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And Colombo read the book. And when he had finished his face was
grey as are old ashes in ancient urns, and about the mouth of him
whom men called the Dreamer were curious hard lines.
"Now, by Heaven", said Colombo brandishing his sword Impavide,
"you lie. And your Gopher Prairie is a lie. And you are all, all
contemptible, you who dip your pens in tracing ink and seek to
banish beautiful dreams from the world."
But the red-haired stranger had vanished and Colombo found that
he was alone and to Colombo the world seemed cheerless and as a
place that none has lived in for a long time.
"Now this is curious", mused Colombo, "for I have evidently been
dreaming and a more horrible dream have I never had, and I
think", said Colombo, "that while all this quite certainly did
not actually take place, yet that grinning red head has upset me
horribly and on the whole", said Colombo, "I believe the safest
course would be to put back at once for Spain, for certainly I
have no desire to take the remotest chance of discovering
anything which may in the least resemble that Gopher Prairie."
And the tale tells that as Colombo started for the deck in order
that he might give the signal for the return to Spain, there came
across the water from one of the other ships the faint cry of a
sailor. And the sailor was waving his hat and shouting, "Land
Ho!"
Thus it was that Cristofer Colombo became the discoverer of the
land of his imagining, and as he stood on the deck Colombo mused.
"Now this is a sorrowful jest and a very unfair jest that is
happening," said he. "For I who have dreamed a beautiful dream
of the land of my imagining will quite probably henceforth be
known only as the discoverer of what will turn out to be merely
one more hideous and stupid country." And tears came to the eyes
of Colombo, for on the waves behind him floated the torn and
scattered pages of the poem which sang the imagined vision of
Beauty of him whom men long and long ago called the
Dreamer.
Thus it was in the old days.
ANALYSIS AND SUMMARY OF THE FOREGOING ARTICLE In the Manner of
Dr. Frank Crane
There is a lesson for us all in this beautiful story of how
Columbus realized his ambition to be a great discoverer.
Men called Columbus a Dreamer--but that is just what folks once
said about Thomas A. Edison and Henry Ford.
The world has a place for Dreamers--if they are Practical
Dreamers.
Columbus was ambitious. Ambition is a great thing if it is
unselfish ambition. By unselfish I mean for the greatest good of
the greatest number. Shakespeare, the great teacher, shows us in
"Macbeth" what happens to the selfishly ambitious man.
Columbus got ahead by paying attention to small details.
Whatever he did, he did to the best of his ability. Even when
engaged in teaching geography to the Queen, Columbus was the best
geography teacher he knew how to be. And before long he was made
Royal Geographer.
In our daily lives let us all resolve to be good teachers of
geography. We may not all become Royal Geographers--but there
will be to us the lasting satisfaction of having done our best.
And that, as a greater than I has said, is "more precious than
rubies--yea, than much fine gold".
Chapter Three
MAIN STREET: Plymouth, Mass.
In the Manner of Sinclair Lewis
I
1620.
Late autumn.
The sour liver-colored shores of America.
Breaking waves dashing too high on a stern and rockbound coast.
Woods tossing giant branches planlessly against a stormy sky.
Cape Cod Bay--wet and full of codfish. The codfish--wet and full
of bones.
Standing on the deck of the anchored "Mayflower", gazing
reflectively at the shores of the new world, is Priscilla
Kennicott.
A youthful bride on a ship full of pilgrims; a lily floating in a
dish of prunes; a cloissone vase in a cargo of oil cans.
Her husband joins her. Together they go forward to where their
fellow pilgrims are preparing to embark in small boats.
Priscilla jumps into the bow of the first of these to shove off.
As the small craft bumps the shore, Priscilla rises joyously. She
stretches her hands in ecstasy toward the new world. She leans
forward against the breeze, her whole figure alive with the joy
of expectant youth.
She leaps with an irrepressible "Yippee" from the boat to the
shore.
She remains for an instant, a vibrant pagan, drunk with the joy
of life; Pan poised for an unforgettable moment on Plymouth Rock.
The next minute her foot slips on the hard, wet, unyielding
stone. She clutches desperately. She slides slowly back into the
cold chill saltness of Cape Cod Bay.
She is pulled, dripping and ashamed, into the boat. She crouches
there, shivering and hopeless. She hears someone whisper, "Pride
goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."
A coarse mirthless chuckle.
The pilgrims disembark.
II
Plymouth.
A year later.
Night.
She lay sleepless on her bed.
She heard the outside door open; Kennicott returning from prayer
meeting.
He sat down on the bed and began pulling off his boots. She knew
that the left boot would stick. She knew exactly what he would
say and how long it would take him to get it off. She rolled over
in bed, a tactical movement which left no blanket for her
husband.
"You weren't at prayer meeting," he said.
"I had a headache," she lied. He expressed no sympathy.
"Miles Standish was telling me what you did today at the meeting
of the Jolly Seventeen." He had got the boot off at last; he lay
down beside her and pulled all the blankets off her onto
himself.
"That was kind of Miles." She jerked at the covers but he held
them tight. "What charming story did he tell this time?"
"Now look here, Prissie--Miles Standish isn't given to
fabrication. He said you told the Jolly Seventeen that next
Thanksgiving they ought to give a dance instead of an all-day
prayer service."
"Well--anything else?" She gave a tremendous tug at the
bedclothes and Kennicott was uncovered again.
"He said you suggested that they arrange a series of lectures on
modern religions, and invite Quakers and other radicals to speak
right here in Plymouth and tell us all about their beliefs. And
not only that but he said you suggested sending a message to the
Roman Catholic exiles from England, inviting them to make their
home with us. You must have made quite a little speech."
"Well this is the land of religious freedom, isn't it? That's
what you came here for, didn't you?" She sat up to deliver this
remark--a movement which enabled Kennicott to win back
seven-eighths of the bed covering.
"Now look here Prissie--I'm not narrow like some of these
pilgrims who came over with us. But I won't have my wife
intimating that a Roman Catholic or a Quaker should be allowed to
spread his heresies broadcast in this country. It's all right for
you and me to know something about those things, but we must
protect our children and those who have not had our advantages.
The only way to meet this evil is to stamp it out, quick, before
it can get a start. And it's just such so-called broadminded
thinkers as you that encourage these heretics. You'll be
criticizing the Bible next, I suppose."
Thus in early times did the pious Right Thinkers save the land
from Hellfire and Damnation; thus the great-grandfathers of
middle-western congressmen; thus the ancestors of platitudinous
editorial writers, Sitters on Committees, and tin-horn
prohibitionists.
Kennicott got up to cool his wrath and indignation with a drink
of water. He stumbled over a chair, reached for the jug, took a
drink, set the jug down, stumbled over the same chair, and
crawled back into bed. His expedition cost him the loss of all
bed covering; he gave up the fight.
"Aside from dragging my own private views over the coals of your
righteousness, did you and your friends find anything equally
pleasant and self-satisfying to discuss this
evening?"
"Eh--what's that? Why, yes, we did. We decided to refuse
permission for one of these traveling medicine shows to operate
in Plymouth."
"Medicine shows?"
"Yes--you know--like a fair in England. This one claims to come
from down south somewhere. 'Smart Set Medicine Show' it's
called, run by a fellow named Mencken. Sells cheap whisky to the
Indians-- makes them crazy, they say. He's another one of your
radical friends we don't want around."
"Yes, he might cut in on your own trading with the Indians."
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Prissie--hire a hall."
Silence. He began to snore.
She lay there, sleepless and open-eyed. The clock struck eleven.
"Why can't I get to sleep?"
("Did Will put the cat out?")
"I wonder what this medicine show is like?"
"What is the matter with these people?"
("Or is it me?")
She reached down, pulled the blankets from under her, spread them
carefully over the sleeping Kennicott, patting them down
affectionately.
The next day she learned what the medicine show was like. She
also learned what was the matter with the pilgrims.
III
Morning.
A fog horn.
A fog horn blowing unceasingly.
At breakfast Kennicott pointed with his fork in the direction of
the persistent sound.
"There's your Smart Set medicine show," he said glumly. "He
doesn't seem to care much whether we give him a permit or not."
Then, a minute later, "We'll have to let him stay. Won't do to
have the Indians down on us. But I tell you this, Priscilla, I
don't want you to go."
"But Will--"
"Prissie, please! I'm sorry I said what I did last night. I was
tired. But don't you see, well, I can't just exactly explain--
but this fog horn sort of scares me--I don't like it--"
He suddenly rose and put both hands on her shoulders. He looked
into her eyes. He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. He
picked up his hat and was gone. It was five minutes before
Priscilla noticed that his breakfast had been left untouched.
A fog horn, sounding unceasingly.
She listlessly put away the breakfast dishes. She tried to drown
out the sound by singing hymns. She fell on her knees and tried
to pray. She found her prayers keeping time to the rise and fall
of the notes of that horn. She determined to go out in the
air--to find her husband--to go to church, anywhere--as far as
possible from the Smart Set medicine show.
So she went out the back door and ran as fast as she could toward
the place from which came the sound of the fog horn.
IV
An open space on the edge of the forest.
In the centre of the clearing a small gaudily-painted tent.
Seated on the ground in a semicircle before the tent, some forty
or fifty Indians.
Standing on a box before the entrance to the tent, a man of
twenty-five or fifty.
In his left hand he holds a fog horn; in his right, a stein of
beer.
He puts the horn to his lips and blows heavy blast.
He bellows, "Beauty--Beauty--Beauty!"
He takes a drink of beer.
He repeats this performance nine times.
He takes up some mud and deftly models the features of several
well-known characters--statesmen, writers, critics. In many
cases the resemblance is so slight that Priscilla can hardly
recognize the character.
He picks up a heavy club and proceeds to beat each one of his
modeled figures into a pulp.
The Indians applaud wildly.
He pays no attention to this applause.
He clears his throat and begins to speak. Priscilla is so
deafened by the roar of his voice that she cannot hear what he
says. Apparently he is introducing somebody; somebody named
George.
George steps out of the tent, but does not bow to the audience.
In one hand he carries a fencing foil, well constructed, of
European workmanship; in his other hand he holds a number of
pretty toy balloons which he has made himself.
He smiles sarcastically, tosses the balloons into the air, and
cleverly punctures them one by one with his rapier.
At each "pop" the announcer blows a loud blast on the fog
horn.
When the last balloon has been punctured George retires without
acknowledging the applause of the Indians.
The next act is announced as Helen of Troy in "Six Minutes of
Beauty". Priscilla learns from the announcer that "this little
lady is out of 'Irony' by Theodore Dreiser".
"All ready, Helen--"
The "little lady" appears.
She is somewhat over six feet six in height and built like a
boilermaker. She is dressed in pink tights.
"Six Minutes of Beauty" begins when Helen picks up three large
iron cannon balls and juggles them. She tosses them in the air
and catches them cleverly on the back of her neck.
The six minutes are brought to a successful conclusion when
Helen, hanging head downward by one foot from a trapeze, balances
lighted lamp on the other foot and plays Beethoven's Fifth
Symphony on the slide trombone.
The announcer then begins his lecture. Priscilla has by this
time gotten used to the overpowering roar of his voice and she
discovers that once this difficulty is overcome she is
tremendously impressed by his words.
She becomes more and more attracted to the man. She listens,
fascinated, as his lecture draws to a close and he offers his
medicine for sale. She presses forward through the crowd of
Indians surrounding the stand. She reaches the tent. She gives
her coin and receives in return a bottle. She hides it in her
cape and hurries home.
She slips in the back way; she pours some of the medicine into a
glass; she drinks it.
V
A terrible overwhelming nausea. Vomiting, which lasts for
agonizing minutes, leaving her helpless on the floor.
Then cessation.
Then light--blinding light.
VI
At 3:10 Priscilla drank the Mencken medicine; at 3:12 she was
lying in agony on the floor; at 3:20 she opened her eyes; at 3:21
she walked out of her front door; and at 3:22 she discovered what
was wrong with Plymouth and the pilgrims.
Main Street. Straight and narrow. A Puritan thoroughfare in a
Puritan town.
The church. A centre of Puritan worship. The shrine of a narrow
theology which persistently repressed beauty and joy and life.
The Miles Standish house. The house of a Puritan. A squat,
unlovely symbol of repression. Beauty crushed by Morality.
Plymouth Rock. Hard, unyielding--like the Puritan moral code. A
huge tombstone on the grave of Pan.
She fled home. She flung herself, sobbing, on the bed. She
cried, "They're all Puritans that's what they are, Puritans!"
After a while she slept, her cheeks flushed, her heart beating
unnaturally.
VII
Late that night.
She opened her eyes; she heard men's voices; she felt her heart
still pounding within her at an alarming rate.
"And I told them then that it would come to no good end. Truly,
the Lord does not countenance such joking."
She recognized the voices of Miles Standish and Elder Brewster.
"Well--what happened then?" This from Kennicott.
"Well, you see, Henry Haydock got some of this Mencken's medicine
from one of the Indians. And he thought it would be a good joke
to put it in the broth at the church supper this evening."
"Yes?"
"Well--he did it, the fool. And when the broth was served, hell
on earth broke loose. Everyone started calling his neighbor a
Puritan, and cursing him for having banished Beauty from the
earth. The Lord knows what they meant by that; I don't. Old
friends fought like wildcats, shrieking 'Puritan' at each other.
Luckily it only got to one table--but there are ten raving
lunatics in the lockup tonight.
"It's an awful thing. But thanks to the Lord, some good has come
out of this evil: that medicine man, Mencken, was standing
outside looking in at the rumpus, smiling to himself I guess.
Well, somebody saw him and yelled, 'There's another of those
damned Puritans!' and before he could get away five of them had
jumped on him and beaten him to death. He deserved it, and it's a
good joke on him that they killed him for being a Puritan."
Priscilla could stand no more. She rose from her bed, rushed
into the room, and faced the three Puritans. In the voice of
Priscilla Kennicott but with the words of the medicine man she
scourged them.
"A good joke?" she began. "And that is what you Puritan
gentlemen of God and volcanoes of Correct Thought snuffle over as
a good joke? Well, with the highest respect to Professor Doctor
Miles Standish, the Puritan Hearse-hound, and Professor Doctor
Elder Brewster, the Plymouth Dr. Frank Crane--BLAA!"
She shrieked this last in their faces and fell lifeless at their
feet.
She never recovered consciousness; an hour later she died. An
overdose of the medicine had been too much for her weak
heart.
"Poor William," comforted Elder Brewster, "you must be brave. You
will miss her sorely. But console yourself with the thought that
it was for the best. Priscilla has gone where she will always be
happy. She has at last found that bliss which she searched for in
vain on earth."
"Yes William," added Miles Standish. "Priscilla has now found
eternal joy."
VIII
Heaven.
Smug saints with ill-fitting halos and imitation wings, singing
meaningless hymns which Priscilla had heard countless times
before.
Sleek prosaic angels flying aimlessly around playing stale songs
on sickly yellow harps.
Three of the harps badly out of tune; two strings missing on
another.
Moses, a Jew.
Methuselah, another Jew. Old and unshaven.
Priscilla threw herself on a cloud, sobbing.
"Well, sister, what seems to be the matter here?"
She looked up; she saw a sympathetic stranger looking down at
her.
"Because you know, sister," he went on, "if you don't like it
here you can always go back any time you want to."
"Do you mean to say," gasped Priscilla, "that I can return to
earth?"
"You certainly can," said the stranger. "I'm sort of manager
here, and whenever you see any particular part of the earth you'd
like to live in, you just let me know and I'll arrange it."
He smiled and was gone.
IX
It was two hundred years before Priscilla Kennicott definitely
decided that she could stand it no longer in heaven; it was
another hundred years before she located a desirable place on
earth to return to.
She finally selected a small town in the American northwest, far
from the Puritan-tainted Plymouth; a small town in the midst of
fields of beautiful waving grain; a small town free from the
artificiality of large cities; a small town named Gopher
Prairie.
She made known her desire to the manager; she said goodby to a
small group of friends who had gathered to see her off; she heard
the sound of the eternal harp playing and hymn singing grow
gradually fainter and fainter; she closed her eyes.
When she opened them again she found herself on Main Street in
Gopher Prairie.
X
From the "Heavenly Harp and Trumpet":
Mrs. Priscilla Kennicott, one of our most popular angels, left
these parts last Tuesday for an extended visit to the Earth.
Mrs. K. confided to Ye Editor that she would probably take up her
residence in Gopher Prairie, Minn., under the name of Carol
Kennicott. The "Harp and Trumpet" felicitates the citizens of
Gopher Prairie on their acquisition of a charming and up-to-date
young matron whose absence will be keenly regretted by her many
friends in the heavenly younger married set. Good luck,
Priscilla!
XI
Heaven.
Five years later.
The monthly meeting of the Celestial Browning Club.
Seated in the chair reserved for the guest of honor, the manager.
The meeting opens as usual with a reading by Brother Robert
Browning of his poem "Pippa Passes"; as he proclaims that "God's
in his heaven, all's right with the world", the members applaud
and the manager rises and bows.
The chairman announces that "today we take up a subject in which
I am sure we are all extremely interested--the popular literature
of the United States".
The members listen to selected extracts from the writings of Gene
Stratton-Porter, Zane Grey, and Harold Bell Wright; at the
conclusion they applaud and the manager again bows.
"I am sure", says the chairman, "that we are all glad to hear
that things are going so nicely in the United States."
(Applause.) "And now, in conclusion, Brother Voltaire has
requested permission to address us for a few minutes, and I am
sure that anything Brother Voltaire has to say will be eminently
worthwhile."
Brother Voltaire rises and announces that he has listened with
interest to the discussion of American literature; that he, too,
rejoices that all is well in this best of all possible United
States; and that he hopes they will pardon him if he supplements
the program by reading a few extracts from another extremely
popular American book recently published under the name of "Main
Street".
XII
At the next meeting of the Celestial Browning Club it was
unanimously voted that the privileges of the club be denied
Brother Voltaire for the period of one year, and that the name of
Priscilla Kennicott be stricken from the list of non-resident
members of heaven.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH
In the Manner of F. Scott Fitzgerald
This story occurs under the blue skies and bluer laws of Puritan
New England, in the days when religion was still taken seriously
by a great many people, and in the town of Plymouth where the
"Mayflower", having ploughed its platitudinous way from Holland,
had landed its precious cargo of pious Right Thinkers, moral
Gentlemen of God, and--Priscilla.
Priscilla was--well, Priscilla had yellow hair. In a later
generation, in a 1921 June, if she had toddled by at a country
club dance you would have noticed first of all that glorious mass
of bobbed corn-colored locks. You would, then, perhaps, have
glanced idly at her face, and suddenly said "Oh my gosh!" The
next moment you would have clutched the nearest stag and hissed,
"Quick--yellow hair--silver dress--oh Judas!" You would then
have been introduced, and after dancing nine feet you would have
been cut in on by another panting stag. In those nine delirious
feet you would have become completely dazed by one of the
smoothest lines since the building of the Southern Pacific. You
would then have borrowed somebody's flask, gone into the locker
room and gotten an edge--not a bachelor-dinner edge but just
enough to give you the proper amount of confidence. You would
have returned to the ballroom, cut in on this twentieth century
Priscilla, and taken her and your edge out to a convenient
limousine, or the first tee.
It was of some such yellow-haired Priscilla that Homer dreamed
when he smote his lyre and chanted, "I sing of arms and the man";
it was at the sight of such as she that rare Ben Johnson's Dr.
Faustus cried, "Was this the face that launched a thousand
ships?" In all ages has such beauty enchanted the minds of men,
calling forth in one century the Fiesolian terza rima of
"Paradise Lost", in another the passionate arias of a dozen
Beethoven symphonies. In 1620 the pagan daughter of Helen of Troy
and Cleopatra of the Nile happened, by a characteristic jest of
the great Ironist, to embark with her aunt on the
"Mayflower".
Like all girls of eighteen Priscilla had learned to kiss and be
kissed on every possible occasion; in the exotic and not at all
uncommon pleasure of "petting" she had acquired infinite wisdom
and complete disillusionment. But in all her "petting parties" on
the "Mayflower" and in Plymouth she had found no Puritan who held
her interest beyond the first kiss, and she had lately reverted
in sheer boredom to her boarding school habit of drinking gin in
large quantities, a habit which was not entirely approved of by
her old-fashioned aunt, although Mrs. Brewster was glad to have
her niece stay at home in the evenings "instead", as she told
Mrs. Bradford, "of running around with those boys, and really, my
dear, Priscilla says some of the FUNNIEST things when she gets a
little er--'boiled', as she calls it--you must come over some
evening, and bring the governor."
Mrs. Brewster, Priscilla's aunt, is the ancestor of all New
England aunts. She may be seen today walking down Tremont Street,
Boston, in her Educator shoes on her way to S. S. Pierce's which
she pronounces to rhyme with HEARSE. The twentieth century Mrs.
Brewster wears a highnecked black silk waist with a chatelaine
watch pinned over her left breast and a spot of Gordon's codfish
(no bones) over her right. When a little girl she was taken to
see Longfellow, Lowell, and Ralph Waldo Emerson; she speaks
familiarly of the James boys, but this has no reference to the
well-known Missouri outlaws. She was brought up on blueberry
cake, Postum and "The Atlantic Monthly"; she loves the Boston
"Transcript", God, and her relatives in Newton Centre. Her idea
of a daring joke is the remark Susan Hale made to Edward Everett
Hale about sending underwear to the heathen. She once asked
Donald Ogden Stewart to dinner with her niece; she didn't think
his story about the lady mind reader who read the man's mind and
then slapped his face, was very funny; she never asked him again.
The action of this story all takes place in MRS. BREWSTER'S
Plymouth home on two successive June evenings. As the figurative
curtain rises MRS. BREWSTER is sitting at a desk reading the
latest instalment of Foxe's "Book of Martyrs".
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