That fall she read a great many newspapers and magazines and The Beloved Vagabond, by W. J. Locke. She began to hate the Germans that were destroying art and culture, civilization, Louvain. She waited for a letter from Jerry but a letter never came.
One afternoon she was coming out of the office a little late, who should be standing in the hall by the elevator but Joe. “Hello, Janey,” he said. “Gee, you look like a million dollars.” She was so glad to see him she could hardly speak, could only squeeze his arm tight. “I just got paid off . . . I thought I better come up here and see the folks before I spent all my jack . . . I’ll take you out and set you up to a big feed an’ a show if you want . . .” He was sunburned and his shoulders were broader than when he left. His big hands and knotty wrists stuck out of a newlooking blue suit that was too tight for him at the waist. The sleeves were too short too.
“Did you go to Georgetown?” she asked him.
“Yare.”
“Did you go up to the cemetery?”
“Mommer wanted me to go, but what’s the use?”
“Poor mother, she’s so sentimental about it . . .”
They walked along. Joe didn’t say anything. It was a hot day. Dust blew down the street.
Janey said: “Joe, dear, you must tell me all about your adventures . . . You must have been to some wonderful places. It’s thrilling having a brother in the navy.”
“Janey, pipe down about the navy, will yer? . . . I don’t want to hear about it. I deserted in B A, see, and shipped out east on a limey, on an English boat . . . That’s a dog’s life too, but anything’s better than the U.S.N.”
“But, Joe . . .”
“Ain’t nothin’ to worry about . . .”
“But, Joe, what happened?”
“You won’t say a word to a livin’ soul, will you, Janey? You see I got in a scrap with a petty officer tried to ride me too damn hard. I socked him in the jaw an’ kinda mauled him, see, an’ things looked pretty bad for me, so I made tracks for the tall timber. . . . That’s all.” “Oh, Joe, and I was hoping you’d get to be an officer.”
“A gob get to be an officer . . . ? A fat chance.”
She took him to the Mabillion, where Jerry had taken her. At the door Joe peered in critically. “Is this the swellest joint you know, Janey? I got a hundred iron men in my pocket.” “Oh, this is dreadfully expensive . . . It’s a French restaurant. And you oughtn’t to spend all your money on me.” “Who the hell else do you want me to spend it on?” Joe sat down at a table and Janey went back to ’phone Alice that she wouldn’t be home till late. When she got back to the table, Joe was pulling some little packages wrapped in red and greenstriped tissuepaper out of his pockets. “Oh, what’s that?” “You open ’em, Janey . . . It’s yours.” She opened the packages. They were some lace collars and an embroidered tablecloth. “The lace is Irish and that other’s from Madeira . . . I had a Chinese vase for you too but some son of a bit . . . son of a gun snitched it on me.” “That was awful sweet of you to think of me . . . I appreciate it.” Joe fidgeted with his knife and fork. “We gotta git a move on, Janey, or we’ll be late for the show . . . I got tickets for ‘The Garden of Allah.’”
When they came out of the Belasco onto Lafayette Square that was cool and quiet with a rustle of wind in the trees Joe said, “Ain’t so much; I seen a real sandstorm onct,” and Janey felt bad about her brother being so rough and uneducated. The play made her feel like when she was little, full of uneasy yearn for foreign countries and a smell of incense and dark eyes and dukes in tailcoats tossing money away on the gaming tables of Monte Carlo, monks and the mysterious east. If Joe was only a little better educated he’d be able to really appreciate all the interesting ports he visited. He left her on the stoop of the house on Massachusetts Avenue. “Where are you going to stay, Joe?” she asked. “I guess I’ll shove along back to New York an’ pick up a berth. . . . Sailoring’s a pretty good graft with this war on.” “You mean tonight?” He nodded. “I wish I had a bed for you but I couldn’t very well on account of Alice.” “Naw, I doan want to hang round this dump . . . I jus’ came up to say hello.” “Well, goodnight, Joe, be sure and write.” “Goodnight, Janey, I sure will.” She watched him walk off down the street until he went out of sight in the shadows of the trees. It made her unhappy to see him go all alone down the shadowed street. It wasn’t quite the shambling walk of a sailor, but he looked like a working man all right. She sighed and went into the house. Alice was waiting up for her. She showed Alice the lace and they tried on the collars and agreed that it was very pretty and quite valuable.
Janey and Alice had a good time that winter. They took to smoking cigarettes and serving tea to their friends Sunday afternoons. They read novels by Arnold Bennett and thought of themselves as bachelor girls. They learned to play bridge and shortened their skirts. At Christmas Janey got a hundred dollar bonus and a raise to twenty a week from Dreyfus and Carroll. She began telling Alice that she was an old stickinthemud to stay on at Mrs. Robinson’s. For herself she began to have ambitions of a business career. She wasn’t afraid of men any more and kidded back and forth with young clerks in the elevator about things that would have made her blush the year before. When Johnny Edwards or Morris Byer took her out to the movies in the evening she didn’t mind having them put their arms around her, or having them kiss her once or twice while she was fumbling in her bag for her latchkey. She knew just how to catch a boy’s hand by the wrist and push it away without making any scene when he tried to get too intimate. When Alice used to talk warningly about men having just one idea, she’d laugh and say, “Oh, they’re not so smart.” She discovered that just a little peroxide in the water when she washed her hair made it blonder and took away that mousey look. Sometimes when she was getting ready to go out in the evening she’d put a speck of rouge on her little finger and rub it very carefully on her lips.
The Camera Eye (15)
in the mouth of the Schuylkill Mr. Pierce came on board ninety-six years old and sound as a dollar He’d been officeboy in Mr. Pierce’s office about the time He’d enlisted and missed the battle of Antietam on account of having dysentery so bad and Mr. Pierce’s daughter Mrs. Black called Him Jack and smoked little brown cigarettes and we played Fra Diavolo on the phonograph and everybody was very jolly when Mr. Pierce tugged at his dundrearies and took a toddy and Mrs. Black lit cigarettes one after another and they talked about old days and about how His father had wanted Him to be a priest and His poor mother had had such trouble getting together enough to eat for that family of greedy boys and His father was a silent man and spoke mostly Portugee and when he didn’t like the way a dish was cooked that came on the table he’d pick it up and sling it out of the window and He wanted to go to sea and studied law at the University and in Mr. Pierce’s office and He sang
Oh who can tell the joy he feels
as o’er the foam his vessel reels
and He mixed up a toddy and Mr. Pierce pulled at his dundrearies and everybody was very jolly and they talked about the schooner Mary Wentworth and how Colonel Hodgeson and Father Murphy looked so hard on the cheery glass and He mixed up a toddy and Mr. Pierce pulled at his dundrearies and Mrs. Black smoked the little brown cigarettes one after another and everybody was very jolly with Fra Diavolo playing on the phonograph and the harbor smell and the ferryboats and the Delaware all silverripply used to be all marshes over there where we used to go duckshooting and He sang Vittoria with the phonograph
and Father Murphy got a terrible attack of gout and had to be carried off on a shutter and Mr. Pierce ninety six years old and sound as a dollar took a sip of toddy and tugged at his dundrearies silveryripply and the harborsmell came on the fresh wind and smoke from the shipyards in Camden and lemon rye sugary smell of toddy-glasses and everybody was very jolly
Newsreel XII
GREEKS IN BATTLE FLEE BEFORE COPS
Passengers In Sleeping Car Aroused At point of Gun
Flow, river, flow
> Down to the sea
Bright stream bring my loved one
Home to me
FIGHTING AT TORREON
at the end of the last campaign, writes Champ Clark, Missouri’s brilliant Congressman, I had about collapsed from overwork, nervous tension, loss of sleep and appetite and constant speaking, but three bottles of Electric Bitters made me allright
Roosevelt Is Made Leader Of New Party
BRYAN’S THROAT CUT BY CLARK; AIDS PARKER
True, dear one, true
I’m trying hard to be
But hear me say
It’s a very very long long way
From the banks of the Seine
the crime for which Richardson was sentenced to die in the electric chair was the confessed murder of his former sweetheart 19 year old Avis Linnell of Hyannis a pupil in the New England Conservatory of Music at Boston.
The girl stood in the way of the minister’s marriage to a society girl and heiress of Brookline both through an engagement that still existed between the two and because of a condition in which Miss Linnell found herself.
The girl was deceived into taking a poison given her by Richardson which she believed would remedy that condition and died in her room at the Young Women’s Christian Association.
ROOSEVELT TELLS FIRST TIME HOW US
GOT PANAMA
100,000 PEOPLE UNABLE TO ENTER
BIG HALL ECHO CHEERING
at dinnertime the Governor said he hadn’t heard directly from Mr. Bryan during the day. “At the present rate of gain,” Mr. Wilson said, “After reading the results of the fifteenth ballot, I figure it’ll take about 175 more ballots to land me”
Redhaired Youth Says Stories of Easy Money Led Him to Crime
interest in the case was intensified on Dec. 20 when it became known that the ex-clergyman had mutilated himself in his cell at the Charles Street jail.
FIVE MEN DIE AFTER GETTING TO SOUTH POLE
DIAZ TRAINS HEAVY GUNS ON BUSINESS SECTION
It’s a very very long long way
From the banks of the Seine
For a girl to go and stay
On the banks of the Saskatchewan
The Boy Orator of the Platte
It was in the Chicago Convention in ’96 that the prizewinning boy orator the minister’s son whose lips had never touched liquor let out his silver voice so that it filled the gigantic hall, filled the ears of the plain people:
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the convention:
I would be presumptuous indeed
to present myself against
the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened, if this
were a mere measuring of abilities;
but this is not a contest between persons.
The humblest citizen in all the land,
when clad in the armor of a righteous cause,
is stronger than all the hosts of error.
I come to speak to you in defence of a cause as holy as the cause of
Liberty . . .
a youngish bigmouthed man in a white tie
barnstormer, exhorter, evangelist,
his voice charmed the mortgageridden farmers of the great plains, rang through weatherboarded schoolhouses in the Missouri Valley, was sweet in the ears of small storekeepers hungry for easy credit, melted men’s innards like the song of a thrush or a mockin’ in the gray quiet before sunup, or a sudden soar in winter wheat or a bugler playing taps and the flag flying;
silver tongue of the plain people:
. . . the man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer;
the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis;
the merchant in a crossroads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York;
the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who begins in the spring and toils all summer, and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the board of trade and bets upon the price of grain;
the miners who go down a thousand feet in the earth
or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs
and bring forth from their hidingplaces
the precious metals
to be poured in the channels of trade,
are as much business men
as the few financial magnates
who
in a back room
corner the money of the world.
The hired man and the country attorney sat up and listened,
this was big talk for the farmer who’d mortgaged his crop to buy fertilizer, big talk for the smalltown hardware man, groceryman, feed and corn merchant, undertaker, truck-gardener . . .
Having behind us
the producing masses
of this nation and the world,
supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests,
and the toilers everywhere,
we will answer
their demand
for a gold standard
by saying to them:
You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns,
you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
They roared their lungs out (crown of thorns and cross of gold)
carried him round the hall on their shoulders, hugged him, loved him, named their children after him, nominated him for president,
boy orator of the Platte,
silver tongue of the plain people.
But McArthur and Forrest, two Scotchmen in the Rand, had invented the cyanide process for extracting gold from ore, South Africa flooded the gold market; there was no need for a prophet of silver.
The silver tongue chanted on out of the big mouth, chanting Pacifism, Prohibition, Fundamentalism,
nibbling radishes on the lecture platform,
drinking grapejuice and water,
gorging big cornbelt meals;
Bryan grew gray in the hot air of Chautauqua tents, in the applause, the handshakes, the backpattings, the cigarsmoky air of committeerooms at Democratic conventions, a silver tongue in a big mouth.
In Dayton he dreamed of turning the trick again, of setting back the clocks for the plain people, branding, flaying, making a big joke
of Darwinism and the unbelieving outlook of city folks, scientists, foreigners with beards and monkey morals.
In Florida he’d spoken every day at noon on a float under an awning selling lots for Coral Gables . . . he had to speak, to feel the drawling voices hush, feel the tense approving ears, the gust of handclaps.
Why not campaign again through the length and
breadth to set up again the tottering word for the plain
people who wanted the plain word of God?
(crown of thorns and cross of gold)
the plain prosperous comfortable word of God
for plain prosperous comfortable midamerican folks?
He was a big eater. It was hot. A stroke killed him.
Three days later down in Florida the company delivered
the electric horse he’d ordered to exercise on
when he’d seen the electric horse the president
exercised on in the White House.
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it was hot as a bakeoven going through the canal from Delaware City and turtles sunning themselves tumbled off into the thick ocher ripple we made in passing and He was very gay and She was feeling well for once and He made us punch of tea and mint and a little Saint Croix rum but it was hot as the hinges of Delaware and we saw scarlet tanagers and redwing blackbirds and kingfishers cackled wrathfully as the yellow wave from the white bow rustled the reeds and the cattails and the sweetflag and He talked about lawreform and what politicians were like and where were the Good Men in this country and said Why thinking the way I think I couldn’t get elected to be notary public in a
ny county in the state not with all the money in the world no not even dogcatcher