Part 9

“I’d like you to think of Lincoln as a poor man,” said Vachel, “an eccentric--laughed at, sneered at a great deal, entirely underestimated, a man who was a mystic, who believed in dreams and presentiments and told many dreams to his Cabinet with great gravity. Politicians want to see in him a conventional great man now, but in his life-time he was called eccentric. He was as much laughed at as Johnny Appleseed. But if a man is called eccentric in this country, or much laughed at, you’ll often find he was a mystic or a genius of some kind.”

One of Vachel’s alternative ideas for a tramp was to do a Springfield star, making the city our centre to radiate outward, or, could I say, walk radiantly outward, in one direction, then in another, all round the compass. “As you went to Bethlehem with the Russian pilgrims so you could pilgrimage to our Bethlehem,” said he, “see our star.”

People from all parts of the world come to Springfield to see the Lincoln home, to visit Salem and the grave of Anne Rutledge, to salute Lincoln’s grave. They do so, not because they are told to do so, or because there are organised tours, but because the heart moves them to it.

But there are also many people in America ready to turn their backs on the simple Abe Lincoln of Springfield. He is too rough for them, too untidy, too raw. They would fain think of him as a man of aplomb, a man of a well-established family, one of the governing class. Lincoln’s son Robert is president of the Pullman Car Company, and they would see the father in the son and surmise a family well-lined, well-wadded, well-upholstered. In that class you can get to power, and be carried there, and sleep on the way. Belong to that class and all is yours!

But the real Abe Lincoln gives the lie to this. It offends some people to the heart to think that Lincoln’s father lived in a three-ways-round log-cabin with the fourth side not built in, that young Abraham was a barge-man, what we call in England a bargee, and came down the Sangamon River in a flat-bottomed boat with a cargo and got stuck on the dam at Salem and accepted a job there, and slept in a sort of loft over a ramshackle tavern, men one side of a plank, women the other, and that he rose out of the very depths of American life.

“What Lincoln did, any boy in the United States can aspire to do,” cried Vachel as we sat on a log together and looked at the shadow and shine of the myriad-fold population of trees. “We’ve no governing class. We’ve only got a class that thinks it is the governing class, but it is the most barren in the community. Lincoln’s life shows the real truth. Any one who feels he has it in him can rise to the Presidency of the United States.”

I promised to make the pilgrimage to the Lincoln shrines when our tramp should be over and we returned to Springfield. Then Vachel was fired by his pet fancies about his native city. He would have it all painted white, like the Chicago World’s Fair. “White harmonises all sizes and shapes of houses and all types of architectural design. And it has an effect on the mind. It suggests the ideal. If the city were all painted white, then people would try to live up to its appearance. Then also it would stand out among all cities of America. The very fact of its painting itself white would go into every newspaper in the United States, it would be known in all English-speaking lands and would direct world-attention to the shrine of Abraham Lincoln,” said he.

It seemed to me a practical idea, and I bade him preach it still. He’d find valuable allies in the paint merchants and painters of Springfield anyway. If America could go “dry” one need not despair of Springfield painting itself white. “In America all things are possible,” as a German street-song says.

He returned once more to his story of the ten who died for the flag of Springfield--the new flag of the city. “I’ve always felt,” said he, “that there could be found at least ten men among the unlikely fellows who loaf around our town square ready to give their lives for Springfield. If ever there came a time when Springfield was in danger or its flag likely to be dishonoured, I know it is from the tramps and wasters that something would come. At least, from the people we don’t know.”

“If only I could write that idea as Edgar Allan Poe wrote ‘King Pest,’” said the poet, “then I’d tell the truth and shame the Devil.”

* * * * *

“YET Springfield was once disgraced by a most unholy race-riot,” my companion went on. “It was in 1908, the centenary of Lincoln’s birth, and I felt it as a terrible disgrace. The negro victims were entirely innocent. It was a shocking affair.”

We had by this time lifted ourselves high out of the gloomy valleys and had attained to a rarer atmosphere and a clearer world, where the forest lay below like a book that has been read and above it rose the eternal hills lifting their mighty granite shoulders to the sky. We saw in retrospect many of the mountains we had climbed. “Going-to-the-Sun” and “Heaven’s Peak” were remote but grandiose on the horizon. We were on a much-exposed ridge of Flat Top Mountain, and we camped in a wintry spot beside a natural table of rock. On the rock we spread our supper; on the ground our blankets. The wind blew the flaps of our blankets, it blew away the flaming embers of the bonfire which we made, and it ignited the grass, and when we had put the fire out on one side it broke out on the other, and yet there was not enough of a fire to warm us. Night came on, and we sought new fuel. Vachel hobbled beside me and discoursed in a preoccupied way about Springfield and its race-riot.

“I’m with you all the way about the Negroes, Stephen,” said he, as we struggled to upraise an embedded sapling which the snows had tumbled over in the spring. “If you write about the Negro again, say I’m with you, I subscribe to it. I’ll go the limit with you.”

We raised the entangled, difficult, fallen tree up on to the star-radii of its roots, and looked down the wild slope to where our fire was burning and blowing. It was dark up there where we were, and the fire below gleamed in the darkness. We rolled the sapling down to the fire and on to it, and stamped out the flames in the grass, and then returned into the darkness for another sapling.

“You know how I felt in Springfield when that riot occurred,” said Vachel. “I visited all the leading Negroes and most of the leading white men. I bombarded the newspapers with letters. And I don’t know that it did any good. You couldn’t be sure that another onslaught on the coloured people wouldn’t occur to-morrow.”

As we talked we sought and collected withered branches, wind-riven arms of the pines. Some we had to pull out of the earth, others we could not pull out.

“I believe the only way to stop lynching would be to break into a lynching crowd and make them either lynch you instead of the Negro or lynch you for interfering. When they realised what they had done their hearts would be touched, their consciences would be shocked,” said Vachel.

We had unwieldy faggots in our arms and so walked closely together down the hill, supporting one another’s wood.

“It is expedient that one man should die for the people once more,” said the poet.

We made up a good fire; we boiled a pot of coffee and fried a heap of beans and stewed a cup of apricots and cut the bread and untied the sugar-bag and exposed the dried raisins, of which we had a capacious little sack-full and wrapped ourselves round and sat by the fire and fed and talked--

“Springfield was just about to attract the attention of the world in a special way, as the shrine of Lincoln, when that riot broke out,” said Vachel. “Large schemes had been approved for the improvement of the city. All promised well. Then suddenly this race-riot broke out, and Springfield was the subject of cartoons all over the United States. The finger of scorn was pointed at Lincoln’s city. Springfield is still trying to live it down.”

I confessed it was difficult to think of Springfield as an American Bethlehem after it had been the scene of a race-riot. That was indeed a smudge on its fair name. Quiet little Bethlehem in Palestine has at least kept clear of that. Still even Bethlehem could not help it if some ugly human doings occurred there.

It was curious that the race-riot sprang from the “poor Whites,” and yet from the same poor Whites Vachel was ready to find ten who would die for the Flag.

I told my thought then, and that was, that the poor white population, heroic as it was, would not be deterred by the self-sacrifice of one of their number for the sake of the Blacks. This very year an English clergyman was stripped and beaten almost to death by a gang of Whites in Florida, just because he asked a congregation for fair play for the Negro. And nothing happened to the gang. No prosecutions followed. Lynch is powerful when law is weak.

“The social conscience is dull,” said the poet sadly. “The Negro question is the one which has most plagued America, and most people have given it up and decided not to fret their brains any more about it. You see, we even fought a war for it once, and we’re always quarrelling about it. A news paragraph about a man being burned by a mob will not even catch the notice of the newspaper reader. It either does not stir his imagination, or he refuses to think about it.”

“But it brings America into disrespect in Europe. It takes away from the force of her moral example,” said I.

Lindsay knew that. We discussed then the daring appeal of Governor Dorsey of Georgia to the people of that State to mend their ways. We discussed South Africa and then India.

And then we went for more wood, and the stars shone out above us, peerless in their righteousness, rolling along deliberately as ever on their fixed ways. “How brightly they shine on us,” said I. “We should be as they. If they erred and strayed from their ways as we do, what a mad universe ’twould be.”

“And one of them,” said the poet, “is the star of Bethlehem, the star that rested over Bethlehem and then rested over Springfield for a while.”

“Up here in the mountains we see the stars, but down there in the forests and dark valleys it is not so easy,” said I.

We talked of Springfield by the firelight till one of us fell asleep. One picture remains in my mind, and that is of a Hindu who sought out Vachel Lindsay after he had been to Abraham Lincoln’s home. “Show me now the home of the poet who lives among you,” said the Hindu.

_A Hindu came to Springfield, He saw the home of Lincoln, He saw the court of Lincoln, He saw the streets he trod. “Now show me,” quoth the Hindu, Show me your poet Lindsay, Show me your prophet Lindsay, Who sings to-day to God._

_The guide to Fifth Street therefore led And showed the house where Lindsay fed. And the Hindu much rejoiced and said: “I know that Springfield is not dead.”_

XXXIII. FLAT TOP MOUNTAIN

THE fire burned sulkily at dawn, and the grass around it was white with frost. We had lain awake for an hour, silently meditating on the joys of coffee to be. We knew it was no use getting up before sunrise, for fuel was scarce and hard to find. It was a wonderful dreamy dawn, rising above the mists of an autumnal night. We looked to see antelopes perched on the crags above us, and mountain-goats. But the scene was bare on all hands. Our eyes lighted on the rusty foliage of some uprooted trees. Walking in our unlaced boots, we brought this dead wood in, made a fine blaze, and had breakfast, and then curled ourselves up by the fire and slept till the sun stood higher. If I woke first it was to sit with a blanket about my shoulders and pen an article for Kit Morley. It commonly happened that I sat by the fire and scribbled my letters to the Post in the morning whilst the poet had an extra hour asleep.

When we resumed our climb the poet got talking of the Indians. Curiously enough Flat Top Mountain marks the entrance to the country of the Flat-Heads, the Flat-Heads being so called because they press their babies’ heads to obtain a flat-headed type of beauty. The mountain has imitated the Indians and grown up flat-headed too. We were presently to meet, when we crossed the Canadian line, a considerable number of Indians of various tribes. Vachel facetiously observed that he wouldn’t mind taking an Indian bride if he could find one that walked thirty-five miles a day and took a bath every morning. I held that it was very snobbish on his part. The disqualifying point, however, proved to be the chewing of tobacco. When the poet saw these young Amazons rolling their quids he was confirmed in bachelordom.

“Great people, the Indians,” said Vachel. “I was brought up on their orations. So was mother, I believe. Did you ever see M’Gaffey’s reader with Black Hawk’s ‘Oration’ and the ‘Defence of Spartacus,’ and other wonderful studies in popular oratory? I wouldn’t mind voting for an Indian to be President of the United States.”

“What! A red Indian? I should have thought America was too prejudiced against colour.”

“Not against the Indians. Against the Negroes. You and I don’t think a Negro could rise to Presidency. But an Indian is different. There is a great romance connected with the Indians; there are the traditions of the battles with them; there is the personal grandeur of the braves. Every American boy has longed to be an Indian chief. And then there is the strain of Pocahontas, the Indian princess, married into the pride of Virginia. I believe an Indian President is just what we want to root us in America and give us a genuine American inspiration. It would bring poetry into politics. It would bring all the glamour of the West.”

“But it is not a practical possibility,” I urged.

“I believe it could be put over,” said the poet. “You see, the Indians are a hunting people, a sporting people. They’ve refused to bow the knee to the sordid side of life.”

We agreed that they were such good hunters that it was in vain the United States Government protected game in these parts. The Flat-Heads seemed to have swept off everything. You may go for days and see nothing more edible than marmots and porcupines. On the other hand, I have heard it said that the animals know the difference between the reservations of the Indians and the preserved regions of the Rockies, and at sight of an Indian on the horizon they rush to safety.

Lindsay recounted to me the story of the political campaigns of “Tippecanoe and Tyler too!” and how the wild tokens of Western life invaded the East and moved the imagination of America. Every American politician is aware of this motive force. Even Roosevelt, a pure New Yorker, played the Western game--as Colonel of the Rough Riders.

We had a wonderful walk along the Flat Top, which was a prolonged mountain meadow full of flowers. Vachel began to repine because he foresaw that, like everything else, our tramp must end, and that in a few weeks we should be back in Springfield and the mere town. I told him a story of how one summer day in Petrograd I paused at a fruiterer’s shop to buy some strawberries which looked very inviting. They were very dear, but the shopkeeper said, “I have some very good second quality strawberries inside the shop, and I strongly recommend them.” “Thanks,” said I. “But I never buy second quality strawberries.” “So in life, eh Vachel, let us never accept second quality strawberries.”

The poet laughed, and began talking of grades of eggs, new-laid eggs, State eggs, selected eggs, political eggs. So walking gently we reached the north-western extremity of the tableland and came upon a grandiose diversified scene of shadows and gloomy greens and barren scarps, and of crowned monarchs of ice and snow. The pines of the Canadian approach were posted like companies of soldiers and disposed in beleaguering armies as if the line, unguarded by men, was guarded by trees, the forest wardens of the Empire and the Republic. The poet saw in the scene another Turner engraving.

We plunged then downward through thick masses of alder and hazel, a whole mountain-side solid with low growth. Here also were thousands of raspberry bushes all agleam with rosy fruits. Vachel called the descent a “raspberry epic.” Down, down we plunged to the dark valley of the rushing Kootenai, only finding a camping-ground after dark.

We came to an aged river in a steep vale of years with old shaggy firs on its very water-edge, and with the ruins of the uncontrollable ever-encroaching forest piled up like walls. We lighted a fire on a humpy-bumpy bit of shore where it was hard either to walk or sit, but easy to find wood to burn. We each cleared ourselves a cradle in the brown needles of the infringing firs.

It was a magnificent enclosure which the old river was a-running through, like a cypress-walled garden of an Asiatic mountain-castle. The trees stood like gigantic janissaries or guardsmen with their cloaks on. The night-stars were exalted by the climbing forest and peeped but faintly into the depths, and like a mighty black bastion the sheer rock of the mountain cut off the view northward.

The fire flared, the hot stones cracked and burst. We put our hot blankets around us and sprawled on them whilst the poet cooked the ham and the beans, and I tended the coffee-pot or stripped the last wisps of grease-paper from the butter.

We slept in our cradles and wakened in the morning to see the beavers jumping among the fallen timber and diving in the river.

_A prairie resident, A dweller in a tent, A White House resident, A good man for President! To White House from white tent. O excellent precedent! A precedent for a President. An unprecedented President!_

XXXIV. CROSSING THE CANADIAN LINE

“AS we approach the British Empire,” says Vachel facetiously, “the huckleberries grow more plentiful, the raspberry bushes larger, the trees loftier, the air purer.” In the poet’s mind politics and hymns gave way to desire of huckleberries. I luxuriated in raspberries. He was Huckleberry Finn. I was a character in Russian folk-lore--the hare with the raspberry-coloured whiskers. “When we get to a Canadian hotel let us register as H. Finn and R. C. W. Hare,” said the poet.

We had slept on the hoar-frosted grass of mountain meadows near the sky; we had slept among the beavers on the banks of the Kootenai; we tramped in the radiant upper air; we tramped in the gloom of ancient forests. Mount Cleveland lifted its dome of snow high o’er the lesser mountains. Trapper Mountain receded. We listened one night to the coyotes caterwauling in their loneliness. Their superfluous lugubrious laments reminded me of modern West of Ireland poetry. Vachel laughed at the comparison. We came to a deserted cabin, once the habitation of a ranger, now littered with Alberta whisky bottles, and here we read a pencilled remark written years ago: “Slept here last night. Visited by a bare who came into cabin and et two sides of bacon.” Another pencilled notice, apparently by the same hand, said: “Don’t leave garbig lying about but put it in the Garbig Holl.” An Indian came and offered to lead us to a boat on Lake Waterton and give us a ferry to Canada. We preferred to walk, but it occurred to me afterwards that he was not so much interested in boating as in bottles. I don’t doubt he could have got us a drink. Then a grand mounted party came past us with guides and pack-horses, coming from over Brown Pass, going over Indian Pass. This was a rich American family on holiday: here were father and mother, grown children, young children, cousins, and in the midst of them Aunt Jemima, looking very proud and stiff, with an expression on her face which signified “_Never again!_” They had been twenty-eight days in the mountains, camping out all the time.

* * * * *

VACHEL’S ankle was rather weak, and he much preferred sitting to walking. He called himself “the slow train through Arkansas.” We stopped at stations, half-stations, and halts. “All I lack, Stephen, is steam,” said he. But every now and then he would take courage and say, “Lots of walk in me to-day--Canada to-night!”

The excitement of finding the “Canadian Line” cheered my companion. The face which in the morning had looked contrite and penitent as that of one just released from jail, lighted up with new mirth and facetious intent. He began to get steam. The slow train from Arkansas began to approach Kentucky, and the sign of steam was a return to political conversation. He began to chaff me mercilessly on the subject of the Empire and King George and the British lion. I chaffed him about “God’s own country.” The poet identified America with all that was best in America’s traditions and in the visions of her poets, the

All I could never be, All men ignored in me,

of his native country. I was critical, for I bore in my mind the growth of materialism, the corruption of the law, the lynchings of the Negroes, and the rest. He wanted me to dissociate America from the dollar, from the noisy business rampage, and from all that was unworthy, and instead identify America with the dreams of her idealists.

“That is what I did with Russia,” said I. “If I tell England of the ideal America they’ll only call me a mystic. But you, Vachel,” I continued, “try and think of the Empire that way.”

He found it difficult. He could think creatively about his own country, but where others were concerned he reverted to the normal critical mind.

* * * * *

IT is almost a recognised convention in literature. If you are writing about a foreign country you take the general average of what you observe and describe that. You can attack lustily without fear that the magazine will lose “advertising.” The writer on Russia was supposed to bring home a report that the police, and indeed every one else, took bribes, the Jews were persecuted, the prisoners in Siberia were chained together. Most American writers on Russia have done it. Kennan is a characteristic case, who obtained fame identifying Russia with prison horrors without recalling to the minds of his readers that there are dreadful prisons also in the United States, and that the silence of his own Georgia is sometimes desecrated by the melancholy clank-clank of the chain-gang.

I was besought in 1917, by a leading magazine of America, to write an account of Rasputin, and although I had many interesting stories of that evil genius of Russia I refused to write what I considered would at that time be damaging to Russia. On the other hand, I wrote in 1919 a realistic vision of America in perhaps her saddest post-war moment, when Wilson was down and no one knew what America was going to do next, and offered it to the same journal. But the editor was quite hurt that I did not then see America in roseate hues. How characteristic of this sprightly world, which, as Latimer said, “was begotten of Envy and put out at Discord for nurse!”

Not that the poet was critical of England. He idealised England. He was not as critical of England as I was of America. Whilst he idealised America creatively he idealised England romantically. To him America was something to be; to him England was something that forever was--beautiful, the substance of poetry, the evidence of things not seen. He did not sympathise with the Irish. He did not think England was so well organised, commercially, as America. But then to him that was a point in our favour. Only one point was registered against us--he did not think that as a nation we could make coffee; and we lagged behind on Prohibition. But then he had to admit that the Americans for their part did not know how to make tea.