CHAPTER XI
ALMOST a month had passed since Gerry landed on his Lethean shore, and it had served him well. But that night on the balcony woke him up. The world seemed to have time-servers in small regard. First Alix and now this consul chap. Gerry began to think of his mother. He strolled over to the cable station. The offices were undergoing repairs. The ground floor was unfurnished save for a table and one chair. In the chair sat a chocolate-colored employee with a long bamboo on the floor beside him. Gerry’s curiosity was aroused. He went in and wrote his message to his mother, just a few words telling her he was all right. The chocolate gentleman folded the message, slipped it into the split end of the bamboo, and stuck it up through a hole in the ceiling to the floor above.
Loaned by George Inness, Jr. Color-Tone, engraved for THE CENTURY by H. Davidson
SUNSET ON THE MARSHES
FROM THE PAINTING BY GEORGE INNES
⇒
LARGER IMAGE
Gerry went out and rambled over the city. Night came on. He was restless. He wished he had not sent the message. It was forming itself into a link. He dined badly at a restaurant, and then wandered back to the quay. Arriving steamers were posted on a blackboard under a street lamp. The mail from New York was due to-morrow. The consul’s papers would be full of the latest New York society scandal—his scandal.
A long, raking craft was taking on its meager provisions. Gerry engaged its captain in a pantomime parley. The boat was bound for Penedo to take on cotton. Gerry decided to go to Penedo. Two of the crew went back with him to get his baggage. The hotel was closed. Gerry was the only guest, and he had his key. He had paid his weekly bill that day, so there was no need to wake any one up. In half an hour he and his belongings were stowed on the deck of the Josephina, and she was drifting slowly down to the bar.
Four days later they were off the mouth of the San Francisco. They doubled in, and tacked their way up to Penedo. There was no life in Penedo. It was desolate and lonely compared with the Hôtel d’Europe and the lively quay; so when a funny little stern-wheeler started up the river on its weekly trip to Piranhas, Gerry went with it.
Gerry chartered a ponderous canoe. At first he had a man to paddle him up and down and sometimes across the wide half-mile of water; but before long he learned to handle the thing himself. The heavy work soon trimmed his splendid muscles into shape. He supplied the hostelry with a variety of fish.
One morning he woke earlier than usual. The wave of life was running high in his veins. He sprang up and, still in his pajamas, hurried out for his morning swim. The break of day was gloriously chilly. A cool breeze, hurrying up from sea, was steadily banking up the mist that hung over the river. Gerry sprang into his canoe and pushed off. He drove its heavy length up-stream, not in the teeth of the current, for no man could do that, but skirting the shore, seizing on the help of every eddy, and keeping an eye out for the green, swirling mound that meant a pinnacle of rock just short of the surface. He went farther up the river than ever before. His muscles were keyed to the struggle. He passed the last jutting bend that the best boatmen on the river could master, and found himself in a bay protected by a spit of sand, rock-tipped and foam-tossed where it reached the river’s channel.
Gerry ran the canoe upon the shore and stepped on to the spit of sand. In that moment just to live was enough. Then the sun broke out, and helped the wind clear the last bank of mist from the river. As he looked, a sharp cry broke on his astonished ears.
Almost at the end of the tongue of sand stood a girl. Her hair was blowing about her slim shoulders. Over one of them she gazed, startled, at Gerry. He drew back, mumbling apologies that she could not have understood even if she could have heard them. Then she plunged with a clean, long dive into the river. But before she plunged she laughed. Gerry heard the laugh. With an answering call he threw himself into the water, and swam as he never swam before.
(To be continued)
THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY[1]
BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT
THE National Progressive Party was born in Chicago, August 5, 1912, at a convention which nominated Roosevelt for the presidency. Since that time, though defeated in the national election, it has figured more and more in the legislative and political activities of State and Nation. In fact progressivism is the one altogether incalculable element in the political situation of this country at a time when all men are peering, puzzled and anxious, into the mists of the future. At THE CENTURY’S request Mr. Roosevelt prepared the following paper for the thoughtful attention of the people of this land. It is crowded with suggestion.—THE EDITOR.
FUNDAMENTALLY the reason for the existence of the Progressive party is found in two facts: first, the absence of real distinctions between the old parties which correspond to those parties and, second, the determined refusal of the men in control of both parties to use the party organizations and their control of the Government for the purpose of dealing with the problems really vital to our people.
As to the first fact, it is hardly necessary to point out that the two old parties to-day no longer deal in any real sense with the issues of fifty and sixty years ago. At that time there was a very genuine division-line between the Republicans and the Democrats. The Republicans of those years stood for a combination of all that was best in the political philosophies of both Jefferson and Hamilton; and under Lincoln they represented the extreme democratic movement which was headed by Jefferson and also that insistence upon national union and governmental efficiency which were Hamilton’s great contributions to our political life in the formative period of the republic. The Republicanism of that day was something real and vital, and the Republican party under Lincoln was the radical party of the country, abhorred and distrusted by the reactionaries and ultraconservatives, especially in the great financial centers, precisely as is now true of the Progressives. The Democratic party of that day, on the contrary, was no longer the party either of Jefferson or of Jackson, whose points of unlikeness were at least as striking as their points of likeness, and in the world of politics stood for slavery and for such development of the extreme particularistic doctrine euphoniously known as “States’ rights,” as to mean, when carried to its logical extreme, total paralysis of governmental functions and ultimately disunion.
The outbreak of the Civil War and its successful conclusion forced the majority of the conservative class of the North into the Republican ranks; for when national dissolution is an issue, or even when any serious disaster is threatened, all other issues sink out of sight when compared with the vital need of sustaining the National Government. There is no possibility of even approximating to social and industrial justice if the National Government shows itself impotent to deal with malice domestic and foreign levy.
On the other hand, after the Civil War, the Democratic party found its position one of mere negation or mere antagonism to the Republican party. The Democrats in the Northern States had very different principles in the East and the West, and both in the East and the West alike they had nothing in common with the Democrats of the South save the bond of hatred to Republicanism.