The Great Valley

I met a fisherman at Havana once,
Havana on the Illinois, I mean,
There by the house and fish boats. He was burned
The color of an acorn, and his hair
Was coarse as a horse’s tail. His scraggy hands
Looked like thick bands of weather-colored copper,
But his eyes were blue as faded gingham is.
I stood amid the smell of scales and heads,
And fishes’ entrails dumped along the sand.
The still air was a burning glass which focused
A bon-fire sun right through my leghorn hat;
And a black fly from crannies of the air
Lit on my hand and bit it venomously.
Across the yellow river lay the bottoms
Where giant sycamores and elms o’ertopped
A jungle of disgusting weeds. The breeze
Hot as a tropic breath exhaled the reek
Of baking mud and of those noisome weeds,
Wherewith the odors of putrescent fish
Mixed on the simmering sands. A naturalist
Must seek the habitat of the life he studies....
There on a platform lay the dressed fish, carp,
Black-bass, and pike and pickerel, buffalo,
Cat-fish, which I had come to see, and talk
With fishermen along the Illinois.
My man held up a fish and said to me;
“Here is the bastard who drives all the fish
Out of the river, out of any water
He comes in, and he comes wherever food
Can be obtained; the black-bass, even cat-fish,
And all the good stocks run away from him,
He is so hoggish, plaguy, and so mean.
The other fish may try to live with him,
I’m thinking sometimes, anyway I know
He drives the others out.” I looked to see
What fish is so unfriendly to his fellows.
“Just look at him,” he said, but as he spoke
The black fly stung my hand again. When I
Looked up from swatting him, the man had thrown
The fish upon the sand, and a stray dog
Was running off with him along the river.

THE MOURNER’S BENCH

They’re holding a revival at New Hope Meeting house,
I can’t keep from going, I ought to stay away.
For I come home and toss in bed till day,
For thinking of my sin, and the trouble I am in.
I dream I hear the dancers
In the steps and swings,
The quadrilles and the lancers
They danced at Revis Springs.
I lie and think of Charley, Charley, Charley
The Bobtown dandy
Who had his way with me.
And no one is so handy
A dancer as Charley
To Little Drops of Brandy,
Or the Wind that Shakes the Barley,
Or Good mornin’ Uncle Johnny I’ve fetched your Wagon Home.

And Greenberry Atterberry, who toed it like a pigeon
Has gone and got religion;
He’s deserted the dancers, the fiddlers, merry-makers,
And I should do it too.
For Charley, Charley has left me for to roam.
But a woman at the mourner’s bench must tell her story true—
What shall I do? What shall I do?

My grandmother told me of Old Peter Cartwright
Who preached hell-fire
And the worm that never dies.
And here’s a young preacher at the New Hope Meeting house,
And every one allows, he has old Peter’s brows,
And flaming of the eyes,
And the very same way, they say.
Last night he stuck his finger right down in my direction,
And said: “God doesn’t care
For your woman’s hair.
Jesus wants to know if your soul is fair
As your woman’s complexion.”
And then I thought he knew—
O what shall I do?

Greenberry Atterberry, weeping and unsteady
Had left his seat already.
He stood at the mourner’s bench in great tribulation
And told the congregation:
That fiddling and dancing and tobacco chewin’
Led up to whisky and to woman’s ruin—
And I thought he looked at me.
Well, you can stop dancing, and you can stop drinking
And you can leave the quarter-horses at the crooked races.
But a woman, a woman, the people will be thinking
Forever of a woman who confesses her behavior.
And then I couldn’t look in the people’s faces,
All weeping and singing, O gentle Saviour!
Then the devil said: You wench
You’d cut a pretty figure at the mourner’s bench,
Go out and look for Charley,
Go out and look for Charley,
He’s down at Leese’s Grove.
He has found a fresh love
Go win him back again.
He is dancing on the platform to the Speckled Hen.

O Saviour, Saviour, how can I join the mourners,
Face all the scorners?
But how can I hunt Charley at Leese’s Grove?
How can I stand the staring, the whispering of things
Down at Revis Springs?
How can I stand the mocking of the fiddle strings?
Charley! Charley!
So it’s knowing what’s best to do,
Saviour! Saviour!
Its knowing what’s best to do!

THE BAY-WINDOW

She sat at a bay-window where she saw
First open carriages and buggies pass!
And then Victorias with horses docked
And bits and buckles, chains of shining brass.
And then the horseless carriage, till at last
The swallow-gleam of varnished limousines
Silent as shadows took her lifted eye,
Uplifted from a book. She always sat
In her bay-window with a book,
And with a tinted fan in summer-time.

But first she was a bride
Before the war.
Springing from honest blood, her place
Passed over lightly as her grandeur grew:
She was of seed too vital to decay
Wholly in any soil, the sort that grows and blooms
Where never gardener comes.
And this bay-window! An aging man of gold
Had plucked her up, and here she rests and breathes
The free air of Chicago’s reclamation.
And then she is
A wonder-bride for her brown hair,
And gray-blue eyes, and laughter, sunny wit,
And naturally patrician ways and speech,
(Acquiring French now that the chance has come),
And she is eighteen and is born to rule.

And her great merchant husband with blue eyes,
And strong beaked English nose,
Walks straighter for a pride that she is his.
Gives her a country place spaced out in walks,
And flower beds, where now such flimsy flats
Confront Grand Boulevard!
And for a city house he builds a house
Three stories high at Twentieth street,
Where then the manifest was sand and oaks,
And what is now the Loop, was just as far
As Hyde Park from the Loop is now.

In this bay-window then she sits a bride,
And sees the scrub oak cut and mansions fill
Gradually year by year the waste of sand.
For fashion follows her and builds beside her,
Till Prairie Avenue becomes the street
Of millionaires, who hear from traveled wives
What London is, what Paris is,
And open purses to unfolding tastes
For canvases and sculpture.
For every one grows rich now in Chicago.
And in the seventies women go to Paris,
Herself among the first, at least the chief,
See Egypt and see Rome.
And when returned drive down where wondering eyes
Along the marble terrace promenading,
Where Michigan Avenue was bounded by
The Lake across the street,
Behold the striped silk of their parasols
Fluttering over plumes and dancing eyes,
And purple velvet of Victorias.

For now it is the classic age!
There is the driving park,
There is the Palmer House,
There are cathedrals too.
There are the lofty ceilings walnut trimmed,
And foliate chandeliers of polished brass,
And marble-slabbed buffets with heavy cupids,
And clustered fruits carved in their sombre wood,
And square pianos with their rosewood legs
Swelled out with oval figures like great plums.
And paintings deeply daubed in brown asphaltum
Where chiaroscuro ends were lost in shadows,
Not lost in light, depressionistic things,
From which her lambent intuition led her.
She was among the first to catch the psychic
Waves that sweep around this little world
And change all things.
She traveled much and lived in Europe much,
Returning to her window where she watched
The city pass and bow its admiration,
The half of whom she knew as time went on,
Though all knew her and said “there is the queen,”
Or “there she is who thinks she is the queen.”

And when the opera came she was the queen,
At least a queen whose sovereignty withstood
Encroaching claims to ripen into rights.
But then if all were lost where not a million
People lived as yet, and where, oh well
Packers and others threw their heavier gold
In what was once a scale of primogeniture,
Rome stood and London stood and Paris.
Have your own way at home, the mood began,
I am off here where you can scarcely come.
The next place is the best, a far off place
Has teasing witcheries to those at home.
Her husband now was dead some years, the children
Grown up, or off to school, a daughter married
To an Italian count kept state in Florence
Where Browning came, with whom our queen would fence
In spiritual dialectics. In her travels
She had known Ibsen, Patti and George Eliot,
Sat as a dinner guest by Beaconsfield,
And taken tea upon Hawarden’s lawn.
And so in escritoires and cabinets
She kept mementoes of her days abroad:
Like letters from George Eliot,
“Ferishtah’s Fancies” inscribed by Robert.
And in the course of time this three-floored house
Was filled with treasures, tapestries,
Etruscan things, and faience peacock blue;
And oriental jade with letters of gold.
And there she reigned, but lived alone
The house kept by French maids
And impeccable butlers.
And so the years went, and she saw at last
The city start to slip away from her
And make her royal isolation
An ignorant solitude!

Yet she was beautiful at forty years,
Some years a widow then and very rich.
She was most fresh and matronly at fifty.
At fifty-five and sixty she could charm
A man of any age. And master-men
Paid suit to her and gained
The stimulating richness of her mind.
Some said they did not want her, others said
Her wisdom and self-mastery froze their hearts.
But when she spoke she said she could not change
The name she loved, or change her place in life
To forced forgetfulness of that English face,
Who lifted up her life from some obscurity
And made it flower.
At any rate she lived for forty years
With only maids and butlers in a house
Round which the warring city crept,
Until at last the street with lowered pulse
Saw vacant mansions, as the mob psychology,
Which sways in fashion, brought an exodus.
But she knew no temptation to depart.
This was her house, her center of the world.
And when the Countess left the Count she came
To ease her mother’s loneliness—oh yes!
Six months of loneliness was quite enough.
And then in spite of everything she left,
Returned to Florence and her rascal count,
Because she could not stand the loneliness,
And saw ahead long years of loneliness
In some bay window—no, it could not be!
And so she left her mother sitting there
Now sixty-eight or so,
Who watched the city pass,
All now the swallow-gleam of limousines,
And all around her now the boarding house,
Or institutes for drunkards, hideous blocks
Of offices and warehouses.

And all her neighbors lying up in Rose Hill.
Perhaps a few remaining who remembered
All that she was, could only say to those
Who had heard of her as she was in the eighties,
And in the nineties:
“She was a great woman, I can scarce explain.
It was this way: Chicago then was young.
Chicago in ten years is changed all through.
You see it was this way: But then you see
This great two million thing has slipped away
From all our hands.”

And then perhaps
A limousine would pass with reckless pridelings
Coming from tea or dancing at the Blackstone,
And find their laughter shortened by her face
At this bay-window
Would say: “Who’s that old woman at the window?
She always has a book, or has a fan.”

MAN OF OUR STREET

This Man’s life had four stages as I hear.
The first stage took him through the days of school
And fastened on his name a prophecy
That he would win success. The second stage
Took him to thirty years while he was fumbling
The strings to find the key and play in key.
The third stage marked discouragement, departure
To speculations and to reconcilement
That he was born no lawyer. And the fourth
Was one of quietude and trivial days.
I knew him in this fourth stage as a man
Emerging from a house across the street
On Sunday mornings in silk hat, long coat
And bamboo cane. When summer came he donned
A flannel suit of gray, a panama
And gloves of tan. When winter came he wore
A double-breasted coat with lamb’s fur collar.
He had no friends, so far as one could see,
No membership in clubs, was never seen
Where men meet, or society is gathered.
Sometimes he stopped to tell a passer-by
The day is fine, it’s very fine, you’re right,
In voice complaisant. The neighbors knew
He lived upon a little purse he made
In compromise of some preposterous wrong.
And people wondered how the purse was lasting,
And wondered how much longer he could loaf,
How many seasons more he could appear
So seasonably attired and walk the streets
In such velleity, with such vacuous light
Grown steady in his eyes.

I love to watch
The chickens in a barn-yard. Nothing else
Is quite so near the human brood. You’ll see
Invariably a rooster stalk about
In aimless fashion, moving here and there,
Picking at times with dull inappetence
At grains or grit, or standing for a time
In listless revery. I never saw
A man with such resemblance to this rooster
As this man was.

At last we had not seen
Our man upon the street for several days.
And some one said he had been very ill.
His wife had fears and wept and said ’twas hard
Just on the eve of great success to die.
He had thought out a plan, she said, to win
Great trade in South America for us.
Our State Department thought it excellent.
And then one day four doctors passed his door
For consultation, and the word went round
Our man rebelled most piteously and said
He could not die until he had worked out
His dream of South America. He knew
His danger, had the doctors called to check
The inroads of the peril, though the purse
Was growing slim, as we discovered later.

One noon-time as I came along the street
Where twenty children laughed and followed me,
Half playing at their game, half following
My banterings and idle talk, and asking
About the bundle underneath my arm.
“It’s nothing but a chicken, go away,”
I said to them.

And there across the street
Was crape upon the door—our man was dead,
And I was carrying chicken home to boil.

ACHILLES DEATHERIDGE

“Your name is Achilles Deatheridge?
How old are you, my boy?”
“I’m sixteen past and I went to the war
From Athens, Illinois.”

“Achilles Deatheridge, you have done
A deed of dreadful note.”
“It comes of his wearing a battered hat,
And a rusty, wrinkled coat.”

“Why didn’t you know how plain he is?
And didn’t you ever hear,
He goes through the lines by day or night
Like a sooty cannoneer?”

“You must have been half dead for sleep,
For the dawn was growing bright.”
“Well, Captain, I had stood right there
Since six o’clock last night.”

“I cocked my gun at the swish of the grass
And how am I at fault
When a dangerous looking man won’t stop
When a sentry hollers halt?”

“I cried out halt and he only smiled
And waved his hand like that.
Why, any Johnnie could wear the coat
And any fellow the hat.”

“I hollered halt again and he stopped
And lighted a fresh cigar.
I never noticed his shoulder badge,
And I never noticed a star.”

“So you arrested him? Well, Achilles,
When you hear the swish of the grass
If it’s General Grant inspecting the lines
Hereafter let him pass.”

SLIP SHOE LOVEY

You’re the cook’s understudy
A gentle idiot body.
You are slender like a broom
Weaving up and down the room,
With your dirt hair in a twist
And your left eye in a mist.
Never thinkin’, never hopin’
With your wet mouth open.
So bewildered and so busy
As you scrape the dirty kettles,
O Slip Shoe Lizzie
As you rattle with the pans.
There’s a clatter of old metals,
O Slip Shoe Lovey,
As you clean the milk cans.
You’re a greasy little dovey,
A laughing scullery daughter,
As you slop the dish water,
So abstracted and so dizzy,
O Slip Shoe Lizzie!

So mussy, little hussie,
With the china that you break,
And the kitchen in a smear
When the bread is yet to bake,
And the market things are here—
O Slip Shoe Lovey!

You are hurrying and scurrying
From the sink to the oven,
So forgetful and so sloven.
You are bustling and hustling
From the pantry to the door,
With your shoe strings on the floor,
And your apron strings a-draggin’,
And your spattered skirt a-saggin’.

You’re an angel idiot lovey,
One forgives you all this clatter
Washing dishes, beating batter.
But there is another matter
As you dream above the sink:
You’re in love pitter-patter,
With the butcher-boy I think.
And he’ll get you, he has got you
If he hasn’t got you yet.

For he means to make you his,
O Slip Shoe Liz.
And your open mouth is wet
To a little boyish chatter.
You’re an easy thing to flatter
With your hank of hair a-twist,
And your left eye in a mist—
O Slip Shoe Lovey!

So hurried and so flurried
And just a little worried
You lean about the room,
Like a mop, like a broom.
O Slip Shoe Lovey!
O Slip Shoe Lovey!

THE ARCHANGELS

Flopped on the floor
With such a silken richness of dark hair,
Descending breezily like blown water from her brow,
And from the arched crown of her Raphael head,
Between the years of twenty-five and thirty,
Her face glows and is white,
Like the thin spirit of a candle light.
And over her forehead passes
Swift waves of splendor, which must be her thought,
Looking, it seems, as if a snowy curtain
Were rhythmically blown at dawn in a white room!

In each of her eyes there is a blue-bright spark!
One time I saw two stars
Held in an inch of water when the evening
Was pale from dying day.
And under this thin water lay dead leaves
The drift of late October—
Gray leaves beneath clear water by an edge
Where spring’s first flower, the azure pickerel weed,
Bent over contemplated those two stars:
These were the sparks in her unruffled eyes.
Flopped on the floor
With little hands clasped round her girlish knees
Such musical thought sings through her cherub lips—
Raptures for Beauty,
Raptures for Truth,
Raptures for Freedom and a world that is free.
While around her flames the fire of a durable hope.
Till at last I sit in wonder
At the miracle of such spirit,
And the miracle of the youths about her,
Listening with bright eyes, in the fellowship of delight,
Who prompt, suggest, applaud, are passionate
For the right word, the soaring thought to beat
At heaven’s gate in a last burst of song.
And here am I a part of this psychic circle,
Bound with soft loops of gold in a charméd band
Of a brood of youthful archangels fiery and strong....

Then thrilled with love of a land that can grow such souls
I turn and ask them questions:
How old are you, who were your father and mother?
What chance have you had in life?
What books have you read?
And where have you bred these dreams?
But why do you laugh? for there must be soil or blood
Or both, for there must be the souls of free men
And the loins of free men,
To make archangels you know,
And pour them into the city to think and plan
For a greater Republic to come.
And though it matters nothing that villages
In Iowa, Indiana, Illinois
In the great far west, in New England, gave us you,
Or you, or you, or you—
I somehow thrill at the contrast, or thrill with the thought
Of such great richness and vastness in the land,
Flowering such souls all fresh and keen,
And eager to make the Republic wholly free—
May she deserve your love!

SONG OF CHANGE

Deep thought that comes through stainless skies;
Pure moods that arch the fancy’s birth;
Sweet sorrow, clear in youthful eyes;
Soft laughter, speaking maiden mirth;—
Such gifts were thine, ere time o’ercast
The sunshine of thy tender heart;
And now that joy itself is past
Yet patience still will do its part.

Sad stars from which the sun has drawn
The light of life, no longer bright;
Life of our lives, that with the dawn
Passed, though remembered, from our sight!
From noonday stept the chilling shade
That struck the quivering aspens still;
Thou hopeful one, thou unafraid,
Smiled—but the Shadow had his will.

Souls of our youth which tire and sleep
And wake to find the hour is sped!
Thou scorn which mocks us if we weep!
Thou hope which says “Be comforted!”
Thou vision dulled, whose tutored eye
Sees but in vain the poplar tree
As once upblown against the sky,
When we were fain, when we were free.

MEMORABILIA

Old pioneers, how fare your souls to-day?
They seem to be
Imminent about this pastoral way,
This sunny lea.
The elms and oaks you knew, greenly renew
Their leaves each spring,
But never comes the hour again which drew
Your world from view.

Here in a mood I lay, deep in the grass,
Between the graves;
And saw ye rise, ye shadowy forms, and pass
O’er the wind’s waves;
Sunk eyes and bended head, wherefrom is fled
The light of life;
Even as the land, whose early youth is dead,
Whose glory fled.

With eighty years gone over what remains
For tongue to tell?
Hence was it that in silence, with no pains
At last ’twas well,
Under these trees to creep, for ultimate sleep
To soothe regret,
For the world’s ways, for war, let mankind reap,
You said, and weep.

Abram Rutledge died, ere the great war
Ruined the land.
His well-loved son was struck on fields afar
By a brother’s hand.
Then brought they him, O pioneer, on his bier
To the hill and the tree,
Back home and laid him, son of Trenton, here
Your own grave near.

Of all unuttered griefs, of vaguest woes,
None equals this:
Forgotten hands, and work that no one knows
Whose work it is;
Good gifts bequeathed, but never earned, or spurned
In hate or pride;
And the boon of an age destroyed, ere a cycle turned
O’er you inurned.

Abram Rutledge lies in a sunken grave,
Dust and no more,
Let Freedom fail, it is naught to him, who was brave,
Who stood to the fore.
The oaks and elms he knew, greenly renew
Their leaves each spring,
But gone his dream with that last hour which drew
His world from view.

TO A SPIROCHAETA

If through the microscope
We peer and stare
You look like marceled shreds of rope,
Or maiden hair,
With eyeless hunger swift to grope
Out of your lair.

To feed and to fulfill your fate
You dive and swim
Forward and backward flagellate
Amid the dim
Ichor of women where you mate,
Delicate, slim.

Why are you screw-shaped, in a spiral?
And why your form
Like a crooked hand upon a dial?
You are the norm
For all hell sealed up in a vial
To break in storm.

Your whips are sharper far than sickles,
Or cricket bristle;
With finer points than rose-leaf prickles,
Or drifting thistle;
You feed yourself till the blood trickles
Through flesh and gristle.

When a man knows he is your diet
A solemn thrill
Shows in great eyes and spirit quiet
For fears that kill;
He is a maelstrom running riot,
At the center still.

Well, Robert Burns: You saw a louse
On a lady crawling.
But one can keep to his own house
Without forestalling
This demon on his death carouse
Breeding and sprawling.

But, Robert Burns, this does not tent
Our pride or tease us;
It is not heaven’s message sent
That virtue frees us.
It shows us hard or penitent
As Nature sees us!

CATO BRADEN

I went to Winston Prairie to attend
The funeral of Cato Braden. He
Had died at fifty-one and I had known him
Since he was twenty-four, but for fifteen
Years or more I had not seen him, nor
Exchanged with him more than a telegraphic
Note about some trivial thing. Indeed
I had not been in Winston Prairie during
These fifteen years.

But on the train I thought
Of Cato Braden, brought back all the days
Through which I knew him, from the very first
When he returned to Winston Prairie from
De Pauw, or was it Valparaiso? Yet
’Twas called a university I remember.
And when I knew him first he kept at hand
De Senectute, also Anthon’s Homer,
And lexicons in Latin and in Greek,
Both unabridged. Sometimes he let me read
The orations he had won the prizes with.
And sometimes he would tell me what it meant
To study at a university.
And what they did and what the boys were like.
This Cato Braden was a happy soul
At twenty-four, of a full noble brow,
A gentle smiling mouth, an honest eye,
A tall and handsome figure, altogether
A man conspicuous for form, a bearing
Of grace and courtliness, engaging ways;
He might be called most lovable, he had
The gift of friendship, was not envious,
Could scarcely be enraged, was not offended
By little things and often not by great.
He had in short a nature fit to work
With great capacity; had he combined
An intellect but half his nature’s worth
He might have won the race. But many thought
He promised much, his father most of all
Because he had these virtues, and in truth
Before his leaves unfolded with the spring
His mind seemed apt, perhaps seemed measured full
Of quality, the prizes he had won
At Valparaiso pointed to the fruit
He would produce at last.

So on the train
I thought of Cato Braden. Then I thought
Of when he came from school with his degree,
And for that summer when he walked the square,
Was whispered of as “Cato Braden, look.”
The first thing Winston Prairie knew it saw
His name conjoined with that of Jerry Ott’s—
It was Ott and Braden, editors and owners,
The Winston Prairie Eagle. Jerry Ott
Was sixty-nine and wheezy from the fight
For Jefferson Democracy, free trade.
Besides the capital that Cato Braden
Brought through his father to the enterprise
Meant bitter war on enemies of truth.
And Cato Braden’s father had some wealth
Made from the making of a vermifuge
And a preposterous compound which he called
Pesodorne; and I have always thought
That Cato Braden’s father garrisoned
His factory for making patent nostrums
By buying for his son this interest,
And place of power in journalism; for
The father’s strong devotion to the church
Did not protect him ’gainst the casual sneers
Of Winston Prairie’s paper called the Lance,
Which used to print such things as this, to instance:
“There’s Braden’s Vermifuge, well, Doctor Braden,
Try your own vermifuge, let’s see it work.”

Well, anyway I know that Cato Braden
Intended to pursue a legal course,
And practice the profession in a city.
I know his father bought for him this place
With Jerry Ott as editor of the Eagle.
I know he went to work. I know he changed
The paper’s motto from “Hew to the line,”
To Principia non homines. I know
He used to sing “Over the Garden Wall,”
While writing editorials and smoked
A number of cheroots. I know he had
A locked drawer where he kept a secret bottle
From which he’d take a drink at noon or night.
I know he was on terms of friendship with
The milliner and dressmaker in a month
After he came from Valparaiso. Yes,
I know he advocated a gymnasium,
And dancing hall for Winston Prairie, and
He opened up a fight to get a park
Where concerts might be given. Cato Braden
Had these ideas at least. About this park
A word remains to say.

Fernando Winston,
Who founded Winston Prairie and surveyed
The original town, laid out a square along
The river for a pleasure ground; in time,
Some fifty years or more, it was forgotten.
And when this Cato Braden came to town
And started as a journalist ’twas used
In part by Winston Prairie’s creamery;
In part ’twas used for gardening by the pastor
Of Winston Prairie’s strongest church. But Cato
Had searched the records, found them straight, began
To agitate the park. And it was this,
Together with Principia non homines,
Free trade, the dressmaker and milliner,
Perhaps the bottle in the drawer, whose secret
Leaked out at once, that clove the people of
The town into two groups of friends and foes.
He had but just begun his editorship
When I left Winston Prairie; after that
Knew little of it, saw him but at times,
Long separated, saw him not at all
For fifteen years before his death, and now
Because I was his friend was on the train
His funeral to attend.

I drove to Oakland
With Dr. Green and William Smoot the grocer.
’Twas hot without a breeze, the town was still.
The church bell tolled until we reached the grave,
It was the church whose pastor used the square
For gardening. And on the way I asked
Why Cato Braden died at fifty-one.
“Why, whisky,” answered William Smoot, the grocer,
“And women,” for he had bad luck they say.
“How is that, Doc, you know?”

And Dr. Green
After a silence said: “It isn’t true.
“He was as sound, so far as that’s concerned
“As any of us.”

Then I asked again
Why Cato Braden died at fifty-one.
And Dr. Green said laughing, “Well, you know
“They die at thirty-one and forty-one,
“And sixty-one of what killed Cato Braden,
“That’s Bright’s Disease.”

“And whisky brings that on—”
I ventured to assert.

“Sometimes” replied
The man of medicine, “But other things
“Produce it. There’s a man’s diathesis;
“There’s worry, over-work, sometimes disease
“Suffered in childhood, leaving an effect
“Like soil, all fertilized for such seed as this.
“He should have drunk no whisky, yet he drank
“Not half so much as Winston Prairie thought.
“But you can see if whisky caused this thing
“All whisky drinkers would be sure to have it,
“Or die of it if not killed by a train.”

We left the carriage, having reached the place
Where Cato Braden’s grave was dug, and stood
Together in a company of fifty
And heard the pastor pray for heaven’s lessons
From Cato Braden’s life. And after that
We separated, made the horses trot
To reach our different destinations. I
Looked up Will Boyden for a little talk
Before my train left for the city.

Will
Was in his office with his sleeves rolled up,
Cob-pipe in mouth, typing a legal paper,
A narratio in slander, so he said.
He smiled from ear to ear and dropped his work.
“You’re here for Cato’s funeral,” he said,
And added, “It’s a shame he had to die,
Damned if it isn’t.”

Then I asked again
Why Cato Braden died at fifty-one,
And Will said: “Winston Prairie, Illinois,
Killed Cato Braden.”

“Tell me what you mean?”
Then Will refreshed his pipe and talked to me:
“I’m fifty-two and good for twenty years
I have no stronger frame than Cato Braden,
But then I got a formula for life
As time went on, and it was one that suited
My nature, and I thrived as you can see.
I have the power to draw the nutriment
Out of this soil, and I get strength thereby
Wherewith to overcome the things that kill.
I work, but then I play, I hunt and fish,
I read and sometimes take a little trip.
I don’t drink whisky, not because I fear it,
But I hate putting in myself such fire—
Beer and light wines are pleasant, more like food
Than stimulants. Well, Cato Braden started
When ‘Over the Garden Wall’ was all the rage,
‘All Coons Look Alike to Me’ was my
Key-note for starting. You know what I mean:
Between my day and his there’s just the difference
That lies between waltz time and syncopation;
Between the magic lantern and the movie,
The rattan phaeton and Ford machine.
These new things came along before he died,
But he had made his life for the old things,
Could not adjust himself, De Senectute
And Valparaiso had not taught him how
To reach out in the world from Winston Prairie
And get the new things for his life. But if
They taught him how he lost the secret here.
For after all a place like Winston Prairie
Will kill your spirit just as surely as
The Island where they cooped up great Napoleon.
In the first place what is a man to do
With life in any place? That is the problem.
And what could Cato Braden do with life
In Winston Prairie? First he was as fitted
To be a journalist as I, and if
Endowed to be a journalist, just think
Of editing The Eagle. But you see
His father was at war then with the Lance
Over that vermifuge and pesodorne.
And under guise of starting him in life
Bought Cato in the paper for the selfish
Purpose of defending vermifuge.
And Cato did it too, and put away
From year to year his dream of studying
The law and practicing in a city.
During which time the poisons of this town
Crept in his blood and stupefied and killed him.
He married Mary Comfort, as you know.
And Mary is—well, what I call a brood-mare,
Although they had no children. What I mean
She is a well-fleshed woman, sound of nerve,
A help-eat, but she made a loyal wife
Who had two eyes to see what Cato saw,
And never an eye to help him see the things
That lay around him, which he stumbled over.
And marriage to my mind means this to man:
He drains his body out to be a father,
And drains his spirit out to be a husband,
Unless the woman helps him see or feel
More than he sees or feels for self. Well then
The years went on. And every day at eight
He could be seen toward his office bent.
At half past ten just as the morning train
Was whistling for the crossing he would go
To get the mail. Returning he would walk
Along Main Street, slapping the folded News
Against his leg. He scanned it in his office.
At twelve o’clock he went to dinner, then
As whisky made him eat, he over-ate
And took a nap till two o’clock. At three
One might discover him at solitaire—
He had clipped from the morning paper quite enough
To keep the boys in copy. Then at four
He might be sitting at the livery stable,
Or sometimes might be found in that back room
Of Little’s restaurant, where a keg of beer
Shipped in was being tapped. At night perhaps
He might be seen down there on Locust street,
Waiting to enter where the milliner lived.
So passed his life away from twenty-four
To fifty-one. It’s simple enough to ask
Why not write for the Eagle, make it better,
Give ideas to the people, help the town,
Refresh the mind, read, study history,
De Senectute? Fancy Teddy Roosevelt,
Who’s labored for this land with restless gifts,
Tied down in Winston Prairie—well, you can’t,
He’d break the ties, and that’s the point, you see.
For Cato couldn’t break them, had to stay,
Incapable to extract the good that’s here,
Susceptible to all the bad that’s here;
He was a nose half active
Who enters in a room where gas escapes,
Sits in the room unconscious of the gas
Till he grows sluggish, lies him down to rest
And dies unknowing. So I say it’s true
That Winston Prairie ruined Cato Braden
And killed him in the end.

You must go see,
Before you leave, our park called Willard Park,
Named after Emma Willard, that devout
Old woman, dead these fifteen years or so.
She left enough to build a granite coping,
Set out some trees, and buy park seats, a stone
Whereon to carve the words, ‘The gracious gift
Of Emma Willard.’ Well, this Cato Braden
First talked this park, was first to tell the truth
About this plot of ground. And more than that
When Cato Braden came here he had dreams:
He wrote at first that boxing, wrestling, racing
Would help this town; that games were needed here;
That Americans seemed ignorant of the art
Of being gay, feeling light-hearted, wise
To play; that they were wise to work and pray,
Fear happiness. And Cato Braden said
The little town was cursed by just these things,
And many human souls destroyed by them.
These were not thoughts of his, he found them somewhere,
But knew them when he found them, that’s his credit.
What though he was a drunk man whom you ask
What road to take, who points and gurgles guttural
Sounds inarticulate? Or better still
What though he was a sick man who in vain
Attempts to make his household orders clear?
For it was true that Cato Braden spoke
About these things at first, then gave them up.
For no one seemed responsive to his plans.
And some there were who sneered, and others said
He’d better help the church, and leave alone
The questions which make bitterness and strife,
Which was their way of speaking of the square
Which Cato tried to make into a park.
They say a lung will turn to stone or steel
When men work in the filings and the dust.
At last the dust of Winston Prairie turned
His soul to dust.

You see old Jerry Ott
Had left a son his interest in the Eagle,
And Cato Braden died right at his table
While playing solitaire. This son came in
And found him dead, a card clutched in his hand.
The card was, strange enough, the deuce of clubs!
This son was glad that Cato Braden died
For now he runs the Eagle by himself.
This Cato Braden had three strains of thought.
I never met him lately but he talked
Some one of them, at times all three of them.
One was the American town must be improved,
So better to conserve the souls and bodies
Of boys and girls. And even when the movie,
And other things of this day came along
He still maintained they did not meet the case.
He never said what thing was requisite.
But in a general way I think he meant
A stronger, and more truthful and more natural
Outlook and attitude would save a town
From dust, and mold and death. For once he said:
“This winter I shall read Grote’s History.”
He never read it. But I think he meant
He would find out the secret of the Greeks.
And then he’d say the young, the middle aged
The old made separate spheres of feeling, thought;
And that a town should not be ruled by one,
Should not be governed as all folks were old,
Or young, or middle aged, but each should have
The town for his according to his age,
And thought and vital power, within his sphere
And period of life; these separate spheres
Should move untroubled by the others, move
Free, independent of the other spheres.

I talked with Cato Braden for the last
A week ago last night. He said to me:
I wake these mornings lately with the thought
Another chance will come to me, that death
Will bring another chance. And then he said:
This is the way of it. When you are young
You say in five years I shall take a trip,
See New York City, go abroad perhaps.
When five years pass you do not take the trip.
Then you say in a year I’ll take the trip.
And so it goes, while you say in a year,
Next year, next year, until at last you say
No, never now! Well, now you’d think a man
Would weep when he stands up against the wall,
And knows he cannot climb the wall. But no,
Something still whispers you will do it yet.
And then you know it must be after death,
In life again, the chance will come to you.
For you know well it is not in this life.
Then Cato Braden said: Not in this life
Shall I read Grote, I could not understand it
After these years in Winston Prairie—still
I have a feeling I shall know about it
Somewhere, somehow.
You’d better catch your train.
It’s good to see you. Up there in the city
Think sometimes of the American village and
What may be done for conservation of
The souls of men and women in the village.”

About This Book