But as a matter of genuine enthusiasm, the bulk of the local census was phlegmatic. They read the boy’s amateurish little girl rhymes with indifference, waiting for it to be disclosed “whether that mopey Forge young one was a darn bright kid or a goddam fool.”
Yet the fact remained that the lad was getting “published.” And every effusion carried its tuppence worth of advertising. Soon the town was forced to sit up and take notice. Some of the best of Nat’s work had been clipped from our smudgy, homely, country sheet and been copied in the Springfield Union or the aforesaid Boston Globe.
That a lethargic exchange editor in each case, hunting for material to fill odd corners with “hay”, had snipped out the verses with a vast and pardonable ennui, spiked them on a linotype hook and forgotten them, was immaterial, even if it had been generally known. Paris felt duly edified.
The effect on Johnathan the day Uncle Joe Fodder, the town philosopher, found the first of Nat’s poems in the Globe and advised John to that effect was as amusing as it was interesting.
John had been positive his boy’s propensity for poetry was in the same category with his Abaddonic proclivity toward girls. Realization that fame was being forced upon the family despite his dogged assumption to the contrary came as a shock. A great city newspaper had printed the name of a Forge and circulated the same by hundreds of thousands of copies! What could Johnathan do in the face of such titanic refutation? Nothing but to glow in his heart that the celebrity was his son and then treat the said celebrity as his own personal washpot.
“I guess I know best how to bring out talent and ability in a youngster,” he affirmed. “Keep ’em in their places and give ’em a little hardship to rise above! That’s the thing that makes men. Give a boy encouragement and he either gets a swelled head or turns out a mollycoddle.”
Besides, what encouragement had his father ever given him?
II
Many times in those months and years, I saw the man opposite me in church or shop and studied him. But there was little to “study.”
It puzzled me for a long time how two such people as Johnathan and Anna could remain together year after year in any such loveless connubiality and not realize its prostitution. But of one thing I am convinced absolutely: Johnathan was no hypocrite; up to the time of Nathan’s marriage and still more vital events yet to be delineated, the man, however narrow, had the courage of his convictions.