“They do look like notes, don’t they?” he agreed.
We both smiled, and then he added: “Now you make me wonder.” And so we parted.
Towns of this size, particularly in the Middle West—and I can scarcely say why—have an intense literary and artistic interest for me. Whether it is because of a certain comic grandioseness which accompanies some of their characters or an ultra seriousness entirely out of proportion to the seeming import of events here—or whether one senses a flow of secret and subconscious desires hindered or trammeled perhaps by cluttering or suffocating beliefs or weaknesses, or a lightness and simplicity of character due to the soil and the air—I do not know; but it is so. In this region I am always stirred or appealed to by something which I cannot quite explain. The air seems lighter, the soil more grateful; a sense of something delicately and gracefully romantic is abroad.
Like children they are, these people, so often concerned with little things which do not matter at all—neighborhood opinions, neighborhood desires, neighborhood failures and contempts which a little more mind could solve or dissolve so readily. Whenever I see a town of this size in Indiana I think of our family and its relation to one or many like it. My mother and sisters and brothers suffered so much from conventional local notions. They made such a pathetic struggle to rid themselves of trammeling, minor local beliefs.
And did they succeed?
Not quite. Who does? Small life surrounds one like a sea. We swim in it, whether we will or no. In high halls somewhere are tremendous councils of gods and supermen, but they will not admit us. Zeus and Apollo will not suffer the feeble judgments of humble man. And so here we sit and slave and are weary—insects with an appointed task.
North Manchester, like all the small Indiana towns, appealed to me on the very grounds I have outlined. As I went up the street this early morning with my letters I encountered an old man, evidently a citizen of importance—present or past—being led down by his daughter (I took her to be). The latter was a thin, anæmic person who looked endless devotion—a pathetic, yearning solicitude for this man. He was blind, and yet quite an impressive figure, large, protuberant as to stomach, a broad, well-modeled face somewhat like that of the late Henry Ward Beecher, long, snow white hair, a silk hat, a swinging cutaway coat of broadcloth, a pleated soft-bosomed shirt ornamented with a black string tie, and an ivory-headed cane. Under his arm were papers and books. His sightless eyes were fixed on nothing—straight ahead. To me he looked like a lawyer or judge or congressman or politician—a local big-wig of some kind yet stricken in this most pathetic of all ways. The girl who was with him was so intent on his welfare. She was his eyes, his ears, his voice, really. It was wonderful—the resignation and self-effacement of her expression. It was quite moving.
“Who is that man?” I asked of a grocer clerk putting out a barrel of potatoes.
“That? Oh, that’s Judge Shellenberger—or he was judge. He’s a lawyer now for the Monon (a railroad that runs through here). He used to be judge of the circuit court.”
I watched them down the street, and as they turned into a block of buildings where I suppose was his office, my mind was busy conjuring up the background which enmeshed them. Life is so full of great tales—every life in its way a masterpiece if seen in its entirety and against the vast background of life itself. Poor, fluttering, summer loving man! The bones of him make the chalk cliffs of time.