Adventures in indigence, and other essays

by Laura Spencer Portor

I have named Miss Lou Brooks first because she made the first strong impression on me; but she was only one of many not less memorable. She was indeed but one star in a certain notable constellation of guests, which shone in one quarter of my heavens.

Belonging to the same constellation, though of a different magnitude, was the young German army officer, for instance, who came all the way from Germany, where my brother in his Wanderjahr had met him. His visit was short, but the glory of it enduring. I was not yet seven. I remember how he rose out of respect for me when I entered the room; how he clicked his heels together and stood formal and attendant; how he drew out my chair for me at the table, and saw me seated with all the respect due an empress. To be allowed to come and sit in my brief piqué dress at table with him and his shoulder-straps was an essay in form and a treatise on self-respect.

As brilliant a star, but of a steely blue radiance, was the physician-scientist, Doctor Highway. He would be classified readily now as a Christian gentleman of highest honor, brilliant gifts, and scientific attainments. But the name scientist was not in those days worn so easily. Huxley and Darwin were old but yet alive, as were many who still believed them to be emissaries of the devil.

Doctor Highway loved truth, he hated falsehood, and this with so much fervor and so little compromise that he was pointed out by some as an atheist. He was perpetually inviting argument, but he, or she, had courage who accepted the invitation. Once, when he expatiated on the marvels of mechanical music-boxes, an older sister of mine, in her early teens, ventured boldly into the open with the tentative remark that, wonderful as such music might be, might it not nevertheless lack soul?

I can see him still. He jerked sharply in his chair. He flung his penetrating glance at her and at her only. He said, with a sharpness that had all the effect of anger, "What do you mean by SOUL!!"

You have seen a too bold rabbit scuttle into a hole at the near sound of a gun. My sister to outward appearances was still there; but to outward appearances only. She was indeed gone, vanished, obliterated, annihilated—disappeared as effectually as though the earth had swallowed her up. I have no record of the time when she again ventured into the open, but I would be willing to think it was not for years.

I remember supper-tables at which his conversations and brilliancy presided. I remember sharp revolutionary statements that fell from him as to Jonah and the whale, the flood; geological testimony as to the length of time consumed in the creation of the world; all given with his fine clear face lit up with a kind of righteous indignation, and his hand brought down at last so that the glass and silver and myself jumped suddenly.

No thunderbolt fell on the house those nights, though I watched for it with anxious waiting. Sometimes I think his was the beginning of my own courage; for whatever moral bravery was in me rose, I think, to honor this greater courage of his—a subaltern saluting a superior officer. When he was by I listened, fascinated. In these long years since he is gone, I too have loved truth; and I could wish for him now, sometimes, that the too-complacent guests and cutlery and glassware of our modern dinner-tables might be so startled and shocked by the thunder of as righteous a sincerity.

There was also—how warmly contrasted with Doctor Highway!—the young Byronic musician with the extraordinary tenor voice. He was the pride of his family, and to their dismay was resolved to go on the opera stage. He treated me as an equal and, dispensing largesse, wrote in my autograph book one day, in a fine stirring hand: "Music my only love, the only bride I'll ever claim." Later, it is true, he seemed to have repented his resolve and forgotten the album, for I believe that he claimed some two brides besides music; but this did not alter his educational value; that remained unspoiled.

There was, too, that great flashing fiery star, Mrs. Rankin, at work at the time of her visit on a drama, "Herod and Mariamne." She had a mannish face; she wore heavy rings on somewhat mannish hands, and was, no doubt,—it is now revealed to me,—an unclassified suffragette, born untimely, denied, cut off by the custom of those days from the delights of militancy, foredoomed to pass out of life with never the joy of smashing a single window.