A Man's World

I

All books should have a preface, to tell what they are about and why they were written.

This one is about myself – Arnold Whitman.

I have sought in vain for a title which would be truly descriptive of the subject and form of my book. It is not a "Journal" nor a "Diary" for these words signify a daily noting down of events. Neither "Memoirs" nor "Recollections" meet the case, for much which I have written might better be called "Meditations." It certainly is not a "Novel," for that term implies a traditional "literary form," a beginning, development and end. I am quite sure that my beginning goes back to the primordial day when dead matter first organized itself – or was organized – into a living cell. And whether or not I will ever "end" is an open question. There is no "unity" in the form of my narrative except the frame of mind which led me to write it, which has held me to task till now.

It is the story of how I, born at the close of The Great War, lived and of the things – common-place and unusual – which happened to me, how they felt at the time and how I feel about them now.

"Autobiography" is the term which most truly describes what I have tried to do. But that word is associated with the idea of great men. The fact that I am not "great" has been my main incentive in writing. We have text books a plenty on how to become Emperor, at least they tell how a man named Napoleon did it. There are endless volumes to which you may refer if you wish to become President of these United States – or rival the career of Captain Kidd. But such ambitions are rare among boys over eighteen.

Even before that age I began to wish for a book like the one I have tried to write. I wanted to know how ordinary people lived. It was no help in those days to read how this Cæsar or that came and saw and conquered. I shared the ambitions of the boys about me. To be sure there were day-dreaming moments when we planned to explore Central Africa or found dynasties. But this was pure make-believe. We knew that not one man in thousands wins fame. For each moment we dreamed of greatness there were days on end when we looked out questioningly on the real world. We got no answers from our teachers. Most of the boys who were in school with me are today running a store, practicing law or medicine. They were prepared for it by reading Plutarch in class and Nick Carter on the sly.

As a youth I wanted of course to gain a comfortable living. I wanted mildly to win some measure of distinction, but all this was subordinate to a more definite desire to be a man, and not to be ashamed. A book about the ordinary life I was to enter, would have been a God-send to me.

This then is to be the story of my life as it appears to me now, and how, in the face of the things which happened to me, I tried to be decent.

I have only two apologies to offer. All the rest of my writing has been scientific – on the subject of criminology. I am unpracticed in narration. And I have been enough in courts to realize the difference between "evidence" and "truth." At best I can only give "evidence." Others who knew me would tell of my life differently, perhaps more truly. But it will be as near truth as I can make it.

And now to my story.

II

My earliest distinct memory is of an undeserved flogging. But from this grew my conception of Justice. It was, I think, my first abstract idea.

My parents died long before I can remember and I was brought up in the home of the Rev. Josiah Drake, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister of the Tennessee Mountains. He was my uncle, but I always called him "the Father." He was the big fact of my childhood and my memory holds a more vivid picture of him than of any person I have known since.

He was very tall, but stooped heavily. If he had shaved he would have resembled Lincoln, and this, I suppose, is why he wore so long and full a beard. For he was a Southerner and hated the Northern leader with all the bitterness of the defeated. And yet he was a Christian. I have never known one who served his God more earnestly, more devotedly. He was a scholar of the old type. He knew his Latin and Greek and Hebrew. And as those were rare accomplishments among the mountain clergy of Tennessee it gave him a great prestige. In all but name he was the Bishop of the country-side. His faith was that of Pym and Knox and Jonathan Edwards, a militant Puritan, fearless before the world, abject in humility before his God.

Of his wife, my aunt Martha, I have scarcely a memory. When I was very young she must have been important to me, but as I grew to boyhood she faded into indistinct haziness. I recall most clearly how she looked at church, not so much her face as her clothes. In all those years she must have had some new ones, but if so, they were always of the same stuff and pattern as the old. Sharpest of all I remember the ridges the bones of her corset made in the back of her dress as she leaned forward, resting her forehead on the pew in front of us, during the "long prayer." There was always a flush on her face when it was over. I think her clothing cramped her somehow.

I have also a picture of her heated, flurried look over the kitchen stove when she was engaged in the annual ordeal of "putting up" preserves. Even when making apple-butter she maintained a certain formality. The one time when she would lapse from her dignity was when one of the negroes would rush into the kitchen with the news that a buggy was turning into our yard. The sudden scurry, the dash into her bedroom, the speed with which the hot faced woman of the kitchen would transform herself into a composed minister's wife in black silk, was the chief wonder of my childhood. It was very rarely that the guests reached the parlor before her.

All of her children had died in infancy except Oliver. As the Father's religion frowned on earthly love, she idealized him in secret. I think she tried to do her Christian duty towards me, but it was decidedly perfunctory. She was very busy with the big house to keep in order, endless church work and the burden of preserving the appearances her husband's position demanded.

There was a large lawn before the house down to a picket fence. Mowing the grass and whitewashing that fence were the bitterest chores of my childhood. The main street of the village was so little used for traffic that once or twice every summer it was necessary to cut down the tall grass and weeds. Next to our house was the church, it was an unattractive box. I remember that once in a long while it was painted, but the spire was never completed above the belfry. There was a straggling line of houses on each side of the street and two stores. Beyond the Episcopal Church, the road turned sharply to the right and slipped precipitously down into the valley. Far below us was the county seat. About five hundred people lived there, and the place boasted of six stores and a railroad station.

That was its greatest charm to my schoolmates. From any of the fields, on the hill-side beyond the village, we could look down and watch the two daily trains as they made a wide sweep up into this forgotten country. There was one lad whom I remember with envy. His father was carter for our community and sometimes he took his son down with him. They slept in the great covered wagon in the square before the county court house, and came back the next day. The boy's name was Stonewall Jackson Clarke. He lorded it over the rest of us because he had seen a locomotive at close quarters. And he used to tell us that the court house was bigger than our two churches "with Blake's store on top."

I think that as a boy I knew the names of one or two stations on each side of the county seat. But it never occurred to me that the trains down there could take you to the cities and countries I studied about in my geography. Beyond the valley were Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. But none of the boys I played with realized that the world beyond the mountains was anything like the country we could see. It would have surprised us if the teacher had pointed out to us on the school map the spot where our village stood. The land over which Cinderella's Prince ruled was just as real to us as New York State or the countries of Europe, the names of whose capitals we learned by rote.

My cousin Oliver I disliked. As a youngster I did not know why. But now I can see that he had a craven streak in him, a taint of sneakiness, an inability to be bravely sincere. It was through him that I got my lesson in justice.

He was then about sixteen and I eight. His hobby at the time was carpentry and, as I was supposed to dull his tools if I touched them, I was forbidden to play in the part of the barn where he had his bench. He was going to make an overnight visit to some friends in a neighboring township and at breakfast – he was to start about noon – he asked the Father to reiterate the prohibition. A few hours later I found Oliver smoking a corn-silk cigarette behind the barn. He begged me not "to tell on him." Nothing had been further from my mind. As a bribe for my silence he said I might play with his tools. The spirit of his offer angered me – but I accepted it.

After he had left the Father found me at his bench.

"Ollie said I could," I explained.

"At breakfast," the Father replied, "he distinctly said you could not."

But I stuck to it. The Father had every reason to believe I was lying. It was not in Oliver's nature to be kind to me without reason. And I could not, in honor, explain the reason. The Father was not the kind to spoil his children by sparing the rod, and there was no crime in his code more heinous than falsehood. He tried to flog me into a confession.

There was nothing very tragic to me in being whipped. All the boys I knew were punished so. I had never given the matter any thought. As I would not admit that I had lied, this was the worst beating I ever received. He stopped at last from lack of breath and sent me to bed.

"Oliver will be back to-morrow," he said. "It is no use persisting in your lie. You will be found out. And if you have not confessed…" The threat was left open.

I remember tossing about in bed and wishing that I had lied and taken a whipping for disobedience. It would not have been so bad and would have been over at once. The next morning I sat sullenly in my room waiting for Oliver's return, wondering if he would tell the truth. I was not at all confident. Towards noon, the blackboard turned in at the gate, one of the negroes took the horse and I heard the Father call Oliver into his study.

Then suddenly a door slammed and I heard the Father's step on the stair. He was running. He burst into my room and before I knew what was happening, he had picked me up in his arms. And, wonder of wonders, he was crying. I had never before seen a grown man cry. He was asking me, I could not understand what he meant, but he was asking me to forgive him. Then I heard the Mother's voice at the door.

"What is the matter, Josiah?"

"Oh, Martha. It's horrible! I caned the lad for a lie and he was telling the Truth! Oh, my son, my son, forgive me."

At first all I realized was that I was not to be whipped any more. But all day long the Father kept me close to him and gradually from his talk I began vaguely to understand that there was such a thing as justice. I had always supposed that punishments were a matter of the parents' good pleasure. That it had any relation to cause and effect, that sometimes a father might be right and sometimes wrong in beating a child, had never occurred to me.

It is interesting how such things take form in a child's mind. The Father bought me a set of tools like Oliver's as a peace offering, and of course I was much more interested in them than in any abstract conception of justice. Yet in some gradual, subconscious way, the idea arranged itself in my mind. I began to judge everything by it. I suppose it marked the end of babyhood, the first faint beginning of manhood.

III

It Is not surprising that, in that austere home, my first fundamental idea should have been of justice rather than of love.

There may have been a time when the affection between the Father and Mother had an outward showing. I would like to think that they had tasted gayer, honey-mooning days. I doubt it. They were helpmates rather than lovers. The Mother was well named Martha, busy with much serving. Her work had dovetailed into his. It would be juster to say her work was his. Their all-absorbing business was the winning of souls to Christ, and anything of only human interest seemed to them of the earth, earthy. I never saw anything like a quarrel between them, nor any passage of affection – except that the Father kissed her when going on a journey or returning.

It is hard for me to understand such people. Everything which has given me solace in life, all the pleasures of literature and art, all the real as well as the written poems, they had rigorously cut off.

Oliver and I kissed the Mother when we went to bed. I never remember kissing the Father. Yet he loved me. Sometimes I think he loved me more than his own son. I doubt if I was often separated from his thoughts, ever from his prayers.

But all I knew as a boy about the affections, which expresses itself openly, was from Mary Button, my Sunday school teacher. She was brimming over with the joy of living and in every way the opposite of the austerity I knew at home. She was altogether wonderful to me. When the Mother was away at Synodical meetings, Mary used often to come for a whole day to keep the house in order. It was strange and typical to hear her sing rollicking college songs at our parlor organ – a wheezy contraption which seemed entirely dedicated to Moody and Sankey.

All through my childhood Mary passed as a celestial dream, a princess from some beautiful land of laughter and kisses.

When I was about nine, and she I suppose near nineteen, Prof. Everett, who had been with her brother in college, began to visit the village. I disliked him at once with an instinctive jealousy. He has since won a large renown as a geologist, and was no doubt an estimable man, but if I should meet him now, after all these years, I am sure the old grudge would come to life and make me hate him. After a few months he married her and took her away to a nearby college town.

About a year later, when the ache of her absence was beginning to heal, and, boy-like, I was in danger of forgetting her, a photograph came of her and the baby. It was such a loving picture! She looked so radiantly happy! It was set up on the mantel-piece in the parlor, and seemed to illuminate that sombre room. I remember exactly how it leaned up against the bronze clock, between the plaster busts of Milton and Homer. In those days I supposed one had to be blind to be a poet. The picture kept her memory alive for me.

Some months later Mary wrote that her husband was going away to attend a convention and she asked that I might come to bear her company for the week.

The excitement of that first sortie out into the world is the most vivid thing which comes to me from my childhood. The Father drove me down the mountain-side to the county seat and so at last I saw a train at close quarters. Even when I had watched them through the Father's campaign glasses I had not realized how large they were. He gave me in charge of the conductor, a man with an armless sleeve and drooping moustaches, who had been a corporal in his regiment.

There was a rattle and jerk – we had no air-brakes on the Tennessee trains in those days – and the railroad station and the Father slipped out of sight. Such an amazing number of things went by the car window! I counted all the fields to the next station. There were thirty-seven. The conductor told me I was not to get off till the eighteenth stop. I started in valiantly to count them all, but my attention was distracted by the fact that things near the track went by so much faster than things far away. In "physics A" at college I learned an explanation of this phenomena which seemed all right on paper but even today it is entirely inadequate when I am in a train and actually watching the earth revolve about distant points in either horizon. Trying to find a reason for it on that first railroad trip put me to sleep. At last the conductor woke me up and handed me over to Mary.

I can recall only vaguely the details of that delectable week, the strangeness of the entire experience is what sticks in my memory. There was the baby, so soft and round and contented. There was the German nurse, the first white servant I had ever seen. And there were the armchairs in the living-room, curved and comfortable and very different from the chairs in the parlor at home. After supper, instead of sending me off to bed, Mary read to me before the open fire, read me the wonderful stories of King Arthur. When at last I was sleepy, she came with me to my room. It embarrassed me to undress before her, but it was very sweet to have her tuck me in and kiss me "goodnight."

Mary "spoiled" me, to use the Father's expression, systematically, she let me eat between meals and gorged me with sweets. One night it made me sick. I have forgotten whether "dough-nuts" or "pop-overs" were to blame. When the doctor had gone away, laughing – for it was not serious – Mary took me into her own bed. I would gladly have suffered ten times the pain for the warm comfort of her arms about me.

It was during this visit that all the side of life we call Art began to appeal to me. The King Arthur legends were my introduction to literature, Malory and Tennyson's "Idylls" were the first written stories or poems I ever enjoyed. And I think my first impression of Beauty, was the sight of Mary nursing the baby. I am sure she did not realize with what wondering eyes I watched her. I was only a little shaver and she could not have guessed what a novel sight it was for me. At home, everything human, which could not be suppressed, was studiously hidden. I think some of the old Madonnas in which the Mother is suckling the Child would have seemed blasphemous to the Father. Art has always seemed to me at its highest when occupied with some such simple human thing.

IV

I had two playmates in those days, Margaret and Albert Jennings. Their father had been on "Stonewall" Jackson's staff. "Al" was my own age, but seemed older and Margot was a year younger. Until I went away to school we were almost inseparable. Only in affairs of the church were we apart, for they were Episcopalians.

Our biggest common interest was a "Chicken Company." We had built an elaborate run in the back yard of the parsonage and sometimes had as many as thirty hens. This enterprise led us into the great sin of our childhood – stealing.

Why I stole I cannot explain. I never pretended to justify it. We would sell a dozen eggs to my household and then take as many out of the pantry as were necessary to complete a dozen for Mrs. Jennings. We did this off and on for four or five years. When the hens laid freely we did not have to. But if there were not eggs to satisfy the demands of the two families, we stole. I think we blamed it on the chickens. Al and I were always full of great projects for improving the stock or the run and so needed money. There was little danger of discovery, because housekeeping was a very unexact science in our southern homes. And just because the chickens refused to lay as they should, seemed a very trivial reason for sacrificing our plans. But we did not like to do it. We always searched the nests two or three times in the hope of finding the eggs we needed.

Al was a queer chap. I remember one time we were two eggs short.

"We'll have to steal them from your mother," I said.

"You may be a thief," he retorted angrily, as we started after the spoils. "But I intend to pay it back. It's just a loan."

There was a weak subterfuge to the effect that Margot knew nothing of our dishonesty. The three of us had decided upon this in open council, to protect her in case we were caught. If there were to be any whippings, it was for the masculine members of the firm to take them. But Margot knew, just as well as we did, how many eggs were laid and how far our sales exceeded that number. But the candy she bought did not seem to trouble her conscience any more than it did her digestion. I have met no end of older women, in perfectly good church standing, who are no more squeamish about how their men folk gain their income.

There was another very feminine trait about Margot. We divided our profits equally, in three parts. Al and I always put most of our share back into the business. Margot spent hers on candy. Al used to object to this arrangement sometimes, but I always stood up for her.

This was because I expected to marry her. I do not remember when it was first suggested, but it was an accepted thing between us. Col. Jennings used laughingly to encourage us in it. I spoke of it once at home, but the Father shook his head and said it would grieve him if I married outside of our denomination. The Baptists were his special aversion, but next to them he objected to Episcopalians, whom he felt to be tainted with popery.

This led to a quarrel with Margot. I told her flatly that I would not marry her, unless she became a Presbyterian. She was a little snob and, as the most considerable people of the county belonged to her church, she preferred to give me up rather than slip down in the social scale. For several days we did not speak to each other. I refused to let any misguided Episcopalians in my yard. As the chicken run was in my domain, Al, who was smaller than I, became an apostate. But Margot held out stubbornly, until her mother intervened and told us, with great good sense, that we were much too young to know the difference between one sect and another, that we had best suspend hostilities until we knew what we were fighting about. So peace was restored.

This calf-love of mine was strangely cold. Some of the boys and girls in school used to "spoon." But "holding hands" and so forth seemed utterly inane to me. I do not know what Margot felt about it, but I no more thought of kissing her than her brother. The best thing about her was that she also loved King Arthur. Mary had given me a copy of Malory. Up in our hay-loft, Margot and I used to take turns reading it aloud and acting it. Only once in a long while could we persuade Al to join us in these childish dramatics. I was generally Launcelot. Sometimes she would be Elaine, but I think she loved best to be the Queen.

At fourteen I discovered Froissart's Chronicles in the Father's library. It had a forbidding cover and I might never have unearthed it, if he had not set me to work dusting his books in punishment for some minor delinquency. On the bottom shelf there were three big lexicons, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Next to them was the great family Bible. Then came Cruden's Concordance, a geography of Palestine, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Motley's "Dutch Republic" – and Froissart! As I was dusting it gloomily, it slipped from my hands and fell open to an old engraving of the Murder of Richard II. There were twenty-four plates in that volume. Never did boy enter into such a paradise.

I can only guess what the Father would have thought of my filling my mind with such lore. I took no chances in the matter. With great pains, I arranged the books so that the absence of Froissart would not be noticed. Until I went East to school at sixteen, it reposed in the bottom of the bran bin in the loft, and when at last I went, I gave it to Margot as my choicest treasure.

When I saw her ten years ago, she showed me the old book. The sight of it threw us both under constraint, bringing back those old days when we had planned to marry. The funeral of a dream always seem sadder to me than the death of a person.

Permanent camp meetings, the things which grew into the Chautauqua movement, were just beginning their popularity. One had been started a few score miles from our village and the year I went away to school, the Father had been made director. We left home early in the summer, and I was to go East without coming back.

On the eve of my departure, I went to see Margot. It was my first formal call and, in my new long trousers, I was much embarrassed. For an hour or so we sat stiffly, repeating every ten minutes a promise to write to each other. I remember we figured out that it would take me ten years to finish the Theological Seminary and be ready to marry her. It was ordained that I was to study for the ministry. No other career had ever been suggested to me.