Читать книгу A Man's World - Edwards Albert - Страница 10

In one regard the fairies who attended my christening were marvelously kind to me. They gave me the gift of friends. It is the thing above all others which makes me reverent, makes me wish for a god to thank. There is no equity in the matter. I am convinced that it is what the Father would have called "an act of grace." Always, in every crisis, whenever the need has arisen, a friend has stepped beside me to help me through.

So it was when the Father cut off my allowance. Utterly ignorant of the life outside, I was not so frightened by my sudden pennilessness as I should have been, as I would be to-day. Work was found for me. My friend, Prof. Meers discovered that he needed an assistant to help him on a bibliography which he was preparing. He offered me a modest salary – enough to live comfortably. So I stayed on in the college town, living in the fraternity house.

The library work interested me more than my study had done. Even the routine detail of it was not bad and I had much time to spend on the Old English which fascinated me. I was not ambitious and would have been content to spend my life in that peaceful, pleasant town. But Prof. Meers had other plans for me. Back of my indolent interest in old books, he was optimistic enough to see a promise of great scholarship. He was better as a critic of literature than as a judge of men. He continually made plans for me. I paid scant attention to them until almost a year had passed and we were beginning to see the end of the work he could offer me. I began to speculate with more interest about what I would do next.

Without telling me about it, Prof. Meers wrote to the head of a New York Library, whom he knew and secured a position for me. When he received the news he came to me with a more definite plan than I would ever have been able to work out for myself. He knew that a certain publishing house wanted to bring out a text book edition of "Ralph Roister Doister." He had given them my name and I was to prepare the manuscript during my free hours. This he told me would not bring me much money, but some reputation and would make it easier for him to find other openings for me, where I could develop my taste for Old English. I caught some of his enthusiasm and set out for my new work with high hopes.

Of my first weeks in the city there is little memory left except of a disheartening search for a place to live. After much tramping about I took a forlorn hall bedroom in a not over peaceful family. The quest for an eating place was equally unsatisfactory.

In the library I was put to uninteresting work in the Juvenile Department. But there, handling books in words of one syllable, I found a new and disturbing outlook on life. There was more jealousy than friendship among my fellow employees. The chances of advancement were few, the competition keen – and new to me. I did not understand the hostility, which underlies the struggle for a living. Once I remember I found a carefully compiled sheet of figures, which I had prepared for my monthly report, torn to bits in my waste paper basket. Another time some advice, which I afterwards discovered to have been intentionally misleading, sent me off on a wild goose chase, wasted half a day and brought me a reprimand from the chief. Such things were incomprehensible to me at first. It took some time to realize that the people about me were afraid of me, afraid that I might win favor and be advanced over their heads. I resented their attitude, but gradually, by a word dropped here and there, I learned how a dollar a week more or less was a very vital matter to most of them. One girl in my department had a mother to support and was trying desperately to keep a brother in school. There was a man whose wife was sick, the doctor's and druggist's bills were a constant terror to him. Very likely if I had been in their place, I would have done the little, mean things they did. Life began to wear a new aspect of sombreness to me. I could not hope for advancement without trampling on someone.

By temperament I was utterly unfitted for this struggle. My desire for life was so weak that such shameful, petty hostilities seemed an exorbitant price to pay for it. I would much rather not have been born than struggle in this manner to live. I began to look about eagerly for some other employment. But I could find none which did not bear the same taint.

However it was there in that library that I encountered Norman Benson. He was near ten years older than I, tall and loose jointed. His face, very heavily lined, reminded me of our Tennessee mountaineers. But the resemblance went no farther. He was a city product, bred in luxury and wealth. He was variously described by the people of the library as "a saint," "a freak," "a philanthropist," "a crank." The chief called him "a bore." He was the idol of the small boys who ran errands for us and put the books back on the shelves. He gave them fat Egyptian cigarettes out of his silver case, to their immense delight and to the immense horror of Miss Dilly, who had the boys in charge.

His hobby, as he soon explained to me, was "a circulating library that really circulates." He had a strange language, a background of Harvard English, a foreground of picturesque slang – all illumined by flashes of weird profanity. Of course I cannot recall his words, but his manner of speaking I shall never forget.

"They call this a circulating library," he would shout. "Hell! It never moves an inch. It's stationary! Instead of going out around the town, it sits here and waits for people to come. And the people don't come. Not on your life! Only a few have the nerve to face out all this imposing architecture and red-tape. If there is anything to discourage readers, they don't do it because they've been too stupid to think of it. If a stranger comes in and asks for a book they treat him like a crook. Ask him impertinent questions about his father's occupation. Won't let him take a book unless he can get some tax-payer to promise to pay for it if he steals it! What in thunder has that got to do with it? Someone wants to read. They ought to send up an Hosanna! They ought to go out like postmen, and leave a book at each door every morning. Circulating? Rot!"

He had given his time and money for a year or two to bring about this reform. At first he had met with cold indifference. But he stuck to his point. He had put up his money as guarantees for any books which might be lost. He had persuaded half a dozen or more school teachers to distribute books among their scholars and the parents, paying them out of his own pocket for the extra work. He had established branches in several mission churches and in one or two saloons.

"That corpse of a librarian," he explained to me, "had the fool idea that his job was to preserve books – to pickle them! I've been trying to show him that every book he has on his shelves gathering dust, is money wasted, that his job is to keep them moving. The city's books ought to be in the homes of the tax-payers – not locked up in a library. The very idea horrified him at first. He was afraid the books would get dirty. Good Lord! What's the best end that can come to a book, I'd like to know? It ought to fall to pieces from much reading. For a book to be eaten by worms is a sin. I've been hammering at him, until he's beginning to see the light. He don't cry any more if a book has to be rebound."

Indeed, the "hammering" process had been effective. That year the chief read a paper at the National Congress on "Library Extension." Of course he took all the credit; boasted how the idea had come from his library and so forth. But Benson cared not at all for that. His plan had been accepted and he was content.

He interested me immensely. Why did a man with a large income spend his time, rushing about trying to make people read books they did not care enough for to come after? I could get no answer from him. He would switch away from the question into a panegyric on reading. It was a frequent expression of his that "reading is an invention of the last half century."

"Of course," he would qualify, "the aristocracy has enjoyed reading much longer. But the people? They've just learned how. The democratization of books is the most momentous social event in the history of the world. Think of it! More people read an editorial in the newspaper within twenty-four hours than could possibly have read Shakespeare during his entire life. There are dozens of single books which have had a larger edition than all the imprints of Elizabethan literature put together. Don't you see the immensity of it? It means that people all over the world will be able to think of the same thing at the same time. It means a social mind. Plato lived in his little corner of the world and his teachings lived by word of mouth and manuscripts. Only a few people could read them, fewer still could afford to buy them. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' swept across the country in a couple of years. Think how long it took Christianity to spread – a couple of hundred miles a century. And then think of the theory of evolution! It has captured the world in less than a generation! That's what books mean. We're just entering the epoch of human knowledge as compared to the old learning of individuals. It's gigantic! Wonderful!"

Benson, like many another, took a liking to me. I was lonely enough in that library. And finding no sympathy elsewhere, I improved every opportunity to talk with him.

One evening he asked me to come home with him to dinner. I accepted gladly, being more than tired of my pallid little room, and the sloppy restaurant where I ate. An evening with this rich young man, seemed attractive indeed. To my surprise he led the way to a downtown Bowery car. I did not know the city well and I thought perhaps this dismal street led to some fairer quarter. But the further we went the grimmer became the neighborhood. It was my first visit to the slums.

We got off at Stanton Street. It is so familiar to me now – with its dingy unloveliness, the squalor of its tenements, its crowding humanity, and the wonder that people can laugh in such a place – that it is hard to recall how it looked that first time. I think the thing which impressed me most was the multitude of children. Clearest of all I remember stepping over a filthy baby. It lay flat on its back, sucking an apple core and stared up at me with a strange disinterestedness. It did not seem to be afraid I would step on it. I wanted to stop and set the youngster to one side, out of the way. But I felt that I would look foolish. I did not know where to take hold of it. And Benson strode on down the street without noticing it.

A couple of blocks further, we came to a dwelling house with flower boxes in the windows. A brass-plate on the door bore the inscription, "The Children's House." So I was introduced to the Social Settlement. They were novelties in those days.

A tumult of youngsters swarmed about us as we entered. A sweet faced young woman was trying to drive them out, explaining with good natured vexation that they had over-stayed their time and would not go. They clambered all over Benson, but somehow he was more successful than the young woman in persuading them to go home. Her name, when Benson introduced me, gave me a start. It recalled a fantastic newspaper story of a millionaire's daughter who had left her diamonds and yachts to live among the poor. I had supposed her some sallow-faced, nun-like creature. I found her to be vibrantly alive, not at all a recluse.

The Settlement consisted of a front and rear tenement. The court between had been turned into a pleasant garden. With the hollyhocks along the walls and the brilliant beds of geraniums it was a strangely beautiful place for that crowded district. The men's quarters were in the back building. Benson had two rooms on the top floor, a small monastic bedroom and a larger study. It surprised me more than the courtyard. It was startling to find the atmosphere of a college dormitory in the center of the slums. The books, the fencing foils, the sofa-pillows in the window-seat – after my months in a furnished room – made me homesick for my fraternity house.

Downstairs in the cheery dining room, I met the staff of "Residents." The Rev. James Dawn, an Englishman, was the Head Worker. He was a graduate of Oxford and had been associated with Arthur Toynbee in the first London Settlement. His wife, also English, sat at the foot of the table. Benson introduced me rapidly to the others. "Miss Blake – District Nurse," "Miss Thompson – Kindergartner," "Long, Instructor in Sociology in the University," "Dr. Platt – of the Health Department." I did not begin to get the labels straight.

It was a very much better dinner than I could get in any restaurant, better than the food I had had at College and school. But the thing which impressed me most was the whizz of sharp, intellectual – often witty – conversation. The discussion centered on one of the innumerable municipal problems. I was ashamed of my inability to contribute to it.

It was to me a wonderfully attractive group of people. They enjoyed all which seemed most desirable in college life and added to this was a strange magnetic earnestness, I did not understand. I saw them relaxed. But even in their after-dinner conversation, over their coffee cups and cigarettes, there was an undercurrent of seriousness which hinted at some vital contact with an unknown reality. I was like an Eskimo looking at a watch, I could not comprehend what made the hands go round. I could see their actions, but not the stimuli from which they reacted. I knew nothing of misery.

That evening set my mind in a whirl. It was an utterly new world I had seen. I had never thought of the slums except as a distressful place to live. Stanton Street was revolting. I did not want to see it again. And yet I could not shake myself free from the thought of it – of it and of the strange group I had met in the Children's House. There seemed to be something fateful about it, something I must look at without flinching and try to understand.

On the other hand some self-defensive instinct made me try to forget it. The distaste for the struggle for life which had come to me from experiencing the petty jealousies of the library was turned into a dumb, vague fear by the sight of the slum. I turned to "Ralph Roister Doister" – on which I had made only listless progress – with a new ardor. The only escape which I could see from perplexing problems of life lay in a career of scholarship.

The Old English which had formerly been an amusement for me, now seemed a means of salvation. When Benson next suggested that I spend the evening with him, I excused myself on the ground of work.

But very often as I sat at my table, burning the midnight oil over that century old farce, the vision of that baby of Stanton Street, sucking the piece of garbage, came between me and my page. And I felt some shame in trying to drive him away. It was as though a challenging gauntlet had been thrown at my feet which I must needs pick up and face out the fight, or commit some gross surrender. I tried to escape the issue, with books.