My Life and Loves, Book 1

by Frank Harris

  And next day he was convinced that he had been robbed of his money by the man who kept the bank and went about swearing that he would get even with him at all costs. By the evening he had infected Bent and Joe with his insane determination, and finally I went along hoping to save him, if I could, from some disaster. Already I had asked Bob to get another herdsman and drive the cattle steadily towards Kansas City: he consented, and for hours before we went to the saloon, Bob had been trekking north. I intended to rejoin him some five or six miles further on and drive slowly for the rest of the night. Somehow or other, I felt that the neighborhood was unhealthy for us. The gambling saloon was lighted by three powerful oil lamps: two over the faro table and one over the bar. Jo stationed himself at the bar while Bent and Charlie went to the table. I walked about the room trying to play the indifferent among the twenty or thirty men scattered about.

  Suddenly, about ten o'clock, Charlie began disputing with the banker: they both rose, the banker drawing a big revolver from the table drawer in front of him. At the same moment Charlie struck the lamp above him and I saw him draw his gun just as all the lights went out (leaving us in pitch darkness). I ran to the door and was carried through it in a sort of mad stampede. A minute afterwards Bent joined me and then Charlie came rushing out at top speed with Jo hard after him. In a moment we were at the corner of the street where we had left our ponies and were off: one or two shots followed; I thought we had got off scot free, but I was mistaken. We had ridden hell for leather about an hour when Charlie without apparent reason pulled up and swaying, fell out of his saddle: his pony stopped dead and we all gathered round the wounded man. «I'm finished,» said Charlie in a weak voice, «but I've got my money back and I want you to send it to my mother in Pleasant Hill, Missouri. It's about a thousand dollars, I guess.» «Are you badly hurt?» I asked. «He drilled me through the stomach first go off,» Charlie said, pointing, «and I guess I've got it at least twice more through the lungs: I'm done.»

  «What a pity, Charlie!» I cried; «you'll get more than a thousand dollars from your share of the cattle: I've told Bob that I intend to share equally with all of you. This money must go back, but the thousand shall be sent to your mother, I promise you.» «Not on your life!» cried the dying man, lifting himself up on one elbow.

  «This is my money: it shan't go back to that oily sneak thief!» The effort had exhausted him; even in the dim light we could see that his face was drawn and grey: he must have understood this himself, for I could just hear his last words: «Goodbye, boys!» His head fell back, his mouth opened: the brave boyish spirit was gone. I couldn't control my tears: the phrase came to me: «I better could have lost a better man,» for Charlie was at heart a good fellow! I left Bent to carry back the money and arrange for Charlie's burial, leaving Jo to guard the body: in an hour I was again with Bob and had told him everything. Ten days later we were in Kansas City, where I was surprised by unexpected news. My second brother, Willie, six years older than I was, had come out to America and hearing of me in Kansas, had located himself in Lawrence as a real estate agent; he wrote asking me to join him. This quickened my determination to have nothing more to do with cow-punching. Cattle, too, we found, had fallen in price and we were lucky to get ten dollars a head for our bunch, which made a poor showing from the fact that the Indians had netted all the best. There was about six thousand dollars to divide:

  Jo got five hundred dollars and Bent, Bob, Charlie's mother and myself divided the rest. Bob told me I was a fool: I should keep it all and go down south again; but what had I gained by my two years of cow-punching? I had lost money and caught malarial fever; I had won a certain knowledge of ordinary men and their way of living and had got more than a smattering of economics and of medicine; but I was filled with an infinite disgust for a merely physical life. What was I to do now? I'd see Willie and make up my mind.

  Chapter IX. Student Life and Love

  Thatrailway journey to Lawrence, Kansas, is as vivid to me now as if it had taken place yesterday; yet it all happened more than fifty years ago. It was a blazing hot day and in the seat opposite to me was an old grey-haired man who appeared to be much troubled by the heat: he moved about restlessly, mopped his forehead, took off his vest and finally went out, probably to the open observation platform, leaving a couple of books on his seat. I took one of them up heedlessly-it was The Life and Death of Jason, by William Morris. I read a page or two, was surprised by the easy flow of the verse, but not gripped, so I picked up the other volume: Laus Veneris: Poems and Ballads by Algernon Charles Swinburne. It opened at the Ancatoria, and in a moment I was carried away, entranced as no poetry before or since has ever entranced me. Venus herself spoke in the lines: Alas! that neither rain nor snow nor dew Nor all cold things can purge me wholly through, Assuage me nor allay me, nor appease, Till supreme sleep shall bring me bloodless ease, Till Time wax faint in all her periods, Till Fate undo the bondage of the Gods To lay and slake and satiate me all through, Lotus and Lethe on my lips like dew, And shed around and over and under me Thick darkness and the insuperable sea. I haven't seen the poem since and there may be verbal inaccuracies in my version, but the music and passion of the verses enthralled me; and when I came to The Leper, the last stanzas brought hot tears to my eyes; and in the Garden of Proserpine, I heard my own soul speaking with divine if hopeless assurance. Was there ever such poetry? Even the lighter verses were charming: Remembrance may recover And time bring back to time The name of your first lover, The ring of my first rhyme: But rose-leaves of December, The storms of June shall fret; The day that you remember, The day that I forget. And then the gay defiance: In the teeth of the glad salt weather, In the blown wet face of the sea; While three men hold together, Their Kingdoms are less by three. And the divine songs to Hugo and to Whitman and the superb Dedication, the last verse of it a miracle: Though the many lights dwindle to one light, There is help if the Heavens have one; Though the stars be discrowned of the sunlight And the earth dispossessed of the Sun: They have moonlight and sleep for repayment When refreshed as a bride and set free; With stars and sea-winds in her raiment Night sinks on the sea. My very soul was taken; I had no need to read them twice: I've never seen them twice; I shall not forget them so long as this machine lasts. They flooded my eyes with tears, my heart with passionate admiration. In this state the old gentleman came back and found me, a cowboy to all appearance, lost, tear-drowned in Swinburne. «I think that's my book,» he said calling me back to dull reality. «Surely,» I replied bowing;

  «but what magnificent poetry, and I never heard of Swinburne before.»

  «This is his first book, I believe,» said the old gentleman, «but I'm glad you like his verses.» «Like,» I cried, «who could help adoring them?» and I let myself go to recite the Prosperpine:

  From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever Gods may be That no life lives forever, That dead men rise up never, That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea.

  «Why, you've learned it by heart!» cried the old man in wonder. «Learned,» I repeated, «I know half the book by heart: if you had stayed away another half hour, I'd have known it all,» and I went on reciting for the next ten minutes. «I never heard of such a thing in my life,» he cried. «Fancy a cowboy who learns Swinburne by merely reading him. It's astounding! Where are you going?» «To Lawrence,» I replied. «We're almost there,» he added, and then,

  «I wish you would let me give you the book. I can easily get another copy and I think it ought to be yours,» I thanked him with all my heart and in a few minutes more got down at Lawrence station, then as now far outside the little town, clasping my Swinburne in my hand.

  I record this story not to brag of my memory, for all gifts are handicaps in life, but to show how kind western Americans were to young folk, and because the irresistible, unique appeal of Swinburne to youth has never been set forth before, so far as I know. In a comfortable room at the Eldridge House, in the chief str
eet of Lawrence, I met my brother. Willie seemed woefully surprised by my appearance. «You're as yellow as a guinea, but how you've grown,» he cried. «You may be tall, but you look ill, very ill!» He was the picture of health and even better looking than I had remembered him: a man of five feet ten or so, with good figure and very handsome dark face: hair, small moustache, and goatee beard jet black; straight thin nose and superb long hazel eyes with black lashes: he might have stood for the model of a Greek god, were it not that his forehead was narrow and his eyes set close. In three months he had become enthusiastically American. «America is the greatest country in the world»; he assured me from an abysmal ignorance, «any young man who works can make money here; if I had a little capital I'd be a rich man in a very few years; it's some capital I need, nothing more.» Having drawn my story out of me, especially the last phase when I divided up with the boys, he declared I must be mad. «With five thousand dollars,» he cried, «I could be rich in three years, a millionaire in ten. You must be mad; don't you know that everyone is for himself in this world? Good gracious! I never heard of such insanity: if I had only known!» For some days I watched him closely and came to believe that he was perfectly suited to his surroundings, eminently fitted to succeed in them. He was an earnest Christian, I found, who had been converted and baptized in the Baptist Church; he had a fair tenor voice and led the choir; he swallowed all the idiocies of the incredible creed, but drew some valuable moral sanctions from it; he was a teetotaler and didn't smoke; a Nazarene, too, determined to keep chaste, as he called a state of abstinence from women; and weekly indulgence in self-abuse which he tried to justify as inevitable.

  The teaching of Jesus himself had little or no practical effect on him; he classed it all together as counsels of an impossible perfection and, like the vast majority of Americans, he accepted a childish Pauline-German morality, while despising the duty of forgiveness and scorning the Gospel of Love. A few days after our first meeting, Willie proposed to me that I should lend him a thousand dollars and he would give me twenty-five per cent for the use of the money. When I exclaimed against the usurious rate, twelve per cent being the state limit, he told me he could lend a million dollars, if he had it, at from three to five per cent a month on perfect security.

  «So you see,» he wound up, «that I can easily afford to give you two hundred and fifty dollars a year for the use of your thousand: one can buy real estate here to pay fifty per cent a year; the country is only just beginning to be developed,» and so forth and so on in the wildest optimism: the end of it being that he got my thousand dollars, leaving me with barely five hundred. But as I could five in a good boarding house for four dollars a week, I reckoned that at the worst I had one carefree year before me, and if Willie kept his promise, I would be free to do whatever I wanted to do for years to come. It was written that I was to have another experience in Lawrence much more important than anything to do with my brother. «Coming events cast their shadows before,» is a poetic proverb, singularly inept; great events arrive unheralded, were truer. One evening I went to a political meeting at Liberty Hall near my hotel. Senator Ingalls was going to speak, and a Congressman on the Granger movement, the first attempt of the western farmers to react politically against the exploitation of Wall Street. The hall was packed: just behind me sat a man between two pretty grey-eyed girls. The man's face attracted me at first sight: I should be able to picture him, for even as I write his face comes before me as vividly as if the many long years that separate us were but the momentary closing of my eyes. Mentally, I can, even today, reproduce a perfect portrait of him and need only add the coloring and expression. The large eyes were hazel and set far apart under the white, overhanging brow; the hair and whiskers were chestnut-brown, tinged with auburn; but it was the eyes that drew and fascinated me, for they were luminous as no other eyes that I have ever seen; frank too, and kind, kind always. But his dress, a black frock coat, with low stand-up white collar and a narrow black silk tie, excited my snobbish English contempt. Both the girls, sisters evidently, were making up to him for all they were worth, or so it seemed to my jaundiced, envious eyes. Senator Ingalls made the usual kind of speech: the farmers were right to combine, but the money lords were powerful, and after all farmers and bankers alike were Americans-Americans first and last and all the time! (Great cheering!) The Congressman followed with the same brand of patriotic piffle and then cries arose from all parts of the hall for Professor Smith! I heard eager whispering behind me, and turning half-round, guessed that the good looking young man was Professor Smith, for his two girl admirers were persuading him to go on the platform and fascinate the audience. In a little while he went up amid great applause; a good figure of a man, rather tall, about five feet ten, slight with broad shoulders. He began to speak in a thin tenor voice:

  «There is a manifest conflict of Interests,» he said, «between the manufacturing eastern states that demanded a high tariff on all imports and the farming west that wants cheap goods and cheap rates of transport. «In essence, it's a mere matter of arithmetic, a mathematical problem, demanding a compromise; for every country should establish its own manufacturing industries and be self-supporting. The obvious reform is indicated; the Federal government should take over the railways and run them for the farmers, while competition among American manufacturers would ultimately reduce prices.» No one in the hall seemed to understand this «obvious reform,» but the speech called forth a hurricane of cheers, and I concluded that there was a great many students from the state university in the audience. I don't know what possessed me, but when Smith returned to his seat behind me between the two girls and they praised him to the skies, I got up and walked to the platform. I was greeted with a tempest of laughter and must have cut a ludicrous figure. I was in cow-puncher's dress as modified by Reece and Dell; I wore loose Bedford cord breeches, knee-high brown boots and a sort of buckskin shirt and jacket combined that tucked into my breeches. But rains and sun had worked their will on the buckskin, which had shrunk down my neck and up my arms. Spurred on by the laughter, I went up the four steps on the platform and walked over to the mayor, who was chairman. «May I speak?» I asked. «Sure,» he replied; «your name?» «My name is Harris,» I answered, and the mayor manifestly regarding me as a great joke, announced that a Mr. Harris wished to address the meeting, and he hoped the audience would give him a fair hearing, even if his doctrines happened to be peculiar. As I faced him, the spectators shrieked with laughter: the house fairly rocked. I waited a full minute and then began. «How like Americans and Democrats,» I said, «to judge a man by the clothes he wears and the amount of hair he has on his face or the dollars in his jeans!» There was instantaneous silence, the silence of surprise, at least, and I went on to show what I had learned from Mill, that open competition was the law of life, another name for the struggle for existence; that each country should concentrate its energies on producing the things it was best fitted to produce and trade these off against the products of other nations; this was the great economic law, the law of the territorial division of labor. «Americans should produce corn and wheat and meat for the world,» I said, «and exchange these products for the cheapest English woolen goods and French silks and Irish linen. This would enrich the American farmer, develop all the waste American land, and be a thousand tunes better for the whole country than taxing all consumers with high import duties to enrich a few eastern manufacturers who were too inefficient to face the open competition of Europe. The American farmers,» I went on, «should organize with the laborers, for their interests are identical, and fight the eastern manufacturer, who is nothing but a parasite living on the brains and work of better men.» And then, I wound up: «This common sense program won't please your Senators or your Congressmen, who prefer cheap claptrap to thought, or your super-fine Professors, who believe the war of classes is 'a mere arithmetical problem' (and I imitated the professor's thin voice), but it may nevertheless be accepted by the American farmer tired of being milked by the Yankee m
anufacturer, and it should stand as the first chapter in the new Granger gospel.»