Out of his own reading and reflections Allen had reached the conclusion that Franklin, Emerson, and Lincoln were the greatest Americans. He talked a great deal of Lincoln and of the Civil War, and the soldiers' monument, in its circular plaza in the heart of the city, symbolized for him all heroic things. He would sit on the steps in the gray shadow at night, waiting for Dan to finish some task at his office, and Harwood would find him absorbed, dreaming by the singing, foaming fountains.
Allen spoke with a kind of passionate eloquence of This Stupendous Experiment, or This Beautiful Experiment, as he liked to call America. Dan put Walt Whitman into his hands and afterwards regretted it, for Allen developed an attack of acute Whitmania that tried Dan's patience severely. Dan had passed through Whitman at college and emerged safely on the other side. He begged Allen not to call him "camerado" or lift so often the perpendicular hand. He suggested to him that while it might be fine and patriotic to declaim
"When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,"
from the steps of the monument at midnight, the police might take another view of the performance. He began to see, however, that beneath much that was whimsical and sentimental the young fellow was sincerely interested in the trend of things in what, during this Whitman period, he called "these states." Sometimes Allen's remarks on current events struck Harwood by their wisdom: the boy was wholesomely provocative and stimulating. He began to feel that he understood him, and in his own homelessness Allen became a resource.
Allen was a creature of moods, and vanished often for days or weeks. He labored fitfully in his carpenter shop at home or with equal irregularity at a bench in the shop of Lüders, a cabinetmaker. Dan sometimes sought him at the shop, which was a headquarters for radicals of all sorts. The workmen showed a great fondness for Allen, who had been much in Germany and spoke their language well. He carried to the shop quantities of German books and periodicals for their enlightenment. The shop's visitors included several young Americans, among them a newspaper artist, a violinist in a theatre orchestra, and a linotype expert. They all wore large black scarfs and called each other "comrade." Allen earnestly protested that he still believed in the American Idea, the Great Experiment; but if democracy should fail he was ready to take up socialism. He talked of his heroes; he said they all owed it to the men who had made and preserved the Union to give the existing government a chance. These discussions were entirely good-humored and Harwood enjoyed them. Sometimes they met in the evening at a saloon in the neighborhood of the shop where Allen, the son of Edward Thatcher, whom everybody knew, was an object of special interest. He would sit on a table and lecture the saloon loungers in German, and at the end of a long debate made a point of paying the score. He was most temperate himself, sipping a glass of wine or beer in the deliberate German fashion.
Allen was a friendly soul and every one liked him. It was impossible not to like a lad whose ways were so gentle, whose smile was so appealing. He liked dancing and went to most of the parties—our capital has not outgrown its homely provincial habit of calling all social entertainments "parties." He was unfailingly courteous, with a manner toward women slightly elaborate and reminiscent of other times. There was no question of his social acceptance; mothers of daughters, who declined to speak to his father, welcomed him to their houses.
Allen introduced Dan to the households he particularly fancied and they made calls together on Dan's free evenings or on Sunday afternoons. Snobbishness was a late arrival among us; any young man that any one vouched for might know the "nicest" girls. Harwood's social circle was widening; Fitch and his wife said a good word for him in influential quarters, and the local Yale men had not neglected him. Allen liked the theatre, and exercised considerable ingenuity in devising excuses for paying for the tickets when they took young women of their acquaintance. He pretended to Dan that he had free tickets or got them at a discount. His father made him a generous allowance and he bought a motor car in which he declared Dan had a half interest; they needed it, he said, for their social adventures.
At the Thatcher house, Harwood caught fitful glimpses of Allen's father, a bird of passage inured to sleeping-cars. Occasionally Harwood dined with the father and son and they would all adjourn to Allen's shop on the third floor to smoke and talk. When Allen gave rein to his fancy and began descanting upon the grandeur of the Republic and the Beautiful Experiment making in "these states," Dan would see a blank puzzled look steal into Thatcher's face. Thatcher adored Allen: he had for him the deep love of a lioness for her cubs; but all this idealistic patter the boy had got hold of—God knew where!—sounded as strange to the rich man as a discourse in Sanskrit.
Thatcher had not been among Bassett's callers in the new office in the Boordman, but late one afternoon, when Dan was deep in the principles of evidence, Thatcher came in.
"I'm not expecting Mr. Bassett to-day, if you wish to see him," said Dan.