WHAT THE SEXTON SAID
Your dust will be upon the wind
Within some certain years,
Though you be sealed in lead to-day
Amid the country’s tears.
When this idyllic churchyard
Becomes the heart of town,
The place to build garage or inn,
They’ll throw your tombstone down.
Your name so dim, so long outworn,
Your bones so near to earth,
Your sturdy kindred dead and gone,
How should men know your worth?
So read upon the runic moon
Man’s epitaph, deep-writ.
It says the world is one great grave.
For names it cares no whit.
It tells the folk to live in peace,
And still, in peace, to die.
At least, so speaks the moon to me,
The tombstone of the sky.
DEATH, THE DEVIL, AND HUMAN KINDNESS
The Shred of an Allegory
I
The Undertaker
Curious are the agencies that throw the true believer into the occult state. Convalescence may do it. Acts of piety may do it. Self-mortification may do it.
After reading my evening sermon in rhyme in the house of the stranger, I had slept on the lounge in the parlor. The lounge had lost some of its excelsior, and the springs wound their way upwards like steel serpents. So strenuous had been the day I could have slumbered peacefully on a Hindu bed of spikes.
I awoke refreshed, despite several honorable scars. What is more important I left that house with faculties of discernment.
I did not realize at first that I was particularly spiritualized. I was merely walking west, hoping to take in Oil City on my route. Yet I saw straight through the bark of a big maple, and beheld the loveliest ... but I have not time to tell.
Then I heard a fluttering in a patch of tall weeds and discovered what the people in fairyland call ... but no matter. We must hurry on.
At noon your servant was on the front step of a store near a cross-roads called Cranberry, Pennsylvania. The store was on the south side of the way by which I had come. I sat looking along wagon tracks leading north, little suspecting I should take that route soon.
On one side overhead was the sign: “Fred James, Undertaker.” On the other: “Fred James, Grocer.”
“And so,” I thought, “I am going to meet, face to face, one of the eternal powers. He may call himself Fred James all he pleases. His real name is Death.”
I met the lady Life, once upon a time, long ago. She had innocent blue eyes. Alone in the field I felt free to kiss the palm of her little hand, under the shadow of the corn.
It has nothing to do with the tale, but let us here reflect how the corn-stalk is a proud thing, how it flourishes its dangerous blades, guarding the young ear. It will cut you on the forehead if the wind is high. Above the blades is the sacred tassel like a flame.
Once, under that tassel, under those dangerous blades, I met Life, and for good reason, bade her good-by. After her solemn words of parting, she called me back, and mischievously fed me, from the pocket of her gingham apron, crab apples and cranberries. Ever since that time those fruits have been bitter delights to my superstitious fancy.
And here I was at Cranberry cross-roads, with a funeral director’s sign over my head. A long five minutes I meditated on the mystery of Life and Death and cranberries. A fat chicken, apparently meditating on the same mystery, kept walking up and down, catching gnats.
At length it was revealed to me that when things have their proper rhythm Life and Death are interwoven, like willows plaited for a basket. Somewhat later in the afternoon I speculated that when times are out of joint, it is because Death reigns without Life for a partner, with the assistance of the Devil rather. But do not remember this. It anticipates the plot.
One does not hasten into the presence of the undertaker. One rather waits. He was coming. I did not look round. Even at noon he cast a considerable shadow.
The shadow dwindled as he sat on the same step and asked: “What road have you come?” His non-partisan drawl was the result, we will suppose, of not knowing which side of the store the new customer approached.
“I came from over there. I have been walking since sunrise.”
He had some account of my adventures, and my point of view as a religious mendicant. I knew I would have to ask the further road of him, but disliked the necessity. He waited patiently while I watched my friend, the fat chicken, explore an empty, dirty, bottomless basket for flies.
“I want to go west by way of Oil City,” I finally said.
He answered: “Oil City is reached by the north road, straight in front of you as you sit. It is about an hour’s walk to the edge of it. It is a sort of trap in the mountains. When you get in sight of it, keep on going down.” This he said very solemnly.
He put his hand on my shoulder: “Come in and rest and eat first. It won’t cost you a cent.”
I was hungry enough to eat a coffin handle, and so I looked at him and extended my hand. He was a handsome chap, with a grey mustache. His black coat was buttoned high. He was extra neat for a country merchant, and chewed his tobacco surreptitiously. His face was not so bony and stern as you might think.
I gave him an odd copy of the Tree of Laughing Bells, still remaining by me. He looked at the outside long, doing the cover more than justice. Then he opened it, with a certain air of delicate appreciation. I urged him to postpone reading the thing till I was gone.
His store was high and long and narrow and cool. There was a counter to the west, a counter to the east. Behind the western one were tall coffin cupboards. As he proudly opened and shut them, one could not but notice the length of his fingers and their dexterity. He showed plain coffins and splendid coffins. He unscrewed the lid of one, that I might see the silky cushions within. They looked easier than last night’s lounge.
As he stepped across what might be called the international date line of the store, and entered the hemisphere of groceries, he began to look as though he would indulge in a merry quip. A faint flush came to his white countenance, that shone among the multi-colored packages.
Before us were the supplies of a rural general store, from the kitchen mop to the blue parlor vase. Hanging from the ceiling was an array of the flamboyant varnished posters of the seedsmen, with pictures of cut watermelons, blood-red, and portraits of beets, cabbages, pumpkins.
I read his home-made sign aloud: “I guarantee every seed in the store. Pansy seeds a specialty.”
“Not that they all grow,” he explained. “But the guarantee keeps up the confidence of the customers. I have made more off of vegetable and flower seeds this year than caskets.”
He pulled out a chip plate and fed me with dried beef, sliced thin.
He smiled broadly, and set down a jar. The merry quip had arrived.
“Why,” he asked, “is a stick of candy like a race-horse?”
I remained silent, but looked anxious to know. Delighted with himself, he gave the ancient answer, and with it several sticks of candy. Kind reader, if you do not know the answer to the riddle, ask your neighbor.
There was no end of sweets. He skilfully sliced fresh bread, and spread it with butter and thick honey-comb. With much self-approval he insisted on crowding my pockets with supper.
“Nobody knows how they will treat you around Oil City. I go often, but never for pleasure. Only on funeral business.”
He gave me pocketfuls of the little animal crackers, so daintily cut out, that used to delight all of us as children. Since he insisted I take something more, I took figs and dates.
He held up an animal cracker, shaped like a cow, and asked: “When was beefsteak the highest?” I ventured to give the answer.
Death is not a bad fellow. Let no man cross his grey front stoop with misgiving. The honey he serves is made by noble bees. Yet do not go seeking him out. No doubt his acquaintance is most worth while when it is casual, unexpected, one of the natural accidents. And he does not always ask such simple riddles.
II
The Trap without the Bait
It was about two o’clock when the north road left the cornfields and reached the hill crests above the city. How the highway descended over cliffs and retraced itself on ridges and wound into hollows to get to the streets! At the foot of the first incline I met a lame cat creeping, panic-stricken, out of town.
Oil City is an ugly, confused kind of place. There are thousands like it in the United States.
I reached the post-office at last. There was no letter for me at the general delivery. I was expecting a missive. And now my blistered heels, and my breaking the rule to avoid the towns, and my detour of half a day were all in vain.
Oil City, in her better suburbs, as a collection of worthy families in comfortable homes, may have much to say for herself. But as a corporate soul she has no excuse. The dominant, shoddy architecture is as eloquent as the red nose of a drunkard. I do not need to take pains to work her into my allegory. The name she has chosen makes her a symbol. No doubt others reach the very heart of her only to find it empty as the post-office was to me. Baffling as this may be, there is another risk. Escape is not easy.
Almost out of town at last, I sat down by the fence, determined not to stir till morning. I said, “I can sleep with my back against this post.”
I had just overtaken the lame cat, and she now moved past me over the ridge to the cornfields. She seemed most unhappy. I looked back to that oil metropolis. I wondered how many had lived and died there when they would have preferred some other place.
III
A Mysterious Driver
A fat Italian came by in a heavily-tired wagon. The wagon was loaded with green bananas. The fruit-vendor stopped and looked me over. He most demonstratively offered me a seat beside him. He had a Benvenuto Cellini leer. He wore one gold earring. He looked like the social secretary of the Black Hand.
He was apparently driving on into the country. Therefore I suffered myself to be pulled up on to the seat. Around the corner we came to green fields and bushes, and I thanked the good St. Francis and all his holy company.
I said to my charioteer: “As soon as you get a mile out, let me down. I do not want to get near any more towns for awhile.”
“Allaright,” he said. On his wrist was tattooed a blue dagger. The first thing he did was unmerciful. He went a yard out of his way to drive over the lame cat which had stopped in despair, just ahead of us. Pussy died without a shriek. Then the cruel one, gathering by my manner that I was not pleased with this incident, created a diversion. He reproved his horse for not hurrying. It was not so much a curse as an Italian oration. The poor animal tried to respond, but hobbled so, his master surprised me by checking the gait to a walk. Then he cooed to the horse like a two hundred pound turtledove.
In a previous incarnation this driver must have been one of the lower animals, he had so many dealings with such. Some rocks half the size of base-balls were piled at his feet. A ferocious dog shot out from a cottage doorway. With lightning action he hurled the ammunition at the offender. The beast retreated weeping aloud from pain. And Mr. Cellini showed his teeth with delight.
And now, after passing several pleasant farm-houses, where I ran a chance for a free lodging for the asking, I was vexed to be suddenly driven into a town. We hobbled, rattled on, into a wilderness thicker every minute with fire-spouting smoke-stacks.
“This ees Franklin,” said my charioteer. “Nice-a-town. MY town,” he added earnestly. “I getta reech (rich) to-morrow.”
He began to cross-examine the writer of this tale. I counselled myself not to give my name and address, lest I be held for ransom.
After many harmless inquiries, he asked in a would-be ingratiating manner, “Poppa reech?”
“No. Poor.”
“Poppa verra reech?”
“No. Awfully poor. But happy and contented.”
“Where your Poppa leeve?”
“My father is the Man in the Moon.”
That answer changed him completely. I seemed to have given the password. I had joined whatever it was he belonged to. He gave me three oranges as a sign.
I had hoped we would drive past the smoke and fire. But he turned at right angles, into the midst of it, and drove into a big black barn. He waved me good-by in the courtliest manner, as though he were somebody important, and I were somebody important.
Pretty soon I asked a passer-by the nearest way to the suburbs. I had to walk on the edges of my feet they were so tired. The street he pointed out to me was nothing but a continuation of tar-black, coughing, out-of-door ovens, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, on to the crack of doom. I presume, in the language of this vain world, they were coke ovens.
I opened my eyes as little as possible and breathed hardly at all. Then, by way of diversion, I nibbled animal crackers, first a dog, then a giraffe, then a hippopotamus, then an elephant.
Those ovens looked queerer as the street led on. There were subtle essences abroad when the smoke cleared away, and when the great roar ceased there were vague sounds that struck awe into the heart. I may be mistaken, but I think I know the odor of a burning ghost on the late afternoon wind, and the puffing noise he makes.
As the cinders crunched, crunched, underfoot, the conviction deepened: “These ovens are not mere works of man. Dying sinners snared and corrupted by Oil City are carried here when the city has done its work—carried in the wagon of Apollyon, under bunches of green bananas. Body and soul they are disintegrated by the venomous oil; they crumble away in the town of oil, and here in the town of ovens, the fragments are burned with unquenchable fire.”
Now it was seven o’clock. The street led south past the aristocratic suburbs of Franklin, and on to the fields and dandelion-starred roadside.
IV
The Allegory Breaks Down. My Friend
Humankindness with the Green Galluses
I hoped for a farm-hand’s house. Only in that sort will they give free lodging so near town. And, friends, I found it, there on the edge of the second cornfield. The welcome was unhesitating.
I looked at my host aghast. To satisfy my sense of the formal, he should have had the dignity to make him Father Adam, and lord of Paradise. How could one round out a day that began loftily with Death, and continued gloriously with some one mighty like the Devil, with this inglorious type now before me? He wrecked my allegory. There is no climax in Stupidity.
Just as the colorless, one-room house had stove, chimney, cupboard, adequate roof, floor, and walls, so the owner had the simplified, anatomical, and phrenological make-up of a man. He had a luke-warm hand-clasp. He smoked a Pittsburg stogy. He had thick vague features and a shock of drab hair. The nearest to a symbol about him was his new green galluses. I suppose they indicated I was out in the fields again.
If his name was not Stupidity, it was Awkwardness. He kept a sick geranium in an old tomato can in the window. He had not cut off the bent-back cover of the can. Just after he gave me a seat he scratched his hand, as he was watering the flower, and swore softly.
Yet one must not abuse his host. I hasten to acknowledge his generous hospitality. If it be not indelicate to mention it, he boiled much water, and properly diluted it with cold, that the traveller might bathe. The bath was accomplished out of doors beneath the shades of evening.
Later he was making preparations for supper, with dull eyes that looked nowhere. He made sure I fitted my chair. He put an old comfort over it. It was well. The chair was not naturally comfortable; it was partly a box.
After much fumbling about, he brought some baked potatoes from the oven. The plate was so hot he dropped it, but so thick it would not break.
He picked up the potatoes, as good as ever, and broke some open for me, spreading them with tolerable butter, and handing them across the table. Then I started to eat.
“Wait a minute,” he said. He bowed his head, closed his dull eyes, and uttered these words: “The Lord make us truly thankful for what we are about to receive. Amen.”
I have been reproved by some of the judicious for putting so much food in these narratives. Nevertheless the first warm potato tasted like peacocks’ tongues, the next like venison, and the next like ambrosia, and the next like a good warm potato with butter on it. One might as well leave Juliet out of Verona as food like this out of a road-story. As we ate we hinted to each other of our many ups and downs. He mumbled along, telling his tale. He did not care whether he heard mine or not.
He had been born nearby. In early manhood he had been taken with the oil fever. It happened in this wise:—He had cut his foot splitting kindling. Meditating ambition as he slowly recovered, he resolved to go to town. He sold his small farm and wasted his substance in speculation. At the same time his young wife and only child died of typhoid fever. He was a laborer awhile in the two cities to the northeast. Then he came back here to plough corn.
He had been saving for two years, had made money enough to go back “pretty soon” and enter what he considered a sure-thing scheme, that I gathered had a close relation to the oil business. He said that he had learned from experience to sift the good from the bad in that realm of commerce.
He put brakes on the slow freight train of his narrative. “I was about to explain, when you ast to come in, that I don’t afford dessert to my meals often.”
“If you will excuse me,” I said, emptying my pockets, “these figs, these dates, these oranges, these animal crackers were given me by Death, and the Devil. Eat hearty.”
“Death and the Devil. What kind are they?”
“They’re not a bad sort. Death gave me honey for dinner, and the Devil did no worse than drive me a little out of my way.”
He smiled vaguely. He thought it was a joke, and was too interested in the food itself to ask any more questions.
The balmy smokeless wind from the south was whistling, whistling past the window, and through the field. How much one can understand by mere whispers! The wind cried, “Life, life, life!” Some of the young corn was brushing the walls of the cottage, and armies on armies of young corn were bivouacing further down the road, lifting their sacred tassels toward the stars.
There was no change in the expression of the countenance of my host, eating, talking, or sitting still in the presence of the night. I may have had too poor an estimate of his powers, but I preached no sermon that evening.
But, like many a primitive man I have met, he preached me a sermon. He had no bed. He gave the traveller a place to sleep in one corner and himself slept in the opposite corner. The floor was smooth and clean and white, and the many scraps of rag-carpet and the clean comfort over me were a part of the sermon. Another part was in his question before he slept: “Does the air from that open window bother you?”
I assured him I wanted all there was, though from the edge of the world.
He had awkwardly folded his new overcoat, and put it under my head.... And so I was beginning to change his name from Stupidity and Awkwardness to Humankindness.
Though in five minutes he was snoring like Sousa’s band, I could not but sleep. When I awoke the sun was in my eyes. It shone through the open door. Mr. Humankindness was up. The smell of baked potatoes was in the air. Outside, rustled the com. The wind cried, “Life, life, life.”
LIFE TRANSCENDENT
This being the name of praise given to a fair lady.
I used to think, when the corn was blowing,
Of my lost lady, Life Transcendent,
Of her valiant way, of her pride resplendent:
For the corn swayed round, like her warrior-band
When I knelt by the blades to kiss her hand.
But now the green of the corn is going,
And winter comes and a springtime sowing
Of other grain, on the plains we knew.
So I walk on air, where the clouds are blowing,
And kiss her hand, where the gods are sowing
Stars for corn, in the star-fields new.