A TEMPLE MADE WITH HANDS
I
The Dwelling-place of Faith, Hope, and Charity
I had walked twelve miles before noon. Then I had eaten four slices of bread and butter on merciful doorsteps. At four-thirty, having completed twenty-one miles, I entered the richest village in the United States, a village that is located in New Jersey. I was so weary I was ready to sleep in the gutter, and did not care if the wagons ran over me. I should have walked through to the green fields before I looked for hospitality. I knew that the well-meant deeds of the city cannot equal the kindness of the most commonplace farm-hand. Yet I lingered.
I purchased a feast of beefsteak and onions at an obscure Jewish restaurant and felt myself once more a man. But it was now too late to leave town. The rule of the country is—one must ask for his night’s lodging before five o’clock. After that, things are growing dark, and people may be afraid of you.
After paying for beefsteak and onions, I had twenty-five cents. This twenty-five cents was all that remained after a winter’s lecturing on art and poetry in Manhattan. I am satisfied that the extra money, over and above all paid debts, brought me some of the ill-luck of the night. As I have before observed, money is a hoodoo on the road. Until a man is penniless he is not stripped for action.
A sign at the lunch-counter advertised: “Furnished rooms, fifty cents.”
I asked the proprietor to cut the price. He dodged the issue. “Say, why don’t you go up there to the mission? They will sell you a good bed cheap.”
“For a quarter?”
“Something like that.”
“Show me the place.”
As of old the Jew pointed out the way of salvation. The Gentile followed it and reached the dwelling-place of Faith, Hope, and Charity.
“What do you want?” The questioner, evidently in charge of the place, was accoutred in stage laboring-man style. Maybe his paraphernalia was intended to put him on a level with wayfarers. He wore a slouch hat, a soft shirt, and no necktie. His clothes had the store freshness still. They looked rather presumptuous in that neat, well-stocked reading room.
“I want a cheap bed.”
“We do not sell beds.”
“I was told you did.”
“We give them away.”
“All right.”
“But you have to work.”
“Very well.”
“Do you want to leave early in the morning?” (The place was evidently a half-way house for tramps.)
“Yes. I want to leave early in the morning.”
“Then you will have to split kindling two hours to-night.”
“Show me the kindling.”
II
Splitting Kindling
In the basement I throned myself on one block while I chopped kindling on another. Before me, piled to the first story, was a cellarful of wood, the record of my predecessors in toil. I gathered that the corporal’s guard of the unemployed who stayed at the mission that night, and had been there two or three days, had finished their day’s assignment of splitting. They completely surrounded me, questioned me with the greatest curiosity, and put me down as a terrific liar, for I answered every question with simple truth.
As soon as the melodramatic workingman-boss went up stairs, one of them said, “Don’t work so fast. It’s only a matter of form this late at night. They want to see if you are willing, that’s all.”
I chopped a little faster for this advice. Not that I was out of humor with the advisers,—though I should have been, for they were box-car tramps.
One of them, having an evil and a witty eye, said, “If I was goin’ west like you, I’d start about ten o’clock to-night and be near Buffalo before morning.”
Another, a mild nobody, professed himself a miller. He told what a wonderful trick it was to say, “Leddy, I’m too tired to work till I eat,” and after eating, to walk away.
The next, a carriage painter of battered gentility, told endless stories of the sprees that had destroyed him. Another, a white frog with a bald head and gray mustache, quite won my heart. He said, “Wait till you get a nice warm bath after service. Then you’ll sleep good.”
To my weary and addled brain the mission was like one of those beautiful resting-places in Pilgrim’s Progress. It became my religion, just to split kindling. I failed to apprehend what infinitesimal nobodies these fellows around me were. I should have disliked them more.
The modern tramp is not a tramp, he is a speed-maniac. Being unable to afford luxuries, he must still be near something mechanical and hasty, so he uses a dirty box-car to whirl from one railroad-yard to another. He has no destination but the cinder-pile by the water-tank. The landscape hurrying by in one indistinguishable mass and the roaring of the car-wheels in his ears are the ends of life to him. He is no back-to-nature crank. He is a most highly specialized modern man. All to keep going, he risks disease from these religious missions, from foul box-cars, and foul comrades. He risks accident every hour. He is always liable to the cruelty of conductor or brakeman and to murder by companions.
He runs fewer risks in the country, yet his aversion to the country is profound. He knows all that I know about country hospitality, that it can be purchased by the merest grain of courtesy. Yet most of the farm-people that entertained me had not seen a tramp for months.
To account for some of the happenings of this tale I will only add that a speed-maniac at either end of the social scale is not necessarily a hustler, personally. But in one way or another he is sure to be shallow and artificial, the grotesque, nervous victim of machinery. And a “Mission,” an institution built by speed-maniacs who use automobiles for speed-maniacs who use box-cars, is bound to be absurd beyond words to tell it.
III
The Sermon on the Mount
I loved all men that night, even the fellow in melodramatic laboring-man costume, who appeared after two hours to drive us animals up stairs into one corner of the chapel, where a dozen of our kind had already assembled from somewhere.
On the far side of that chapel sat the money-fed. The aisle was a great gulf between them and us. I smiled across the gulf indulgently, imagining by what exhortations to “Come and help us in our problem” those uncomfortable persons had been assembled. An unmitigated clergyman rose to read a text.
I presume this clergyman imagined Christ wore a white tie and was on a salary promptly paid by some of our oldest families. But I share with the followers of St. Francis the vision of Christ as a man of the open road, improvident as the sparrow. I share with the followers of Tolstoi the opinion that when Christ proclaimed those uncomfortable social doctrines, he meant what he said.
The clergyman read: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
He read much more than I will quote. Here is the final passage:—
“Ye have heard how it hath been said: ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say unto you that you resist not evil. But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and to him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away.”
This Pharisee smugly assumed that he was authorized by the Deity to explain away this scripture. And he did it, as the reader has heard it done many a time.
The Pharisee was followed by a fat Scribe who tried to smile away what the other fellow had tried to argue away. The fat one then called on the assembly to bow, and exhorted the repentant to hold up their hands to be prayed for.
I held up my hand. Was I not eating the bread of the mission? And then I felt like a sinner anyway.
“Thank God,” said the fat one.
After a hymn, testimonies were called for. I felt the spirit move me, but some one had the floor. Across the gulf she stood, an exceedingly well-dressed and blindly devout sister. She glanced with a terrified shrinking at the animals she hoped to benefit. She said:—
“There has been one great difficulty in my Christian life. It came with seeking for the Spirit. Sometimes we think it has come with power, when we are simply stirred by our own selfish desires. Our works will show whether we are moved by the Spirit.”
I wanted to preach them a sermon on St. Francis. But how could I? There was still a quarter in my own pocket. Meanwhile there rose a saint with a pompadour and blocky jaws. He was distinctly inferior in social position to a great part of the saints. It was probable he had given that testimony many times. But he did not want the meeting to drag. He spake in a loud voice: “I was saved from a drunkard’s life, in this mission, eighteen years ago, and ever since, not by my own power, but by the grace of God, I have been leading a God-fearing and money-making life in this town.” That was his exact phrase, “a money-making life.” His intention was good, but he should have been more tactful. The Pharisee looked annoyed.
IV
A Screaming Farce
I advise all self-respecting citizens to skip this section. It is nothing but over-strained, shabby farce.
The throng melted. Scribe and Pharisee, Dives, Mrs. Dives, and their satellites went home to their comfortable beds. Many of the roughs on our side of the house found somewhere else to stay. The fellow dressed like a workingman in a melodrama sought the consolations of his own home. Had the last authority departed? Were we to have anarchy? The Frog, in his gentlest manner, sidled up to make friends again.
“Now you can have your nice warm bath, you two.” I looked around. There were two of us then. Beside me, fresh from a box-car was a battered scalawag. The Frog must have let him in at the last moment.
We three climbed to the bath-room.
“Wait a minute,” said the Amphibian. He disappeared. I opened my eyes, for this creature spake with a voice of authority. The box-car scalawag grinned sheepishly.
There was a scuffling overhead, a scratch and a rumble. We two looked up just in time to dodge the astonishing vision of a clothes-horse descending through a trap-door by a rope. At the upper end of the rope was the absurd bald head of our newly achieved superintendent.
“Hello, Santy Claus,” said the box-car tramp. “Whose Christmas present is this?”
The Frog shouted: “Put your shoes and hats in the corner. If you have any tobacco, put it in your shoes. Hang everything else on the clothes-horse.”
I obeyed, except that I had no tobacco. The rascal by my side had a plenty, and sawdusted the bath-room floor with some of it, and the remainder went into his foot-gear. Then we two, companions in nakedness, watched the Frog haul up our clothes out of sight. He closed the trap-door with many grunts.
Then this Amphibian, this boss, descended and entered the bath-room. He was a dry-land Amphibian. He had never taken a bath himself, but was there to superintend. He seemed to feel himself the accredited representative of all the good people behind the mission, and no doubt he was.
“Can it be possible,” I asked myself, “that they have chosen this creature to apply their Christianity?”
The Frog said to my companion: “Git in the tub.”
Then he turned on the water, regulated the temperature, and watched as though he expected one of us to steal the faucets from the wash-bowl. He threw a gruesome rag at the tramp, and allowed him to scrub himself. The creature bathing seemed well-disposed toward the idea, and had put soap on about one-third of his person when the Frog shouted: “I’ve got to get up at four-thirty.”
The scalawag took the hint and rose like Venus from the foam. He splashed off part of it, and rubbed off the rest with a towel that was a fallen sister of the wash-rag.
The Frog was evidently trying to enforce, in a literal way, regulations he did not understand. He wiped out the bath-tub most carefully with the unclean wash-rag. Then he provided the scalawag with a shirt for night-wear. The creature put it on and said:—
“Ain’t I a peach?”
He was.
The nightie was an old, heavily-starched dress-shirt, once white. Maybe it had once been worn by the Scribe or the Pharisee. But it had not been washed since. The rascal cut quite a figure as he took long steps down the corridor to bed, piloted by the hurrying Amphibian. He was a long-legged rascal, and the slivered remainders of that ancient shirt flapped about him gloriously.
I was hustled into the tub after the rascal. I was supervised after the same manner. “Now wash,” boomed the Amphibian. He threw at me the sloppy rag of my predecessor.
I threw it promptly on the floor.
“I don’t use a wash-rag,” I said.
“Hurry,” croaked the Frog. And he let the water out of the tub. He handed me the towel the scalawag had used. I had not, as a matter of fact, had a bath, and I was quite foot-sore.
“I do not want that towel,” I said.
“You’re awful fancy, aren’t you?” sneered the Frog.
Wherever I was damp, I rubbed myself dry with my bare hands, being skilled in the matter, meanwhile reflecting that there is nothing worse than a Pharisee except a creature like this. I wondered if it was too late to rouse a mob among the better element of the town, neither saints nor sinners, but just plain malefactors of great wealth, and have this person lynched. There were probably multi-millionnaires in this town giving ten-dollar bills to this mission, who were imagining they were giving a free bath to somebody.
I wanted to appeal to some man with manicured hands who had grown decently rich robbing the widow and the orphan and who now had the leisure to surround himself with the appurtenances of civility and the manners of a Chesterfield.
“I am through with the poor but honest submerged tenth. Rich worldlings for mine,” I muttered.
“Put these on,” squeaked the Frog. His manner said, “See how good we are to you.” He held out the treasure of the establishment, a night-garment retained for fastidious new-arrivals, newly-bathed. Of course, no one else was supposed to bathe.
Was the garment he held out a slivered shirt? Nay, nay. It was a sort of pajama combination. Hundreds of men had found shelter, taken a luxurious bath, and put them on. They were companions in crime of the towel and the wash-rag. Let us suppose that three hundred and sixty-five men wore them a year. In ten years there would have been about three thousand six hundred and fifty bathed men in them. That did not account for their appearance.
“What makes them so dirty?” I asked.
No answer.
“Can’t I wear my underclothes to bed instead of these?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Sulphur.”
“What do you mean by sulphur?”
“Your clothes are up stairs being fumigated.”
“Can’t I get my socks to-night? I always wash them before I go to bed.”
“No. It’s against the law of the state. And you would dirty up these bowls. I have just scrubbed them out.”
“I will wash them out afterward.”
“I haven’t time to wait. I must get up at four-thirty.”
“But why fumigate my clean underwear, and give me dirty pajamas?”
The Frog was getting flabbergasted. “I tell you it’s the law of New Jersey. You are getting awful fancy. If I had had my way, you would never have been let in here.”
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” I said to myself, and put on the pajamas.
This insanitary director showed me my bed. It was in a long low room with all the windows closed, where half a score were asleep. The sheets had never, never, never been washed. Why was it that in a mission so shiny in its reading room, and so devout in its chapel, so melodramatic with its clean workman-boss, in the daytime, these things were so?
The lights went out. I kicked off the pajamas and slept. I awoke at midnight and reflected on all these matters. I quoted another scripture to myself: “I was naked, and ye clothed me.”
V
The Highway of Our God
At six o’clock I was called for breakfast. My sulphur-smelling clothes were on my bed. I put them on with a light heart, for after all I had slept well, and my feet were not stiff. The quarter was still in my trousers’ pocket. I presume that hoodoo quarter had something to do with the bad breakfast.
The Amphibian was now cook. He gave each man a soup-plate heaped with oat-meal. If it had been oats, it would have been food for so many horses. Had the Frog been up since four-thirty preparing this?
The price of part of that horse-feed might have gone into something to eat. There was a salty blue sauce on it that was called milk. And there was dry bread to be had, without butter, and as much bad coffee as a man could drink.
A person called the bookkeeper arrived with the janitor. I made my formal farewells to those representatives of the law, before whom the Amphibian melted with humility. The scalawag who had bathed with me tipped me a wink, and tried to escape in my company. But I bade him good-by so firmly that the authorities noticed, and the brash creature remained glued to his chair. He probably had to do his full share of kindling before he escaped.
I went forth from that place into the highway of our God, who dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all men life and breath and all things.
I said in my heart: “I shall walk on and on and find a better, a far holier shrine than this at the ends of the infinite earth.”
THE TOWN OF AMERICAN VISIONS
(Springfield, Illinois)
Is it for naught that where the tired crowds see
Only a place for trade, a teeming square,
Doors of high portent open unto me
Carved with great eagles, and with hawthorns rare?
Doors I proclaim, for there are rooms forgot
Ripened through æons by the good and wise:
Walls set with Art’s own pearl and amethyst
Angel-wrought hangings there, and heaven-hued dyes:—
Dazzling the eye of faith, the hope-filled heart:
Rooms rich in records of old deeds sublime:
Books that hold garnered harvests of far lands,
Pictures that tableau Man’s triumphant climb:
Statues so white, so counterfeiting life,
Bronze so ennobled, so with glory fraught
That the tired eyes must weep with joy to see
And the tired mind in Beauty’s net be caught.
Come enter there, and meet To-morrow’s Man,
Communing with him softly day by day.
Ah, the deep vistas he reveals, the dream
Of angel-bands in infinite array—
Bright angel-bands, that dance in paths of earth
When our despairs are gone, long overpast—
When men and maidens give fair hearts to Christ
And white streets flame in righteous peace at last.
ON BEING ENTERTAINED ONE EVENING
BY COLLEGE BOYS
I walked across the bridge from New Jersey into Easton, Pennsylvania, one afternoon. I discovered there was a college atop of the hill. In exchange for a lecture on twenty-six great men[4] based on a poem on the same theme, that I carried with me, the boys entertained me that night. They did not pay much attention to the lecture. Immediately before and after was a yell carnival. There was to be a game next day. They were cheering the team and the coach with elaborate reiteration. All was astir.
But for all this the boys spoke to me gently, gave me the privileges of the table, the bath-room, the dormitory. The president of the Y. M. C. A. lent me a clean suit of pajamas. He and two other young fellows delighted my vain soul, by keeping me up late reciting all the poems I knew.
I record these things for the sake of recording one thing more, the extraordinary impression of buoyancy that came from that school. It was inspiring to a degree, a draught of the gods. Coming into that place not far from the centre of hard-faced Easton-town I realized for the first time what sheltered, nurtured boy-America was like, and what wonders may lie beneath the roofs of our cities.