“Wilbur, thee knows I can lick thee, the best day thee ever lived.”
The idea of two Quakers fighting cheered me. I felt much better.
But now tell me—don’t you think I ought to destroy Sandusky anyhow, as a warning?
After we left Sandusky I began to feel at home again, for somehow this territory southwest was more like Indiana than any we had seen—smooth and placid and fertile—it was a homelike land. We scudded through a place called Clyde, hung madly with hundreds of little blue and white triangular banners announcing that a Chautauqua was to be held here within a few days—one of those simple, country life Chautauquas which do so much, apparently, to enliven this mid-western world. And then we came to a place called Fremont, which had once had the honor of being the home and death place (if not birthplace) of the Hon. Rutherford B. Hayes, once President of the United States by accident—the man who stole the office from Samuel J. Tilden, who was elected. A queer honor—but dishonor is as good as honor any day for ensuring one a place in the memory of posterity.
And after that we drove through places called Woodside and Pemberton and Portage—you know the size—only in these towns, by now, I was seeing exact duplicates of men I had known in my earliest days. Thus at Woodside where we asked our way to Pemberton and Bowling Green, Ohio, the man who leaned against our car was an exact duplicate of a man I had known in Sullivan, over thirty years before, who used to drive a delivery wagon, and the gentleman he was driving (a local merchant of some import, I took it) was exactly like old Leonard B. Welles, who used to run one of the four or five successful grocery stores in Warsaw. He had a short, pointed, and yet full beard, with steely blue eyes and a straight, thin-lipped mouth—but not an unkindly expression about them. I began to think of the days when I used to wait for old Mr. Welles to serve me.
Later we came to a river called Portage, yellow and placid and flowing between winding banks that separated fields of hay from fields of grain; and then we began to draw near to a territory with which I had been exceedingly familiar twenty years before—so much so that it remains as fresh as though it had been yesterday.
You must know, because I propose to tell you, that in the fair city of St. Louis, at the age of twentytwo, I was fairly prosperous as a working newspaper man’s prosperity goes, and in a position to get or make or even keep a place not only for myself but for various others—such friends, for instance, as I chose to aid. I do not record this boastfully. I was a harum scarum youth, who was fairly well liked by his elders, but with no least faculty, apparently, of taking care of his own interests. From Chicago one of those fine days blew a young newspaper man whom I had known and liked up there. He was not a very good newspaper man, humdrum and good natured, but a veritable satellite of mine. He wanted me to get him a place and I did. Then he wanted counsel as to whether he should get married, and I aided and abetted him in that. Then he lost his job through his inability to imagine something properly one night, and I had to get him another one. Then he began to dream of running a country paper with me as a fellow aspirer to rural honors and emoluments, and if you will believe me, so rackbrained was I, and so restless and uncertain as to my proper future, that I listened to him with willing ears. Yes, I had some vague, impossible idea of being first State Assemblyman Dreiser of some rural region, and then, perchance, State Senator Dreiser, and then Congressman Dreiser, or Governor Dreiser, if you please, and all at once, owing to my amazing facility and savoir faire, and my clear understanding of the rights, privileges, duties and emoluments of private citizens, and of public officers, and because of my deep and abiding interest in the welfare of the nation—President Dreiser—the distinguished son of the state of Indiana, or Ohio, or Michigan, or wherever I happened to bestow myself.
I had only one hundred and fifty dollars all told in the world at the time—but somehow money didn’t seem so very important. Perhaps that was why I listened to him. Anyhow, he hailed from this northern section of Ohio. His father lived just outside of the village of Grand Rapids (Ohio, not Michigan), and between there and a town called Bowling Green, which we were now approaching, lay the region which we were to improve with our efforts and presence.
Looking at the country now, and remembering it as it was then, I could see little, if any, change. Oh, yes—one. At that time it was dotted on every hand with tall skeleton derricks for driving oil wells. The farming world was crazy about oil wells, believing them to be the open sesame to a world of luxury and every blessed thing which they happened to desire. And every man who owned so much as a foot of land was sinking an oil well on it. The spectacle which I beheld when I first ventured into this region was one to stir the soul of avarice, if not of oil. As far as the eye could see, the still wintry fields were dotted with these gaunt structures standing up naked and cold—a more or less unsatisfactory sight. I remember asking myself rather ruefully why it was that I couldn’t own an oil well and be happy. Now when I entered this region again all these derricks had disappeared, giving place to small dummy engines, or some automatic arrangement lying close to the ground, and controlled from afar, by which the oil pumping was done. These engines were very dirty, but fortunately inconspicuous. And apparently nearly all the wells which I had seen being dug in 1893 had proved successful. In every field was at least one of these pumping devices, and sometimes two and three, all in active working order. They looked odd in fields of corn and wheat. But where were the palaces of great beauty which the farmers of 1893 expected if they struck oil? I saw none; merely many fairly comfortable, and I trust happy, homes.
But to return to my venture into this region. The most disturbing thing about it, as I look back on it now, is that it shows me how nebulous and impractical I was at that time. Clearly I had had a sharp desire to be rich and famous, without any understanding of how to achieve these terms of comfort. On the other hand, I had the true spirit of adventure, else I would never have dropped so comfortable a berth as I had, where I was well liked, to come up here where I knew nothing of what the future held in store. Great dreams invariably shoot past the possibilities of life.