Although in Bath the sun seemed suddenly overcast by these reflections in regard to the remorseless tread of time, outside, in the open fields, it was as inspiriting as ever. A few miles out and we came to the banks of a small river which flowed for a number of miles through this region, tumbling thinly over rough boulders, or forming itself into deep, grey-green pools. Gone were the ancient soldiers in blue, the miseries of a hag like “the Pete and Duck.” Just here the hills seemed to recede, and the land was very flat, like a Dutch landscape. We came to a section of the stream where it was sheltered by groves of trees which came to its very edge, and by small thickets of scrub willow. Just below a little way, some girls, one of them in a red jacket, were fishing. A little farther a few Holstein cows were standing in the water, knee deep. It looked so inviting that I began to urge that we all take a swim. A lovely bank coming into view, and an iron bridge above, which was a poem among trees, Franklin was inspired. “That looks rather inviting,” he said.
As usual, Speed had something to do—heaven only knows what—polishing some bolts, probably. But Franklin and I struck out through waving patterns of ox-eye daisies and goldenrod to the drab and pea green willow groves, where, amid rank growths of weeds and whitish pebbles and stones, we presently reached the water’s edge and a little hillock of grass at the foot of a tree. Here on bushes and twigs we hung our clothes and went out into the bright, tumbling waters. The current was very swift, though very shallow—no deeper than just above the knees. By clearing away the stones and lying down on the pebbles and sand underneath, you could have the water race over you at breakneck speed, and feel as though you were being fingered by mystic hands. It was about all we could do, lying thus, to brace ourselves so that the stream would not keep moving us on.
The sky, between the walls of green wood, was especially blue. The great stones about us were all slippery with a thin, green moss, and yet so clean and pretty, and the water gurgled and sipped. Lying on my back I could see robins and bluejays and catbirds in the trees about. I amused myself kicking my feet in the air and throwing stones at the farther bank and watching Franklin’s antics. He had a strong, lean white body, which showed that it had been shaped in hayfields in his youth. His white hair and straight nose made him look somewhat like an ancient Etruscan, stalking about in the waters. We were undisturbed by any sound, and I could have spent the rest of the day lying in this babbling current—it was so warm—listening to the birds, watching the wind shake the leaves, and contemplating the blue sky. It was so warm that when one sat up the wind and sun soon dried the flesh. I was loath to leave.
THE “TOON O’ BATH”
CHAPTER XVIII
MR. HUBBARD AND AN AUTOMOBILE FLIRTATION
Avoca, just beyond here, was a pleasant little town, with a white church steeple drowsing in the afternoon sun. We tried to get something to eat and couldn’t—or rather could only obtain sandwiches, curse them!—and ham sandwiches at that. My God, how I do hate ham sandwiches when I am hungry enough to want a decent meal! And a place called Arkport was not better, though we did get some bananas there—eight—and I believe I ate them all. I forget, but I think I did. Franklin confined himself almost exclusively to popcorn and candy!
At Avoca we learned of two things which altered our course considerably.
First, in leisurely dressing after our bath, Franklin began browsing over a map to see where we were and what the name of this stream was, when suddenly his eye lighted on the magic name of East Aurora. (Imagine a town named East Aurora!) Here had lived until recently (when the Lusitania went down he and his wife were drowned) a certain Elbert Hubbard, author, publisher, lecturer, editor, manufacturer of “art” furniture and articles of virtu, whose personal characteristics and views seemed to have aroused more feverish interest in the minds of a certain type of American than almost any other man’s, unless, perchance, it might have been William Jennings Bryan’s, or Billy Sunday’s.
In my youth, when he was first writing his interesting “Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great” (think of that for a title!), I thought him wonderful too. I never heard of his stirring those hard, sophisticated, unregerenate sanctums and halls of the great cities where lurk the shrewd, the sharp and evil, to say nothing of the dullest of the dull; but when it came to the rural places, there he shone. In the realms of the vast and far flung Chautauqua, with its halls and shrines of homage, he was au fait, a real prophet. Here he was looked up to, admired, adored. These people bought his furniture and read his books, and in the entertainment halls of public schools, clubs, societies, circles for the promotion of this, that, or the other, they quoted his thoughts. Personally, I early outgrew Mr. Hubbard. He appealed to me for about four months, in my twentyfourth or twentyfifth year, and then he was gone again. Later on his Roycroft furniture, book bindings, lamps and the like came to have a savage distaste to me. They seemed impossible, the height of the inane; but he went on opening salesrooms in New York, Chicago and elsewhere, and increasing his fame. He came to be little more than a shabby charlatan, like so many of those other itinerant evangelists that infest America.