“No,” I replied. “I think not. I believe it will help him, if he doesn’t injure himself in any other way.”
“That’s what I think,” he exclaimed, with a kind of defiant chuckle. “I never did think he knew what he was talking about.”
On our way west, as I have indicated, Franklin had been telling me much of his father’s and his own upbringing. They were types, as I judged, not much calculated either to understand or sympathize with each other—Franklin the sensitive, perceptive artist; his father the sheer, aggressive political soldier type. The one had artistic imagination, the other scarcely any imagination at all. I could see that. Yet both had a certain amount of practical understanding backed by conviction, which could easily bring them into conflict. I felt a touch of something here, as though this father would be rather gratified if he could prove his son to be in a false position. It amused me, for I knew from what I had heard that Franklin would be amused too. He was so tolerant.
More than that, I discovered a streak in the father which I think is to be found in thousands of countrymen the world over, in all lands, namely, that of pruriency, and that in the face of a rural conventionalism and even a religious bent which frowns on evidence of any tendency in that direction on the part of others, especially those most immediately related to them. Rural life is peculiar in this respect, somewhat different to that of the tribes of the city, who have so much more with which to satisfy themselves. Most isolated countrymen—or perhaps I had better modify that and say many confined to the silences of the woods and fields and the ministrations of one woman, or none—have an intense curiosity in regard to sex; which works out in strange, often naïve ways. In this instance it showed itself shortly in connection with some inquiry I made in regard to local politics—how the next election was coming out (I knew that would interest him) and who the local leaders were. Soon this resulted in the production of a worn and dingy slip of paper which he handed me, chuckling.
“What do you think of that?” he asked. I took it and read it, smiling the while.
It seemed that some local wag—the owner of the principal drug store—had written and circulated a humorous double entendre description of a golf game and someone’s failure as a golfer, which was intended really to show that the man in the case was impotent. You can easily imagine how the thing was worked out. It was cleverly done, and to a grown-up person was quite harmless.
But the old gentleman was obviously greatly stirred by it. It fascinated and no doubt shocked him a little (all the more so since sex was over for him) and aroused in him a spirit of mischief.
“Well, it’s very funny,” I said. “Rather good. What of it?”
“What do you think of a man that’ll get up a thing like that and hand it around where children are apt to get a hold of it?”
“As regards the children,” I commented, “it’s rather bad, I suppose, although I’ve seen but few children in my life that weren’t as sexually minded, if not more so, than their elders. I wouldn’t advise putting this in their hands, however. As for grownups, well, it’s just a trivial bit of business, I should say,” I concluded.