The Genius by Theodore Dreiser

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BOOK I
------
YOUTH

THE "GENIUS"

CHAPTER I

This story has its beginnings in the town of Alexandria, Illinois,
between 1884 and 1889, at the time when the place had a population of
somewhere near ten thousand. There was about it just enough of the air
of a city to relieve it of the sense of rural life. It had one
street-car line, a theatre,--or rather, an opera house, so-called (why
no one might say, for no opera was ever performed there)--two railroads,
with their stations, and a business district, composed of four brisk
sides to a public square. In the square were the county court-house and
four newspapers. These two morning and two evening papers made the
population fairly aware of the fact that life was full of issues, local
and national, and that there were many interesting and varied things to
do. On the edge of town, several lakes and a pretty stream--perhaps
Alexandria's most pleasant feature--gave it an atmosphere not unakin to
that of a moderate-priced summer resort. Architecturally the town was
not new. It was mostly built of wood, as all American towns were at this
time, but laid out prettily in some sections, with houses that sat back
in great yards, far from the streets, with flower beds, brick walks, and
green trees as concomitants of a comfortable home life. Alexandria was a
city of young Americans. Its spirit was young. Life was all before
almost everybody. It was really good to be alive.

In one part of this city there lived a family which in its character and
composition might well have been considered typically American and
middle western. It was not by any means poor--or, at least, did not
consider itself so; it was in no sense rich. Thomas Jefferson Witla, the
father, was a sewing machine agent with the general agency in that
county of one of the best known and best selling machines made. From
each twenty, thirty-five or sixty-dollar machine which he sold, he took
a profit of thirty-five per cent. The sale of machines was not great,
but it was enough to yield him nearly two thousand dollars a year; and
on that he had managed to buy a house and lot, to furnish it
comfortably, to send his children to school, and to maintain a local
store on the public square where the latest styles of machines were
displayed. He also took old machines of other makes in exchange,
allowing ten to fifteen dollars on the purchase price of a new machine.
He also repaired machines,--and with that peculiar energy of the
American mind, he tried to do a little insurance business in addition.
His first idea was that his son, Eugene Tennyson Witla, might take
charge of this latter work, once he became old enough and the insurance
trade had developed sufficiently. He did not know what his son might
turn out to be, but it was always well to have an anchor to windward.

He was a quick, wiry, active man of no great stature, sandy-haired, with
blue eyes with noticeable eye-brows, an eagle nose, and a rather radiant
and ingratiating smile. Service as a canvassing salesman, endeavoring to
persuade recalcitrant wives and indifferent or conservative husbands to
realize that they really needed a new machine in their home, had taught
him caution, tact, savoir faire. He knew how to approach people
pleasantly. His wife thought too much so.

Certainly he was honest, hard working, and thrifty. They had been
waiting a long time for the day when they could say they owned their own
home and had a little something laid away for emergencies. That day had
come, and life was not half bad. Their house was neat,--white with green
shutters, surrounded by a yard with well kept flower beds, a smooth
lawn, and some few shapely and broad spreading trees. There was a front
porch with rockers, a swing under one tree, a hammock under another, a
buggy and several canvassing wagons in a nearby stable. Witla liked
dogs, so there were two collies. Mrs. Witla liked live things, so there
were a canary bird, a cat, some chickens, and a bird house set aloft on
a pole where a few blue-birds made their home. It was a nice little
place, and Mr. and Mrs. Witla were rather proud of it.

Miriam Witla was a good wife to her husband. A daughter of a hay and
grain dealer in Wooster, a small town near Alexandria in McLean County,
she had never been farther out into the world than Springfield and
Chicago. She had gone to Springfield as a very young girl, to see
Lincoln buried, and once with her husband she had gone to the state fair
or exposition which was held annually in those days on the lake front in
Chicago. She was well preserved, good looking, poetic under a marked
outward reserve. It was she who had insisted upon naming her only son
Eugene Tennyson, a tribute at once to a brother Eugene, and to the
celebrated romanticist of verse, because she had been so impressed with
his "Idylls of the King."

Eugene Tennyson seemed rather strong to Witla pere, as the name of a
middle-western American boy, but he loved his wife and gave her her way
in most things. He rather liked the names of Sylvia and Myrtle with
which she had christened the two girls. All three of the children were
good looking,--Sylvia, a girl of twenty-one, with black hair, dark eyes,
full blown like a rose, healthy, active, smiling. Myrtle was of a less
vigorous constitution, small, pale, shy, but intensely sweet--like the
flower she was named after, her mother said. She was inclined to be
studious and reflective, to read verse and dream. The young bloods of
the high school were all crazy to talk to Myrtle and to walk with her,
but they could find no words. And she herself did not know what to say
to them.

Eugene Witla was the apple of his family's eye, younger than either of
his two sisters by two years. He had straight smooth black hair, dark
almond-shaped eyes, a straight nose, a shapely but not aggressive chin;
his teeth were even and white, showing with a curious delicacy when he
smiled, as if he were proud of them. He was not very strong to begin
with, moody, and to a notable extent artistic. Because of a weak stomach
and a semi-anaemic condition, he did not really appear as strong as he
was. He had emotion, fire, longings, that were concealed behind a wall
of reserve. He was shy, proud, sensitive, and very uncertain of himself.

When at home he lounged about the house, reading Dickens, Thackeray,
Scott and Poe. He browsed idly through one book after another, wondering
about life. The great cities appealed to him. He thought of travel as a
wonderful thing. In school he read Taine and Gibbon between recitation
hours, wondering at the luxury and beauty of the great courts of the
world. He cared nothing for grammar, nothing for mathematics, nothing
for botany or physics, except odd bits here and there. Curious facts
would strike him--the composition of clouds, the composition of water,
the chemical elements of the earth. He liked to lie in the hammock at
home, spring, summer or fall, and look at the blue sky showing through
the trees. A soaring buzzard poised in speculative flight held his
attention fixedly. The wonder of a snowy cloud, high piled like wool,
and drifting as an island, was like a song to him. He had wit, a keen
sense of humor, a sense of pathos. Sometimes he thought he would draw;
sometimes write. He had a little talent for both, he thought, but did
practically nothing with either. He would sketch now and then, but only
fragments--a small roof-top, with smoke curling from a chimney and birds
flying; a bit of water with a willow bending over it and perhaps a boat
anchored; a mill pond with ducks afloat, and a boy or woman on the bank.
He really had no great talent for interpretation at this time, only an
intense sense of beauty. The beauty of a bird in flight, a rose in
bloom, a tree swaying in the wind--these held him. He would walk the
streets of his native town at night, admiring the brightness of the
store windows, the sense of youth and enthusiasm that went with a crowd;
the sense of love and comfort and home that spoke through the glowing
windows of houses set back among trees.

He admired girls,--was mad about them,--but only about those who were
truly beautiful. There were two or three in his school who reminded him
of poetic phrases he had come across--"beauty like a tightened bow,"
"thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face," "a dancing shape, an image
gay"--but he could not talk to them with ease. They were beautiful but
so distant. He invested them with more beauty than they had; the beauty
was in his own soul. But he did not know that. One girl whose yellow
hair lay upon her neck in great yellow braids like ripe corn, was
constantly in his thoughts. He worshiped her from afar but she never
knew. She never knew what solemn black eyes burned at her when she was
not looking. She left Alexandria, her family moving to another town, and
in time he recovered, for there is much of beauty. But the color of her
hair and the wonder of her neck stayed with him always.

There was some plan on the part of Witla to send these children to
college, but none of them showed any great desire for education. They
were perhaps wiser than books, for they were living in the realm of
imagination and feeling. Sylvia longed to be a mother, and was married
at twenty-one to Henry Burgess, the son of Benjamin C. Burgess, editor
of the _Morning Appeal_. There was a baby the first year. Myrtle was
dreaming through algebra and trigonometry, wondering whether she would
teach or get married, for the moderate prosperity of the family demanded
that she do something. Eugene mooned through his studies, learning
nothing practical. He wrote a little, but his efforts at sixteen were
puerile. He drew, but there was no one to tell him whether there was any
merit in the things he did or not. Practical matters were generally
without significance to him. But he was overawed by the fact that the
world demanded practical service--buying and selling like his father,
clerking in stores, running big business. It was a confusing maze, and
he wondered, even at this age, what was to become of him. He did not
object to the kind of work his father was doing, but it did not interest
him. For himself he knew it would be a pointless, dreary way of making a
living, and as for insurance, that was equally bad. He could hardly
bring himself to read through the long rigamarole of specifications
which each insurance paper itemized. There were times--evenings and
Saturdays--when he clerked in his father's store, but it was painful
work. His mind was not in it.

As early as his twelfth year his father had begun to see that Eugene was
not cut out for business, and by the time he was sixteen he was
convinced of it. From the trend of his reading and his percentage marks
at school, he was equally convinced that the boy was not interested in
his studies. Myrtle, who was two classes ahead of him but sometimes in
the same room, reported that he dreamed too much. He was always looking
out of the window.

Eugene's experience with girls had not been very wide. There were those
very minor things that occur in early youth--girls whom we furtively
kiss, or who furtively kiss us--the latter had been the case with
Eugene. He had no particular interest in any one girl. At fourteen he
had been picked by a little girl at a party as an affinity, for the
evening at least, and in a game of "post-office" had enjoyed the wonder
of a girl's arms around him in a dark room and a girl's lips against
his; but since then there had been no re-encounter of any kind. He had
dreamed of love, with this one experience as a basis, but always in a
shy, distant way. He was afraid of girls, and they, to tell the truth,
were afraid of him. They could not make him out.

But in the fall of his seventeenth year Eugene came into contact with
one girl who made a profound impression on him. Stella Appleton was a
notably beautiful creature. She was very fair, Eugene's own age, with
very blue eyes and a slender sylph-like body. She was gay and debonair
in an enticing way, without really realizing how dangerous she was to
the average, susceptible male heart. She liked to flirt with the boys
because it amused her, and not because she cared for anyone in
particular. There was no petty meanness about it, however, for she
thought they were all rather nice, the less clever appealing to her
almost more than the sophisticated. She may have liked Eugene originally
because of his shyness.

He saw her first at the beginning of his last school year when she came
to the city and entered the second high school class. Her father had
come from Moline, Illinois, to take a position as manager of a new
pulley manufactory which was just starting. She had quickly become
friends with his sister Myrtle, being perhaps attracted by her quiet
ways, as Myrtle was by Stella's gaiety.

One afternoon, as Myrtle and Stella were on Main Street, walking home
from the post office, they met Eugene, who was on his way to visit a boy
friend. He was really bashful; and when he saw them approaching he
wanted to escape, but there was no way. They saw him, and Stella
approached confidently enough. Myrtle was anxious to intercept him,
because she had her pretty companion with her.

"You haven't been home, have you?" she asked, stopping. This was her
chance to introduce Stella; Eugene couldn't escape. "Miss Appleton, this
is my brother Eugene."

Stella gave him a sunny encouraging smile, and her hand, which he took
gingerly. He was plainly nervous.

"I'm not very clean," he said apologetically. "I've been helping father
fix a buggy."

"Oh, we don't mind," said Myrtle. "Where are you going?"

"Over to Harry Morris's," he explained.

"What for?"

"We're going for hickory nuts."

"Oh, I wish I had some," said Stella.

"I'll bring you some," he volunteered gallantly.

She smiled again. "I wish you would."

She almost proposed that they should be taken along, but inexperience
hindered her.

Eugene was struck with all her charm at once. She seemed like one of
those unattainable creatures who had swum into his ken a little earlier
and disappeared. There was something of the girl with the corn-
hair about her, only she had been more human, less like a dream. This
girl was fine, delicate, pink, like porcelain. She was fragile and yet
virile. He caught his breath, but he was more or less afraid of her. He
did not know what she might be thinking of him.

"Well, we're going on to the house," said Myrtle.

"I'd go along if I hadn't promised Harry I'd come over."

"Oh, that's all right," replied Myrtle. "We don't mind."

He withdrew, feeling that he had made a very poor impression. Stella's
eyes had been on him in a very inquiring way. She looked after him when
he had gone.

"Isn't he nice?" she said to Myrtle frankly.

"I think so," replied Myrtle; "kind o'. He's too moody, though."

"What makes him?"

"He isn't very strong."

"I think he has a nice smile."

"I'll tell him!"

"No, please don't! You won't, will you?"

"No."

"But he _has_ a nice smile."

"I'll ask you round to the house some evening and you can meet him
again."

"I'd like to," said Stella. "It would be a lot of fun."

"Come out Saturday evening and stay all night. He's home then."

"I will," said Stella. "Won't that be fine!"

"I believe you like him!" laughed Myrtle.

"I think he's awfully nice," said Stella, simply.

The second meeting happened on Saturday evening as arranged, when he
came home from his odd day at his father's insurance office. Stella had
come to supper. Eugene saw her through the open sitting room door, as he
bounded upstairs to change his clothes, for he had a fire of youth which
no sickness of stomach or weakness of lungs could overcome at this age.
A thrill of anticipation ran over his body. He took especial pains with
his toilet, adjusting a red tie to a nicety, and parting his hair
carefully in the middle. He came down after a while, conscious that he
had to say something smart, worthy of himself, or she would not see how
attractive he was; and yet he was fearful as to the result. When he
entered the sitting room she was sitting with his sister before an open
fire-place, the glow of a lamp with a red-flowered shade warmly
illuminating the room. It was a commonplace room, with its blue
cloth-covered center table, its chairs of stereotyped factory design,
and its bookcase of novels and histories, but it was homey, and the
sense of hominess was strong.

Mrs. Witla was in and out occasionally, looking for things which
appertained to her functions as house-mother. The father was not home
yet; he would get there by supper-time, having been to some outlying
town of the county trying to sell a machine. Eugene was indifferent to
his presence or absence. Mr. Witla had a fund of humor which extended to
joking with his son and daughters, when he was feeling good, to noting
their budding interest in the opposite sex; to predicting some
commonplace climax to their one grand passion when it should come. He
was fond of telling Myrtle that she would one day marry a horse-doctor.
As for Eugene, he predicted a certain Elsa Brown, who, his wife said,
had greasy curls. This did not irritate either Myrtle or Eugene. It even
brought a wry smile to Eugene's face for he was fond of a jest; but he
saw his father pretty clearly even at this age. He saw the smallness of
his business, the ridiculousness of any such profession having any claim
on him. He never wanted to say anything, but there was in him a burning
opposition to the commonplace, a molten pit in a crater of reserve,
which smoked ominously now and then for anyone who could have read.
Neither his father nor his mother understood him. To them he was a
peculiar boy, dreamy, sickly, unwitting, as yet, of what he really
wanted.

"Oh, here you are!" said Myrtle, when he came in. "Come and sit down."

Stella gave him an enticing smile.

He walked to the mantel-piece and stood there, posing. He wanted to
impress this girl, and he did not quite know how. He was almost lost for
anything to say.

"You can't guess what we've been doing!" his sister chirped helpfully.

"Well--what?" he replied blankly.

"You ought to guess. Can't you be nice and guess?"

"One guess, anyhow," put in Stella.

"Toasting pop-corn," he ventured with a half smile.

"You're warm." It was Myrtle speaking.

Stella looked at him with round blue eyes. "One more guess," she
suggested.

"Chestnuts!" he guessed.

She nodded her head gaily. "What hair!" he thought. Then--"Where are
they?"

"Here's one," laughed his new acquaintance, holding out a tiny hand.

Under her laughing encouragement he was finding his voice. "Stingy!" he
said.

"Now isn't that mean," she exclaimed. "I gave him the only one I had.
Don't you give him any of yours, Myrtle."

"I take it back," he pleaded. "I didn't know."

"I won't!" exclaimed Myrtle. "Here, Stella," and she held out the few
nuts she had left, "take these, and don't you give him any!" She put
them in Stella's eager hands.

He saw her meaning. It was an invitation to a contest. She wanted him to
try to make her give him some. He fell in with her plan.

"Here!" He stretched out his palm. "That's not right!"

She shook her head.

"One, anyhow," he insisted.

Her head moved negatively from side to side slowly.

"One," he pleaded, drawing near.

Again the golden negative. But her hand was at the side nearest him,
where he could seize it. She started to pass its contents behind her to
the other hand but he jumped and caught it.

"Myrtle! Quick!" she called.

Myrtle came. It was a three-handed struggle. In the midst of the contest
Stella twisted and rose to her feet. Her hair brushed his face. He held
her tiny hand firmly. For a moment he looked into her eyes. What was it?
He could not say. Only he half let go and gave her the victory.

"There," she smiled. "Now I'll give you one."

He took it, laughing. What he wanted was to take her in his arms.

A little while before supper his father came in and sat down, but
presently took a Chicago paper and went into the dining room to read.
Then his mother called them to the table, and he sat by Stella. He was
intensely interested in what she did and said. If her lips moved he
noted just how. When her teeth showed he thought they were lovely. A
little ringlet on her forehead beckoned him like a golden finger. He
felt the wonder of the poetic phrase, "the shining strands of her hair."

After dinner he and Myrtle and Stella went back to the sitting room. His
father stayed behind to read, his mother to wash dishes. Myrtle left the
room after a bit to help her mother, and then these two were left alone.
He hadn't much to say, now that they were together--he couldn't talk.
Something about her beauty kept him silent.

"Do you like school?" she asked after a time. She felt as if they must
talk.

"Only fairly well," he replied. "I'm not much interested. I think I'll
quit one of these days and go to work."

"What do you expect to do?"

"I don't know yet--I'd like to be an artist." He confessed his ambition
for the first time in his life--why, he could not have said.

Stella took no note of it.

"I was afraid they wouldn't let me enter second year high school, but
they did," she remarked. "The superintendent at Moline had to write the
superintendent here."

"They're mean about those things," he cogitated.

She got up and went to the bookcase to look at the books. He followed
after a little.

"Do you like Dickens?" she asked.

He nodded his head solemnly in approval. "Pretty much," he said.

"I can't like him. He's too long drawn out. I like Scott better."

"I like Scott," he said.

"I'll tell you a lovely book that I like." She paused, her lips parted
trying to remember the name. She lifted her hand as though to pick the
title out of the air. "The Fair God," she exclaimed at last.

"Yes--it's fine," he approved. "I thought the scene in the old Aztec
temple where they were going to sacrifice Ahwahee was so wonderful!"

"Oh, yes, I liked that," she added. She pulled out "Ben Hur" and turned
its leaves idly. "And this was so good."

"Wonderful!"

They paused and she went to the window, standing under the cheap lace
curtains. It was a moonlight night. The rows of trees that lined the
street on either side were leafless; the grass brown and dead. Through
the thin, interlaced twigs that were like silver filigree they could see
the lamps of other houses shining through half-drawn blinds. A man went
by, a black shadow in the half-light.

"Isn't it lovely?" she said.

Eugene came near. "It's fine," he answered.

"I wish it were cold enough to skate. Do you skate?" She turned to him.

"Yes, indeed," he replied.

"My, it's so nice on a moonlit night. I used to skate a lot at Moline."

"We skate a lot here. There're two lakes, you know."

He thought of the clear crystal nights when the ice of Green Lake had
split every so often with a great resounding rumble. He thought of the
crowds of boys and girls shouting, the distant shadows, the stars. Up to
now he had never found any girl to skate with successfully. He had never
felt just easy with anyone. He had tried it, but once he had fallen with
a girl, and it had almost cured him of skating forever. He felt as
though he could skate with Stella. He felt that she might like to skate
with him.

"When it gets colder we might go," he ventured. "Myrtle skates."

"Oh, that'll be fine!" she applauded.

Still she looked out into the street.

After a bit she came back to the fire and stood before him, pensively
looking down.

"Do you think your father will stay here?" he asked.

"He says so. He likes it very much."

"Do you?"

"Yes--now."

"Why _now_?"

"Oh, I didn't like it at first."

"Why?"

"Oh, I guess it was because I didn't know anybody. I like it though,
now." She lifted her eyes.

He drew a little nearer.

"It's a nice place," he said, "but there isn't much for me here. I think
I'll leave next year."

"Where do you think you'll go?"

"To Chicago. I don't want to stay here."

She turned her body toward the fire and he moved to a chair behind her,
leaning on its back. She felt him there rather close, but did not move.
He was surprising himself.

"Aren't you ever coming back?" she asked.

"Maybe. It all depends. I suppose so."

"I shouldn't think you'd want to leave yet."

"Why?"

"You say it's so nice."

He made no answer and she looked over her shoulder. He was leaning very
much toward her.

"Will you skate with me this winter?" he asked meaningly.

She nodded her head.

Myrtle came in.

"What are you two talking about?" she asked.

"The fine skating we have here," he said.

"I love to skate," she exclaimed.

"So do I," added Stella. "It's heavenly."

CHAPTER II

Some of the incidents of this courtship that followed, ephemeral as it
was, left a profound impression on Eugene's mind. They met to skate not
long after, for the snow came and the ice and there was wonderful
skating on Green Lake. The frost was so prolonged that men with horses
and ice-saws were cutting blocks a foot thick over at Miller's Point,
where the ice houses were. Almost every day after Thanksgiving there
were crowds of boys and girls from the schools scooting about like water
skippers. Eugene could not always go on week evenings and Saturdays
because he had to assist his father at the store. But at regular
intervals he could ask Myrtle to get Stella and let them all go together
at night. And at other times he would ask her to go alone. Not
infrequently she did.

On one particular occasion they were below a group of houses which crept
near the lake on high ground. The moon was up, its wooing rays reflected
in the polished surfaces of the ice. Through the black masses of trees
that lined the shore could be seen the glow of windows, yellow and
homey. Eugene and Stella had slowed up to turn about, having left the
crowd of skaters some distance back. Stella's golden curls were covered,
except for a few ringlets, with a French cap; her body, to below the
hips, encased in a white wool Jersey, close-fitting and shapely. The
skirt below was a grey mixture of thick wool and the stockings were
covered by white woolen leggings. She looked tempting and knew it.

Suddenly, as they turned, one of her skates came loose and she hobbled
and exclaimed about it. "Wait," said Eugene, "I'll fix it."

She stood before him and he fell to his knees, undoing the twisted
strap. When he had the skate off and ready for her foot he looked up,
and she looked down on him, smiling. He dropped the skate and flung his
arms around her hips, laying his head against her waist.

"You're a bad boy," she said.

For a few minutes she kept silent, for as the center of this lovely
scene she was divine. While he held her she pulled off his wool cap and
laid her hand on his hair. It almost brought tears to his eyes, he was
so happy. At the same time it awakened a tremendous passion. He clutched
her significantly.

"Fix my skate, now," she said wisely.

He got up to hug her but she would not let him.

"No, no," she protested. "You mustn't do like that. I won't come with
you if you do."

"Oh, Stella!" he pleaded.

"I mean it," she insisted. "You mustn't do like that."

He subsided, hurt, half angry. But he feared her will. She was really
not as ready for caresses as he had thought.

Another time a sleighing party was given by some school girls, and
Stella, Eugene and Myrtle were invited. It was a night of snow and
stars, not too cold but bracing. A great box-wagon had been dismantled
of its body and the latter put on runners and filled with straw and warm
robes. Eugene and Myrtle, like the others, had been picked up at their
door after the sleigh had gone the rounds of some ten peaceful little
homes. Stella was not in yet, but in a little while her house was
reached.

"Get in here," called Myrtle, though she was half the length of the box
away from Eugene. Her request made him angry. "Sit by me," he called,
fearful that she would not. She climbed in by Myrtle but finding the
space not to her liking moved farther down. Eugene made a special effort
to have room by him, and she came there as though by accident. He drew a
buffalo robe around her and thrilled to think that she was really there.
The sleigh went jingling around the town for others, and finally struck
out into the country. It passed great patches of dark woods silent in
the snow, little white frame farmhouses snuggled close to the ground,
and with windows that gleamed in a vague romantic way. The stars were
countless and keen. The whole scene made a tremendous impression on him,
for he was in love, and here beside him, in the shadow, her face palely
outlined, was this girl. He could make out the sweetness of her cheek,
her eyes, the softness of her hair.

There was a good deal of chatter and singing, and in the midst of these
distractions he managed to slip an arm about her waist, to get her hand
in his, to look close into her eyes, trying to divine their expression.
She was always coy with him, not wholly yielding. Three or four times he
kissed her cheek furtively and once her mouth. In a dark place he pulled
her vigorously to him, putting a long, sensuous kiss on her lips that
frightened her.

"No," she protested, nervously. "You mustn't."

He ceased for a time, feeling that he had pressed his advantage too
closely. But the night in all its beauty, and she in hers made a lasting
impression.

******

"I think we ought to get Eugene into newspaper work or something like
that," Witla senior suggested to his wife.

"It looks as though that's all he would be good for, at least now,"
replied Mrs. Witla, who was satisfied that her boy had not yet found
himself. "I think he'll do something better later on. His health isn't
very good, you know."

Witla half suspected that his boy was naturally lazy, but he wasn't
sure. He suggested that Benjamin C. Burgess, the prospective
father-in-law of Sylvia and the editor and proprietor of the _Morning
Appeal_, might give him a place as a reporter or type-setter in order
that he might learn the business from the ground up. The _Appeal_
carried few employees, but Mr. Burgess might have no objections to
starting Eugene as a reporter if he could write, or as a student of
type-setting, or both. He appealed to Burgess one day on the street.

"Say, Burgess," he said, "you wouldn't have a place over in your shop
for that boy of mine, would you? He likes to scribble a little, I
notice. I think he pretends to draw a little, too, though I guess it
doesn't amount to much. He ought to get into something. He isn't doing
anything at school. Maybe he could learn type-setting. It wouldn't hurt
him to begin at the bottom if he's going to follow that line. It
wouldn't matter what you paid him to begin with."

Burgess thought. He had seen Eugene around town, knew no harm of him
except that he was lackadaisical and rather moody.

"Send him in to see me some day," he replied noncommittally. "I might do
something for him."

"I'd certainly be much obliged to you if you would," said Witla. "He is
not doing much good as it is now," and the two men parted.

He went home and told Eugene. "Burgess says he might give you a position
as a type-setter or a reporter on the _Appeal_ if you'd come in and see
him some day," he explained, looking over to where his son was reading
by the lamp.

"Does he?" replied Eugene calmly. "Well, I can't write. I might set
type. Did you ask him?"

"Yes," said Witla. "You'd better go to him some day."

Eugene bit his lip. He realized this was a commentary on his loafing
propensities. He wasn't doing very well, that was certain. Still
type-setting was no bright field for a person of his temperament. "I
will," he concluded, "when school's over."

"Better speak before school ends. Some of the other fellows might ask
for it around that time. It wouldn't hurt you to try your hand at it."

"I will," said Eugene obediently.

He stopped in one sunny April afternoon at Mr. Burgess' office. It was
on the ground floor of the three-story _Appeal_ building in the public
square. Mr. Burgess, a fat man, slightly bald, looked at him quizzically
over his steel rimmed spectacles. What little hair he had was gray.

"So you think you would like to go into the newspaper business, do you?"
queried Burgess.

"I'd like to try my hand at it," replied the boy. "I'd like to see
whether I like it."

"I can tell you right now there's very little in it. Your father says
you like to write."

"I'd like to well enough, but I don't think I can. I wouldn't mind
learning type-setting. If I ever could write I'd be perfectly willing
to."

"When do you think you'd like to start?"

"At the end of school, if it's all the same to you."

"It doesn't make much difference. I'm not really in need of anybody, but
I could use you. Would you be satisfied with five a week?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, come in when you are ready. I'll see what I can do."

He waved the prospective type-setter away with a movement of his fat
hand, and turned to his black walnut desk, dingy, covered with
newspapers, and lit by a green shaded electric light. Eugene went out,
the smell of fresh printing ink in his nose, and the equally aggressive
smell of damp newspapers. It was going to be an interesting experience,
he thought, but perhaps a waste of time. He did not think so much of
Alexandria. Some time he was going to get out of it.

The office of the _Appeal_ was not different from that of any other
country newspaper office within the confines of our two hemispheres. On
the ground floor in front was the business office, and in the rear the
one large flat bed press and the job presses. On the second floor was
the composing room with its rows of type cases on their high racks--for
this newspaper was, like most other country newspapers, still set by
hand; and in front was the one dingy office of the so-called editor, or
managing editor, or city editor--for all three were the same person, a
Mr. Caleb Williams whom Burgess had picked up in times past from heaven
knows where. Williams was a small, lean, wiry man, with a black pointed
beard and a glass eye which fixed you oddly with its black pupil. He was
talkative, skipped about from duty to duty, wore most of the time a
green shade pulled low over his forehead, and smoked a brown briar pipe.
He had a fund of knowledge, piled up in metropolitan journalistic
experience, but he was anchored here with a wife and three children,
after sailing, no doubt, a chartless sea of troubles, and was glad to
talk life and experiences after office hours with almost anybody. It
took him from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon to gather
what local news there was, and either write it or edit it. He seemed to
have a number of correspondents who sent him weekly batches of news from
surrounding points. The Associated Press furnished him with a few minor
items by telegraph, and there was a "patent insides," two pages of
fiction, household hints, medicine ads. and what not, which saved him
considerable time and stress. Most of the news which came to him
received short shrift in the matter of editing. "In Chicago we used to
give a lot of attention to this sort of thing," Williams was wont to
declare to anyone who was near, "but you can't do it down here. The
readers really don't expect it. They're looking for local items. I
always look after the local items pretty sharp."

Mr. Burgess took care of the advertising sections. In fact he solicited
advertising personally, saw that it was properly set up as the
advertiser wanted it, and properly placed according to the convenience
of the day and the rights and demands of others. He was the politician
of the concern, the handshaker, the guider of its policy. He wrote
editorials now and then, or, with Williams, decided just what their
sense must be, met the visitors who came to the office to see the
editor, and arbitrated all known forms of difficulties. He was at the
beck and call of certain Republican party-leaders in the county; but
that seemed natural, for he was a Republican himself by temperament and
disposition. He was appointed postmaster once to pay him for some useful
services, but he declined because he was really making more out of his
paper than his postmastership would have brought. He received whatever
city or county advertising it was in the power of the Republican leaders
to give him, and so he did very well. The complications of his political
relationships Williams knew in part, but they never troubled that
industrious soul. He dispensed with moralizing. "I have to make a living
for myself, my wife and three children. That's enough to keep me going
without bothering my head about other people." So this office was really
run very quietly, efficiently, and in most ways pleasantly. It was a
sunny place to work.

Witla, who came here at the end of his eleventh school year and when he
had just turned seventeen, was impressed with the personality of
Mr. Williams. He liked him. He came to like a Jonas Lyle who worked at
what might be called the head desk of the composing room, and a certain
John Summers who worked at odd times--whenever there was an extra rush
of job printing. He learned very quickly that John Summers, who was
fifty-five, grey, and comparatively silent, was troubled with weak lungs
and drank. Summers would slip out of the office at various times in the
day and be gone from five to fifteen minutes. No one ever said anything,
for there was no pressure here. What work was to be done was done. Jonas
Lyle was of a more interesting nature. He was younger by ten years,
stronger, better built, but still a character. He was semi-phlegmatic,
philosophic, feebly literary. He had worked, as Eugene found out in the
course of time, in nearly every part of the United States--Denver,
Portland, St. Paul, St. Louis, where not, and had a fund of
recollections of this proprietor and that. Whenever he saw a name of
particular distinction in the newspapers he was apt to bring the paper
to Williams--and later, when they became familiar, to Eugene--and say,
"I knew that fellow out in ----. He was postmaster (or what not) at
X----. He's come up considerably since I knew him." In most cases he did
not know these celebrities personally at all, but he knew of them, and
the echo of their fame sounding in this out-of-the-way corner of the
world impressed him. He was a careful reader of proof for Williams in a
rush, a quick type-setter, a man who stayed by his tasks faithfully. But
he hadn't got anywhere in the world, for, after all, he was little more
than a machine. Eugene could see that at a glance.

It was Lyle who taught him the art of type-setting. He demonstrated the
first day the theory of the squares or pockets in a case, how some
letters were placed more conveniently to the hand than others, why some
letters were well represented as to quantity, why capitals were used in
certain offices for certain purposes, in others not. "Now on the Chicago
_Tribune_ we used to italicize the names of churches, boats, books,
hotels, and things of that sort. That's the only paper I ever knew to do
that," he remarked. What slugs, sticks, galleys, turnovers, meant, came
rapidly to the surface. That the fingers would come to recognize weights
of leads by the touch, that a letter would almost instinctively find its
way back to its proper pocket, even though you were not thinking, once
you became expert, were facts which he cheerfully communicated. He
wanted his knowledge taken seriously, and this serious attention,
Eugene, because of his innate respect for learning of any kind, was only
too glad to give him. He did not know what he wanted to do, but he knew
quite well that he wanted to see everything. This shop was interesting
to him for some little time for this reason, for though he soon found
that he did not want to be a type-setter or a reporter, or indeed
anything much in connection with a country newspaper, he was learning
about life. He worked at his desk cheerfully, smiling out upon the
world, which indicated its presence to him through an open window, read
the curious bits of news or opinion or local advertisements as he set
them up, and dreamed of what the world might have in store for him. He
was not vastly ambitious as yet, but hopeful and, withal, a little
melancholy. He could see boys and girls whom he knew, idling in the
streets or on the corner squares; he could see where Ted Martinwood was
driving by in his father's buggy, or George Anderson was going up the
street with the air of someone who would never need to work. George's
father owned the one and only hotel. There were thoughts in his mind of
fishing, boating, lolling somewhere with some pretty girl, but alas,
girls did not apparently take to him so very readily. He was too shy. He
thought it must be nice to be rich. So he dreamed.

Eugene was at that age when he wished to express himself in ardent
phrases. He was also at the age when bashfulness held him in reserve,
even though he were in love and intensely emotional. He could only say
to Stella what seemed trivial things, and look his intensity, whereas it
was the trivial things that were most pleasing to her, not the
intensity. She was even then beginning to think he was a little strange,
a little too tense for her disposition. Yet she liked him. It became
generally understood around town that Stella was _his_ girl. School day
mating usually goes that way in a small city or village. He was seen to
go out with her. His father teased him. Her mother and father deemed
this a manifestation of calf love, not so much on her part, for they
were aware of her tendency to hold lightly any manifestation of
affection on the part of boys, but on his. They thought his
sentimentalism would soon be wearisome to Stella. And they were not far
wrong about her. On one occasion at a party given by several high school
girls, a "country post office" was organized. That was one of those
games which mean kissing only. A system of guessing results in a series
of forfeits. If you miss you must be postmaster, and call someone for
"mail." _Mail_ means to be kissed in a dark room (where the postmaster
stands) by someone whom you like or who likes you. You, as postmaster,
have authority or compulsion--however you feel about it--to call whom
you please.

In this particular instance Stella, who was caught before Eugene, was
under compulsion to call someone to kiss. Her first thought was of him,
but on account of the frankness of the deed, and because there was a
lurking fear in her of his eagerness, the name she felt impelled to
speak was Harvey Rutter. Harvey was a handsome boy whom Stella had met
after her first encounter with Eugene. He was not as yet fascinating to
her, but pleasing. She had a coquettish desire to see what he was like.
This was her first direct chance.

He stepped gaily in, and Eugene was at once insane with jealousy. He
could not understand why she should treat him in that way. When it came
to his turn he called for Bertha Shoemaker, whom he admired, and who was
sweet in a way, but who was as nothing to Stella in his estimation. The
pain of kissing her when he really wanted the other girl was great. When
he came out Stella saw moodiness in his eyes, but chose to ignore it. He
was obviously half-hearted and downcast in his simulation of joy.

A second chance came to her and this time she called him. He went, but
was in a semi-defiant mood. He wanted to punish her. When they met in
the dark she expected him to put his arms around her. Her own hands were
up to about where his shoulders should be. Instead he only took hold of
one of her arms with his hand and planted a chilly kiss on her lips. If
he had only asked, "Why did you?" or held her close and pleaded with her
not to treat him so badly, the relationship might have lasted longer.
Instead he said nothing, and she grew defiant and she went out gaily.
There was a strain of reserve running between them until the party broke
up and he took her home.

"You must be melancholy tonight," she remarked, after they had walked
two blocks in complete silence. The streets were dark, and their feet
sounded hollowly on the brick pavement.

"Oh, I'm feeling all right," he replied moodily.

"I think it's awfully nice at the Weimers', we always have so much fun
there."

"Yes, lots of fun," he echoed contemptuously.

"Oh, don't be so cross!" she flared. "You haven't any reason for
fussing."

"Haven't I?"

"No, you haven't."

"Well if that's the way you feel about it I suppose I haven't. I don't
see it that way."

"Well, it doesn't make any difference to me how you see it."

"Oh, doesn't it?"

"No, it doesn't." Her head was up and she was angry.

"Well I'm sure then it doesn't to me."

There was another silence which endured until they were almost home.

"Are you coming to the sociable next Thursday?" he inquired. He was
referring to a Methodist evening entertainment which, although he cared
very little about it, was a convenience as it enabled him to see her and
take her home. He was prompted to ask by the fear that an open rupture
was impending.

"No," she said. "I don't think I will."

"Why not?"

"I don't care to."

"I think you're mean," he said reprovingly.

"I don't care," she replied. "I think you're too bossy. I don't think I
like you very much anyhow."

His heart contracted ominously.

"You can do as you please," he persisted.

They reached her gate. It was his wont to kiss her in the shadow--to
hold her tight for a few minutes in spite of her protests. Tonight, as
they approached, he thought of doing it, but she gave him no chance.
When they reached the gate she opened it quickly and slipped in.
"Good-night," she called.

"Good-night," he said, and then as she reached her door, "Stella!"

It was open, and she slipped in. He stood in the dark, hurt, sore,
oppressed. What should he do? He strolled home cudgelling his brain
whether never to speak to or look at her again until she came to him, or
to hunt her up and fight it all out with her. She was in the wrong, he
knew that. When he went to bed he was grieving over it, and when he
awoke it was with him all day.

He had been gaining rather rapidly as a student of type-setting, and to
a certain extent of the theory of reporting, and he worked diligently
and earnestly at his proposed trade. He loved to look out of the window
and draw, though of late, after knowing Stella so well and coming to
quarrel with her because of her indifference, there was little heart in
it. This getting to the office, putting on an apron, and starting in on
some local correspondence left over from the day before, or some
telegraph copy which had been freshly filed on his hook, had its
constructive value. Williams endeavored to use him on some local items
of news as a reporter, but he was a slow worker and almost a failure at
getting all the facts. He did not appear to know how to interview
anybody, and would come back with a story which needed to be filled in
from other sources. He really did not understand the theory of news, and
Williams could only make it partially clear to him. Mostly he worked at
his case, but he did learn some things.

For one thing, the theory of advertising began to dawn on him. These
local merchants put in the same ads. day after day, and many of them did
not change them noticeably. He saw Lyle and Summers taking the same ads.
which had appeared unchangingly from month to month in so far as their
main features were concerned, and alter only a few words before
returning them to the forms. He wondered at the sameness of them, and
when, at last, they were given to him to revise he often wished he could
change them a little. The language seemed so dull.

"Why don't they ever put little drawings in these ads?" he asked Lyle
one day. "Don't you think they'd look a little better?"

"Oh, I don't know," replied Jonas. "They look pretty good. These people
around here wouldn't want anything like that. They'd think it was too
fancy." Eugene had seen and in a way studied the ads. in the magazines.
They seemed so much more fascinating to him. Why couldn't newspaper ads.
be different?

Still it was never given to him to trouble over this problem.
Mr. Burgess dealt with the advertisers. He settled how the ads were to
be. He never talked to Eugene or Summers about them, not always to Lyle.
He would sometimes have Williams explain just what their character and
layout was to be. Eugene was so young that Williams at first did not pay
very much attention to him, but after a while he began to realize that
there was a personality here, and then he would explain things,--why
space had to be short for some items and long for others, why county
news, news of small towns around Alexandria, and about people, was much
more important financially to the paper than the correct reporting of
the death of the sultan of Turkey. The most important thing was to get
the local names right. "Don't ever misspell them," he once cautioned
him. "Don't ever leave out a part of a name if you can help it. People
are awfully sensitive about that. They'll stop their subscription if you
don't watch out, and you won't know what's the matter."

Eugene took all these things to heart. He wanted to see how the thing
was done, though basically it seemed to be a little small. In fact
people seemed a little small, mostly.

One of the things that did interest him was to see the paper put on the
press and run off. He liked to help lock up the forms, and to see how
they were imposed and registered. He liked to hear the press run, and to
help carry the wet papers to the mailing tables and the distributing
counter out in front. The paper hadn't a very large circulation but
there was a slight hum of life about that time and he liked it. He liked
the sense of getting his hands and face streaked and not caring, and of
seeing his hair tousled, in the mirror. He tried to be useful and the
various people on the paper came to like him, though he was often a
little awkward and slow. He was not strong at this period and his
stomach troubled him. He thought, too, that the smell of the ink might
affect his lungs, though he did not seriously fear it. In the main it
was interesting but small; there was a much larger world outside, he
knew that. He hoped to go to it some day; he hoped to go to Chicago.

CHAPTER III

Eugene grew more and more moody and rather restless under Stella's
increasing independence. She grew steadily more indifferent because of
his moods. The fact that other boys were crazy for her consideration was
a great factor; the fact that one particular boy, Harvey Rutter, was
persistently genial, not insistent, really better looking than Eugene
and much better tempered, helped a great deal. Eugene saw her with him
now and then, saw her go skating with him, or at least with a crowd of
which he was a member. Eugene hated him heartily; he hated her at times
for not yielding to him wholly; but he was none the less wild over her
beauty. It stamped his brain with a type or ideal. Thereafter he knew in
a really definite way what womanhood ought to be, to be really
beautiful.

Another thing it did was to bring home to him a sense of his position in
the world. So far he had always been dependent on his parents for food,
clothes and spending money, and his parents were not very liberal. He
knew other boys who had money to run up to Chicago or down to
Springfield--the latter was nearer--to have a Saturday and Sunday lark.
No such gaieties were for him. His father would not allow it, or rather
would not pay for it. There were other boys who, in consequence of amply
provided spending money, were the town dandies. He saw them kicking
their heels outside the corner book store, the principal loafing place
of the elite, on Wednesdays and Saturdays and sometimes on Sunday
evenings preparatory to going somewhere, dressed in a luxury of clothing
which was beyond his wildest dreams. Ted Martinwood, the son of the
principal drygoods man, had a frock coat in which he sometimes appeared
when he came down to the barber shop for a shave before he went to call
on his girl. George Anderson was possessed of a dress suit, and wore
dancing pumps at all dances. There was Ed Waterbury, who was known to
have a horse and runabout of his own. These youths were slightly older,
and were interested in girls of a slightly older set, but the point was
the same. These things hurt him.

He himself had no avenue of progress which, so far as he could see, was
going to bring him to any financial prosperity. His father was never
going to be rich, anybody could see that. He himself had made no
practical progress in schoolwork--he knew that. He hated
insurance--soliciting or writing, despised the sewing machine business,
and did not know where he would get with anything which he might like to
do in literature or art. His drawing seemed a joke, his writing, or wish
for writing, pointless. He was broodingly unhappy.

One day Williams, who had been watching him for a long time, stopped at
his desk.

"I say, Witla, why don't you go to Chicago?" he said. "There's a lot
more up there for a boy like you than down here. You'll never get
anywhere working on a country newspaper."

"I know it," said Eugene.

"Now with me it's different," went on Williams. "I've had my rounds.
I've got a wife and three children and when a man's got a family he
can't afford to take chances. But you're young yet. Why don't you go to
Chicago and get on a paper? You could get something."

"What could I get?" asked Eugene.

"Well, you might get a job as type-setter if you'd join the union. I
don't know how good you'd be as a reporter--I hardly think that's your
line. But you might study art and learn to draw. Newspaper artists make
good money."

Eugene thought of his art. It wasn't much. He didn't do much with it.
Still he thought of Chicago; the world appealed to him. If he could only
get out of here--if he could only make more than seven or eight dollars
a week. He brooded about this.

One Sunday afternoon he and Stella went with Myrtle to Sylvia's home,
and after a brief stay Stella announced that she would have to be going;
her mother would be expecting her back. Myrtle was for going with her,
but altered her mind when Sylvia asked her to stay to tea. "Let Eugene
take her home," Sylvia said. Eugene was delighted in his persistent,
hopeless way. He was not yet convinced that she could not be won to
love. When they walked out in the fresh sweet air--it was nearing
spring--he felt that now he should have a chance of saying something
which would be winning--which would lure her to him.

They went out on a street next to the one she lived on quite to the
confines of the town. She wanted to turn off at her street, but he had
urged her not to. "Do you have to go home just yet?" he asked,
pleadingly.

"No, I can walk a little way," she replied.

They reached a vacant place--the last house a little distance
back--talking idly. It was getting hard to make talk. In his efforts to
be entertaining he picked up three twigs to show her how a certain trick
in balancing was performed. It consisted in laying two at right angles
with each other and with a third, using the latter as an upright. She
could not do it, of course. She was not really very much interested. He
wanted her to try and when she did, took hold of her right hand to
steady her efforts.

"No, don't," she said, drawing her hand away. "I can do it."

She trifled with the twigs unsuccessfully and was about to let them
fall, when he took hold of both her hands. It was so sudden that she
could not free herself, and so she looked him straight in the eye.

"Let go, Eugene, please let go."

He shook his head, gazing at her.

"Please let go," she went on. "You mustn't do this. I don't want you
to."

"Why?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"Well, because I don't."

"Don't you like me any more, Stella, really?" he asked.

"I don't think I do, not that way."

"But you did."

"I thought I did."

"Have you changed your mind?"

"Yes, I think I have."

He dropped her hands and looked at her fixedly and dramatically. The
attitude did not appeal to her. They strolled back to the street, and
when they neared her door he said, "Well, I suppose there's no use in my
coming to see you any more."

"I think you'd better not," she said simply.

She walked in, never looking back, and instead of going back to his
sister's he went home. He was in a very gloomy mood, and after sitting
around for a while went to his room. The night fell, and he sat there
looking out at the trees and grieving about what he had lost. Perhaps he
was not good enough for her--he could not make her love him. Was it that
he was not handsome enough--he did not really consider himself good
looking--or what was it, a lack of courage or strength?

After a time he noticed that the moon was hanging over the trees like a
bright shield in the sky. Two layers of thin clouds were moving in
different directions on different levels. He stopped in his cogitations
to think where these clouds came from. On sunny days when there were
great argosies of them he had seen them disappear before his eyes, and
then, marvel of marvels, reappear out of nothingness. The first time he
ever saw this it astonished him greatly, for he had never known up to
then what clouds were. Afterward he read about them in his physical
geography. Tonight he thought of that, and of the great plains over
which these winds swept, and of the grass and trees--great forests of
them--miles and miles. What a wonderful world! Poets wrote about these
things, Longfellow, and Bryant, and Tennyson. He thought of
"Thanatopsis," and of the "Elegy," both of which he admired greatly.
What was this thing, life?

Then he came back to Stella with an ache. She was actually gone, and she
was so beautiful. She would never really talk to him any more. He would
never get to hold her hand or kiss her. He clenched his hands with the
hurt. Oh, that night on the ice; that night in the sleigh! How wonderful
they were! Finally he undressed and went to bed. He wanted to be
alone--to be lonely. On his clean white pillow he lay and dreamed of the
things that might have been, kisses, caresses, a thousand joys.

One Sunday afternoon he was lying in his hammock thinking, thinking of
what a dreary place Alexandria was, anyhow, when he opened a Chicago
Saturday afternoon paper, which was something like a Sunday one because
it had no Sunday edition,--and went gloomily through it. It was as he
had always found, full of a subtle wonder, the wonder of the city, which
drew him like a magnet. Here was the drawing of a big hotel someone was
going to build; there was a sketch of a great pianist who was coming to
play. An account of a new comedy drama; of a little romantic section of
Goose Island in the Chicago river, with its old decayed boats turned
into houses and geese waddling about; an item of a man falling through a
coal hole on South Halstead street fascinated him. This last was at
sixty-two hundred and something and the idea of such a long street
seized on his imagination. What a tremendous city Chicago must be. The
thought of car lines, crowds, trains, came to him with almost a yearning
appeal.

All at once the magnet got him. It gripped his very soul, this wonder,
this beauty, this life.

"I'm going to Chicago," he thought, and got up.

There was his nice, quiet little home laid out before him. Inside were
his mother, his father, Myrtle. Still he was going. He could come back.
"Sure I can come back," he thought. Propelled by this magnetic power he
went in and upstairs to his room, and got a little grip or portmanteau
he had. He put in it the things he thought he would immediately need. In
his pocket were nine dollars, money he had been saving for some time.
Finally he came downstairs and stood in the door of the sitting room.

"What's the matter?" asked his mother, looking at his solemn
introspective face.

"I'm going to Chicago," he said.

"When?" she asked, astonished, a little uncertain of just what he meant.

"Today," he said.

"No, you're joking." She smiled unbelievingly. This was a boyish prank.

"I'm going today," he said. "I'm going to catch that four o'clock
train."

Her face saddened. "You're not?" she said.

"I can come back," he replied, "if I want to. I want to get something
else to do."

His father came in at this time. He had a little work room out in the
barn where he sometimes cleaned machines and repaired vehicles. He was
fresh from such a task now.

"What's up?" he asked, seeing his wife close to her boy.

"Eugene's going to Chicago."

"Since when?" he inquired amusedly.

"Today. He says he's going right now."

"You don't mean it," said Witla, astonished. He really did not believe
it. "Why don't you take a little time and think it over? What are you
going to live on?"

"I'll live," said Eugene. "I'm going. I've had enough of this place. I'm
going to get out."

"All right," said his father, who, after all, believed in initiative.
Evidently after all he hadn't quite understood this boy. "Got your trunk
packed?"

"No, but mother can send me that."

"Don't go today," pleaded his mother. "Wait until you get something
ready, Eugene. Wait and do a little thinking about it. Wait until
tomorrow."

"I want to go today, ma." He slipped his arm around her. "Little ma." He
was bigger than she by now, and still growing.

"All right, Eugene," she said softly, "but I wish you wouldn't." Her boy
was leaving her--her heart was hurt.

"I can come back, ma. It's only a hundred miles."

"Well, all right," she said finally, trying to brighten. "I'll pack your
bag."

"I have already."

She went to look.

"Well, it'll soon be time," said Witla, who was thinking that Eugene
might back down. "I'm sorry. Still it may be a good thing for you.
You're always welcome here, you know."

"I know," said Eugene.

They went finally to the train together, he and his father and Myrtle.
His mother couldn't. She stayed to cry.

On the way to the depot they stopped at Sylvia's.

"Why, Eugene," she exclaimed, "how ridiculous! Don't go."

"He's set," said Witla.

Eugene finally got loose. He seemed to be fighting love, home ties,
everything, every step of the way. Finally he reached the depot. The
train came. Witla grabbed his hand affectionately. "Be a good boy," he
said, swallowing a gulp.

Myrtle kissed him. "You're so funny, Eugene. Write me."

"I will."

He stepped on the train. The bell rang. Out the cars rolled--out and on.
He looked out on the familiar scenes and then a real ache came to
him--Stella, his mother, his father, Myrtle, the little home. They were
all going out of his life.

"Hm," he half groaned, clearing his throat. "Gee!"

And then he sank back and tried, as usual, not to think. He must
succeed. That's what the world was made for. That was what he was made
for. That was what he would have to do....

CHAPTER IV

The city of Chicago--who shall portray it! This vast ruck of life that
had sprung suddenly into existence upon the dank marshes of a lake
shore. Miles and miles of dreary little houses; miles and miles of
wooden block-paved streets, with gas lamps placed and water mains laid,
and empty wooden walks set for pedestrians; the beat of a hundred
thousand hammers; the ring of a hundred thousand trowels! Long,
converging lines of telegraph poles; thousands upon thousands of
sentinel cottages, factory plants, towering smoke stacks, and here and
there a lone, shabby church steeple, sitting out pathetically upon
vacant land. The raw prairie stretch was covered with yellow grass; the
great broad highways of the tracks of railroads, ten, fifteen, twenty,
thirty, laid side by side and strung with thousands upon thousands of
shabby cars, like beads upon a string. Engines clanging, trains moving,
people waiting at street crossings--pedestrians, wagon drivers, street
car drivers, drays of beer, trucks of coal, brick, stone, sand--a
spectacle of new, raw, necessary life!

As Eugene began to draw near it he caught for the first time the sense
and significance of a great city. What were these newspaper shadows he
had been dealing with in his reading compared to this vivid, articulate,
eager thing? Here was the substance of a new world, substantial,
fascinating, different. The handsome suburban station at South Chicago,
the first of its kind he had ever seen, took his eye, as the train
rolled cityward. He had never before seen a crowd of foreigners--working
men--and here were Lithuanians, Poles, Czechs, waiting for a local
train. He had never seen a really large factory plant, and here was one,
and another, and another--steel works, potteries, soap-factories,
foundries, all gaunt and hard in the Sunday evening air. There seemed to
be, for all it was Sunday, something youthful, energetic and alive about
the streets. He noted the streetcars waiting; at one place a small river
was crossed on a draw,--dirty, gloomy, but crowded with boats and lined
with great warehouses, grain elevators, coal pockets--that architecture
of necessity and utility. His imagination was fired by this for here was
something that could be done brilliantly in black--a spot of red or
green for ship and bridge lights. There were some men on the magazines
who did things like this, only not so vivid.

The train threaded its way through long lines of cars coming finally
into an immense train shed where arc lights were spluttering--a score
under a great curved steel and glass roof, where people were hurrying to
and fro. Engines were hissing; bells clanging raucously. He had no
relatives, no soul to turn to, but somehow he did not feel lonely. This
picture of life, this newness, fascinated him. He stepped down and
started leisurely to the gate, wondering which way he should go. He came
to a corner where a lamp post already lit blazoned the name Madison. He
looked out on this street and saw, as far as the eye could reach, two
lines of stores, jingling horse cars, people walking. What a sight, he
thought, and turned west. For three miles he walked, musing, and then as
it was dark, and he had arranged for no bed, he wondered where he should
eat and sleep. A fat man sitting outside a livery stable door in a
tilted, cane-seated chair offered a possibility of information.

"Do you know where I can get a room around here?" asked Eugene.

The lounger looked him over. He was the proprietor of the place.

"There's an old lady living over there at seven-thirty-two," he said,
"who has a room, I think. She might take you in." He liked Eugene's
looks.

Eugene crossed over and rang a downstairs bell. The door was opened
shortly by a tall, kindly woman, of a rather matriarchal turn. Her hair
was gray.

"Yes?" she inquired.

"The gentleman at the livery stable over there said I might get a room
here. I'm looking for one."

She smiled pleasantly. This boy looked his strangeness, his wide-eyed
interest, his freshness from the country. "Come in," she said. "I have a
room. You can look at it."

It was a front room--a little bed-room off the one main living room,
clean, simple, convenient. "This looks all right," he said.

She smiled.

"You can have it for two dollars a week," she proffered.

"That's all right," he said, putting down his grip. "I'll take it."

"Have you had supper?" she asked.

"No, but I'm going out soon. I want to see the streets. I'll find some
place."

"I'll give you something," she said.

Eugene thanked her, and she smiled. This was what Chicago did to the
country. It took the boys.

He opened the closed shutters of his window and knelt before it, leaning
on the sill. He looked out idly, for it was all so wonderful. Bright
lights were burning in store windows. These people hurrying--how their
feet sounded--clap, clap, clap. And away east and away west it was all
like this. It was all like this everywhere, a great big, wonderful city.
It was nice to be here. He felt that now. It was all worth while. How
could he have stayed in Alexandria so long! He would get along here.
Certainly he would. He was perfectly sure of that. He knew.

Chicago at this time certainly offered a world of hope and opportunity
to the beginner. It was so new, so raw; everything was in the making.
The long lines of houses and stores were mostly temporary
make-shifts--one and two story frame affairs--with here and there a
three and four story brick building which spoke of better days to come.
Down in the business heart which lay between the lake and the river, the
North Side and the South Side, was a region which spoke of a tremendous
future, for here were stores which served

Question: Summarize the above passage in exactly 500 words and give a brief outlook on it.