Of Time and the River & Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe

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СКАЧАТЬ of a glass humidor, under which a leathery quarter of mince pie lay weltering. Spring had come.

      Meanwhile, having completed twice their parade up and down the street from the Square to the post-office, the Misses Christine Ball, Viola Powell, Aline Rollins, and Dorothy Hazzard were accosted outside Wood’s Drug Store by Tom French, seventeen, Roy Duncan, nineteen, and Carl Jones, eighteen.

      “Where do you think you’re going?” said Tom French, insolently.

      Gayly, brightly, in unison, they answered:

      “Hey — ee!”

      “Hay’s seven dollars a ton,” said Roy Duncan, and immediately burst into a high cackle of laughter, in which all the others joined, merrily.

      “You craz-ee!” said Viola Powell tenderly. Tell me, ye merchants’ daughters, did ye see another creature fair and wise as she.

      “Mr. Duncan,” said Tom French, turning his proud ominous face upon his best friend, “I want you to meet a friend of mine, Miss Rollins.”

      “I think I’ve met this man somewhere before,” said Aline Rollins. Another Splendor on his mouth alit.

      “Yes,” said Roy Duncan, “I go there often.”

      His small tight freckled impish face creased again by his high cackle. All I could never be. They moved into the store, where drouthy neibors neibors meet, through the idling group of fountain gallants.

      Mr. Henry Sorrell (It Can Be Done), and Mr. John T. Howland (We Sell Lots and Lots of Lots), emerged, beyond Arthur N. Wright’s, jeweller, from the gloomy dusk of the Gruner Building. Each looked into the sub-divisions of the other’s heart; their eyes kept the great Vision of the guarded mount as swiftly they turned into Church Street where Sorrell’s Hudson was parked.

      White-vested, a trifle paunchy, with large broad feet, a shaven moon of red face, and abundant taffy-colored hair, the Reverend John Smallwood, pastor of the First Baptist Church, walked heavily up the street, greeting his parishioners warmly, and hoping to see his Pilot face to face. Instead, however, he encountered the Honorable William Jennings Bryan, who was coming slowly out of the bookstore. The two close friends greeted each other affectionately, and, with a firm friendly laying on of hands, gave each to each the Christian aid of a benevolent exorcism.

      “Just the man I was looking for,” said Brother Smallwood. In silence, slowly, they shook hands for several seconds. Silence was pleased.

      “That,” observed the Commoner with grave humor, “is what I thought the Great American People said to me on three occasions.” It was a favorite jest — ripe with wisdom, mellowed by the years, yet, withal, so characteristic of the man. The deep furrows of his mouth widened in a smile. Our master — famous, calm, and dead.

      Passed, on catspaw rubber tread, from the long dark bookstore, Professor L. B. Dunn, principal of Graded School No. 3, Montgomery Avenue. He smiled coldly at them with a gimlet narrowing of his spectacled eyes. The tell-tale cover of The New Republic peeked from his pocket. Clamped under his lean and freckled arm were new library copies of The Great Illusion, by Norman Angell, and The Ancient Grudge, by Owen Wister. A lifelong advocate of a union of the two great English-speaking (sic) nations, making together irresistibly for peace, truth, and righteousness in a benevolent but firm authority over the less responsible elements of civilization, he passed, the Catholic man, pleasantly dedicated to the brave adventuring of minds and the salvaging of mankind. Ah, yes!

      “And how are you and the Good Woman enjoying your sojourn in the Land of the Sky?” said the Reverend John Smallwood.

      “Our only regret,” said the Commoner, “is that our visit here must be measured by days and not by months. Nay, by years.”

      Mr. Richard Gorman, twenty-six, city reporter of The Citizen, strode rapidly up the street, with proud cold news-nose lifted. His complacent smile, hard-lipped, loosened into servility.

      “Ah, there, Dick,” said John Smallwood, clasping his hand affectionately, and squeezing his arm. “Just the man I was looking for. Do you know Mr. Bryan?”

      “As fellow newspaper men,” said the Commoner, “Dick and I have been close friends for — how many years is it, my boy?”

      “Three, I think, sir,” said Mr. Gorman, blushing prettily.

      “I wish you could have been here, Dick,” said the Reverend Smallwood, “to hear what Mr. Bryan was saying about us. The good people of this town would be mighty proud to hear it.”

      “I’d like another statement from you before you go, Mr. Bryan,” said Richard Gorman. “There’s a story going the rounds that you may make your home with us in the future.”

      When questioned by a Citizen reporter, Mr. Bryan refused either to confirm or deny the rumor:

      “I may have a statement to make later,” he observed with a significant smile, “but at present I must content myself by saying that if I could have chosen the place of my birth, I could not have found a fairer spot than this wonderland of nature.”

      Earthly Paradise, thinks Commoner.

      “I have travelled far in my day,” continued the man who had been chosen three times by a great Party to contend for the highest honor within the gift of the people. “I have gone from the woods of Maine to the wave-washed sands of Florida, from Hatteras to Halifax, and from the summits of the Rockies to where Missouri rolls her turgid flood, but I have seen few spots that equal, and none that surpass, the beauty of this mountain Eden.”

      The reporter made notes rapidly.

      The years of his glory washed back to him upon the rolling tides of rhetoric — the great lost days of the first crusade when the money barons trembled beneath the shadow of the Cross of Gold, and Bryan! Bryan! Bryan! Bryan! burned through the land like a comet. Ere I was old. 1896. Ah, woeful ere, which tells me youth’s no longer here.

      Foresees Dawn of New Era.

      When pressed more closely by the reporter as to his future plans, Mr. Bryan replied:

      “My schedule is completely filled, for months to come, with speaking engagements that will take me from one end of the country to the other, in the fight I am making for the reduction of the vast armaments that form the chief obstacle to the reign of peace on earth, good-will to men. After that, who knows?” he said, flashing his famous smile. “Perhaps I shall come back to this beautiful region, and take up my life among my good friends here as one who, having fought the good fight, deserves to spend the declining years of his life not only within sight, but within the actual boundaries, of the happy land of Canaan.”

      Asked if he could predict with any certainty the date of his proposed retirement, the Commoner answered characteristically with the following beautiful quotation from Longfellow:

      “When the war-drum throbbed no longer,

       And the battle-flags were furled

       In the Parliament of man,

       The Federation of the world.”

      The magic cell of music — the electric piano in the shallow tiled lobby of Altamont’s favorite cinema, the Ajax, stopped playing with firm, tinny abruptness, hummed ominously for a moment, and without warning commenced anew. СКАЧАТЬ