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CHAPTER I THE ROSE WINDOW
CHAPTER I THE ROSE WINDOW
It was at a modest evening reception I happened to be giving to a new poet of renown that the idea of the holiday was first conceived. I had not seen Franklin, subsequent companion of this pilgrimage, in all of eight or nine months, his work calling him in one direction, mine in another. He is an illustrator of repute, a master of pen and ink, what you would call a really successful artist. He has a studio in New York, another in Indiana—his home town—a car, a chauffeur, and so on. I first met F
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CHAPTER II THE SCENIC ROUTE
CHAPTER II THE SCENIC ROUTE
It was a flash of all this that came to me when in the midst of the blathering and fol de rol of a gay evening Franklin suddenly approached me and said, quite apropos of nothing: “How would you like to go out to Indiana in my car?” “I’ll tell you what, Franklin,” I answered, “all my life I’ve been thinking of making a return trip to Indiana and writing a book about it. I was born in Terre Haute, down in the southwest there below you, and I was brought up in Sullivan and Evansville in the souther
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CHAPTER III ACROSS THE MEADOWS TO THE PASSAIC
CHAPTER III ACROSS THE MEADOWS TO THE PASSAIC
I assume that automobiling, even to the extent of a two-thousand-mile trip such as this proved to be, is an old story to most people. Anybody can do it, apparently. The difference is to the man who is making the trip, and for me this one had the added fillip of including that pilgrimage which I was certain of making some time. There was an unavoidable delay owing to the sudden illness of Speed, and then the next morning, when I was uncertain as to whether the trip had been abandoned or no, the c
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CHAPTER IV THE PIETY AND EGGS OF PATERSON
CHAPTER IV THE PIETY AND EGGS OF PATERSON
But in addition to mills and the falls, Paterson offered another subject of conversation. Only recently there had been completed there an evangelical revival by one “Billy” Sunday, who had addressed from eight to twenty thousand people at each meeting in a specially constructed tabernacle, and caused from one to five hundred or a thousand a day to “hit the trail,” as he phrased it, or in other words to declare that they were “converted to Christ,” and hence saved . America strikes me as an excee
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CHAPTER V ACROSS THE DELAWARE
CHAPTER V ACROSS THE DELAWARE
The afternoon run was even more delightful than that of the morning. Yet one does not really get free of New York—its bustle and thickness of traffic—until one gets west of Paterson, which is twentyfive miles west, and not even then. New York is so all embracing. It is supposed to be chiefly represented by Manhattan Island, but the feel of it really extends to the Delaware Water Gap, one hundred miles west, as it does to the eastern end of Long Island, one hundred miles east, and to Philadelphia
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CHAPTER VI AN AMERICAN SUMMER RESORT
CHAPTER VI AN AMERICAN SUMMER RESORT
I have no quarrel with American summer resorts as such—they are as good as any—but I must confess that scenes like this do not move me as they once did. I can well recall the time—and that not so many years ago—when this one would have set me tingling, left me yearning with a voiceless, indescribable pain. Life does such queer things to one. It takes one’s utmost passions of five years ago and puts them out like a spent fire. Standing in this almost operatic street, I did my best to contrast my
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CHAPTER VII THE PENNSYLVANIANS
CHAPTER VII THE PENNSYLVANIANS
And then there was this matter of Pennsylvania and its rumored poor roads to consider, and the smallness and non-celebrity of its population, considering the vastness of its territory—all of which consumed at least an hour of words, once we were started. This matter interested us greatly, for now that we had come to think of it we could not recall anyone in American political history or art or science who had come from Pennsylvania. William Penn (a foreigner) occurred to me, Benjamin Franklin an
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CHAPTER VIII BEAUTIFUL WILKES-BARRÉ
CHAPTER VIII BEAUTIFUL WILKES-BARRÉ
My own interest in Wilkes-Barré and this entire region indeed dated from the great anthracite coal strike in 1902, in my estimation one of the fiercest and best battles between labor and capital ever seen in America. Who does not know the history of it, and the troubles and ills that preceded it? I recall it so keenly—the complaints of the public against the rising price of coal, the rumors of how the Morgans and the Vanderbilts had secured control of all these coal lands (or the railroads that
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CHAPTER IX IN AND OUT OF SCRANTON
CHAPTER IX IN AND OUT OF SCRANTON
Darkness had fallen when we reached Scranton. We approached from the south along a ridge road which skirted the city and could see it lying below to the east and ablaze with arc lights. There is something so appealing about a city in a valley at dark. Although we had no reason for going in—our road lay really straight on—I wanted to go down, because of my old weakness, curiosity. Nothing is more interesting to me than the general spectacle of life itself in these thriving towns of our new land—t
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CHAPTER X A LITTLE AMERICAN TOWN
CHAPTER X A LITTLE AMERICAN TOWN
Factoryville, as we found this morning, was one of these very small places which, to one weary of metropolitan life, occasionally prove entertaining through an extreme simplicity and a sense of rest and peace. It was, as I saw sitting in my dressing gown in our convenient wooden swing, a mere collection of white cottages with large lawns or country yard spaces and flowers in profusion and a few stores. Dr. A. B. Fitch, Druggist (I could see this sign on the window before which he stood), was ove
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CHAPTER XI THE MAGIC OF THE ROAD AND SOME TALES
CHAPTER XI THE MAGIC OF THE ROAD AND SOME TALES
Our particular breakfast consisted of a choice of several “flake” breakfast foods, a hard fried chop, an egg or two, fried, some German fried potatoes, and all done as an American small town hotelkeeper used to dealing with farmers and storekeepers and “hands” would imagine they ought to be done. Where did the average American first get the idea that meals of nearly all kinds need to be fried hard ? Or that tea has to be made so strong that it looks black and tastes like weeds? Or that German fr
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CHAPTER XII RAILROADS AND A NEW WONDER OF THE WORLD
CHAPTER XII RAILROADS AND A NEW WONDER OF THE WORLD
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the automobile, as it is being perfected now, would make over the whole world’s railway systems into something very different from what they are today. Already the railways are complaining that the automobile is seriously injuring business, and this is not difficult to understand. It ought to be so. At best the railways have become huge, clumsy, unwieldy affairs little suited to the temperamental needs and moods of the average human being. They are mass ca
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CHAPTER XIII A COUNTRY HOTEL
CHAPTER XIII A COUNTRY HOTEL
Beyond Nicholsen, somewhere in this same wondrous valley and in a winelike atmosphere, came New Milford and with it our noonday meal. We were rolling along aimlessly, uncertain where next we would pause. The sight of an old fashioned white hotel at a street corner with several rurals standing about and a row of beautiful elms over the way gave us our cue. “This looks rather inviting,” said Franklin; and then, to the figure of a heavy nondescript in brown jeans who was sitting on a chair outside
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CHAPTER XIV THE CITY OF SWAMP ROOT
CHAPTER XIV THE CITY OF SWAMP ROOT
Binghamton—"Bimington," as Franklin confusedly called it in trying to ask the way of someone—now dawned swiftly upon us. I wouldn’t devote a line to those amazingly commercial towns and cities of America which are so numerous if the very commercial life of the average American weren’t so interesting to me. If anyone should ask me “What’s in Binghamton?” I should confess to a sense of confusion, as if he were expecting me to refer to something artistic or connected in any way with the world of hi
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CHAPTER XV A RIDE BY NIGHT
CHAPTER XV A RIDE BY NIGHT
It was a glorious night—quite wonderful. There are certain summer evenings when nature produces a poetic, emotionalizing mood. Life seems to talk to you in soft whispers of wonderful things it is doing. Marshes and pools, if you encounter any, exhale a mystic breath. You can look into the profiles of trees and define strange gorgon-like countenances—all the crones and spectres of a thousand years. (What images of horror have I not seen in the profiles of trees!) Every cottage seems to contain a
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CHAPTER XVI CHEMUNG
CHAPTER XVI CHEMUNG
Next morning I was aroused at dawn, it seemed to me, by a pounding on a nearby door. “Get up, you drunken hound!” called a voice which was unmistakably that of the young man who had rented us the room. “That’s right, snore, after you stay up all night,” he added; and he beat the door vehemently again. I wanted to get up and protest against his inconsiderateness of the slumber of others and would have, I think, only I was interested to discover who the “drunken hound” might be and why this youth
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CHAPTER XVII CHICKEN AND WAFFLES AND THE TOON O' BATH
CHAPTER XVII CHICKEN AND WAFFLES AND THE TOON O' BATH
We found an official of the Elmira Automobile Club, a small, stoop-shouldered, bald, eye-sockety person who greeted us with a genial rub of his hands and a hearty smirk as though we were just the persons, among all others, whom he was most pleased to see. “Come right in, gentlemen,” he called, as Franklin and I appeared in the doorway. “What can I do for you? Looking for maps or a route or something?” “Tell me,” I inquired, anxious to make my point at once, “are there any good roads due west of
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CHAPTER XVIII MR. HUBBARD AND AN AUTOMOBILE FLIRTATION
CHAPTER XVIII MR. HUBBARD AND AN AUTOMOBILE FLIRTATION
Avoca, just beyond here, was a pleasant little town, with a white church steeple drowsing in the afternoon sun. We tried to get something to eat and couldn’t—or rather could only obtain sandwiches, curse them!—and ham sandwiches at that. My God, how I do hate ham sandwiches when I am hungry enough to want a decent meal! And a place called Arkport was not better, though we did get some bananas there—eight—and I believe I ate them all. I forget, but I think I did. Franklin confined himself almost
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CHAPTER XIX THE REV. J. CADDEN McMICKENS
CHAPTER XIX THE REV. J. CADDEN McMICKENS
The last twelve miles of the run into Portageville had seemed if anything the most perfect of all. Before we reached Canaseraga we traversed a number of miles of dirt road—"one of the finest dirt roads anywhere," a local enthusiast described it,—and it was excellent, very much above the average. After Canaseraga it continued for twelve miles, right into Portageville and the Falls, and even on to Warsaw and East Aurora, some forty miles farther, as we found out later. Following it we skirted a hi
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CHAPTER XX THE CAPITAL OF THE FRA
CHAPTER XX THE CAPITAL OF THE FRA
Next morning it was raining, and to pass the time before breakfast I examined a large packet of photographs which Speed had left with me the night before—mementoes of that celebrated pioneer venture which had for its object the laying out of the new Lincoln Highway from New York to San Francisco. We had already en route heard so much of this trip that by now we were fairly familiar with it. It had been organized by a very wealthy manufacturer, and he and his very good looking young wife had been
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CHAPTER XXI BUFFALO OLD AND NEW
CHAPTER XXI BUFFALO OLD AND NEW
We had traveled now between six and seven hundred miles, and but for a short half mile between Nicholsen and New Milford, Pennsylvania, we could scarcely say that we had seen any bad roads—seriously impeding ones. To be sure, we had sought only the best ones in most cases, not always, and there were those patches of state road, cut up by heavy hauling, which we had to skirt; but all things considered, the roads so far had been wonderful. From East Aurora into Buffalo there was a solid, smooth, r
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CHAPTER XXII ALONG THE ERIE SHORE
CHAPTER XXII ALONG THE ERIE SHORE
If anyone doubts that this is fast becoming one of the most interesting lands in the world, let him motor from Buffalo to Detroit along the shore of Lake Erie, mile after mile, over a solid, vitrified brick road fifteen feet wide at the least, and approximately three hundred miles long. As a matter of fact, the vitrified brick road of this description appears to be seizing the imagination of the middle west, and the onslaught of the motor and its owner is making every town and hamlet desirous of
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CHAPTER XXIII THE APPROACH TO ERIE
CHAPTER XXIII THE APPROACH TO ERIE
Beyond the Tackawanna Steel Works there was a lake beach with thousands of people bathing and sausage and lemonade venders hawking their wares (I couldn’t resist buying one “hot dog”); and after that a long line, miles it seemed to me, of sumptuous country places facing the lake, their roofs and gables showing through the trees; then the lake proper with not much interruption of view for a while; and then a detour, and then a flat, open country road, oiled until it was black, and then a white ma
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CHAPTER XXIV THE WRECKAGE OF A STORM
CHAPTER XXIV THE WRECKAGE OF A STORM
The next day was another of travel in a hot sun over a country that in part lacked charm, in other parts was idyllically beautiful. We should have reached Sandusky and even the Indiana line by night, if we had been traveling as we expected. But to begin with, we made a late start, did not get out of Erie until noon, and that for various reasons,—a late rising, a very good breakfast and therefore a long one, a shave, a search for picture cards and what not. Our examination of the wreck made by th
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CHAPTER XXV CONNEAUT
CHAPTER XXV CONNEAUT
More splendid lake road beyond Erie, though we were constantly running into detours which took us through sections dreadful to contemplate. The next place of any importance was the city of Conneaut, Ohio, which revealed one form of mechanical advance I had never dreamed existed. Conneaut being “contagious,” as Philosopher Dooley used to say, to the coal fields of Pennsylvania—hard and soft—and incidentally (by water) to the iron and copper mines “up Superior way” in northern Michigan, a kind of
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CHAPTER XXVI THE GAY LIFE OF THE LAKE SHORE
CHAPTER XXVI THE GAY LIFE OF THE LAKE SHORE
Then came Ashtabula with another such scene as that at Conneaut, only somewhat more picturesque, since the road lay on high ground and we had a most striking view of the lake, with a world of coal cars waiting to be unloaded into ships, and ships and cranes and great moving derricks which formed a kind of filigree of iron in the distance with all the delicacy of an etching. These coal and iron towns of Ohio were as like in their way as the larger manufacturing centers of the East in theirs. Comi
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CHAPTER XXVII A SUMMER STORM AND SOME COMMENTS ON THE PICTURE POSTCARD
CHAPTER XXVII A SUMMER STORM AND SOME COMMENTS ON THE PICTURE POSTCARD
Shortly after leaving Ashtabula we ran into a storm—one of those fine, windy, dusty, tree-groaning rains that come up simply and magnificently and make you feel that you are going to be blown into kingdom come and struck by lightning en route. As we sped through great aisles of trees and through little towns all bare to our view through their open doors, as though they had not a thing to conceal or a marauder to fear, the wind began to rise and the trees to swish and whistle, and by the glare of
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CHAPTER XXVIII IN CLEVELAND
CHAPTER XXVIII IN CLEVELAND
The next morning we set off under grey, lowery clouds, over the shore road to Cleveland, which proved better than that between Erie and Painesville, having no breaks and being as smooth as a table. At one place we had to stop in an oatfield where the grain had been newly cut and shocked, to see if we could still jump over the shocks as in days of yore, this being a true test, according to Speed, as to whether one was in a fit condition to live eighty years, and also whether one had ever been a t
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CHAPTER XXIX THE FLAT LANDS OF OHIO
CHAPTER XXIX THE FLAT LANDS OF OHIO
But now Cleveland by no means moved me as it once had. Not that there was anything wrong with Cleveland. The change was in me, no doubt—a septicæmia which makes things look different in middle life. We breakfasted at a rather attractive looking restaurant which graced a very lively outlying corner, where a most stately and perfect featured young woman cashier claimed our almost undivided attention. (Hail, Eros!) And then we sped on to the Hollenden, an hotel which I recalled as being the best in
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CHAPTER XXX OSTEND PURGED OF SIN
CHAPTER XXX OSTEND PURGED OF SIN
At Vermilion the sun suddenly burst forth once more, clear and warm from a blanket of grey, and the whole world looked different and much more alluring. Speed arrived with the car just when we had finished luncheon, and we had the pleasure of sitting outside and feeling thoroughly warm and gay while he ate. Betimes Franklin commented on the probable character of the life in a community like this. He was of the conviction that it never rose above a certain dead level of mediocrity—however charmin
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CHAPTER XXXI WHEN HOPE HOPPED HIGH
CHAPTER XXXI WHEN HOPE HOPPED HIGH
It is Anatole France, I think, who says somewhere that “robbery is to be condoned; the result of robbery respected.” Even so, listen to this story. We came into this hotel at eleven P. M. or thereabouts. Franklin, who is good at bargaining, or thinks he is, sallied up to the desk and asked for two rooms with bath, and an arrangement whereby our chauffeur could be entertained for less—the custom. There was a convention of some kind in town—traveling salesmen in certain lines, I believe—and all bu
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CHAPTER XXXII THE FRONTIER OF INDIANA
CHAPTER XXXII THE FRONTIER OF INDIANA
To me, therefore, this region was holy Ganges—Mecca, Medina—the blessed isles of the West. In approaching Bowling Green, Ohio, I was saying to myself how strange it will be to see H—— again, should he chance to be there! What an interesting talk I will have with him! And after Bowling Green how interesting to pass through Grand Rapids, even though there was not a soul whom I would wish to greet again! Toledo was too far north to bother about. When we entered Bowling Green, however, by a smooth m
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CHAPTER XXXIII ACROSS THE BORDER OF BOYLAND
CHAPTER XXXIII ACROSS THE BORDER OF BOYLAND
As we were looking in this same window, I saw a man who looked exactly like a man who used to be a lawyer politician in Warsaw, a small town lawyer politician, such as you find in every town of the kind, pettifogging their lives away, but doing it unconsciously, you may well believe. This one had that peculiar something about him which marks the citizen who would like to be a tribune of the people but lacks the capacity. His clothes, nondescript, durable garments, were worn with the air of one w
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CHAPTER XXXIV A MIDDLE WESTERN CROWD
CHAPTER XXXIV A MIDDLE WESTERN CROWD
Though a city of seventyfive thousand, or thereabouts, Fort Wayne made scarcely any impression upon me. Now that I was back in Indiana and a few miles from my native heath, as it were, I expected, or perhaps I only half imagined, that I might gain impressions and sensations commensurate with my anticipations. But I didn’t. This was the city, or town, as it was then, to which my parents had originally traveled after their marriage in Dayton, Ohio, and where my father worked in a woolen mill as fo
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CHAPTER XXXV WARSAW AT LAST!
CHAPTER XXXV WARSAW AT LAST!
Getting to Warsaw was a matter of an hour or so at most from here. I think my principal sensation on entering Indiana and getting thus far was one of disappointment that nothing had happened, and worse, nothing could happen. From here on it was even worse. It is all very well to dream of revisiting your native soil and finding at least traces, if no more, of your early world, but I tell you it is a dismal and painful business. Life is a shifting and changing thing. Not only your own thoughts and
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CHAPTER XXXVI WARSAW IN 1884-6
CHAPTER XXXVI WARSAW IN 1884-6
And right here I began to ponder on the mystery of association and contact, the chemistry and physics of transference by which a sky or a scene becomes a delicious presence in the human brain or the human blood, carried around for years in that mystic condition described as “a memory” and later transferred, perhaps, or not, by conversation, paint, music, or the written word, to the brains of others, there to be carried around again and possibly extended in ever widening and yet fading circles in
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CHAPTER XXXVII THE OLD HOUSE
CHAPTER XXXVII THE OLD HOUSE
Dora Yaisley and her sister, insofar as I could learn this day, had fared no better than some of the others. Indeed, life had slipped along for all and made my generation, or many of the figures in it, at least, seem like the decaying leaves that one finds under the new green shoots and foliage of a later spring. Dora had married a lawyer from some other town, so my gossip believed, but later, talking to another old resident and one who remembered me, I was told that she had run away and turned
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CHAPTER XXXVIII DAY DREAMS
CHAPTER XXXVIII DAY DREAMS
But I could not bear to tear myself away so swiftly. I went round to the side door on the north side, where often of a morning, before going to school, or of an afternoon, after school, or of a Saturday or Sunday, I was wont to sit and rock and look out at the grass and trees. As I see it now, I must have been a very peculiar youth, a dreamer, for I loved to sit and dream all the while. Just outside this door was the one best patch of lawn we possessed, very smooth and green. In late October and
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CHAPTER XXXIX THE KISS OF FAIR GUSTA
CHAPTER XXXIX THE KISS OF FAIR GUSTA
Standing in this room, looking at the place where our open fire used to be, but which was now closed up and a cooking stove substituted, and at the window where I often sat of a morning “studying” history, physical geography, geography, physiology, botany, and waiting for breakfast, or if it were afternoon and after school, for dinner, I asked myself, if I could, would I restore it all—and my answer was unhesitatingly yes. I have seen a great many things in my time, done a lot of dull ones, suff
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CHAPTER XL OLD HAUNTS AND OLD DREAMS
CHAPTER XL OLD HAUNTS AND OLD DREAMS
But the school next door gave me the cruellest shock of all. I went into it because, it being mid August, the preliminary autumn repairs were under way and the place was open. Workingmen were scattered about—carpenters, painters, glaziers. I had no idea how sound my memory was for these old scenes until I stepped inside the door and saw the closets where we used to hang our hats and coats on our nails and walked up the stairs to the seventh grade room, which is the one in which I had been placed
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CHAPTER XLI BILL ARNOLD AND HIS BROOD
CHAPTER XLI BILL ARNOLD AND HIS BROOD
West of Warsaw about twelve miles lies the town of Silver Lake, on a small picturesque lake of the same name—a place to which, during our residence at Warsaw, Ed and I more than once repaired to visit a ne’er-do-well uncle and his wife, the latter my mother’s half sister. This family was so peculiar and so indifferent to all worldly success and precedence, so utterly trifling and useless, that I am tempted to tell about them even though they do not properly belong in this narrative. William or “
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CHAPTER XLII IN THE CHAUTAUQUA BELT
CHAPTER XLII IN THE CHAUTAUQUA BELT
The centre of Indiana is a region of calm and simplicity, untroubled to a large extent, as I have often felt, by the stormy emotions and distresses which so often affect other parts of America and the world. It is a region of smooth and fertile soil, small, but comfortable homes, large grey or red barns, the American type of windmill, the American silo, the American motor car—a happy land of churches, Sunday schools, public schools and a general faith in God and humanity as laid down by the Pres
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CHAPTER XLIII THE MYSTERY OF COINCIDENCE
CHAPTER XLIII THE MYSTERY OF COINCIDENCE
As we were starting for Wabash from here, a distance of twenty miles or so, and at ten o’clock in the morning, it began to sprinkle. Now the night before, as we were entering this place, Franklin had been telling me that as he had gone through here the year before about this time in the morning, homebound from a small lake in this vicinity, some defect in the insulation of the wiring had caused a small fire which threatened to burn the car. They detected it in time by smelling burning rubber. In
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CHAPTER XLIV THE FOLKS AT CARMEL
CHAPTER XLIV THE FOLKS AT CARMEL
The run to Carmel, Franklin’s home, was not long—say, forty miles—and we made it in a downpour and were silent most of the way. It was so dark and damp and gloomy that no one seemed to want to talk, and yet I took a melancholy comfort in considering how absolutely cheerless the day was. I could not help reflecting, as we sped along, how at its worst life persistently develops charm, so that if one were compelled to live always in so gloomy a world, one would shortly become inured to it, or the r
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CHAPTER XLV AN INDIANA VILLAGE
CHAPTER XLV AN INDIANA VILLAGE
While we were sitting on the veranda—Franklin’s father and myself—Speed came by on his way down town, and Mr. Booth, having gathered a sense of approval, perhaps, for the pornographic document from my attitude, drew it out and showed it to him. “Gee!” exclaimed Speed, after reading it. “I must get some of those.” Soon after, Franklin came out and, seeing the document and reading it, seemed troubled over the fact that his father should be interested in such a thing. I think he felt that it threw
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CHAPTER XLVI A SENTIMENTAL INTERLUDE
CHAPTER XLVI A SENTIMENTAL INTERLUDE
As we had planned it, we were to stay in Carmel only three days—from Friday until Monday—and then race south to Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Sullivan, Evansville, French Lick, Bloomington, back to Indianapolis, and after a day or night at Carmel for preparation, I might depart as I had planned, or I could stay here. Franklin suggested that I make his home my summering place—my room was mine for weeks if I cared to use it. Actually up to now I had been anxious to get on and have the whole trip done
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CHAPTER XLVII INDIANAPOLIS AND A GLIMPSE OF FAIRYLAND
CHAPTER XLVII INDIANAPOLIS AND A GLIMPSE OF FAIRYLAND
Indianapolis, the first city on our way south and west, was another like Cleveland, Buffalo, Toledo, only without the advantage of a great lake shore which those cities possess. It is boasted as one of the principal railroad centers of America, or the world. Good, but what of it? Once you have seen the others, it has nothing to teach you, and I grow tired of the mere trade city devoid of any plan or charm of natural surroundings. The best of the European cities, or of later years, Chicago and Ne
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CHAPTER XLVIII THE SPIRIT OF TERRE HAUTE
CHAPTER XLVIII THE SPIRIT OF TERRE HAUTE
Aside from these perfervid memories in connection with it, Terre Haute was not so different from Fort Wayne, or even Sandusky, minus the lake. It had the usual main street (Wabash Avenue) lighted with many lamps, the city hall, postoffice, principal hotel, and theatres; but I will say this for it, it seemed more vital than most of these other places—more like Wilkes-Barré or Binghamton. I asked Franklin about this, and he said that he felt it had exceptional vitality—something different. “I can’
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CHAPTER XLIX TERRE HAUTE AFTER THIRTYSEVEN YEARS
CHAPTER XLIX TERRE HAUTE AFTER THIRTYSEVEN YEARS
For good, bad, or indifferent, whether it had been painful or pleasant, the youth time that I had spent in Terre Haute had gone and would never come back again. My mother, as I remembered her then—and when is a mother more of a mother than in one’s babyhood?—was by now merely a collection of incidents and pains and sweetnesses lingering in a few minds! And my father, earnest, serious-minded German, striving to do the best he knew, was gone also—all of thirteen years. Those brothers and sisters w
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CHAPTER L A LUSH, EGYPTIAN LAND
CHAPTER L A LUSH, EGYPTIAN LAND
The next morning, after purchasing our customary picture cards, we were about to achieve an early start when I suddenly remembered that I had not tried to find the one man I really wanted to see—a man for whom my father had worked in years gone by, the son of a mill owner who after his father’s death with a brother had inherited this mill and employed my father to run it. Although he was very much younger than my father at that time, there had always been a bond of sympathy and understanding bet
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CHAPTER LI ANOTHER “OLD HOME”
CHAPTER LI ANOTHER “OLD HOME”
Be that as it may, it was much of this and related matters that I was ruminating as I came through this region. But I could find no traces of what had formerly been. There was no red house anywhere—repainted probably. The coal mine, which I had remembered as being visible from this section, was not to be seen. Later I learned that it had been worked out and abandoned. The coal had all been dug out. Many new small houses in orderly, compact rows now made streets here. We had Bert follow this road
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CHAPTER LII HAIL, INDIANA!
CHAPTER LII HAIL, INDIANA!
Going out of Sullivan I made an observation, based on the sight of many men and women, sitting on doorsteps or by open windows or riding by in buggies or automobiles, or standing in yards or fields—that a lush, fecund land of this kind produces a lush, fecund population—and I think this was well demonstrated here. There was a certain plumpness about many people that I saw—men and women—a ruddy roundness of flesh and body, which indicated as much. I saw mothers on doorsteps or lawns with kicking,
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CHAPTER LIII FISHING IN THE BUSSERON AND A COUNTY FAIR
CHAPTER LIII FISHING IN THE BUSSERON AND A COUNTY FAIR
It was just outside of Sullivan, a mile or two or three, that we encountered the Busseron, the first stream in which, as a boy, I ever fished. The strangeness of that experience comes back to me even now—the wonder, the beauty of a shallow stream, pooled in places, its banks sentineled by tall trees, its immediate shoreline ornamented by arrogant weeds and bushes blooming violently. The stillness of the woods, the novelty of a long bamboo pole and a white line and a red and green cork; a hook, w
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CHAPTER LIV THE FERRY AT DECKER
CHAPTER LIV THE FERRY AT DECKER
Is it an illusion of romance, merely, or is it true that, in spite of the fact that the French, governmentally speaking, have been out of old Vincennes—the very region of it—for over a hundred and fifty years, and that nearly all we know of the town of twenty thousand has come into existence in the last fifty years, there still exists in it, hovers over it, the atmosphere of old France? Do we see, always, what we would like to see, or is there something in this matter of predisposition, the plan
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CHAPTER LV A MINSTREL BROTHER
CHAPTER LV A MINSTREL BROTHER
But we didn’t reach Evansville, for all our declaration and pretence of our need. A delightful run along a delightful road, overhung with trees (and now that we were out of the valley between the two rivers, cut between high banks of tree shaded earth), brought us to Princeton, a town so bright and clean looking that we were persuaded, almost against our wishes, to pass the night here. Some towns have just so much personality. They speak to you of pleasant homes and pleasant people—a genial atmo
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CHAPTER LVI EVANSVILLE
CHAPTER LVI EVANSVILLE
But I cannot possibly hope to convey the delicious sting life had in it for me at this time as a spectacle, a dream, something in which to bathe and be enfolded, as only youth and love know life. Not Evansville alone but life itself was beautiful—the sky, the trees, the sun, the visible scene. People hurrying to and fro or idling in the shade, the sound of church bells, of whistles, a wide stretch of common. Getting up in the morning, going to bed at night. The stars, the winds, hunger, thirst,
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CHAPTER LVII THE BACKWOODS OF INDIANA
CHAPTER LVII THE BACKWOODS OF INDIANA
Stopping to look at the old school door I went in. I recalled how, once upon a time, when we were first starting to school here, we tried to induce Ed to enter, he being the youngest and very shy as to education. But he refused to go and ran back home. The next day my sister Sylvia and I and Tillie took him, but at the gate he once more balked and refused to enter. It was a dreadful situation, for already we others had found the discipline here to be very stern. Perhaps it was Ed’s subconscious
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CHAPTER LVIII FRENCH LICK
CHAPTER LVIII FRENCH LICK
After passing through Jasper and Dubois Counties, where we had seen more good automobiles, good roads and brisk life than we had since the very best sections of northern Indiana and Ohio, our luck in roads left off. Around the courthouse square at Jasper we had seen machines of the best make, and parties of well to do people driving; but on our road to Kellerville and Norton and French Lick we passed nothing but rumbling wagons and some few, not very good, cars. And now the landscape changed rap
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CHAPTER LIX A COLLEGE TOWN
CHAPTER LIX A COLLEGE TOWN
Bloomington, as we sped into it, did not seem much changed from the last time I had laid eyes upon it, twentyfive years before, only now, having seen the more picturesque country to the south of it, I did not think the region in which it lay seemed as broken and diversified as it did the year I first came to it. Then I had seen only the more or less level regions of northern and southern Indiana and the territory about Chicago, and so Bloomington had seemed quite remarkable, physically. Now it s
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CHAPTER LX “BOOSTER DAY” AND A MEMORY
CHAPTER LX “BOOSTER DAY” AND A MEMORY
Entering Bloomington this afternoon, the memories of all my old aches and pains were exceedingly dim. We say to ourselves at many particular times, “I will never forget this,” or, “The pain of this will endure forever,” but, alas! even our most treasured pains and sufferings escape us. We are compelled to admit that the memory of that which rankled so is very dim. Marsh fires, all of us. We are made to glow by the heat and radiance of certain days, but we fade—and we vanish. Nevertheless, enteri
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CHAPTER LXI THE END OF THE JOURNEY
CHAPTER LXI THE END OF THE JOURNEY
We sped north in the gathering dusk, and I was glad to go. It was as though I had been to see something that I had better not have seen—a house that is tenantless, a garden that is broken down and ravished and run to weeds and wild vines, naked and open to the moon—a place of which people say in whispers that it is haunted. Yes, this whole region was haunted for me. I took small interest in the once pleasing and even dramatic ravine where, in my college year, I had so often rambled, and which th
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