IN THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION CHURCH
Hunted by friends who think that life is play,
Shaken by holy loves, more feared than foes,
By beauty’s amber cup, that overflows,
And pride of place, that leads me more astray:—
Here I renew my vows, and this chief vow—
To seek each year this shrine of deathless power,
Keeping my springtime cornland thoughts in flower,
While labor-gnarled grey Christians round me bow.
Arm me against great towns, strong spirits old!
St. Francis keep me road-worn, music-fed.
Help me to look upon the poor-house bed
As a most fitting death, more dear than gold.
Help me to seek the sunburned groups afield,
The iron folk, the pioneers free-born.
Make me to voice the tall men in the corn.
Let boyhood’s wildflower days a bright fruit yield.
Scourge me, a slave that brings unhallowed praise
To you, stern Virgin in this church so sweet
If I desert the ways wherein my feet
Were set by Heaven, in prenatal days.
THE OLD GENTLEMAN WITH THE
LANTERN (AND THE PEOPLE OF
HIS HOUSEHOLD)
I
The Savage Necklace
The reader need not expect this book to contain any nicely adjusted plot with a villain, hero, lawyer, papers, surprise, and happy ending. The highway is irrelevant. The highway is slipshod. The highway is as the necklace of a gipsy or an Indian, a savage string of pebbles and precious stones, no two alike, with an occasional trumpery suspender button or peach seed. Every diamond is in the rough.
I was walking between rugged farms on the edge of the oil country in western Pennsylvania.
The road, almost dry after several days of rain, was gay with butterfly-haunted puddles. The grotesque swain who gave me a lift in his automobile for a mile is worth a page, but we will only say that his photograph would have contributed to the gaiety of nations—that he was the carved peach-stone on the necklace of the day.
There was a complacent cat in a doorway, that should have been named “scrambled eggs and milk,” so mongrel was his overcoat. There was a philosophic grasshopper reading inscriptions in a lonely cemetery, with whom I had a long and silent interchange of spirit. Even the graveyard was full of sun.
On and on led the merry morning. At length came noon, and a meal given with heartiness, as easily plucked as a red apple. For half an hour after dinner in that big farm-house we sat and talked religion.
O pagan in the cities, the brand of one’s belief is still important in the hayfield. I was delighted to discover this household held by conviction to the brotherhood of which I was still a nominal member. Their lingo was a taste of home. “Our People,” “Our Plea,” “The pious unimmersed.” Thus did they lead themselves into paths of solemnity.
Then, in the last five minutes of my stay, I gave them my poem-sermon. The pamphlet made them stare, if it did not make them think.
Splendor after splendor rolled in upon the highway from the four corners at heaven. Why then should I complain, if about four o’clock the prosy old world emerged again?
The wagon-track now followed a section of the Pennsylvania railroad, and railroads are anathema in my eyes when I am afoot. There appeared no promising way of escape. And now the steel rails led into a region where there had been rain, even this morning. More than once I had to take to the ties to go on. When the mud was at all passable I walked in it by preference, fortifying myself with these philosophizings:—
“Cinders are sterile. They blast man and nature, but the black earth renews all. Mud upon the shoes is not a contamination but a sign of progress, eloquent as sweat upon the brow. Who knows but the feet are the roots of a man? Who knows but rain on the road may help him to grow? Maybe the stature and breadth of farmers is due to their walking behind the plough in the damp soil. Only an aviator or a bird has a right to spurn the ground. All the rest of us must furrow our way. Thus will our cores be enriched, thus will we give fruit after our kind.”
Whistling pretty hard, I made my way. And now I had to choose between my rule to flee from the railroad, and my rule to ask for hospitality before dark.
At length I said to myself: “I want to get into a big unsophisticated house, the kind that is removed from this railroad. I want to find an unprejudiced host who will listen with an open mind, and let me talk him to death.”
To keep this resolve I had to hang on till near eight o’clock. The cloudy night made the way dim. At length I came to a road that had been so often graded and dragged it shed water like a turtle’s shell. It crossed the railway at right angles and ploughed north. I followed it a mile, shaking the heaviest mud from my shoes. Led by the light of a lantern, I approached a dim grey farm-house and what would have been in the daytime a red barn.
II
By the Light of the Lantern
The lantern was carried, as I finally discovered, by an old man getting a basket of chips near the barn gate. He had his eye on me as I leaned over the fence. He swung the lantern closer.
“My name is Nicholas,” I said. “I am a professional tramp.”
“W-e-l-l,” he said slowly, in question, and then in exclamation.
He flashed the lantern in my face. “Come in,” he said. “Sit down.”
We were together on the chip-pile. He did not ask me to split kindling, or saw wood. Few people ever do.
In appearance he was the old John G. Whittier type of educated laboring-man, only more eagle-like. He spoke to me in a kingly prophetic manner, developed, I have no doubt, by a lifetime of unquestioned predominance at prayer-meeting and at the communion table. It was the sonorous agricultural holy tone that is the particular aversion of a certain pagan type of city radical who does not understand that the meeting-house is the very rock of the agricultural social system. As far as I am concerned, if this manner be worn by a kindly old man, it inspires me with respect and delight. In a slow and gracious way he separated his syllables.
“Young man, you are per-fect-ly wel-come to shel-ter if we are on-ly sure you will not do us an in-ju-ry. My age and ex-per-ience ought to count for a lit-tle, and I assure you that most free travel-ers abuse hos-pi-tal-ity. But wait till my daugh-ter-in-law comes.”
I was shivering with weariness, and my wet feet wanted to get to a stove at once. I did not feel so much like talking some one to death as I had a while back.
By way of passing the time, the Patriarch showed me his cane. “Pre-sen-ted at the last old set-tel-ers’ picnic because I have been the pres-i-dent of the old-settlers’ association for ten years. Young man, why don’t you carry a cane?”
“Why should I?”
“Won’t it help you to keep off dogs?”
I replied, “A housekeeper, if she is in a nervous condition, is apt to be afraid of a walking-stick. It looks like a club. To carry something to keep off dogs is like carrying a lightning-rod to keep off lightning. I encounter a lot of barking and thunder, but have never been bitten or blasted.”
And while I was thus laboring for the respect of the Patriarch, the daughter-in-law stepped into the golden circle of the lantern light. She had just come from the milking. I shall never forget those bashful gleaming eyes, peering out from the sunbonnet. Her sleeves were rolled to the shoulder. Startling indeed were those arms, as white as the foaming milk.
She set down the bucket with a big sigh of relaxation. She pushed back the sunbonnet to get a better look. The old man addressed her in an authoritative and confident way, as though she were a mere adjunct, a part of his hospitality.
“Daugh-ter, here is a good young man—he Looks like a good young man, I think a stew-dent. You see he has books in his pock-et. He wants a night’s lodging. Now, if he is a good young man, I think we can give him the bed in the spare room, and if he is a bad young man, I think there is enough rope in the barn to hang him before daylight.”
“Yes, you can stay,” she said brightly. “Have you had supper?”
It is one of the obligations of the road to tell the whole truth. But in this case I lied. The woman was working too late.
“Oh yes, I’ve had supper,” I said.
And she carried the milk into the darkness.
In the city, among people having the status indicated by the big red barn and the enormous wind-mill and a most substantial fence, this gleaming woman would have languished in shelter. She would have played at many philanthropies, or gone to many study clubs or have had many lovers. She would have been variously adventurous according to her corner of the town. Here her paramour was Work. He still caressed her, but would some day break her on the wheel.
The old man sent me toward the front porch alone. There was a rolling back of the low gray clouds just then, and the coming of the moon. The moon’s moods are so many. To-night she took the forlornness out of the restless sky. She looked domestic as the lantern.
III
You Ought to be Ashamed of Yourself
I was on the porch, scraping an acquaintance with the grandmother. She held a baby in her lap. They sat in the crossing of the moonlight and the lamplight.
There was no one to explain me. I explained myself. She eyed me angrily. She did not want me to shake hands with the baby. She asked concerning her daughter-in-law.
“And did she say you could stay?”
“She did.”
The grandmother brought a hard fist down on the arm of the chair: “I’d like to break her neck. She’s no more backbone than a rabbit.”
I do not distinctly remember any bitter old man I have met in my travels. She was the third bitter old woman. Probably with the same general experiences as her husband, she had digested them differently. She was on the shelf, but made for efficiency and she was not run down.
In her youth her hair was probably red. Though she was plainly an old woman, it was the brown of middle age with only a few streaks of gray. Under her roughness there were touches of a truly cultured accent and manner. I would have said that in youth she had had what they call opportunities.
I asked: “Isn’t the moon fine to-night?”
She replied: “Why don’t you go to work?”
I answered: “I asked for work in the big city till I was worn to a thread. And you are the first person who has urged it on me since I took to tramping. I wonder why no one ever thought of it before.”
She smiled grudgingly.
“What kind of work did you try to do in the city?”
“I wanted to paint rainbows and gild sidewalks and blow bubbles for a living. But no one wanted me to. It is about all I am fit for.”
“Don’t talk nonsense to me, young man!”
“Pardon me, leddy—I am a writer of rhymes.”
“The nation’s going to the dogs,” she said. I suppose I was the principal symptom of national decay.
Just then a happy voice called through the house, “Come to supper.”
“That’s for you,” said the grandmother. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
IV
Gretchen-Cecilia, Waitress
I went in the direction of the voice, delighted, not ashamed. There, in that most cleanly kitchen, stood the white-armed milkmaid, with cheeks of geranium red. She had spread a table before me in the presence of mine enemy. I said: “I did not ask for supper. I told you I had eaten.”
“Oh, I knew you were hungry. Wait on him, Gretchen-Cecilia.”
My hostess scurried into the other room. She was in a glorious mood over something with which I had nothing to do.
Gretchen-Cecilia came out of the pantry and poured me a glass of warm milk. I looked at her, and my destiny was sealed forevermore—at least for an hour or so. The sight of her brought the tears to my eyes.
I know you are saying: “Beware of the man with tears in his eyes.” Yes, I too have seen weeping exhibitions. I remember a certain pious exhorter. The collection followed soon. And I used to hear an actor brag about the way he wept when he looked upon a certain ladylike actress whom we all adore. He vividly pictured himself with a handkerchief to his devoted cheeks, waiting in the wings for his cue. He had belladonna eyes. At the risk of being classed with such folk, I reaffirm that I was a little weepy. I insist it was not gratitude for a sudden square meal—if truth be told, I have had many such—it was the novel Gretchen-Cecilia.
It took little conversation to show that Gretchen-Cecilia was a privileged character. She had little of the touch of the farm upon her. She was the spoiled pet of the house, and the index of their prosperity—what novelists call the third generation. She had a way of lifting her chin and shoving her fists deep into her apron pockets.
I said: “I have a fairy-tale to read to you after supper.”
And she said: “I like fairy-tales.” And then, redundantly: “I like stories about fairies. Fairy stories are nice.”
It was no little pleasure to eat after nine hours doing without, and to dwell on beauty such as this after so many days of absence from the museums of art and the curio shops. Every time she brought me warm biscuits or refilled my tumbler, she brought me pretty thoughts as well.
She was nine years old, she told me. Her eyes were sometimes brown, sometimes violet. Her mouth was half a cherry, and her chin the quintessence of elegance. Her braids were long and rich, her ribbons wide and crisp.
Maidenhood has distinct stages. The sixteenth year, when unusually ripe, is a tender prophecy. Thirteen is often the climax of astringent childhood, with its especial defiance or charm. But nine years old is my favorite season. It is spring in winter. It is sweet sixteen through walls of impregnable glass. This ripeness dates from prehistoric days, when people lived in the tops of the trees, and almost flew to and from the nests they built there, and mated much earlier than now.
As I finished eating, the mother brought the little brother into the room saying, “Gretchen-Cecilia, watch the baby.” Then she smiled on me and said: “When she washes the dishes, you can hold him.”
She had on a fresh gingham apron, blue, with white trimmings. I judged by the squeak, she had changed her shoes.
“Who’s coming?” I asked, when the mother had left.
“Papa. He goes around the state and digs oil wells, and is back at the end of the week.”
I was washing the dishes when Grandma came in. She frowned me away from the dishpan. She said, “Gretchen-Cecilia, wipe the dishes.”
The baby howled on the floor. I was not to touch him. Gretchen-Cecilia tried to comfort him by saying, “Baby, dear dear baby; baby, dear dear baby.”
“Do you realize, young man,” asked Grandma, “that I, an old woman, am washing your dishes for you?”
I was busy. I was putting my wet stockinged feet on a kindling-board in the oven, and my shoes were curling up on the back of the stove.
“Young man—”
“Yessum—”
“Where’s your wife?”
I replied, “I have no wife, and never did have.” Then I ventured to ask, “May I have the hand of Gretchen? I want some one who can wipe dishes while I wash them.”
“But I’m not grown up,” piped the maiden. It seemed her only objection.
I said: “I will wait and wait till you are seventeen.”
The old lady had no soul for trifles. She intoned, like conscience that will not be slain: “Where’s your wife?”
But I said in my heart: “Madam, you are only a suspender button upon the necklace of the evening.”
V
“Papa has Come!”
There was a scurry and a flutter. Gretchen threw down her dish-rag, leaving Grandma a plate to wipe.
I heard the grandfather say, “Wel-come, son, wel-come indeed!” The young wife gave a smothered shriek, and then in a minute I heard her exclaim, “John, you’re a scamp!”
I put on my hot shoes and went in to see what this looked like. Gretchen-Cecilia was somewhere between them, and then on her father’s shoulder, mussing his hair. And the mother took Gretchen down, as John said in reply to a question:—
“Business is good. Whether there’s oil or not, I dig the hole and get paid.”
This man was now standing his full height for his family to admire. He was one I too could not help admiring. He had an open sunburned face, and I thought that behind it there was a non-scheming mind, that had attained good fortune beyond the lot of most of the simple. He was worth the dressing up the family had done for him, and almost worthy of Gretchen’s extra crisp hair ribbons.
His wife put her arms around his neck and whispered something, evidently about me. He watched me over his shoulder as much as to say:—
“And so it’s a stray dog wants shelter? No objections.”
He unwrapped his package. It was an extraordinary doll, with truly truly hair, and Gretchen-Cecilia had to give him seven kisses and almost cry before he surrendered it.
He pulled off his boots and threw them in the corner, then paddled up stairs and came down in his shoes. For no reason at all Gretchen-Cecilia and her mother chased him around the kitchen table with a broom and a feather duster, and then out on to the back porch.
VI
Conferences
The grandfather called me into the front room and handed me a book.
“Yer a schol-ar. What do you think of that?”
It was a history of the county. The frontispiece was a portrait of Judge Somebody. But the book naturally opened at about the tenth page, on an atrocious engraving of this goodly old man and his not ill-looking wife. He breathed easier when I found it. It was plainly a basis of family pride. I read the inscription.
“So you two are the oldest inhabitants?” I asked.
“The oldest per-pet-ual in-habitants. I was born in this coun-ty and have nev-er left it. My wife is some young-er, but she has nev-er left it, since she married me.”
Even the old lady grew civil. She tapped a brooch near her neck. “They gave me this breast-pin at the last old-settlers’ picnic.”
The old man continued: “All the old farm is still here in our hands, but mostly rented. It brings something, something. Our big income is from my son’s well-digging. He never speculates and he makes money.”
It seemed a part of the old man’s pride to have even the passing stranger realize they were well-fixed. In a furtive attempt to do justice to their station in life they had a tall clock in the corner, quite new and beautiful. And, as I discovered later, there was up stairs a handsome bath-room. The rest of that new house was clean and white, but helplessly Spartan.
The old folk were called to the back porch. At the same time I heard the mother say, “Show the man your doll.”
And in came the little daughter like thistledown.
We were in that white room at opposite ends of the long table, and nothing but the immaculate cloth stretching between us. She sat with the doll clutched to her breast, looking straight into my eyes, the doll staring at me also. The girl was such a piece of bewitchment that the poem I brought to her about the magical Tree of Laughing Bells seemed tame to me, and everyday. That foolish rhyme was soon read and put into her hands. It seemed to give her an infinite respect for me. And any human creature loves to be respected.
On the back porch the talking grew louder.
“Papa is telling them he wants to rent the rest of the farm and move us all to town,” explained Gretchen.
It was the soft voice of the young wife we heard: “Of course it will be nice to be nearer my church.”
And then the young father’s voice: “And I don’t want Gretchen to grow up on the farm.”
And the old man’s voice, still nobly intoned: “And as I say, I don’t want to be stub-born, but I don’t want to cross the coun-ty line.”
Gretchen banged the door on them and we crossed the county line indeed. We told each other fairy-tales while the unheeded murmur of debate went on.
When it came Gretchen’s turn, she alternated Grimm, and Hans Andersen and the legends of the Roman Church. I had left the railroad resolved to talk some one to death, and now with all my heart I was listening. She knew the tales I had considered my special discoveries in youth: “The Amber Witch,” “The Enchanted Horse,” “The Two Brothers.” She also knew that most pious narrative, Elsie Dinsmore. She approved when I told her I had found it not only sad but helpful in my spiritual life. She had found it just so in hers.
VII
The Spare Room
With her eyes still flashing from argument, the grandmother took me up stairs. She gave me a big bath-towel, and showed me the bath-room, and also my sleeping place. I asked her about the holy pictures hanging near my bed. She explained in a voice that endeavored not to censure: “My daughter-in-law is of German-Catholic descent, and she is still Catholic.”
“What is your denomination?” I asked.
“My husband and son and I are Congregationalists.”
She did not ask it of me, but I said: “I am what is sometimes disrespectfully called a ‘Campbellite.’”
But the old lady was gone.
After a boiling bath I lay musing under those holy pictures. My brother of the road, when they put you in the best room, as they sometimes do, and you look at the white counterpane and the white sheets and the cosey appointments, do you take these brutally, or do you think long upon the intrinsic generosity of God and man?
I have laid hold of hospitality coldly and greedily in my time, but this night at least, I was thankful. And as I turned my head in a new direction I was thankful most of all for the unexpected presence of the Mother of God. There was her silvery statue near the foot of my bed, the moonlight pouring straight in upon it through the wide window. It spoke to me of peace and virginity.
And I thought how many times in Babylon I had gone into the one ever open church to look on the crowned image of the Star of the Sea. Though I am no servitor of Rome I have only adoration for virginity, be it carved in motionless stone, or in marble that breathes and sings.
A long long time I lay awake while the image glimmered and glowed. The clock downstairs would strike its shrill bell, and in my heart a censer swung.
VIII
Morning
There was a pounding on the door and a shout. It was the young husband’s voice. “It’s time to feed your face.”
They were at the breakfast table when I came down. My cherished memory of the group is the picture of them with bowed heads, the grandfather, with hand upraised, saying grace. It was ornate, and by no means brief. It was rich with authority. I wanted to call in all the mocking pagans of the nation, to be subdued before that devotion. I wanted to say: “Behold, little people, some great hearts still pray.”
I stood in the door and made shift to bow my head. Yet my head was not so much bowed but I could see Gretchen-Cecilia and her mother timidly cross themselves. In my heart I said “Amen” to the old man’s prayer. But I love every kind of devotion, so I crossed myself in the Virgin’s name.
The tale had as well end here as anywhere. On the road there are endless beginnings and few conclusions. For instance I gathered from the conversation at the breakfast table they were not sure whether they would move to the city or not. They were for the most part silent and serene.
There were pleasant farewells a little later. Gretchen-Cecilia, when the others were not looking, gave me, at my earnest solicitation, a tiny curl from the head of her doll that had truly truly hair.
I walked on and on, toward the ends of the infinite earth, though I had found this noble temple, this shrine not altogether made with hands. I again consecrated my soul to the august and Protean Creator, maker of all religions, dweller in all clean temples, master of the perpetual road.
THAT MEN MIGHT SEE AGAIN THE
ANGEL-THRONG
Would we were blind with Milton, and we sang
With him of uttermost Heaven in a new song,
That men might see again the angel-throng,
And newborn hopes, true to this age would rise,
Pictures to make men weep for paradise,
All glorious things beyond the defeated grave.
God smite us blind, and give us bolder wings;
God help us to be brave.
Printed in the United States of America.
THE following pages contain advertisements
of books by the same author.
VERSE BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Congo and Other Poems
With a preface by Harriet Monroe, Editor of the Poetry Magazine.
Cloth, 12mo, $1.25; leather, $1.60
In the readings which Vachel Lindsay has given for colleges, universities, etc., throughout the country, he has won the approbation of the critics and of his audiences in general for the new verse-form which he is employing, as well as the manner of his chanting and singing, which is peculiarly his own. He carries in memory all the poems in his books, and recites the program made out for him; the wonderful effect of sound produced by his lines, their relation to the idea which the author seeks to convey, and their marvelous lyrical quality are quite beyond the ordinary, and suggest new possibilities and new meanings in poetry. It is his main object to give his already established friends a deeper sense of the musical intention of his pieces.
The book contains the much discussed “War Poem,” “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight”; it contains among its familiar pieces: “The Santa Fe Trail,” “The Firemen’s Ball,” “The Dirge for a Righteous Kitten,” “The Griffin’s Egg,” “The Spice Tree,” “Blanche Sweet,” “Mary Pickford,” “The Soul of the City,” etc.
Mr. Lindsay received the Levinson Prize for the best poem contributed to Poetry, a magazine of verse, (Chicago) for 1915.
“We do not know a young man of any more promise than Mr. Vachel Lindsay for the task which he seems to have set himself.”—The Dial.
General William Booth Enters Into
Heaven and Other Poems
Price, $1.25; leather, $1.60
This book contains among other verses: “On Reading Omar Khayyam during an Anti-Saloon Campaign in Illinois”; “The Wizard Wind”; “The Eagle Forgotten,” a Memorial to John P. Altgeld; “The Knight in Disguise,” a Memorial to O. Henry; “The Rose and the Lotus”; “Michaelangelo”; “Titian”; “What the Hyena Said”; “What Grandpa Mouse Said”; “A Net to Snare the Moonlight”; “Springfield Magical”; “The Proud Farmer”; “The Illinois Village”; “The Building of Springfield.”
COMMENTS ON THE TITLE POEM:
“This poem, at once so glorious, so touching and poignant in its conception and expression ... is perhaps the most remarkable poem of a decade—one that defies imitation.”—Review of Reviews.
“A sweeping and penetrating vision that works with a naïve charm.... No American poet of to-day is more a people’s poet.”—Boston Transcript.
“One could hardly overpraise ‘General Booth.’”—New York Times.
“Something new in verse, spontaneous, passionate, unmindful of conventions in form and theme.”—The Living Age.
PROSE BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Adventures While Preaching the Gospel
of Beauty
Price, $1.00
This is a series of happenings afoot while reciting at back-doors in the west, and includes some experiences while harvesting in Kansas. It includes several proclamations which apply the Gospel of Beauty to agricultural conditions. There are, among other rhymed interludes: “The Shield of Faith,” “The Flute of the Lonely,” “The Rose of Midnight,” “Kansas,” “The Kallyope Yell.”
SOMETHING TO READ
Vachel Lindsay took a walk from his home in Springfield, Ill., over the prairies to New Mexico. He was in Kansas in wheat-harvest time and he worked as a farm-hand, and he tells all about that. He tells about his walks and the people he met in a little book, “Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty.” For the conditions of his tramps were that he should keep away from cities, money, baggage, and pay his way by reciting his own poems. And he did it. People liked his pieces, and tramp farmhands with rough necks and rougher hands left off singing smutty limericks and took to “Atlanta in Calydon” apparently because they preferred it. Of motor cars, which gave him a lift, he says: “I still maintain that the auto is a carnal institution, to be shunned by the truly spiritual, but there are times when I, for one, get tired of being spiritual.” His story of the “Five Little Children Eating Mush” (that was one night in Colorado, and he recited to them while they ate supper) has more beauty and tenderness and jolly tears than all the expensive sob stuff theatrical managers ever dreamed of. Mr. Lindsay doesn’t need to write verse to be a poet. His prose is poetry—poetry straight from the soil, of America that is, and of a nobler America that is to be. You cannot afford—both for your entertainment and for the real idea that this young man has (of which we have said nothing)—to miss this book.—Editorial from Collier’s Weekly.
The Art of the Moving Picture
Price, $1.25
An effort to apply the Gospel of Beauty to a new art. The first section has an outline which is proposed as a basis for photoplay criticism in America; chapters on: “The Photoplay of Action,” “The Intimate Photoplay,” “The Picture of Fairy Splendor,” “The Picture of Crowd Splendor,” “The Picture of Patriotic Splendor,” “The Picture of Religious Splendor,” “Sculpture in Motion,” “Painting in Motion,” “Furniture,” “Trappings and Inventions in Motion,” “Architecture in Motion,” “Thirty Differences between the Photoplays and the Stage,” “Hieroglyphics.” The second section is avowedly more discursive, being more personal speculations and afterthoughts, not brought forward so dogmatically; chapters on: “The Orchestra Conversation and the Censorship,” “The Substitute for the Saloon,” “California and America,” “Progress and Endowment,” “Architects as Crusaders,” “On Coming Forth by Day,” “The Prophet Wizard,” “The Acceptable Year of the Lord.”
FOR LATE REVIEWS OF MR. LINDSAY AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES READ:
The New Republic: Articles by Randolph S. Bourne, December 5, 1914, on the “Adventures while Preaching”; and Francis Hackett, December 25, 1915, on “The Art of the Moving Picture.”
The Dial: Unsigned article by Lucien Carey, October 16, 1914, on “The Congo,” etc.
The Yale Review: Article by H. M. Luquiens, July, 1916, on “The Art of the Moving Picture.”
General Articles on the Poetry Situation
The Century Magazine: “America’s Golden Age in Poetry,” March, 1916.
Harper’s Monthly Magazine: “The Easy Chair,” William Dean Howells, September, 1915.
The Craftsman: “Has America a National Poetry?” Amy Lowell, July, 1916.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This appears, pages seventy-four through eighty-one, in General Booth and Other Poems.
[2] This appears, pages seventy-four through eighty-one, in General Booth and Other Poems.
[3] In the prose sketches in this book I have allowed myself a story-teller’s license only a little. Sometimes a considerable happening is introduced that came the day before, or two days after. In some cases the events of a week are told in reverse order.
Lady Iron-Heels is obviously a story, but embodies my exact impression of that region in a more compressed form than a note-book record could have done.
The other travel-narratives are ninety-nine per cent literal fact and one per cent abbreviation.
[4] Portions of this poem are scattered through this book for interludes. Others are already printed in General Booth and Other Poems.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.