Part 18

To revert to Sienkiewicz and the Nights of Araby, the Orient is filled with marvels and magic and mystery; with strategy; and beauty that is strange and deadly. The Occident is used to mental food that is colder, and not so highly seasoned. Sienkiewicz has grandeur of conception akin to the East. Only the East with a past that is measureless can be at one and the same moment, bitter and tender, cruel and impassioned. Thousands and thousands of years are necessary to ripen to perfection that rare fruit of Time, _the human mind_. To twist a Russian proverb to the moment’s need. A young race is not strong; a young apple not sweet.

What an amazing piece of mental architecture Somadeva built long ago, in India in his _Ocean of Story_. To measure exactly just how petty the art-creative mind of today is, read it! The entire Human Comedy of Balzac would be one little drop to the ocean. It is not properly speaking an _Ocean_ at all; it is greater: It is a world.

Probably the best _Voyages_ are the purely imaginary. Gulliver wrote one, Cyrano de Bergerac another, and Xavier de Maistre a third. One went to the rim of the mind’s nimble making, the second to the moon, and the third merely journeyed around his chamber. But the distances were all equal, and enchanting.

I am heartbroken that I could not have seen the palaces of Nineveh. It is eye-delight that keeps me alive.

Fancy lofty walled interiors completely covered, (or built rather), of a substance resembling precious porcelain, with the blazing surface of a gem. But pictured, colored! Esarhaddon declared that his palace interiors surpassed the rainbow. These glazed fragments are found today in Assyria. Why could I not have seen it? Thêbes, too! And Babylon! I have always hated economy, petty things, and cold hearts. Shabbiness. Not my kingdom for a horse—but all boasted Fifth Avenue for Babylon. And the gardens of Asia!

Petofi was a lonely, but a good deal madder, a more impetuous, Heine, who lived in Hungary, but he was of Slav descent and his original family name was Petrovich. Like Heine, he felt out of harmony with Goethe. In one of his letters to Friedrich Kerenyi he declares: “... I say it right out. I do not like Goethe. I can not stand him! His head is a diamond, his heart a pebble.”

Petofi’s days suffered from lack of that which Goethe had in abundance, _wise guidance_. There may be envy mixed with hatred. He goes on to exclaim in this letter: “Bury me in the north. Plant an orange tree upon my grave and you will see how my heart will warm it into bloom.”

“Goethe is one of the great poets. A giant, but a giant made of stone.”

He declares impetuously: “When I read George Sand, I am mad to think she could write like that! She was a man, not a woman.”

He adored Dumas. Poor Petofi had only twenty-six years in which to conquer life and art. In addition, the wars claimed him. A pitiful measure, truly! That was the length of life of Lermontov, the Russian poet. The natures of both were stormy, unreasoning, impassioned. They made foes as rapidly as other men make friends. Every brilliant word they uttered made an enemy. And they did not care. Both wrote prose and verse with high, fine rhythm.

Petofi exclaims gayly, carelessly: “If there were no critics, there is nothing in this world I should hate like horse-radish with cream.”

“Hortobagy—Blessed Plain! You are the brow of God. I stand in the center and look about me with delight, a delight the Swiss can not have upon his Alps. Only the Bedouin in heart of the Arabian desert can feel as I feel. Only he knows how my heart expands.”

“My poor Hungary, which the Turks, the Tartars, the grasshoppers, and the politicians have helped destroy! Perhaps, however, a bad poet is the last drop of Vermouth in the bottle—And then one can hope for a better future.”

“For years almost my only reading, my morning, evening prayer, was the French Revolution. It is daily bread. It is the world’s new Bible.”

“We people like to celebrate—we Hungarians. When there aren’t individuals left to celebrate, we shall set about giving festivals for the moon. That is why we are poor, ragged, because we insist upon shining.”

“It has always hurt my feelings to think Shakespeare was an Englishman.” (I think Heine said these words too.)

“Oh divine Art, why is it your priests are devils?”

“In the dark night of my Hungarian Fatherland I am a little flickering flame. But I am flame just the same! By my light, the future Hungary will be forced to read the Book of Fate. Hope is written there.”

“What is a rule? A crutch for feeble, limping, commonplace people.”

Poor, pitiful, proud, impassioned Petofi! He disappeared from the world like Bestushev-Marlinski, as if by magic. No one knows what became of him. As adjutant to the commanding officer he accompanied his general into battle. After the battle was over, he was not seen. His body was never found. About his tragic end there are stories, and romantic stories. Some say he died a prisoner in the mines of Siberia. Some say he became a Russian subject, learned the Russian tongue, and that one of Russia’s famous writers, is Petofi grown old. He was born in 1823.

Hungary has had other spirited story tellers, but none perhaps informed with such peculiarly tragic fire, surely none with such unspoiled lyric gift. Her short story tellers, as a rule possess grace, irony, gaiety. These are qualities that belong to the race. There is a whimsical imagination found among story writers of Hungary, no other nation I know of has. Mikszáth had it richly; and Molnar illustrates the same kind of mind and writing. Other Hungarian story writers are Herczeg, Rakosi, Arpad von Derczik, Jokai, to mention a few, at random, whom I happen to recall.

I found something interesting in Montesquieu’s _Persian Letters_. He writes: _C’est la sagesse des Orientaux, de chercher des remèdes contre la tristesse avec autant de soin que contre les maladies le plus dangereuses._ Orientals seek medicaments for sadness as frequently as for ills of the body. This is indicative of the fact that in the Orient they still believe in things of the spirit, of which the West has lost sight. And also that they are older and wiser. Riper. Montesquieu goes on to say: We ought to weep for a man when he is born, not when he dies. What could be more characteristic of Gallic mind? French wit is Oriental philosophy turned inside out.

One of the sayings of La Rochefoucauld which delighted me is: “The evil we do can not begin to draw upon us the persecution our superiorities draw.” How many personal disillusions, how many sad, surprising visions into man’s heart, went to make that!

I enjoy the _Satires of Boileau_. They play generous part in building that penetrating, discriminating French mind. Especially do I enjoy the prose introduction to the satires, where he speaks of Horace living at a period when it was most dangerous for man to laugh. A strange thing, that, to observe! A dangerous time to laugh! Did something similar occur to Boileau in his own life? Did he learn to know what is the arrogant power, then the selfish pride, of a king?

Condorcet’s _Life of Voltaire_ is fine writing of history. To me it is enthralling romance. In it the same mind is visible, in action, that we find in Taine, Quintillian, Saint Beuve. Taine was novelist and story teller. But his merits as an original creator are overshadowed by that vast, amazing critical writing, which is his work on the literature of England. When I read it I marvel why no Englishman knew himself as this Frenchman, Taine, knew him.

I read Lamennais: _Paroles d’un Croyant_. He writes like an inspired prophet, to stir masses to unrest, rebellion. His sentences ring like clarions. Magnificently curses fall. It is peculiar how he gives words the quality of metal. Other people use the same words. They are nothing at all.

It has been said that there has been no name so execrated as _Machiavelli_. He is the supremely hated. An Italian critic writing of him declares: “Voltaire hated him, and Frederick the Great; the Jesuits, and Cardinal Polo. He could only be right in a world in which there are no spiritual truths.” It is a strange thing that living in Italy, at a period when the Church dominated it, he should have written just that book.

There is not necessarily anything important in a likeness. There are resemblances in the world for which in our present condition of knowledge we are unable to account.

When José Asuncion Silvá, poet of Bogotá, who wrote a poem that recalls Poe’s _Raven_, was in Paris sight-seeing with friends, he happened to pause, by accident, one day in the Louvre, beside the marble bust of Lucius Verus. To their amazement, his friends found that the head of Silvá and that of the dissolute Roman lover of Faustine, were identical. A photograph of Silvá with hair and beard dressed like the statue, was made the next day, and the result is something that no one can explain. They are as alike as two peas. I have the pictures.

Years ago the _Mercure de France_ sent its representative all the way to South America, and then on to Bogotá, city no railroad has succeeded approaching, to secure information about _The Nocturn_ which critics call the greatest poem written in the Americas. The only notice of him in the U. S. was my translation of the poem of which the dead poet’s publishers approved.

If you wish to revel in the beauties of the tropics, minus the long voyage to South America, weeks perhaps of sea-sickness, read Chocano, who laughingly calls himself _the spirit of the Andes_. He has pictured, in ringing verse, this glowing, romantic continent, from which, in days of old, clipper ships, used to go back to Europe with scuppers awash with emeralds, gold, with amethysts. Reading Chocano gives the rich sensations of the tropics. It is like wandering through vast gardens filled with flaming orchids, curious in shape, amazing in color. Just so evocative is he, varied. Just so seemingly inexhaustible.

Another poet, but in the Portuguese tongue, to the south, is Machado de Assis, of the celebrated poems which all Brazilians know: _Uma Creatura_, _Suave Mare Magno_, _No Alto_. The sonnet which he wrote to his wife is one of the noblest in the Portuguese tongue.

Machado de Assis was telling South America of Chinese poets, translating and publishing versions of them, an half century ago. We are just getting around to it. They have kept over us of the north, the æsthetic superiority of Mediterranean peoples among whom they originated.

We are forced to admit that the outlook of Germany is vast. It is not easy to comprehend how vast. In it, individual welfare has been sacrificed as ruthlessly as the Samurai Creed sacrificed it, centuries ago, in Japan. We call this _barbarism_. Germany has been cut latest of the European nations by the disease, _civilization_. As smallpox, other ills of flesh, are more fatal in a young, fresh race, not before visited by it, so young Germany fresh from the forests, the fens, felt the disease, _civilization_. For her it has been most deadly.

I recall the school on the plains. School is probably too important a word. It was a few bare rooms over a business block. No building for the purpose had been put up. From the windows we could look across the Main Street into upper rooms of other buildings. These rooms had been rented to houses of ill fame. Any time we could turn from our lessons and see the painted creatures lolling in the rooms, with their lovers. They were fat, greasy, disheveled, and clad in gay, cotton _Mother Hubbards_.

Beneath one of these houses there was a saloon. From the windows we could look over tops of screens that cut the too plain view from the sidewalk, and see Greasers, Indians, the stragglers of the plains, drinking, gambling. They quarreled frequently. Occasionally they fought with knives, with pistols. But the thrust of a knife that killed, in the lonely silence of the circling prairie was unimportant.

It was as if I saw it all far off through sheets of crystal. There was nothing I wanted. It represented the forces from which I longed to get away. As I walked about the streets of this settlement on the plains, drenched with sun and breeze-swept, I was conscious of an unknown world of art. I used to say to myself: I can not know the heights of life, wealth, power. I can not have things that do not depend upon myself. But, with my brain, I can know the heights of art. I can know all men have dreamed. I learned languages as other women learn to sew. For me they kept few difficulties. My foreign tutor, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude, who knew many tongues, was introducing me to books of the Old World. He had a library of his own, of which he was good enough to give me use. His name was Arnold Jeannerett.

I was dazed at first, breathless, at this introduction to the sumptuous Palaces of Thought. Less and less I saw the world about me. It faded away with its crudity, harsh, noisy contrasts; discomforts; its persistent attempt to make life miserable for me. Nothing remained but a place of enchantment where there were no imperfections, and everything was as I wished.

I read Ariosto. I learned to know Petrarch, and the classics of Italy. I read the splendid prose of France; Bossuet, Fenelon, Chateaubriand, Rousseau. I read the lyric poets of Germany. Hidden upon my person somewhere, either in a pocket in my calico petticoat, or else within the lining of my hat, was some tiny book of the Old World.

But an unexpected complication arose. It made the women of the village angry. And in no slight degree. What right had I to amuse myself in ways not theirs? There was nothing left undone within their inventive range, which I soon learned to my sorrow was considerable, to make me understand their displeasure.

Sweeping past my eyes there was the picturesque panorama of the plains. Interesting things peculiar to isolation were happening.

Chief Joseph, with the warriors who murdered Custer, with their squaws and children, were being removed to a northern Reservation. They stopped in our village. Chief Joseph made a speech which one of the tribal interpreters put into English. The old chief described the massacre. He did it with relish. I sat in front of him, on a board upheld by two nail kegs. When he came to the horrors of it, over his dull eyes, which years had given singular expressionlessness, grey mists floated like spring across black winter. The memory was sweet.

The Main Street with its ugly, flat-topped buildings stretched from north to south. Through this artificial canal swept the wind, having come across desolate plains. Drifting through this street until midnight, moved a strangely assorted crowd, laughing, talking, drinking, quarreling. There were buck Indians in beaded moccasins, a striped calico about their loins, and tin bracelets upon thin, muscled arms. They walked with dignity. Sleek squaws, who toed in, toddled after them. Tin rings were in their ears. There were Mexicans with black, wide faces and white hats; Greasers, whom on-rushing civilization would soon annihilate; cowboys with fringed leggings and high heels, and gamblers with angular, prairie faces. There were soldiers from nearby forts and a few great-hearted pioneers who loved lonely places and who lived their adventures instead of writing them.

The thing I loved best was the clouds that rose high above the levels. They painted pictures. They satisfied my longing to get away.

I loved them when they were white, glittering mountains looking down upon some fairy land.

I used to ride out upon the levels, stop my horse, observe them, feeling happily upon face and arms, the warm, rollicking wind of the south, from unknown spaces where perhaps flowers grew. One longed sometimes here for the lonely comfort of long rains.

Then I would turn my horse and ride home through the twilight, when the little stars first began to prick the day. I like to think of it all again. And the moons of my youth, which poised so superbly above the plains.

I said nothing ever came again. I was wrong. The Strip Opening came.

THE STRIP OPENING

BY

EARL UNDERWOOD

Then the little place resembled any cow-town at time of the county fair or the reunion of the Veterans of the Civil War, except that the crowd did not have a carnival spirit. The crowd was made up of cattle-men driven from their former pasture land, old adventurers still looking for a fortune, wanderers of all kinds, professional gamblers who resembled human buzzards, homeless stragglers from everywhere. There were old men with weather beaten faces from the Klondike, from the gold fields of Arizona, and old Mexico. There were poor, honest, but unsuccessful farmers from other states looking for new homes and considering this a kind of Promised Land for inability of all kinds. They came in _boomer wagons_. They came from every point of the compass. There were some successful Middle West farmers who had just sold their own land for a large price and brought their family here, hoping to get a new start for their sons. The crowd slept in _boomer wagons_; they slept on the ground; they slept on cots along the streets; they slept on the floors of empty buildings. Seventy-five thousand people were poured into a little village that had barely accommodations for ten thousand.

It was hot. Everyone suffered. The ground was sun-baked until it cracked open in wide fissures. There had been no rain for four months. Daily the south wind blew until the atmosphere kept the hue of a twilight that did not change. The corn was burned and sere. The leaves withered; all the vegetation was colorless and dry. The intense heat was unchanging. The day was followed by a night without dew. The continued milling of horses, wagons, people on foot, ground up the dirt until it became an impalpable powder that penetrated everywhere, even the sides of the houses. And through all this dry, parching heat there was an agonizing lack of water. There were poor families here who had waited, in wagons, for years for the gift of this free land. There were legitimate people who really wanted homes and were willing to work for them. There was a large class too of shiftless, chronic boomers from the entire West, whose lives had been spent in looking for something for nothing. There were chronic wanderers seeking sensation. After this Strip Opening was over, they would sadly turn away, hoping for similar, fresh excitement somewhere else.

It was a prohibition country, but saloons and gambling houses and houses of prostitution were open day and night. Everyone went armed. A man who did not have a gun upon his hip was something to remark about.

The scarcity of water increased from day to day. Horses, dogs, and mules went about sadly with their swollen tongues hanging out. The entire prairie was parched like another Sahara. Over it bent a sky that was just as blue, just as cloudless, just as brazen and wind beaten.

Along with the gamblers came the prostitutes, the Three Card Monte men, from the deserts of Arizona, from the deserts of New Mexico, from Arkansas, and Texas. The prostitutes were not segregated nor isolated. They occupied the second story, front, of the business houses along the one Main Street. Among them were two Cherokee Indian girls, sisters; Violet and May. May was built like the Venus. She was her little sister in the flesh, as far as beauty went. She had thin, fine lined features, coal black hair that reached her ankles, and a complexion the color of a cape-jessamine. The only marks of the Indian were her silence and suppleness; and the grace of her body. Both had been convent bred. After these years of forced and disagreeable restraint in the convent, they turned to the easiest way, or else some law of atavism asserted itself, and swept upon them the insistent instincts of their Indian past.

The streets looked like a scene from a comic opera. Red blanketed Indians mixed freely with the whites, and Mexicans, wearing a fortune in a silver hat band that glittered like a coiled snake around their pointed-crowned, broad-brimmed, white hats. Notwithstanding the fact that the Indian is a stoic and seldom gets excited himself, he gravitates toward a crowd like a fly toward a bowl of sugar, instinctively rebelling against the accumulated loneliness of the past. He does not take any part to be sure, nor does he join in the fun and the noise, but he has his own, ancient, silent, devious ways of pleasure. He did not know of course, the silent watchful Indian, that he was helping to celebrate his own funeral. All these tens of thousands of white men congregated here, were at a given signal, going to leap over the line of the Indian Territory and cut up, into the checker-board squares of little farms, the old, happy hunting ground of his ancestors.

The line-up was on the southern Kansas line. For weeks, for months, they had been getting ready for this race; Texans on their long winded cow-ponies, Kentuckians on their thoroughbreds, Illinois farmers on their fat, overfed, pot-bellied horses, and Missouri farmers driving wagons with mules. It was just like getting ready for a world Marathon, which had fifty thousand entries, and no rules and no judges. They trained hundreds of horses here for weeks; for endurance, for speed, for that first great leap forward. Some had picked out the land they wanted in advance and had a definite objective. The rich paid fabulous sums for horses; tall, gaunt, clean limbed Kentucky racers, or Virginia thoroughbreds, thin and nimble bodied. There were fat mule teams that could not make twenty miles in a day. But everyone was eager for a little square of that rich land.

On the morning of the big day, this entire mass moved to the State Line which was only four miles away, where each one tried for first place. From then until noon it surpassed Pandemonium itself or any congregation of the lost in Purgatory. For a hundred miles this great crowd was held back only by a little group of cavalry-men spread out at intervals that were too great. High noon was the opening hour. It was announced by a cannon. The announcement was passed down the line by the echoing firing of troopers.

By noon the red, sun-baked plain was veiled with a blue haze of heat. There was almost no vegetation. The great drought had killed it. There was no grass, no weeds, no trees that were green, because of months of wind and rainlessness. Nowhere was there a sign of water. All the little _cricks_ were dry. Clouds of sand kicked up by the wind curled derisively over all the former trickling water courses. The thirst was terrible. It all but made men mad.