Domesday Book

ARCHIBALD LOWELL

Archibald Lowell, owner of the Times
Lived six months of the year at Sunnyside,
His Gothic castle near LeRoy, so named
Because no sun was in him, it may be.
His wife was much away when on this earth
At cures, in travel, fighting psychic ills,
Approaching madness, dying nerves. They said
Her heart was starved for living with a man
So cold and silent. Thirty years she lived
Bound to this man, in restless agony,
And as she could not free her life from his,
Nor keep it living with him, on a day
She stuck a gas hose in her mouth and drank
Her lungs full of the lethal stuff and died.
That was the very day the hunter found
Elenor Murray’s body near the river.
A servant saw this Mrs. Lowell lying
A copy of the Times clutched in her hand,
Which published that a slip of paper found
In Elenor Murray’s pocket had these words
“To be brave and not to flinch.” And was she brave,
And nerved to end it by these words of Elenor?
But Archibald, the husband, could not bear
To have the death by suicide made known.
He laid the body out, as if his wife
Had gone to bed as usual, turned a jet
And left it, just as if his wife had failed
To fully turn it, then went in the room;
Then called the servants, did not know that one
Had seen her with the Times clutched in her hand.
He thought the matter hidden. Merival,
All occupied with Elenor Murray’s death
Gave to a deputy the Lowell inquest.
But later what this servant saw was told
To Merival.

And now no more alone
Than when his wife lived, Lowell passed the days
At Sunnyside, as he had done for years.
He sat alone, and paced the rooms alone,
With hands behind him clasped, in fear and wonder
Of life and what life is. He rode about,
And viewed his blooded cattle on the hills.
But what were all these rooms and acres to him
With no face near him but the servants, gardeners?
Sometimes he wished he had a child to draw
Upon his fabulous income, growing more
Since all his life was centered in the Times
To swell its revenues, and in the process
His spirit was more fully in the Times
Than in his body. There were eyes who saw
How deftly was his spirit woven in it
Until it was a scarf to bind and choke
The public throat, or stifle honest thought
Like a soft pillow offered for the head,
But used to smother. There were eyes who saw
The working of its ways emasculate,
Its tones of gray, where flame had been the thing,
Its timorous steps, while spying on the public,
To learn the public’s thought. Its cautious pauses,
With foot uplifted, ears pricked up to hear
A step fall, twig break. Platitudes in progress—
With sugar coat of righteousness and order,
Respectability.

Did the public make it?
Or did it make the public, that it fitted
With such exactness in the communal life?
Some thousands thought it fair—what should they think
When it played neutral in the matter of news
To both sides of the question, though at last
It turned the judge, and chose the better side,
Determined from the first, a secret plan,
And cunning way to turn the public scale?
Some thousands liked the kind of news it printed
Where no sensation flourished—smallest type
That fixed attention for the staring eyes
Needed for type so small. But others knew
It led the people by its fair pretensions,
And used them in the end. In any case
This editor played hand-ball in this way:
The advertisers tossed the ball, the readers
Caught it and tossed it to the advertisers:
And as the readers multiplied, the columns
Of advertising grew, and Lowell’s thought
Was how to play the one against the other,
And fill his purse.

It was an ingrown mind,
And growing more ingrown with time. Afraid
Of crowds and streets, uncomfortable in clubs,
No warmth in hands to touch his fellows’ hands,
Keeping aloof from politicians, loathing
The human alderman who bails the thief;
The little scamp who pares a little profit,
And grafts upon a branch that takes no harm.
He loved the active spirit, if it worked,
And feared the active spirit, if it played.
This Lowell hid himself from favor seekers,
Such letters filtered to him through a sieve
Of secretaries. If he had a friend,
Who was a mind to him as well, perhaps
It was a certain lawyer, but who knew?
And cursed with monophobia, none the less
This Lowell lived alone there near LeRoy,
Surrounded by his servants, at his desk
A secretary named McGill, who took
Such letters, editorials as he spoke.
His life was nearly waste. A peanut stand
Should be as much remembered as the Times,
When fifty years are passed.

And every month
The circulation manager came down
To tell the great man of the gain or loss
The paper made that month in circulation,
In advertising, chiefly. Lowell took
The audit sheets and studied them, and gave
Steel bullet words of order this or that.
He took the dividends, and put them—where?
God knew alone.

He went to church sometimes,
On certain Sundays, for a pious mother
Had reared him so, and sat there like a corpse,
A desiccated soul, so dry the moss
Upon his teeth was dry.

And on a day,
His wife now in the earth a week or so,
Himself not well, the doctor there to quiet
His fears of sudden death, pains in the chest,
His manager had come—was made to wait
Until the doctor finished—brought the sheets
Which showed the advertising, circulation.
And Lowell studied them and said at last:
“That new reporter makes the Murray inquest
A thing of interest, does the public like it?”
To which the manager: “It sells the paper.”
And then the great man: “It has served its use.
Now being nearly over, print these words:
The Murray inquest shows to what a length
Fantastic wit can go, it should be stopped.”
An editorial later might be well:
Comment upon a father and a mother
Invaded in their privacy, and life
In intimate relations dragged to view
To sate the curious eye.

Next day the Times
Rebuked the coroner in these words. And then
Merival sent word: “I come to see you,
Or else you come to see me, or by process
If you refuse.” And so the editor
Invited Merival to Sunnyside
To talk the matter out. This was the talk:
First Merival went over all the ground
In mild locution, what he sought to do.
How as departments in the war had studied
Disease and what not, tabulated facts,
He wished to make a start for knowing lives,
And finding remedies for lives. It’s true
Not much might be accomplished, also true
The poet and the novelist gave thought,
Analysis to lives, yet who could tell
What system might grow up to find the fault
In marriage as it is, in rearing children
In motherhood, in homes; for Merival
By way of wit said to this dullest man:
“I know of mother and of home, of heaven
I’ve yet to learn.” Whereat the great man winced,
To hear the home and motherhood so slurred,
And briefly said the Times would go its way
To serve the public interests, and to foster
American ideals as he conceived them.
Then Merival who knew the great man’s nature,
How small it was and barren, cold and dull,
And wedded to small things, to gold, and fear
Of change, and knew the life the woman lived,—
These seven days in the earth—with such a man,
Just by a zephyr of intangible thought
Veered round the talk to her, to voice a wonder
About the jet left turned, his deputy
Had overlooked a hose which she could drink
Gas from a jet. “You needn’t touch the jet.
Just leave it as she left it—hide the hose,
And leave the gas on, put the woman in bed.”
“This deputy,” said Merival, “was slack
And let a verdict pass of accident.”
“Oh yes” said Merival, “your servant told
About the hose, the Times clutched in her hand.
And may I test this jet, while I am here?
Go up to see and test it?”

Whereupon
The great man with wide eyes stared in the eyes
Of Merival, was speechless for a moment,
Not knowing what to say, while Merival
Read something in his eyes, saw in his eyes
The secret beat to cover, saw the man
Turn head away which shook a little, saw
His chest expand for breath, and heard at last
The editor in four steel bullet words,
“It is not necessary.”

Merival
Had trapped the solitary fox—arose
And going said: “If it was suicide
The inquest must be changed.”

The editor
Looked through the window at the coroner
Walking the gravel walk, and saw his hand
Unlatch the iron gate, and saw him pass
From view behind the trees.

Then horror rose
Within his brain, a nameless horror took
The heart of him, for fear this coroner
Would dig this secret up, and show the world
The dead face of the woman self-destroyed,
And of the talk, which would not come to him,
To poison air he breathed no less, of why
This woman took her life; if for ill health
Then why ill health? O, well he knew at heart
What he had done to break her, starve her life.
And now accused himself too much for words,
Ways, temperament of him that murdered her,
For lovelessness, and for deliberate hands
That pushed her off and down.

He rode that day
To see his cattle, overlook the work,
But when night came with silence and the cry
Of night-hawks, and the elegy of leaves
Beneath the stars that looked so cold at him
As he turned seeking sleep, the dreaded pain
Grew stronger in his breast. Dawn came at last
And then the stir and voices of the maids.
And after breakfast in the carven room
Archibald Lowell standing by the mantel
In his great library, felt sudden pain;
Saw sudden darkness, nothing saw at once,
Lying upon the marble of the hearth;
His great head cut which struck the post of brass
In the hearth’s railing—only a little blood!
Archibald Lowell being dead at last;
The Times left to the holders of the stock
Who kept his policy, and kept the Times
As if the great man lived.

And Merival
Taking the doctor’s word that death was caused
By angina pectoris, let it drop.
And went his way with Elenor Murray’s case.
————
So Lowell’s dead and buried; had to die,
But not through Elenor Murray. That’s the Fate
That laughs at greatness, little things that sneak
From alien neighborhoods of life and kill.
And Lowell leaves a will, to which a boy—
Who sold the Times once, afterward the Star—
Is alien as this Elenor to the man
Who owned the Times. But still is brought in touch
With Lowell’s will, because this Lowell died
Before he died. And Merival learns the facts
And brings them to the jury in these words:—

WIDOW FORTELKA

Marie Fortelka, widow, mother of Josef,
Now seventeen, an invalid at home
In a house, in Halstead Street, his running side
Aching with broken ribs, read in the Times
Of Lowell’s death the editor, dressed herself
To call on William Rummler, legal mind
For Lowell and the Times.

It was a day
When fog hung over the city, and she thought
Of fogs in Germany whence she came, and thought
Of hard conditions there when she was young.
Then as her boy, this Josef, coughed, she looked
And felt a pang at heart, a rise of wrath,
And heard him moan for broken ribs and lungs
That had been bruised or mashed. America,
Oh yes, America, she said to self,
How is it different from the land I left?
And then her husband’s memory came to mind:
How he had fled his country to be free,
And come to Philadelphia, with the thrill
Of new life found, looked at the famous Hall
Which gave the Declaration, cried and laughed
And said: “The country’s free, and I am here,
I am free now, a man, no more a slave.”
What did he find? A job, but prices high.
Wages decreased in winter, then a strike.
He joined the union, found himself in jail
For passing hand-bills which announced the strike,
And asked the public to take note, and punish
The corporation, not to trade with it,
For its injustice toward the laborers.
And in the court he heard the judge decide:
“Free speech cannot be used to gain the ends
Of ruin by conspiracy like this
Against a business. Men from foreign lands,
Of despot rule and poverty, who come
For liberty and means of life among us
Must learn that liberty is ordered liberty,
And is not license, freedom to commit
Injury to another.”

So in jail
He lay his thirty days out, went to work
Where he could find it, found the union smashed,
Himself compelled to take what job he could,
What wages he was offered. And his children
Kept coming year by year till there were eight,
And Josef was but ten. And then he died
And left this helpless family, and the boy
Sold papers on the street, ten years of age,
The widow washed.

And first he sold the Times
And helped to spread the doctrines of the Times
Of ordered liberty and epicene
Reforms of this or that. But when the Star
With millions back of it broke in the field
He changed and sold the Star, too bad for him—
Discovered something:

Josef did not know
The corners of the street are free to all,
Or free to none, where newsboys stood and sold,
And kept their stands, or rather where the powers
That kept the great conspiracy of the press
Controlled the stands, and to prevent the Star
From gaining foot-hold. Not upon this corner
Nor on that corner, any corner in short
Shall newsboys sell the Star. But Josef felt,
Being a boy, indifferent to the rules,
Well founded, true or false, that all the corners
Were free to all, and for his daring, strength
Had been selected, picked to sell the Star,
And break the ground, gain place upon the stands.
He had been warned from corners, chased and boxed
By heavy fists from corners more than once
Before the day they felled him. On that day
A monster bully, once a pugilist,
Came on him selling the Star and knocked him down,
Kicked in his ribs and broke a leg and cracked
His little skull.

And so they took him home
To Widow Fortelka and the sisters, brothers,
Whose bread he earned. And there he lay and moaned,
And when he sat up had a little cough,
Was short of breath.

And on this foggy day
When Widow Fortelka reads in the Times
That Lowell, the editor, is dead, he sits
With feet wrapped in a quilt and gets his breath
With open mouth, his face is brightly flushed;
A fetid sweetness fills the air of the room
That from his open mouth comes. Josef lingers
A few weeks yet—he has tuberculosis.
And so his mother looks at him, resolves
To call this day on William Rummler, see
If Lowell’s death has changed the state of things;
And if the legal mind will not relent
Now that the mind that fed it lies in death.
It’s true enough, she thinks, I was dismissed,
And sent away for good, but never mind.
It can’t be true this pugilist went farther
Than the authority of his hiring, that’s
The talk this lawyer gave her, used a word
She could not keep in mind—the lawyer said
Respondeat superior in this case
Was not in point—and if it could be proved
This pugilist was hired by the Times,
No one could prove the Times had hired him
To beat a boy, commit a crime. Well, then
“What was he hired for?” the widow asked.
And then she talked with newsboys, and they said
The papers had their sluggers, all of them,
Even the Star, and that was just a move
In getting circulation, keeping it.
And all these sluggers watched the stands and drove
The newsboys selling Stars away.

No matter,
She could not argue with this lawyer Rummler,
Who said: “You must excuse me, go away,
I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.”

Now Widow Fortelka had never heard
Of Elenor Murray, had not read a line
Of Elenor Murray’s death beside the river.
She was as ignorant of the interview
Between the coroner and this editor
Who died next morning fearing Merival
Would dig up Mrs. Lowell and expose
Her suicide, as conferences of spirits
Directing matters in another world.
Her thought was moulded no less by the riffles
That spread from Elenor Murray and her death.
And she resolved to see this lawyer Rummler,
And try again to get a settlement
To help her dying boy. And so she went.

That morning Rummler coming into town
Had met a cynic friend upon the train
Who used his tongue as freely as his mood
Moved him to use it. So he said to Rummler:
“I see your client died—a hell of a life
That fellow lived, a critic in our midst
Both hated and caressed. And I suppose
You drew his will and know it, I will bet,
If he left anything to charity,
Or to the city, it is some narcotic
To keep things as they are, the ailing body
To dull and bring forgetfulness of pain.
He was a fine albino of the soul,
No pigment in his genesis to give
Color to hair or eyes, he had no gonads.”
And William Rummler laughed and said, “You’ll see
What Lowell did when I probate the will.”

Then William Rummler thought that very moment
Of plans whereby his legal mind could thrive
Upon the building of the big hotel
To Lowell’s memory, for perpetual use
Of the Y. M. C. A., the seminary, too,
In Moody’s memory for an orthodox
Instruction in the bible.

With such things
In mind, this William Rummler opened the door,
And stepped into his office, got a shock
From seeing Widow Fortelka on the bench,
Where clients waited, waiting there for him.
She rose and greeted him, and William Rummler
Who in a stronger moment might have said:
“You must excuse me, I have told you, madam,
I can do nothing for you,” let her follow
Into his private office and sit down
And there renew her suit.

She said to him:
“My boy is dying now, I think his ribs
Were driven in his lungs and punctured them.
He coughs the worst stuff up you ever saw.
And has an awful fever, sweats his clothes
Right through, is breathless, cannot live a month.
And I know you can help me. Mr. Lowell,
So you told me, refused a settlement,
Because this pugilist was never hired
To beat my boy, or any boy; for fear
It would be an admission, and be talked of,
And lead another to demand some money.
But now he’s dead, and surely you are free
To help me some, so that this month or two,
While my boy Joe is dying he can have
What milk he wants and food, and when he dies,
A decent coffin, burial. Then perhaps
There will be something left to help me with—
I wash to feed the children, as you know.”

And William Rummler looked at her and thought
For one brief moment with his lawyer mind
About this horror, while the widow wept,
And as she wept a culprit mood was his
For thinking of the truth, for well he knew
This slugger had been hired for such deeds,
And here was one result. And in his pain
The cynic words his friend had said to him
Upon the train began to stir, and then
He felt a rush of feeling, blood, and thought
Of clause thirteen in Lowell’s will, which gave
The trustees power, and he was chief trustee,
To give some worthy charity once a year,
Not to exceed a thousand dollars. So
He thought to self, “This is a charity.
I will advance the money, get it back
As soon as I probate the will.”

At last
He broke this moment’s musing and spoke up:
“Your case appeals to me. You may step out,
And wait till I prepare the papers, then
I’ll have a check made for a thousand dollars.”

Widow Fortelka rose up and took
The crucifix she wore and kissed it, wept
And left the room.
————
Now here’s the case of Percy Ferguson
You’d think his life was safe from Elenor Murray.
No preacher ever ran a prettier boat
Than Percy Ferguson, all painted white
With polished railings, flying at the fore
The red and white and blue. Such little waves
Set dancing by the death of Elenor Murray
To sink so fine a boat, and leave the Reverend
To swim to shore! he couldn’t walk the waves!

REV. PERCY FERGUSON

The Rev. Percy Ferguson, patrician
Vicar of Christ, companion of the strong,
And member of the inner shrine, where men
Observe the rituals of the golden calf;
A dilettante, and writer for the press
Upon such themes as optimism, order,
Obedience, beauty, law, while Elenor Murray’s
Life was being weighed by Merival
Preached in disparagement of Merival
Upon a fatal Sunday, as it chanced,
Too near to doom’s day for the clergyman.
For, as the word had gone about that waste
In lives preoccupied this Merival,
And many talked of waste, and spoke a life
Where waste had been in whole or part—the pulpit
Should take a hand, thought Ferguson. And so
The Reverend Percy Ferguson preached thus
To a great audience and fashionable:
“The hour’s need is a firmer faith in Christ,
A closer hold on God, belief again
In sin’s reality; the age’s vice
Is laughter over sin, the attitude
That sin is not!” And then to prove that sin
Is something real, he spoke of money sins
That bring the money panics, of the beauty
That lust corrupts, wound up with Athen’s story,
Which sin decayed. And touching on this waste,
Which was the current talk, what is this waste
Except a sin in life, the moral law
Transgressed, God mocked, the order of man’s life,
And God’s will disobeyed? Show me a life
That lives through Christ and none shall find a waste.
This clergyman some fifteen years before
Went on a hunt for Alma Bell, who taught
The art department of the school, and found
Enough to scare the school directors that
She burned with lawless love for Elenor Murray.

And made it seem the teacher’s reprimand
In school of Elenor Murray for her ways
Of strolling, riding with young men at night,
Was moved by jealousy of Elenor Murray,
Being herself in love with Elenor Murray.
This clergyman laid what he found before
The school directors, Alma Bell was sent
Out of the school her way, and disappeared....
But now, though fifteen years had passed, the story
Of Alma Bell and Elenor Murray crept
Like poisonous mist, scarce seen, around LeRoy.
It had been so always. And all these years
No one would touch or talk in open words
The loathsome matter, since girls grown to women,
And married in the town might have their names
Relinked to Alma Bell’s. And was it true
That Elenor Murray strayed as a young girl
In those far days of strolls and buggy rides?

But after Percy Ferguson had thundered
Against the inquest, Warren Henderson,
A banker of the city, who had dealt
In paper of the clergyman, and knew
The clergyman had interests near Victoria,
Was playing at the money game, and knew
He tottered on the brink, and held to hands
That feared to hold him longer—Henderson,
A wise man, cynical, contemptuous
Of frocks so sure of ways to avoid the waste,
So unforgiving of the tangled moods
And baffled eyes of men; contemptuous
Of frocks so avid for the downy beds,
Place, honors, money, admiration, praise,
Much wished to see the clergyman come down
And lay his life beside the other sinners.
But more he knew, admired this Alma Bell,
Did not believe she burned with guilty love
For Elenor Murray, thought the moral hunt
Or Alma Bell had made a waste of life,
As ignorance might pluck a flower for thinking
It was a weed; on Elenor Murray too
Had brought a waste, by scenting up her life
With something faint but ineradicable.
And Warren Henderson would have revenge,
And waited till old Jacob Bangs should fix
His name to paper once again of Ferguson’s
To tell old Jacob Bangs he should be wary,
Since banks and agencies were tremulous
With hints of failure at Victoria.

So meeting Jacob Bangs the banker told him
What things were bruited, and warned the man
To fix his name no more to Ferguson’s paper.
It was the very day the clergyman
Sought Jacob Bangs to get his signature
Upon a note for money at the bank.
And Jacob Bangs was silent and evasive,
Demurred a little and refused at last.
Which sent the anxious clergyman adrift
To look for other help. He looked and looked,
And found no other help. Associates
Depending more on men than God, fell down,
And in a day the bubble burst. The Times
Had columns of the story.

In a week,
At Sunday service Percy Ferguson
Stood in the pulpit to confess his sin,
The Murray jury sat and fed their joy
For hearing Ferguson confess his sin.
This is the way he did it:

“First, my friends,
I do not say I have betrayed the trust
My friends have given me. Some years ago
I thought to make provision for my wife,
I wished to start some certain young men right.
I had another plan I can’t disclose,
Not selfish, you’ll believe me. So I took
My savings made as lecturer and writer
And put them in this venture. I’m ashamed
To say how great those savings were, in view
Of what the poor earn, those who work with hands!
Ashamed too, when I think these savings grew
Because I spoke the things the rich desired.
And squared my words with what the strong would have—
Therein Christ was betrayed. The end has come.
I too have been betrayed, my confidence
Wronged by my fellows in the enterprise.
I hope to pay my debts. Hard poverty
Has come to me to bring me back to Christ.”

“But listen now: These years I lived perturbed,
Lest this life which I grew into would mould
Young men and ministers, lead them astray
To public life, sensation, lecture platforms,
Prosperity, away from Christ-like service,
Obscure and gentle. To those souls I owe
My heart’s confession: I have loved my books
More than the poor, position more than service,
Office and honor over love of men;
Lived thus when all my strength belonged to thought,
To work for schools, the sick, the poor, the friendless,
To boys and girls with hungry minds. My friends,
Here I abase my soul before God’s throne,
And ask forgiveness for the pious zeal
With which I smote the soul of Alma Bell,
And smudged the robe of Elenor Murray. God,
Thou, who has taken Elenor Murray home,
After great service in the war, O grant
Thy servant yet to kneel before the soul
Of Elenor Murray. For who am I to judge?
What was I then to judge? who coveted honors,
When solitude, where I might dwell apart,
And listen to the voice of God was mine,
By calling and for seeking. I have broken
The oath I took to take no purse or scrip.
I have loved money, even while I knew
No servant of Christ can work for Christ and strive
For money. And if anywhere there be
A noble boy who would become a minister,
Who has heard me, or read my books, and grown
Thereby to cherish secular ideas
Of Christ’s work in the world, to him I say:
Repent the thought, reject me; there are men
And women missionaries, here, abroad,
And nameless workers in poor settlements
Whose latchets to stoop down and to unloose
I am unworthy.”

“Gift of life too short!
O, beautiful gift of God, too brief at best,
For all a man can do, how have I wasted
This precious gift! How wasted it in pride,
In seeking out the powerful, the great,
The hands with honors, gold to give—when nothing
Is profitable to a servant of the Christ
Except to shepherd Christ’s poor. O, young men,
Interpret not your ministry in terms
Of intellect alone, forefront the heart,
That at the end of life you may look up
And say to God: Behind these are the sheep
Thou gavest me, and not a one is lost.”

“As to my enemies, for enemies
A clergyman must have whose fault is mine,
Plato would have us harden hearts to sorrow.
And Zeno roofs of slate for souls to slide
The storm of evil—Christ in sorrow did
For evil good. For me, my prayer is this,
My faith as well, that I may be perfected
Through suffering.”

That ended the confession.
Then “Love Divine, All Love Excelling” sounded.
The congregation rose, and some went up
To take the pastor’s hand, but others left
To think the matter over.

For some said:
“He married fortunate.” And others said:
“We know through Jacob Bangs he has investments
In wheat lands, what’s the truth? In any case
What avarice is this that made him anxious
About the comfort of his wife and family?
The thing won’t work. He’s only middle way
In solving his soul’s problem. This confession
Is just a poor beginning.” Others said:
“He drove out Alma Bell, let’s drive him out.”
And others said: “you note we never heard
About this speculation till it failed,
And he was brought to grief. If it had prospered
The man had never told, what do you think?”
But in a year as health failed, Ferguson
Took leave of absence, and the silence of life
Which closes over men, however noisy
With sermons, lectures, covered him. His riffle
Died out in distant waters.

There was a Doctor Burke lived at LeRoy,
Neurologist and student. On a night
When Merival had the jury at his house,
Llewellyn George was telling of his travels
In China and Japan, had mutual friends
With Franklin Hollister, the cousin of Elenor,
And son of dead Corinne, who hid her letters
Under the eaves. The talk went wide and far.
For David Borrow, sunny pessimist,
Thrust logic words at Maiworm, the juryman;
And said our life was bad, and must be so,
While Maiworm trusted God, said life was good.
And Winthrop Marion let play his wit,
The riches of his reading over all.
Thus as they talked this Doctor Burke came in.
“You’ll pardon this intrusion, I’ll go on
If this is secret business. Let me say
This inquest holds my interest and I’ve come
To tell of Elenor’s ancestry.” Thus he spoke.
“There’ll be another time if I must go.”
And Merival spoke up and said: “why stay
And tell us what you know, or think,” and so
The coroner and jury sat and heard:—

DR. BURKE

You’ve heard of potters’ wheels and potters’ hands.
I had a dream that told the human tale
As well as potters’ wheels or potters’ hands.
I saw a great hand slopping plasmic jelly
Around the low sides of a giant bowl.
A drop would fly upon the giant table,
And quick the drop would twist up into form,
Become homonculus and wave its hands,
Brandish a little pistol, shoot a creature,
Upspringing from another drop of plasm,
Slopped on the giant table. Other drops,
Flying as water from a grinding stone,
Out of the giant bowl, took little crowns
And put them on their heads and mounted thrones,
And lorded little armies. Some became
Half-drooped and sickly things, like poisoned flies.
And others stood on lighted faggots, others
Fed and commanded, others served and starved,
But many joined the throng of animate drops,
And hurried on the phantom quest.

You see,
Whether you call it potter’s hand or hand
That stirs, to no end, jelly in the bowl,
You have the force outside and not inside.
Invest it with a malice, wanton humor,
Which likes to see the plasmic jelly slop,
And rain in drops upon the giant table,
And does not care what happens in the world,
That giant table.

All such dreams are wrong,
My dream is wrong, my waking thought is right.
Man can subdue the giant hand that stirs,
Or turns the wheel, and so these visions err.
For as this farmer, lately come to town,
Picks out the finest corn seeds, and so crops
A finer corn, let’s look to human seed,
And raise a purer stock; let’s learn of him,
Who does not put defective grains aside
For planting in the spring, but puts aside
The best for planting. For I’d like to see
As much care taken with the human stock
As men now take of corn, race-horses, hogs.
You, Coroner Merival are right, I think.
If we conserve our forests, waterways,
Why not the stream of human life, which wastes
Because its source is wasted, fouled.

Perhaps
Our coroner has started something good,
And brought to public mind what might result
If every man kept record of the traits
Known in his family for the future use
Of those to come in choosing mates.

Behold,
Your moralists and churchmen with your rules
Brought down from Palestine, which says that life
Though tainted, maddened, must not be controlled,
Diverted, headed off, while life in corn,
And life in hogs, that feed the life of man
Should be made better for the life of man—
Behold, I say, some hundred millions spent
On paupers, epileptics, deaf and blind;
On feeble minded, invalids, the insane—
Behold, I say, this cost in gold alone,
Leave for the time the tragedy of souls,
Who suffer or must see such suffering,
And then turn back to what? The hand that stirs,
The potter’s hand? Why, no—the marriage counter
Where this same state in Christian charity
Spending its millions, lets the fault begin,
And says to epileptics and what not:—
“Go breed your kind, for Jesus came to earth,
And we will house and feed your progeny,
Or hang, incarcerate your murderous spawn,
As it may happen.”

And all the time we know
As small grains fruit in small grains, even man
In fifty matters of pathology
Transmits what’s in him, blindness, imbecility,
Hysteria, susceptibilities
To cancer and tuberculosis. Also
The soil that sprouts the giant weed of madness—
There’s soil which will not sprout them, occupied
Too full by blossoms, healthy trees.

We know
Such things as these—Well, I would sterilize,
Or segregate these shriveled seeds and keep
The soil of life for seeds select, and take
The church and Jesus, if he’s in the way,
And say: “You stand aside, and let me raise
A better and a better breed of men.”
Quit, shut your sniveling charities; have mercy
Not on these paupers, imbeciles, diseased ones,
But on the progeny you let them breed.
And thereby sponge the greatest waste away,
And source of life’s immeasurable tragedies.
Avaunt you potter hands and potter wheels!
God is within us, not without us, we
Are given souls to know and see and guide
Ourselves and those to come, souls that compute
The calculus of beauties, talents, traits,
And show us that the good in seed strives on
To master stocks; that even poisoned blood,
And minds in chemic turmoils, mixed with blood
And minds in harmony, work clean at last—
Else how may normal man to-day be such
With some eight billion ancestors behind,
And something in him of the blood of all
Who lived five hundred years ago or so,
Who were diseased with alcohol and pork,
And poverty? But oh these centuries
Of agony and waste! Let’s stop it now!
And since this God within us gives us choice
To let the dirty plasma flow or dam it,
To give the channel to the silver stream
Of starry power, which shall we do? Now choose
Between your race of drunkards, imbeciles,
Lunatics and neurotics, or the race
Of those who sing and write, or measure space,
Build temples, bridges, calculate the stars,
Live long and sanely.

Well, I take my son,
I could have prophesied his eyes, through knowing
The color of my mother’s, father’s eyes,
The color of his mother’s parent’s eyes.
I could have told his hair.

There’s subtler things.
My father died before this son was born;
Why does this son smack lips and turn his hand
Just like my father did? Not imitation—
He never saw him, and I do not do so.
Refine the matter where you will, how far
You choose to go, it is not eyes and hair,
Chins, shape of head, of limbs, or shape of hands,
Nor even features, look of eyes, nor sound
Of voice that we inherit, but the traits
Of inner senses, spiritual gifts, and secret
Beauties and powers of spirit; which result
Not solely by the compound of the souls
Through conjugating cells, but in the fusion
Something arises like an unknown X
And starts another wonder in the soul,
That comes from souls compounded.

Coroner
You have done well to study Elenor Murray.
How do I view the matter? To begin
Here is a man who looks upon a woman,
Desires her, so they marry, up they step
Before the marriage counter, buy a license
To live together, propagate their kind.
No questions asked. I’ll later come to that.
This couple has four children, Elenor
Is second to be born. I knew this girl,
I cared for her at times when she was young—
Well, for the picture general, she matures
Goes teaching school, leaves home, goes far away,
Has restlessness and longings, ups and downs
Of ecstasy and depression, has a will
Which drives her onward, dreams that call to her.
Goes to the war at last to sacrifice
Her life in duty, and the root of this
Is masochistic (though I love the flower),
Comes back and dies. I call her not a drop
Slopped from the giant bowl; she is a growth
Proceeding on clear lines, if we could know,
From cells that joined, and had within themselves
The quality of the stream whose source I see
As far as grandparents. And now to this:

We all know what her father, mother are.
No doubt the marriage counter could have seen—
Or asked what was not visible. But who knows
About the father’s parents, or the mother’s?
I chance to know.

The father drinks, you say?
Well, he drank little when this child was born,
Had he drunk much, it is the nerves which crave
The solace of the cup, and not the cup
Which passes from the parent to the child.
His father and his mother were good blood,
Steady, industrious; and just because
His father and his mother had the will
To fight privation, and the lonely days
Of pioneering, so this son had will
To fight, aspire, but at the last to growl,
And darken in that drug store prison, take
To drink at times in anger for a will
That was so balked.

Well, then your marriage counter
Could scarcely ask: What is your aim in life?
You clerk now in a drug store, you aspire
To be a lawyer, if you find yourself
Stopped on your way by poverty, the work
Of clerking to earn bread, you will break down,
And so affect your progeny. So, you see,
For all of that the daughter Elenor
Was born when this ambition had its hope,
Not when it tangled up in hopelessness;
And therefore is thrown out of the account.
The father must be passed and given license
To wed this woman. How about the mother?
You never knew the mother of the mother.
She had great power of life and power of soul,
Lived to be eighty-seven, to the last
Was tense, high voiced, excitable, ecstatic,
Top full of visions, dreams, and plans for life.
But worse than that at fifty lost her mind,
Was two years kept at Kankakee, quite mad,
Grieving for fancied wrongs against her husband
Some five years dead, and praying to keep down
Desire for men. Her malady was sensed
When she began to wander here and there,
In shops and public places, in the church,
Wherever she could meet with men, one man
Particularly to whom she made advances
Unwomanly and strange. And so at last
She turned her whole mind to the church, became
Religion mad, grew mystical, believed
That Jesus Christ had taken her to spouse.
They kept her in confinement for two years.
The rage died down at last, and she came home.
But to the last was nervous, tense, high keyed.
And then her mind failed totally, she died
At eighty-seven here.

Now I could take
Some certain symbols A and a, and show
Out of the laws that Mendel found for us,
What chances Elenor Murray had to live
Free of the madness, clear or in dilute,
Diminished or made over, which came down
From this old woman to her. It’s enough
To see in Elenor Murray certain traits,
Passions and powers, ecstasies and sorrows.
And from them life’s misfortunes, and to see
They tally, take the color of the soul
Of this old woman, back of her. Even to see
In Elenor Murray’s mother states of soul,
And states of nerves, passed on to Elenor Murray
Directly by her mother.

But you say,
Since many say so, here’s a woman’s soul
Most beautiful and serviceable in the world
And she confutes you, in your logic chopping,
Materialistic program, who would give
The marriage counter power to pick the corn seed
For future planting:

No, I say to this.
What does it come to? She had will enough,
And aspiration, struck out for herself,
Learned for herself, did service in the war,
As many did, and died—all very good.
But not so good that we could quite afford
To take the chances on some other things
Which might have come from her. Well, to begin
Putting aside an autopsy, she died
Because this neural weakness, so derived,
Caught in such stress of life proved far too much
For one so organized; a stress of life
Which others could live through, and have lived through.
The world had Elenor Murray, and she died
Before she was a cost.—But just suppose
No war had been to aureole her life—
And she had lived here and gone mad at last
Become a charge upon the state? Or yet,
As she was love-mad, by the common word,
And as she had neurotic tendencies,
Would seek neurotic types therefore, suppose
She had with some neurotic made a marriage,
And brought upon us types worse than themselves;
Given us the symbol double A instead
Of big and little a, where are you then?
You have some suicides, or murders maybe,
Some crimes in sex, some madness on your hands,
For which to tax the strong to raise, and raise
Some millions every year.

Are we so mad
For beauty, sacrifice and heroism,
So hungry for the stimulus of these
That we cannot discern and fairly appraise
What Elenor Murray was, what to the world
She brought, for which we overlook the harm
She might have done the world? Not if we think!
And if we think, she will not seem God’s flower
Made spotted, pale or streaked by cross of breed,
A wonder and a richness in the world;
But she will seem a blossom which to these
Added a novel poison with the power
To spread her poison! And we may dispense
With what she did and what she tried to do,
No longer sentimentalists, to keep
The chances growing in the world to bring
A better race of men.

Then Doctor Burke
Left off philosophy and asked: “How many
Of you who hear me, know that Elenor Murray
Was distant cousin to this necrophile,
This Taylor boy, I call him boy, though twenty,
Who got the rope for that detested murder
Of a young girl—Oh yes, let’s save the seed
Of stock like this!”

But only David Borrow
Knew Elenor was cousin to this boy.
And Merival spoke up: “What is to-day?
It’s Thursday, it’s to-morrow that he hangs.
I’ll go now to the jail to see this boy.”
“He hangs at nine o’clock,” said Dr. Burke.
And Merival got up to go. The party
Broke up, departed. At the jail he saw
The wretched creature doomed to die. And turned
Half sick from seeing how he tossed and looked
With glassy eyes. The sheriff had gone out.
And Merival could see him, get the case.
Next afternoon they met, the sheriff told
This story to the coroner.

CHARLES WARREN, THE SHERIFF

I have seen twenty men hanged, hung myself
Two in this jail, with whom I talked the night
Before they had the rope, knotted behind
The ear to break the neck. These two I hanged,
One guilty and defiant, taking chops,
Four cups of coffee just an hour before
We swung him off; the other trembling, pale,
Protesting innocence, but guilty too—
Both wore the same look in the middle watch.
I tell you what it is: You take a steer,
And windlass him to where the butcher stands
With hammer ready for the blow and knife
To slit the throat after the hammer falls,
Well, there’s a moment when the steer is standing
Head, neck strained side-ways, eyes rolled side-ways too,
Fixed, bright seen this way, but another way
A film seems spreading on them. That’s the look.
They wear a corpse-like pallor, and their tongues
Are loose, sprawl in their mouths, lie paralyzed
Against their teeth, or fall back in their throats
Which make them cough and stop for words and close
Dry lips with little pops.

There’s something else:
Their minds are out of them, like a rubber band
Stretched from the place it’s pinned, about to break.
And all the time they try to draw it back,
And give it utterance with that sprawling tongue,
And lips too dry for words. They hold it tight
As a woman giving birth holds to the sheet
Tied to the bed’s head, pulls the sheet to end
The agony and the reluctance of the child
That pauses, dreads to enter in this world.

So was it with Fred Taylor. But before
The high Court shook his hope, he talked to me
Freely and fully, saying many times
What could the world expect of him beside
Some violence or murder? He had borrowed
The books his lawyers used to fight for him,
And read for hours and days about heredity.
And in our talks he said: mix red and violet,
You have the color purple. Strike two notes,
You have a certain chord, and nature made me
By rules as mathematical as they use
In mixing drugs or gases. Then he’d say:
Look at this table, and he’d show to me
A diagram of chickens, how blue fowls
Come from a cross of black with one of white
With black splashed feathers. Look at the blues, he’d say.
They mate, and of four chickens, two are blue,
And one is black and one is white. These blues
Produce in that proportion. But the black
And white have chickens white and black, you see
In equal numbers. Don’t you see that I
Was caught in mathematics, jotted down
Upon a slate before I came to earth?
They could have picked my forbears; on a slate
Forecast my soul, its tendencies, if they
Had been that devilish. And so he talked.

Well, then he heard that Elenor Murray died,
And told me that her grandmother, that woman
Known for her queerness and her lively soul
To eighty years and more, was grandmother
To his father, and this Elenor Murray cousin
To his father. There you have it, he exclaimed,
She killed herself, and I know why, he said
She loved someone. This love is in our blood,
And overflows, or spurts between the logs
You dam it with, or fully stayed grows green
With summer scum, breeds frogs and spotted snakes.

He was a study and I studied him.
I’d sit beside his cell and read some words
From his confession, ask why did you this?
His crime was monstrous, but he won me over.
I wished to help the boy, for boy he was
Just nineteen, and I pitied him. At last
His story seemed as clear as when you see
The truth behind poor words that say as much
As words can say—you see, you get the truth
And know it, even if you never pass
The truth to others.

Lord! This girl he killed
Knew not the power she played with. Why she sat
Like a child upon the asp’s nest picking flowers.
Or as a child will pet a mad dog. Look
You come into my life, what do you bring?
Why, everything that made your life, all pains,
All raptures, disappointments, wisdom learned
You bring to me. But do you show them, no!
You hide them maybe, some of them, and leave
Myself to learn you by the hardest means,
And bing! A something in you, or in me,
Out of a past explodes, or better still
Extends a claw from out the buttoned coat
And rips a face.

So this poor girl was killed,
And by an innocent coquetry evoked
The claw that tore her breast away.

One day
As I passed by his cell I stopped and sat.
What was the first thing entering in your mind
From which you trace your act? And he said: “Well
Almost from the beginning all my mind
Was on her from the moment I awaked
Until I slept, and often I awoke
At two or three o’clock with thoughts of her.
And through the day I thought of nothing else;
Sometimes I could not eat. At school my thought
Stretched out of me to her, could not be pulled
Back to the lesson. I could read a page
As it were Greek, not understand a word.
But just the moment I was with her then
My soul re-entered me, I was at peace,
And happy, oh so happy! In the days
When we were separated my unrest
Took this form: that I must be with her, or
If that could not be, then some other place
Was better than the place I was—I strained,
Lived in a constant strain, found no content
With anything or place, could find no peace
Except with her.”

“Right from the first I had
Two minds, two hearts concerning her, and one
Was confidence, and one was doubt, one love,
One hatred. And one purpose was to serve her,
Guard her and care for her, one said destroy,
Ruin or kill her. Sitting by her side,
Except as I shall say I loved her, trusted her,
Away from her, I doubted her and hated her.
But at the dances when I saw her smile
Up at another man, the storming blood
Roared in my brain for wondering about
The words they said. He might be holding her
Too close to him; or as I watched I saw
His knee indent her skirt between her knees,
That might be when she smiled. Then going home
I’d ask her what he said. She’d only smile
And keep a silence that I could not open
With any pry of questions.”

“Well, we quarreled,
About this boy she danced with. So I said:
I’ll leave her, never see her, I’ll go find
Another girl, forget her. Sunday next
I saw her driving with this fellow. I
Was walking in the road, they passed me laughing,
She turned about and waved her hand at me.
That night I lay awake and tossed and thought:
Where are they now? What are they doing now?
He’s kissing her upon the lips I’ve kissed,
Or worse, perhaps, I have been fooled, she lies
Within his arms and gives him what for love
I never asked her, never dared to ask.”
This brought Fred Taylor’s story to the murder,
In point of madness, anyway. Some business
Broke in our visit here. Another time
I sat with him and questioned him again
About the night he killed her.

“Well,” he said,
“I told you that we quarreled. So I fought
To free myself of thought of her—no use.
I tried another girl, it wouldn’t work.
For at the dance I took this girl to, I
Saw Gertrude with this fellow, and the madness
Came over me in blackness, hurricanes,
Until I found myself in front of her,
Where she was seated, asking for a dance.
She smiled and rose and danced with me. And then
As the dance ended, May I come to see you,
I’m sorry for my words, came from my tongue,
In spite of will. She laughed and said to me:
‘If you’ll behave yourself.’”

“I went to see her,
But came away more wretched than I went.
She seemed to have sweet secrets, in her silence
And eyes too calm the secrets hid themselves.
At first I could not summon up the strength
To ask her questions, but at last I did.
And then she only shook her head and laughed,
And spoke of something else. She had a way
Of mixing up the subjects, till my mind
Forgot the very thing I wished to know,
Or dulled its edges so, if I remembered
I could not ask it so to bring the answer
I wished from her. I came away so weak
I scarce could walk, fell into sleep at once,
But woke at three o’clock, and could not sleep.”

“Before this quarrel we had been engaged
And at this evening’s end I brought it up:
‘What shall we do? Are you engaged to me?
Will you renew it?’ And she said to me:
‘We still are young, it’s better to be free.
Let’s play and dance. Be gay, for if you will
I’ll go with you, but when you’re gloomy, dear,
You are not company for a girl.’”

“Dear me!
Here was I five feet nine, and could have crushed
Her little body with my giant arms.
And yet in strength that counts, the mind that moves
The body, but much more can move itself,
And other minds, she was a spirit power,
And I but just a derrick slowly swung
By an engine smaller, noisy with its chug,
And cloudy with its smoke bituminous.
That night, however, she engaged to go
To dance with me a week hence. But meanwhile
The hellish thing comes, on the morning after.
Thus chum of mine, who testified, John Luce
Came to me with the story that this man
That Gertrude danced with, told him—O my God—
That Gertrude hinted she would come across,
Give him the final bliss. That was the proof
They brought out in the trial, as you know.
The fellow said it, damn him—whether she
Made such a promise, who knows? Would to God
I knew before you hang me. There I stood
And heard this story, felt my arteries
Lock as you’d let canal gates down, my heart
Beat for deliverance from the bolted streams.
That night I could not sleep, but found a book,
Just think of this for fate! Under my eyes
There comes an ancient story out of Egypt:
Thyamis fearing he would die and lose
The lovely Chariclea, strikes her dead,
Then kills himself, some thousands of years ago.
It’s all forgotten now, I say to self,
Who cares, what matters it, the thing was done
And served its end. The story stuck with me.
But the next night and the next night I stole out
To spy on Gertrude, by the path in the grass
Lay for long hours. And on the third night saw
At half-past eight or nine this fellow come
And take her walking in the darkness—where?
I could have touched them as they walked the path,
But could not follow for the moon which rose.
Besides I lost them.”

“Well, the time approached
Of the dance, and still I brooded, then resolved.
My hatred now was level with the cauldron,
With bubbles crackling. So the spade I took,
Hidden beneath the seat may show forethought,
They caught the jury with that argument,
And forethought does it show, but who made me
To have such forethought?”

“Then I called for her
And took her to the dance. I was most gay,
Because the load was lifted from my mind,
And I had found relief. And so we danced.
And she danced with this fellow. I was calm,
Believed somehow he had not had her yet.
And if his knee touched hers—why let it go.
Nothing beyond shall happen, even this
Shall not be any more.”

“We started home.
Before we reached that clump of woods I asked her
If she would marry me. She laughed at me.
I asked her if she loved that other man.
She said you are a silly boy, and laughed.
And then I asked her if she’d marry me,
And if she would not, why she would not do it.
We came up to the woods and she was silent,
I could not make her speak. I stopped the horse.
She sat all quiet, I could see her face
Under the brilliance of the moon. I saw
A thin smile on her face—and then I struck her,
And from the floor grabbed up the iron wrench,
And struck her, took her out and laid her down,
And did what was too horrible, they say,
To do and keep my life. To finish up
I reached back for the iron wrench, first felt
Her breast to find her heart, no use of wrench,
She was already dead. I took the spade,
Scraped off the leaves between two trees and dug,
And buried her and said: ‘My Chariclea
No man shall have you.’ Then I drove till morning,
And after some days reached Missouri, where
They caught me.”

So Fred Taylor told me all,
Filled in the full confession that he made,
And which they used in court, with looks and words,
Scarce to be reproduced; but to the last
He said the mathematics of his birth
Accounted for his deed.

Is it not true?
If you resolved the question that the jury
Resolved, did he know right from wrong, did he
Know what he did, the jury answered truly
To give the rope to him. Or if you say
These mathematics may be true, and still
A man like that is better out of way,
And saying so become the very spirit,
And reason which slew Gertrude, disregarding
The devil of heredity which clutched him,
As he put by the reason we obey,
It may be well enough, I do not know.

Now for last night before this morning fixed
To swing him off. His lawyers went to see
The governor to win reprieval, perhaps
A commutation. I could see his eyes
Had two lights in them; one was like a lantern
With the globe greased, which showed he could not see
Himself in death tomorrow—what is that
In the soul that cannot see itself in death?
No to-morrow, continuation, the wall, the end!
And yet this very smear upon the globe
Was death’s half fleshless hand which rubbed across
His senses and his hope. The other light
Was weirdly bright for terror, expectation
Of good news from the governor.

For his lawyers
Were in these hours petitioning. He would ask:
“No news? No word? What is the time?” His tongue
Would fall back in his throat, we saw the strain
Of his stretched soul. He’d sit upon his couch
Hands clasped, head down. Arise and hold the bars,
Himself fling on the couch face down and shake.
But when he heard the hammers ring that nail
The scaffold into shape, he whirled around
Like a rat in a cage. And when the sand bag fell,
That tested out the rope, a muffled thug,
And the rope creaked, he started up and moaned
“You’re getting ready,” and his body shivered,
His white hands could not hold the bars, he reeled
And fell upon the couch again.

Suppose
There was no whiskey and no morphia,
Except for what the parsons think fit use,
A poor weak fellow—not a Socrates—
Must march the gallows, walk with every nerve
Up-bristled like a hair in fright. This night
Was much too horrible for me. At last
I had the doctor dope him unaware,
And for a time he slept.

But when the dawn
Looked through the little windows near the ceiling
Cob-webbed and grimed, with light like sanded water,
And echoes started in the corridors
Of feet and objects moved, then all at once
He sprang up from his sleep, and gave a groan,
Half yell, that shook us all.

A clergyman
Came soon to pray with him, and he grew calmer,
And said: “O pray for her, but pray for me
That I may see her, when this riddle-world
No longer stands between us, slipped from her
And soon from me.”

For breakfast he took coffee,
A piece of toast, no more. The sickening hour
Approaches—he is sitting on his couch,
Bent over, head in hands, dazed, or in prayer.
My deputy reads the warrant—while I stand
At one side so to hear, but not to see.
And then my clerk comes quickly through the door
That opens from the office in the jail;
Runs up the iron steps, all out of breath,
And almost shouts: “The governor telephones
To stop; the sentence is commuted.” Then
I grew as weak as the culprit—took the warrant,
And stepped up to the cell’s door, coughed, inhaled,
And after getting breath I said: “Good news,
The governor has saved you.”

Then he laughed,
Half fell against the bars, and like a rag
Sank in a heap.

I don’t know to this day
What moved the governor. For crazy men
Are hanged sometimes. To-day he leaves the jail.
We take him where the criminal insane
Are housed at our expense.
————
So Merival heard the sheriff. As he knew
The governor’s mind, and how the governor
Gave heed to public thought, or what is deemed
The public thought, what’s printed in the press,
He wondered at the governor. For no crime
Had stirred the county like this crime. And if
A jury and the courts adjudged this boy
Of nineteen in his mind, what was the right
Of interference by the governor?
So Merival was puzzled. They were chums,
The governor and Merival in old days.
Had known club-life together, ate and drank
Together in the days when Merival
Came to Chicago living down the hurt
He took from her who left him. In those days
The governor was struggling, Merival
Had helped with friends and purse—and later helped
The governor’s ambition from the time
He went to congress. So the two were friends
With memories and secrets for the stuff
Of friendship, glad renewal of the surge
Of lasting friendship when they met.

And now
He sensed a secret, meant to bring it forth.
And telegraphed the governor, who said:
“I’ll see you in Chicago.” Merival
Went up to see the governor and talk.
They had not met for months for leisured talk.
And now the governor said: “I’ll tell you all,
And make it like a drama. I’ll bring in
My wife who figured in this murder case.
It was this way: It’s nearly one o’clock,
I’m back from hearing lawyers plead. I wish
To make this vivid so you’ll get my mind.
I tell you what I said to her. It’s this:”