with that on the platform to play the accompaniments the people used to sing songs that Jones had written--some of them of real beauty, and breathing the spirit of poetry, if they were not always quite in its form. In the winter these meetings were held in Golden Rule Hall, a large room that served very well as an auditorium, in his factory hard by. On the walls of Golden Rule Hall was the original tin sign he had hung up in his factory as the only rule to be known there, “Therefore whatsoever things ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” In the course of time every reformer, every radical, in the country had spoken in that hall or under that willow-tree, and the place developed an atmosphere that was immensely impressive. The hall had the portraits of many liberal leaders and humanitarians on its walls, and a number of paintings; and in connection with the settlement which Jones established across the street the institution came to be, as a reporter wrote one day in his newspaper, the center of intelligence in Toledo.

Well then, on that morning when first he called, Jones said to me:

“I want you to come out and speak.”

“On what subject?” I asked.

“There’s only one subject,” he said,--“life.” And his face was radiant with a really beautiful smile, warmed with his rich humor. I began to say that I would prepare something, but he would not let me finish my sentence.

“Prepare!” he exclaimed. “Why prepare? Just speak what’s in your heart.”

He was always like that. Once, a good while after, in one of his campaigns, he called me on the telephone one evening just at dinner time, and said:

“I want you to go to Ironville and speak to-night.”

I was tired, and, as I dislike to confess, somewhat reluctant,--I had always to battle so for a little time to write,--so that I hesitated, asked questions, told him, as usual, that I had no speech prepared.

“But you know it is written,” he said, “that ‘in that hour it shall be given you what ye shall say.’”

I could assure him that the prophecy had somewhat failed in my case, and that what was given me to say was not always worth listening to when it was said; and then I inquired:

“What kind of crowd will be there?”

“Oh, a good crowd!” he said.

“But what kind of people?”

“What kind of people?” he asked in a tone of great and genuine surprise. “What kind of people? Why, there’s only one kind of people--just people, just folks.”

I went of course, and I went as well to Golden Rule Park and to Golden Rule Hall, and there was never such a school for public speaking as that crowded park afforded, with street cars grinding and scraping by one side of it and children laughing at their play on the swings and poles which Jones had put there for them; or else standing below the speaker and looking curiously up into his face, and filling him with the fear of treading any moment on their little fingers which, as they clung to the edge, made a border all along the front of the platform. And for a year or so after his death I spoke there every Sunday: we were trying so hard to keep his great work alive.

XXI

It was our interest in the disowned, the outcast, the poor, and the criminal that drew us first together; that and the fact that we are gradually assuming the same attitude toward life. He was full of Tolstoy at that time, and we could talk of the great Russian, and I could introduce him to the other great Russians. He was then a little past fifty, and had just made the astounding discovery that there was such a thing as literature in the world: he had been so busy working all his life that he had never had time to read, and the whole world of letters burst upon his vision all suddenly, and the glorious prospect fairly intoxicated him, so that he stood like stout Cortez, though not so silent, upon a peak in Darien.

He was reading Mazzini also, and William Morris and Emerson, who expressed his philosophy fully, or as fully as one man can express anything for another, and it was not long before Jones discovered an unusual facility for expressing himself, both with his voice and with his pen. The letters he wrote to the men in his shops--putting them in their pay-envelopes--are models of simplicity and sincerity, which show a genuine culture and have that beauty which is the despair of conscious art.[A] He had just learned of Oscar Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol,” and he committed it to memory, or got it into his memory somehow, so that he would recite stanzas of it to anyone. He read Burns, too, with avidity, and I can see him now standing on the platform in one of his meetings, snapping his fingers as he recited:

A fig for those by law protected! Liberty’s a glorious feast!

But it was Walt Whitman whom he loved most, and his copy of “Leaves of Grass” was underscored in heavy lines with a red pencil until nearly every striking passage in the whole work had become a rubric. When anything struck him, he would have to come and tell me of it; sometimes he would not wait, but would call me up on the telephone and read it to me. I remember that occasion when his voice, over the wire, said:

“Listen to this [and he read]:

“The snag-tooth’d hostler with red hair, redeeming sins past and to come, Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery.”