LINDEN ON THE SAUGUS BRANCH

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LINDEN

ON THE SAUGUS BRANCH

By Elliot Paul

Random House -New York

Itt X*w York

'. tmr.
AH

it* chr- f S A l*y 11 NV^Hf, Xt-^v York.

Xo Mildred and Edwin Leslie Paul
of Harwood Street

The author wishes to thank Rtirhara Paul
/lo/n'rf *V. lAnsc&tt for editorial help an<i
encouragement in conjunction with this volume.

Contents

1. A Name on the Snow 3

2. The Doctor Hides at Twilight 15

3. A/rw, Afrnr, Tckd, Upharsin 25

4. The Nfus.su.soit House 41

5. Morning Mood 59

6. Linden Square and Packard's Powders 73

7. The Passing of tin* Bairn of Gilead Tree 101

8. An Evening Not Soon to Be Forgotten 121

9. Black Ann's Corner and the Finns 142

10. Of Codfish Balls 102

11. Of ( :<xlfish Balls, < JonUnuod 179

12. Some Widows and Old Maids 191

13. About the* Relatively Worthy Poor 209

14. Being Seen and Not Heard 229

15. Pursuits of Happiness 241

18. Of Racial Minorities 257
17. The Barbershop 272
18* Law and Order 283

19. The Rich and the Needle's Eye 294
2(1, Of Public KnU'ttaintnent 312

21. Church Pair 328

22. The Professor and the Stonecutter 354

23. Nomads and Dilettantes and Music 385

24. The Wind Blows the Water White and Black" 377

25. The Penultimate 392

LINDEN

ON THE SAUGUS BRANCH

CHAPTER ONE

A Name on the Snow

LlNDEN, in Massachusetts, at the turn of the twentieth
century, was as obscure a little community as there was in the
broad United States. It was neither backwoods, seashore, coun-
try, c:ity or town, but only a detached precinct of the outermost
ward of the suburban city of Maiden, eight or nine miles dis-
tant from Boston, as the crow flies. It is almost incredible that
such a neglected and isolated spot could exist in a section of
Netv England that looks, on the map, thickly populated and
devoid of open spaces.

To the north were miles and miles of virgin woods in which
Indians had lived by hunting, not as vast as the wilderness of
Maine, but extensive and mysterious enough so that there
seemed to be no end to them. And in shocking contrast, to
the east, lay the Lynn marshlands, all the way from Linden
to the sea, Hat, bleak, and containing beneath their drab
camouflage all the wonders of the tidelands and the littoral*
Southward lay more vacant miles. Gravestones in rows, acre
after acre of Holy Cross Cemetery, one of the largest and least
beautiful burying grounds in all the world. The view between
Linden and the sunset, to the west, had in the foreground a
wirtdtng creek bottom and a swamp* with the flat nx>f of ram*
bling carbarns against the maples of nearby Maplewood and
the jagged evergreens on the hon/on.

Politically, Linden was the forgotten ward r the stepchild of

8

Linden on the Saugus Branch

Maiden, which in turn owed its existence to Boston. The Lin-
den folks, who got nothing from their absentee government
except tax bills for which few services were rendered, felt no
civic connection with any other place at all. To all intents and
purposes they were separate and autonomous.

Not far away, in Concord, just the other side of Boston, in
1776 the shot had been fired that had been heard around the
world. I think it caused little stir in Linden. Five or six miles
south by east was Bunker Hill, where local patriots had fought
the British. None of those heroes, as far as the records indicate,
had rushed over from Linden to join the affray. The first May-
flower, whose passengers are all catalogued and whose furni-
ture has multiplied like the miraculous loaves and fishes, sailed
into Plymouth, on the South Shore. Mayflower Number 2, of
which too little has been said or written, landed in Salem, just
north of Linden, in 1629, an d the passengers, more resourceful
and adventurous, if less pious than the Pilgrims, spread
through the Mystic Valley, and down Cape Ann to the tip, at
Pigeon Cove. For decades, all these hardy settlers overlooked
what later became Linden.

There were never any fine old houses, examples of Colonial
or European architecture, and none of the new houses were
remarkable for their proportions or lines. The churches, or
meeting houses, post-dated the period when clover blinds and
white steeples made the houses of God in New England vil-
lages an expression of dignity and beauty. Linden's churches
were aesthetic monstrosities, badly designed, jerry-built, and
inexpertly painted.

No Linden pioneers had a conspicuous part in building up
our nation. And if any of the nineteenth or twentieth century
residents set the planet afire, in any field of endeavor, I have
not been informed of the fact. F. P. A. and Erie Stanley Gard-
ner were bom in Maiden, not in Linden. Harold Stearns, al-

4

A Name on the Snow

though he went to Maiden High School, lived in Cliftondale.
Alvan T. Fuller, the Massachusetts governor who sanctioned
the official murders of Sacco and Vanzetti, taught Sunday
School in Maiden Center, but Linden knew nothing of him
until he became top dog in state politics. Roland Tapley,
reared and taught in Linden, became a member of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra at an early age, playing in the violin sec-
tion. That is about the size of Linden's contributions to the
arts and sciences, and we produced no outstanding military
figures or statesmen. No bankers or great criminals, either.
The Linden men and women liked to think of themselves as
slightly above the average Americans, not too smart, and cer-
tainly not stupid or provincial.

Our house was on Beach Street, the central thoroughfare
to Linden Square, where the steam trains came in. Through
the storm windows facing west, and the vivid winter sunsets,
we could watch the horsecars and the struggling of beasts and
drivers to get them up the hill to Salem Street. This Beach
Street hill, today, is hardly noticeable, but in the late nineties
it was a traffic hazard that offered much winter entertainment.
The northeast blizzards, gathering momentum as they hurled
themselves at Linden, across the marsh from the raging At-
lantic, piled drifts against this hill, and biting frosts iced the
streetcar rails and the bumpy path between them. So during
and after a snowstorm the street railway company sent an
extra pair of horses and an extra driver, red-whiskered young
Ginger McSweeney, to help the horsecars up the hill.

When a horsecar passed our house, with slow rhythmic thuds
of hoofbeats, jangling of harness, puffing of animals, thumping
of gongs and shouts from the driver, it was possible to watch
it through the north windows, to see who was aboard, then
hurry to the west side of the house to see what happened on
the hill.

Linden on the Saugus Branch

The regular driver would wind the long brass handle of the
brake, after transferring the reins to his left glove or mitten,
making a din with the ratchet. Inside the car, which had red
plush seats along the sides, and straps hanging down the mid-
dle, was a glowing wood stove from which sparks snapped out
of the stovepipe. But the heat from this did not penetrate the
front vestibule, on which the driver stood.

About the time the car came to a stop, just beyond Clapp
Street, which faced Puffer's store, about a hundred yards from
our windows, Ginger, cursing and blarneying his nags in a
penetrating voice that no storm windows could' keep out,
would hitch them ahead of the regular pair. If he waited too
long, the iron wheels of the car would freeze to the rails. As
a matter of course, the railway superintendent sent his least-
promising pair of extra horses to Linden, and none of the Bay
State Street Railway's horses were prize-winning specimens.
The best work horses in the region hauled brewery wagons in
Boston and Chelsea, or delivery wagons from the Boston stores:
S. S. Pierce, Jordan Marsh, Houghton and Button, or Stearns.

Ginger, himself, was sent to Linden, although he was one
of the best drivers anywhere around, because his language,
and his ways with women, had caused complaints elsewhere.
The officials thought nothing mattered much in Linden. He
lived in Edgeworth, the toughest neighborhood north of Bos-
ton, and at first had been assigned by the company to work
near his home* There, among his fellow Irish, his language
had caused little comment, but he had got into a fight, prac-
tically every day, and someone he had beaten up had sued the
company. The liability of public service corporations for the
acts of their employees was not in those days what it is now,
but the Bay State Street Railway Company was not one to
take chances.

In Linden, most of the men were working in Boston, day-

A Name on the Snow

times, and came home tired nights. Furthermore, the women
in Linden who lived along the street car tracks were Protes-
tants.

Wherever he was, drunk or sober, Ginger was irrepressible
and gay. He was not a tall man, but he was stocky. His eyes
were agate-brown and crackled with malicious highlights, his
hair was crisp and curly, and he wore luxuriant red moustaches
that bristled at least four inches on either side of the part in
the middle. Even as a young man, he had a magnificent start
on a nose that promised to be an object of art and amazement.
It was prominent, bulbous, in rose and crimson, pocked and
veined with indigo. We were told that Ginger's nose was thus
because he drank. Untactfully, I mentioned a number of others
who drank with zeal and gusto, and whose noses were normal.
Those, I was assured, had no more lining in their stomachs,
but I could not see that they were the worse for the lack.

Throughout the years I lived in Linden, I had a chance to
watch the progress of Ginger's nose.

When the horsecars gave way to electric cars, Ginger became
a motorman. My friends and I used to stand on the front plat-
form, watching him spin the brake handle, stamp on the gong,
and hearing him bawl out teamsters or pedestrians who got in
the way. When the first automobiles put in an appearance,
Ginger was frankly contemptuous and used to race them with
his trolley car, whenever they pulled alongside. Often this
caused him to overrun his stops and brake the car abruptly,
but most of the passengers, feeling as he did about the new
machines, made no objection.

His nose slowly ripened and glowed. The early shades of
rose and crimson deepened to russet and purple, and the once
smooth and shiny surface was etched and stippled with veins,
scrolls and tiny curlicues, with a texture like Moroccan leather.

It was in the dead of winter, while Linden was partially

Linden on the Saugus Branch

snowbound, that we began to hear rumors that Ginger Mc-
Sweeney had written, in a way that became clearer as time
went on, the name of one of the Linden schoolteachers, Miss
Alice Townsend, in the snow, and that the consequences, to
Miss Townsend and many others, were grave and far-reaching,
indeed.

Miss Townsend, nicknamed irreverently by her third grade
pupils "Sweet Alice," on account of the song "Ben Bolt," was
then twenty-two years old, with a pale oval face, a little flat,
perhaps, honey-colored hair piled high on her head like that
of a Gibson Girl, slender, graceful, nervous hands, and a soft
and plaintive voice. She was far too timid to be a school teacher
and enjoy it, but very few occupations were then open to young
women, and Alice Townsend had a mother and an older sister
to support. As a matter of course, the Maiden School Commit-
tee sent their least successful teachers to Linden. That is why
Miss Townsend was there.

Massachusetts children went to school at the age of five and
there must have been about twenty of them in the third grade,
between the ages of eight and ten. And the temptation was so
strong that most of them made life difficult for poor Miss
Townsend, who was so palpably afraid of them. Some of the
most susceptible dearly loved her and spared her what they
could, and on the days she suffered from "sick headaches," even
the most brutal boys and girls let up a bit. She never was cross,
or failed to promote anyone, having a horror of hurting the
children's feelings or antagonizing the parents, whom she sel-
dom saw or heard from unless they were dissatisfied about
something.

The Townsends lived high up on Salem Street, in an old
wooden house badly in need of paint and repair. The front
porch was propped up on stilts, the back rested against the
steep slope of the northern hills. To reach their front door,

8

A Name on the Snow

one had to climb a rickety flight of wooden steps, held up
precariously by worm-eaten timbers. Mrs. Townsend was in
poor health and liked to have anyone with whom she came in
contact realize the fact. Her neck was scrawny, her hair a pep-
pery gray, and while she showed some trace of former beauty
that must have resembled Alice's, Mrs. Townsend had more
of the manner and features of her older daughter, Elvira: the
tight lips, onion eyes and stiff manners that made them both
seem a little off the pattern.

Three or four times each week, Mrs. Townsend had to walk
back and forth between her house and the stores in the Square,
a distance of about a mile. She passed our house about half-
way and on fine days, when Mother was out on the porch, she
stopped to rest in one of the porch rockers a while and talk
with Mother, who was always sympathetic. This, except for
Mrs. Townsend's dealings with the tradesmen, was about the
extent of her movements in Linden. She belonged to the
Ladies' Social Circle of the Congregational Church and at-
tended their afternoon meetings in the various homes of the
members only when the weather, underfoot and overhead, was
favorable to semi-invalids.

Elvira was never seen outside of the Townsends' roughly
sloping yard except Sunday mornings, when she went with
Alice and her mother to church, just beyond our house, at the
corner of Beach and Lawrence Streets. Elvira walked with her
head tilted to one side, and alternated between two expres-
sions: one of resigned disapproval and the other, as if she were
thinking of something very lovely that she she did not wish
to share.

Linden people thought it was too bad Alice Townsend did
not have a young man, she was so pretty and modest and good,
but they also understood that she could not very well leave her
mother and sister to their own devices. And no local young

9

Linden on the Saugus Branch

man, with his way to make in the world, could take on the
whole family and live with them, unless he were head over
heels in love. Alice's timidity, her constant state of nervous
exhaustion, and her virginal reserve and pride did not attract
the young men.

Her pay as a teacher was about five hundred dollars a year.
Food for three cost her about five dollars a week. That left two
hundred and fifty, more or less, divided three ways, for clothes,
fuel (a major item, about forty dollars), taxes, church con-
tributions (about fifteen dollars a year at the Congregational),
and entertainment. The Townsend women made their own
clothes, the materials being used first by Alice, who had to
keep up a neat appearance, then her mother, who had to show
herself on the street to do the errands, and lastly by Elvira.
Before the disastrous handwriting incident, they had never
had to call a doctor. Their entertainment consisted of church
sociables, horsecar rides which cost a nickel apiece, and free
band concerts at Crescent Beach or Pine Banks Park.

Ginger's pay, as an extra horsecar driver, was about the same
as Miss Townsend's around ten dollars a week, three of which
he paid his mother for board. The rest he blew merrily on
drink, doxies, tobacco and Copenhagen snuff. Now and then,
to pacify his old mother, he would go to Mass at St. Joseph's,
in Maplewood.

"Everything but murder, Father, ten times," he would say
to the priest, and not even the priest could be too severe with
Ginger, who smiled and laughed his way in and out of every-
thing.

Every day, after school, Miss Townsend walked home from
the schoolhouse on Clapp Street. In cold weather she wore a
neat fur hat, made over from one her father had left them, a
woolen coat, overshoes, and gloves inside of mittens. She led,
one with each hand, the two little Preston girls, who lived just

10

A Name on the Snow

at the top of the Beach Street hill, directly on her only passable
route. Mrs. Preston always received the children at the door,
and thanked Miss Townsend. Several of the older boys took
the same way home, but they ran on ahead of the teacher.

Nearly always the boys stopped to -watch Ginger and his
horses, and talk with him. He got on well with boys.

On the day in question, Miss Townsend had a few papers
to correct and other odd chores, so the Preston girls went up to
her empty classroom to wait. The little girls looked forward
to those days when Miss Townsend was delayed, because then
they had a chance to look into a higher grade, where some day
they would be, and which had different Perry pictures on the
walls and problems beyond their knowledge on the black-
boards.

It must have been four o'clock when Miss Townsend and
the girls started out. The sun was sinking behind the carbarns
and evergreens. Before sundown, the wind that searched the
Linden streets all day was likely to calm down, and everything
was still, except for the shouts of Ginger as he hooked his
horses to the streetcar and urged them ahead.

As Miss Townsend approached and turned up Beach Street,
the horsecar, with glowing stove and a dozen passengers, was
being dragged up the hill. Everything was as usual except that
Miss Townsend noticed five or six boys grouped outside the
fence of Clapp's field, near the turnout. Her nerves responded
with a faint tingling, and her heart beat faster, because she
was wary of boys when they might throw snowballs. They
probably would not try to hurt her with frozen ones, but their
disrespect would emphasize to the neighbors that her pupils
failed to take her seriously.

As she approached a little nearer, she saw that the boys were
staring at something on the other side of the fence.

Jim Puffer, saluting her from his store window across the

11

Linden on the Saugus Branch

street, distracted her attention a moment. When she looked
back, the boys had vanished. This bewildered her and fright-
ened her a little. They must be hiding somewhere. When Miss
Townsend got frightened or excited her usually pale face got
paler. The two little girls, aware that she was clinging to their
hands very tightly, looked up to see what was the matter. She
led them on, wishing they all were safe at home.

The drifts along Beach Street were deep, and the snowplow
had heaped the snow shoulder high. On her left was the picket
fence and a smooth glaze of crust dusted with fine, powdered
snow. She heard the snickering and suppressed laughter of the
boys, who were crouching out of sight in the frozen creek bed.
She had been looking straight ahead, but now, startled, she
glanced into the field and saw, in wavering letters, "Sweet
Alice" on the surface of the snow. There was no mistaking the
method by which the words had been written.

She did not stop, although she had to struggle to keep going.
Her mind turned blank, her legs were leaden. As she got a few
steps away, her pace began to quicken, until the bewildered
little girls had to run to keep up. They felt that the teacher
was stiffening and shuddering, her eyes staring ahead, her
hands gripping theirs until it hurt.

From behind, the children heard the boys shouting with
laughter. They saw Ginger at the top of the hill, pretending to
dry off his panting horses with his mittens before he blanketed
them. Ginger was watching Miss Townsend from the corner
of his gleaming eye, pretending that he was not.

Mrs. Preston, opening her front door to thank Miss Town-
send and greet the children, started to speak, then looked closer
and asked anxiously, "What's the matter?" Miss Townsend
stood there, tense with hysteria, unable to reply.

"Don't you feel well?" Mrs. Preston asked.

Miss Townsend's mouth opened, but no sound came out.

12

A Name on the Snow

She dropped her muff, and when Mrs. Preston picked it up and
handed it back, she fumbled it again. Then she swayed, and
fell, but not in a faint. Her eyes were still open.

"Ginger," called Mrs. Preston. "Come here, quick!"

Ginger wrapped the reins around a hydrant, and came run-
ning over, vaulting the snow pile. He picked up Miss Town-
send, dazed himself, and under Mrs. Preston's direction carried
her inside the house and lowered her carefully to the couch.

"What ails her?" he asked.

They couldn't make Miss Townsend understand, so Mrs.
Preston began questioning the children. Ginger was contrite
and dumbfounded. He had foreseen no such results as these.

"When we got to the turnout," one little girl said, "she
started walking faster and faster. She couldn't seem to talk."

"You'd better go for the doctor," Mrs. Preston said, and
Ginger, leaving his horses hitched to the hydrant, started down
the hill and toward the Square where the Linden doctor had
his office.

The only telephone in Linden then was in the home of
Norman Partridge, the richest man in town. The doctor had
none, as yet. So Ginger had to run the length of Beach Street
to call him.

On his way, Ginger had to pass all the houses, including
ours, and run the gauntlet of astonished eyes. His gait and
manner made it plain there was something the matter, some
accident or emergency, and no such occurrence ever passed
unnoticed in Linden, not even the least deviation from its
everyday routine.

I had already, by the time he reached our sidewalk, started
putting on my winter wraps and footgear which meant
sweater, jacket, overshoes, and mittens, with a loose overcoat
outside and a corduroy cap with ear flaps. I was no Spartan,

13

Linden on the Saugus Branch

but I didn't mind the cold when it was not painful or un-
comfortable.

"What are you up to?" asked my mother. But she knew. I
was going on the trail of Ginger, to find out what was wrong.
Some of the other boys with the same idea in mind appeared
on the sidewalks and converged toward the Square, and sev-
eral men and women followed a few minutes afterward, hav-
ing thought of errands they could do. That was the best way
to find out what was going on. Linden folks never felt ashamed
of wanting to know. Perhaps they could be of service, and, if
not, it would give them something extra to talk about.

When I saw that Ginger turned in at the doctor's house,
just beyond the Saugus Branch railroad crossing, I quickened
my pace. We all knew the accident, or whatever it was, must
be serious, then.

CHAPTER TWO

The Doctor Rides at Twilight

AT THE turn of the century, medicine in Linden consisted
mostly of home remedies passed on to their descendants by
farmers, horse doctors and old wives. The discoveries of Lister
and Pasteur were beginning to take hold, but in Linden Square
there still stood a public drinking fountain with an iron ladle
chained to it and the men who milked cows in Weeks' barn
washed their hands before supper, but after milking the cows.
Antitoxin against diphtheria came too late to save my brother
Everett, who died of that dread children's disease at the age
of four, six years before I was born. Folks in our neighborhood
were either sickly or hardy, so that some were ailing most of
the time and the others survived exposure to all kinds of con-
tagion without knowing how lucky they were.

I can remember hearing in the barber shop an argument
in which Luke Harrigan, head window dresser at Houghton
and Button's, got the horselaugh from the whole crowd be-
cause the news had come through that, after Dr. Gorgas and
General Leonard Wood had scrubbed up all the Cubans in
Havana, the worst epidemic of yellow fever known to the island
had broken out. Tuberculosis was called "consumption" and
the general belief was that people caught it from sitting in
a draft, smoking cigarettes, or being urged beyond their ca-
pacity by younger and insatiable wives.

But Linden was never consistently forward or backward

15

about anything. The only resident doctor was Dick Moody, a
young man from the state of Maine who went through Harvard
Medical School and hung out his shingle in our square when
I was five years old. I remember because he vaccinated me for
smallpox, unsuccessfully, just before I started going to school.
"Doc" Moody said he had come to Linden because he liked
duck-shooting and fishing and ours was the only community
he could find that had no doctor handy, that was near enough
Boston so he could keep in touch with his professors at Harvard
and the doctors at the Massachusetts General, and had a big
marsh for shooting ducks and trout streams in the woods, both
practically at his doorstep. Doc had plenty of time for sport
and study, because for the first few years very few of the
Linden people called him, except in cases of great emergency.
Then, usually, it was too late. The Catholics south of the rail-
road tracks patronized old Dr. Casey, in Maplewood, who was
a pitiable drug-addict, and whenever a case was grave, insisted
on consulting with another doctor from Maiden Center. Most
of the Protestant families had got accustomed to sending to
Maiden Center, too, and did not change their allegiance when
Dr. Moody came to Linden Square, at least until after he had
shown himself to be a good fellow, and as smart as they make
them.

There were two other reasons why the Linden women, and
the women were the ones who decided about doctors, did not
warm up at first to Dr. Moody. Doc was under thirty, when he
started practicing, although he grew a set of what were called
"lilacs" to make himself look older. There were never less than
ten or twelve Linden girls of marriageable age, mostly with
anxious mothers coaching them, and while many young men
left Linden for wider fields of endeavor, very few came into
town with respectable professions, a hopeful future and no
previous attachments. Doc Moody was soon one of the most

16

The Doctor Rides at Twilight

popular men in the vicinity, but he treated all the young girls
alike and hired as housekeeper a cousin of the fishman named
Mathilda Stowe.

Now the institution of housekeeper to an unmarried man
or a widower had long precedent and a firm standing in New
England. It provided homes and occupations for countless
worthy women who had been brought up as housekeepers and
knew no other way to make a living. It was a boon to men who
otherwise would have been lonesome and lived untidily.
Usually both the man and the housekeeper had reached an age
that made gossip rather pointless, or, at least, one of the parties
was safely over life's great divide. A housekeeper, in New Eng-
land, was not a hired girl, in any sense of the word. She ran the
house, quite often high-handedly, and was likely to keep her
employer within bounds more strict than many wives estab-
lished.

The catch about Mathilda was that she was under forty, well
formed, neat and handsome, with gray-blue eyes, brown curly
hair, small aristocratic hands and feet, and a sharp wit and
tongue, the latter of which she modified with respect and even
tenderness only when she was addressing the doctor. She was
as solicitous and protective as a mother hen and quite soon
after she had gone to work for Doc Moody, she had spoken out
plainly, in a meeting of the Ladies' Social Circle held at our
house, regarding her intentions.

"Just so's you all can quit worryin'," Mathilda said, in her
soft, tantalizing voice that took all the corners from her Cape
Ann vernacular, "I have not set my cap for the doctor. I won't
say I wouldn't, if I was ten years younger, but I ain't. When
the doctor is forty, I'll be fifty, and most o' you know what a
woman looks like and feels like when she's fifty."

This did not please many members of the Social Circle, who
were trying not to think about that, and with reason. The

17

Linden on the Saugus Branch

Linden women of that epoch showed their age, and most of
them, about ten years more. Mother, who was passing out cake,
cookies and cocoa to her guests at the moment, was thirty-eight
then, about Mathilda's age, and from outward appearances
one would have said there was a generation between them,
for Mother's hair was gray, her manner subdued, and her face
was lined with sadness. Only her fine brown eyes, dark and
responsive, remained of the flowerlike beauty she had had as
a bride.

My Uncle Reuben, in speaking of Mathilda, in a conversa-
tion with Packard, the town lady-killer who clerked in the
principal grocery store, said one day:

"I understand Mathilda won't clean Doc's shotguns for
him."

"Well," said Packard dryly. "Can't a woman refuse a man
something?"

"You've got an evil mind," my uncle said, but he added
philosophically, "So've I, but it doesn't seem to get me much
these days."

One thing was certain. The longer Mathilda kept house for
Doc, the more content and easygoing he became, while she
developed for him a consuming ambition. She was determined
that he should make the most of his talents and go to the fore-
front of his profession. As Linden put it, "Mathilda kept him
up to scratch." In those years, -Doc handled very little money.
Actually his income was just below those of Miss Townsend
and Ginger McSweeney, and his expenses were higher because
of his hobbies as a sportsman. Mathilda saved him more than
she cost him, but neither of them would have been willing to
reckon their relationship in terms of dollars and cents. She even
took over the details of subscribing to the current medical peri-
odicals and kept track of important lectures, meetings and con-

18

The Doctor Rides at Twilight

ventions, and Doc, whatever his inclinations, could not avoid
reading what he should, attending the lectures and such, and
keeping abreast of all the medical developments.

"Doc'll have to get married to get a little freedom, one of
these days," Packard said.

It was Mathilda who answered the bell when Ginger pulled
at the knob the evening Miss Townsend collapsed. The day
being Friday, she had a chowder on the fire, a basket of clams
out in the ice chest, to be steamed as an appetizer, a fresh
mackerel to be grilled, some homemade doughnuts spread on
brown paper to take off the grease, and water boiling in the
coffee pot. There was also in the icebox a case of Bass Ale,
which S. S. Pierce delivered in a plain box, so that, in so far as
the neighbors were concerned, it might have contained Moody
and Sankey hymn books. Mathilda had decided that it was not
good policy for a rising young doctor to let it be known that
he had liquor in the house and drank it with his meals.

Doc was sitting in his shirt sleeves, chair tipped back, in the
kitchen, enjoying the smell of the choWder. He could tell from
the way the bell had rung that an urgent case was impending,
and to him a case was always an adventure. He did not want
to work himself to death, at all hours of day and night, but he
wanted to prove that he knew what he was about and win the
confidence of his chosen community and sociable neighbors*
He got up, without breaking the back legs of the chair, slipped
on his coat and came out of the kitchen to see what was up.

"It's the Townsend girl. The teacher/' Mathilda said, help-
ing him on with his overshoes, heavy bearskin coat and fur
mittens. "She's had some kind of a spell."

"She's at Mrs. Preston's/' Ginger said, and headed straight
for the back yard to get the doctor's horse, Hippocrates, known
as "Hip," harness him and hitch him to the sleigh.

Mathilda was glad in her heart that something had hap-

10

Linden on the Saugus Branch

pened that might give Doc his big chance, and, character-
istically concealed her deeper feelings with a complaint.

"Nobody calls the doctor unless he's fast asleep or the food's
ready to go on the table," she said, before she closed the front
door, to a small crowd of curious folks who wanted to know
who was sick or had got hurt. Actually, suppertime was an
hour away, but already in Mathilda's mind she pictured the
pale schoolteacher in some kind of crisis that would keep the
doctor at her bedside, watching every pulse beat and quiver
of the girl's eyelashes, and in some masterly way no other doc-
tor would have thought of, bringing the patient out of danger.
Mathilda wished the patient was in some more influential
family than the Townsends. Alice was a gracious, well-
mannered young woman, without an ounce of spunk, accord-
ing to Mathilda's point of view, but Alice's mother and her
weird sister, Elvira, would not be likely to appreciate the
doctor's work, no matter how brilliant it might be. Mathilda
had all the stamina she needed, but she knew the Linden
women, those who were known to be frail, might imagine all
kinds of things wrong with them, or get dizzy spells because
they laced themselves in so tightly. If Miss Townsend recov-
ered before the doctor could get there, the whole affair would
amount to nothing, in so far as building up his reputation was
concerned.

"I'm thankful it isn't some young one, with the croup,"
Mathilda said to herself, as she went back to the kitchen to
arrange things so the meal, if necessary, could wait without
spoiling.

Some dread and acute form of what probably was bronchitis
was known as "croup/' and struck fear into the hearts of the
mothers when any of the children showed signs of it. It came
on suddenly, and for a few hours it was touch-and-go between
life or death from strangulation. The best doctors, if called a

20

The Doctor Rides at Twilight

little too late, were likely to lose the case, and that had hap-
pened once, within a month of his arrival in Linden, to Dr.
Moody.

As the horse was being hitched in the back yard, Doc was
trying to find out from Ginger what had happened, and
Ginger, thoroughly rattled, could hardly make sense. He fast-
ened one of the harness buckles wrong-side-out, a mistake he
would not have normally made in his sleep.

"Get on to yourself/' the doctor said, puzzled. "You might
as well ride back with me."

Ginger agreed, more uneasily. Should he tell Doc all he
knew, or would that do the teacher still more harm? He was in
a hot sweat, not being accustomed to dealing with moral and
ethical problems.

The crowd on the sidewalk parted as Doc drove out of the
driveway and turned sharply up Beach Street. Doc always
drove like a bat out of hell. Hip, nerved up by the tension,
shied, snorted and reared when the railroad gates started
coming down, with clanging of gongs, just ahead of him, to
hold up traffic for the five o'clock express. Doc took a long
chance and touched Hip with the whip. The gelding streaked
ahead not a second too soon. The far gate just grazed the top
of the sleigh.

"Sweet Mother of Christ," said Ginger, admiringly.

"He'll break his neck, and get me in trouble," Pat Finley,
the crossing-tender grumbled.

The crowd in the Square watched the sleigh make record
time up Beach Street, bells jangling, chunks of frozen snow
flying. Everyone along both sides of the street was at the storm
doors or in the windows, watching. At the corner of Clapp
Street, just before the turnout on the hill, a horsecar had got
stuck, blocking the way. Doc tried to swerve to the right and

21

Linden on the Saugus Branch

get around it, and the hard-packed snowpile upset him. Ginger,
thrown clear, grabbed Hippocrates' bridle, and the gelding
promptly started kicking the shafts and dashboard to pieces,
while Doc rolled out on the other side. The passengers on
the horsecar, jammed together with the conductor on the
back platform, and a few customers from Puffer's store, started
milling around.

The doctor, leaving Ginger to straighten out the jackpot,
grabbed his bag and started on foot up the hill.

By the time Doc emerged from Mrs. Preston's house, looking
for his rig, the horsecar had got started again. Seeing nothing
of the sleigh or Ginger, Doc hailed it and the driver pulled up
short.

"Give me a hand," Doc said to the conductor. "I've got to
move Miss Townsend up to her house."

Obligingly, the driver held the horses, while the conductor
and some of the passengers followed Doc into the house. The
public conveyances, in those friendly years, were ready to be
of service informally. And there were no ambulances, with
sirens and stretchers and attendants in white coats to be sum-
moned in an instant.

The teacher, fully dressed for outdoors, was lying face up,
breathing so lightly it was imperceptible. Her fair face was
so still and innocent, almost transparent. The shadows of her
eyelashes shimmered because of the draft and the kerosene
lamp.

"She ain't dead, is she?" asked Eddie George, the conductor,
in horror.

"No. She'll be all right," the doctor said.

Under Doc's direction, the teacher's inert form was lifted
and carried out to the waiting horsecar, where she was laid out
on one of the brassy-smelling red plush cushions.

"Go easy, Mike," Eddie said to the driver and slowly, with

22

The Doctor Rides at Twilight

several of the neighbors aboard who had paid no fare, the car
inched its way along Salem Street and stopped in front of the
Townsend home. Mrs. Townsend, who had just been informed
that Alice had "fainted" was on the sidewalk, distraught and
wrapped in a shawl. Elvira was moaning on the porch, high
above.

The doctor and three or four volunteers lifted the teacher
tenderly and started up the long rickety steps. A board gave
way and one man fell through, spraining his ankle; another
caught at the railing to save himself and wrenched it loose,
and, in the confusion, the doctor and the men carrying Miss
Townsend lost their balance and fell down the steps to the
sidewalk with their unconscious patient. Mrs. Townsend
screamed, and set off Elvira. While the doctor leaned the
teacher against a snow bank to ascertain if she had been in-
jured, Eddie George, the kind-hearted conductor, tried to
quiet the mother and older sister.

When at last the teacher, still in a coma, had been placed
safely in her upstairs bedroom, the men, who had tracked snow
all over the house, took their departure, all except the doctor.
The horsecar moved on up Salem Street, toward the cross-
roads with the old Newburyport Turnpike.

"Has she had spells like this before?" the doctor asked.

"No. Never," said Mrs. Townsend.

"You and Elvira get her clothes off and put on her night
dress," the doctor said. "Then I can examine her, and find
out what's gone wrong."

Mrs. Townsend obeyed, in consternation. She and Elvira
watched the doctor as he left the bedroom where no man had
set foot before that day, and hysterically closed the door after
him, fastening the wrought-iron latch and the hook and eyelet
besides. They had not seen Alice or each other completely
undressed for years, and the thought of a strange man about

23

Linden on the Saugus Branch

to look at her and perhaps lay hands on her, while she was
exposed and senseless, demoralized them utterly.

Out in the hallway, the doctor was trying to decide what he
should do. He had checked her heart, pulse and respiration.
There were no symptoms of physical shock. She was not as
rigid as an epileptic. He had little hopes of getting an accurate
account of her history or heredity. The best he could do was to
watch her, and wait, in the hope that she would regain con-
sciousness and tell him what she could.

Of course, there was the thermometer, but already he had
guessed that her temperature would be slightly subnormal.
When, fearfully, Mrs. Townsend and Elvira opened the door
just a crack, he opened it wider, stepped in, and went through
a harmless bedroom routine, mostly for their benefit. He
listened through the stethoscope again and said, "Mmmmm.
Heart's stronger than mine." He slipped the thermometer
under Alice's tongue and waited what seemed a long while.
Then he took it over to the lamp light.

"Good. No fever," he said.

To keep the women busy, he asked them to prepare a hot
water bottle or a soapstone for her feet, and cool compresses
for her forehead. Now that they believed he was not going to
peer beneath the bedclothes, they were calmer.

"Better make some broth," he said.

As he sat by the bedside, for what he feared would be a long
and pointless vigil, he thought of the steamed clams, the fish
chowder, the grilled mackerel, baked potatoes, fresh dough-
nuts and coffee, and Mathilda, waiting by the Square. And
wondered when, if ever, he would get a case that matched some
cases in his books.

CHAPTER THREE

Mene,Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

SUNDAYS in Linden were different from other days. The
men were all at home. No trains were running on the Saugus
Branch, and the horsecar schedules were radically curtailed.
For the purpose of visiting the sick, or giving the overworked
housewives a little air, the folks who had horses could take a
drive in the afternoon. Children were not allowed to play and
could read only improving books, but they could take walks
if they did not soil their Sunday clothes. Those who lived in
strict families where the Sunday newspaper was taboo, man-
aged to call on those with more liberal parents in order to see
what the Katzenjammer Kids, Maude the Mule, Happy Hooli-
gan, or the Hallroom Boys were doing. I used to do my reading
of the funny papers at the Graydons'.

Early in the morning and intermittently until ten-thirty,
the Catholics from the south side of Linden, mostly Irish, with
a few Italians among them, walked past our house, in groups,
in pairs, or singly, headed for Mass at St. Joseph's in Maple-
wood. There seemed to be enough of them to fill a church of
their own, but none was built in Linden.

The Protestants had three churches, of different denomina-
tions. On Lynn Street, just south of the Square, where Eastern
Avenue came in at an angle, stood St. Luke's Church, a dingy
mauve conventional structure on a level triangular lot. The
rector, the Reverend Doctor Danker, who in his robes looked

25

Linden on the Saugus Branch

as big as the back of a hack, wore pince-nez perched at a for-
bidding angle, spoke with a British accent that sounded as if
he had a hot potato in his mouth, and made the ritual for his
three dozen parishioners as High Church as he could. These
Episcopalians, who did not relish the title "Church of Eng-
land," were mostly born in England or one of the Dominions,
or were first-generation Americans with an English influence
at home.

The Methodist Church was on Oliver Street, near the west-
ern rim of Linden. Old Doctor Best, the minister, was nearly
eighty, a kindly old man with white hair and a perpetual smile,
but his memory was faulty and when, one Sunday, he preached
the same sermon twice, with a hymn in between, and made the
small congregation an hour late for Sunday dinner, quite a few
of his flock decided to try the Congregational Church, at least
for a while.

The largest and most influential church in the community
was the Congregational, under the leadership of the Reverend
K. Gregory Powys, a stocky, peppery little Welshman whose
deep voice was like a clarion and who rolled his "r's" and
stuttered when he got excited. He frequently got excited. On a
good Sunday, his congregation numbered two hundred "or
more, including the children.

Because his wife was too feeble to get around much, and
was too aloof to encourage confidences and gossip, and on
account of his own fierce application to his subject between
Friday and Sunday, the Reverend Powys (who would not
permit his followers to call him "Doctor" although he was an
authentic D.D.), had not heard the details of the Town-
send incident. He was too busy putting the finishing
touches on one of the favorite sermons about the feast of
Belshazzar.

The bell in the square wooden tower of the Congregational

26

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

Church was the loudest and most clamorous in Linden, and
since our house was only one hundred yards away, it clanged
and reverberated in our ears so stridently that I usually had a
dull headache before it subsided to let the church service go on.
Its overtones were discordant and Deacon Parker, known to
the boys as T.D., because he smoked the one-cent clay pipes
of that name, liked to throw his weight on the bell rope and
give his coreligionists their money's worth. Naturally, the
other inhabitants within a three- or four-mile range had to
take it, too.

Deacon Parker was a fixture around the Congregational
Church. Not only did he ring the church bell, but he tended
the furnace, a more troublesome task, and kept the large, un-
gainly structure as clean and free of snow tracks, mud and dust,
inside, as possible. At no season in Linden was this an easy
proposition. In spring the sidewalks were muddy and the
crossings were pools and quagmires. The summer breezes
wafted in dust, pollen and such a phenomenal variety of in-
sects, featuring all kinds of flies and mosquitoes, that faith in
God's unfailing wisdom was often sorely tried. The best sea-
son was the fall, with its gusts of wind, smoke and dead leaves.
Winter meant for Deacon Parker a continual struggle.

Probably if the furnace of the Congregational Church were
displayed today, it would be mistaken for some giant robot
from Mars. It squatted obesely on the floor of the Sunday
School room, just below the level of the ground outside, so
that the ungainly zinc pipes, a foot in diameter, that fed smoke,
powdered ashes and hot air into the registers of the main audi-
torinm upstairs, were wired up against the Sunday-school
ceiling, like tentacles of metallic sea monsters.

Most of the older members of the congregation, in point of
membership, had pews near the registers, which were spotted
along the aisles.

27

Linden on the Saugus Branch

The Sunday morning after Miss Townsend's misfortune on
Friday, was a cold and threatening one. The thermometer read
five below zero at six o'clock, but as the wind increased its
violence, the cold loosened its grip, and all the old sailors
knew a blizzard was coming, and soon. By nine-thirty, when
the first din from the church bell was sounded, the tones were
torn from the steeple by the northeast wind and slapped against
the houses nearby. My mother grimly got herself ready, and
Leslie and I were obliged to do the same.

"We'll have hard work getting home," I said, but Mother
knew I would do almost anything to stay home from church,
and ignored the warning. As things turned out, I would not
have missed the performance for the world.

The air was ominously still, and slate-colored stormclouds
were crowding the eastern horizon beyond the marsh, in reefs
and terraces, blue and black, when at quarter of eleven we
started out. From our front porch we could see other church
folks of the more rugged and faithful types converging to-
ward the meeting house, down Beach Street, from Salem; up
Beach Street from the Square. Spring Street and Revere Street,
running south from Salem, and sloping downward, had been
cleared by the snowplow, and were passable. So the Congrega-
tionalists were gathering from all directions, bundled up like
Arctic explorers, all sizes, in groups and solitary figures, dark
against the snow, their slow progress accentuated by the fixity
of the stark, bare trees. Quite a few drove to church from the
outskirts, in sleighs and pungs. Along the eastern wall of the
church was a long shed with a roof and wide stalls, where
the horses could be blanketed, hitched and left in shelter.

We always got to church ten minutes early because Mother
had a horror of being late and distracting the attention of the
worshippers after the services had got under way. We took off
our rubbers, overcoats, mufflers and mittens and left them

28

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

downstairs, near the furnace, as everybody did. Then we stood
over the register, in the aisle near our pew upstairs until we
were warm, and sat down, to watch the regulars come in and
take their places. Some Sundays there were strangers, and
everyone was eager to know who they were, and who knew
them, and whether they were visiting or had come to Linden
to live.

No strangers put in an appearance that Sunday morning.

My grandmother (Mother's mother), my mother, my
brother Charles, then twenty-four years old, my brother Les-
lie, then eight, and I were in our pew. Norman Partridge, the
richest man in Linden, lived right across from the church, at
the corner of Lawrence and Beach Streets, and his support was
another reason why the Congregationalists more or less domi-
nated the community. Three of the four local grocers were
members, also the druggist, the undertaker, the doctor's house-
keeper, the tinker, the fishman, and many of the most pros-
perous commuters, an amazing number of widows, and
three-quarters of the old maids.

The mixed quartet then consisted of Abbie Craven, daugh-
ter of the only grocer, who was an Episcopalian. She was paid
a small fee because her voice was trained. Finding a contralto
was always a problem, because the natural contraltos were as
rare as white blackbirds. So some good-natured second soprano
had to do the best she could, and whenever her part was sup-
posed to be prominent, the other three eased up a bit to give
her a chance. Will Crowell, the basso profundo, was one of
Charles' friends, and president of the Wenepoykin Bicycle
Club. Will could really get down there, and had such volume
in his voice that he had to hold himself in unless he was the
soloist, or his colleagues might as well not have been there at
all. The tenor was a chipper young man, of the unathletic type,
who wore nose glasses and a stand-up collar. On weekdays he

29

Linden on the Saugus Branch

was a floorwalker in a Boston shoe store. His name was Frank
Horton, and he was vivacious and gay, with a repertoire of par-
lor jokes, conundrums and stories that were the despair of
other young men at parties and socials.

Mrs. Ford, the comely little organist whose husband had
consumption, started off with a processional on the large reed
organ. This occupied a partly screened alcove to the right of
the pulpit, across from the quartet who had a similar niche
on the left. Mrs. Ford played fairly well, but she had to pump
with her feet and the bellows of the organ were not strong
enough for loud and dynamic effects. I felt myself straining
the muscles of my arms and hands, trying to help her hit it
with gusto when the piece cried for emphasis and majesty.

I shall not enumerate here all the people who came to church
that day, but Mrs. Powys, the minister's wife, deserves a
paragraph of her own. She was one of the most unsightly
women, in an age and region where handsome females were
the exception rather than the rule. Most of the vainer ones,
when they got into their thirties, tried to conceal their years
with false teeth, rats in their hair, bustles, pads, pleats, and
ruffles. Make-up was not condoned, off the stage, and the stage
was in ill repute with strict Congregationalism. The current
styles revealed nothing of a woman's allure, and distorted what
might have been attractive. But Mrs. Powys was in a class
by herself. Compared with her full-blooded and virile hus-
band, she looked like a moth-eaten Egyptian mummy rigged
out in second-hand Victorian clothes. The material was shiny,
the buttons grotesque, the small dabs of fur and lace pathetic.
Her hands and neck were scrawny. Her hair was so scant that
her yellow scalp showed through rifts in her absurd little bon-
net. Her eyes were dull and bloodshot, her voice without
timbre, her temples and cheeks were hollow, her ears had no

30

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

lobes and stuck up too high and wide. Her nose was pinched
and hooked like a beak.

Mrs. Powys sat in the second pew from the front, facing
her husband, which must have made it harder for him to be
eloquent. She was no good as a mixer, or a sitter with the sick.
She had nothing to say, in a crowd, and would spill a drink
of water if she tried to give it to a sufferer, because her hand
shook with palsy.

"And, by Jesus," said my Uncle Reuben, "she hasn't got and
never had a cent to her name, that I've heard about."

The men and women of Linden could figure out a lot of
things, but never that particular marriage, and neither the
minister nor Mrs. Powys ever said a word about it. It had
happened years before, and in another country. Ministers were
practically never chosen or received calls from on high to
preach to men and women with whom they had played marbles
and gone to school.

The lead-off hymn that Sunday morning was "Rock of
Ages," and, as usual, I tried to figure out what sense it made,
if any.

Rock of Ages
Cleft for me.
Let me hide
Myself in Thee.

I had heard the Deity referred to as a lamb, a loving shep-
herd, the Maker, the seven-day Creator, the Three-in-One, a
king (somehow revered by republicans), the Cause of it all,
a judge, the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Spirit. But a rock to me
was either Gibraltar, which I saw on each year's issue of the
Prudential Life Insurance Company's calendar, the Reef of
Norman's Woe, the Natural Bridge of Virginia, or the enor-
mous ledge near Black Ann's Corner, on the northeastern tip

31

Linden on the Saugus Branch

of Linden, where the granite quarry and stone crusher stood.

Everything went awry that day. Deacon Parker, who with
his wife and son, William, sat in the pew directly behind ours,
loved dearly to sing, but, like many other things, singing
started him coughing. And Deacon Parker's cough, if it had
flourished later, in the days of modern sound recording, would
have been one of Linden's foremost claims to distinction. It
is hard even to attempt to describe it. He started with a wheeze,
inhaled and of incredible duration, then an exhaled hissing
sound like a slow leak in a boiler, or the fuse of a pinwheel
before it starts revolving. Then miraculously it ascended in
a shrieking parabola that rasped as shrilly as the ungreased
axle of a wagon wheel, and at the zenith broke up into gasps,
yelps, groans and sneezes until it seemed that a gunnysack of
ocelots had been slung over a clothesline.

The Deacon was built like Foxy Grandpa, being short, ro-
tund and ruddy, with a bald head set off with a wisp of silver
topknot. For such a small man to produce such prodigies of
sound with only the normal respiratory organs was incredible
and unforgettable. He shook and rattled while coughing, like
a dried pod half-filled with seeds. And we all knew that nothing
so completely disconcerted the Reverend K. Gregory Powys
as to have the Deacon give one of his prime performances
before the sermon was safely over. There was nothing the irate
Welsh minister could do about it, except to boil and seethe
inwardly and try to keep his face from swelling and turning
beet-red.

While the Deacon was whooping, choking, yawping, yoik-
ing, and puffing, the other voices scattered throughout the con-
gregation continued dutifully, against the competition. The
quartet stuck to its guns. The organ bleated and moaned. Dea-
con Parker tried to stuff a handkerchief in his mouth as he
struggled convulsively for the nearest exit. He stumbled over

32

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

a register, barked his shin on the corner of a pew, and finally
made it, but when he opened the swinging door a blast of wind
rushed in, and everybody knew that the storm would break
before the meeting was finished.

After the hymn was over, the Reverend Powys led the con-
gregation in prayer. At least, that was what they called it.
Actually, nobody prayed but he, and for ten or twelve min-
utes he talked to God in a manner implying that if the Rock, or
Ghost or Father did not answer the prayer, He would by no
means have heard the last of it.

The selection by the quartet, which followed, was "Good-
bye Sweet Day," a piece so well received that they frequently
sang it in the morning. But their performance was marred by
whinneying, thudding and squealing outside. A horse fight
had got started in the sheds and three or four of the men who
had horses down there had to scuttle up the aisles.

By that time, the minister could easily have bitten the head
off a railroad spike. He sat in his high-backed chair, like a
throne, glaring straight ahead and over the heads of his flock,
while Mrs. Ford played "collection music," always rather vague
and pianissimo. Four ushers passed the plates. The ushers were
Deacon Puffer, the ineffectual grocer with silky mutton-chop
whiskers, my brother Charles, who was running for the City
Council, George Sampson, the most enterprising grocer, and
Dud Shultz, the nervous little druggist.

Two ushers worked the pews on either side of one aisle, the
other pair collected on the other side. Everybody knew who
contributed and about how much, and that Norman Partridge,
without ostentation, would make up the treasury deficit at the
end of each fiscal year.

After the ushers had covered all the pews, they marched
down the aisle to the table in front of the pulpit, each one
counted the money in his plate, and handed it to the Reverend

33

Linden on the Saugus Branch

Powys, two steps higher, on the pulpit. Dud Shultz, next to
Deacon Puffer, was the prize tumbler in town. He could mix
up what seemed impossible, on the face of it, to complicate.
He had to check and re-check the prescriptions he put up four
or five times, and then was likely to make a mistake, and come
running after whoever had started away with the stuff.

That morning Dud dropped his plate and the coins rolled
this way and that, some under the table, some under the front
pews. Mrs. Ford, thrown off her base by the contretemps, ac-
cidentally pulled out the stop for the full organ, leaned on
the swell and brought out a cluster of caterwauling discords
before she could pull herself together. The druggist and my
brother Charles got down on their knees, with what dignity
they could, and retrieved what they could find, while the Rev-
erend Powys stood up there, grinding his teeth.

The explosive possibilities of the minister's mood, what with
the ominous wind outside, the sullen dimness of the light, and
the series of mishaps, was communicating itself to the whole
congregation, and developing a kind of mass hysteria. My own
nerves were throbbing with anticipation.

At last the moment came when, all preliminaries having
been disposed of, the Reverend K. Gregory Powys squared
his shoulders, smoothed the lapels of his black frock-coat,
took a sip of water from a glass nearby, and opened the
enormous Bible on the podium before him. The place where
the text would be found had been carefully marked, in ad-
vance, but K. Greg always made a dramatic gesture by taking
one firm step forward, grasping the top cover of the Book with
his left hand, sweeping the volume open, and pointing un-
erringly with his finger to the verse, he proceeded, simul-
taneously, to read.

"I take my text," he said that morning, "from Daniel, V;
verses 5 and 25.

34

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

"In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand . . .

"And this is the writing that was written. Mene, Mene,
Tekel, Upharsin."

To heighten the effect, as he often did, the minister puffed
himself up like a pouter pigeon, tapped the Book and repeated:

"In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand."

That was as far as he got before fat and jolly Mattie Freeman,
oldest daughter of Deacon Clapp and wife of Dawson Free-
man, the handsome young insurance man, threw back her
head, gasped for breath, and let out a shrill, uncontrollable
peal of laughter.

K. Gregory Powys stopped as if he had been hit with a snow-
ball. The rest of the congregation, torn between horror and
the feeling they were going to burst, held their breath and
tried to decide where and where not to look, in order to pre-
serve what was left of their decorum.

In Deacon Clapp's pew, consternation was growing, because
Mattie, who weighed a good two hundred pounds, was laugh-
ing louder and louder, tears streaming from her eyes, mam-
moth breastworks heaving, limbs flopping helplessly. The
dignified and shy old deacon, who looked like the left-hand
Smith Brother, half stood up, as did his wife on the other
side of Mattie. Charley Moore, the station agent, who was
always ready and willing to help, got up and took Mattie by the
arm. Mattie rose, shaking like jelly and letting out grace notes,
demiquavers and appogiaturas, but some evil demon prompted
her to look toward the pulpit and she nearly sank down again,
her knees buckling under her.

Charley Moore and Deacon Clapp, the latter embarrassed
almost to death, got the gasping and guffawing Mattie up the
long aisle and out into the vestibule, between them. As the
sounds died away, the members of the congregation tried to
quiet themselves and to guess what the minister would do.

35

Linden on the Saugus Branch.

They had not long to wait. The peppery little Welshman
stepped back from the podium, like David getting ready to take
a shot at Goliath. This time, before he started reading, he
glared at everyone who sat near enough the front, as if he were
making mental notes of anyone who dared to find his text
funny, or even who might laugh after he or she got home. He
shook his right forefinger in the air, revolved it a few times,
brought it down on the Book and started all over again.

"In the same hour. . . ." Unluckily for him, the Reverend
Powys stuttered badly and rolled his "r's" more madly when
he got too excited or lost his temper, or both.

"In the same hour came fu-fu-fu-fu-forrrrth fu-fu-fu-fu-fu.
. . . fu-fu fffffingerrrsofamu,ofamu,ofammmmmu-man's
hand [he banged the Book flat-handed, gritted his teeth, and
persisted] and wrrrrote."

Grace Dodge, the volunteer contralto, sitting in the choir
loft at the minister's right, looked helplessly at the tenor,
started shaking and shuddering, and to hide this from the
congregation, dropped down on her knees, below the level
of the green plush curtain, so that, from the auditorium she
was completely out of sight. From where the minister stood, he
could see her very well, and turned like a bantam. The tenor
swallowed a cough drop whole, it got stuck in his throat, and
he started to throttle and gag. The paroxysm got worse and
worse, so Frank had to stagger down the stairs, with Will
Crowell, who was glad of a pretext to escape, pounding the
tenor on his narrow and unsubstantial back.

I was having one of the best times of my childhood, watching
everyone in front and listening hard for indicative sounds from
behind. My grandmother, who had no use for the Reverend
Powys, looked serene and frankly triumphant. My brother
Charles, who had a sense of humor, was keeping a straight face
on account of Mother. My brother Leslie was gleeful. My

36

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

mother looked as saintlike as she could, and most certainly
was deeply regretting the minister's predicament, but her
eyes had a characteristic expression that showed she wanted
to laugh and knew she ought not.

There was a lull, and Mr. Powys succeeded in getting past
the text, with the cryptic words I always confused with Eenie,
Meenie, Minie, Mo. For a while I got quite interested in what
the minister was saying. He had a flair for the dramatic and
descriptive when he let himself go, and drew such a word pic-
ture of the great hall of Nebuchadnezzar and the magnificence
of ancient Babylon that I was carried away. Each comment on
the old city's wickedness, abandon and extravagance endeared
it to me. I loved the sound of the names of great rivers, the
Araxes, the Tigris, the Euphrates. I liked to try to visualize
the Medes, Chaldeans, Assyrians, and the great monarchs:
Tiglath Pileser, Assur-bani-pal, Shalmaneser, Sennacherib,
Sargon, Darius. I could not identify them with colorless types
like Norman Partridge or tradesmen like J. J. Markham.

I tried to picture the Hanging Gardens, blooming and ris-
ing, terrace upon terrace, through languorous days and nights;
the great reservoir fed by the Euphrates; the ponderous draw-
bridge between the great palaces, the Gate of the Gods and
the Admiration of Mankind. The Reverend Powys evoked
the colored half-pillars, glistening in the sun and shimmering
by moonlight; the Tower of Babel that confounded men's
tongues; canals and pyramids; the great universities of Erech
and Borsippa, which must have been marvellous in comparison
to Harvard and Yale, which then I thought of purely in terms
of husky young men in turtleneck sweaters, who let their hair
grow thick and long.

Nebuchadnezzar had ruled the world from Babylon, for
forty-three years. He had left his son, Belshazzar, a mighty
heritage, with all the captive Jews. Where had the great king

37

Linden on the Saugus Branch

failed? He worshipped the 1 Moon Goddess and a lot of idols,
instead of ,the God of Hosts, Jehovah.

The Reverend K. Greg Powys, after the gardens and pal-
aces, the lakes and pyramids, the golden bulls and bronze lions,
the battles won, the power and the glory, got down to the
scene in the banquet hall. Belshazzar was feasting. Around
the walls were bas-reliefs depicting the triumphs of his an-
cestors, slaves served the choicest fruits and meats and game.
Already I had noticed that in the Bible stories there was little
said about vegetables. Little birds, larks and thrushes, were
served in pies; on golden platters from the Temple of Jerusa-
lem were roast wild boar, gazelles, lambs and calves. And what
impressed me most was the minister's tale of how, crawling on
their knees and begging, in chains and halters, their hands
and feet having been chopped off to humiliate them to the
utmost, were the captive kings the Chaldeans had overthrown.
With the palace hounds, they had to scramble as best they
could for the scraps thrown from the table. Detestable sports-
manship.

The Jews, God's chosen people? They were menials. Bel-
shazzar's lackeys flogged the hide off their backs, and worked
them, laying bricks and drawing water, till they died.

The One and Only God? Belshazzar mocked at Him, too.
The proud king was surfeited with the richest of foods, and it
wearied him. He tried to lose himself in wine, from golden
goblets, and the wine turned bitter in his mouth. The dancing-
girls failed to please him. He had them sewed into sacks in
pairs, and drowned in the Euphrates, while drunken rioters
looked on and watched the bubbles rise. There was nothing
vile or cruel that the king did not do. And still he was ruler of
the temporal world. Men trembled at the mention of his name.
And then ... in the middle of the feast. . . .

Mr. Powys dropped his voice and I was frankly shiver-

38

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

ing. The minister paused for effect, extended his right arm
and revolved his forefinger again, pointing to the empty wall
between stained-glass windows. He would have been all right
had not the blizzard, at just the wrong moment, hurled its
first blast of sharp sleet against the windows. That caused the
slip that broke up the meeting.

"In the middle of the feast, inflamed with meat and wine,
Belshazzar looked and saw, being written by the fingers of a
ghostly hand, on the snow . . . Mene, Mene, Tekel, Uphar-
sin."

The last mysterious words were drowned in laughter,
nervous at first, then swelling into a ragged chorus. No one
in the congregation meant to laugh, but those who did could
not help it. A few of those led off, and this broke the reserve
of others. I was far too busy looking around to laugh. Deacon
Parker got to coughing again. And through it all, Mathilda
Stowe sat calmly facing the apoplectic Reverend Powys as
if nothing unusual were happening.

The Reverend Powys at first was the personification of
outraged dignity, then he cut loose. The members of his con-
gregation who scoffed at divine warnings and had lost their
respect for God's House would share the fate of Belshazzar,
he roared. They would be weighed and found wanting. Which
ones among them could call themselves Christians? Did they
imagine he did not know of the sins and shame that were
countenanced in Linden, by men and women who pretended
to be worshippers? Did they think they could bluff their way
into Heaven, or buy their way? Did they believe, in their folly
and pride, that the God of Hosts, who saw a sparrow fall, would
overlook and fail to visit His vengeance on their small sink of
iniquity, because in great cities the sinners were like the sands
of the sea in number?

The outraged little preacher had tossed aside his manuscript

39

Linden on the Saugus Branch

and started singling out, by references everyone could not fail
to grasp, those who had been disrespectful. He was a vain man,
as men go, and had a formidable temper, and before he got
through he had bruised the feelings of half the most faithful
members of the congregation, but they, aware that he did not
know what they had been laughing about, took the tirade in
good part and did not hold it against him.

One day not long afterward, my Uncle Reuben was seen
entering the minister's house, an unprecedented occurrence,
and soon thereafter, a passerby was startled to hear the two
men's hearty voices in uncontrolled laughter. My uncle was
anything but pious, but he was a sport, and what took place
in the privacy of the minister's study he never revealed, not
even to his closest cronies at the Massasoit bar.

40

CHAPTER FOUR

The Massasoit House

AMONG the many paradoxes and contradictions that added
savour to life in Linden was the happy situation concerning
strong drink and good cheer. The commonwealth had for
decades extended to its cities and towns local option on the
question of the sale of intoxicating liquors, and regularly, at
every election, the Maiden Protestant Republicans had voted
"No," outnumbering the license advocates at least three to one.
Wherever Maiden led, hapless Linden had to follow, but as a
matter of fact, in this instance, Precinct Two of Ward Six voted
just about the same as the city at large. The Linden women
who were most active in the churches were zealous temperance
workers, and no boy or girl could get through a Sunday School
class without signing a pledge, on a neatly embossed card with
gilt lettering, renouncing alcohol forever.

Actually, Linden had some very accomplished drinkers,
men who could hold their own in almost any seaport on or off
the map. They did not have to worry about companionship or
thirst because of the Massasoit House. This famous old inn
was technically across the line in the town of Revere, although
the nearest house in Revere, the fine rambling farmhouse be-
longing to John P. Squire, was a mile and a half distant, with
bleak marshland between, while Linden Square was less than
two hundred yards away. As long as the Massasoit was geo-
graphically and socially a part of Linden, little did any of its

41

Linden on the Saugus Branch

patrons care that, in reaching its hospitable doorways, it was
necessary for them to pass over an imaginary boundary be-
tween the city of Maiden and the town of Revere. And Spike
Dodge, the Linden cop, as well as the rest of the Maiden force,
was without authority to interfere with Admiral Quimby's
conduct of his barroom, restaurant and hotel. The Revere
police, put into office and kept there by saloon politicians, were
not likely to journey miles and miles across primeval swamp-
lands to harass a saloon-keeper who served another town, al-
though his place happened to stand a few yards inside the
limits of Revere.

So on his five-acre lot, fronting on the extension of Beach
Street, Linden, the Admiral reigned supreme, and always with
distinction. I have said that there were no examples of the
best early-American architecture in Linden, but the Mas-
sasoit House, just a stone's throw eastward, built in 1750 by
an anonymous ship's carpenter, had the simple and pleasing
proportions of the best New England houses, the easy sloping
roof, just steep enough to clear itself of heavy loads of snow,
the tightly-fitted windows with detachable green blinds, so
that the building had contrasting aspects for summer and win-
ter. The main building, about forty feet by eighty (but not
exactly), and two and a half stories high, contained an attic
where the help could be accommodated, hotel bedrooms up-
stairs, and the ground floor was given over to a dining room
known and praised far and wide, with a private banquet hall
behind, on one wall of which was a balcony for musicians.
All the public rooms had broad stone fireplaces.

There was a spacious wing extending toward Linden, but
lower than the main building. The peak of the roof of the
wing was on the level with the base of the larger roof. Then,
from the wing, a shed extended farther, still lower and of simi-
lar construction.

42

The Massasoit House

Every element in the design was balanced, but not too ob-
viously. The chimneys of the main hotel were squat and broad,
the chimney of the wing rose high and was topped with glazed
bricks. Rising to twice the height of the chimneys, a grove of
horse-chestnut trees overshadowed the gray roofs and white
walls, stark black and white in winter, in summer shimmering
green, with the white showing through. The outbuildings in-
cluded carriage sheds for customers, ice house, a stable with
a smart gold-plated weathervane aloft, and two backhouses,
one staunch and roomy to accommodate six males, the other
more dainty, where four females and/or children could sit,
side by side. In the year 1 895, the Admiral had three bathrooms
and toilets of the then modern style the Linden men called "so-
ciety crap-houses" installed inside the hotel. With the help of
the Linden carpenter, Swede Carlson, and the plumber from
Revere, he managed to make room for these radical improve-
ments without spoiling the interior of his hotel. Nevertheless,
for reasons of prudence and sentimentality, and on aesthetic
grounds, since the buildings as originally planned formed
such an harmonious group, the Admiral left the outdoor back-
houses as they were. One was neatly labelled "Men" and the
other "Ladies." Both had their entrances and exits well
screened with green latticework on which were twining grape-
vines.

Sam Quimby was not really an Admiral. He had worked as
steward a few summers, years before, on the Bangor boat. His
Uncle Ebenezer had left him the hotel and Sam was an ideal
host. He wanted his guests to feel welcome when they arrived,
comfortable and carefree while they were there, and satisfied
when they departed. He enjoyed the company of those who
patronized his bar, and never was moody or bored. I remember
him as a man of about sixty, a forceful, hearty and picturesque
figure, although he ran the Massasoit thirty consecutive years,

43

Linden on the Saugus Branch

and must have formerly been younger, but never more mis-
chievous.

I have described the restful beauty of Linden's one hotel
from the outside. From within, it had a more intimate charm.
The barroom and back room were in the wing, broadside to
Beach Street, and well back from the sidewalk. Neither Linden
nor Revere did anything about the mud in that vicinity where
the street was on the level of the marshes, and sometimes was
inundated by the high-run tides. But within the^boundaries
of the Admiral's land, there were flagstone walks, and scrapers
near the doorways. The bar was of mahogany, about eighteen
feet long, with a firm brass rail and a mirror behind it. Above
the mirror, in the center, was an oil painting of Adam, Eve,
the tree and a very rakish serpent. Adam was a small man,
relatively insignificant, and wore a leafy garment around his
loins. Eve was on a larger scale, voluptuous and nude. Her head
was at such an angle, with her eyes looking downward, that
her gaze seemed to follow the drinkers in a tantalizing way
as they shifted from one end of the bar to the other. She looked
a bit like the Venus de Milo, in the face, with a suggestion
of Mrs. Leslie Carter, because of her auburn hair.

The lighting in the Massasoit bar was dim, but never dingy.
The floor was of chestnut planks, the rafters of oak, the walls
were panelled in mahogany. Kerosene bracket lamps and
chandeliers were used there until 1910, when electricity was
available. The Admiral might have used gas, five years before
he made the change, but so many country people had died in
Boston hotels from blowing out the gas lights that he did not
want to take the chance. His guests were not hayseeds, as a
rule, but most of them drank and might forget themselves, and
revert to former fixed habits.

Admiral Quimby was not merely concerned with the com-
fort of his paying customers. He wanted life around him to be

44

The Massasoit House

merry and in movement. He liked to have everybody except
a temperance crank get what he desired, whether or not it
happened to be good for him. His Massasoit House, while it
was practically immune from interference by the law, and
because of Linden's "no license" ordinance was free from
competition, was exposed to the weather on a grand scale, in
keeping with the host's princely personality. There stood no
protecting barriers between his snug establishment and the
raging sweep of the Atlantic that bred and sped the north-
easters. The salt ice that formed on the marsh was broken into
fragments and displaced by every rising tide, and when the
waters receded they left behind an area of glacial wreckage
that was forbidding by day and ghostly at night. To protect the
Massasoit, its outbuildings and fenced grounds, the Admiral
had set up snowbreaks ten feet high, to catch the drifts before
they overwhelmed his place, and to add to the joy of young and
old, he had walled in a low, flat area which could be flooded
with fresh water and serve as a skating pond. At his own ex-
pense, the Admiral kept the pond swept clean of snow, on days
and evenings when the weather was cold and clear, had put up
shelters with benches, in which the skaters could put on their
skates and take them off, and nearby a large warm fire was kept
burning, so the skaters could thaw themselves out when the
wind was too cold to be ignored, even by young folks in violent
motion.

In winter the Admiral's public skating rink was called "Mas-
sasoit Pond." In spring, he had it drained and planted with
clover, so that it would swarm with bees and butterflies instead
of mosquitoes.

So, in Linden, the influence of K. Gregory Powys and the
Congregational Church was balanced by that of Admiral
Quimby and the Massasoit House.

45

Linden on the Saugus Branch

"A town should be like Caesar's wife," the Admiral said.
"All things to all men."

He loved to quote Bobby Burns and Shakespeare as well as
the ministers loved quoting from the Bible, but the Admiral
was less restrained by the need of accuracy than the leaders of
the respectable element.

There was a group of men, and one mannish woman, who
used to make the barroom of the Massasoit their headquarters,
and used the place as a sort of club. Two or more of them were
likely to be found there, drinking as gentlemen should, con-
versing on a variety of topics that ranged from the personal
to the esoteric, with sporting topics and political comment in
between. The Admiral would be leaning against the bar or
seated near them. Sometimes they preferred to group them-
selves at the bar, each with one well-shod foot on the rail. Again
it would please their whim of the hour to sit in the solid and
comfortable barroom Windsors around the circular oak tables,
which had been scrubbed as smooth as satin.

Foremost among the regulars was my Uncle Reuben, a
stocky, broad-shouldered man of medium height, with disarm-
ingly candid blue eyes, sandy hair and long drooping mous-
taches that showed faintly red and gold in the sunlight, a hearty
voice, the slightly rolling gait of an experienced sailor, and a
vocabulary like all the fleet. He was a link between the two
foremost strata of society, being not only one of the most con-
vivial habitu& of the Massasoit, but also a deacon of the Con-
gregational Church. He drank to please himself, and went to
church to pacify his wife, my patient Aunt Carrie.

The third member of what was really the triumvirate of the
Massasoit was Mr. Wing. His full name was Christopher Van
Volkenburgh Wing, and he came to Linden from New York,
nobody knew why. He owned the only apartment house in

46

The Massasoit House

town, a triangular building at the intersection of Oliver and
Beach Streets, one hundred yards from the Saugus Branch
crossing and the Square, but everyone understood that he had
other properties and investments more important than the
one in which he occupied a bachelor apartment and rented
five others to families without small children. Boys, he liked
and understood, when they were ten years old or older. Be-
fore that, he held them in mild horror and said more than once
that they should be seen and, on rare occasions, heard, but
not by him.

Mr. Wing's admirers or his critics never claimed that he was
as rich as Norman Partridge, but he was the richest man in
Linden who did no work whatsoever, on principle.

"Gad, sir," he would demand, on occasion. "Is there an in-
stance in recorded history in which a nation has been brought
to grief by idle men of substance? Cite me one, and, by Jove,
I will blister these hands on yon woodpile, depriving the good
Irv Walker of a day's subsistence. No, my friends. It has always
been the industrious blighters who have proven themselves
the scourges of mankind."

He spoke with an accent and a choice of words strange to
Linden, and therefore fascinating to me. It was neither the
Harvard manner, nor the Oxford, nor that of the vaudeville
dude. Furthermore, Mr. Wing departed farther from what
was usually condoned in nineteenth-century Linden. He em-
ployed a valet. Not a hired man, or a cook, or a janitor. A
valet.

"Pfeiffer," he would say. "The whale-bone stick, if you
please. This Malacca is a trifle too garish for today. I am not at
my best. . . ."

Pfeiffer, the valet, a gaunt Dane whose eyes sometimes glit-
tered like those of the Ancient Mariner, and whose manners,
as a trained servant from birth, in high New York society,

47

Linden on the Saugus Branch

were as perfect as his master's, in another way, would bow and
almost shudder.

"I am sincerely sorry, sir," he would say, knowing exactly
what was the matter. The pair of eggs he had served Mr. Wing
that morning had matched in color. That is, they both had pale
yellow yolks. It would have been just as bad if they had both
had deep orange yolks. What Mr. Wing required was one light
and one dark one.

In the light of the best practices in the high-class New Eng-
land restaurants of the period, that was not as far-fetched as it
seems today, when breakfasts are snatched on the fly. The
best places, when they served a pair of eggs, saw to it that the
yolks contrasted in color, and therefore, subtly, in flavor, pro-
viding a nuance for discriminating egg-eaters that put the lat-
ter in the best of humor.

"I should not like to have you think I was remiss, sir,"
Pfeiffer would continue, head still inclined. "All the eggs de-
livered yesterday were light in color, and either I had to de-
lay. . . ."

"Quite all right/' said Mr. Wing, expansively. "Speak to
Packard about it. . . .Emphatically."

Actually, Pfeiffer had, in preparing the breakfast, broken a
dozen eggs, one after the other, in search of a dark one, and had
considered carefully whether he should hurry out to the store,
and keep Mr Wing waiting, or serve the eggs matched that
day.

Of course, Mr. Wing knew that Linden relished, behind his
back, the comedies he played with Pfeiffer, and I am sure the
valet understood and responded by being a little more metic-
ulous than was humanly possible, when he was sober. That was
the rub with Pfeiffer, and made the relationship between him
and Mr. Wing a touching and continuous performance that

48

The Massasoit House

raised them both in local esteem, and heightened the neigh-
borly interest in their quaint duet through the years.

Pfeiffer, about every six weeks or so, retired to his attic
bedroom for several days, during which Mr. Wing rolled up his
fashionable shirt sleeves and did his own housework, and took
his meals at the Massasoit. As many times as were necessary
each day, the fat and jolly man-about-town, weighing two hun-
dred and sixty-five pounds, would mount three flights of back
stairs, with provisions, some solid, but mostly liquid, the
remedies and antidotes for alcohol then believed efficacious,
and if more complicated medicines were needed, Mr. Wing
would consult the doctor privately and call at Dud Shultz's
drug store with a prescription.

There was never a suggestion from Mr. Wing that Pfeiffer
should reform. That was manifestly impracticable and un-
likely. What he insisted upon, and Pfeiffer, in his wildest de-
liriums never contravened, was that the valet, when he felt it
best to go on a bender, either stay in his room or leave Linden
and vicinity until he was ready to resume his work again.
Also, he would not permit Pfeiffer to apologize, or swelter in
remorse.

; "My man, you follow the dictates of your nature, as I pander
to mine. What is there to moan about? Because of your occa-
sional excursions into the realm of the spirit and imagination,
by the only method within your means and suitable to your
station, you serve me better between-times. More important.
You cause me to demonstrate to myself, periodically, that I am
not dependent upon you, or anyone, and that a bachelor's
existence, with its admitted drawbacks, is the lesser of two
evils, as I have always maintained." With words like those,
Mr. Wing would receive the faithful Pfeiffer, when he returned
from one of his bouts with the D.T/s.

49

Linden on the Saugus Branch

Mr. Wing came nearer than any man in Linden to doing
at all times exactly as he pleased, or so it seemed to me. We
were dnrwn together when I was at an early age by our mutual
passion for music, of the informal and spirited kind. He had
in his bachelor's living room, so richly and tastefully furnished,
a Chickering grand piano on which he played, with amazing
dexterity, all the reels, jigs, pigeonwings, moriscos, sarabands,
fandangos, flings, hoedowns, polkas, gavottes, quadrilles, horn-
pipes, minuets, mazurkas, schottisches and cancans known to
the Old World taverns and greenswards or to the surging
American frontiers.

I never heard Mr. Wing play any other type of music, and
I never asked him to. I knew by instinct that when anyone
is playing, from the heart,, he should not be prompted in his
selection of tunes. Often Mr. Wing would tell me of the origin
of the folk dances he was playing. Some were English, French,
Scandinavian, Gaelic, Belgian, Dutch. Rightly or wrongly, he
avoided tie Italian and German music, complaining that the
operas of Verdi and Wagner had helped drive him from New
York. I felt happy and welcome in Mr. Wing's ornately fur-
nished flat, knowing that by listening as I did, I was helping
him play.

Now and again, at the Massasoit, Mr. Wing, Bill Daley's
father, Uncle Reuben and Jeff Lee, the only Negro in Linden,
would go into the otherwise empty banquet room, in the main
part of the Massasoit, and play together, Mr. Wing and Mr.
Daley following the printed music with miraculous ease, Uncle
Reuben and Black Jeff doing quite as well without notes of any
kind. There in a corner would I be found, trying to appear
invisible, because no one else was encouraged to enter. Now
and again, on public occasions, when professionals could not
fill the bill, the Massasoit ensemble, with Mr. Wing at the
piano, Mr. Daley, first fiddle, Uncle Reuben, second fiddle, and

50

The Massasoit House

Jeff Lee, picking the guitar (which he pronounced "gui>-tar"),
would oblige.

The fourth member of the group that represented the senior
or postgraduate tosspots of the Massasoit was Ruth Coffee, a
Junoesque and powerful woman with a deep, booming voice,
muscles much harder than those of the Linden blacksmith,
who was rather slight, and a hale and hearty manner with
everyone, man, woman or beast. She dressed like a man. That
is, with a man's coat and collar and a felt hat, but to her sex
she made the concession of wearing a sensible skirt and what-
ever went with it underneath.

Most of the comment on Ruth's unwomanly behavior must
have spent itself before I knew her, because she was born in
Linden, had always lived there in her neat little cottage on
Salem Street where her father had lived and died, and had
established herself, as she was, and become an accepted phe-
nomenon in Linden before she reached mature womanhood.
She had liked to go hunting and fishing with her father, so later
she liked to go hunting and fishing with the men with the
kind of tact and understanding he had had. They were not
hard to find or to select: the Admiral, Uncle Reuben, and
Christopher Van Volkenburgh Wing. Mr. Wing went so far
as to address Ruth by her last name, to make her doubly cer-
tain she was within the inner circle of their friendship on her
own peculiar terms.

"Coffee, drink up, damn it," he would say. "You're worse '
than an old woman, lately."

"Here goes," Ruth would respond, raising her glass and
taking its contents without a chaser. "And when you say that,
smile."

Offhand, one would never expect that Mr. Wing dearly
loved to stalk and shoot game birds, at some ungodly hour of
the morning, but when he set his mind to it he could tramp as

51

Linden on the Saugus Branch

far, as fast and as long as any of his companions. He was a
fair shot, but never tried to excel.

"Nothing too much," he would say. "Don't you think it's a
trifle vulgar to hit too many of them?"

Mr. Wing could reduce almost any question to a matter of
taste.

As far as I could ever find out, nothing happened in Linden
that was not known and discussed at the Massasoit bar, and
nearly everything was talked about at the weekly meetings of
the Ladies' Social Circle. The church women were not so
blunt or direct in their language, but little escaped their notice
and the primmest of them seemed to be able to follow, how-
ever disapprovingly, the items that were brought to their at-
tention.

The evening after Miss Townsend had shown such an
unexpected and disturbing reaction to Ginger's thoughtless
prank, after Ginger had stowed away the doctor's damagecf
sleigh and led Hip back to his stall off the Square, Ginger had
thought first of the Massasoit. He found it prudent, however,
to hurry back to Clapp's field, by a circuitous route, in order
to erase the evidence from the surface of the snow. He was not
sure that the school boys, or anyone excepting Miss Town-
send, the victim, had seen the words "Sweet Alice," and hoped
that she would recover promptly and be too modest to men-
tion the inscription, either to the doctor or her family.

When he entered the Massasoit, a little later, his bottle com-
panions were gathered, as usual, in the back room. The
younger Linden drinking set found the tone of the conversa-
tion at the Admiral's table somewhat over their heads, and
too formal as a rule, and each evening sat around a long
oblong table in the room adjacent to the spacious barroom.
It was possible to get into the back room two ways, either by
entering the wing of the Massasoit from the Beach Street side

52

The Massasoit House

and passing through the barroom to the rear, or taking the
flagstone walk around the back way to the door marked
"Family Entrance."

In the back room the dean of the regular customers was
Hal Kingsland who for some years had been promised the next
appointment as fireman in Maiden, a job for which he was
superbly suited by temperament and gifts. Hal was an easy-
going, good-natured man, with such a flair for women that,
according to my Uncle Reuben, he could not walk under a pair
of drawers hung on a clothesline without an instant physio-
logical acknowledgment taking place, noticeable from a con-
siderable distance. Hal was a fine horseman, and had a dare-
devil courage that got him into quick and efficient action
whenever the occasion arose. Then he would relax for weeks,
or months, to think it over.

Hal Kingsland sat at the head of the table, facing the swing-
ing door that led into the bar. The potbellied stove was at his
back and the waiter, a former sailor with a peg leg named
Gimp Crich, tended the stove, the kerosene lamps, the mixed
company of customers, and kept fresh sawdust on the floor
as spryly as any man could who had both of his legs.

Gimp's conversation was confined to "Yea, yea," and "Nay,
nay," and everybody knew that no matter what happened in
the back room, short of mayhem or theft, it would never, on
Gimp's account, go farther than the oak-panelled walls.

The men at Hal Kingsland's table included Ginger Mc-
Sweeney, during the hours he was off duty at the Beach Street
turnout; Dick Lanier, who worked as a house carpenter's
helper or house painter in season, spent the winters hunting
in the woods and on the marsh, or fishing through the ice,
and was waiting for the next appointment to the city fire de-
partment after Hal Kingsland got his. Ordinarily, Linden
would not have been given consideration for such a large

53

Linden on the Saugus Branch

ohare of city employment, even though the employment was
not yet in existence, but there had been talk of building a
branch fire station in Linden, and it was understood by the
local active Republicans and their perpetually unsuccessful
opponents, the Democrats, that Linden men would be favored
for Linden jobs, if they were qualified to fill them. Dick
Lanier was only a first-generation resident of Linden, having
been brought there by his French-Canadian parents when
Dick was four years old. In nineteen hundred, he must have
been about twenty-eight. When he worked, he kept up a swift
pace and gave whoever hired him his money's worth. That
was his reputation. When out of work, which was at least half
the time, and mostly in winter, Dick did not fret. He was light-
hearted and affable, and second only to Markham's clerk,
Packard, as a squire of Linden females, and others in neigh-
boring towns. His Canuck brogue, in contrast with the Irish
inflections of Hal Kingsland and Ginger, the Finnish lilt of
the two stone-cutters and masons, Pehr and Paavo Wallenius,
and the New York lingo straight from the Four Hundred
delivered by Mr. Wing, gave the Massasoit a mildly cosmo-
politan atmosphere, or what politicians then referred to as the
vapours of the "Melting Pot."

Directing a friend as to how to get from Maiden Center to
the Saugus Branch depot, Dick said, without meaning to be
irreverent, "When you get off the car at Ferry Street, you put
your ass to the First Baptist Church and miss on the left with
your face to the High School, and go straight like hell down-
hill from there."

Two cockney twins, George and Ernie Hobart, who played
left and right ends, respectively, on the football team, and
worked in a shipyard in Chelsea, were often present, toward
the first of the week. Like most of the Linden young men
who worked for wages, they found themselves short between

54

The Massasoit House

Wednesday, the traditional night on which they were supposed
to take out their girls, and Saturday, which was the almost
universal payday. The Hobart boys were short in stature, as
tough as tripe, but they paid whenever their turn came round,
and when they had no money they hauled in their belts and
worked up a yeomanly weekend thirst.

The Admiral followed a number of salutary rules in running
his place, but never too strictly. There were always excep-
tions, that made sense. Women were not supposed to sit in the
barroom, for instance, but Ruth Coffee invariably did, and
was welcome. Unescorted women, theoretically, were not ad-
mitted through the "Family Entrance," but good Irish house-
wives who came to rush the can were always accommodated
and asked to sit down while the bartender, Nick Spratt, was
drawing the beer for them. Also, there was a group of neighbor-
ing young women, between twenty and thirty, who dropped
in when they felt like it, and if no man came in with them,
they found a few to talk with when they got inside, or seldom
had too long to wait for company. They were described by
Uncle Reuben, affectionately, as "the roguish kind" and never
caused any trouble.

Big Julie Goan, who lived on the Square, was one of them.
In summer she worked as a waitress in one of the restaurants in
Crescent Beach before the big state bathhouse was built and
the beach became a New England Coney Island. She was ami-
able and rangy, with a gift for repartee, and no man got fresh
with her unless she took a fancy to him. That was often enough
to keep her in tiptop condition, and quite well content with
life.

A shapely Italian girl named Palmira Di Brazzio came in
now and then. She had a flair for bright colors that set off her
large and expressive brown eyes, and had to be careful that
her father, a section-gang foreman on the Boston and Maine,

55

Linden on the Saugus Branch

was either away or safely snoring in bed before she could
leave.

Young Gertie Walker, one of the six daughters of Irv Walker,
the poorest family man in town, was a favorite of Ginger's but,
luckily, neither Gertie nor Ginger was jealous or possessive
and did not expect more fidelity than was natural to either of
them.

Letty Ledbetter, of Canadian parentage, worked as hired
girl for a family in Maplewood, but she roomed in Linden,
with Julie's family, and preferred the good cheer at the Mas-
sasoit to the more elaborate distractions in Boston or Lynn.

Maive Bagley was the sister of Tom Bagley, an Irishman
who ran a small express business which took little of his time.
He was said by the Admiral to "have a soft hand under a hen."
But at home he was, until a few things happened, the heavy
husband and brother and his womenfolk had no leeway until,
unexpectedly, one night, Maive appeared at the Massasoit
with her suitcase and a few bundles and asked the Admiral
for a room.

"What will your brother say?" asked the Admiral, who had
little use for Tom, but wanted no complications.

"Just let him open his trap," said Maive, her dark blue eyes
flashing.

The Admiral shrugged, and showed Maive to a small hall
bedroom for which he asked a very small rate. A little later,
he gave Maive a job as chambermaid, and waitress in the main
dining room, and from that day on, Maive was as much a part
of the Massasoit entourage as the tall horse-chestnut trees
that shaded the inn formed a part of the scenery. Evenings,
after her work was done in the dining room, Maive joined the
group in the back room and spent a good part of her pay.
Tom did not speak to her after she had left his roof, and
she ignored him, but she bought useful presents for his wife

56

The Massasoit House

and two children, all of whom were fond of her, when Tom
was not looking.

The evening that Ginger came in, after his harrowing ex-
perience involving Miss Townsend, he chose to enter the
front way. The door was propped open, for the moment, be-
tween the bar and the back room where at Hal Kingsland's
table and the others nearby, Jack, Dick Lanier, the Cockney
twins, Big Julie, Young Gertie and Letty Ledbetter were sit-
ting, expectantly.

At the bar, among others, were the Admiral, Mr. Wing,
Pehr the Finnish mason, and Ruth Coffee. My Uncle Reuben
was sitting at a table nearby, with pen in hand and paper
before him, pretending to write. They all said "Good evening"
to Ginger, who greeted them somewhat self-consciously, but
they seemed to pay him no further attention. From his point of
view, their attitude was a little too aloof, or studied.

Just as Ginger got abreast of my uncle's table, my uncle's
stub pen slipped, spluttered and scattered blots all over the
paper.

"Confound it," said Uncle Reuben, looking up at the Ad-
miral, "It's a wonder the House wouldn't supply some decent
materials in here."

Ginger was trying to slip by, but my uncle detained him.

"Ginger," he said, in a voice loud enough for everyone
in the kitchen and back room to hear. "Lend me your pencil,
like a good fellow. I want to write a billy do."

The driver turned every shade of scarlet and crimson,
and the chorus of guffaws that arose dispelled his last prayer-
ful hope that his part in the day's main event had not been
traced to him. It was well known to one and all that Ginger
had no use for an ordinary pencil and never was known to
carry one.

"Well. What do you say?" persisted Uncle Reuben.

57

Linden on the Saugus Branch

Ginger sighed ruefully, and turned toward the bar.

"I guess the drinks are on me," he said, and Nick Spratt
reached for two handfuls of glasses as Ginger went on, into
the back room, where he was met with a fresh burst of laugh-
ter, in which the girls all joined.

"A man has no Goddamn privacy in this town," he said.
"Every Tom, Dick and Harry reads his mail."

"You're getting pretty stuck-up about who you write to/'
Big Julie said. 'There's plenty of your friends who wouldn't
mind a postcard now and then."

58

CHAPTER FIVE

Morning Mood

1HE first man up each morning in Linden was Alexander
Graydon, namesake and direct descendant of the financier and
diplomat who was a colleague of Alexander Hamilton. All that
heredity and history meant nothing to Alec. He did not get
up so early because he was enterprising and energetic. Alec
took life easier than almost anyone in town.

Alec's house was on Oliver Street, diagonally opposite the
old grammar school. His back yard, with a barbed-wire fence,
touched the railroad right-of-way, so that the firemen of the
Saugus Branch trains, eastbound, began to pull the rope and
clang the bell and start slowing down for the depot about
the time they passed his place, from the rear. His old barn was
patched and sagged a little, but the roof was tight, the loft
was roomy, there were nails on which to hang the harnesses
and garden tools on the unpainted walls, and there was a stall
for his fat and cranky old mare, Daisy, whom Alec treated
like a beloved but troublesome old female relative who
seemed to blame him for the ravages and inconveniences of
age.

None of the space in Alec's yard was wasted, and none of
it used to the best advantage. There was a small orchard to
the right of his house, a few very old and gnarled apple trees
and some stunted pear trees. On the other side of the house
was a tomato patch, a few rows of corn, including the purple

59

Linden on the Saugus Branch

variety that the Indians had liked best, shell beans climbing
on poles that were never exactly straight or plumb, some
squash and pumpkin vines, and trellises of Concord grapes.

Alec took care of the mare, Daisy, and what time was left
over he devoted to odd chores and outside jobs, so that no
day passed when he could not have found many things to do.
Instead of forcing himself, he put things off as long as possible
and when he finally started working on them, he took his own
time, and proceeded according to his own ideas. He did only
the jobs one man could manage, alone, and never had a boss.
Most Linden men, even the idlest and most shiftless of them,
followed some perceptible routine. Whatever Alec did was
suitable to the season, and seasonal regulation was the only
kind to which he ever submitted. Within seasonal limits, his
existence was an impromptu.

The checker games at the Massasoit, and later at the Linden
Fire Station, took up lots of his time, and he played very
shrewdly, letting his opponent do the talking, the boasting,
and deliver the apostrophes to fate. Alec would sit in his shirt
sleeves, puffing at his acrid briar pipe, and when the pattern
was working out in his favor the crow's feet would deepen
around his dark eyes that seemed to contain in their depths
so much native tolerance and wisdom. Alec laughed very
often, and heartily, without much noise, till the tears came
into his eyes, but he seldom laughed at any man directly.
He would wait until he was out of sight, then lean against
a post or tree and laugh till he was satisfied. As he was jogging
along in his wagon, behind old Daisy, his face would light up,
he would smile, then grow pensive, enjoying his shifting
moods as the surface of a woodland pond reflects the light and
shadow when the sun is screened, then revealed by cirrus
clouds.

In summertime, Alec would cut the grass from strips of

60

Morning Mood

railroad right-of-way or vacant lots, spread it to dry in the
sun, stack it, and cart it into his hayloft, with the volunteer
aid of the boys. A little later, he picked elderberries along
the edges of the lanes in the woods, and the old Newburyport
Turnpike. With these he made a thick liqueur, of royal pur-
ple, that he called "elderberry wine." He counted votes for
the Democratic party, on election day, being one of the few
Yankee Democrats, and holding a sort of Olympian disdain
for the McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt administration. Mc-
Kinley did nothing quietly, while Teddy did even less with
a lot of noise, Alec would say. He was for Bryan first, last,
and all the time, but he did not expect the Commoner to win.
Alec did not think the general electorate had sense enough for
that.

Alec Graydon was the sole owner, operator and proprietor
of a small carpet-cleaning establishment way over in Melrose,
so that two or three times a week, if the weather was right and
he felt like it, he would drive over in the morning, with his
lunch in a pail, clean carpets in a cloud of dust that would
have choked an ordinary man until three or four in the after-
noon, then drive back to Linden. Naturally, he spent more
time on the road than he did in his shop, but he enjoyed the
drives. The budding shrubs, or the changing colors in the
leaves, the birds and chipmunks and garter snakes and hum-
ming insects, dancing butterflies, clouds, all registered gently
with him, as he sat on his seat, and Daisy jogged along. The
smell of alder catkins, of damp springs by the roadside, of hay,
of tansy, wild honeysuckle, drying codfish or tan bark, holly-
hocks, peonies, he would inhale and recognize as the minutes
and hours and days passed by. Peonies were Alec's favorite
flower. There was something about them their presentation,
their perispherical freedom from nonsense, their confidence
and unique perfume that kindled Alec's admiration. I have

61

Linden on the Saugus Branch

seen him stand, leaning on a rake or a hoe, looking at his
peonies, or one particular peony, as if from all the universe,
and God-possible plants and blossoms, he, Alec, had set apart
that peony, or cluster of peonies, for contemplation. Con-
cerning this he never said a word.

Once in every two or three years, at the instigation of his
wife, who was of one of the best Salem families, Alec would
get into his boiled shirt, dress suit and wear the stovepipe hat
he wore habitually at the time she fell in love with him. I
never saw a more distinguished-looking man; not even Mr.
Wing or the Admiral could hold a candle to him. Perhaps that
was because they were always dressed well, and Alec, day after
day, wore an old shirt and patched pants and shoes that Mr.
Laws, the cobbler, had put more thread and leather into than
the original manufacturers had. He smelled of horse, beer
or wine, the crudest tobacco extant, of old carpets, and new-
mown hay.

One of Alec's trivial jobs was to drive each morning, about
four o'clock, to Maplewood, a couple of miles distant, to get
the roll of Boston morning newspapers intended for Linden.
The paper train left North Station in Boston a little after
3:00 a.m. and in due course, depending on the weather, ar-
rived in Maplewood. Unluckily for Linden, this first morning
train was an "express," and passed through Broadway, Linden,
and one or two other little stations without stopping, as so
many of the more useful trains seemed to do. It would appear
to have been easy for the baggage-man to toss off the roll of
Linden papers when the train was passing through Linden,
to be received directly by Seymour Batt, the nearsighted dry-
goods dealer who superintended the newspapers' distribution
and collected from the subscribers. No Saugus Branch train
moved much faster than the average buggy horse. Neverthe-
less, some technicality cooked up between the Express Com-

62

Morning Mood

pany, the Boston and Maine, and the newspaper owners, re-
quired that an agent be on hand to receive and sign for the
bundle of papers, and that could not be done in Linden, on
the fly.

Therefore, Alec Graydon drove to Maplewood each morn-
ing, signed for the Linden papers on receiving them from the
baggage-man, then drove back to Linden Square to turn them
over to Seymour Batt, whose two newsboys, Jerry Dineen and
Frigger Bacigalupo, were by that time on hand to start out
on their routes.

Puffing on his short-stemmed pipe, and with one small boy
for company, Alec would sit contentedly on the blanketed
front seat, so covered because of the faulty upholstery. Alec's
wagon was held together by straps, brads and haywire, and
the harness was patched up with parts of other discarded har-
nesses. Daisy maintained a pace a little faster than a walk, and
whenever Alec let his mind wander, she would get the reins
under her tail. In the stall, when he was off guard, the mare
would nip Alec or step on his foot, never very hard. She liked
to be annoying, in small ways.

There was a real feud between Mrs. Graydon and the mare,.
Daisy. Mrs. Graydon fussed and fumed because Alec "spent
all summer cutting hay" and drove all the way to Melrose when
the carpet-cleaning apparatus could easily have been set up
somewhere handy, in Linden, where small vacant lots could
be had for a song. Alec listened, and frequently agreed in prin-
ciple, but he never did anything about it.

Mrs. Graydon was an exceptionally capable and energetic
woman, with a good social background and high ambitions for
their two children. In no way could she influence Alec. She
was one of the Methodists who, when old Dr. Best tottered
into senility and the church standiijg committee would not
turn him out of the pulpit he had occupied fifty years, went

63

Linden on the Saugus Branch

over to the Congregational Church and became one of the
most active members of the Social Circle. It had been a long
time since she had found an outlet for her administrative
urge, and she was thereafter as busy and bustling as her hus-
band was indolent and calm.

After he had delivered the papers each morning to Seymour
Batt, Alec drove over to the Massasoit for what he called "a
snifter." I hitched Daisy in one of the stalls of the customers'
shed, and went to the kitchen where Jeff Lee always passed
out some pie or doughnuts, with a glass of milk or Linden
blossom tea.

At that hour of the morning, neither the Admiral nor the
regulars were likely to be around, and Jeff doubled as cook
and bartender. One of Alec's oldest friends, and also one of
the few Spanish War veterans in Linden, Tim Curtin by
name, had had his nerves unstrung by malaria and one arm
cut off above the elbow because of a shrapnel wound. Tim was
the principal reason why the Linden Democrats had plenty
of arguments to use against the majority Republicans who
were jubilant about the election of Teddy Roosevelt as Vice
President. Whenever anyone would listen, Tim would tell
by the hour of his baptism of fire in the jungle between El
Pozo and San Juan Hill.

Tim had enlisted, in a patriotic fervor that Alec Graydon
had done his best to quench before it was too late. Being a
poultry dealer by trade, Tim had found himself in the Signal
Corps, one of the buck privates who held a rope attached to the
U. S. Army's first and only observation balloon.

"I felt like a kid at the county fair," Tim said, "until the
shrapnel and bullets began to fly around."

He had waited at El Pozo with his unit on the historic morn-
ing of the battle of San Juan Hill. The American batteries had
started firing, but they had no smokeless powder, and while

64

Morning Mood

their shells did not bother the Spaniards much, the Spaniards
used the smoke as a target; artillery men and some of what
Tim called "those bloody stupid Rough Riders" began to fall,
and the American artillery was ordered to cease firing.

Some New York infantry were sent into the jungle, toward
San Juan Hill, but when they got half-way, and could not find
their direction, they were shoved off the swampy trail, into the
jungle, to let the Rough Riders go through. Tim's balloon
followed the Rough Riders, and when everybody got mixed
up, cavalry and infantry alike, in the swamp holes and thickets,
the balloon was held up, so the major aloft just sat there and
waited, while the Spaniards found the range. Tim was hit in
the arm, and another man grabbed the rope he had been hold-
ing, but as Tim fell, and before the medical corps men could
get around to him, a long thin green snake dropped down on
a New York sergeant from a palmetto and stampeded the whole
squad of National Guardsmen who were lying in the puddles
and weeds Goddamning the day that Roosevelt and his cow-
boys ever were born. More than ten hobnailed soldiers, fleeing
the snake in a panic, trampled over Tim, so aggravating the
fracture of the humerus he had sustained in line of duty that
the arm had to come off above the elbow.

The hospital in which Tim was bedded while his arm was
healing was not adequately screened, so he was bitten by mos-
quitoes and came down with malaria. At that time, the army
doctors did not connect the cause and effect, and Tim thought
of the mosquitoes and the malaria as separate discomforts.
Either one would have been enough to dampen the zeal he
formerly had felt for United States imperial expansion.

After Tim had been evacuated a few miles to the rear, his
outfit had been shot up, halfway up the slope of San Juan, by
American artillery. Before that, the Spanish marksmen who
had been aiming at the balloon and decimating the troops

65

Linden on the Saugus Branch

around and below it, punctured the bag and reconnaissance
from the air was over, for the duration.

"It was like a Jesusly burlesque show, without any women,
until men started getting killed," Tim said. "And for what?"

Alec never said "I told you so," but he smiled his wonderful
smile, and the crow's feet showed around his eyes.

Tim used the adjective "Jesusly" as a term of disdain, and
"un-Jesusly" as a word of high praise. So he spoke of the
Jesusly war, and the un-Jesusly good beer.

I have already made it clear that Alec Graydon was sparing
of his energy and effort, but he had one characteristic in com-
mon with so many Linden men who otherwise were not given
to Spartan endeavor. He would not let the weather get the best
of him. In the fiercest blizzards and the bitterest cold, he kept
his rendezvous in Maplewood with the early morning train,
and on days when the Saugus Branch tracks were blocked of
course, they were the last on the Boston and Maine system to
be cleared he would wait in the Maplewood depot, sometimes
until twilight, and carry out his pan of the bargain.

The Admiral depended on Alec to keep the skating pond
clear of snow, and to haul for the bonfire a supply of oak and
birch logs. Alec had rigged up a scraper and a sweeper that
Daisy could haul back and forth over the ice, and spent many a
winter hour driving slowly but steadily, first westward, then
eastward, in his contemplative way. The logs he cut from a lot
over by the piggery, just south of the Irish part of town, by
arrangement with the officials of the Catholic cemetery who
owned the land and trees and wanted to clear the area and
blast out the stumps to make room for more graves. Alec drew
the line at blasting. He had kept out of war and never had
fired a gun. Explosives in any form were not for him. Alec be^
lieved firmly that the manufacture of gunpowder or dynamite
was a mistake, and when he was told by Mary Stoddard, Lin-

66

Morning Mood

den's most vehement pacifist, that the Chinese had invented
powder hundreds of years before, and had never used it for
killing, but only for amusement, Alec was taken aback. It
made him quite thoughtful for a while, and he looked more
closely and with what seemed to be greater respect at the local
Chinese laundryman thereafter.

There were not more than three hundred morning news-
papers delivered in Linden, and they cost, retail, only two
cents apiece, of which at least one cent went to the publishers.
That left three dollars each morning, from the newspaper dis-
tribution, to be divided between Alec, who brought them
down from Maplewood; Seymour Batt, who hired the news-
boys, solicited the subscriptions, kept the accounts and re-
turned titles torn from the front pages to get credit for those
left unsold; and the two newsboys.

Before either of them were out of short pants and long
stockings, everyone in town was sure that the newsboys would
make their marks in life, and they did, Jerry becoming a pio-
neer dealer in automobiles and Frigger doing so well for him-
self during Prohibition that he wore silk shirts, nifty suits and
ties, elaborate shoes, and paid for music lessons for at least
twenty of his young relatives. Frigger loved music, but could
not play a note himself, never having had time to learn, or an
instrument to play on.

The Boston morning newspapers then circulating in Lin-
den were the Boston Herald, Globe, Post and Advertiser. Each
had definite and separate characteristics, and placed their pur-
chasers in distinct groups well recognized in Linden.

The Herald was conservative, Republican, with a Protestant
slant and a moderate style, the natural choice of the ministers,
Protestant tradesmen and solid citizens. To see Norman Part-
ridge or Deacon Clapp reading the Post, instead of the Herald^
would have been as startling as seeing the Reverend K. Greg-

67

Linden on the Saugus Branch

ory Powys scorching through the Square on a racing bicycle
with low-slung handlebars and an enormous sprocket.

Around the Massasoit bar, and in sporting circles, the lively,
sensational Post was the favorite. Nearly all the Irish families
took the Post, which never ran lengthy stories, gave the Cath-
olic news the preference, and spared no expense or trouble
with its sporting page.

A few Linden people favored the staid old Globe (Demo-
cratic), which let the stories inn, column after column, and
avoided the spectacular make-up affected by the Post. Those
in our town who read the Globe did so because it covered care-
fully local news north of Boston, as far as the Canadian border,
and south to the tip of Cape Cod. There were pages of small-
town items, not significant individually, but collectively giving
quite a picture of New England. Also, the Globe was scrupu-
lously accurate in its market tabulations and sporting page,
where the accounts of horse races and ball games were written
in a florid, dignified style like political and commercial news.

Only five men in Linden read the Advertiser, which con-
tained little else than shipping, commercial and financial news.
These were Norman Partridge, for the market quotations;
Dawson Freeman, for insurance news; J. J. Markham and
George Sampson, who had to watch the wholesale prices of
meat and produce in Faneuil Hall; and the fishman, Ezra
Stowe, who had to know what fishing vessels were coming in
to Gloucester and Boston.

Jerry Dineen had the harder of the newsboys' assignments.
He covered the area north of the Saugus Branch tracks, and
had to be careful which paper he left on the various doorsteps.
Frigger had mostly Posts, with a very few Globes, to distribute
on the south side of the tracks. Jerry was held up to all Linden
boys as an example. He never was late. He never made mis-
takes. He saved the pennies he earned. In bad weather, he

68

Morning Mood

never left the papers exposed to the rain, sleet or snow. He was
not very smart in school, but he was tenacious, and never
missed a grade. His various odd jobs kept him busy outside of
school hours, and all day Saturdays, so he was not an athlete,
although he was healthy and strong. Jerry was considered by
everyone as the boy most likely to succeed. Linden folks knew
that when Jerry went into Sampson's store, as clerk, he would
soon go into business for himself.

I was then, and always since then have been a little in awe
of men, young or old, who were hustlers and whose career was
clear to them and could be built, step by step, according to a
plan. My brother Charles was one of those. He was a good
student, deliberate and thorough, with a leaning toward prac-
tical science. From the time he entered school it was a foregone
conclusion that he would go to Boston Tech (the Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology) which was known to be the
toughest scientific school in the world. He chose civil en-
gineering, for which he was ideally equipped, and never failed
or faltered. He accepted his responsibilities, discharged his
duties, overcame his obstacles, all in a quiet, steady and de-
termined way.

My younger brother, Leslie, was placid and easygoing, had
no ambition except to shun effort and responsibility, did badly
in school, took care not to rise too rapidly in any field of en-
deavor, was kind and considerate, courageous and unassuming,
and preferred to be inconspicuous. He has never left New
England for any length of time, except to serve in the artillery
in France in World War I. All the worrying he ever has done
could be accomplished by the average citizen in less than half
an hour.

I, born of the same parents, and brought up in the same
environment, turned out to be a wanderer, without direction
or governing philosophy, with no stability or purpose, no

69

Linden on the Saugus Branch

achievements which did not come to me easily, impulsive,
reckless, impractical and inconsistent, receptive to almost any
kind of experience, with limitless curiosity and no standards
at all.

This diversity of temperaments in families is characteristic
of New England, where any attempt at standardization has led
to rebellion, confusion, and has resulted, backhandedly, in
progress or disaster. It is partly responsible for the reticence
that, to outsiders, is a New Englander's most baffling charao
teristic. They talk very little, and if at all, indirectly, about
what means most to them. A large proportion of their inner 01
their outer life they keep to themselves.

For instance, there was the Old Saugus Race Track, on the
edge of the marsh in Cliftondale. My mother, having to count
every penny to keep us all going, had a horror of gambling,
and disapproved of racing on that account. So did my pious
aunts and uncles, and the other Linden people who took the
Herald and went regularly to church. But my cousin Ella's
husband, from Amesbury, owned a trotter named Waldo
which now and then was entered in the gig races at Old Saugus
and was driven by Lawyer Perkins, himself. My mother's cous-
in, Survina, had a husband named Luther Morrill, one of the
best of the Faneuil Hall restaurateurs (a competitor of the
famous Durgin and Parks), who had two race horses, Molly and
Maisy, one or both of which was frequently in the money.

On the days when Lawyer Perkins' Waldo was running, on
the Saugus track, just a couple of miles from our house, Cousin
Ella used to come to spend the day with Mother. Cousin Ella,
with her gray hair (at the age of thirty) and soft gray-blue eyes,
was the most beautiful and exotic of our family connections,
and the daughter of adventurous Great-Aunt Lucy, one of the
first New England women to get a divorce. Cousin Ella and
my mother would talk all day, mostly about various relatives

70

Morning Mood

one had seen lately and the other had not, but no mention of
the races at Old Saugus would be made. Late in the afternoon,
Lawyer Perkins would show up, smelling of bay rum and the
stable, and would stay to dinner, but he never talked about
the race.

The same was true when "Uncle" Luther Morrill and
"Aunt" Vine appeared. "Aunt" Vine came first and spent the
day, "Uncle" Luther would come to fetch her late in the day,
and would stay for supper. Naturally, I had seen the races,
either as guest of my uncles, through a knothole in the fence,
or from a high water tower that commanded a view of the
track. That was not mentioned, either.

Some summer mornings, when the clouds along the horizon
were gray and a peculiar fragrance was in the air that meant
the day would be fair, instead of riding to Maplewood with
Alec Graydon to get the papers, I would go alone into the
woods, before the birds awoke. I knew every step of the path-
ways and trails, in the thinning darkness, and would seat my-
self on a rock on the edge of a feather-grass meadow festooned
with damp cobwebs, near Elephant's Back.

First I would hear faint clicks, as drops of dew fell down
on dried leaves, and sometimes the soft, unstealthy tread of a
woodchuck among the stones and fallen branches. Then would
come the barely audible murmurings of thrushes as they stirred
sleepily in the bushes, at the level of my ear. My hearing was
sharpened by the morning dampness. The thrushes' whisper-
ing would spread and slowly become general, a rustle from
which a liquid note would escape. Then from the grass, and
between the trees, the clear-weather song of the robin would
confirm my guess about the weather. A jay would scream. An-
other. Woodpeckers would start drumming, song sparrows
would scatter notes in clusters, as, one by one, the trees would
take shape in the dimness birches with the evergreens, groves

71

Linden on the Saugus Branch

of oaks and maples, pine, fir, spruce, cedar and hemlock. Wil-
lows grew in the damp places, alder almost anywhere. There
were walnut trees, beechnuts, sumach, and berry bushes.

The chorus of birds would swell from its tentative begin-
nings to a moderate stage, then all of them would let them-
selves go, until the sound was overwhelming. Miles of
woodland, acres of shrubs and fields, all eloquent with birds.
Along the streets of Linden, far below, the orioles in their
swinging nests along Elm Street burst into song. Sparrows
chattered along Beach Street. In the meadows and reeds the
red-winged blackbird and the bobolink clung to swaying stalks
and cat-o'-nine-tails, reflected in the pools. Around me, in the
woods, now the tanagers and flickers, the rose-breasted gros-
beaks and the bluebirds joined the demonstration. No one bird
seemed to be listening to the others. Each sang at the top of its
voice, which was swept into the joyous ensemble.

I did not go to the woods to study wild life. That was farthest
from my mind. I wanted to hear the performance, alone, to
be in the midst of it, trying to penetrate its quivering volume
for component sounds, for broader effects, to hear melody
tossed and scrambled in profusion, rhythm complicated be-
yond analysis, until it began to throb and beat with hidden
rumblings, chants, deliriums and ecstasy. I liked to hear the
chorus race like fire, flow like the tide, flap like pennons on a
thousand spars, roar, mount, blur, then, note by note, subside.

72

CHAPTER SIX

Linden Square and Packard's Powders

THE retail trade in Linden, which years ago was so friendly,
so intimate and unhurried, and so personal, was centered in
Linden Square. It goes without saying that Linden would not
have a Square that was shaped like one. The south side of
Beach Street, and both sides of Lynn Street coming in from
the direction of Everett, had room for all the stores and shops.
The Saugus Branch depot was fifty yards north of the grade
crossing and between it and Beach Street, bordering on Lynn
Street, was a triangular lot on which stood a few elm trees,
spaced evenly, so that it passed for a park, only there were no
benches, no flower beds, and the grass did not grow very well.
The depot was painted a dingy railroad red, with dark green
blinds, dark green trimmings and a shingle roof so old that it
was flecked with moss. A broad macadam walk stretched all
the way from the Beach Street sidewalk, which was of mud or
dust, to the unguarded grade crossing where Lynn Street cut
across the tracks from behind the depot, at an angle. Probably
the Beach Street grade crossing would have had no tender if
the horsecar tracks had not intersected the steam car tracks
there. Inside the depot, front and center, was Charley Moore's
office. He was the station agent, who checked the trains in and
out, tended the clicking telegraph that brought in mostly bad
news and condolences in those days, loaded the outgoing
trunks and boxes into the baggage cars, after trundling them

73

Linden on the Saugus Branch

along the macadam from the baggage room to the far end of
the walk, either way, where the baggage cars stopped.

Between crossings in Linden, there was just room for an
ordinary Saugus Branch train. If the engine nosed the sidewalk
of Lynn Street, the baggage car would be touching the sidewalk
along Beach Street, and vice versa. Two extra cars would block
traffic on both sides and cut Linden in two, at its narrowest
and most vulnerable point.

The American Express Company maintained a service along
the Saugus Branch, but it was efficacious only if goods were
coming from, or destined for, the north of Boston. Any ship-
ments that had to pass from the South Station to the North
Station in Boston were delayed anywhere from ten days to a
fortnight, so perishable goods could not be sent that way.

Charley Moore, the station agent, was a loose-jointed, good-
natured man, just under thirty, who bent his knees when he
walked and wore thick-lensed glasses. He could afford neither
liquor nor tobacco, but was always chewing gum. Charley was
studying to be a lawyer, and always between trains, his nose
was buried deep in his books, so that one hesitated at the
grilled window before disturbing him to buy a ticket. Charley
had been studying law several years, and after he passed the bar
examinations and hung out his shingle and built up a practice,
he intended to marry Rena Carberry, to whom he had been
engaged five years, in 1900. When the dispute as to whether
the turn of the century should be celebrated January i, 1900,
or January i, 1901, Charley had sent a letter to the Boston
Globe, in favor of the even date. There were arguments, and
even fist-fights, all over America on account of that mathe-
matical riddle, some insisting that on January i, 1900, only
ninety-nine years of the century had been endured, and that
the hundredth year lay between January i and December 3 1 of
the year numbered 1900. I do not remember any fights in

74

Linden Square and Packard's Powders

Linden on account of the century-turning problem, but there
were quite a few headaches, and I did not ask my brother
Charles for fear that, if he did not know the answer, it would
make him feel badly to admit it, since he had been an honor
student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Pat Finley, the crossing tender, who let down and raised the
gates across Beach Street before and after the trains had
crossed, lived in a square little shanty so near the track that
the whoosh of the eastbound "express" trains stirred all the
cinders and dust with which his tiny room was coated. He had
a wooden bunk with blankets, nails on which to hang his
lanterns, a soap box stood on end for a bed table, another, with
a basin, for a washstand. His water he got from an outside
faucet in Dr. Moody's back yard. When his socks got too stiff
and his towels too grimy, Pat tossed them away. He read dime
novels nearly all the time he was awake Nick Carter, Frank
Merriwell, and the like and loaned them to the boys he could
trust to return them. Pat was a real critic of the dime novel,
and was so tensely involved in Frank Merriweirs romance that
he would grind his teeth and mutter under his breath when
he saw a dark-complexioned, dark-eyed woman go by.

Frank Merriwell, it will be remembered by those who fol-
lowed his career in their youth, was loved to distraction by two
girls, one named Elsie, a white-skinned, blue-eyed blonde of
the clinging kind, the other, Inza Burrage, a brunette with an
olive skin, black hair and luminous dark eyes. Actually, Frank
was not indecisive. That would not have been consistent with
his sterling character and unimpeachable judgment. It seemed
that Frank was not quite sure that Elsie could love him, in
the ordinary way. She was so frail and pure and ethereal. Inza
left no doubt in anyone's mind. She loved Frank so passion-
ately that Pat Finley was disgusted that any woman should so
far forget herself and her modesty. Inza knew she was going to

75

Linden on the Saugus Branch

lose out to the fragile blonde, and she tried not to embarrass
Frank, but Frank knew. He knew everything, and could not
bear to hurt Inza.

This went on, volume after volume, as long as the average
soap-opera lasts today.

"Those black-eyed floozies have hearts just as black. Dpn't
trust 'em, or let one of 'em near you/' Pat would say. "You'll
rue the day, if you do."

When the author and publishers of the Frank Merriwell
series brought out another, centering around Dick Merriwell,
Frank's younger brother, Pat was furious. He engendered a
dislike for the younger brother that kept him muttering and
pacing his cabin.

"That young whippersnapper," he would say, shaking his
fist at Dick's picture on the paper cover of the book. "He's not
the man his brother was, and I can lick the man who says so."

Naturally, knowing what rise we could get out of Pat, we
would let him overhear us say that maybe Dick, after all, was
a better pitcher or scrapper than Frank. For us to suggest that
Frank might be getting too old put Pat into a rage, and he
would, in extreme cases, refuse to let such young lunkheads
as ourselves read his books. That only lasted through the day.
On the morrow, Pat would forgive and forget, and tell the
boys all the high points of the stories before they had a chance
to read them.

When a train was approaching Linden, a bell started ringing
in Pat's little shack, giving him warning in time to clear the
crossing of traffic and get the gates down. Very infrequently
freights would be routed our way, because of congestion on
the main lines, or deliveries of coal to J. J, Markham, the local
dealer. Those would annoy Pat, who liked everything accord-
ing to schedule. There were no toilet facilities in Pat's shanty,
so in daylight he would ask one of us to stay in his place on

76

Linden Square and Packard's Powders

the chance that a freight might come through while he was
at the depot "for purposes of nature," as he expressed it. I
could not hope to reproduce Pat's rich Irish brogue.

In the depot were two waiting rooms, with potbellied stoves,
giant size, resting on metal mats large enough to accommodate
large coal hods. Each waiting room had a toilet, of the "society"
brand, equipped with overhead tank that spattered, and a
handle and chain. The "Gents" toilet was kept locked, and
Charley Moore had the key, which was attached to an inch
board, a foot long and three inches across, so absentminded
patrons would not stick it in their pockets. The "Ladies"
toilet was left unlocked while the depot was open, so that the
women would not have to reveal to Charley when they felt
the urge to relieve themselves. Most women of that period
would have risked almost anything rather than show such
immodesty. Some of the most ladylike and lovely of them built
up such an illusion that a Linden bridegroom, after the Span-
ish-American War, burst into tears and went on a ten-day
drunk when by accident he pulled the backhouse door open
and saw his bride seated there.

Charley Moore's office had two grilled windows, one open-
ing into the men's waiting room, the other into the ladies', so
there was no enforced mingling of the sexes in Linden's small
station. The melodramas involving the innocent country girl
and the city slicker with the black moustaches were still vivid
and meaningful north of Boston, so much so that unescorted
girls, if they made a journey that passed without adventure,
began to feel a little doubtful of their attractions.

Starting eastward from Pat Finley's shanty, the next build-
ing, two stories with an unfinished attic, was rented by Doc
Moody, who used the front rooms for an office and waiting
room and the others as living quarters.

"Doc sure is an optimist," Uncle Reuben said, to plague

77

Linden on the Saugus Branch

Mathilda. "He's fitted himself out to handle three or four
patients at a crack, when it's all he can do to get hold of one."

"That one's enough trouble for half a dozen doctors," Ma-
thilda said, referring to Alice Townsend, who, after she had
come out of her first coma, had started acting strangely and
kept relapsing every day or two, until Doc was at his wit's end
and the sentiment in Linden had veered from sympathy with
the modest teacher to open impatience with her state of nerves.

"I got an idea about the right kind of treatment . . ."Uncle
Reuben said.

"You aren't the only one," Mathilda agreed.

Seymour Batt's little dry-goods store was wedged in be-
tween Doc's driveway and the tailor shop. There were in-
numerable odd-sized shelves and drawers in Seymour's place,
and broad counters on which material was cut and measured
by the yard or the width of his outstretched hand. He kept
thread, buttons, hand-made and machine-made laces; socks,
shirts, underwear and neckties for men; bustles, corsets, ruf-
fled drawers and petticoats for women. The sales he made were
almost always small, and he had to hunt from one end of the
store to the other in order to find what was wanted, so he added
to his income from dry goods, which could not have exceeded
three hundred dollars a year, by handling newspapers, maga-
zines, and paper-covered novels, the dime novels for boys, and
the twenty-five cent kind for women who liked romantic
stories. The favorite writer among the last named was Laura
Jean Libbey. Seymour was tall, stoop-shouldered and very near-
sighted, so he had to peer and lean over like a crane in search
of spools of thread, hooks and eyes, and spare whalebone
strips for busted stays. He carried an enormous bunch of keys,
unmarked, and when he tried to open up his place or lock it
after closing time, he would spend five or ten minutes, trying
one key, fumbling for the keyhole, then trying another.

78

Linden Square and Packard's Powders

"Why don't you paste some hair around that thing? You'd
find it then, fast enough," Packard, the lady-killing clerk at
J. J. Markham's nearby grocery, would say.

Seymour would pretend that he had not heard, and continue
trying keys, one after another. What the other keys were for,
no one knew. There were only two doors, front and back, to
the dry-goods store, and two to Batt's little house on Oliver
Street, where his daughter, Minnie, kept house for him. That
was all Minnie ever did. She was slow in school and did not
graduate until she was fifteen. She had to wear glasses, like her
father's, and they made her look odd and undermined her
confidence so that she moved awkwardly. Her natural inapti-
tude made the housework last all day, so she had no time in
which to be discontented. Once in a while, when Seymour had
to make a trip into Boston, to replenish his stock or get some
new novelties his customers had begun pestering him for, Min-
nie kept store, and on those occasions the customer and Minnie
might have to spend an hour or more rummaging through
pigeonholes and cabinets for a yard of ribbon that would retail
for eight cents.

Moe Selib, who kept the tailor shop next door, was the only
Jew in town, and as such, was a fine ambassador for his race.
He worked hard when there was a rush of trade, took it easy
when he could, was witty and resourceful, and accepted the role
of comedian that seemed to be expected of him: frock coat, flat
derby, sagging knees with toes spread outward, and eloquent
shrugs and gestures.

The next little shop on the Square was the cobbler's, where
the brisk little Lancashireman, Henry Laws, toiled prodi-
giously, up to his waist in old misshapen shoes he turned out
like new, or as nearly as was possible. Shoes then, and especially
children's shoes, were worn until there was little left of the
original leather. They were soled and half-soled, sewn at the

79

Linden on the Saugus Branch

seams, patched, repatched and mended. Like so many men
who learned their trades in England, Mr. Laws was thorough
and proud of his workmanship. If he could not fix a boot or a
shoe, it could not be fixed. That was all there was to it. He
could make a pair of shoes by hand, starting from scratch. He
could start farther back than that, and shape a last, after meas-
uring and studying a foot. Mr. Wing, who liked to have every-
body happy, once ordered a pair of hand-made shoes from Mr.
Laws, to let the little Englishman show the town what he
could do, and the result was more than satisfactory. The only
trouble was that Mr. Laws put in so much time on the custom-
job that his little shop was piled high with shoes to be repaired
and dozens of customers had to wait, while the cobbler was
doing fancy stitching and holding his work to the light, in an
ecstasy of pardonable self -approbation. And when the custom-
shoes were finished, Mr. Laws would only charge eight dollars,
having used at least eighty dollars' worth of time. A few more
orders like that, and the cobbler would have gone out of busi-
ness, but those shoes for Mr. Wing were the high spot in Mr.
Laws' stay in America. He and his wife were so homesick that
it was painful to see them, and in the end, they went back,
with, let us hope, enough money earned and saved to see them
through a comfortable English old age.

The horse trough and public drinking fountain, with its
metal cup on a chain, stood on the northwest corner of the
crossroads, next to the little railroad "park." Across Lynn
Street, on the northeast corner, stood the big house, with the
enormous horse-chestnut tree in the yard, where Big Julie
Goan's mother kept a rooming house. The roomers were Big
Julie, who paid her room-rent and chipped in more, when it
was needed; Letty Ledbetter, the Canadian girl who worked
in Maplewood; Packard, J. J. Markham's clerk who never
passed up a skirt, regardless of age, looks, status, or previous

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Linden Square and Packard's Powders

condition of servitude; a huge grass widow named Martha
Loomis, who stayed in bed most of the time to keep herself
from eating, and every few weeks broke her self-imposed bonds
and went on an eating jag that became legendary all over the
countryside. When she could control herself, she went as far
as Young's Hotel in Boston before she started stuffing, but
sometimes she could make it only as far as the Massasoit House,
and after two or three days, during which Jeff Lee, eyes bulging
with wonder and hands trembling for fear she would die on
his hands, waited on her, hand and foot, and in the end, per-
suaded her to send to Doc Moody who, in extreme cases, had
to pump her out.

Mrs. Loomis was dearly loved by her fellow roomers and
the men and women around the Square and the Massasoit
House. She was serene, fat, good-natured to an incredible de-
gree, and as psychic as any clairvoyant or professional medium
could be. Serious-minded Christian business men, like George
Sampson, the second grocer, sat at her bedside and took her
advice on commodity investments. Mrs. Goan insisted that
whenever George Sampson called, after he was gone Mrs.
Loomis cried as if her heart would break, but the fat seeress
would never explain. Years later, when Sampson's only daugh-
ter died suddenly of pneumonia, and Mr. and Mrs. Sampson
were so paralyzed with grief that it looked for a while as if
neither could recover, Mrs. Loomis broke down and admitted
that whenever she had seen George Sampson she had seen a
shadowy figure of a dead young girl behind him. I submit this
for what it is worth. I know that Mrs. Loomis predicted that
a terrible disaster at sea was impending, before the Portland
went down. I know that she said, categorically, that Susie
Lowe, of Rockport, who came to us to keep house while Mother
was recovering from blood poisoning, and who had been stone-
deaf for thirty years, would one day suddenly recover her hear-

81

Linden on the Saugus Branch

ing again. That Susie did, on falling downstairs at the age of
sixty, is a matter of record.

Sometimes I thought Mrs. Loomis was one of the most beau-
tiful women I had ever seen, in spite of her bulk. She had
lovely dark-blue eyes, skin as white as a baby's, and a low and
well-modulated voice. She spoke of her absent daughters with
affection and understanding, and of her eating habits, which
made it necessary for them to maintain her at a distance, where
she would not hinder their chances for good marriages. I think
she would not have had things otherwise. She loved her com-
panions of the rooming house, and the Linden folks who
trusted her visions and relied on her advice. She accepted the
worship of Jeff Lee, as a queen might receive it, and permitted
him to remonstrate when he served her a whole keg of live
oysters, as a starter on one of her tremendous meals.

That her love life was not neglected was due to the warm-
hearted Packard, who was likely, on occasion, to be found in
any room, including Mrs. Goan's, from top to bottom of the
large rooming house. Anyway, that was what everybody said,
and Packard never denied it.

"Any man who's able, and refuses a lady, is no gent," Packard
said. "He's sure to wish, some day, that he hadn't been so
mean."

On the southeast corner of the Square, Dud Shultz pottered
around his dim little drug store, like a white mouse in a cage.
Next door was George Sampson's grocery, and set apart on a
small unfenced lot was the Chinese laundry.

The southwest corner, with an extensive frontage on Beach
Street and at right-angles on Lynn Street, also, was J. J. Mark-
ham's grocery, the largest in Linden, and farther south, ad-
jacent to it, were the hay scales and the wood and coal yard,
with storehouses for baled hay and sacks of grain.

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Linden Square and Packard's Powders

Beyond the coal yard was the Linden barber shop, Webb
Higginson, proprietor.

Before the year 1900, at which time J. J. Markham had a
telephone installed in his store, the second phone in Linden,
the first being in the residence of Norman Partridge, the dif-
ferent ways the four Linden grocers conducted their business
was the subject of much comment. Two or three times a week,
the grocers had to drive their wagons to Boston, for meat,
poultry, butter, cheese and eggs, fresh vegetables and other
perishable produce. Their staples were ordered from the
wholesale houses and delivered by wagon or freight.

The first up in the morning was George Sampson, who, be-
fore he went into business for himself, had been head clerk at
Markham's. George was a large solemn-faced man who took
himself and his work seriously. Before sunup in winter, and
not later than five o'clock in the morning in summer, George
would hitch up his two horses to the wagon or pung and start
out across the marsh toward Revere. He would pass through
Chelsea, and was prudent enough to look up the tides in the
Old Farmer's Almanac so he would not be likely to be delayed
by open drawbridges in Charlestown. Thus he would reach
Faneuil Hall, Boston's superb central market place, in time
to get the pick of the provisions.

Often he would have his wagon loaded aand be almost back
in Linden when he met Jim Puffer, his shiftless competitor,
on his way in, past midmorning. That was one reason why
Sampson succeeded and Puffer periodically failed and had to
be rescued by his wife's brother, Norman Partridge.

J. J. Markham, a chipper little man who handled the bulk of
Linden's trade in groceries, provisions, coal, wood, hay and
grain, could afford to stay in bed until nearly six o'clock, and
started off about seven, the days he drove to market. J. J. wore
a white linen duster down to his ankles, and a straw hat in his

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

store, the year round. He had a word to say to everybody, ad-
dressing all men as "Charley" and all the women as "Ma'am."
His manner was breezy, and while taking an order, filling it, or
totaling up bills, kept up a running fire of chatter, all inconse-
quential, almost like a barker in a county fair. Being the only
one who sold feed and fuel in town, nearly everyone traded
with him to that extent, but he did not like having Sampson
take away any of his grocery trade, and sometimes cut prices
on meat, or fresh vegetables. His special pride was his large,
commodious icebox, as big as the gate-tender's shack. He liked
to handle meat and was a skillful butcher. When he got back
from Boston with a load of meat, J. J. would peel off his over-
coat and hat, get back into his duster and straw, and help un-
load the carcasses of lamb and sides of beef, resting them on his
straw hat and holding the ankles in his hands. If his hat got
bloody, he would look at it fondly, and wipe the blood off on a
gunnysack of spuds or meal.

Like the other grocers, J. J. used small spuds as stoppers
over the spigots of the kerosene cans, so the kids would not
spill the kerosene on the way home and cause him to be ac-
cused of giving short measure.

The weights and measures in a grocery store of that epoch
were a sight to behold. Potatoes, turnips, parsnips, dried peas
and cracked corn, numerous articles that were fairly durable
and dry, were sold by the peck and half-peck. Cylindrical boxes
without tops were used for dry measure, graded in size from
the smallest, not six inches in diameter, to the bushel, as big
around as a military drum. Spring balances were used for meat,
platform scales for sacks of meal. It was several years later that
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts started taking an interest
in weights and measures, and sent inspectors to the local stores,
and up to the time of the first World War, this interference
with local business was resented deeply by the tradesmen, and

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Linden Square and Packard's Powders

most of their Linden customers agreed with them. The farther
away a seat of government was situated, the more the pre-war
New Englanders distrusted it, when any of its representatives
stuck their noses in local affairs.

Just after J. J. installed his telephone, the story got started
around Linden about Packard's powders, and never com-
pletely died down.

Packard, Markham's best clerk, as I have suggested, was
known far and wide as a ladies' man. Whenever a woman came
near him, Pack began to get a mischievous gleam in his eye. It
was quite clear what was foremost in his mind, but he said or
did nothing tangible to which any of them could take excep-
tion. In the mornings he stayed in the store, taking orders,
wrapping up the stuff he sold, or packing it in wooden boxes
for delivery in the afternoon. There were three kinds of women
in Linden. The larger group consisted of wives who were
faithful, and single women who were either unattractive or
unapproachable. Then there were several some married,
some single, some in their teens, others middle-aged and gray
who, everyone knew, were amenable to improper suggestions.
Most of these were attractive, with a merry zest for life and a
healthy disregard of consequences.

It was in the middle zone, between the two extremes, that
Packard seemed to be most active, among those housewives
and working girls who looked tempting but that the men were
never quite sure about. Packard never said a word about his
conquests or rebuffs. He enjoyed being noncommunicative,
and that helped him in his lusty avocation. Everybody in Lin-
den kidded Packard, but they never found out anything defi-
nite from him.

No one was sure how the story got started about Packard's
powders. The nature of them, the source of supply, the method
of application and the results were discussed, both facetiously

85

Linden on the Saugus Branch

and in earnest, for years. One of the tales was to the effect that
the secret came from an old Indian squaw, Ann Welcome, for
whom Black Ann's Corner was named. Black Ann's Corner,
where Lynn Street ran into Salem Street, near the stone quarry
and the Cliftondale line, was always a sinister spot because a
man named Herty had killed his housekeeper there with a
hatchet, in 1764. That was after Ann Welcome had lived
there. How the formula for the love powders was handed down
through nearly one hundred and fif ty years to Packard, was
never clearly explained. No Indians had lived in Linden since
that time.

Hen Richards, who gathered herbs and simples in the woods,
brewing them occasionally to keep himself healthy, was also
charged with having given the secret to Packard, in exchange
for a cigar box full of fishhooks.

Others insisted that Packard had a prescription, from some
doctor in Bangor, and that Dud Shultz filled it, secretly, in the
middle of the night.

The story I first heard was that Packard's powders were
white and tasteless, and that, while he was making his after-
noon deliveries, he sifted a few grains into the flour or sugar.
This tiny dose was said to make any woman so eager for a man
that the lightest touch would cause her to fall over backwards.

Packard's first stop, as he drove Markham's grocery wagon
up Beach Street from the Square was at Mr. Wing's apartment
house on the corner of Oliver Street. There he stopped and
chatted a long while with Mrs. Thole and Milly, mother and
youngest daughter, respectively, in a theatrical family whose
other members were nearly always on the road with their
famous puppets which had earned them an international
reputation. Mother and daughter were a handsome, lively pair
who might have passed for sisters. Milly was about fifteen, but
extraordinarily well-developed for her age, and her mother,

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Linden Square and Packard's Powders

who must have been over forty, was at the height of her beauty
and, at least ten months of the year, away from her husband.
All the time Packard was in there, and his horse and wagon
hitched outside, tongues were wagging, but neither the Tholes
nor Packard did anything to stop them. The local women, and
young girls, were somewhat in awe of Mrs. Thole and Milly
because they had been on the stage and Milly, in the last grades
of the Linden Grammar School, had a provocative, well-
rounded physique and assured manner that set her apart from
her schoolmates and put most of the teachers in the shade.

One of the Linden women on Packard's route was a good
friend of my mother's named Daisy Hoyt. Daisy was large and
buxom, with an hourglass figure, hair that was naturally curly,
and a complexion almost as clear as Mrs. Loomis'. She was a
widow, and a gay one, and contrived to have a pot of tea on
the stove when Packard came around. She always invited him
in, and he accepted. And when Mother would reproach her
mildly for giving people such a chance to gossip about her,
Daisy's eyes would light up and she would throw back her head
and laugh so heartily that Mother would be forced to smile.
On every street through which he drove, Packard was wel-
comed by three or four otherwise lonely women.

It was Mrs. Hoyt who told my mother what she had heard
about Packard's powders, and admitted, in order to aggravate
Mother, that sometimes after eating biscuits made from flour
that Packard had delivered, Daisy felt so kittenish that she put
on her best lace nightgown and waltzed with her pillow in the
moonlight.

Packard used to go to Dud Shultz's drugstore for his cigars
and pipe tobacco. When he noticed that the nervous little
druggist seemed to be uneasy whenever he showed up there,
Packard, always ready to be the instrument of harmless malice,
contrived to go in when no other customers were in the store.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

That made little Dud tremble and stutter. He miscounted the
change, grabbed for the wrong brands, and otherwise acted as
if he were on the verge of a nervous breakdown. This condi-
tion was aggravated if, as usually happened, once the word got
round, other men, mostly those from the Massasoit brother-
hood, would glance in at the windows while Packard was mak-
ing his purchases, find excuses to linger in the vicinity, would
nod, grimace and talk slyly with other passersby, making it
plain to the timorous Dud that his actions were under close
observation and were the source of subversive comment.

Packard, meanwhile, would take his time, bringing up all
odds and ends of conversation, pretending not to notice that
Dud was ready to cry or fly, acting as sociable and leisurely as
you please.

One evening, when a popular and free-spending travelling
man for Blackstone whiskey and assorted Crosse and Blackwell
relishes was at the Massasoit, a course of action was suggested
and agreed upon, the results of which came close to putting
poor Dud Shultz in hospital. Walt Robbins was the drummer's
name, and he was an old friend of my Uncle Reuben and the
Admiral. He made Linden about twice in three months, driv-
ing in from Chelsea, in the late afternoon, to give himself time
to make his calls and take Admiral Quimby's order, have one
of Jeff's famous suppers, tell stories around the bar or in the
back room after supper was over, and then settle down with
my incorrigible uncle, the proprietor, Mr. Wing, Dawson Free-
man and Doc Moody for a social game of poker that often
lasted until dawn, or later. That was a game in which, accord-
ing to Doc, everybody lost and nobody won. Any of the players,
if asked how he came out, would say that he lost a little, in the
long run, or that he was about even. In the case of my Uncle
Reuben and Dawson Freeman, the insurance man who had
married Deacon Clapp's oldest daughter, that resum of their

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Linden Square and Packard's Powders

luck was in the nature of mild boasting. Doc, himself, did man-
age to keep almost even. Admiral Quimby, as host, did not like
to take large amounts away from his guests. The game was table
stakes, with a quarter ante, Jacks or better to open, and a dollar
limit for a raise at one time.

Walt Robbins, although his losses could have been absorbed
in his expense account (the "swindle sheet" as he called it),
usually came out ahead, and Mr. Wing seldom won less than
ten or fifteen dollars, and sometimes collected as high as fifty
dollars a sitting. No one resented that, or let drop the faintest
suspicion that a gentleman of Mr. Wing's presence would have
cheated. He was competent and lucky, besides.

"Some men hold cards and others don't," my Uncle Reuben
said. And he added, with a rueful smile: "I'm one who don't."

"You could find better uses for your money than paying for
those other rounders' rum and loose women," said my Great-
Uncle Lije.

Aunt Carrie, who never had any accurate idea of the family
finances, accepted the fiction that the men did not play for
money, but she thought it was wicked to play cards at all, that
there was something inherently evil in pasteboards covered
with hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs, kings, aces, queens and
jacks. Like most of the stricter Congregationalists, she would
not have a pack of cards in her house. My own mother relented
concerning cards, for harmless nongambling games like Casino
or Hearts, a year or two before I graduated from high school.

It was one of those cool, invigorating evenings in the fall,
when the air was crisp, the smell of burning leaves hung faintly
in the air, when Jeff felt most like cooking and his steady cus-
tomers felt most like eating, that it was decided at the Massasoit
to postpone the poker game and utilize the presence of Walt
Robbins for a practical joke on Dud Shultz. Whether Packard,
himself, was in on it or not is a question that never can be

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determined. Packard's inner life was a closed book to every-
body. So was his outer life, except those phases of it that
could be observed from the Linden sidewalks.

It was a fact, nevertheless, that on the afternoon before
Walt and his fellow-conspirators called on Dud, Packard had
gone into the drugstore and had asked Dud for some memory
pills, which he swore he had seen among the Humphrey's
Specifics, somewhere between Numbers i and 80.

"I've had a hard time rememberin' who wants Pettijohn's
and who asks for Force, over that dratted telephone," Packard
said. "Not once, since I was a boy, have I forgot an order
when somebody gave it to me, face-to-face. The minute I
pick up that darn machine, all the wits go out of my head.
They tell me a few of them memory pills will fix all that."

"I assure you, Mr. Packard, I never heard of any pills like
that," Dud answered nervously. Little by little, in spite of
himself, Packard was edging him nearer the prescription
shelves and counter.

"You got Humphrey's Specifics, haven't you?" Packard
asked.

In desperation, the jittery little druggist started taking bot-
tles of pills from their compartments in the case containing
the famous specifics, glancing at the labels, and shaking his
head. His fingers grew moist and his hands began to tremble,
so that he dropped pills on the floor, and put them back in the
wrong compartments. Outside, on the sidewalk, watching and
nodding wisely, were Hal Kingsland, Gimp Crich, the old
sailor, Ruth Coffee, young Frigger Bacigalupo, and Spike
Dodge, the Linden cop.

To add to Dud's consternation, Packard offered to go
around behind the counter and help the druggist look for
what was wanted. This was against the rules, and the last thing

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Linden Square and Packard's Powders

Dud wanted at the time, but Packard suited the action to the
word and soon was scrutinizing the mysteriously labelled jars,
bottles and drawers, as if his life depended on it. Finally,
Packard found something he said he wanted, and the watchers
on the sidewalk saw Dud wrap up a package and saw Packard
shove it into his pocket, paying for it with coins from his
leather purse. Packard emerged from the drugstore, not seem-
ing to pay attention to the men assembled on the sidewalk,
and, with a casual nod to them collectively, went about his
business in the grocery store.

Hal Kingsland and Gimp Crich, after giving Dud a little
time to get more excited and rattled, went into the drugstore,
and headed straight for the prescription counter.

"What was that you just sold Packard?" asked Kingsland.

Dud was in a panic. "I don't know. I. don't remember," he
said.

"Come out of it," said Hal, still good-naturedly. "Ain't this
pharmacy a public place?"

"Can't any citizen get service here?" Crich asked. "I've been
to more'n half the seaports all over the world, an* I ain't never
seen nothing like that. A store that sells to one man, and not
to another."

"I'll sell you anything you ask for, if the law allows it,"
Dud began.

"Ah," said Hal Kingsland. "Is Packard a privileged charac-
ter, who gets stuff here that's unlawful?"

The door opened, causing a rusty bell to jangle in the back
room, and my Uncle Reuben came in, ostensibly to buy me
some candy. When he was flush, he was always doing that.
When he was broke, he charged it, with a grand, irresistible
air.

. "Reuben. Did you ever hear tell of anything like that?
Packard, next door, comes in and buys some powders, or what-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

ever it is he gets here. Gimp and me come in, right after, and
Dud, here, won't sell us none," Hal asked and stated, in an
injured tone of voice.

"That don't sound like the Dud I've known all these years,"
Uncle Reuben said. "He's always been on the level, as far
as I'm concerned, and I don't like to have anybody say any-
thing to the contrary."

"Mr. Paul, I really don't remember. Mr. Packard came in
here for something something about his memory we looked
for what he wanted, couldn't find it, then he saw something
else he wanted, handed it over to me, I saw the price on it,
accepted the money and wrapped it up. I was so confused,
with him behind the counter, which is against the rules of the
State Board, that I didn't notice what I was doing." The little
druggist addressed this, appealingly, to my Uncle Reuben.

"Do I get what I asked for, or don't I?" Hal Kingsland per-
sisted, eyeing Dud as a tomcat looks at a cornered mouse.

"If Packard'll tell you what it is," Dud Shultz said earnestly.

"Fat chance a fellow's got of getting anything out of
Packard," Hal said disgustedly.

"He don't volunteer no information. Never has," said the
sailor, Gimp Crich. He turned and beckoned to Hal. "Come
on. We're wasting our time in here. We got to go higher up."

"Gentlemen," implored Shultz. "I'm doing the best I can.
No one has ever entered a complaint"

"Think it over, why don't you? Give Dud another chance,"
my Uncle Reuben said. He turned to Dud, and grew con-
fidential. "You know, Dud. A lot of the men with restless wives
and growin' daughters have been gettin' good and scared.
They say that Packard has been feedin' the womenfolk some
kind of medicine that makes 'em itch where it's risky to scratch.
And some folks say you put the stuff up for him. Mr. Weeks
told the cop that it was getting so he couldn't figure on more

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Linden Square and Packard's Powders

than half a crop from his best hayfields, the grass gets flattened
so."

"I don't know a thing about any such medicine," Dud said,
plaintively.

"Then you think it may be somebody else who's peddling
this Spanish fly, or whatever it is?" my uncle asked.

"I've heard nothing about it," Dud said, uneasily.

"Got your doctor's book handy?" my uncle asked.

Reluctantly, the druggist got out his worn Pharmacopoeia.
My uncle frowned and pawed the leaves, turning them slowly
over and peering at the contents. This time, Admiral Quimby,
Harry Weeks, Charley Clapp, Big Julie Goan and Ginger Mc-
Sweeney peered in, then winked at one another significantly.

"Mmmmm. Aphro . . . Aphrodisiacs. Isn't that what you
call 'em?" asked Uncle Reuben.

"I don't know. I've never had call for them. Of course, some
of the drugs may be in stock. I don't know." Dud reached
anxiously for the book.

"You know pretty well what's in stock," my Uncle Reuben
said. Then, to me. "Come on, nephew." He stocked me gen-
erously with candy, then asked me to stop in on my way home
to tell his wife, Aunt Carrie, that he had some business to
talk over that night, at the hotel, and wouldn't be home to
supper. As we left the store, I knowing that Aunt Carrie would
receive the message resignedly but sadly, Uncle Reuben took a
parting shot at the already demoralized Dud.

"I'd be extra careful, if I were you," my uncle said.

Poor Dud was already wringing his hands and was ready to
cry. He knew of .what activities, from one end of town to the
other, Packard was suspected. Nothing could be farther out-
side Dud's range of character than to have a part in such
projects. It was never clear in his mind whether Packard's
magic compound or elixir worked only in Packard's favor, or

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

had a general effect on womankind. As a graduate pharmacist,
he felt sure the whole story was based on myths and hearsay,
with no foundation in chemistry, physiology or fact. Psy-
chology was a study no serious or practical man had any time
or use for. It was plain common sense, applied to human
nature, and he was afraid he had very little of either. He felt
insecure and almost nonexistent, with no margin, physically,
financially or socially. If his store became unpopular, and
people in Linden suspected him, he was finished. He had no
hope of being able to establish himself elsewhere, or to get
work in a busy city pharmacy, where the pace already was too
swift for him. Druggists, lately, were expected to deal with
all kinds of innovations, such as developing and printing plates
and prints for camera enthusiasts.

Just before closing time, which was eight o'clock, Dud was
informed by another of Markham's clerks, a serious-minded
owl-like young man named Evans, that he was "wanted" on
the phone. This method of communicating with the druggist
was very rare, and Dud had never got used to it. If the glib
and progressive Packard had trouble with his memory, when
a telephone was brought into play, Dud became quite hys-
terical. In case a doctor was giving him an emergency prescrip-
tion, Dud checked and rechecked each item and amount until
he was blue in the face.

"This is Inspector Chatham, of the State Board," said a gruff
and pompous male voice.

"Yes. Yes. Inspector, you said," mumbled Shultz, before he
let the receiver slip from his hands. When he had retrieved
it and held it again to his ear, teeth chattering, the Voice said:

"You won't be leaving town this evening, will you, Mr.
Shultz?"

"No. I'll be home," Dud promised. He felt sick and dizzy,
too frightened to react.

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Linden Square and Packard's Powders

*Td like to have a talk with you, and look around," the
Voice said.

The little druggist could not answer. He still clutched the
receiver, looking fearfully to see whether the late clerk, Evans,
was hearing what had been said. A harsh click grated in Dud's
ear. He held on a moment longer, fearfully, then replaced the
receiver on the hook. Evans, who was sweeping in a distant
corner, having locked the doors for the night, came over and
let Dud out into the air, where the little man gasped.

"Somebody sick?" asked Evans.

"No . . . That is . . . I don't know," stammered Dud and
fled into his drugstore. He turned down the lamps and blew
them out, shuddering in the darkness, and crawled up the back
stairs to his quarters above. There, without supper, or light,
he waited, his mind fluttering back over everything he had
done or failed to do in recent years, in some instances as far
back as his childhood.

There had been a few occasions when men, and a very few
women, had confided in him that some friend, never anyone
with whom they were directly concerned, was "in trouble" and
had begged him for something that would save the unlucky ones
from disaster and their families from disgrace. Invariably Dud
had told them he knew nothing about such remedies, that he
could give out nothing without a doctor's prescription, and
that he knew of no doctor who would handle such a case.
All of these statements were true, but to be approached in
such a way left him uneasy for weeks. His accounts he kept as
best he could, but he was so inept that they were seldom, if
ever, in order. No one had questioned his conduct of his little
business before. He knew of no one he could ask for comfort
or advice.

He did not know that a delegation from the Massasoit had
watched him from the waiting room in the depot as he had

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

scurried into Markham's store, in response to the summons to
the telephone, had seen him return, douse the lamps in his
drugstore, and had noticed, with amused satisfaction, that
he had not lighted the lamp in his quarters upstairs.

At the same time, at the Massasoit bar, Walt Robbins was
being rigged out as "Inspector Chatham." He was equipped
with an official-looking notebook, and wrapped in a black In-
verness cape which would have qualified him for the role of
villain in any melodrama. On his upper lip had been glued a
pair of black handlebar moustaches. Hal Kingsland had lent
Walt a silver badge which had been issued to Hal as deputy
fireman.

About nine o'clock, "Inspector Chatham" appeared in Lin-
den Square, descending from a horsecar which he had boarded
only two hundred yards away, in front of the Massasoit. He
stood under the street lamp in the Square, one of the few
of which Linden then boasted, took ostentatiously from under
his cape a scroll of paper on which was a ribbon and a seal,
peered at the signs on the various shops and stores, located
the drugstore, and crossed the Square to Dud Shultz' door-
way, where he pressed the night bell. All this, Dud had seen,
cowering inside his unlighted window.

After a pause, the "Inspector" pressed the bell again, more
peremptorily. Dud, more dead than alive, pushed up one of
his windows.

"Who's there?" he croaked.

"Ah. Mr. Shultz. It's the Inspector. Could you come down
and let me in?"

Dud descended, and took in the ominous details of the
big man's cloaked figure. The "Inspector" was affable in the
extreme.

"Sorry to intrude at this time of night. Pressure of official
business, you understand," he said.

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Linden Square and Packard's Powders

"Wwwhat can I do for you, sir?" Dud answered.

"I'll just take a look around," the "Inspector" said. "A
routine matter."

He had to help Dud unlock the door of the drugstore, but
he stepped back with exaggerated politeness and insisted that
the little man precede him into the store.

"Shall we have a light?" the "Inspector" suggested. He had
to help with the sulphur matches and the lampshade. Once
the lamp was lighted, and the kerosene flame began to pene-
trate the dimness, the "Inspector" seemed to forget that Dud
was there. He made himself at home, going straight to the
prescription counter and the shelves containing drugs and solu-
tions. Every now and then, as he peered at a label, he let out
a learned "Hmmmmm" or an "Ahhhh." He looked behind the
jars and bottles, took up the prescription record book, and
in his own notebook made notations.

Dud hovered around, expecting to be denounced or hand-
cuffed at any moment, but nothing happened except that the
preoccupied "Inspector" looked at him sharply, from under
his heavy eyebrows and stroked carefully the handlebar mous-
taches.

"Is anything wrong?" asked Dud, unable to bear the strain
any longer.

"A mere formality," the "Inspector" said. "There's been
quite a lot of illicit traffic in aphrodisiacs. Indeed, sir, what
amounts to a veritable crime wave. The Board is taking
steps. . . ."

Disarmingly, the "Inspector" turned on Dud and fixed him
with a fishy eye, made colder by a rather twisted smile. "By
the way, Mr. Shultz. Did you happen to know a young man
called Packard or Pickhard hereabouts?"

"You mean Packard?" asked Dud, his heart beating so hard
he could not swallow.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Ah! Precisely. . . ." The "Inspector" fixed Dud with his
piercing eye again, his head cocked on one side, like a macaw's.
"A customer of yours?"

"He comes in now and then . . . For tobacco and cigars.
Quincy cigars and Mayo's cut plug," said Dud.

"Was he here today?"

"I think so. Yes. This afternoon."

"For cigars and tobacco?"

"No. He wanted some . . . memory pills ... I think he
called them," Dud said. "I assure you, sir, I had never heard
of them."

"So he went away empty-handed?" persisted the "Inspec-
tor."

"No. He took a box of pills. I ... I'm not sure what they
were."

"He stole an unspecified box of pills, am I to understand?
Come, sir. You must be candid."

"That isn't what I mean. He paid for them. One of
Humphrey's Specifics, I believe. They're all priced the same, so
I didn't notice the number," Dud said, trying to keep his knees
from knocking.

At that moment, Admiral Quimby, my Uncle Reuben, Hal
Kingsland and Mr. Wing appeared. They tried the door. It was
unlocked. All four of them came in.

"Good-evening, Dud. What keeps you so late. . . ." the
Admiral asked. Then he seemed to notice the "Inspector" for
the first time and mumbled, "I beg your pardon."

"I'm Inspector Chatham, gentlemen. Of the State Board,"
the big man said.

"Maybe we ought to come back another time," Hal Kings-
land said.

"By no means. By no means. I'm about finished with my
inspection," but as the four customers edged Dud toward the

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Linden Square and Packard's Powders

cigar counter and started looking over the familiar brands,
the "Inspector" went over to the case of Humphrey's Specifics,
closed the glass door, latched it, and took the whole case under
his arm.

"I shall have to take these for analysis. You'll hear from
me again," he said, and strode from the store.

The four conspirators were all sympathy and curiosity.

"Nothing wrong, I hope?" asked my Uncle Reuben.

"What was that he took away? Did he give you a receipt?"

"Who is he?" Mr. Wing asked.

"Did he ask about anyone in particular?" inquired the
Admiral.

Dud Shultz, at the end of his feeble endurance, sank down
into a cane-seated chair and began to cry, almost soundlessly.
The others looked at one another, a little shamefacedly, and
started away.

"Don't let these officers push you around," Mr. Wing said.
"We'll all stand by you."

"But I haven't done a thing," Dud quavered.

"We none of us are perfect. Buck up, and let us know if
there's anything we can do to square you. The 'courts go easy
on a first offense," said the Admiral. And leaving Dud to dry
his eyes and try to pull himself together, they left the drug-
store.

Two days later, the case of Humphrey's Specifics was received
at the Linden depot, from Boston, addressed to Mr. Dudley R.
Shultz, without a word of explanation.

A fortnight later, Ginger McSweeney appeared in the drug-
store, on a Saturday evening just before closing time, when
the store, except for Ginger and the proprietor, was empty,
took Dud cautiously aside, pulled out a ten-dollar bill, and
said:

"Look, Dud. We're all wise to you. I'll give you ten bucks,

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

no questions asked, for just one shot of that stuff you furnished
Packard, to stir up the women. I swear by all the Holy Saints
Til never tell a soul."

For two days af terward, Dud stayed upstairs in bed, without
opening the store.

100

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Passing of the Balm of Gilead Tree

LlNDEN, before the days of the Puritans, was a sheltered
and isolated area in the hunting-grounds of some Indian tribes
who found protection from depredations by the powerful
Five Nations in the rigors of the coastal climate and the natural
advantages of a location where forest, meadowlands, and teem-
ing marshes joined together. Soon after the white settlers
came, in the early pan of the seventeenth century, most of
the native Indians died of measles, to which they had built
up no resistance, and the others migrated north, to the dense
wilderness of Maine, for a few years more of grace.

Those original inhabitants, if they could have returned to
peer over the rim of northern hills at the turn of the twentieth
century, would have recognized the fields sloping downward
from the woods to the winding creek bed, the higher ground,
comparatively flat, on which the town was built, and two
great natural landmarks, the granite ledge that stood like
Gibraltar to shield Black Ann's Corner, at the northeastern
extremity of Linden, and the giant Balm of Gilead tree in the
shade of which our house had been built.

There had been an intermediate stage in Linden's develop
ment, between the epoch of the redskins and the settlement of
commuters from Boston and Lynn, small tradesmen and shop-
keepers, and day laborers who liked to raise their families
away from noisy city streets, and were described collectively

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

as Ward 6, Precinct 2, of Maiden. Between 1630 and 1830,
what later became Linden was covered by three or four large
truck and dairy farms. One of these, the homestead of which
stood on the site of the old Clapp mansion, included all the
central part of Linden, and the Balm of Gilead tree, and when
at noon, or during light showers, the farm hands and team-
sters gathered together they found shade beneath its branches
and lint for their wounds.

The first and only industry in Linden came a little later,
when a Boston firm of contractors started working Black Ann's
quarry for building and foundation stone.

When Newburyport, about twenty miles northeast of Lin-
den, developed a flourishing commerce by sea, and needed a
connection with Boston, the Newburyport Turnpike, one
of the first toll roads in New England, cut back of Linden,
through the woods, emerging at the clearing where later the
Broadway carbarns were put up, and continuing through
Everett to Boston. The Everett section of the Turnpike, when
that municipality was ready to take it over, was given the im-
pressive title of "Broadway." The Turnpike always marked
Linden's western border.

While Clapp's farm on one side, and Squire's broad acres in
Revere, were still undivided, the grove of horse chestnuts and
poplars on the high land that bordered the marsh attracted the
builder of the Massasoit House.

All the Linden streets, as they were laid out later, had
reference to these three landmarks, the granite ledge, the
Balm of Gilead, and the grove below the Square. The horsecar
tracks followed Salem Street down from Maiden, and cut
through Beadi Street toward Crescent Beach and southward
to Boston, and Beach Street had been a lane that was shaded
by the Balm of Gilead tree. When the Saugus Branch of the

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The Passing of the Balm of Gilead Tree

Boston and Maine brought steam trains through Linden, the
right-of-way was chosen because it then was the southern and
eastern boundaries of the community; but the railroad was
obliged to swerve and cut off Linden Square from the rest
of the town in order to avoid the swampland and quicksand
of the marsh, or else to purchase the land on which the
stores and shops stood and which, therefore, was the most ex-
pensive.

It may appear that in all this planning from without,
Linden's convenience was little considered, but someone, or
some group of men, did Linden a service that almost to this
day has set it apart from other suburban communities. Along
all the principal streets, when they were first surveyed or
broadened from primitive lanes, shade trees in double files
were set out, and these trees gave Linden its scenic distinction,
unifying and blending the effect of the houses, haphazardly
matched, budding with new life in the spring, shimmering
and whispering in summer, in the autumn all colors from buff
and pale yellow to the richest crimson and purple, in winter
asserting darkly all their fundamental grace and patterns
against the sleet and snow.

East and west on Beach Street were perfect linden trees,
spaced in a way that was dignified and orderly, but not un-
pleasantly symmetrical. Maples lined Lawrence and Oliver
Streets. Elms marked the course of Elm Street, and sturdy
horse chestnuts guarded Clapp Street.

Most of the men and women who lived in Linden fifty years
ago are now elsewhere. Quite a few of the trees have re-
mained. What is known as "Greater Boston" has leaked out
over the area; broad traffic arteries have spread tentacles this
way and that. The streetcar tracks have been abandoned, mak-
ing way for buses. I assume that Linden still gets the old
damaged ones and they seldom run on time. The Saugus

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

Branch is used no more for passengers, and only in emergencies
for freight. Heavy trucks have made it obsolete.

The granite quarry is still in use, busier than ever, and
shows no signs that its boundless supply of rock will be ex-
hausted in another long century. The eruption that hurled its
molten mass through the crust of the continent antedates
the Indians by millions of years.

Since in 1900 the Balm of Gilead tree was twelve feet in
diameter, with a spread of more than two hundred feet, it
was then at least four hundred years old, and probably more,
and must have stood between what later became Beach Street
and our own front yard when Columbus set out from Spain.

Linden, between Revolutionary days and 1900, had passed
through what has been rarest in American history, and what
promises to be rarer still, a century of easy, uninterrupted de-
velopment where changes grew imperceptibly, like trees, main-
taining the community's form and shape on a slowly expanding
scale. The horse had helped do the work and furnish the
transportation, and still was predominant. Men who did not
like to work for wages had small businesses of their own, and
got along fairly well. Great fortunes had been made, the names
of J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and John Jacob
Astor were bandied about in the newspapers and magazines,
and there were a few Massachusetts millionaires not well
known locally. The trusts were talked of as a bugaboo, but
Linden men were mostly conservative, and believed that the
smart successful men knew what they were doing and that the
country was safe in their hands.

The disappearance of sailing vessels from the seas and New
England shipyards hit many of the coastal cities very hard, but
navigation from the Atlantic to Linden was so difficult that
not more than a half-dozen Linden men would attempt it, and
then only in small craft that drew four feet or less of water*

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The Passing of the Balm of Gilead Tree

Chain stores had not yet stifled competition in Linden, al-
though there was talk about them. Electricity was not in gen-
eral use for light and power. The daily life of a Linden man
was not essentially different than it had been at the time of the
War of 1812, and while a few Linden men had fought on the
Union side in the Civil War, and the feeling against the Rebels
was practically unanimous, the community had suffered little,
and had gone on through the war years almost as if the struggle
were taking place in another country. In our family, the Civil
War brought about one of the series of misfortunes that made
my mother's life so sad. Her brother, George W. Dowsett, con-
tracted tuberculosis in an army camp, and died later out West
as a result.

The Spanish-American War had been accepted in Linden
without much understanding, had been soon over and Amer-
ica's part in it had been served up to the inhabitants and school
children of Linden with such a patriotic gloss that it was con-
sidered a minor triumph, the consequences of which in Cuba
and the Philippines were turning out to be a nuisance. Much
more interest was shown in the fight the Boers were making
against the British, and the dozen English families in Linden,
including those of the cobbler, the Hobart twins, and Tom
Craven, proprietor of Associate Hall, had a hard time try-
ing to defend the British policy against their neighbors who,
without wishing to hurt them, rejoiced openly in every British
setback. That, no doubt, was a result of the extremely anti-
British text of the school books from which the Linden folks
had learned what little most of them knew about history.

I was born and lived nine years in the shade of Linden's
Balm of Gilead tree, which was the most remarkable tree in
a community which, without its trees and life-loving indi-
vidualists, would have had nothing whatever to set it apart. I
thought of our house and the giant tree as a unit, of which the

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

Balm of Gilead was by far the most important part. I waited for
the snow to thaw and expose its great roots that sprawled across
the sidewalk and tripped unwary passers-by. I could smell the
fragrance as the sap began to stir and the buds appeared, to
lengthen into catkins which carpeted the whole area, more
than six thousand square feet, beneath its branches. That they
also clogged the gutters of our house and covered the roof and
porch roof and front lawn did not trouble me at all, although
it seemed to bother my mother and my older brother, Charles.

From the ground, it was impossible to climb the trunk of the
tree, but I had a way of getting up among the boughs and
branches by letting myself out of a front bedroom window on
the second story, sliding cautiously down the porch roof, and
swinging my body over the nearest bough. In this way, I spent
much time concealed by the foliage as I watched the traffic up
and down Beach Street and in and out of our neighbors' yards
and houses.

Hour after hour I watched the shadow of that tree over dust
and leaves, and puddles after rain, as it revolved and turned
and changed its shape, extent, and details. I was excited by the
polished new green of the leaves in May, how they developed
and expanded, and the hues of green grew more mature and
deeper, to turn buff and brown and yellow and the color of
eggshells and ashes in the fall.

The first rumor that I heard to the effect that "the city of
Maiden" intended to cut the Balm of Gilead down was while
men were putting up poles at regular intervals along Beach
Street that were to support guy-wires for an overhead trolley,
so that the horsecars could be replaced by electric cars. I knew
what electric cars were, and how badly they smelled of brass
and oxides, having ridden on them in Boston. Most of the
communities around Linden had been served by electric cars
a few years before the company got around to converting the

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The Passing of the Balm of Gilead Tree

Linden lines. I did not believe what I had heard until I asked
my family about it, and by doing so threw my grandmother,
Mrs. Sarah J. Dowsett, into such a temper that she had a heart
attack and almost died. This distracted our attention for a
while, until the doctor came and quieted the staunch old lady
with sedatives and pronounced her out of immediate danger.

As soon as my grandmother was able to talk, she began pro-
testing and remonstrating again, and insisted that Charles, who
was running for the Maiden City Council, do something to
stop the outrage. My mother, mild and tactful, tried to point
out the advantages that would result if the tree were removed.
No more leaking roof and clogged gutters,. no more raking
catkins from the yard or having carpets ruined by sticky fallen
buds tracked inside. My grandmother's dark eyes flashed, her
stern eyebrows were knit and her jaw was set. Everybody in
the family knew what that meant Grandmother did not set
her will against all comers very often, but when she did, noth-
ing in heaven or on earth could move her. She reduced my
timid but courageous mother to the status of a child again.
Charles, who as head of the family, the student, breadwinner,
youngest candidate for the Maiden City Council, never argued
with our grandmother. She was well read, up-to-date and
educated, too, and had seen more of life.

Strange to say, of one with such a vacillating nature, I, from
boyhood, have shown streaks of determination, or obstinacy,
if you wish, at variance with everything that was expected of
me. Always such a tendency in me would be traced to Grand-
mother Dowsett, and through her to her father, referred to in
the family as "Pa Tarr."

I had been badly shaken by the news that predatory in-
terests had designs on my tree, for I thought of that Balm of
Gilead not only as my own, but standing for everything in
America's development and Linden's history that I could ad-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

mire. To find that I had an ally in Grandmother Dowsett gave
me a little hope, and our household was split into two camps,
with Mother and Charles quite reconciled to the loss of the
Balm of Gilead, and Grandmother and I implacable.

Uncle Reuben, when the affair came to his attention, put
up quite a lot of money at the Massasoit bar.

"If Sarah Dowsett says no, that tree will stand there just as
long as she lives," my uncle said.

"What do individuals amount to now?" asked the Admiral.
"The big railroads and streetcar lines and trusts ride rough-
shod over all of us."

"Not Sarah Dowsett, they don't," Uncle Reuben said.

It was not long before my grandmother had plenty of sup-
porters. I can hardly remember any question that arose on
which Linden was so sharply divided. Mary Stoddard, the
old maid who lived with her mother in the little house across
the street from us, went to the Mayor's office in Maiden Center,
shook her fist in his face and said that he, or any man who
would touch that tree, should be drawn and quartered.

The Mayor, of course, pretended to know nothing of the
matter, and promised to get in touch with the officials of the
streetcar company. Meanwhile, Mary Stoddard tramped from
one end of Linden to the other with a petition to the board
of aldermen and city council, demanding that they take action
to prevent the destruction of Linden's most remarkable land-
mark and natural monument.

Dawson Freeman, the young insurance man who had mar-
ried Mattie Clapp and moved to Linden from the city, drama-
tizing that nine-mile migration as a return to the land and
sound American values (although he took the steam train
back and forth each day to continue his insurance business),
warmed to the conflict with his customary vigor, eloquence

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The Passing of the Balm of Gilead Tree

and energy. He put the proposition so forcefully that the
Partridges, Clapps and several of his immediate and well-to-do
neighbors donated enough money to hire Associate Hall for
a mass meeting.

To all the initial protests the street railway company was
indifferent. The city had given the company a franchise. In
order to string poles and wires along the streets where the
cars were to pass, it was necessary to clear the way. Wherever
it was feasible, trees, branches and foliage were spared. The
Balm of Gilead on Beach Street was an obstacle to traffic and
progress that, in the interest of modern transportation, must be
sacrificed.

The Maiden politicians and editors were against the big
tree, on the ground that it had no definite historical or literary
associations, like the Washington Elm in Cambridge, or Long-
fellow's "spreading chestnut tree/' It was merely a big tree,
and of little public benefit to Linden as a whole, since it shaded
only one of the houses.

Associate Hall was crowded on the evening of the protest
meeting and, disregarding the doctor's warnings, my grand-
mother sat with the rest of us on the hard wooden settee, nod-
ding and grunting agreement with the speakers on our side
(hers and mine) and showing signs of contempt and disgust
when the opposition had the floor. For the first time she was
pleased with the Reverend K. Gregory Powys, who came out
flat-footedly in favor of retaining the tree. The Reverend
Powys quoted Thoreau, who had warned his countrymen
against worship of material improvements and astounding in-
ventions, without regard to their possible effect upon the spirit.
Luckily for all of us, that detestable jingle setting forth that
only God could make trees had not then been written. Never-
theless, the Reverend Powys pleaded that it was a pity, after
one of God's majestic creations had stood as a symbol of Lin-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

den for a longer time than the Republic had then endured, to
destroy it in the interests of a company that was chartered by
the cities and towns and allowed to make money for its stock-
holders by using the public thoroughfares without charge.
The course of Beach Street, the Reverend Powys said, had been
determined by man alone, and who was to say that it could
not be turned to the right or the left, to leave intact a thing
of beauty and a joy for centuries.

Admiral Quimby said he was pleased to find himself for
once on the side of the cloth.

"Should any man come to me and ask, 'Admiral, which do
you value highest, your chestnut trees or your hostelry?', I
should answer: 'Which, kind sir, could you replace in my life-
time?' "

Dawson Freeman brought tears to the eyes of many of the
women when he arose, and throwing back his proudly shaped
head, let his voice out, then dropped it low.

"I defer in this matter," he said, "to the mother of my
children."

With a sweep of his hand he indicated the astonished Mat-
tie, ne Clapp, who had already produced Lincoln, Walcott
and Marian, and was well started on a fourth whose name
was to be Gladstone.

"While men are in the marts of toil, the patient women
they leave behind, at home, each morning, have much to do
and little to distract them. Is there one of these, our mothers,
wives, sisters, daughters, sweethearts, who has not paused in
reverence to behold that tree, or rested in its shade? Whose
is Linden? Is it the property of the men who return to it eve-
nings, or of those who spend their days and years within its
borders? We try to beautify our homes. There is none so poor
among us who has not made some effort to relieve the mo-
notony of his humble walls, and none so rich that he has not

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The Passing of the Balm of Gilead Tree

halted by the roadside to pick a wild rose from a crumbling
stone wall and look at it with gratitude and wonder.

"Strip Linden of its noblest tree? Demolish what is most
ancient in Linden and by more generations than we can count
has been beloved? For whom? To relieve a soulless corporation
of a little expense. Cannot electric wires be protected by in-
sulation? I move, Mr. Chairman, that a resolution be adopted
and copies of the same be forwarded to the members of our
city government, to the effect that it is the wish of a majority
of the residents and voters of Ward 6, Precinct 2, that the Balm
of Gilead tree near Number 63 Beach Street, be preserved in
its present condition and that the street railway company be
required to find other ways and means, without removing the
said tree, to install trolley wires!"

The prudent members of the community were always the
same, and included the richest man in Linden. Norman
Partridge, Deacons Harper, Plummer and Clapp of the Con-
gregational Church, Mr. Weeks, the milkman, my Great-
Uncle Elijah, and my brother Charles. There were many more
who nodded and clucked in their favor but seldom spoke. The
conservatives had most of their strength in the newly formed
Linden Improvement Association, whose president, Francis
Newcomb, was one of Charles' most influential supporters. I
could see that Charles was suffering, in a quiet way, what with
Grandmother Dowsett sitting at his right, erect and stern, feet
planted firmly on the splintered floor, and everywhere through-
out the Hall the quiet, careful men who looked to him for
their kind of leadership in the rising generation.

Mr. Newcomb said a few words in praise of Dawson Free-
man's resolution and Dawson's good intention, and compli-
mented the Reverend Powys on his civic spirit, but he asked
that a committee be appointed, with representatives of the
new association among the members, to confer with the city

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

government and the street railway officials and report in the
public press. To my surprise and dismay, Dawson Freeman's
resolution was tabled and Mr. Newcomb's motion carried,
with a safe majority. I slowly realized that everyone had come
to the meeting with his or her mind made up, and that all
the oratory, while relished as such, did not sway the vote
one way or the other.

Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech was only four years old then,
and how many times I had heard the Admiral quote it, with
local variations:

"The man who is employed for wages is as much a business-
man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as
much a businessman as the corporation counsel in a great
metropolis; the merchant in Linden Square is as much a busi-
nessman as the frenzied financier on State Street . . ."

Bryan had lost in 1896 and was losing again in 1900. And
most of the men I liked best in Linden had been heart and
soul for Bryan. I began to suspect that most of the causes for
which I felt strongly would not prevail, and it bewildered me.

My grandmother was indignant because of the action of
the mass meeting, but not depressed.

"Those men think they can whisper : anything to death/*
she said. "We'll see."

The local paper began printing editorials about progress,
of how fortunate the community was to be served with modern
conveniences for the same five-cent fare that hitherto pur-
chased a ride at a snail's pace behind a pair of spavined and
sway-backed nags. When the Linden committee's report was
published, it was what I had expected. The tree, according
to tree experts, was very old and could not stand forever.
The century, with its electrical wonders, was young. The
expense of curving Beach Street around it would be prohibi-
tive, since it would necessitate filling in a part of Weeks* field

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The Passing of the Balm of Gilead Tree

to a depth of four to six feet. In time of storm, if the highly
charged wires were broken by swaying branches, danger and
death might result. And if the street railway company was re-
quired to change its plans and estimates according to the whim
of each property owner along the right-of-way, it would not
be possible to operate on a five-cent fare, and still pay divi-
dends to the stockholders, many of whom were widows and
orphans with no other security than the investments of their
dear-departed.

My grandmother read the paper grimly, and did not rant or
collapse. Instead, while Mother watched with misgivings, the
old lady went straight to the writing desk in the sitting room,
took her pen in hand, and wrote a letter. She did not tell
Mother to whom she was writing, nor let Mother see the
address. Later, when Grandmother had retired in her upstairs
room, she tapped on the floor with her cane, the signal for me
to go up and see what she wanted. It was part of Grandmother's
eccentricity that she was extremely partial to me, while other
members of the family and all the neighbors found Leslie and
Charles more sympathetic and predictable.

"If you'll drop this in the Lawrence Street box . . .There's
a collection in fifteen minutes," she said, handing me the let-
ter she had written. Although her movements were restricted,
even in the house, Grandmother Dowsett knew in detail what-
ever was happening in Linden, and elsewhere.

The letter was addressed to Frederick H. Tarr, attorney
at law, in Rockport, Mass. Fred Tarr, one of my first cousins
about Charles' age, was starting to practice in Gloucester, and
already had a good reputation and was taking part in Essex
County politics. Fred had always handled Grandmother's af-
fairs, such as they were. My grandmother had been a widow
twenty-five years, and had been left enough money so she
could pay her own way, but she had always been active in

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

family affairs, throughout the wide network of our family
connections. On several occasions she had supported various
minority members in rebellion against fate, to such an extent
that she risked running out of money before the end of her
lifetime. Actually, when she died and the funeral expenses had
been paid, there were about three hundred dollars left, and
some very quaint, lavender-scented, old-fashioned clothes,
some silks and satins, that once had been in style. My grand-
mother had been one of the most striking beauties on Cape
Ann.

Fred Tarr had taken over the management of Grandmother's
money when he was admitted to the bar, and always had ad-
mired her courage. (Later he represented the district in Con-
gress with distinction many years.) First, Grandmother had in-
sisted that her youngest sister, Lucy, get a divorce, for which
she had practically all the grounds then extant. It was a truly
revolutionary move, in our family and region. When my
father's sister, Elizabeth, found herself a bitter and frustrated
old maid chained to the occupation of teaching school, which
she detested, my grandmother persuaded her to drop her
school work and go into training as a nurse. Aunt Elizabeth fol-
lowed Grandmother's advice, accepted her aid, and became
happy and successful. It was Grandmother Dowsett who finally
told Charles to pack up and get out of Linden, where the only
civil engineering was a political football and his field was hope-
lessly constrained. He had not been able to believe that he
could leave Mother and the rest of us "without a man in the
house." Mother turned faint at the mention of the prospect.
Grandmother said "Go" and Charles went, and from that
moment on began to rise to the height of his profession, until
few large projects of hydraulic engineering in America were
undertaken without his advice.

The next 'few days were ominously peaceful in our house.

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The Passing of the Balm of Gilead Tree

Grandmother did not thump with her cane, but read quietly,
ate carefully, and slept more soundly than usual.

"She's up to something," my mother said, uneasily, to
Charles. Both looked at me, but I said nothing about the
address on that letter, and, both being honorable to a degree
that was almost painful, they could not ask me to betray a
confidence.

Sunday, about dinnertime, Fred Tarr and his wife drove
up and hitched their tired span of horses in the driveway. They
had started from Rockport early that morning, and the thirty-
mile distance, along the North Shore, was about all the horses
could do that day. I knew they would stay all night, and start
back early Monday morning.

While Angie, Fred's wife, another very progressive and in-
telligent woman, talked with Mother and Charles, Fred was
with Grandmother, upstairs. Before midafternoon, I was sent
across the street for Mary Stoddard, and down to the Square
for Dr. Moody.

"Doc" Moody and his housekeeper, Mathilda, were staunch
defenders of the Balm of Gilead tree.

I don't know what was said, or how Grandmother found out
the date on which the tree was due to come down. Probably
that was through Dick Lanier, who had a temporary job with
the company that kept him climbing trees and poles. I only re-
member that, a few days before the showdown, my grand-
mother called me to her bedside. She was no female Polonius,
but on very few occasions gave me good counsel.

"Elliot," she said. "This pesky heart of mine has been a
nuisance all these years. If I try to get some good out of it, don't
worry. Do you understand?"

I didn't, quite, but nodded, feeling sure I would understand
later.

Two evenings before the men were coming to cut down

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

the tree, Grandmother Dowsett had one of the worst "spells"
with her heart she had suffered in years. Dr. Moody was sum-
moned on the hotfoot from the Square, and Fred Tarr hap-
pened to come into town on the evening train from Lynn. We
were up all night, those who were useful attending Grand-
mother, the others sitting fearfully, drinking coffee or hot
milk, and hoping for the best. I am sure that what Grand-
mother had said to me about not worrying flitted in and out
of my head, but I had seen her heart attacks before, and could
not convince myself that this was not the real thing. She was
enduring the excruciating pain that, in those days, could not
be relieved; she was holding on to life in her shapely and
regal old head, on which to the day of her death there was not
a gray hair. Early in the morning, Fred and Dr. Moody drove
to Maiden, and a half hour after the courthouse opened, came
forth with a paper that I suppose was an injunction.

Fred and Charles both were expert at whittling. As boys
they had made models of full-rigged ships and schooners, in
every detail. Charles was urged to go to work, and reluctantly
did. Fred made two wooden signs, with sharp stakes. They
read: "Sickness. Quiet" One was driven into the sidewalk
west of the big tree, the other several yards east of our house.

The men with huge saws and axes, ropes and tackle, arrived
from Maiden, and were met by Fred Tarr and Spike Dodge,
and the all-powerful injunction.

Lawyers from the company called at our house the next day.
Fred and the doctor conferred with them. The patient was not
out of danger. There was no saying when she would be. And
she could not be moved. Excitement might prove fatal, and,
added Fred Tarr, in his slow, pleasant voice, the company
would be liable.

Two doctors from the company came down to Linden the
next day, and asked permission to see my grandmother. Dr.

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The Passing of the Balm of Gilead Tree

Moody acquiesced, and after fifteen minutes in the sick room,
they all three came downstairs, nodding gravely. The company
doctors were convinced she would not last through the night.
That frightened my mother so badly that Fred and I broke
down, and told her that, while Grandmother Dowsett had a
bad heart, as she well knew, it was no worse than it had been
for years. All of a sudden, Mother began putting two and
two together, and relapsed into that silent, reproachful atti-
tude that had a smile quite near the surface.

"I might have known," she said, and sighed.

Uncle Reuben bought himself a topcoat, a derby and six
new neckties on the strength of his winnings at the Massasoit
bar.

Meanwhile, men, women and horses trod softly along our
sidewalk between the warning signs, and Ginger and the other
drivers did not use their gongs within a hundred yards of the
house. It seemed to me that the Admiral and Dawson Free-
man smoked more cigars than usual during that period, and
enjoyed them well. Miss Stoddard was so triumphantly happy
that she talked and sang to herself.

Then, after more consultations, the company tree-climbers
and electricians clipped off a few small branches, nailed some
heavy insulators on various stout boughs, and the big Balm
of Gilead, without loss of majesty, helped sustain the guy-
wires and the trolley, so the work of electrification went on
through Linden and the electric cars were dappled, in passing
beneath its shade.

The next onslaught against the old tree came from another
direction. In the dead of winter, one afternoon as I started
home from the old wooden grammar school at Oliver and
Clapp Streets, I saw smoke coming from the back of our house,
white and black, pouring upward in great volume. I ran

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

quickly, to find a crowd gathering across the street. My mother
and my grandmother, wrapped in shawls, were standing in
Miss Stoddard's front yard. I saw, against the flames in our
smashed upper windows, Jim Puffer and Dick Lanier throwing
articles out, presumably to save them. In emergencies as well
as through the humdrum days, old Jim Puffer was destined
to make a mess of things. I saw Lanier stop and remonstrate
with him after Jim, ignoring things, no doubt, of higher value,
had tossed a chamber-pot onto the cluttered front lawn. Lanier
himself was tossing out some of my grandmother's books, in
such a way that they would land in a soft snowbank. Unfor-
tunately the snowbank melted in the heat of the raging fire,
so that the books ever afterward had stained leaves and swollen
bindings. My brother Charles 1 engineering library, in the
back of the house, was lost. Practically everything we had was
lost, and as the years' accumulation of household goods and
souvenirs was burning, I remember how well-meaning mem-
bers of the church and neighborhood tried to comfort my
mother by saying how lucky it was that the house and furnish-
ings were insured That I did not understand at all. I was
worried first about my grandmother's heart. Actually, my
grandmother was the calmest individual around there. She
watched the blaze, and the comings and goings of the crowd,
in a reserved and dignified way, smiling with quiet irony when
someone acted particularly absurd or futile. Once I saw that
Grandmother was going to bear up all right, I was worried
about the cat. We had a gray and white cat, Mopsy, and
everybody remembered, too late, that for two days and nights
before the fire, she had been uneasy, had refused food, and
roamed from place to place, all over the house, switching her
tail impatiently, bristling, sniffing and growling at times.
The fire, according to the experts who viewed the ashes, must
have been burning inside the walls for two or three days.

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The Passing of the Balm of Gilead Tree

When the roof caved in, the heat rose so intensely that half
the Balm of Gilead's branches and limbs caught fire.

"Never mind," my grandmother said, with a toss of her
head. "Those barbarians will never get a chance at it, now."

There was nothing left of the house but a small section of
the sitting room floor on which stood, almost unharmed, the
old Vose square piano, and when nothing was blazing but the
tree, the crowd began to cheer and catcall wildly as the Maiden
fire engines finally careened down the hill, stopped, hauled
out ladders and hose, and tried vainly to throw a stream to
the topmost branches of the burning tree.

When all was over, the charred trunk was standing, and the
branches over the street were intact, but the tree was maimed
and crippled. I could not bear to look at it for a long time.

One of the results of the fire that destroyed our house was
a vote and appropriation by the Maiden city government for a
fire station to be built in Linden, and before many years the
work was begun. Not, however, until the old wooden school-
house had gone up like a strawberry box in the middle of one
night, without loss of life, or anything but its obsolete books
and equipment A new schoolhouse was built of brick, a
block away, and the site of the old. one was used for the fire-
house.

Soon after my grandmother died, in igoa, a windstorm
broke off the largest remaining limb of the Balm of Gilead,
so that in falling it tore down the trolley for a hundred yards.
That time, the company succeeded in demolishing the rest of
the tree, but I had been prepared for this in stages. Still, I
never forgave the men who completed its destruction. Luckily,
they all were strangers. The huge trunk was sawed through,
and fell; the roots were dug up, the branches stripped of
boughs, and the wood sawed up and carted away. I saw it
hauled, load by load, in wagons up Beach Street hill and out

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

of sight, and was glad, for the moment, that Grandmother
Dowsett was not present. I thought of her, not as dead, with
a fly walking unheeded across her waxen face as she lay in a
satin-lined casket, but absent Never have I believed in the
existence of a Biblical Heaven, but if I chance to be wrong,
and there is one, I feel certain who is running it.

The nineteenth century, for what it was worth, went out
of Linden in wagonloads, with that Balm of Gilead tree.

I had made such a fuss about the tree that when we moved
back to Beach Street, into the second house, my brother
Charles, on a visit home from Philadelphia, borrowed a wagon
from Deacon Clapp, drove to the woods without letting me
know why, and came back with a well-formed little linden tree
about ten feet high. The roots had been dug up with plenty
of soil, and the tree began to grow, not on the sidewalk, but
on our lawn just left of the driveway, between our house and
the double house next door. I was assured that it would grow,
and in time become as big as I could wish.

"Then some men will come down from Maiden and saw it
down," I said.

That has not happened yet. When I last saw the house
and the tree, forty-six years after the latter was planted and
the former built, the tree was tall and stately, and towered
above the rooftop by a good ten feet. It was spreading with
impunity, because the trolley wires that doomed the Balm of
Gilead have outlived their usefulness and also have been
superseded.

120

CHAPTER EIGHT

An Evening Not Soon to Be Forgotten

BEFORE Alice's collapse, the Townsend women had lived a
secluded life, and inside their ungainly house against the hill-
side had shared one another's existence very intimately. Every
detail of their small affairs had been discussed, gently and
somewhat fearfully, by the mother and two daughters. Each
expenditure had been considered, and was weighed to the last
odd cent.

Nearly all the Linden families got along on small incomes
and earnings, and before the incident that cost Alice her job,
it was felt among the neighbors and tradesmen that the Town-
sends had almost no margin at all. Callers who came to solicit
for church funds, and deliverymen from the various stores,
knew that Mrs. Townsend, when she paid for anything,
reached into a hand-painted vase that stood on the dining-room
mantelpiece and counted out what was needed from a small
handful of greenbacks and coins. It had flashed through the
minds of many of the kind-hearted people that, under the cir-
cumstances, with nothing coming in, the savings in that faded
old vase could not last forever. That quiet, semidesperate kind
of finance was understood by many residents of old Linden,
and struck responsive chords in their hearts.

Dr. Moody said little about Alice's condition, but he was
naturally too candid and honest to put on an act. He was wor-
ried, more worried as each day and week and month passed

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

by. Alice would recover consciousness for a while, would be
sweet and obedient, taking her medicine and light nourish-
ment as the doctor prescribed, then, when the slightest shadow
of a practical problem passed over her pillow, she would close
her eyes again and go back into deep sleep that was practically
a coma.

All Linden knew, before the meeting had adjourned, when,
in August, before the schools opened again, the Maiden School
Committee, which included Linden's Norman Partridge in
its membership, voted reluctantly to replace Miss Townsend.

Dr. Moody had never sent a bill to Mrs. Townsend, and did
not intend to, at least not until his patient was on her feet and
able to earn money again. But the womern of the Social Circle,
including my mother and two of my aunts who talked freely
in my presence when I pretended not to be listening or inter-
ested, were aware that increasing friction between Mrs. Town-
send and Elvira, on the one hand, and the doctor, was develop-
ing. Mrs. Townsend had remarked that Dr. Moody was not
her regular doctor, and someone remembered that fifteen years
before, when Mr. Townsend had died, he had been attended
by Dr. Goodenough, from Maiden Center. Since then, the
Townsends had called no doctor at all, and Dr. Moody had
arrived at their house with Alice.

When Mrs. Townsend's remarks came to the ears of Ma-
thilda Stowe, and thus reached Dr. Moody, he insisted that
old Dr. Goodenough, who was on the verge of his dotage, be
called into consultation.

The folks along Salem Street saw Dr. Goodenough's buggy
drive down from Maiden way, and Dr. Moody's buggy arrive
from the opposite direction. The two doctors, the younger
helping the older and feeble one, went up the long flight of
outside steps, and disappeared inside. When they came out,
old Dr. Goodenough was driven right back to Maiden, but

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An Evening Not Soon to Be Forgotten

everyone in Linden who saw Dr. Moody knew that the old
man's opinion had been contrary to his own, and profoundly
disturbing to him. Mrs. Townsend told my mother, with lips
set tight and a hard glint in her eyes, that Dr. Moody had been
wrong from the start.

"My daughter has dementia praecox" Mrs. Townsend said.
Mrs. Townsend did not know exactly what that meant, but
several others did, and believed it was incurable and meant
that Alice would probably end up in an asylum.

That evening Doc Moody quietly overruled Mathilda and
dropped in at the Massasoit bar. Most of the regulars were
there, and also Ginger McSweeney, but the gravity of the new
development caused the drinkers to refer to the case discreetly
and not to persecute Ginger, who was heartsick and depressed.
Seated across the table from Ginger was big Ruth Coffee, who
was comforting him. Dr. Moody, after nodding to the others,
walked over and took a seat between Ginger and Ruth.

Ruth turned to the doctor. "Ginger, here, is worrying his
fool head off," she said.

"Who isn't?" asked the doctor dismally.

"I've just told him," Ruth continued, "that nobody throws
a fit, all of a sudden, about a little thing like . . . well, you
know."

"Go on," said the doctor. "You've got some sense. What do
you think is wrong with the girl?"

"Mother of God," said Ginger. "Sometimes I'd like to cut
the damn thing off."

"Shut up, Ginger," said the doctor. "Let's hear what Ruth
has to say. Then you can go ahead."

"Alice wasn't built for teaching school," said Ruth. "The
kids rode hell out of her, and made her nervous all the time.
She was afraid of 'em, and they knew it, and took advantage.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

She knew she was slipping, that some day she'd lose her
job.

"She's already lost it," moaned Ginger.

The doctor was paying no mind to Ginger, but was listen-
ing attentively to Ruth.

"You mean," he said, "that she'd been worrying for years
with reasonand that little by little the headaches got worse,
the kids got noisier, and any shock at all would have broken
her down."

"That's what I mean," Ruth said. "Would that have any-
thing to do with dementia praecox, or whatever the old gazabo
from Maiden said she had?"

"I don't agree with Dr. Goodenough, if that's what you're
driving at. I think she's got a chance. ..." He looked ap-
praisingly at Ruth. "That is, if you'll help me out"

"Who? Me?" asked Ruth, bewildered.

"It's not good for her, having only her mother and that odd
stick of a sister around. They mutter and whisper. They're
more fidgety than she is. That state of mind is contagious, I
tell you. Now if you'd sit with Alice, and inject a little com-
mon sense into that household?"

"Sure I will," Ruth said. "I'm pretty heavy-handed for a
nurse, but I'll sure give it a try."

"You may have trouble with those women," the doctor said.
"They hate to have outsiders in the house."

"Leave it to me," said Ruth.

So the doctor had a talk with Mrs. Townsend, and told her
what had to be done. And soon it became part of Linden's
routine to see big Ruth, in her shirt sleeves, raking leaves from
the Townsend's steeply sloping yard, or striding down Beach
Street, shoulders swinging like those of a sailor ashore, to do
the errands for the Townsend household. When Ruth entered
Alice's bedroom, however, she seemed to shed her brusque and

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An Evening Not Soon to Be Forgotten

vigorous ways. She dressed more daintily, and was quite soft-
spoken. Alice responded and seemed to improve. The doctor
and all the neighbors praised Ruth for her devotion. And
slowly the Junoesque young woman, who had always seemed
to be at sixes and sevens, found a place in life and her warm
personality expanded.

The more Alice depended on Ruth and enjoyed her com-
pany and faithful attentions, the more Mrs. Townsend and
Elvira froze. Especially the sister. Her eyes gleamed with
jealous, almost frantic, resentment, as it became evident that
Ruth, and Ruth only, was acquiring over Alice a sort of con-
trol, exactly what the sick girl needed. Ruth ignored Mrs.
Townsend's unfriendly words and actions, and soon Elvira
had worked up such an antipathy that she avoided any contact
with Ruth, day after day.

In Alice's dainty bedroom, the windows of which looked out
over the tops of the elms, Ruth spent many happy hours, her
shirt open at the neck, her sturdy legs crossed carelessly. She
relayed the town gossip, such of it as she thought fit for Alice's
ears, talked about life and mankind in general, and solved, one
by one, a number of the Townsends' practical problems. Alice,
on her best days, fairly glowed, and rested her frail, slender
hand in Ruth's strong, capable ones. Then, suddenly, a change
came over Alice and she acted as if she were afraid. She clung
to Ruth more tightly, but the least sound outside, like a creak
on the stairway, sent fear welling into her eyes, so that she
trembled and slipped into a coma again. When Ruth or the
doctor tried, gently, to find out the reason, Alice receded like
a ghost beyond their control. Mrs. Townsend and Elvira grew
more furtive and hostile, reluctant to admit either Ruth or
the doctor; but Ruth, now bound to Alice in a way she had
never experienced with regard to any human being, would not
be brushed aside. Mrs. Townsend sat with Alice in the after-

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noon, and at dusk Ruth took over for the long night hours.
Elvira, while Ruth was in the house, remained in hiding,
usually in her downstairs bedroom, with the latch firmly fas-
tened inside.

Late one afternoon, before Ruth arrived, Mrs. Townsend
left Alice alone and went downstairs to make some tea. She
was in the kitchen half an hour, slicing and buttering bread,
opening a jar of barberry jam that Deacon Plummer's wife
had left, shaking the grate to let the ashes from the fire sift
down in the range. Elvira was in the sitting room running the
sewing machine. When Mrs. Townsend went back upstairs
with the tray, she opened Alice's bedroom door, entered with-
out noticing anything peculiar, and, with her back to the bed,
set the tray down on a table by a window. Then she turned,
saw the bed was empty, and called, "Alice."

There was no reply. Alice was not in bed, or elsewhere in
the room. Mrs. Townsend pulled open the clothes-closet door.
Alice was not there, either, but some of her clothes were miss-
ing. Elvira, hearing her mother calling, came running upstairs.
She had not seen Alice come down. The sewing machine had
been making the usual noise, and she had been sitting, bending
over her work, her back to the stairway.

Frantically the two women searched the house, from attic
to cellar. In the midst of their search, Ruth rang the front
doorbell. Both Mrs. Townsend and Elvira rushed to the door
to open it. Face to face with Ruth, Elvira's hatred broke loose
in a torrent of abuse and accusation.

"Where's my sister?" Elvira shrieked. "You've taken her
away. You've killed her!" .

Ruth, aware that something unusual had happened, turned
to Mrs. Townsend.

"What's going on?" Ruth asked, ignoring Elvira.

"She's gone," Mrs. Townsend said Ruth parted the two

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An Evening Not Soon to Be Forgotten

distracted women with a sort of breast stroke and rushed be-
tween them into the hallway and up the stairs. Elvira screamed
after her, wildly and incoherently. In Alice's bedroom, Ruth
found just what Mrs. Townsend had found, and one thing
more. Alice's dainty lace nightgown had been wadded into a
ball and stuffed into an old shoe box up on the clothes-closet
shelf. This was unlike Alice, who folded everything neatly
and carefully.

Ruth tried to calm Mrs. Townsend. "Tend to Elvira. Keep
her quiet if you can. And leave the rest to me," she said. "If
Alice got dressed and went out on the street, someone must
have seen her. And where could she go? Maybe to Mrs.
Preston's?"

"You've taken her somewhere," Elvira interrupted. "Ma.
Call the police!"

"Keep your shirt on," Ruth said, severely. "If there's a big
fuss about this, Alice'll never get over it."

She turned to Mrs. Townsend. "You stay here in case she
comes back. I'll go down Lynn Street and look around. She
can't have gone far, and the weather's mild."

It was just getting dark, and here and there in Linden lemon
lights, and orange, flickered faintly on the window shades. The
sidewalks and gutters were strewn with fallen leaves and over
the low meadows and marshes the ghostly haze was suspended.
The depths of the woods were already pitch-dark. Beyond the
Broadway carbarns the low ridge of evergreens was brought
into gentle relief by lingering streaks of turquoise green and
deep rose. Distant memories of Linden are tinted always with
sunsets and dawns, one after another, like faded silks on attic
shelves.

Ruth was striding purposefully down Lynn Street. The
Walkers' shabby little shack was first on her left. She mounted
the short flight of steps and knocked.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Come in," Irv said. He was lounging in a makeshift camp
chair, his feet on the wood box. Big Gertie, his wife, was stirring
something on the stove.

"You haven't seen Alice?" Ruth asked, trying to appear un-
concerned. "She went out for a walk," Ruth added. "I thought
she might have passed this way."

Gertie grinned. "So she took it into her head at last to get
up," Gertie said, not unkindly. "What's the matter? Had she
worn out the bedclothes?"

"She's feeling lots better," Ruth said, thinking fast.

"Glad to hear it, Miss Coffee. Right glad, I am," said the
good-natured Irv.

At Mrs. Preston's across the street, Ruth also got a negative
report, and concluded that Alice must have taken Lynn Street
in the other direction, up towards Broadway. She lengthened
her stride, starting westward, and saw ahead of her Mrs. Town-
send, her head wrapped in a shawl, talking distractedly with
the lanky stoop-shouldered "jeweller," "Ich" Drown. As Ruth
joined them, disturbed because Mrs. Townsend was spreading
the alarm, Mrs. Townsend was babbling.

"My little girl has disappeared," she wailed.

"Disappeared, my eye," Ruth said, sharply. "I told you I'd
find her."

"She didn't come down to Lynn Street. Mr. Drown would
have seen her if she had," Mrs. Townsend said.

"I was sittin' on my front steps, lookin' down this way all
the time," said Drown. "I saw Miss Coffee go in, then I saw
her come out again, and walk down Lynn Street. I knew some-
thing was wrong, from the way she walked. If Alice went out,
she must have gone out the back way, up into the woods."

"What for?" demanded Ruth, but the thought that Alice
had strayed into the woods was already uppermost in her mind.
That puzzled Ruth, because Alice had never mentioned the

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An Evening Not Soon to Be Forgotten

woods, and as far as Ruth knew, had never gone walking there.
It would have been completely outside her timid character.

Ruth knew the woods up by the quarry, near her own cot-
tage, and along the Newburyport Turnpike, but the stretch
behind the Townsends' was strange to her. There the slopes
were steep, cut with dry rocky rivulets, and the humped granite
summit that was called "Elephant's Back." Paths were few,
and seldom used. There was a thick undergrowth of alders,
sumach, briers, berry bushes, and the three-leaved clinging
vine called "poison ivy."

Mrs. Townsend, made bolder by the presence of Mr. Drown,
glared at Ruth and defied her. "You can say what you like/*
Mrs. Townsend said. "I'm going to call the police."

Ruth sighed, trying to control herself. "The police!" she
repeated scornfully. "You mean Spike? He couldn't pour slops
out of a boot, with directions written all over the sole. Why
not call Doc Moody and see what he says?"

"I've had enough of him, too," said Mrs. Townsend. She
turned to Mr. Drown. "What would you do, Mr. Drown?"

"I could ask a few men to lend a hand, and help look for
her," he suggested.

"And in ten minutes the news'll be all over town," protested
Ruth. "Poor Alice'll never hear the last of it. What if she did
decide to take a walk?"

"You probably know more about that than I do," said Mrs.
Townsend, bitterly.

Drown was already ten paces down the street. He had the
vague idea that a search party should be organized, but it was
very hard for him to figure out how to go about it. He was a
slow thinker and very careful worker, with his old clocks and
watches. Action in a broader field was not in his line. He de-
cided that he should turn over the responsibility and the ini-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

tiative to somebody else. He thought first of Spike, the Linden
cop, but finding Spike at dusk on a pleasant evening was most
difficult. The lanky jeweller would not have known how to
begin. Irv Walker, whose door he passed first, was out of the
question as an organizer. He would pass as a follower, if some-
one else would tell him just what to do. Mr. Preston, with all
the will in the world, was not the man, because he was so near-
sighted that he often mistook the hydrant in front of his house
for one of his own kids, and called it repeatedly. The next
house on the left was Daisy Hoy t's, and she had no man, unless
Packard was around, in which case it would be most untactful
to call. Then came Jim Puffer. Mr. Drown dismissed Jim with-
out debate. Poor Jim would most likely set the woods afire
and burn out the whole town, if he was sent up there to hunt
for the girl.

Mr. Ford, kite-flying husband of the Congregational organ-
ist, had consumption, and could not stand the night air.

Deacon Clapp was a fine upstanding man, and sensible as
they made them, but twenty years too old.

Then Mr. Drown had an inspiration. Dawson Freeman was
just the man. Dawson, when the situation was put up to him,
accepted with alacrity. He was a born organizer, in any emer-
gency. Dawson had a loud, pleasant voice, black hair and black
moustaches, snapping black eyes, smoked black cigars, and
spoke with much assurance.

"Ring the church bell," Dawson ordered. "That'll bring
men there, to find out what's wrong."

Dawson made up his mind, right away, to make his head-
quarters on the steps of the Congregational Church, and there
instruct his helpers, organize his groups, assign the territory
to be searched to each, and wait for reports.

"There's no question of foul play," Dawson said. "The

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An Evening Not Soon to Be Forgotten

schoolmarm is a little cracked, got tired of lyin' in bed, put
on her clothes, and strolled away. I don't blame her if she
wanted to dodge that sister of hers.

"If the girl's in anybody's house, it'll soon be reported. If
she's in the woods, maybe she fell down and hurt herself."

Dawson's new phone did not help him much. He could only
call Norman Partridge, who could hear him without a phone,
from the Congregational porch, or J. J. Markham, who prob-
ably knew all about it by that time. Horses were of no use in
the woods. What he needed were lanterns. Dawson called to
Charley Clapp, his brother-in-law, and sent him on the hotfoot
to Black Ann's Corner to stop all trolley cars and warn the
motormen to go slowly through Linden and keep their eyes on
the track. Mario Bacigalupo and Frigger appeared, the news
having already travelled across the railroad tracks. Dawson
sent them in opposite directions to scour the neighborhood
for lanterns and ask for volunteers. But ringing the church
bell was not so easy. Deacon Parker, who lived way. up on
Revere Street, had one set of keys to the church. The Reverend
K. Gregory Powys had the other. Neither of them were at
home. Jim Puffer was handy, so Dawson sent him to the car-
penter shop to borrow a ladder, in order that someone might
get into the church steeple and get hold of the bell rope.

Ralph Milliken, a boy a few years older than I was, knocked
at our back door on his way through the yard, to ask for a lan-
tern. It was from him that Mother and I first learned what
had happened. I rushed down-cellar to get our lantern, and
tried to follow Ralph out, but Mother put on such a scene
that I had to stay home. She was always nervous, but patheti-
cally so when anything distressing was happening in town and
I was not within her sight

I was saved from missing the rest of the evening out-of-doors
by Miss Stoddard, across the street. Ralph went to her house

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

on the run, as soon as he got our lantern, and pulled the front
doorbell.

"Alice Townsend's lost in the woods," Ralph said. "Dawson
Freeman sent me for your lantern."

"What does Dawson Freeman think he's going to do with a
lantern in those woods? He won't be able to see anything but
his own legs and the shadows of them. With a lantern he might
as well be blind," Miss Stoddard said.

Ralph did not stop to argue. He dashed away, muttering,
"Old Maid Know-it-all," and decided to try Norman Par-
tridge's house.

Miss Stoddard had been a good friend of Alice Townsend's,
before and after the girl's collapse, and she also liked Ruth and
knew the latter would be frantic. She got on her walking boots,
put on an old skirt and coat that already had been torn by
briers, got one of her old mother's stout canes, and came across
to our house. When Mother saw her at the door, Mother felt
a little faint and flustered, for it seemed to her that whenever
Miss Stoddard got mixed up in anything, it turned out to be
disconcerting.

"How are you, Lutie?" Miss Stoddard said. "I want to bor-
row Elliot"

"He hasn't had his supper yet," Mother said.

"No matter. He'll be hungrier later," said Miss Stoddard,
who never would take "No" for an answer. I had heard what
she said, and already was putting on my sweater and coat, and
an old pair of gloves.

"This youngster knows more about the woods than all the
men in town, with or without their lanterns," Miss Stoddard
said. Mother was pale with fright at the thought of my going
to the woods in pitch-darkness, but since Miss Stoddard was
going, too, she could not refuse. She would merely lose her
appetite for supper, and sleep more fitfully than usual that

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An Evening Not Soon to Be Forgotten

night, if she could quiet herself down enough to sleep at all.

Soon Miss Stoddard and I were hiking across Weeks' field,
near enough to Hen Richards 1 rickety shack to start his crazy
little dog to barking.

"By the time those men get up into the woods, Miss Town-
send could get all the way to Sugar Pond," Miss Stoddard said.

We were both thinking along the same lines. The path that
led into the woods from Townsends' back yard (which was
tilted up at an angle of forty-five degrees) was nothing more
than the loose, rocky bed of a tiny watercourse that was a tor-
rent only in spring and after a cloudburst for an hour or two.
It branched, one fork leading up Elephant's Back, the other
leading to a grove of sugar maples that stood in stagnant water
called "Sugar Pond." There were two danger points. On the
west fork of the path, which was almost invisible in the day-
time, there was a stretch where it was within a few feet of a
steep cut bank, with a fifty-foot drop, the edge concealed with
low bushes and briers on which it was easy to trip. The other
grim possibility was the pond itself. If Alice tried, she might
drown herself there, among the wet moss and roots and water
snakes between the sugar maples. In certain pools the depth
might reach six feet.

As we hurried along, Miss Stoddard discussed these possi-
bilities with me. She always, from my earliest years, addressed
me thoughtfully and talked with me as if I were adult, and in
return I dropped the reserve and lack of confidence I habitu-
ally held as a screen between me and most grown people.

As usual, I had a theory about what might have happened,
based upon a guess as to what would go on in another person's
mind. Miss Stoddard listened to it respectfully, as I led the way
along the path that skirted the border of the woods near Salem
Street, and she followed, step by step. Without lanterns, in
spite of the Indian summer mist, our eyes had adjusted them-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

selves and we could see quite well. "What brought most people
into the woods, those who did not particularly care for them,
was the sight of the Bulfinch State House dome in Boston from
the summit of Elephant's Back. Now certainly Miss Townsend
would not, in her right mind, start out to climb Elephant's
Back at twilight, but if she had done so before she took sick,
it seemed to me that she might repeat the process. Certainly
if she were in the woods at all, she would have followed the
one pathway with which her feet had been slightly familiar.
The briers and underbrush would have prevented her going
more than a few feet from the precarious path.

We had passed behind Grovers' sprawling New England
farmhouse (which for years had been without farm), and
farther along had started the hens clucking in Irv Walker's
hillside hen house, and were nearing the junction of our lateral
path with the uphill path from Townsends' yard when the
church bell began to clang.

"That isn't Deacon Parker," I said.

"No," said Miss Stoddard. The frenzied clanging, which got
tangled up in itself every few strokes of the bell, was the work
of an amateur. Miss Stoddard had told me that my reasoning
was good, concerning what Miss Townsend might do, and she
grunted appreciatively when I remarked that the ringing of
the bell was not in Deacon Parker's style.

We paused and looked down over Linden, between the
parted branches of an oak. Little dark figures were scurrying
here and there, most of them converging toward the Congre-
gational Church. Lanterns were swaying and twinkling. There
must have been three dozen of them. A few were clustered
already around the church porch.

How far that panorama of mists and dark slopes and dimly
lighted window shades and moving shapes and lanterns seems
from today, which has its police cars and motorcycles with

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An Evening Not Soon to Be Forgotten

sirens, two-way radio telephones, to say nothing of modern
psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, neurologists, alienists,
and all the Gospels and Apostles of St. Sigmund Freud. The
community of Linden was responding to the call, as best it
could, each man willing, and no one thinking of leaving a
public emergency to be dealt with by paid officials who re-
sented aid and interference.

Jim Puffer had appealed to Swede Carlson for a ladder long
enough to reach the belfry of the Congregational Church. The
carpenter responded readily, but the ladder was too long and
heavy for one to manage, so Jim took the front end and the
carpenter the rear. They trotted down Beach Street and when
they came to our yard, they tried to cut through, on a beeline
for the church, forgetting that Don Partridge, who lived be-
hind us on Lawrence Street, had just put up a newfangled wire
fence, without barbs, that was guaranteed not to rust. Jim, in
the lead, ran his end of the ladder smack into the wire, the
ladder bounced back, breaking his nose, knocking him flat, and
also throwing Swede Carlson at the rear end, who fell and
sprained a wrist and bruised an ankle. My mother and Leslie,
at the supper table, heard the twang of the wires, the thump
and groans, and got to the back door just in time to see Jim
and the carpenter sprawled on the ground, both trying to get
up. From the back porch Mother could see that Jim's face was
streaming with blood, so she ran back in for some hot water.

Jim helped the Swede up, getting blood all over him; they
both limped up the steps and into our kitchen where Mother
stuffed Jim's nose with cotton batting, treated the carpenter's
bruised ankle with Arabian Balsam, a patent medicine in
which she believed as firmly as in Christ's miracles, and fol-
lowed the Swede's directions about strapping up his sprained
wrist. Of coui^e it had to be the right one.

Meanwhile, Dick Lanier showed up at the church with his

135

Linden on the Saugus Branch

climbers. As he was spiking his way up to the belfry, digging
his spurs deep into the Congregational paint and clapboards,
there was some discussion as to the propriety of his act, but
Dawson Freeman settled that.

"The church needs painting, anyway," he said.

Norman Partridge had telephoned Markham's store to no-
tify Dr. Moody that his patient was on the loose, and the doc-
tor, driving Hip and his buggy through the ranks of the gath-
ering posse, locked wheels with Packard, bound in the opposite
direction, and a dozen men had to lift both rigs off the ground
to get them untangled.

Suppertime had now arrived in all the houses, with women
waiting and complaining, food spoiling in the oven and on
the back of the stove, children either restless or missing, and
the more active men about to search the woods with lanterns,
while the staider ones had been assigned streets for a house-to-
house canvass. Dawson, in assigning men to the various streets,
had taken them as they came, so that most of the Protestant
streets north of the tracks were canvassed by Irishmen who
had never darkened the doorways before, and the Irish and
Italian wives, on the south side of Linden, were interviewed
self-consciously by the Protestant deacons, who did not fail to
note the smell of cabbage in the entryways, the loose boards
on the steps, and the empty bottles in the ash barrels, or thrown
carelessly in piles.

Miss Stoddard and I reached the steep path down to Town-
sends 1 back yard long before the searchers under Freeman got
started. I was still in the lead, and had not got halfway to the
back of Townsends' house when I brought up short, causing
Miss Stoddard to collide with me. She saw what I had seen,
and kneeled swiftly. The body of Ruth Coffee, clad in her
mannish blue serge, was lying prone, across the pathway.
"She's alive," Miss Stoddard grunted, before I could ask.

136

An Evening Not Soon to Be Forgotten

Then she added: "She's been cut/ 1 In the half-darkness I could
see Miss Stoddard turning Ruth face-upward, and exploring
a wound below her left shoulder, in front. At least, the coat
and blouse were cut and soaked with blood. Ruth had a bruise
on her forehead, where she had hit a stone in falling. That is
what had knocked her out.

I thought I heard Dr. Moody's voice, and footsteps on the
Townsend stairway.

"Go down and get Dr. Moody," Miss Stoddard said, and I
slid recklessly down the rocky path, swerved before I crashed
into Townsends' back door, and managed to reach the doctor
before he reached the front porch. The house was lighted in-
side, but no one was in sight.
"Come quick, doctor," I said.

"What's up?" he asked, but already I had started back up
the hill, and he scrambled after me, holding his medicine case
in his hand.

When we got there, Ruth was conscious, sitting up, and talk-
ing in her hearty way with Miss Stoddard, who was nodding,
and clucking, and agreeing. Ruth was holding her cut shoulder
with a handkerchief to staunch the blood, but they were not
talking about her injury, as if she were in danger. Seeing first
me, then the doctor, Ruth glanced at Miss Stoddard, then at
me again, and said, in a tone I knew was intended for me, and
need not necessarily convey the facts: "I thought maybe Alice
had wandered up this way, so I came up in the dark, stumbled
and fell. There must be glass around here, because I cut
myself."

She patted with the handkerchief the place below her shoul-
der.

"What time is it?" she asked suddenly, this time touching
her bruised forehead.

137

Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Almost six o'clock," the doctor said. "Let's have a look at
you."

"Shucks. I'm all right," Ruth said, and started to get up.
To her surprise, her legs gave way and she sat down again,
hard.

The doctor turned to Miss Stoddard. "We'd better lug her
into the house."

"Elliot," Miss Stoddard said. "I'll be busy at the house here
for a while. Why don't you run down to the sand pit, below
the cut bank, on Salem Street, and see if anyone has fallen
down in there. Then take this path to Elephant's Back, as we
said. If you don't find Miss Townsend at the summit, or around
Sugar Pond, come back here, ring the front doorbell and ask
for me, and I'll go home with you, and explain to your mother
what kept us."

Reluctantly I agreed, somewhat hurt because suddenly the
others thought I would be in the way, or find out about some-
thing they wanted to keep from me. Already I had a strong
suspicion of what really had happened, and I was disappointed
that Miss Stoddard, with whom I thought I had an under-
standing, would think that I would tell about anything she
asked me not to, or would admit its validity even if the whole
town were insisting on it.

Although I was depressed and resentful, I tried to conceal
my feelings, and carried out Miss Stoddard's instructions. I
raced down to the foot of the cut bank, which had its base fifty
feet from the upper sidewalk of Salem Street. No one had fallen
down there. When I retraced my steps, I tiptoed up the long
flight of steps to the Townsend house, trying not to make any
noise. I still had to make the long climb to Elephant's Back
and the subsequent journey over to Sugar Pond. Through a
back kitchen window I could see a strained group in the sitting
room, Ruth, her shoulder bandaged, her manner cool and

138

An Evening Not Soon to Be Forgotten

relentless; Miss Stoddard nodding judicially; Dr. Moody em-
barrassed, but obviously taking some kind of a stand; Mrs.
Townsend at bay; Elvira sulking in an easy chair, refusing to
take any part in the discussion, whatever it was.

I found no trace of Miss Townsend on the way to Elephant's
Back, and the night mist made it impossible to see the Broad-
way carbarns or the gravestones in Holy Cross Cemetery, let
alone the Bulfinch State House dome or the Bunker Hill
Monument By the time I had trotted down from Elephant's
Back and taken the other fork of the path toward Sugar Pond,
Dawson Freeman's men were in the woods, with lanterns, call-
ing back and forth to one another, tearing their skin and their
clothes on the briers, and getting thoroughly fed up with the
search before they were well started. I rescued two of them.
Spike Dodge, the cop, had been found and pressed into
service at last. He had been playing Casino with the black-
smith and the blacksmith's daughter, who worked summers in
the women's side of the bathhouse at Revere Beach, renting
and receiving bathing suits. Leona, the plump young woman
in question, was paired with Spike, in the search. Both were
lost, and were headed for the Newburyport Turnpike, be-
lieving they were working their way back to Linden.

I went with them as far as Salem Street, then hurried back
to the Townsend house, where I looked through all the back
windows to see what was going on before I rang the bell. The
doctor had gone. Mrs. Townsend was vehemently remonstrat-
ing, Elvira was still sulking, and Miss Stoddard was firm. More
than anyone else in Linden, Miss Stoddard tried to mind her
own business, or rather, to avoid getting mixed up in anyone
else's affairs. Ruth was alone in the kitchen, heating some water
in order to change her own bandages.

News of the woman-hunt had spread to the neighboring
communities, Broadway and Maplewood on the west, and Clif-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

tondale northeast, so in addition to the Linden men roaming
the streets, inquiring at doorways, getting free rides to and
fro on the trolley cars presumably in line of duty, and crowding
the Massasoit bar, quite a number of non-Linden men, and
their women, were sharing the excitement.

I saw Ruth, having bathed and rebandaged her sturdy shoul-
der to her satisfaction, leave the kitchen to rejoin Miss Stod-
dard and the Townsend women. When she reached the sitting-
room doorway, I saw her look startled, then come alive quickly
and stride over to the opposite side of the sitting room, where
there was an old carved sea chest. Ruth raised the cover, gasped
with relief, and Mrs. Townsend started screaming, until Miss
Stoddard shook her exasperatedly to quiet her.

Alice, dishevelled and pale, wearing a shirtwaist that had not
been tucked into her skirt, sat up, and reached toward Ruth,
who clasped her in her arms.

"They tried to make me send you away," Alice said, and
Ruth turned indignantly to Mrs. Townsend.

"The doctor warned you about that," Ruth said "I hope
you're satisfied."

"Every day they tried to make me send you away," repeated
Alice, clinging, while Ruth, forgetting Mrs. Townsend and
Miss Stoddard, held her tightly and patted her head as it rested
on her shoulder.

That was the moment I chose to ring the front doorbell, and
all of them jumped. Miss Stoddard came to the door.

"I think you'd better go home by yourself, Elliot," Miss
Stoddard said. "Before you go in, tell Dawson Freeman that
Miss Townsend has been found."

"Where?" I asked.

"In the woods, back of the house. . . . She lost her way,
and fell asleep," Miss Stoddard said.

"Who found her?"

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An Evening Not Soon to Be Forgotten

"Ruth," said Miss Stoddard.

"There wasn't any glass on that path, or anywhere near it
... I hunted all around," I said, looking her resentfully in
the eye.

Miss Stoddard relaxed and smiled ruefully.

"What folks don't know, won't hurt them," she said. "I'll
explain it all to you . . . when we go walking Sunday ... if
I can. Now run along. Remember what I told you."

I found Dawson Freeman at the church, gave him the in-
accurate message, and hurried home to ease my mother's mind.
Just as I was getting into bed, before I fell asleep, the bell of the
Congregational Church began to ring again, but this time with
the soothing, steady strokes of Deacon Parker.

141

CHAPTER NINE

Black Ann's Corner and the Finns

THE approach to Linden from the North Shore and the east
was through Black Ann's Corner, where Salem Street took
a ninety-degree bend, around the quarry, and Lynn Street
branched off o it, to skirt the marshland toward the Square.
Beyond the ledge, where the streetcars struggled up the hill
and disappeared, were Cliftondale, Saugus, Lynn, Salem,
Beverly, Marblehead, Gloucester, Annisquam and Rockport.

I have mentioned several times how vast and inexhaustible
the granite quarry seemed, standing like an eternal bastion to
deflect the force of northeast storms and channel them onto
little Linden. That does not mean there was furious or antlike
activity around the ledge or the old-fashioned stone crusher.
Nothing or no one was too busy in our town. There may have
been half a dozen men, all Irish, who worked for the quarry
company and lived south of the tracks, about a mile away. A
mile in Linden was a considerable distance then. It took
twenty minutes to walk it, if the footing was good and one did
not meet a few friends on the way. The going underfoot was
seldom ideal, and friends were everywhere.

It may readily be understood that six easygoing Irishmen,
with a neighbor for a foreman and an anonymous Boston con-
tracting concern that furnished the pay, working against a huge
gray background of ageless hard rock, did not create enough
of a stir to be noticeable, except at blasting time.

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Black Ann's Corner and the Finns

Once or twice a day, two or three stone carts would drive
into Linden, from Revere, and take Lynn Street at the Square,
bound for the quarry. They would be loaded at the crusher,
with a little unhurried bustle and much conversation, the
horses would be changed or watered, odd bits of news from
the city would be discussed, and a few hours later the loaded
carts would head back to Boston. More often than not, they
would get stuck somewhere between Black Ann's Corner and
the Massasoit House, for Lynn Street dipped from the higher
ground of Salem Street to the level of the marsh, and the mud-
holes lasted days and days after the other streets were dry.
When Lynn Street got dry, it was very dry, and the passing
carts set up a screen of dust that cut off the view to the east and
slowly drifted toward the residential section.

Not far along Salem Street, from the quarry, in a clearing
that faced the town, stood Weeks' barn, the only large one left
in Linden. Mr. Weeks, the Linden milkman, was a Yankee,
and his hired hands were Yankees. They were not the hayseeds
of the vaudeville stage, but were definitely farmers and dairy-
men, who milked the cows, drove them back and forth between
the barn and the various fields Weeks used for pasture, knew
how to swing a scythe, to stack and dry the timothy hay, pile up
colossal loads that dwarfed the hayracks and horses that pulled
them, store the hay in the lofts, and pitch it down for the cows
in the winter. Weeks had four men, besides his son Harry.
They supplied milk for most of the stores and families in
Linden, and quite a few in the neighboring communities of
Clif tondale and Broadway. Also they shipped a dozen or more
huge tin cans, not quite the Ali Baba size, both ways on the
Saugus Branch, to Lynn and to Boston.

A field of Linden cows was not like any other herd on earth,
but how they graced the meadows, sometimes one, sometimes
another. Weeks, when things were going well for him, used

143

Linden on the Saugus Branch

three or four fields at a time, one of the largest stretching all the
way from Beach Street across the creek and up to Salem Street,
directly opposite our house; from our porch we could watch
the cows moving indolently about their business, hear them
munching and sloshing in the mud, smell their fragrance, and
as years went by, get acquainted with them, individually,
and learn that they were no more alike than people were. The
slow-moving, almost wordless Mr. Weeks did not go in for
breeds and strains. In colors and markings, the thirty cows or
more in any given pasture represented just about everything
that could be done with shapes and hues and arrangements.
Some were plain red, fawn color, yellow, white or black. Some
were piebald, dappled, spotted, ringed or belted. Quite a few
looked at us with large reproachful eyes, and represented
tragic figures, animals who protested their status in a dignified
way. Others, with rakish angles to their twisted horns, were
obviously clowns. Now and then a cow would have horns that
matched. Weeks had a bull, who was not of any special kind,
either, and never two days alike. His name was Dave, and he
looked as if he had never been able to decide whether he would
be predominantly white or black. On days when Dave was
feeling chipper, scenes were enacted in Weeks' barnyard, with
spectators along all sides of the rickety rail fence, that were
worthy of the jousts of old. Merely to hear one of these bovine
debauches was an experience. I think it was there I got my
obsession for sound effects, but the assorted colors of the vic-
tims enlivened the action as well.

When Dave was performing, all work stopped at the quarry
and the blacksmith shop, and the Irish laborers and Yankee
farmers met on common ground. More than once, the spectacle
was so moving that the Irishmen knocked off for the rest of the
day and headed, some for home, and others for the Revere cat
houses three miles distant

144

Black Ann's Corner and the Finns

I remember Mr, Weeks, when he called at our back door
to tell Mother that he would have to charge six cents a quart,
instead of five. All the other milkmen around the region had
previously made the change, and he was sorry, but wages were
higher, whatever he bought cost him more than it used to.
When his boy, Harry, had figured up the year's receipts, he had
found that they both had worked hard twelve months for
nothing.

"Some dratted new kind of double-entry figurin'," Mr.
Weeks said.

Mother nodded, sadly and sympathetically. She knew that
everything cost more, and worried about it, too.

Mr. Weeks never seemed to have a recent haircut, or work
clothes that fitted him. He was lean and lanky, awkward and
perpetually embarrassed, when it was necessary for him to talk
at all. His men did not wear themselves out, nor did they loaf.
They produced milk, which was rich and highly unsanitary,
without seeming to exhaust the source, as the Irish at the
quarry produced crushed stone. The milkmen voted Republi-
can and read the Herald, the Irish voted Democratic and read
the Post. Some got drunk whenever they had a chance, others
stayed sober. I think they liked working and living in Linden.
I believe they felt a mantle of security, with no suspicion that
their employers were out to exploit them. Somehow they
would always earn a living.

How much of their contentment was well founded, or sound
economic or social doctrine, I leave to the reader to decide. I
must insist, however, that in feeling the way they did, they de-
rived a lot of pleasure from living, and a minimum of care.
Their children went to the same schools, played on the same
ball teams, and bought their clothes at the same stores as the
rest of us did. The animosities that existed were almost purely
individual, and not too many of those.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

I wish all children could live a few years in a place where
nearly everybody liked everybody else. There is nothing quite
comparable to this. I will go farther. I wish all children could
have lived a while in Linden. I should like to feel that they
had seen Weeks' cows, in all the colors and patterns cows'
promiscuity can achieve, against the background of daisies and
buttercups, when the tide was high and they could stand in
the cool water. And when it came to guidance about the facts
of life, Weeks' barnyard had it all over the little bees and
bluebells.

Another feature of Black Ann's Corner was the Linden
blacksmith's shop, which stood with its back to the town, facing
the Finns' stone yard across Lynn Street, with the Saugus
Branch embankment and miles of marshland in the back-
ground. What first attracted me to the spot was its utter denial
of Longfellow, whose verses I heartily detested. There was no
"spreading chestnut tree," or any tree whatsoever. The fore-
ground consisted of a muddy or dusty street, with unchiseled
slabs that later would be gravestones. And the smithy, Bart
Dickey by name, was less than the average in height, had dys-
pepsia of which he continually complained, and when he had
any heavy lifting to be done, he called on a few of the unem-
ployed men (unemployed by instinct, choice and tempera-
ment), who were always hanging around and were willing to
help him.

Probably Bart, who was an indolent man, figured that the
free entertainment he provided, mending wagon rims, shoeing
refractory horses, making railroad spikes for the section gang,
and pitching horseshoes against all comers, entitled him to the
services of his audience.

The rusty scrap iron, broken-down parts of vehicles, mud-
holes and semistagnant pools, relieved by the smoky old ruin
of a shop and the slabs and gravestones in the Finns' yard across

146

Black Ann's Corner and the Finns

the way, did not provide the most attractive setting for "loafing
and inviting the soul." However, that was the rendezvous for
idle and unattached Linden men, not of the tradesman class,
like those who hung around the Square, but laborers, rousta-
bouts, and tramps. Seldom were there less than ten or twelve
in the group.

When I remarked to Miss Stoddard that the meeting place
of the bums was unsightly, she pointed out that while they
were in that desolate area, they did not see it, unless they were
looking down at their feet. What they saw was the rugged
granite ledge and the wooded hills to the north, the fog banks
creeping in from the marshes to the east, a side view of resi-
dential Linden to the south, and fertile rolling meadows bor-
dering the creek as it flowed westward, when the tide was
coming in.

Not all the men who spent their time around Dickey's shop
were from Linden. Many who liked to be idle, from Broadway
or Clif tondale, and did not find it convenient to be seen doing
nothing by their wives, families or creditors, shuffled over the
Linden borders and converged on the blacksmith shop.

When the tide was right, in smelting season, there were
always four or five men fishing from the granite rim of the
conduit, smoking, dangling their legs, allowing the kids to take
the smelts off their hooks and drop them in the pails. They all
used spreaders, with at least four hooks and leaders, and when
the fish were running, seldom caught less than three at a time.
At other times they caught alewives, or speared eels, or seined
for shrimps, but their fishing was never in the line of work.
They took a few home, gave the rest away, and thought of
fishing as another way of killing time.

A horseshoe game was always in progress, unless the weather
was too cold or too warm. If it was too hot, the men would
stretch themselves out on the higher ground and doze, and if

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

it was too cold they would build a large bonfire, with scraps of
driftwood and discarded railroad ties or wagon spokes that
always were handy. Nothing around the blacksmith shop was
ever picked up unless someone had an immediate use for it.

Pehr and Paavo, the Finns, worked steadily in their shop or
out in the yard, not a hundred feet away, seemingly paying no
attention to the fishing, or games, or bonfires, and the loafers
never crossed the muddy street and sat on their stone slabs and
pedestals. So the hardest work in Linden was performed within
sight of the most complete and accomplished loafing in Middle-
sex County.

The blacksmith shop crowd was seldom drunk or disorderly.
Now and then a bottle was passed around, but the loafers were
more likely to finish their liquor, what little they had, before
checking in at the loafing grounds. Most of them were men
who handled very little money, although they would have re-
sented being classified as "poor." They were able-bodied, but
weak and unambitious in their minds. They were respectable,
to the extent that they seldom got pinched, but their financial
bracket was much lower than that of the men who watched the
trains come in and the customers go in and out of the stores
and shops in the Square. Their wives, if they had them, took
in washing. Their jobs, if any, were seasonal or intermittent.
They were house painters' helpers, ice cutters, teamsters with-
out horses of their own, men with cricks in their backs or pains
in their stomachs that no doctors could relieve, single-taxers,
men who had been fired unjustly, or promised work that did
not materialize. Their ranks were swelled by other men, a little
more soundly placed in the social setup, who were temporarily
out of work, or had sustained minor injuries, or were fed up
with wherever they had been and were visiting indigent rela-
tives south of the Saugus Branch tracks.

Actually their presence in the Lynn Street hollows incom-

148

Black Ann's Corner and the Finns

moded no one. Ruth Coffee, my Great-Aunt Elizabeth, Mrs.
Weeks and young Mrs. Weeks, and the other women who lived
on the eastern reaches of Salem Street, would have chosen the
better footing afforded by Revere Street, in order to do their
errands in Linden, even if the gang of ne'er-do-wells had not
been gathered on Lynn Street. If transient or out-of-town cus-
tomers drove to the blacksmith shop with women in their rigs,
Paavo, the stonecutter, would cross the street, doff his cap, and
offer the stranger the use of his front room and other facilities
he did not specify for the womenfolk. After a glance at the
Lynn Street bums, the women accepted the offer with relief
and alacrity, although probably they were in no danger at all.
I cannot remember a single incident in which a woman was
molested around the blacksmith shop. No Linden woman ever
risked going near enough for that.

Linden weather, forty or fifty years ago, was a formidable
consideration in any mode of life. It was amazing with what
ingenuity the blacksmith shop loafers adapted themselves to it.
Their rendezvous was without natural shade or shelter, but
they managed somehow, rain or shine, in the stifling heat of
summer and the bitter cold of winter. None of them had suit-
able clothing for either extreme. On the hottest days, when
the sun was strong, they would sometimes stray as far as the
edge of the woods beyond the quarry, but they detested
the ants and nettles, the snakes and poison ivy, while the flies
and mosquitoes that swarmed around the creek were compan-
ions they understood. It took a real scorcher, or the stickiest of
dog days, to drive them any farther than the stone wall, overrun
with brambles and berry bushes. In the morning, they would
lie on the western side of the wall, in the field. In the after-
noon, when the shadows spread the other way, they would
stretch out on what was called, for lack of an accurate term,
the sidewalk. When it was raining hard, they would swarm

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into the blacksmith shop. To slight showers they paid no at-
tention, standing like bedraggled fowl and watching without
purpose or interest, the spatter of the raindrops on the surface
of the creek or on the mud.

On clear, cold days, there was no problem except wood for
the fire, which they built on the ice that bound the still pools.
In snowstorms, when the creek was frozen, they huddled in
the conduit under the railroad embankment, heating the
shelter with an old metal tank filled with coals.

They argued continuously, but seldom fought. Fighting re-
quired physical effort, and if they had been that kind of men
they would not have been there. None of them bought news-
papers, but there was always one or two around, and the head-
lines served as springboards for their talk. If a new building
was going up, or an old one was being torn down, if the city was
embarking on a public project, the pros and cons would be
sifted, in a vehement but impersonal way. Clay pipes and cut
plug were obtainable for one cent and five cents, respectively,
and a few of them smoked Sweet Caporals or butts they picked
up on the sidewalks.

Whenever there was a public ceremony or a ball game in
Linden, the bums from Lynn Street were the most partisan
rooters or spectators. They did not stick together, but mingled
freely with the rest of the Linden population and showed as
much animation as on other days they showed lassitude. Once,
when after a dry spell the marsh grass caught fire and was
fanned by a brisk east wind, they beat out the fire with their
coats and green branches from the woods, and undoubtedly
saved the town. But if Jim Puffer approached from the Par-
tridge warehouse and wanted to hire a few extra men to unload
leather, the variety of reasons they would give, as individuals, as
to why they could not oblige that day, was a tribute to their
ingenuity.

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Black Ann's Corner and the Finns

Once, a hurdy-gurdy, pushed by an Italian and hauled by his
strong young daughter, stopped in front of the blacksmith shop
and the Italian started to grind out a tune. The bums looked
at each other, annoyed and embarrassed, and slowly dispersed,
before the young girl got around with her tambourine. They
certainly would not put out the few coins they had for music,
and wanted no favors free of charge. The Italian was bewil-
dered, somewhat hurt, but he never made the same mistake
again. He left Linden for Cliftondale by way of Revere Street
and Salem, and kept away from Lynn Street and the black-
smith shop. The Lynn Street gang was made up of Irish, and
what were loosely known as "Americans" or "white men." No
Polacks or southern European or Scandinavians were among
them. They had no interest in music. None of them ever sang
songs, unless he was drunk, and then he was discouraged from
continuing.

It always seemed to me that the loafers had a mild contempt
for the respectable, hard-working people who had steady in-
comes, were looked up to by their families, and jumped when
whistles blew. I never heard them express any quaint philos-
ophy or profound socialistic ideas. They were not sorry for
themselves, they did not seem to be ruminating on past frustra-
tions or sorrows, like Hen Richards or Dick Trask, the hermits,
for instance. None of them mentioned the fact, if they "had
seen better days." The days they were seeing were good enough
for them. They felt no obligation to be useful, or noble, or
industrious. They liked the status quo and were irritated by
innovations.

Bart Dickey, the blacksmith, made a few dollars now and
then, in spite of himself, and I am sure he would have been
lonesome without his shiftless companions. They did not mind
his working, if somebody showed up with a horse to be shod or
a wagon to mend.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Doesn't it drive away half of your trade, having those bums
around the shop, day after day?" J. J. Markham asked the
blacksmith one day.

"I hope to God it does," Bart said, sincerely.

The Finns, Pehr and Paavo Wallenius, whose place was also
a landmark at Black Ann's Corner, made a living by shaping up
stone slabs and carving names and gems of hopeful statement
on funeral monuments. Between-times, the Finns did the finest
masonry work, for pavements, walls or porches, in New Eng-
land.

The two brothers looked and dressed much alike. Pehr was
slightly taller and had a tinge of orange in his sandy hair and
moustaches. Paavo had shoulders not quite so narrow as his
brother's. They worked equally hard, when there was stone
cutting to be done, from about eight o'clock in the morning
until the last blast sounded at the nearby quarry, just after
six p.m. The remainder of the twenty-four hours, and all Satur-
day afternoons, Sundays and holidays, their pathways were
separate.

Pehr, the older one, drank. Paavo, the younger and broader
one in the shoulders, did not. Paavo read Swedenborg instead,
and at an early age I had Mary Stoddard's word for it that the
drinker had all the best of it, in so far as the effect on the brain
was concerned.

From the moment the Finns had laid the stone walk in front
of her neat cottage, and had fixed up her wall so the spring
rains would not wash it out, had added a stone well, an outdoor
fireplace, and a fountain with a sun dial in her flower garden,
by far the most decorative and well planned in Linden, Ruth
Coffee had been obsessed with the feeling that two such artists
should not waste their talents. It was worth a lot to see the
embarrassed, deprecatory smiles that passed over the boyish
faces of the middle-aged masons when Ruth referred to them as

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Black Ann's Corner and the Finns

artists. Good stone masons and cutters were respected in Fin-
land, they admitted, but they were just plain working men.

"You're chumps not to cash in on what you can do," Ruth
said. "Those summer people down to Marblehead will pay
you more for a porch like mine than you get for a hundred
lousy gravestones. Just say the word, and we'll skin 'em alive."

The Finns did not like to talk when they were working. A
nod or a grunt or a gesture between them was sufficient for
communication. They made no lost motions. Consequently
Ruth was tactful enough not to harangue them in working
hours. And except during working hours, the brothers were
seldom together.

Pehr, the elder brother, was at the Massasoit every night. He
went there straight from work, cutting across the fields when
weather and footing permitted, instead of using the round-
about streets and sidewalks. At six o'clock, the whistle on the
stone crusher blew, a hundred yards away. Pehr stopped what-
ever he was doing. If he was halfway up the "U" in carving
a "Pause, Stranger," he did not hit the chisel another tap. He
got up, dusted himself off, went to the yard between the shop
and the blacksmith's to wash his hands, and now and then his
face, and was cleaned up in time to see the blast

Pehr got a childish pleasure out of seeing a section of the
huge granite ledge crumple and slide down to the level of the
quarry bottom, with its wicked puff of smoke, white and black,
the lift, the fissure, the pull of gravitation, friction, dust, flying
fragments that sometimes landed all the way down to the yard
in which he stood, and the delayed sound of the explosion,
followed by the rustle and clatter and roar of rock cascading
downward against rock.

As soon as the workmen were safely away, two watchmen
walked along the car tracks in opposite directions, with red
flags, to warn pedestrians, vehicles and trolley cars not to ap-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

proach. All day the drillers had been drilling, the powder
monkey had been taking drills back and forth from blacksmith
shop to quarry, the hard-rock men had been stowing away the
black powder, for lift, and the dynamite for fission. The fuses
had been measured, attached to the concussion caps, and laid.
They were lighted with a match, and if one spluttered out and
failed, there was dangerous work to be done.

Linden people got accustomed to hearing the blasts at the
quarry, just after noon, and just after six. It was pan of the
day's punctuation.

The last blast meant more to Pehr than most of the people.
It signalled his exit from a world of toil, to one of the imagina-
tion and retrospect, well oiled with Portsmouth Ale. His
brother handled the money, fixed the charges, paid the bills,
and after expenses were taken care of, divided the money, bill
by bill and coin for coin, one for you and one for me. Before
he took his own half, Paavo put whatever extra change or bills
he had left over from the last division into a metal box con-
cealed in his fireplace. The other half he gave to Pehr, who
put it all in his pockets and headed for the Massasoit bar.

There was something satisfying and purposeful about the
way Pehr walked from his shop to the bar. Anyone watching
him would feel, instinctively, that there was a man who knew
what he wanted, and was not likely to be frustrated or deterred.
He took long strides, without undignified haste, leaning
slightly forward without swinging his arms. Swinging his arms
would have been physically uneconomical, and Pehr would
have none of that. He would have use for his arms the next
morning at eight o'clock, in the shop. Until then, no worry,
no waste, no interruption.

The Admiral, the bartender, my Uncle Reuben, Hal Kings-
land, Ruth Coffee, Ginger McSweeney, Mr. Wing, all the
bottle companions assembled would nod and smile pleasantly

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Black Ann's Corner and the Finns

as Pehr came through the swinging doors. He was never late,
and never misbehaved. He acknowledged the greetings po-
litely, with his warm, boyish smile. The glow of the lamps,
the smell of beer and sawdust, the somber hue of the mahogany,
the alluring high lights in the stout brass rail, sang a song of
evening, a vesper hymn, a brotherhood in Christ and alcohol,
a unity of mankind, what all bards and scalds and poets and
drinking songs have, since the beginning of time, tried faith-
fully and inadequately to express. The sailor home from the
sea, the beacons passed, the spiritual predicate. What mattered
the hours of tapping with a mallet upon stone, the foolish
phrases, the stupid patterns, the aching fingers, neck muscles,
dust in the nostrils?

Ale and good brother Paavo, and the money to pay for what
he had, by yumpin' Yesus. Pehr seldom spoke, unless the
amenities made it necessary, but after a few good mugs of ale
he smiled happily to himself, breathed deeply, flexed the
muscles of his shoulders, and on one occasion, from pure
inner glee, startled the other tipplers at the bar by exclaiming,
to himself and apropos of nothing, in the middle of an evening,
during a lull in the barroom chatter: "God damn it to hell!"
With those words, he shook his head, with exuberance, and
smacked the bar, gently but delightedly. Pehr loved existence,
and the world.

What did Pehr experience, leaning so blissfully on his
elbows, resting his foot on the brass? Snatches of song, of toil,
of boyhood among the reindeer, or smoked reindeer, of north-
ern lights, and northern minor music, with cleavages of major
and minor, like faults in clear ice. Of a safe and ordered
existence, with coins in his pocket, work always to be had, and
always his little brother, supplying what in character Pehr
lacked. He had never urged his brother to drink, or sung to
him about drink's miraculous evocations. He had promised his

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

dying mother that he would take care of Paavo, and Paavo
had sworn to take care of him. Both were fulfilling their vow,
in their separate fashions.

Pehr never ate an evening meal, but depended on the free
lunch at the Massasoit. Lucullus might have depended on less.
Jeff Lee put out home-cured hams, steaming hot and redolent
with spices; steamed Annisquam clams that had dreamed in
the sand and seaweed fragrance and been turned up by under-
standing clam forks and given the blessing of hot vapors, not
more than two minutes; four or five kinds of herring, one bet-
ter than the other; roast beef or roast spring lamb, with home-
made bread, white, rye or brown, for sandwiches; the pickled
toes of swinekins, in a brine that would save sinners; baked
beans and steamed brown bread. The beans deserve another
chapter. If each bean were a bead of a rosary, and the cross
made of fat salt pork, there would be no men of taste outside
God's mercy.

Glimpses of fine, strong, blonde women in seaport dives.
Song drunken, and song sober. Evergreens and salt air, and the
patterns in the grain of granite, basalt, porphyry, and marble.
Porches and pavings, poetical, and monuments stiff and trite.
Days working and nights drinking, the roar of the breakers
and the space between the stars.

A train steamed into Linden, stopped to let off a few late-
faring passengers, then steamed along the edge of the marsh.
This took place on weekday nights,* just about midnight.
Paavo, the younger Finn, heard this train, invariably, although
he had been in a deep, placid sleep since nine o'clock. He got
out of bed, hauled on his britches and boots, wrapped a scarf
around his neck, took his corduroy cap with ear muffs (tucked
up in summer), and started down Lynn Street toward the
Massasoit. The Massasoit never closed, in the accepted meaning
of the word, but Pehr softly and gradually folded as leaves are

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Black Ann's Corner and the Finns

turned on calendars. Several of the steady drinkers would still
be at the bar, and would wave and speak greetings as Paavo
came in. The bartender would reach for the keg of root beer
he kept on hand for customers on the wagon. Pehr would open
one eye sleepily, nod to his brother, shake himself lazily like
a dog, shove over his mug for one last and final ale. Paavo
would gulp the root beer, smacking his lips approvingly. Stone
dust gave a man a good thirst, whether he drank water or
liquor. Pehr would drain his mug of ale, take out his purse and
pay for his evening's drinks, which seldom amounted to more
than two dollars and a half. If, toward the end of a week or a
month, Pehr didn't have enough, Paavo would pay the dif-
ference and charge it to general expenses, or what has now
become known as "overhead."

Together they would nod and say, "Gude-night, jentlemen,"
and would leave the barroom, side by side. It was a point of
dignity with Pehr that he must go home under his own steam,
and not stagger too much. His little brother, he explained,
came to remind him, not because Pehr could not take care of
himself. They would enter the shop, in the back of which they
lived, do whatever undressing they thought necessary, say,
"Gude-night, brother," and tumble into their bunks.

When the six o'clock train, Boston bound in the morning,
whistled for the unguarded crossing on Lynn Street, Paavo
would get up, wash in the yard, light a fire in the cook stove,
put on coffee, warm over some beans or steak or whatever he
had left over from his supper, fry about a dozen fresh eggs,
break out some bread or sea biscuit, tidy up the sleeping room,
and at seven he would wake Pehr. This was a project requiring
restraint and patience, as well as ingenuity and adaptability.
It seldom required more than a quarter of an hour. Once the
advent of a new day had seeped into Pehr's consciousness, he
would sit up, shake his head, say, "Gude-morning, brother/*

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

and go out to the pump. There he would not hold his head
under the stream. That is for nondrinkers. Drinking men keep
their heads up high, and raise the water in their cupped hands,
until the worst is over. Jerry Dineen would have delivered the
paper. The Finns read the Globe, passing the sections back and
forth gravely as they ate a whopping breakfast. Paavo opened
up the shop and made ready for business while Pehr washed
the dishes. Then they settled down to work, with a maximum
of accomplishment and a minimum of chatter.

Their joint income was about twenty-five hundred dollars
a year, gross. Of his share, Paavo put aside between nine hun-
dred and a thousand dollars. Pehr had never laid up a cent.

The only cross words that passed between the brothers were
due to Paavo's thirst for the wisdom of Swedenborg. He would
knit his brows, clench his hands, groan and suffer agonies of
concentration as he read, in English, about the relation of the
finite to the infinite, and the geometrical theory of the origin
of things. He let his head ring with squared circles and the
Swedish mystic's dreams, talks with the Lord and the angels.
God, he learned, was like a man, only divine, and a sphere,
glowing as the sun.

Once Pehr picked up the book he had seen his brother so
strenuously devouring, frowned harder than Paavo, and
pointed out a word with his calloused finger.

"Brother? What's this 'nexus'? I don't know what it means,"
Pehr said.

Paavo flushed and looked hard at his brother. "That's none
of your business," he said.

"Maybe you don't know yourself, exactly?" said Pehr, sur-
prised and nettled.

"The man who wrote that book had witnessed the Last
Judgment and saw the Holy Ghost," Paavo said, taking the
book and dosing it firmly.

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Black Ann's Corner and the Finns

"And what did the Holy Ghost look like?" Pehr asked.

"That isn't for sinners," said Paavo.

"Maybe Mr. Swedenborg forgot to write it down," said Pehr.

"A great man is a threefold eternal incarnation, when he's
seen the Last Judgment and the Second Coming, and couldn't
forget, unless the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost were so
minded, and thus spake," Paavo said. "Now will you shut up
and hold your tongue?"

"I didn't mean to get you mad, brother," Pehr said. "But
if I did, you can kindly go to hell."

The Finns did not speak to each other again for ten days,
and Pehr never asked his brother again about anything in
Swedenborg's book. Pehr, nevertheless, brooded a bit about
the meaning of the word "nexus" and sprung it on the gang
at the Massasoit bar. Some thought it was an animal, like the
sidehill gouger or the four-legged snipe, others believed it
was a place, like Texas, only having people who spoke better
English. Ruth Coffee did not know, but she saw Miss Stoddard
passing, and invited her to come in. Miss Stoddard ordered tea,
and sat at a table. She had heard volumes about the Massasoit,
but had never been there.

The Admiral and Mr. Wing were very gallant and my Uncle
Reuben poured a jigger of rum into the tea. Miss Stoddard
sipped it and liked it.

"The Finn just stumped us with a word he saw somewhere
in a book," Ruth said.

"I didn't realize you had spelling matches in here," Miss
Stoddard said.

Hal Kingsland, who always found a way to insert an element
of gambling into a situation, made up a book, offering odds of
six to seven that Miss Stoddard would know what the word
meant My Uncle Reuben insisted on even money. Jeff Lee
came out from the kitchen, his eyes glowing. He dearly loved a

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

sporting proposition, and had decided hunches on that one.
He offered to back Miss Stoddard for any amount he had in his
pocket, or could borrow.

When the money was all put up, and Pehr had been reduced
to the depths of self-consciousness because he had made himself
so conspicuous, Ruth asked Miss Stoddard the question.

"What is a nexus?" she said.

Miss Stoddard's humorous and tolerant smile lit up her
homely face, warts and all.

"A nexus," she said, and already Jeff Lee was reaching for
the money, "is a bond between members of a group. For in-
stance, between you gentlemen, the nexus that holds you to-
gether is a thirst for strong drink."

She finished her tea, still smiling between sips, rose, said,
"Good-evening," and departed.

The men looked after her, impressed, as she departed. For
years, most of them had looked upon Mary Stoddard as a harm-
less eccentric. Now they were convinced that she knew a lot
more than they did.

Miss Stoddard's speech at the mass meeting about the Balm
of Gilead tree had provoked a lot of ridicule. She said that in
her day the tree had been struck by lightning at least a dozen
times, and that if it were removed, the houses in the vicinity
would be in danger from electrical storms.

Linden was one of the prize locations in the world for
thunderstorms. Something about the conformation of the
northern hills, the currents of air that rose above the marshes,
and the hot flat lands to the south, seemed ideal to attract the
most vicious streaks of lightning and produce the most ultra-
Wagnerian thunderclaps. Miss Stoddard had pointed this out,
and the opponents of the tree, as well as many of its supporters
had not taken her seriously until a few months after die last
of the tree had been sawed down. Don Partridge, Norman's

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Black Ann's Corner and the Finns

brother and junior partner, started building a house just back
of ours, and when the rough work was finished, the new build-
ing was struck by lightning and nearly demolished.

The proprietor, as well as Mr. Carlson, the builder, were
in it at the time, and both were stunned. It was then that folks
in Linden began to believe that Miss Stoddard knew what she
was talking about.

"What a shame," Uncle Reuben said, as she left the Mas-
sasoit bar. "A smart woman like that, with a face that would
scare a dog off a gut wagon. Some of you young fellows ought
to help her out."

"Not me," said Ginger. "There's nothing that throws a man
off his stride like an educated woman. It makes him nervous at
just the wrong time."

"Lots of girls feel bashful with an educated man," Big Julie
said, "but they're kind of nice when you get used to them."

"Does it make any difference what a man looks like?" my
uncle asked.

"You can always turn the page," Julie said.

161

CHAPTER TEN

Of Codfish Balk

IT WAS the codfish (Gaddus calarius) that brought to the
New England coast a large number of its best inhabitants, not
the misfits and the pious of whom far too much has been writ-
ten, but mariners and fishermen with all the adventurous
characteristics of men who pit themselves against the sea, where
the ways are free for all and nobody owns anything except the
fish he catches and the vessel he rides on. The Grand Banks
off Newfoundland, and farther south, Grand Manan off what
now is the state of Maine, and St. George's great submerged
peninsula off Cape Ann, brought fishermen from England,
France, all the Scandinavian countries, the Spaniards, the
Basques and the Portuguese; many of them, finding it more
convenient to winter on the coast of America than to sail back
to Europe, spent a few seasons here, were challenged by the
new continent's endless possibilities, and stayed.

Among those who chose Cape Ann, founding Rockport and
Gloucester and other coastal cities and towns in what now is
Massachusetts, a number left descendants who established
themselves in Linden and the little communities just north
of Boston. The first cargo ever to be shipped from Massa-
chusetts was of sun-dried cod. And when the steam engine was
invented, in the eighteenth century, and sails, one by one, dis-
appeared from the seas, large numbers of fishermen stuck to
the traditional schooners, and sailed out of Gloucester, New-

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Of Codfish Balls

buryport, Salem, and Boston, preferring one of the toughest
known ways of making a living to swallowing cinders on steam
freighters or going into New England factories to weave textiles
or manufacture boots and shoes. The codfishermen did not
work by the day or by the month. After the owner's and the
skipper's cut had been taken from the receipts of the voyage,
the crew shared alike.

Old Gimp Crich, who waited on the back room customers
at the Massasoit House, had had his leg sheared off by a tow-
rope, aboard a fishing schooner off Grand Manan. He had a
cousin who had been one of his shipmates and who still sailed
out of Bucksport, Maine, for the Newfoundland Banks, had
got a master's ticket, and as captain and owner of a neat two-
master, was prosperous. Captain Eldridge was his name, and
he argued with Gimp by the hour to give up his job and act as
watchman on the Bessie B. Gimp, over seventy and with a
handicap that would have crippled a less agile man, was still
independent.

Gimp explained to me once why so many New England sail-
ing vessels had women's first names and only an initial after-
ward.

"Them's mostly hookers," he said. "Somebody liked 'em
and couldn't remember their last name, if ever he knew."

Also, I think Gimp liked his Linden job because of the girls
who came in each night.

"Gimp always was a hound," Captain Eldridge said, and,
while Gimp looked embarrassed and snorted, his cousin told
the back room crowd around Hal Kingsland's long table how,
when "Gimp and him" were young punks together and had
just got back from the Banks with a fine load of cod, Gimp
started hell-bent up the street in Bangor, his share of the
money still in his hand. Captain Eldridge hurried after him,
caught up, and said:

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Gimp, hadn't you better give me some of that money?
You'll be needing food and clothes this winter."

("This was the last trip of the season/' Eldridge explained
to the crowd.)

" 'To hell with food and clothes/ Gimp said," according to
Eldridge. " Tm after whores and music/ "

Gimp shuffled off his bashfulness and was a little defiant.

"Well. What of it?" Gimp said. "I ain't starved to death yet,
and I'm decently covered."

Gimp, in fact, was quite content. It will hardly be be-
lievable, in the light of present-day existence, how many con-
tented men and women I report out of Linden. I do not suggest
"going back" to those conditions. That is foolish and impos-
sible, and not even desirable. Recapturing the contentment,
striving for it, recognizing that it is most important is another
matter. That we must do. No series of harassed and bitter gen-
erations will produce an improved mankind. What will hap-
pen, if contentment is sneered at and obliterated, is that the
best qualities of humanity will be drained away, which is far
from impossible. Scientifically it is even probable, unless
enough of us persist in having a good time. Admitting that we
still need Karl Marx, we need Omar Khayyam even more.
They must be reconciled.

Linden, without codfish, would have lost one of its essen-
tials, as would any seacoast town in New England. The match-
less varieties of seafood, available and inexpensive, had their
part in building Linden's people, balancing their precarious
economy, strengthening their physiques and mellowing their
character.

It was on Tuesdays and Fridays in Linden that Ezra Stowe,
the fishman, called from house to house. The stores carried
meat, which could be kept in the ice chest for days or weeks.
But New England customers insisted that their fish be fresh

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Of Codfish Balls

right out of the water. They knew nothing about vitamins, but
were right about what they liked.

Mr. Stowe was a small active man, incredibly swift and skill-
ful with his hands, which, because of his occupation, were
scarred, pitted, calloused and gnarled. He could clean a had-
dock with his thumbnail, in less time than most men could
reach for a knife. He knew how to pack lobsters, alive, so they
would not fight and maim one another, and without resorting
to pegs driven into their claw joints.

"Don't never eat a lobster from a pound," he said. "He
won't taste no better than you would, after you'd been in
jail and practically starved."

I think there are few more beautiful sights, of shapes, pat-
terns and colors, than were displayed at the back of Mr. Stowe's
zinc-lined cart. The stupid and wasteful practice of chopping
"filets" from fish and throwing the most useful and nourishing
parts away before the customer saw the fish, had not then been
conceived. Mr. Stowe, who had shrewd grey-blue eyes as merry
as his cousin Mathilda's, liked best to deal with customers who
knew fish when they saw them, and of those there were plenty
in Linden. Folks who did not know what they were getting
were instructed by Mr. Stowe, and he would sell them noth-
ing that he thought they should not have.

"Mrs. Ford," he would say to the organist, who came from
out west in Ohio and knew little about salt water fish, "you
don't want me to skin them flounders. Where do you think the
flavor is, if it isn't in the skin? Skin 'em after you've fried
'em, if the taste is too strong, but my advice is to eat it and
get used to it, and if after three tries you don't like it, I'll give
you the choice of my two horses. Is that a bargain?"

The fishman's two horses were named Moody and Sankey,
and he used them on alternate days. He could drive them with-
out any reins, which he frequently did, twisting the lines

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

around the whip in its socket, and simply directing them
around corners, back and forth across the streets, and
wherever he wanted them to go. The Linden cats all followed
Mr. Stowe and his cart, sometimes halfway around town,
purring happily, with tails held high, and always were re-
warded with scraps. He knew them by name, scolded the
greedy, encouraged the weak and the timid. He had trained
Moody and Sankey to look around, both sides, before they
started, to be sure no cat had settled down to eating between
the cart wheels, where it might get run over. It was Mr. Stowe
who told the Italian hurdy-gurdy man how to keep his monkey
alive, after two had died because of the rigorous climate.

"Get a cat to sleep with him," Mr. Stowe said, and the old
Italian built a little house with an upstairs compartment for
the monkey and a lower for the cat. In the fall, when nights
turned cold, and through the winter, the monkey would reach
down and haul up the cat, and they would cuddle together.
In spring and summer, they rested on their separate levels.
Where Mr. Stowe picked up these odd bits of practical knowl-
edge, no one knew, but he solved a host of minor problems.

One of the Freeman boys had an awful case of hiccoughs,
which started on Monday and lasted all night When Mr. Stowe
came around, he put a paper bag over the boy's face and told
him to breathe ten times. The hiccoughs stopped and big Mat-
tie Freeman stopped crying. Dawson, as generous as he was
original, spent days and evenings trying to figure out what a
fish dealer would like best as a present, and discussed the matter
with all the regulars at the Massasoit.

"Thunderation. He don't smoke cigars, and he gets his
liquor for next to nothing," Dawson said. The incoming sailors
the fish dealers met around T-wharf in Boston every morning
had no great reverence for the customs laws, and made a few
extra dollars bringing in imported liquors and the best Eng-

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Of Codfish Balls

lish cloth, as well as genuine meerschaum pipes, Toledo
swords, snakeskins from South America, and other articles
highly prized and easily disposed of. Dawson wound up by
commissioning a Boston painter to paint a still life of wild
ducks and fresh mackerel for Mr. Stowe's dining room. It cost
Fred two hundred dollars, and everyone thought he was crazy,
but Dawson Freeman never did anything in a picayune way.

I do not know what Mr. Stowe really thought about that
oil painting, but he put up a good show, and never called at
the Freemans' without admiring Dawson's collection of paint-
ings and remarking how he prized his own.

Mr. Stowe bought his fish at T-wharf about five o'clock in
the morning, within sight of the spot where the famous Boston
Tea Party had taken place. His haddock were caught in the
channels between the offshore islands; scrod and cod came
from the hidden ledges off Nahant, Marblehead, Gloucester
and all the way along Cape Ann; flounders were sweetest and
best from the East Boston flats; smelts swarmed the tidal rivers
and the creeks of Linden marsh; salmon came down on the
daily Maine boat, alive, from the Penobscot; mackerel and
bluefish abounded, in schools of hundreds of thousands that
matched to the fraction of a centimeter in all their details;
deep-sea halibut and swordfish were found in cold currents,
over shell bottoms; lobsters prowled the floor of the ocean
all along the North Shore and were taken from traps on the
turn of each tide; the finest oysters were raked at Cotuit and
Narragansett; the best of all clams were from Ipswich and
Annisquam.

"Lutie," Mr. Stowe would say to my mother, whom he had
known in Rockport for years, and my father, too, before he
died, "Lutie. I've saved these cheeks and tongues for you."

Pollack's cheeks and tongues were a delicacy, comparatively
rare. Each trip there were cod's cheeks and tongues, but the

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

cod is a vulgar cousin to the less numerous and more elusive
pollack, and the tidbits from the heads of the latter are es-
teemed by connoisseurs. If my mother had ever heard the
words "gourmet" or "connoisseurs 1 " she would have thought
of them as too highfalutin or affected to use. But Brillat-Savarin
could have learned enormously from her about the choice and
preparation of fresh fish.

So every Tuesday and Friday evening in Linden, when the
trains began puffing and clanging to the Linden depot, and
hungry men who had worked all day in Boston got off and
started fanning out in various directions along the familiar
tree-lined streets, the fragrance that would greet them and
enliven their progress toward home would be a symphony of
the steam from chowder; clams or lobster in seaweed; haddock
baking, garnished with home-cured bacon and shallots from
the yard; the mysterious and poetic exhalations from deep-sea
snails who had strayed into lobster pots; bluefish pan-broiling
on one side, to be grilled gently on the other; perfect mackerel,
hake, and halibut. From some of the kitchens, where a local
housewife was known for her careful cooking, the inviting
smells would arrest the commuters, homeward bound, and I
regret to say that on one occasion, a couple of good -fellows,
friends and neighbors for years, before and after, got into a
fist fight over the question as to whether birch or willow twigs
made the best live coals for grilling salmon.

Those were days. I am not writing about jaded gentlemen
with stuffed pocketbooks, in city hotels, but of Linden men
and women who thought of supper as a high point in a worthy
working day, of dishes worthy of any king's table that cost
eighty cents apiece, for a family of four or five, of recipes not
from Parmentier, or Savarin, or Escoffier, but coming to
Linden from Cape Ann settlers named Tarr, Griffin, Pool,
Wetherell, Noble, Bly, Favor, Norcross and Paul. What is a

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Of Codfish Balls

meal? What was ever a meal? Should it be revolting and toxic,
convenient and insipid, or evoked from nature's best with
reverence, loving kindness and address? What have we, out-
side of our days and hours? Companions. And what is better
for companionship than regard for the table. The kind of
health good food engenders cannot be shot into arms or swal-
lowed in pills, amid Philistines and bores. Except frequently
at the Massasoit, and in some of the houses, the Linden meal-
time conversations were neither witty or inspired. Hearty eat-
ers said little or nothing, and that is as it should be. Civilization
has never devised a more stupid convention than requiring a
poor devil, faced with course after course of a banquet, to
turn first to his right and then to his left and think of some-
thing brilliant to say. Talk as much as you like between drinks,
but hold your peace while fornicating or eating. Simple ab-
stract grunts, sighs, or ejaculations are sufficient, less distract-
ing, more directly understood.

My Great-Uncle Elijah was one who came to Linden from
Cape Ann in 1870, when his trade, that of ship's carpenter,
began to show signs of its final decline. He was offered the job
of foreman in a small shipyard near the mouth of the Mystic
River, and about the same time a relative left his wife, Eliza-
beth, a snug white house on Salem Street, on the high ground
near the top of the Salem Street hill, west of Black Ann's
Corner. The house was not nearly as beautiful as many of the
cottages Lije had built Down East for other men, but he
shingled the roof, replaced the clapboards, and made the build-
ing sightly and weatherproof, in spite of its banal proportions.

The little section of Linden, sloping downward to the
creek bed from the Salem Street hill, was neat and lovely be-
cause of the well-kept houses, yards and flower gardens along
the sidewalk, and the fields, with hen yards and corn rows be-
tween the back of the houses and the main part of town. There

169

Linden on the Saugus Branch

was the rambling white house belonging to Great-Uncle Lije,
and across the street, Ruth Coffee's little red cottage with white
trimmings, a fountain and dial, and rock garden. Ruth's house
was the only one in Linden ever reproduced on the cover of a
magazine, but that was years later.

My Great-Uncle Lije was the strongest man in Linden. He
could roll boulders with a crowbar that three or four men
could not move, or bend horseshoes and pokers, tear decks of
cards, and put any man's hand on the counter, at the elbow
game. These tricks he did reluctantly and only after extreme
provocation, because he was naturally shy and unassuming;
and he was uneasy in his mind because, in his best years (be-
tween fifty and eighty) his work petered out and he could only
be kept busy for wages or on contract, maybe half of the time.
The other half of the time, Lije kept busy, and the results were
picturesque, if not directly profitable. The land his wife had
inherited had been part of a farm, like all the other land in
Linden and vicinity; Lije thought he ought not to waste it, so
he kept hens, turkeys and ducks, a milk cow that often had a
calf, likewise a large and noble Newfoundland dog named
Rover who took care of all the neighborhood children, pre-
venting them forcibly from wading or falling into the creek
when the tide was high and the water was deep. Lije also had
a horse, with buggy, harness, 3. carryall, a dump cart and a
spring wagon. The horse was named Zaccheus, because the first
thing he had done as a colt, when Mr. Weeks had tried to hitch
him, was to climb an overloaded apple tree and break it down.

Our Linden school copybooks in those days contained the
verse:

Zaccheus, he
Did climb a tree,
Our Lord to see.

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Of Codfish Balls

Great-Uncle Lije was a deacon and a pious man, who could
not swear in public and seldom did so in private, and his in-
terminable contest of wills and forces with Zaccheus was epic
and amazing. Being a seafaring man, of seafaring ancestors,
Lije misunderstood horses in every conceivable way. He
thought they were stubborn, like squarehead sailors, and could
understand and do what was wanted if they felt like it. I do not
know the source of the old English tale about the sea captain
who had come ashore for good and was getting married, being
late for the ceremony because, riding a saddle horse for the
first time in his life, he tacked him back and forth across the
field, not knowing he could drive the creature straight into
the wind. But it looked as if Great-Uncle Lije was trying to
maneuver a catboat, sometimes, when he hitched Zaccheus to
a plough and tried to turn furrows, up and down the slope and
side by side. The blade would hit a rock, the handles jump,
Zach would kick his straw hat off, and the harness, nine times
out of ten hooked up the wrong way, would rip or break. My
Great-Aunt Elizabeth would watch from a back window, con-
cealed behind a lace curtain, and protest and pray.

"Every ear of corn we raise costs us five dollars/' she would
say, to my mother and my Aunt Carrie, but never to Lije. A
Cape Ann husband was the head of the house, if he was any
good at all.

My great-uncle was not hard up for money. He had saved
his pay and his profits, when young, and the banks where he
deposited his savings were not the ones that failed. He had
never had a sick day in his life, and neither had Great-Aunt
Elizabeth. Their only son was doing well, with a hardware
store in Bangor.

"If Lije would take it easy, when he's off from the shipyards,
we could have a fine time and save quite a bit of money," my
Great-Aunt Elizabeth said.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"It's no use talking. Men can't do what isn't in their nature,"
Aunt Carrie, my Uncle Reuben's lovely and long-suffering
helpmeet said.

"I'm not asking him to do what's contrary to nature. I only
wish the Lord would put in his head not to do what's contrary
to his nature."

"The Lord has His work cut out for Him, puttin' things
in some men's heads," Aunt Carrie said.

"It's harder taking things out than puttin' 'em in," said my
mother reminiscently.

When Tommy Craven's girl, Abbie, our church soprano,
married Barney Ewig, an undertaker's assistant from out of
town (six miles, in Lynn), the stalwart little English grocer
wanted to do things up brown, and held the wedding break-
fast in Associate Hall, down behind the depot. Tommy owned
the Hall and Abbie was popular, so everyone in Linden wanted
to give her a good send-off. My Great-Uncle Lije shined up
the buggy, with the wrong kind of polish that smelled like
shoe blacking, oiled the harness with whale oil that smelled,
according to Uncle Reuben, like sour owl turd, and insisted
on driving Great-Aunt Elizabeth to the ceremony behind the
outlaw, Zaccheus. My great-aunt began to tremble whenever
she saw that horse. She was practically hysterical by the time
she got near enough his hindquarters, holding up her long
skirts away from the muddy buggy wheel while Lije awkwardly
helped her in. It was a beautiful morning for the wedding and
the breakfast, and Zach behaved like a thoroughbred all the
way to the church. He stayed hitched during the wedding,
did not kick or bite the other horses in the shed, refrained
from gnawing away the soft boards of the manger, and prac-
tically bowed and smiled when Great-Aunt Elizabeth came
from the church with Lije. They started toward the Square and
the Hall.

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Of Codfish Balls

"He's up to something," Great-Aunt Elizabeth said. "That
miscreant can't fool me."

She was likely to use words out of Laura Jean Libbey, Louisa
May Alcott or Harriet Beecher Stowe when other folks would
use curse words or phonetic substitutes for profanity.

Zach allowed himself to be hitched behind the depot, then
quietly reverted to type. As soon as he was left to his own
devices, he unhitched himself, with or without the Devil to
help him, crossed Lynn Street to the back entrance of the
Hall, walked up a short flight of wooden stairs, let himself
into a back pantry, and ate up all the bridesmaids' bouquets,
which had come all the way from a florist's in Faneuil Hall,
being tastefully arranged with small white rosebuds, forget-
me-nots, and other rare flowers not plentiful in Linden.
Having finished the flowers, Zach rubbed his head against a
sliding panel and found himself looking into the kitchen,
where Jeff Lee, his back turned, was doing his stuff. When Jeff
turned around, Zach was on his third blueberry pie. The
guests were called from .the table to see the roguish horse,
quite pleased with himself, in the pantry, his muzzle and head
stained with blueberry juice almost back to his ears.

Great-Uncle Lije, who was painfully embarrassed when any-
thing called public attention his way, was "mortified," but
he would not sell, exchange or give away Zach. I think Lije
felt that the Lord had sent Zach to him to see which one would
give up first

According to Linden tradition, my great-uncle was the only
man in those parts to have a backhouse blown right out of his
hand, without letting go of the door. Lije was one of the last
men of adequate means who clung to the outdoor privy, in
preference to the effete modern type that he heartily distrusted.
To relieve himself, right in the middle of his own dwelling,
always made him feel like the bird that sullies its own nest

173

Linden on the Saugus Branch

On a night like the historic one on which the Portland went
down, Lije felt the urge when the storm was at its peak. Lesser
men would have thought of some makeshift, but not Lije. He
pulled on some woolen socks and lumberman's rubbers,
slipped his heavy mackinaw over his long nightshirt, and tried
to find the path through the drifts in the back yard. By the aid
of a high rail fence around the barn, he guided himself to the
backhouse, with the fury of the blizzard cutting diagonally
across his course. Just as he pulled open the door, against the
wind, a howling gust tipped over the backhouse, and left him
with the door in his powerful hand. The hinges had been
torn from their moorings.

So many generations of Lije's ancestors had lived within
sight and hearing of the "stern and rockbound coast" that
Great-Uncle Lije could not resign himself entirely to being
miles up a creek, and he was one of the very few Linden men
who kept a boat, in a boathouse just east of the railroad tracks,
and navigated it through the labyrinth of the great Linden
marshes, to a branch of the Saugus River and thence to the
open sea. Both Lije and my father's father, Edwin Paul, had
helped build and design the yacht Petrel, that, captained by
my father, won second place in the toughest boat race then to be
found, off Cape Ann; later, after Father sold it to an Australian,
it won first money at Sydney, against a field of four hundred
English and American craft.

So Great-Uncle Lije's little yawl, with sails and a four horse-
power motor he despised, but had to use on the marsh, was
called Petrel II. I can never remember being in a baby carriage,
but have distinct recollections of rowing a dory and helping
man the Petrel II while still in the first grades of school. Lije
never ran her aground in the tricky, shifting shoals of Linden
Creek, where the nine-foot tide raced like mad, in and out,
for two hours at a stretch each way, and when high, overflowed

174

Of Codfish Balls

the banks and hid the channel from all but the most discerning
eyes.

My great-uncle and aunt seldom argued. She deferred to his
opinions out-of-doors, and he to hers inside. That was the
unwritten rule of Cape Ann. But they disagreed, wordlessly,
on practically everything, in detail. As a whole, they got along
through a marriage that lasted sixty years, and only ceased
when Elizabeth died, aged eighty-one. Being cautious folks by
nature, they had not married young, but had waited till she was
twenty-one. That was because Lije was away, building ships in
Maine, while she taught school in Pigeon Cove.

One thing they agreed upon thoroughly. Each year, Lije
found time to make a trip in late summer or early fall to catch
a winter's supply of cod, to be dried and used for making fish
balls. And for that purpose, Lije did not try to raise his own
potatoes. None would do, except the ones they bought in sacks
from Aroostook County, Maine.

Just lately, some fine singers of American folk songs have
sung all over the air a perverted version of one of the saddest
gongs in the world. The original title was "One Fish Ball," and
it brought tears to my eyes whenever Charles would sing it, as
he often did while he was attending M. I. T. and after.

There was a man of small renown.
Came to a tavern in the town.

Thus the words started, and went on to tell how this man,
who had only a nickel in his pockets, looked fearfully over the
menu. "Fish, balls, 10 cents," was one of the items. The waiter
was at his shoulder. Embarrassed, he ordered "One fish ball."

The waiter, who had few of the finer feelings workingmen
should have, brought the single fish ball. The man said, "Some

175

Linden on the Saugus Branch

bread and butter if you please." And then the waiter's voice
"boomed through the hall."

We don't serve bread with one fish ball.

Modern Americans, from the middle of the country, now
sing this song as "One Meat Ball," following the practice of
Burl Ives and Josh White and Paul Robeson. Meat or fish, flesh
or fowl, it is just as sad and discouraging. I have shed as many
tears over those lyrics, and their forceful tune, as any song I
know. I should be happy to see inserted in our Constitution a
provision that with one fish or meat ball, at least a man is
entitled to half a slice of buttered bread and a clean glass of
water.

So one evening my Great-Uncle Lije was sitting on his front
porch, relaxed and puffing on his powerful corncob pipe, and
in the stillness of the twilight air a column of "twisted smokes"
arose like incense to the God of his fathers. His mind worked
deliberately, never hastily. He knew it was about time for him
to go out for cod. While he was about it, he always got enough
for us, Aunt Carrie, and a widow named Dunbar, who, old and
infirm herself, was taking care of three older, badly crippled
and bedridden relatives, in a house just back of the Congrega-
tional Church.

Lije glanced at the western sky, and found there what he
wanted.

Evening red and morning gray,

Sure sign of a fair day.

Evening gray and morning red,

Will bring down rain on the travellers head.

That was the proverb New England folks found reliable to
heed.

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Of Codfish Balls

The evening was red, several of the reds, with streaks of
robin's-egg blue in between, and higher up, a mackerel sky in
dove colors. Lije had seen Hen Richards, the hermit, go clam-
ming that afternoon, and knew that, likely as not, if he met
Hen on his way back, before he passed the Massasoit, he could
buy a couple of baskets of clams for bait. Lije rose, therefore,
left the porch and dumped the ashes from his pipe, being
careful to tread them into the turf, and started for the Massa-
soit House. He said nothing to his wife about his project, be-
cause if he didn't get the clams he would have to wait until
another day, and there was no use working up the womenfolks
for nothing.

My great-uncle was a deacon in the church, and did not
often go into the barroom, but he was not a teetotaler, and
enjoyed a mug of ale if his wife were not present to feel badly
about it. Nick Spratt kept his imported ale, Bass or Burton,
at an even temperature, on its side in the keg, not too cold,
not too warm, for six weeks before serving it in pewter mugs,
so that it would be as still, when poured, as the surface of a
pond. Through the windows facing the marsh, Lije saw Hen
Richards plodding slowly westward, across the hidden paths
through the reeds and sweet grass, and went out to meet him at
the stone wall along lower Beach Street. Hen had a gait and
carriage all his own. He wore an old derby, high crowned and
out-of-date, and held his shoulders erect in an almost military
way.

The tide was then low, and starting to come in, so the flats
and creek beds gleamed, in mother-of-pearl and rose reflected
from the sky. The salt air was fragrant. Late wild roses, sweet
fern and bayberry grew along the roadside, and offered their
mingled perfumes to the passengers of the open cars to Revere.
The two men met, and exchanged a minimum of words, then
together they walked back to the Massasoit, where Lije bor-

177

Linden on the Saugus Branch

rowed a couple of lard pails from Jeff Lee. They sat side by
side on the worn stone steps, and started shucking. The empty
shells dropped steadily on a newspaper spread between them,
the clams went into the lard pails. When the pails were filled,
Lije asked old Hen to join him in a mug of ale, and left the
clams in Jeffs icebox, to be picked up in the morning. Around
them sat the Admiral, his own best customer, and a number
of the regulars, including Uncle Reuben.

"Going fishing in the morning?" my Uncle Reuben asked.

I arrived at the kitchen door, with a message from Aunt
Carrie, just in time to hear the question and see Great-Uncle
Lije nod. That was enough for me. Sometimes when he went
out in his boat, Lije would send word down to me so I could
go with him, but school had just started and I knew that unless
I took independent action I would lose out on the voyage for
cod that year. So I delivered the message to Reuben, after
hearing him say he would go along to lend a hand, hurried
home and went early to bed.

For that there also was a proverb:

Early to bed, and early to rise,

Makes a man healthy f wealthy and wise.

178

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Of Codfish Balls, Continued

I TOOK to bed with me, unobserved, a copy of the Old
Farmer's Almanac, and puzzled over the pages that told about
the tides. That was the only way I could be sure that I would
not be too late. At Boston the next morning the tide would be
high at four a.m. and a little later at Nahant. That meant,
according to what Great-Uncle Lije had taught me, that at the
boathouse in Linden, the high-water slack would start about
five a.m.; the Petrel II, with its small motor, should shove off
about four, buck a slight adverse current for an hour or so in
order to reach the branch of the Saugus River, after twisting
and turning like a snake for ten miles, when the tide would be
going out at a moderate rate, faster and faster as the ocean was
nearer.

A gull could fly, if he was so minded, from Linden to the
cove inside Bass Point, without travelling more than four miles
in a straight line. The Petrel II, following the tortuous creek
bed, had to cover at least twelve, nine by creek and three on the
river. Great-Uncle Lije would start, then, not earlier than four
o'clock. I woke up at three, dressed myself silently, and stole
downstairs in the dark, without awakening Mother. In the ice-
box on the back porch I found some slices of meat and some
butter. From the breadbox in the pantry I sliced off six slices
of bread. In the lettuce patch outside the Massasoit I picked a
few fresh leaves, then went over and sat on the stone wall to fix

179

Linden on the Saugus Branch

my sandwiches, eat them and wait for Great-Uncle Lije. I heard
the clop<lop of Harry Weeks' milk wagon, intercepted him and
bought a quart of milk, which I drank.

There was a light in the barroom, and I saw through the
windows Uncle Reuben and a few other men who apparently
had been up all night. When, just before four o'clock, I saw
my great-uncle approaching down Beach Street, to get the
clams for bait, I went over to the boathouse and sat on the land-
ing. The tide was still coming in, but slowly. The moon was in
the sky, reflected in the bends of the swollen creek. The marsh
birds were still asleep. The sun, according to the invaluable
almanac, would not rise before half-past five.

Great-Uncle Lije and Uncle Reuben, with lunch box, milk
can, clams, and a case of cold beer, arrived at the boathouse ten
minutes later and found me there. Only Lije pretended to be
surprised.

"You here, my boy?" he asked.

I nodded, and started making myself useful.

They unlocked the boathouse, opened the door, and kicked
out the blocks, steadying the Petrel II on rollers as it slid down
the incline and into the water. While I hopped in and held the
boat steady, with the painter half-hitched around a post, they
brought out the masts and sails, put the former in their place,
with sails furled, and started up the motor. Uncle Reuben
stepped in, went to the bow, stretched out, and promptly fell
asleep. Great-Uncle Lije took the tiller, and I went amidships,
being careful to keep the boat in balance.

The moon grew dimmer as the eastern sky was streaked with
white. The great marsh, in the dim light before the dawn, was
boundless and mysterious, in dim neutral colors, on which
were scrolled the winding creek. Soon, as we moved along, the
put-put of the motor woke the water birds, who clucked and
drifted. Some tucked their heads under their wings again, and

180

Of Codfish Balls, Continued

went back to sleep, a few others started feeding. As the tide
reached its height and was suspended, gulls, young and old,
stirred themselves. Flocks of sandpipers wheeled in forma-
tion. A heron stood on one foot, on the bank. Some herring
gulls went aloft, then plummeted down to catch minnows.

Patches of seaweed and driftwood bobbed on the surface.
Stranded among the reeds were shells of horseshoe crabs. There
was no vegetation higher than the coarse marsh grasses. In
places the channel was narrow and deep, again it flared and
shallowed on the bends. Between the boathouse and the river,
Lije steered skillfully, not saying a word. I was busy watching
everything, letting each detail of the dawn and the solitary
landscape impress itself on my mind. The woods I felt that I
understood, after a fashion. The marsh was haunting and
vague. It held the quality of a dream that is disturbing but not
terrifying, and can neither be forgotten nor remembered.
There was restless, soundless life beneath the mud and sand
and flowing water, so crazily etched and patterned, remote and
primitive, inaccessible and cool.

I liked the feelings the marsh gave me, the chill of the early
morning, the racier odors of the mud and clay, the wordless
company of my Great-Uncle Lije, and the awareness that, when
the time came, Uncle Reuben would awaken and be just as
agreeable afloat as he was on shore. He was enoimousl/ v sensi-
tive about anything human, but moods of nature passed him
by. That was not true of Lije, the devout and dutiful Christian.
Lije relished all natural manifestations, as proof of the versa-
tility of God. Still, neither Lije nor Uncle Reuben nor any of
the men seemed to have much curiosity about the littoral, or
the bottom of the sea, or particularly about the cod, which had
always meant so much to Massachusetts.

When we were safely headed eastward on the surface of the
river, where the currents were not tricky and the shoals were

181

Linden on the Saugus Branch

easy to see and avoid, Lije turned the tiller over to me. He knew
I liked to steer. When we got near the ocean, he took it back
again. He knew where to find the best fishing grounds, where
the cod would be waiting, at a depth of twenty fathoms, over
a submerged ledge three miles off Nahant. The sky was still
cloudy and the water was unruffled when Lije baited his hook,
tested the sinker, and let his line over the side. I did the same.
When the first cod, about eighteen inches long, was hauled in,
hand over hand, by Lije, Uncle Reuben awoke, shook himself,
and glanced toward us.

"Mornin', Lije," he said for the second time.

"It's tolerable/' Lije replied.

Uncle Reuben unslung another hand line, baited it skill-
fully, and started fishing. Lije pulled in another twelve-
pounder, I got a slightly smaller one. Uncle Reuben caught a
haddock.

"I'll save this one for chowder," he said.

"That won't square you with Carrie, for not going home last
night," Lije said. "You'll catch the Old Ned, and who can
blame her?"

"Not I," Reuben said.

"Don't you ever feel ashamed?" Lije asked.

"Shame?" repeated Reuben, with mock indignation. "Do
you know a better, more saintly woman in Linden than Car-
rie 'is?"

"Can't say as I do," admitted Lije.

Reuben looked at him gravely. "And who keeps her that
way?" he demanded.

"She does, and Our Heavenly Father," said Lije, drily.

"They don't do any such thing," Reuben said. "I do."

"Getting full every night, and chasing other women?" Lije
said, skeptically.

"I furnish her the trials and tribulations," Reuben said. "A

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Of Codfish Balls, Continued

fine woman like Carrie don't get the best in her brought out
except by a sinful man like me. Just an ordinary husband
couldn't do the trick. Her qualities wouldn't get a fitting
workout. Some day, when she's sitting pretty, in the sky, she'll
thank me for all this."

"You won't be there," Lije said.

"She'll find some way of sending me word, wherever I am,"
Reuben said.

They fished away in silence and, as usual when I found adult
conversation interesting or illuminating, I pretended not to
pay attention to a word. I was catching fish steadily, until my
arms were aching: cod, with a few pollack, a hake and a had-
dock.

Lije was inclined to pursue the argument. "You mean to
say," he said to Uncle Reuben, "that if I got plastered and
was profane and idle, and couldn't pass up a skirt, that Eliza-
beth would be better off?"

"Sin don't come natural to you, Lije," Reuben said toler-
antly. "Still, you aren't as bad off as some I could name. Now
and then you have a good time."

"That isn't what we're put here for," Lije said.

"Any idea just what we were put here for?" Reuben asked

"That's the Lord's affair, not ours," said Lije.

They stopped talking, and I began thinking about the cod,
not only the ones that lay glistening and suffocating in the bot-
tom of the boat, but the myriads below, feeding over the hid-
den ledge, and the quadrillions in the rest of the Atlantic. Miss
Stoddard had made me feel profoundly about codfish, more
numerous than all the peoples of the earth, dead or alive, from
the beginning of time; pursuing their relentless existence in
water far below the freezing point; devouring anything and
everything that came their way. Hundreds of millions were

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

caught each year, and those left behind did not even miss them.
Looking out over the ocean, I thought how much more water
there was than land, that formerly the earth had been covered
with water, that there were fishes, and probably cod, before
there had been trees, or birds, or animals or men. Miss Stod-
dard had told me about Darwin, and evolution. Our Linden
marshes, or others like them, had been spread over vast areas
of continents, slowly drying, she had said.

Every time I went with Lije, in a boat, from the boathouse
across the marsh by the twisted little creek, to the flowing river,
and thence to the sea, I felt that I was taking an excursion into
history and prehistory, something far back of the Indians who
had roamed in the woods, the Balm of Gilead tree, the May-
flower, the first Linden settlers. None of this feeling I com-
municated to Lije or Uncle Reuben. They were, like most
New England people, a little hostile to anyone who thought
he knew too much.

Just a year or two before, I had made myself unpopular by
asking first my brother Charles, then Fred Tarr, Gimp Crich,
Uncle Reuben, and Great-Uncle Lije, in turn, whether fishes
slept. They had all spent their lives among fishermen, and
not only were unable to answer the question, but showed by
their manner that it surprised them and that they had not
thought about the matter before.

I must not leave the impression that my Uncle Reuben was
a weak or ineffectual character. In the Linden of his time, it
took more stamina to be a sinner than to live by the Book.
Uncle Reuben's personality, in spite of the efforts of his par-
ents and relatives, and later his wife and her church associates,
to reform him, went through life unchanged. What bothered
those who wanted most to restrain him, or disapproved most
strongly of his mode of life, was the awareness that his free-and-
easy ways were not bringing him the remorse, anguish and dis-

184

Of Codfish Balls, Continued

grace that should follow a dissolute youth, as season followed
season.

To me he represented good sense and freedom. From what-
ever angle I considered his life, I found myself warm with
admiration. For one thing, he had no steady occupation which
required that he rush his breakfast and catch an early morning
train, or get into a duster and straw hat and work long hours
in a store, or hold down a job as station agent in order to study
law. He took his own time about everything, got up when he
felt able, went to bed when he was too tired to drink any more,
liked men and women, practically all of them, and even his
sternest critics had a tolerant gleam in their eyes, and smiled
when they did not mean to, in commenting on his activities.
What made Uncle Reuben perfect, from my point of view, was
the fact that he made considerable money, while having a riot-
ous good time. How he managed it, no one ever knew, exactly.
He bought and sold real estate, or boats, or horses, carriages,
wagons, crops, and now and then, after consultation with Mr.
Wing, took a flyer in what was mysteriously known as "the
market," and which was considered by most of the conservative
middle-class Linden folks as one of the more dangerous of the
Devil's domains.

On our way back from the fishing grounds, after sun-up, we
saw in the distance a three-masted schooner, with some kind of
a foreign rig not in vogue with Down-Easters. It was motion-
less and listed at an angle that indicated it had gone aground,
in the shallows off Nahant.

"Shall we take a look?" Uncle Reuben asked.

Lije was reluctant to digress or delay. He liked to finish trips
the way he planned them. The question was solved by the
appearance of a Portuguese fisherman in a big gray motor boat
that smelled to heaven and, from Lije's point of view, had
never been properly cleaned since it first had left the yards.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

Uncle Reuben hailed the Portuguese, who was as easygoing as
himself and was headed for the wreck just to pass the time.
I wanted very much to go with Uncle Reuben, and he would
have invited me, had he been sure that he would get home that
night. Whenever I got home, I was in for a bad time because
of school that day. In my eagerness to go fishing or rather, to
take that mysterious voyage across the marshes I had ignored
the fact that we would not get back until two hours or more
after school had started. So I had to stick with Great-Uncle
Lije, helping clean the boatload of fish as he steered the
Petrel II into the Saugus River. The tide now was coming in,
and had started to run rather fast. The Linden Creek that
twisted and turned from the river to the Saugus Branch tracks
and the boathouse, and all the way through Linden, would be
a mere trickle of water between the still pools in the meadows,
but by the time we got to it, the water would be high enough.
As soon as we were safely on the river, Lije wordlessly relin-
quished the tiller to me and took over the fish-cleaning job.
Whatever those old-school New England men did, they did
skillfully. They raced each other, shucking clams, cleaning fish,
or picking berries. If two of them were picking up potatoes, or
nailing up boxes of sardines, or sawing in the lumber woods,
or playing Casino on the morning train, there was stiff coin-
petition. One tried to keep ahead of the other. They wore
themselves out, proving they were better men than others were.
When once I asked my music mentor, Mr. Wing, a New Yorker,
why it was the men who sang loud in church were always ahead
of the organ and each other, he explained this New England
characteristic.

"It wouldn't do for one of them to let the others beat him,"
Mr. Wing said.

I had felt the instinct to race with everyone, and all my life
have alternately yielded to it or fought it on principle. I cannot

186

Of Codfish Balls, Continued

say which is harder. But I always envied, and still envy, men
like my late Uncle Reuben who felt no urge to surpass their
fellows in unimportant ways.

The Portuguese who picked up Uncle Reuben and took him
to see the wreck off Nahant had been a sailor, years before he
sailed to America and stayed here. He had a small supply of
red wine in a leather flask. Uncle Reuben shared it. They
learned that the wreck had a cargo of dried herring and cheese,
then headed for Bass Point, hove to, and went to a fisherman's
saloon for more refreshment. The place was lively that morn-
ing, because most of the crew from the stranded schooner, all
Portuguese, were drinking there, and had brought up a bunch
of women from Lynn.

With a few good drinks under his belt, my Uncle Reuben
seemed to be able to communicate with men or women in
practically any language, although he did not know more than
six words of each. Having spent two hours with Jorge, the
Portugee, whom he called Horky, they were already firm
friends. The only music available for the foreign sailors and
their women from Lynn to dance by was a small accordion in
bad repair, played by a local blind man who could see much
better in saloons than in the streets, during the busy summer
season. However, the Italian proprietor of the saloon brought
out a fiddle and a bow, and Uncle Reuben took over. Not only
could he play the old square dance tunes, with gusto, but could
turn in a creditable "Over The Waves," "My Bonnie Lies
Over The Ocean," and another waltz tune the words of which
concerned a brave sea captain who went down with his ship.

Soon the Bass Point saloon was very gay. The solid old floor-
ing of pumpkin pine, strewn with sawdust, rumbled and
clicked beneath the tread of seamen's boots and women's high-
heeled slippers. The Italian proprietor drafted two male cous-
ins into service to take advantage of the boom in business.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

Seated on a stout barroom Windsor atop an equally stout table,
was my Uncle Reuben, bearing down on the strings and sing-
ing, in his hearty baritone:

I'll stay by the ship, boys,
You save your lives.
I have no one to miss me,
You have each other's wives.

From somewhere, a strapping Swede girl showed up, and
danced and drank with Uncle Reuben while the sailors sang
foreign songs to the tune of the accordion. When the lobster-
men got in, the Italian sent his fat wife down to buy enough
to fill two wash boilers.

Reuben, smelling the fragrant steam of the lobsters cooking,
dragged his Swede girl out back, to the kitchen, and insisted
on making Johnnycake. The fat Italian wife looked on, beam-
ing, and the proprietor, ordinarily fiendishly jealous, did not
mind when Uncle Reuben flattered her outrageously and pat-
ted her playfully under the chin. He, and all the others, had
taken a great fancy to Uncle Reuben, and felt as if they had
known him all their lives. When they tasted his Johnnycake,
along with the steamed lobsters and butter, not to mention the
strong black coffee, Italian style, that cleared their heads for
the afternoon and evening drinking, all hands liked Uncle
Reuben even more.

There were a couple of bedrooms upstairs, not intended for
transients. They were occupied, ordinarily, by the two young
daughters of the Italian, but, having seen the way tilings were
starting out that morning, the proprietor had exercised his
customary forethought and sent the two young girls, under
protection of a very strict aunt, all the way to Chelsea, where

188

Of Codfish Balls, Continued

they were to stay, carefully nurtured and chaperoned, until
further notice.

Uncle Reuben was having the time of his life. That is what
he seemed to do at least every other day. Alma was strong and
receptive, jolly and handsome, and seemed to be wholesomely
unattached. She and Uncle Reuben withdrew, from time to
time, to have a look at the rest of the house. So did various
couples of Portuguese, and an Irish girl or two who came over
after the shoe factories in Lynn closed for the night. In the
kitchen, at evening, the fat Italian wife had prepared two or
three huge roasts of beef, a couple of hams, Italian squash, and
took down from a rafter a large Provolone cheese.

"What kind of cheese was in the schooner?" Uncle Reuben
asked Horky, as they ate fresh Italian bread and Provolone, at
the end of their second huge meal.

"It wasn't like this," Horky said. "This comes from a a
what is it, Mr. Paul, you call in English a horse with two ass
holes?"

"You mean a mare," my Uncle Reuben said.
"That's it!"

"Was it Portugee cheese?" Reuben persisted.
"I think it was Dutch," Horky said, after consultation with
the Portuguese sailors.

I do not know all the details of the gamble that, along with
the harmless revelry, was forming itself in my Uncle Reuben's
mind. I picked up several of them, one way or another, after he
had got home to Linden, about four days later. He did not
return, bleary eyed and tired, with wrinkled clothes and soiled
linen. Instead, he got off the Boston train, the 6: 10, one eve-
ning, debonairly. He had on a new dark gray suit, of the finest
imported woolen, new boots with elastic sides, a diamond ring
and stickpin, a light-colored vest, a new derby, with a fine wide

189

Linden on the Saugus Branch

brim, a plum-colored four-in-hand tie, leather gloves, and a
topcoat "too light for winter and too heavy for fall."

He had remarked the angle at which the stranded schooner
was listed, had made a good guess as to where the cargo was
stowed, and how it lay, with respect to the water that had
leaked into the hold. He knew that tubbed salted herring
would not be damaged much by a little sea water, and that
there was a lively demand for Holland cheese in the Faneuil
Hall market just then. In the course of his pleasant adventure,
he had met the captain, found out the name and address of the
commission agent who handled the cargo, had drawn from the
Boston banks all the money he had, and Aunt Carrie's money
that had been left her by her father and Reuben had promised
her he would never touch, and had taken a chance that most of
the cargo could be retrieved and sold before the schooner went
to pieces. Uncle Reuben knew the sand bar and the ledge
where she was hung up, the way the tides and currents ran. He
had used his best judgment about weather prospects, and he
won his flyer.

When he showed up in Linden, four days after our fishing
trip, the merchandise had been salvaged and resold, at a good
profit. Aunt Carrie's money was back in the bank. My uncle
had two or three outfits of new clothes and some diamonds.
Aunt Carrie had a fur coat and yards and yards of Chinese silk.
The Swede girl had a nice room in Boston, which she had badly
wanted, some good clothes, and a job with the commission
agent Our fishing trip had netted him at least five thousand
dollars, and fifty of the excellent cod which were drying on the
racks in Lije's back yard.

190

CHAPTER TWELVE

Some Widows and Old Maids

No MATTER how reticent a Linden resident might be,
or how he shunned contact with his neighbors, no one's life
was entirely his own. What he said and did, or what he failed
to say or do, was noticed, discussed, embellished, interpreted
and disseminated throughout the town, as public property. If
a man seemed too anxious or insistent upon having folks be-
lieve this or that about his past, his current situation, or his
prospects, the instinct of the Linden people was to scrutinize
his claims extra carefully. Their minds would not be closed,
but open just a crack. On the other hand, if anyone in Linden
seemed to have anything to conceal, his neighbors would dedi-
cate themselves to acquiring information without asking it
directly from him. And if a man brought the focus of the com-
munity's attention upon himself as an equation with unknown
quantities, a woman in Linden who had elements of the mys-
terious was yeast to everyone's curiosity.

In Linden today, few people would recognize many of the
men and women who lived two streets away. There are other
things to think about, other problems, other entertainments.
Who is to decide which is the more interesting and worth-
while: the daily fate of Stella Dallas, or the movements of Hen
Richards, Linden's hermit, whose past was never disclosed; the
deductions of Hercule Poirot, or the detective work concern-
ing Daisy Hoyt and Packard, in the Ladies' Social Circle; the

191

Linden on the Saugus Branch

astronomical proportions of Lend Lease, or the microscopic
depletion of the bills and coins in Mrs. Townsend's vase.

The majority of dwellers in old Linden had never exchanged
a word with the Dexter sisters, for instance, and even fewer had
been inside their house, where in the front rooms on the street
level they conducted their pitiful "Bazaar." Still, how many of
our neighbors and townspeople felt sorry for them, perhaps
made fun of them, wondered how they paid their rent, what
they ate and how they cooked it, how much it cost them for
their slightly grotesque clothes. Linden people whom the Dex-
ter women had never bowed to, and whose names they did not
know, discussed the weird sisters, tried to find out if they had
relatives somewhere, and, if so, why the relatives never put in
an appearance. Where had the sisters been born? Their way of
speech and formal manners, prim, but not subservient, mild,
but with a certain inner assurance, indicated an aristocratic
origin, in a family that had seen better days.

Laura and Ottilie Dexter had lived side by side so many
years, in the kind of seclusion that was defensive, against the
world outside, and suffered mildly from what the French call
folie i deux. That means the merging of two personalities,
isolated from all others, into one that is eccentric or mad.
When Laura spoke, Ottilie was likely to finish the sentence or
supplement it with a similar one that confirmed it. Whatever
they said to tradesmen or customers was likely to end with:
"Isn't it, Laura?" or "I'm right, am I not, Ottilie?" They stood
side by side at the range or the kitchen table as they prepared
their frugal meals, functioning like a piano duet in a sister act.
They dressed almost alike, but never exactly alike. It seemed
as if they were trying to present an identical appearance, but,
like whatever else they attempted, their skill was not equal to
their conception. Somewhere their hands and eyes were sure to
go astray. It was the same in the tiny articles of embroidery

192

Some Widows and Old Maids

and needlework they offered for sale. The patterns looked like
children's drawings. The embroidered flowers, forget-me-nots
or pansies, seemed to hide idiot cherubs' faces in their lines
and curves and spots. Their borders were never quite even.
Their embroidered puppies and kittens were insidiously mon-
strous and sent a chill down one's spine.

Aware that they were unable to costume themselves with
distinction, they did not dare to attempt dressmaking, which,
if they had been able to do it, would have been more profitable,
or less unprofitable. On one occasion, they presented them-
selves, trembling with dread and sure in advance of the failure
of their mission, to the manager of a Maiden dry goods store,
asking employment as salesladies. They offered to do the work
of two for the wages of one, to counterbalance their lack of
experience. Naturally, the man was obliged to refuse them.
Their vibrant anxiety defeated them. He was unnerved him-
self. They were fifty years old, and forty-eight, respectively,
unworldly in appearance, and both had voices that were high
and hollow, large eyes that rolled like those of owls, beak-like
noses and very small mouths. They were tall, for women, and
painfully thin. What their excursion to Maiden cost them, in
days and weeks of tremulous conferences and long pressure of
necessity, no one knows. I only know that Dawson Freeman,
admirer of Tom Lawson and his revolutionary "Frenzied
Finance," and the terror of every hired girl his wife brought
into the house, heard about the application from some of the
thoughtless neighborhood boys who thought it was a joke.
Dawson showered the boys with a torrent of reproach, until he
actually had tears in his eyes; then, quietly, he slipped around
the back way, via Clapp Street, Oliver Street and Elm Street,
getting mud on his spats, entered the Dexter sisters' "bazaar,"
hoping to God that none of the Massasoit regulars would see
him, flattered and jollied the tall despairing sisters until they

193

Linden on the Saugus Branch

were giddy, and bought practically everything they had on dis-
play: absurd pin cushions, pathetic tea cosies, doilies, hand-
kerchiefs, sachet bags.

Long into the night, after Dawson had left them, the Dexter
sisters sat silently, in their front room lighted only by the
nearby street lamp on the sidewalk (which saved them buying
kerosene), on a ridiculous undersized sofa of stuffed plush,
sighing happily, saying, "Think of it, Laura," or "Ottilie, we
should have had more faith," and holding each other's long
and bloodless hands.

What Dawson Freeman did with his collection of embroid-
ery no one knows. He said nothing about it to his wife, or
anyone in Linden. The next morning, he had some large pack-
ages when he took the train for Boston. As usual, he waited for
the other three businessmen who occupied the two seats facing
each other in the smoking car to finish their newspapers. That
occurred by the time the train got to Maiden Center. From
there on, through Edgeworth, Bell Rock, East Somerville and
into the North Station, Dawson, fine Havana cigar in hand,
talked to them with resonant voice and gleaming eyes, about
the evils of State Street and Wall Street, and Teddy Roose-
velt's latest crusade.

Dawson was a collector by instinct. First, when he was fur-
nishing his new house, diagonally opposite the Clapp mansion
where his wife was born, and exactly opposite Don Partridge's
house, where his wife's sister presided, he took a fancy to a
Boston landscape painter who exhibited in one of the art gal-
leries near the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. This
painter, Claude Barnett, had lived most of his artistic life on
Huntington Avenue and no doubt was tired of the city streets
and buildings, blended into a dirty gray by the cinders from the
New York, New Haven and Hartford locomotives. So Barnett
painted mostly sheep and cattle in lush green meadows, i la

194

Some Widows and Old Maids

Constable, on the banks of streams that were a tribute to Corot.
He belonged to the school that laid the paint on thick and
roughened their textures with a palette knife. The skies were
in the prevailing American style, dim near the horizon, break-
ing up into cirrus clouds like puffballs a little higher up, with
a clear band of blue.

Through Barnett and his canvases, all framed in heavy gilt
mouldings, Dawson brought contemporary art to Linden. As
far as I know, he was the only one in Linden who ever paid
out good money for oil paintings. If a man of means had two or
more daughters, and one of them was learning to play the
piano, it was not uncommon then for another daughter to
study drawing and painting. Anne Partridge, ne Clapp, took
lessons from Barnett and in the course of time turned out
creditable examples of his style and subject matter. Because I
was obsessed in my grammar school years with the desire to
paint, and had covered yards of canvas, beaverboard and Jap-
anese drawing paper with sketches in pencil, pen and ink,
water colors and oil colors, Mrs. Partridge kindly relayed to
me the lessons Barnett gave her.

Painting, as then taught by the successful painters and
teachers around Boston, involved a copious use of one of the
muddiest colors and stickiest substances known to man, called
"Bitumen." Barnett advised his pupils to cover the entire can-
vas first with a layer of bitumen and wait for it to dry. In that
way, one started with a groundwork of what my Uncle Reuben
called "deep fan color," instead of the dim white or light gray
of the canvas. The sky was left until last, but as the painting
progressed, one was encouraged to wipe one's brushes not on
rags, but where the clouds would be, to build up an appropri-
ate sky, as well as to effect an interesting minor economy.

The walls of Dawson Freeman's new house were covered
with gold-framed landscapes by Barnett, and when all the

195

Linden on the Saugus Branch

wall space was filled, Dawson leaned a few against some of the
tables and chairs in the parlor, the sitting room, and the spare
bedrooms, and stood a few on the floor of the "finished" attic,
to the slight inconvenience of the men who played pool or
billiards there. More than once, a player put his heel or the
butt of his cue through a Barnett masterpiece, and afterward
Dawson would display the painting, skillfully mended by the
master so that the break was invisible, with greater pride than
the unrepaired scenes.

The first man in Linden to throw himself, heart and soul,
into the collection of phonograph records was Dawson. He
had every cylinder record that Edison put out, and I daresay
that if his collection is intact today, it will be worth as much
money as the Freeman house, the Barnett paintings, and the
rest of the personal property he left his children when he died.
Dawson deluged the countryside with Liberty Bonds during
World War I, and escaped disillusion by dying before World
War II broke out.

Oriental rugs were the target of Dawson's next burst of zeal.
He tangled with an Armenian named Hagop Bogigian, who
had a flourishing rug business on Boylston Street and a large
experimental farm in Brighton. They met in the halls of the
Massachusetts State House, where both of them were seen
yearly, in support of their pet legislative projects, neither of
which seemed to have any other adherents.

Dawson's bill, which was defeated year after year, was de-
signed to separate policies of life and endowment insurance.
That, in Dawson's eyes, seemed essential to the future of the
race. Bogigian, the huge Armenian, jousted as gallantly for
the protection of game birds. Bogigian loved exotic fowl. He
kept peacocks, pheasants, quail and ptarmigan on his Brighton
estate. When the Boston Elevated Railroad terminated one of
its first suburban surface car lines in his vicinity, hunters from

196

Some Widows and Old Maids

Boston used to ride out on the street car, shotguns in hand,
pot some of Bogigian's prize birds, gather them in, and take
the same car back to Boston. Bogigian, one year, brought his
back door into the legislative committee room, and showed
the members of the Committee on Fish and Game how it had
been riddled with bird shot. Dawson, passing by, on the way to
the Committee on Insurance, witnessed the demonstration and
joined forces with Bogigian, so that from then on, their bills
had two supporters instead of one.

Through Bogigian, who frequently lunched with him at
Woodbury's, the subtle beauties of Oriental carpets were re-
vealed to Dawson. He bought rugs until all the floor space was
covered, and then he kept the surplus rolled in the corners,
between the Barnett paintings, and would unroll them for
inspection at the drop of a hat.

"Dawson Freeman's like Panurge," my Grandmother Dow-
sett said. "He has sixty-three ways of getting money, but more
than two hundred and fourteen of spending it."

I remember once having seen Dawson cry, tears streaming
down his handsome face, all the way from his house to the
depot because he had accidentally stepped on a hop toad and
had to kill it to put the creature out of its suffering.

To this day, I think of our neighbor, Dawson Freeman,
whenever I encounter an impulsive, expansive, imaginative
and tenderhearted man, who gives out what he has, and lets
the Lord, if He be so minded, attend to the taking away.

In Linden, to say that a person had seen better days, was
meant to imply that such a one was not likely to see them again.
There was an inborn dread of a final decrescendo.

How many widows appeared to be sitting life out, asking
little or nothing, turning the leaves of old albums, opening
and closing books in which were pressed and faded flowers,
glancing into drawers at stickpins or baby shoes, perpetually

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

looking inward, presenting to their neighbors, relatives and
friends a facet of their personality that served as a screen be-
tween them and the memories of a departed existence they
cherished.

In the Linden Congregational Church, for instance, each
Sunday morning after Deacon Horton died, his widow came
down the aisle to their pew, in black from veil and bonnet to
her Sunday shoes, so deeply draped in semitransparent mate-
rials that the movements she made inside them were like those
of one of the black Japanese fishes who trail a note of gloom
within a goldfish tank. She outlived the Deacon at least thirty
years, but indoors and out she wore black and referred to his
wishes and preferences as if he were four miles away. They had
a son, the tenor, who was gay and chipper; two daughters, who
were unusually good-looking and seemed well adjusted to life.
If their father's funeral had taken place on an island, and they
had departed as the sod began to thump on the coffin in the
grave, leaving their mother in deep mourning, the spiritual
chasm between the generations could not have been more
profound.

After Charley Moore died of pneumonia, on the eve of his
admittance to the bar, and before he had felt justified in marry-
ing Rena Carberry, to whom he had been engaged twelve years,
Miss Carberry also put on mourning, the deepest that was to be
found in a lugubrious age. She took a walk each day, from four
until five in the afternoon, along the rim of Linden, in dull
black, erect, with a steady stride that was slow, as a mourner's
should be, and unvaried, rain or shine.

"I wish she wouldn't do that," Ruth Coffee would say, when
she saw Miss Carberry approaching. The bereaved woman
would go west on Salem Street, past my Great-Uncle Lije's
farmhouse, along Day's field, past the Grover house, and would
turn down Elm Street, which was barely settled then, and mud-

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Some Widows and Old Maids

dier than most. By the new schoolhouse she would cross the
tracks to Eastern Avenue, take a back lane to avoid Linden
Square and the sight of the depot where Charley had worked
so faithfully and long, and at the moment the five o'clock fire
alarm sounded, first the Maplewood bell, then the Maiden
whistle, she would open the front door of her little yellow
house, where she lived alone, and disappear. A schoolgirl in
her neighborhood was paid twenty-five cents a week for doing
her errands. Aside from the daily walks, by the progress of
which one could set his clocks, Miss Carberry showed herself
only in church. A deep hush was felt when she entered and
started down the aisle. She looked neither to right nor left. Her
pew she shared with no one. She was never referred to as an old
maid, but was grouped with the widows, at the head of the class.

Rena dropped out of the Ladies' Social Circle when Charley
died, as she had dropped out of everything else. Her small yard,
with its willow tree and chokecherry tree, and blackberry
bushes, the tiny lawn and flower beds, which previously had
fairly exploded with huge peonies, was left untended. The
picket fence rotted, and fell away in small sections, leaving a
few pickets and posts in disarray.

On lovely days, the sight of this dark wraith, as she moved
around the edge of the town, speaking to no one, seeing noth-
ing clearly through the mazes of her veil, thinking thoughts
with ill-matched wings that floundered in circles was a har-
binger of misfortune. Women who watched her would won-
der why, if she wanted so badly to die and join her fianc, she
stuck so grimly to her program of daily exercise. On stormy
days, folks said she was trying to catch pneumonia, in order to
die as Charley had died.

After church each Sunday, the minister stationed himself at
the head of the right-hand aisle, facing the pulpit, to shake
hands with his departing parishioners. Miss Carberry, to avoid

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having to shake hands or speak to anyone, went hurriedly out
on the left-hand side. The members of the Social Circle tried
calling on her, without success. She received them, and sat with
them in her parlor, the windows of which were obscured with
underbrush growing wild outside. They tried to sustain a con-
versation. She could not. The minister was helpless in the mat-
ter. She had not renounced her faith in God. She was not able
to decide about it, and wanted no help or interference.

Her face, seen dimly through the veil, seemed to get smaller,
as years went by, and as yellow as old parchment. Her neck
became leathery and scrawny, as thin as a turkey's. Her hands
looked like claws.

At first, everyone in Linden was shaken with sympathy on
account of her loss. It was Linden's loss, too. Charley Moore,
always so genial and accommodating, always stooped over his
books when the trains were not due or the telegraph ceased
clicking. He had been so honest that he was chosen as stake-
holder, no matter who was betting. He arranged purchases and
deliveries in Boston for the Linden housewives, through a
practicing Christian brakeman on the Saugus Branch line. He
umpired football and baseball games, and no one questioned
his decisions. He spoke when flagpoles were dedicated on the
Fourth of July, and in Republican rallies when the politicians
needed someone whose integrity was beyond cavil. In another
five years, added to the ten he had studied out of school, he
would have been a self-taught lawyer. That his relations with
Rena, during the twelve years of their engagement, had been
strictly decorous, was never in doubt.

There are not many communities today in which the widows
and old maids form such an important section of the social
structure. Deep mourning, among Protestants at least, is al-
most a thing of the past. And unmarried women today have so
many fields of endeavor open to them, and care so little about

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Some Widows and Old Maids

sexual technicalities, that in some respects they are looked
upon as luckier than women with husbands, and who have to
open cans, run vacuum cleaners, make formula for babies, ask
their husbands for money, and at the same time keep their
looks and figures, and dress like motion-picture stars.

Along the entire length of Beach Street, from Salem Street
hill down to the Square, the houses containing women without
men were numerous, indeed. The Dexter sisters at the top of
the hill were spinsters. A few doors down on the left, the widow
Plummer mourned Deacon Plummer, all alone, their only son
having gone west (to Cleveland) because the only factory work
for which he had been trained had shifted westward, too. Mrs.
Channing, who lived opposite, facing Spring Street, was a
widow, too, but she was occupied morning and night, with her
son, Edgar, and it is hard to see how she could have been hap-
pier if her husband had still been alive. Candidly, it was well
known that Mrs. Channing had not got on very well with the
late Mr. Channing after Edgar had been born. The unchari-
table ones said she had neglected her husband shamefully.
Others, with only children, believed the late Mr. Channing
was unreasonable in his demands for attention and that her
treatment of him served him right.

The untimely death of Edgar, on account of a brain tumor
no doctors then were able to diagnose in time, in his early high-
school years, transformed Mrs. Channing into one of the most
irreconcilable widows, who would have nothing whatever,
from that moment onward, to do with a God who could treat
folks that way.

Mrs. Ford, the patient, sweet-faced organist and Sunday
School teacher, was a semiwidow, that is, her husband was
unable to work or to be an active husband because of tubercu-
losis, in Linden called "consumption." She encouraged her
husband's hobbies, the making and flying of magnificent box

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

kites and the collecting and classification of sea plants. He had
an entire room filled with albums (loose-leaf records had not
then come into vogue), and I spent many an afternoon, be-
wildered, stimulated and enchanted, enjoying the variety of
colors, patterns and forms and trying to picture to myself the
meadows, plains, ledges and forests, and the silent life that
flourished in submarine areas, far greater than those of the
continents. Mr. Ford, tall, mild-mannered, with a wistful kind
of humor, spent as much time and effort with his kites and
seaweed as almost any man in Linden did with profitable ven-
tures. Mr. Ford was never known to make or collect anything
salable, and his consumption never seemed to get the better
of him. In fact, he outlived his healthy wife by several years.
Mrs. Ford did plain and fancy sewing, gave piano lessons,
played for weddings and funerals, and in sundry quiet ways
earned their living. They must have been deeply in love, at
one time, and the charm of it lasted, dim and plastic, like the
tints and designs of the pressed sea plants, reminiscent and
unchangeable. I liked to be in their flat, above Puffer's store,
looking over Clapp's truck garden from the front windows,
and the creek and Weeks' field on the eastern side. It was one of
the calmest places indoors in Linden. Technically I learned
exactly nothing. I seemed to be allergic to formal learning.
The scientific or common names of the sea plants I ignored,
unless the sound of them struck my fancy. I cared little for the
groups and species and families. The physics and mechanics
involved in making kites that would soar while others dived
and crashed ignominiously meant nothing to me, but I reveled
in their proportions and lines. If Mr. Ford had four kites in his
little upstairs workshop, and I selected one because it struck me
as being beautiful, he would be pleased, because more often
than not it would also be the one that flew the best. In fact, he
often asked me about the "looks" of a kite and if I thought it

202

Some Widows and Old Maids

looked lopsided or topheavy he would adjust it, and both of us
were happy if I had been right.

Next on Beach Street came number 63, our house. My
mother was another of the widows and while the main com-
partment of her life was closed and never entered thereafter,
when my father died in 1895, she did not wear mourning long,
except on the thirtieth of each May, when she took the train
to Rockport and put flowers on his grave. She did not ask any
of her children to accompany her until twenty years later, or so,
when my brother Leslie used to drive her down in the Ford.
Mother's occupation was in fitting the small bills and coins
into the family necessities, and this she did, by dint of constant
application and ingenuity that was tinged with fear. Mother's
nerves had been shaken, by Father's illness and death, to such
a point that she worried all the time she was awake, and suf-
fered from frightful nightmares much of the time she was
asleep. My own nerves responded, like the strings of an instru-
ment that vibrate sympathetically when another instrument is
played, and I felt easier on the days and nights when Mother
was worrying about small things than when she was harassed
by more menacing problems. I slept as lightly and fitfully as
she did, and many times each night awakened her, to stop her
screaming, while Leslie, in an alcove nearby, slept like a top.
The result was that Leslie, with his steady nerves and even
disposition, was the best company for Mother, and soothed
her, while I increased her anxiety and uneasiness. She got up
early and built the kitchen fire, or revived it, planned and
cooked the meals so that we ate like princes without spending
as much for the family as most people spent who lived alone.
Mother not only cleaned the house daily, and did the washing
and ironing (except the stiff collars and boiled shirts), but
twice a year gave the premises such a going-over that nothing
seemed the same for weeks afterward. Rugs and carpets were

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

taken up and beaten, odds and ends in the attic and the cellar
were shifted and rearranged. Sometimes the piano was in the
sitting room, again it was rolled into the parlor. The writing
desk, the chairs, the sewing machine, the dining-room table
and highboy and lowboy, the beds and commodes and dressers
upstairs in the bedrooms, all seemed to be moving and swaying,
forward and back, swinging their partners, sashaying, dos & dos.
Finding one's way in our house, after dark, following the
spring and fall housecleaning, was hazardous in the extreme.

Mother did the morning "chamber work" at a furious, al-
most desperate speed, and her footsteps, usually so soft and
uninsistent, would thump back and forth, until it seemed,
downstairs, that a number of recruits were practicing squads-
right and left.

Monday was the day for washing, and if the weather permit-
ted (grudgingly, if at all), the Linden clotheslines would be
strung from corner to post and on them the washes would be
spread, white and colored, striped, spotted and checkered, un-
til the little community looked like a giant battleship in full
array of flags and pennants. The day when Linden housewives
first sent their "white wash" to steam laundries was the occa-
sion for many quarrels, and broke up quite a few families, as
did the shift from homemade bread to the baker's product.
Those were crises, on the path to progress, the catch being that
no steam laundry ever did the white wash as well as my mother
and her neighbors did, and no bread made in commercial
quantities could compare with the delicious, fragrant "staff of
life" my mother and the others brought forth from their bread
pans and ovens. Today I can recall the smell of yeast, as Mother
mixed the dough and left it overnight, to rise. I stood watch-
ing it, sometimes, trying to see it rising, and forming a concep-
tion of changes infinitely slow, to match the speeds that all
around us were increasing.

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Some Widows and Old Maids

Mother did remarkable things with the leftovers from the
Sunday dinner, to feed us on Monday, dishes that did not take
too much time to prepare, so that she could finish the washing
and hang the clothes out on the line. Tuesday was ironing day,
with a fragrance of its own, and either a chowder would be cre-
ating itself slowly on the back of the stove, or the fresh fish
brought by Mr. Stowe would be fried, creamed, baked or
broiled for supper.

Saturday was the heavy baking day. No pies or cakes or pud-
dings in our house were brought in, ready-made. Mother
started baking early in the morning, and finished in the middle
of the afternoon. All week she planned breakfast, dinner and
supper, for whoever was at home, and when she was alone she
ate the things the rest of us did not like and she liked particu-
larly. Each individual taste at the table was considered. Leslie
did not like raisins and I did, so the mincemeat was made,
some with raisins, some without, and the pie was composed in
sectors, with marks on the upper crust to delineate the raisin
and non-raisin areas. Mother knew which part of a roast each
of us preferred, which cuts of fowl, which kinds of fish. If one of
us got the worst of it in the entree course, he was favored for
the dessert. Mother had a dainty appetite. She took small help-
ings and ate them slowly, her principal interest being focussed
on the rest of us. Her only worry about my eating was that I
ate like a longshoreman, and stayed thin as a rail. She was afraid
I ran too much, or had a tapeworm.

In Mrs. Stoddard's house across the street, there was Lydia
Stoddard, a widow of forty years' standing, and her daughter,
Mary, the town's most dynamic old maid.

Lydia Stoddard lived in her attic, in her high four-posted
bed, her rocking chair, and at the clover-leaf table. In her day
she had been a steady and discriminating reader, and must

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

have had a dozen correspondents, contemporary men and
women in society and diplomacy, with whom she exchanged
letters during decades. Mary Stoddard was criticized for many,
many acts, of commission and omission. Every Sunday a num-
ber of the Linden women would call her to account, behind
her back, for letting her eighty-year-old mother get on a street
car alone and ride to Maiden Center to attend the First Bap-
tist Church in Maiden Square. The fact was that Mary tried,
every Sunday, to go with her mother, not caring particularly
whether she went to the Baptist Church, to her own Episco-
palian, or to none at all. Lydia, the old lady, was more head-
strong even than her willful daughter, and insisted that she
had not reached the point where she needed a nurse or a
keeper.

I think no one in Linden understood her times, recorded
history and science, and her neighbors better than Mary Stod-
dard did, but she was helpless to influence them. She was too
ugly for anyone to marry, and if she had been handsome, any
suitor of hers would have had to leave his will and opinions
outside on the coat and hat rack.

When she was about forty-five, Mary succumbed to a life-
long desire to have a pet cat. One Saturday she brought him
home, quite a while after her old mother had died, and she had
sold her house and rented a room at the Dexters'. Miss Stod-
dard placed the handsome yellow half-Persian tomcat on a
garnet plush chair and stood back to contemplate the spectacle.
Schley, named for the Spanish War admiral, was aloof and very
photogenic. Daintily he lapped his milk, waved his plumy tail,
and almost as daintily rode big dogs down Beach Street hill,
clawing steadily the while, if they annoyed him.

Mary Stoddard turned to me, as near to a companion as
she had, and said, shaking her head judicially and ruefully:

"Elliot I shall end by being too fond of cats. You will see."

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Some Widows and Old Maids

That is just what she did. More and more she confided in
Schley, talked to him aloud, sang to him, and then, one un-
lucky day, when she left the offices of Photo Era on a Saturday
noon, she saw a starving, draggled cat in an alley nearby, and,
trying to approach it, frightened the animal, which was frantic,
and spent the afternoon unsuccessfully trying to find it.

On the first streetcar to Boston the next morning, Sunday,
Miss Stoddard rode forth, with milk and liver, flea powder
and a comb. She haunted the alley and because that district
was quiet on Sunday, she found the stray cat, won its confidence
and intended to carry it to the Animal Rescue League. The
cat, when Miss Stoddard tried to take it up, scratched and
went into a panic, getting clean away.

From then on, for many days, Miss Stoddard did not get
home to supper until eight or nine o'clock. Her supper, eaten
in her room above the Dexters', consisted of cocoa, cheese and
animal crackers. As soon as her office work was done, Miss
Stoddard took from her desk drawer the milk, meat, powder
and comb and fed and groomed the alley cat, which now was
tamer and seemed contented with life. Thinking of the cats
in cages, waiting for homes in the Rescue League haven, Miss
Stoddard decided that the alley cat was happier as things were.
The cat, a female Miss Stoddard named "Minerva," improved
in health until she became attractive to the Boston stray toms
and what resulted posed another problem to Miss Stoddard.

"Elliot," she said. "There is no end to this. I know this is
folly. Intelligent people, like you and me, should not be soft-
hearted. We start by doing what we can, and finish by being
overwhelmed."

Nevertheless, she spent a night in the alley, helping the
cat with her kittens, tramped all the way to the Charles River
and drowned all but one, a semitortoise-shell color. The re-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

bellious agony she suffered, because she had to do this, I sensed
very well, but she did not ask me to accompany her.

"This is their reward for being females," she said, grimly.
"I am being kind."

When she lost her job, on account of her age, Miss Stoddard
devoted all her time and her savings to hunting stray cats,
between dawn and business hours, in the alleys of Boston,
among the ash cans and milk bottles and other modern mani-
festations of the rosy-fingered goddess, Aurora. My first few
books were published before Miss Stoddard died, and although
trite remarks had always been discouraged between us, I can
say now, truthfully, that without her influence they never
would have been written. I have an almost pathologically
strong sense of my own individuality, and seldom feel as if I
were another person, or as if another person were I. Tempera-
mentally, I feel closer to the late Mary Stoddard than anyone
else, except possibly my late Uncle Reuben, Ulysses to my
Telemachus. That the combination has not split my person-
ality wide open and left me the prey of psychiatrists, psycho-
analysts and other roving swamis, is a tribute to the Paul
physique, inherited from my father's side, and which has stood
all of us in good stead, as compensation for Mother's super-
sensitive nerves.

208

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

About the Relatively Worthy Poor

HEN RICHARDS was the Linden hermit, and nothing
his neighbors could not directly observe was ever known
about him. Webster's dictionary defines a hermit as "one who
abandons society and lives alone," a line which seems to me
to be worthy o the ultimate poet. Hen did not abandon so-
ciety, exactly, but he certainly lived alone. Over in Concord,
Henry Thoreau, when he decided to withdraw from it all,
went a little farther from the town than an expert can drive a
golf ball, and settled on the shore of Walden Pond. Hen
Richards found his supreme isolation in Weeks' field, fifty
yards from our house, in the spot that was not far from the
geographical center of Linden.

He was not a beaten man, or inferior in any way, and no one
thought so. There were plenty of people in Linden who their
neighbors thought were mildly crazy. No one thought that of
Hen. He walked slowly but steadily, in a most correct and
dignified way, not like a soldier, not like an actor, not like a
statesman. Like a gentleman who was thoughtful and pre-
occupied. His voice was neither loud nor soft, but was well
modulated, and although he used it infrequently, when he
spoke, his words were to the point and well chosen.

Old Lydia Stoddard, whose house was nearest Hen's small
shack, was the first one Hen spoke to, when he came into town.
Several times, in my hearing, she told about his entrance. It

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

was on a pleasant morning, while the Civil War was still in
progress. Hen was a young man then, but he looked and acted
about the same as he did forty years later. His clothes were
shabby, but decent, quite formal, but worn. He had a plug
hat, which he wore at a slight angle, a long coat Jeff Lee de-
scribed as a "Jim-swinger," and cowhide boots without but-
tons or laces. His trousers had been black, but had gathered a
faint patin of green.

"Good morning, ma'am," Hen had said to Mrs. Stoddard.
He had raised his plug hat.

"Good morning, sir," she replied.

Hen looked over toward Weeks' field, where the pathway
passed over the creek on a small wooden bridge without a rail.

"May I inquire, ma'am, who owns that field?" he asked.

"It belongs to Mr. Weeks," Mrs. Stoddard said, and indi-
cated Weeks' barn, up on Salem Street. "He's probably up
there in the cow barn," she continued.

"I thank you, ma'am," Hen said, bowing as he raised his
hat again.

"You're welcome, sir," she said.

Hen had started along the path toward the creek, neither
slower nor faster than he had walked up Beach Street. Just
before he crossed, he had gathered up a few pebbles. There
was a little patch of meadow, flat and fifty feet square, that
was five or six feet higher than the ground around it, and from
its appearance it was higher than the level of an ordinary tide.
At flood tide it was usually an island, for an hour or two. Hen
looked it over carefully and by snapping the pebbles with his
thumb, he indicated the dimensions of the one-room house he
later built from scraps, driftwood, tar paper and tin placards
advertising Bon Ami, Mayo's Cut Plug, and Mrs. Pinkham's
Vegetable Compound. The placards he turned inward, so the
shack would not be too unsightly.

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About the Relatively Worthy Poor

That day, the shack was only in Hen's mind. He walked
into Weeks' barnyard and saw that three or four men were
gathered around a pigpen, higher on the hill. There was plenty
of space in Linden, then, and no one objected to pigs on the
outskirts of town.

Mr. Weeks was young, then, and just married. He had only
a few animals, and each one meant a great deal to him. He was
doing all his own work, establishing a small milk route, and
curing hams and bacon. The men who stood with him were
neighbors. They saw Hen approaching, and something in his
attitude prompted them to make way, at the rail of the pen.

Hen, taller than the others, and looking more so because
of his plug hat, looked down, and saw four pigs wallowing in
the muck. They evidently were ill, and about ready to give up.

"Good morning, gentlemen," Hen said.

Mr. Weeks and his fellow mourners responded or nodded.

"A bucket and a pitcher," Hen said.

Mr. Weeks scratched his straw-colored hair, and started to-
ward his house. Hen followed. The others watched them.
There was nothing much to say.

When Mr. Weeks and the stranger emerged from the
kitchen, both were carrying pails of soapy water and Hen had
an enamelware pitcher in his hand. Careful not to soil his
trouser legs, Hen opened the gate, went into the pen, took
hold of one of the sick hogs, held open its mouth, and poured
in dishwater from the pitcher. This process he repeated, with
the other three hogs. Mr. Weeks and the men watched, spat
tobacco juice, looked at one another, noncommittally, and
waited. Hen came out of the pen.

"They ought to be all right by tomorrow forenoon," he said.

"Are you a vet?" asked Mr. Weeks.

"No, sir," Hen said, and helped him take the buckets back
to the house. Then he said, "Good day, sir/' and before the

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

somewhat awkward and diffident milkman could recover, was
on his way again. The men watched him take the steep and
rocky road, just wide enough for wheel tracks, and go over
toward the Pike.

The next morning Mr. Weeks got up before dawn, as al-
ways, and the hogs were eating corn and swill. Meanwhile, the
advent and exit of the mysterious stranger had been relayed
from one end of Linden to the other. Whoever was up early
went up to Weeks' barn, then told the folks in the Square and
the stores that dishwater cured hogs when they had colic.

About seven o'clock, when the sun was well up and Linden
was completely under way, Hen Richards came down the rocky
road and turned up Salem Street to Weeks' barn. Mr. Weeks
met him, with bashful cordiality.

"You did the trick, all right," the milkman said.

Mr. Weeks looked troubled, as he always did when money
matters had to be discussed.

"How much?" he asked. "Them hogs were as good as dead."

"Oh, that's all right," Hen said, then he extended his arm
toward the field, a quarter of a mile away. "I should like, if
you don't mind, to build a small house just over the creek,
near the wall."

"Why certainly," said Mr. Weeks. "Glad to have you. Go
right ahead."

"I'm obliged, sir," Hen said.

"My name is Charley Weeks," said Mr. Weeks, extending his
hand.

"Mine is Henry Richards," said the hermit. He did not
mention that he had abandoned society, and if he had, it
certainly would have thrown Mr. Weeks, whose figures of
speech were of the plainer order.

Bit by bit, Hen's simple shack went up. At first he used
a mallet he had made with his jackknife, and wooden pegs for

212

About the Relatively Worthy Poor

nails, until Mrs. Stoddard and Mary, who at the age of ten
was as homely as she was forty years later, told him there were
tools in their shed, and plenty of old nails, and he was welcome
to use them. What had attracted Mary Stoddard, aged ten, to
the hermit was the way he looked at the snakes, and refrained
from molesting them. There were a few days each spring
where, in the back part of the Stoddards* land, and nearby,
in Weeks' field and on the other side, in the swampland owned
by Norman Partridge, as if by prearrangement, hundreds and
thousands of garter snakes came out of hibernation, with
brand-new skins, a zest for life and spring sunshine, and the
grace and poetry of motion that only creatures so simply
designed can possess. Mary Stoddard had her first brush with
the law and the thoughtless brutality of mankind when she
had taken from the chest an old horse pistol and driven away
the men and boys who liked killing snakes. Hen felt about
them as Mary did. He would not kill a fly, unless it was biting
a horse or a cow.

Hen's house had two windows, and an old stove, one missing
leg of which was propped up with books. The furniture, con-
sisting of a kitchen stool, a rocking chair with boards nailed
over the missing cane bottom, a wooden bunk, with an old
mattress but no springs, and a few makeshift shelves, pots
and pans, tin plates and a few odd forks and spoons, had been
acquired slowly, as the need arose. Mr. Weeks never thought
of asking him to pay for use of the land. The price of four
hogs covered that, for a lifetime.

Hen never bought anything except salt, salt pork or bacon,
condensed milk, sugar, coffee, and infrequently a few pounds
of flour or corn meal. To get the necessary cash for this, not
more than twenty-five dollars a year, Hen trapped and sold
eels to the Italians in Chelsea, and shrimps, clams, and worms
for bait, to the sportsmen whose headquarters were the Mas-

213

Linden on the Saugus Branch

sasoit House. He liked to read old almanacs and magazines,
but did not care for books. He wore the same clothes, year
after year, until some man he liked would offer him a derby,
straw hat, or a coat, pair of pants, or a pair of old boots.
This had to be done tactfully, and in strict privacy, or Hen
would politely refuse. In my time, wherever Hen went, he was
followed a few yards distant by a small shaggy dog with hair
hanging over its eyes.

In the woods, Hen found nuts and berries, and plenty of
perch, bass and pickerel in the ponds. Sometimes he shot par-
tridge with a slingshot, not wishing to become involved in
the purchase of ammunition for a gun. In wild duck season,
when the hunters went to the great marsh for sport, in the
frosty dawns, Don Partridge, or Admiral Quimby, or my
Uncle Reuben would lend Hen a shotgun and shells, and he
had a way of preserving the ducks in a light pickle, so that
he had a supply the year round. His only reference to the past
was a remark he let slip, and could not recall, that he had
learned about marinating ducks in Bilbao.

When anyone passed him on the street, or on the path-
ways across the fields, Hen would say, "Good morning," or
"Good af ternoon," in an absent-minded way, and that is about
all he ever said to anyone. He used as few words as possible
and kept his human contacts down to an absolute minimum,
although he showed no fear or distrust or any pathological
symptoms when he found it necessary to seek out someone
and communicate with him. He avoided all the women except
the Stoddards, his nearest neighbors. Most Linden women
were a little nervous about him. He set a bad example, from
their point of view, getting on without work, or money, or a
wife.

If Hen had a barrel of eels he wanted to take over to sell
to an Italian saloonkeeper in Chelsea Square, who bought his

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About the Relatively Worthy Poor

supply for Christmas each year from Hen, Hen would go over
to Clapp's field, a hundred yards from his shack, to see Mario
Bacigalupo, Deacon Clapp's hired man.

Mario might have been rated by statisticians as a poor man,
but he felt like a rich one, only better. He had immigrated
from Sicily, with his wife, Giovanna, and had lived in the
slums in the North End of Boston, while digging ditches
for a contractor at the rate of one dollar a day, of which he
saved fifty cents. Life in America was not what he had expected,
but Deacon Clapp had watched him work with pick and
shovel from the window of an organ factory the Deacon had
on Hanover Street. Something about Mario had set him apart
from the others in the gang, and the Deacon had asked him
if he knew about farming.

The words with which Mario had replied meant nothing
to Deacon Clapp, but the way Mario's eyes had lighted, and
the rapt look on his face, had decided the matter. So Mario had
come to Linden, with Giovanna, had rented a house south of
the tracks, and had raised two boys: Julio, known as "Frig-
ger," the newsboy, who was very smart, and Romeo, two years
younger, who was very good, and dreamed of playing the violin
when he was not actually practicing.

Giovanna was a fine cook, red wine was cheap in Chelsea,
and the fertile acres Mario cultivated for Deacon Clapp were
so luxuriant that they seemed as proud of Mario as he was of
them. As the first Italian to settle in Linden, Mario was ac-
cepted as an example of his nationality. He knew everyone in
Linden, and exulted or sorrowed when fate dealt his towns*
men this or that. The Linden folks made fun of his dialect,
praised his work, and when, a few years after his arrival, the
Raggios, the Sorrocos, and the Marincolas came, they were in*
troduced and guided by Mario, as dean of the Linden Italians.

If Hen Richards, the hermit, was the most aloof man in

215

Linden on the Saugus Branch

town, Mario was sociability personified. Mario felt a proprie-
tary interest in Linden, and all it contained. Once, when Luke
Harrigan, the most beloved of the Irishmen, was soliciting
small contributions so that the Linden baseball team could
wear uniforms, Luke got five dollars from Deacon Clapp, ten
from Dawson Freeman, and five from Don Partridge, all within
sight of the field where Mario was spreading manure.

That afternoon, at milking time, Mario hung his head,
and a tear dropped into the pail. He went home, through a
back gate and the deserted school yard, would not eat, and
went to bed with his clothes on, his face to the wall. In the
middle of the night, he told Giovanna, in Italian, what was
wrong. He was hurt. He was desolate. He had his first papers,
and knew the answers which would win him his second papers.
People spoke, said, "Hello, Mario." His children went to school,
got promoted. Still, he did not belong. Other men gave money
for the ball team. He, Mario, was not asked. His son Frigger,
the newsboy, heard what was said, and stopped in at Luke
Harrigan's that morning, when he delivered the papers. Luke,
as a cosmopolitan, took both the Herald and the Post. If Mario
missed his supper, Luke Harrigan could not swallow his break-
fast. He had a fine position, at Houghton and Dutton's and
was needed there, but Luke stayed home from work. At ten
o'clock, having put on his best clothes, and stuck a flower in
his buttonhole, he made a list of all the Italians in Linden,
ruling it with red ink, and writing it ornamentally, with
elaborate Spencerian scrolls and curlicues. Mario Bacigalupo's
name was at the head, and there were neat columns.

Luke called on Mario, who was plowing doggedly, along
the creek, not hearing the birds, or smelling the fresh earth,
or noticing the passersby.

"Mario," said Luke. "You're just the man I want to see.
I've canvassed a few individuals, but the boys had asked espe-

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About the Relatively Worthy Poor

cially to appoint you head solicitor of the Italian-American
colony. Pep Marincola, as you know, will play center fielder
on the Linden team. We want the Linden boys to have uni-
forms, so will you ask the men I've listed here to chip in?"

No one had a better sense of the dramatic, or could create
an illusion like Luke Harrigan. Suddenly, in Mario's ears
the songs of the orioles started ringing, and the day was so
bright, the soil so fragrant, that he smiled and accepted the
list. He saw the red ink, and the columns, and his name at the
top. He understood, now, why, in canvassing mere individuals,
and not the deans of racial groups, he had not been approached
the day before.

"How much did my boss give?" Mario asked.

"In confidence, two dollars," Luke said. He knew what was
coming, and knocked down the Deacon's five dollars by sixty
per cent.

'Tor Mario Bacigalupo, his wife, Giovanna, and his sons,
Julio and Romeo, three dollars," Mario said, and after Luke
had left him, Mario talked to his horse about America, and
the Constitution, and the people who were all alike, rich and
poor. He told the horse that the Linden boys, with Pep, the son
of his old friend, Marincola, would never be beaten, that
tvhen they got to bat, in the very first inning, the game would
go on until dark, and the Lindens would never be put out. He
said that Mario was a by-Jesus-Christa big damma fool, who
suspected his friends, unjustly, for which he would burn a
church full of candles, and not the cheap ones, but the best.
And that some day Giuseppe Verdi would visit America, and
hear that in Linden there were respected Italians Bacigalupos,
Raggios, Sorrocos, and Marincolas, including the then-famous
athlete Pep and that the Maestro would later compose an
Italian-American opera with a chorus in Linden baseball
suits.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

In December, when Hen Richards sold his eels, no orioles
sang in the elms, which were bare, and the rich black earth
of Clapp's field was frozen to a depth of two or three feet and
covered with snow. For the winter months, Mario saved odd
jobs of shucking corn, grinding fodder, mending harness, and,
in December, preparing for Christmas and New Year's Day.
The family feast at the Clapps* included at table the Deacon,
his wife, his two unmarried sons and one unmarried daughter;
Mattie and Dawson Freeman with their children (a new one
each year); and Anne with her husband, Don Partridge. In
Mario's rented house across the tracks he entertained about
the same number, but in a different way, with more varieties
of food and seasonings, and instead of sweet cider and milk,
red Chianti and grappa. In the big house, roast turkey with
dressing flavored with sage, mashed potatoes, turnips, squash,
and cranberry sauce. In Mario's place, pizza, piquant pickled
peppers, sliced sausages from Genoa and Barcelona, Gio-
vanna's superb canelloni, a roast stuffed fish, entire, and
brought in on a plank for the company to see and cheer, veal
scallopini so tender they were cut with a fork, if at all, a
partridge apiece, from the woods, garnished with home-cured
bacon and a touch of garlic, four kinds of cheeses, three of
which would have driven a Protestant family and their pets
from home, special holiday pastries, fruit selected from the
best that Marincola sold, music by Romeo on his soulful
violin, Uncle Bartolomeo's accordion, two mandolins and a
guitar. And colors of the Old World in the old folks' holiday
costumes, and what young America wears displayed by the
younger generation, with the racial jauntiness, the tints of
shirts, the points of shoes, the belts, neckties, angles of hats
and pads in shoulders, that still set them apart from the May-
flower descendants.

Lest the reader forget that this chapter is about poverty, I

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About the Relatively Worthy Poor

must remind him that after one of these holiday feasts, the
cash reserve of Mario and Giovanna Bacigalupo would not
exceed sixteen dollars, and that no one in Linden, except
possibly Dawson Freeman, who might be several thousand in
the hole at the time, felt richer or more thankful to be in Lin-
den and alive.

Mario lived December in two worlds. He brought ever-
green branches and holly for the Clapp mansion, and his own.
He did errands with his pung for the combined force of hired
girls under the direction of Mrs. Clapp. Between-times, he ob-
served American customs, which never ceased to astonish him
by their restraint, and tried, in his own little home, to combine
the best elements of New England celebrations with those of
Italian fiestas. How many times I have wished that the willing-
ness to acquire treasures of tradition and goodfellowship had
been mutual, between the immigrants and the earlier settlers.
Because while Mario's Christmas and New Year's were ampli-
fied and enriched by quite a few New England customs, the
Clapps* sedate dining room, with its heavy silver service,
Duncan-Phyfe table and Sheraton chairs, remained as always,
menu, service, deportment, cigars and all. I do not mean that
Mrs. Clapp's mince, apple and pumpkin pies, and her plum
pudding with hot and cold sauce, were in any way inferior
to the Italian baker's pastries, from Chelsea. My point is that
Mario profited by both traditions of dessert, while the Dea-
con's household learned nothing.

Early in December each year, Hen Richards would walk
over from his little house to the Clapp estate, his ridiculous
old dog at his heels, and as Hen entered the driveway, the dog
would sit down a moment and look up at him. Hen would turn.
If Hen moved his head to one side, the little dog would sit
down and wait, knowing there might be a larger dog ahead.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

If Hen nodded in the affirmative, the dog would jog along,
secure.

Year after year, Hen had said less and less, and at first he
said very little. His initial request of Mr. Weeks was the only
one on record. He would go to where Mario was working, say,
"Good morning," or merely nod, and wait. Mario, knowing
what he wanted, felt that it was friendly to tease him a while.
Mario would look up at the sky and hold his finger to the
breeze.

"It's gonna be a fine day," he would say.

Hen would nod, expectantly. Then both would wait. But
in waiting, the Latin was no match for the recluse.

"You wanna something I can do?" Mario would finally ask.

Hen would nod again, but shyly.

"You wanna go somewhere, maybe?" Mario continued.

This time Hen would nod and ever so faintly smile.

"Maybe Lynn?" Of course Mario knew exactly where Hen
wished to go, but he tried a few other places first.

Hen shook his head "No."

"Ah. Everett! That'sa fine place."

Like a bashful boy, almost, Hen shook his head again,
from side to side. The little dog was looking up at Mario, his
dark eyes appealing under their thatch of shaggy hair. The dog
felt the tension of expectancy in his master. Mario, noticing
the dog, would feel ashamed of himself.

"Well. Perhaps Chelsea," Mario would say.

This time Hen would wordlessly agree.

So eventually Hen and Mario would hitch up Clapp's horse
to the pung, drive over into Weeks' field, take down the
tailboard, use a plank for an incline, and roll into the pung
the barrel of eels.

For men of frugal habits and fixed itineraries, eels are
among the most accommodating food fish in nature. They may

220

About the Relatively Worthy Poor

be caught at almost any time of year, if one knows where to
look for them, and will stay in traps, feeding royally from the
minutiae that flow through, so that before Christmas-time they
may be gathered into barrels and grace the feasts commemorat-
ing the birth in Nazareth of Him who must have found a few
fine morenas in His miraculous draught of fishes. Hen bored
one-inch holes, with brace and bit, in the sides of his eel traps
so that little eels could come in, find company and shelter,
and feed until they were too big to swim out.

The five dollars that Hen got for this barrel of eels from
the Chelsea saloonkeeper was the largest lump amount he
handled in a calendar year.

I knew as a child as well as I know now that Hen Richards,
because of some shock, infirmity or disappointment, had
sought to disassociate himself and escape from what formerly
he had thought of as "life." I know all the modern routines
about the dangers of trying to "escape," how reality (what a
word) must be faced, and all that, and all that. It has been
my observation that many men and women who have tried to
secede from the race have come to grief. So have many others
who tried to be captain of a leaky and unseaworthy soul, and
master of a botched-up fate. Whatever haunted Hen Richards,
he kept to himself, and his eyes, when he gazed at the horizon,
were not too wistful. He liked to spend the pleasant days walk-
ing around the countryside, picking up what was useful or
edible and belonged to no one, watching things grow, the
buds, the birds, the flowers, and in autumn wither or grow
a protection from the cold. There were plenty of ways in
which he would have made more money, or found steady
employment He did not want more money, or more employ-
ment. He liked to walk, and he had to breathe and think. In
the simplest way imaginable, Hen made the best of it. My
guess is that he placed too much confidence in some young

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

woman, and, having been brutally double-crossed, did not care
to risk it again. Surely he had never cheated at cards, because
he played solitaire frequently and showed no aversion to the
pasteboards.

I got to know Hen very well, because we both liked mush-
rooms, and they grew in the pasture he shared with Weeks'
cows. Each morning in season, a fresh crop would appear,
where the evening before had been none.

"That isn't a miracle, Elliot," Miss Stoddard would say.
"Some things grow faster than others, that's all, and taste
better, too. Whatever isn't growing, wears out."

Hen Richards never stole anything. No one was afraid of
him. He spent his life not making money and not needing it,
which in Linden, gem of our land of opportunity, was just as
easy as becoming President. Perhaps some predatory woman
had snared him, had nagged and demanded too much, and
Hen had walked out as silently as Longfellow's Arabs, only
minus the tent. No one in Linden ever knew. In my time, after
Hen had lived in Weeks' field thirty-odd years, most of his
neighbors did not criticize his mode of life severely, because
it involved only himself, as far as they could find out.

With Irv Walker, the poorest man in Linden with a family,
the verdict of his townspeople was more reproachful. Irv liked
to be carefree and idle as well as Hen did, or even better,
because when Irv had nothing in particular to do, he did not
waste his energy walking or work up a headache thinking. He
lay down somewhere and dozed, until further notice. Irv was
tall, quite good-looking, and only betrayed his role as the
poorest family man in town by greeting his fellow townsmen
a little more politely and respectfully than they treated one
another. No one disliked Irv, or any member of his family.

When Irv had come to Linden as a young man, and had
patched up a shanty on the edge of Grovers' abandoned hill-

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About the Relatively Worthy Poor

side farm, he had been accompanied by his young wife, Gertie,
who was firm and well-rounded, with dark roguish eyes, and
a manner with men that indicated that she was neither prudish
nor helpless. Probably at least a third of the men then in
Linden made advances to Gertie, more or less discreetly, ac-
cording to their natures, the first few months she was in town.
There was something about her that made this inevitable,
some subtle witchcraft or musk. Gertie understood this, at
times was pleased and at others regretted her attractions. But
according to the Linden grapevine, Gertie was one hundred
percent faithful to her shiftless young husband long enough
to become pregnant. From that time on, she was either great
with child and Gertie could get greater than almost any other
young woman her size or nursing an infant, without the exces-
sive modesty that characterized her neighbors under similar
circumstances.

Irv never went after steady jobs, and often left temporary
ones before they were completed. One drop of rain in the
morning was enough to make him smile and stretch out for
a quiet day at ease. Gertie went about her modicum of house-
work, the babies cried and cooed. Irv, on his side of their crude
wooden bunk, dozed through it all. In winter their shack was
kept red-hot, and was less drafty than more complicated houses.
The stove Irv had found on the Linden dump, just west of
town, and the wood he picked up for nothing, in the woods
behind the house. Heating cost him nothing but a little effort
which, as soon as his children were old enough, was contributed
by them. For a long while, Irv and Gertie had only daughters,
five of them, all of whom were too pretty and well-formed to
be ideal offspring of a poor man. Even "Big Gertie," as Irv's
wife came to be called after their third daughter "Little
Gertie" was born, remained handsome and tempting, in spite
of her shabby clothes.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

The house Irv Walker and his family lived in had originally
been a large hen house on the corner of the old Grover estate.
He had built a sort of godown on the end farthest from the
door, after his fourth daughter was born. When all eight of
the Walkers were there together, four of the girls had slept
in two-tier double bunks in the godown, with hooks and
homemade chests for their clothes and belongings. Irv and
Big Gertie had their double bunk curtained off with plush
hangings (bought for two dollars in an auction sale), the
youngest daughter and Young Irv had folding cots set up in the
combination living room and kitchen. By the time he was
twelve, the boy could have strolled through a dressing room
of a girl's gymnasium without batting an eye. The kitchen
window behind the stove was not battened down in the winter,
so Big Gertie and her helpers could throw the tin cans they
opened out on a pile in the back yard. As soon as they were
old enough, and had fulfilled the minimum requirements in
school, the girls got summer jobs at Revere Beach, and slept
out from June until fall. Irv went his way, hauling ashes,
mowing and trimming lawns, shovelling snow, and helping the
gardener and stable man around the Norman Partridge place.
What the Walkers lost in privacy, they gained in lack of mental
strain and social obligations. Irv voted the Republican ticket
each year, suspecting naively that if he went against the wishes
of his various employers, the deception would show on his
face when he came out of the voting booth. No doubt it would
have. He was a candid man.

In the house, Big Gertie was no more adept at work than
Irv was outside. The whole family lived from cans, which
in those days were not common or inexpensive. Corned beef,
sardines, salmon, beans, corn, and apricots were about all that
could be found in cans in Puffer's store. Puffer's store, where
the stock was meagre, was nearest the Walker shack, so none

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About the Relatively Worthy Poor

of them would walk an extra quarter of a mile to trade with
Markham or Sampson. Also, Irv worked intermittently for
Norman Partridge, who was Mrs. Puffer's brother, and there-
fore Puffer gave Irv a certain amount of credit which could be
safely exhausted before Irv felt the pressure of necessity and
had to look around again for something to do.

The youngest of the Walker family, "Young Irv," was quite
like his father. Of the five girls, Nancy, Gertie and Agnes had
plenty of brains, got on easily in school, and knew as much
of what they should as what they should not know. The other
two, Maisy and Dot, were slow thinkers, reacted indolently,
and, without malicious intent, drove their teachers half-crazy
by their good-natured inability to associate ideas or remember
facts and figures, and kept their schoolmates of the opposite
sex in a ferment of reprehensible desire.

The Walkers never missed a meal, were warmer, as I have
said, than other Linden folks, thrived without ventilation or
sanitation, had as many friends as anyone, and lived, on the
average, just as many years. What was wrong with being poor,
with a family, in Linden, had to do with women's clothes.
Old Irv and Young Irv never cared a hoot how they were
dressed, if their duds were fairly comfortable. As soon as the
children were old enough, Big Gertie began to take renewed
interest in her appearance, and instead of prodding and ag-
gravating her husband, as less considerate women would do,
she used to ride into Boston on the streetcar, and go to Ray-
mond's, on Washington Street, a secondhand store that was
unique and famous all over New England. Not a lumberjack
from Maine, who came periodically to Boston to get drunk,
did not know about Raymond's where, in spite of cut prices,
the goods were as represented and nobody was cheated. Ray-
mond's welcomed and solicited especially the hard-working
men.

225

Linden on the Saugus Branch

The New England lumberjack's idea of Boston was con-
fined to a limited area, beginning at the North Station and
extending no farther than Raymond's, two blocks beyond the
Old State House. One of these stalwart woodsmen would work
six weeks in the Maine forest, ride a pung to Bangor, in time
for a Boston train. In Bangor he would provide himself with
a jug of whiskey, called redeye, and a tin cup, and install
himself in the smoking car. The cup was not bought for ten
cents because he could not drink out of a jug, but if he
made friends on the way to Boston and wanted to share his
booze, he wanted to know how much the other guy was get-
ting.

That requires a little side-explanation. In Boston, saloons
where lumberjacks, sailors and other roving proletarians were
welcome, there were "whiskey machines" where a man, almost
broke, could get for a nickel all he could drink before com-
ing up for air, that is, at a single swallow. The quality of the
nickel whiskey was not strained, and probably some of it had
dropped from heaven, but the bums, by long practice, learned
to open their throats and let it run down, without moving
their Adam's apple, until they were full or the tank was
empty. A bum with this background could deplete a jug in
no time. A lumberjack coming into Boston would cross the
street from the North Station, spend his six weeks' pay on
drink, women and food (mostly steaks) at the Hotel Hay-
market, fill himself up in a nickel whiskey machine with his
last jitney, then go to a neighboring pawn shop on Canal
Street, and hock his lumberman's rubbers (worth three or
four dollars) and his mackinaw, worth three dollars more.
For these the Jew would lend him five dollars. Back he would
go to the Haymarket, and drink until the five was gone. The
bartender would give him a nickel, he would find another
machine, drain it, then go sit on the curb in front of the North

226

About the Relatively Worthy Poor

Station, without shoes or mackinaw, until a runner from the
lumber company or an acquaintance came along and staked
him to a ticket back to Bangor, from whence he would return
to the woods for another six weeks' Herculean labor.

Lumberjacks did their shopping before they got drunk,
so they were to be found at Raymond's in a relatively sober
state. The single gallon-jug of redeye, for the long trip from
Bangor, was not enough to addle them. Big Gertie would
linger in Raymond's, near a counter where heavy flannel
shirts for men were on sale on one side of the aisle, and rib-
bons by the yard on the other. Few lumberjacks fresh from
six weeks in the woods would fail to notice such a woman.
One of the bolder would ask what she was looking at, and
would buy it for her, and she would go with him to the Hay-
market, to keep him company until it was time for her to catch
the last Linden train. Big Gertie was strictly scrupulous. She
never struck up an acquaintance with a man in or from
Linden, and she never stayed out all night. If she returned to
Boston the next day, and bought herself a decent outfit, Irv
did not ask questions, as a less agreeable fond husband might
do. He was glad that, somehow, in spite of the fact that
he was a notoriously poor provider, his wife "held her age"
so well, and looked better than most of the other women who
had money to burn.

Big Gertie was careful not to teach her growing daughters
anything wrong, but Little Gertie was smart, and followed
her mother one day, taking an earlier streetcar and waiting
for Big Gertie to get off the Chelsea car in Boston, at Adam's
Square. First Little Gertie, then her sisters, began to dress
much better, and the only shadow on their contentment which
had been cast by their poverty was dispelled.

When the oldest and slowest-thinking Walker girl found
herself in a family way, without a husband, Irv and Gertie did

227

Linden on the Saugus Branch

not throw her out into the snow, although the snow was deep
that year. They took care of Maisy in their tender and casual
way, also the little grandchild, and a few months later Maisy
married an iceman in Lynn, and when Dot got into trouble,
Dot went to stay with Maisy and her husband, had her first
baby, and all of them lived happily ever afterward, as the
story books say. They never seemed to need another man
around the place, to clutter it up.

After I left Linden, I heard that Ginger eventually married
Little Gertie, and that Young Irv was decorated for services
beyond the scope of duty at Belleau Wood in World War L

228

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Being Seen and Not Heard

I T WAS on a Thursday evening that Alice Townsend hid
herself in a sea chest, and had the whole town looking for her.
I awoke the next morning filled with a sense of uneasiness.
Because of what I had seen and heard, I knew more about what
really had happened than others did who were not directly
concerned, but my mind was troubled because I could not
understand the situation well enough to stop wondering
about it That Miss Stoddard did not want me to talk about
the matter was clear to me, and I believed that she had a good
reason for wanting me to be silent. There was a question of
friendship involved, several questions, in fact

Anyway, before breakfast I slipped into the woods and in
the daylight, damp and dim, I examined the rocky path where
Ruth had fallen and we had found her. Not far from the spot,
perhaps four or five feet, partly concealed by the leaves and
tendrils of a vine, I found a paring knife, such as Mother used
in the kitchen, and it was stained. This did not surprise me,
much, but it excited me, and I tried to decide what I should
do. I had not had a chance to talk with Miss Stoddard again,
and normally I would not see her until Sunday afternoon,
when we usually went for a walk in the woods, or along the
streets into neighboring towns. So I took the knife with me
to the summit of Elephant's Back, and as the sun picked up
the various landmarks of Boston, Charlestown, Everett and

229

Linden on the Saugus Branch

Broadway, I hid the weapon where no one else would be likely
to find it and I could recover it whenever I wished. I sat down
to think, not so much about what had happened, as why.
Ruth had been helping the Townsends. Alice was fond of
her. The others hated her. Why?

From another angle, I approached the riddle. Miss Stoddard
liked Ruth and believed Ruth was right. Why did they not
accuse Elvira? Of course, I knew that Mrs. Townsend had
not tried to kill Ruth. The mother was not at all attractive,
to me. But she was careful what she said and did, and acted
sanely enough. Mrs. Townsend was worried, in a way I felt
deeply, because since I could remember, the question of money
had been the menace, the problem, the thing that made life
unstable and tinged the future with amorphous dread. Why
did Mrs. Townsend want Alice to send Ruth away? Why
was she not glad that her daughter, who saw so few people, had
made a new friend, and a warmhearted, generous friend, one
who was known and trusted by some of the people I liked
best?

Was Alice crazy? What did it mean to be crazy? How would
it be different than being as we were?

Mother noticed that I was moody that day, and it disturbed
her, so I pretended I was not. I disliked waiting, and tried to
reconcile myself to waiting until Sunday, when I could have
some kind of a showdown with Miss Stoddard.

I did not have as long to wait as I had expected. Friday
afternoon a strange nurse, in uniform, got off the streetcar in
the Square and was driven by Dr. Moody, a little later, through
Beach Street to the Townsend place. My mother saw them
pass, looked at me, then said nothing. I said nothing, too. But
as soon as I could, without being too conspicuous, I slipped
out the back door and walked up to Great-Uncle Lije's house,
right across Salem Street from Ruth Coffee's cottage. I wanted

230

Being Seen and Not Heard

to have a look at Ruth, see how she seemed to be feeling and
what she was doing.

My great-uncle was not at home, and my Great-Aunt Eliza-
beth was busy. I did not disturb her. Rover came to meet me
at the gate, and walked with me, or just behind me as he had
been taught, to a small grape arbor near the fence and the side-
walk. From there, Ruth's windows were not sixty feet away.
They were open and before I saw her, I heard Ruth singing
"They Dragged Him 'Round the Room." She was not singing
happily, but rather nervously, it seemed to me, as if she were
anxious about something and was singing to make the time
pass faster, and give her something to do while she was waiting.
I heard her bustling around, cursing good-naturedly between
words of the song as she bumped this or that. I knew that kind
of sound, which only came from women cleaning house. A
mild fury took possession of Linden women when they got
their heads wrapped up in flannel and took dust pans, dust
cloths, feather dusters and brooms in their hands, and started
moving furniture out of place, then back again, or to some
other place. Casters were always slipping from chair legs,
tables caught on the edge of rugs, bric-i-brac got knocked from
mantels, books were opened and shut, and the dust made
the women cough.

I caught swift glimpses of Ruth as she was cleaning her
living room. Ruth's cottage contained no parlor. The living
room occupied the front, left of the entrance hallway, and
had a stone hearth, with fire tools and andirons, old furniture
that looked fragile and proved to be strong, rag rugs, a table
with an inlaid chessboard on which she played with Millicent
Partridge sometimes, or Swede Carlson, the carpenter, or Mr.
Ford, who had consumption. Ruth's left arm was in a sling,
so she blundered and cursed more often than usual, trying
to work with one arm, or forgetting her left one was sore and

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

giving herself an unexpected twinge. There were no venom
and petulance in Ruth's expressions. They had a wholesome,
spontaneous effect.

At the same instant, Ruth from her side window and Rover
and I from the arbor heard hoofbeats approaching along
Salem Street, those of Hip. Rover got up, looked at me, I
signalled to take it easy, and he sat down again. Ruth took the
cloth from her head, and put away the dustpan and broom,
quite hastily, it seemed to me. She did not want the doctor to
know she had been working. No doubt he had told her not to
use her left arm. Still, I had seen her using it, and was sure
that the nurse in uniform, taking Ruth's place at Alice's side,
was not there because Ruth was incapacitated. Neither did
Ruth seem crushed or disappointed, or too much worried.
The more I observed of the Townsend affair, the farther I
was at sea.

All I learned definitely was when the doctor came out again,
and Ruth saw him to the cottage door. The bandage around
her shoulder was a fresh one, and Ruth said, cheerfully:

"Well. See you tomorrow, Doc. I'm betting on you."

"I hope we're right," Doc said, got into the buggy, and
drove away.

The next day was Saturday. It was easy to remember when
anything happened in Linden on Saturday. There was no
school, so the boys and girls were all over the place, some work-
ing at odd jobs to make a dime or two, others playing "Run
Sheep, Run," "Hide and Seek," baseball or football in season.
Those who had bicycles rode them up and down the streets,
and, when they were sure the cop was not around, on the side-
walks as well, A lot of agitation against riding bicycles on
sidewalks was in the air just then. Quite a few minor accidents
had occurred, letters of protest appeared in the newspaper,
and Spike Dodge, the Linden cop and the last person to get

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tough about trifles, had warned all the boys to be careful and
not get him into trouble. Of all the men I knew, I think Spike
was the most reluctant to get into trouble. For him, the absence
of trouble was the ideal state, and work and trouble were
synonymous.

There were two extra trains on the Saugus Branch on Sat-
urday afternoons, and most of the men got home early from
Boston, loaded with bundles from the Faneuil Hall markets
and the Boston department stores. The Massasoit bar was
crowded and once in a while the swinging doors would part
and a couple of men in fisticuffs would hurtle out, or a drunk
would be propelled by Nick Spratt, not toward the Linden
line where he might be pinched, but toward the open spaces
of Revere.

Doc Moody, that Saturday, drove across the street to the
depot to meet the 1:15 train. A tall man about thirty-five years
old, dressed quietly in gray, with pale blue eyes, slender but
capable hands, and a reserved but confident manner got off
and shook hands with Dr. Moody. The stranger was a doctor,
without doubt, and through Dawson Freeman, who had talked
with him on the train, the news spread that he was Dr. Alfred
Worcester, of the staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital,
a man well-known and respected by the entire profession,
and a teacher at Harvard. That was where Dr. Moody had
known him before.

Again I went to Great-Uncle Lije's house. This time, Great-
Aunt Elizabeth saw me before I got to the arbor, so I went to
the front porch and sat with her. She was watching Ruth's
cottage, too, and Ruth apparently had finished cleaning the
ground floor rooms the day before. She was working upstairs,
humming and whistling.

"You've been in Miss Coffee's house?" my great-aunt asked.
"Once or twice," I said.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Isn't that the spare bedroom, where she's cleaning?"

"It looks like it," I said.

"Now what's she doing that for?"

My great-aunt did not expect an answer. She sat on the
porch, watching and listening and wondering, until it was time
for her to take pies from the oven and water the bean pot. I
waited and waited, two hours. And while I was waiting, some-
thing I had seen on Beach Street, and should have impressed
me at once, came back to me. Dr. Moody was not using his
buggy, to take the strange doctor to the Townsend house. He
had hitched Hip to the carryall.

So it was the carryall I looked for, and I saw that Ruth had
stopped work and was changing her clothes. She put on a fresh
white shirtwaist, and a blue suit, freshly pressed, dark blue
stockings and patent leather shoes to match. I saw her arrange
her hair before the mirror, and put a red flower in her coat
lapel. She smiled into the glass and squared her shoulders,
and I noticed she had discarded the sling. Her cut must be
better, I thought. Again I wondered why neither Ruth, nor
the doctor, had said a word around town about how she got
hurt. Was it to keep the knowledge from Alice, who might
have another relapse if she were shocked? I did not think Ruth
would take so much trouble to shield Elvira, or would stand
that amount of nonsense from anyone, man or woman, without
satisfaction.

When the carryall came into sight at last, I saw that Dr.
Moody and the nurse were in the front seat, and that two per-
sons, a man and a woman, were in the back seat. I assumed
the man would be Dr. Worcester, so I concentrated on the
woman and was astonished to see that it was Alice Townsend,
fully dressed for the drive. By the time they were abreast of
the porch, Great-Aunt Elizabeth was at the window, inside,
watching from behind the lace curtains.

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Being Seen and Not Heard

"Now don't that beat all?" she said, under her breath.

1 was too absorbed in watching Ruth, who was standing,
radiant in the afternoon sunshine, on the porch. She hurried
to the sidewalk, a* the carryall stopped, reached up and helped
Alice descend. Ruth was not demonstrative, this time. She held
both of Alice's hands and from a little distance looked at her,
eyes shining.

"I'm here," I heard Alice say, hesitantly.

Dr. Moody interrupted. "Break, you two," he said. "Ruth.
Meet Dr. Worcester."

"Glad to meet you, doctor/' said Ruth, and with a sidelong
glance at Alice, added questioningly, but confidently: "How
about it?"

"I agree with Dr. Moody," Dr. Worcester said.

They all went inside, where Ruth served tea for Alice and
the nurse and whiskey and soda to the men.

Great-Aunt Elizabeth was surprised enough when Alice ap-
peared, but when the two doctors and the nurse left without
her, and it was evident that Ruth was putting her to bed in
the spare room, my great-aunt put on her summer shawl and
started for our house, leaving me to watch the beans and put
them on the back of the stove when the oven would be too hot.

"Tell Lije I'll be back in time for supper," she said.

I scarcely heard her, I was thinking so hard, and getting no
results but circles. Eventually Great-Uncle Lije came in, and
was a little surprised and put out because his wife had gone
off and left the beans. He had already heard that Miss Town-
send had ridden with the doctors to Ruth's house, but he did
not know the sick girl had been installed in Ruth's spare bed-
chamber. He pretended not to care very much, one way or the
other. Although my great-uncle never said so, it was easy to
see that he did not approve of Ruth Coffee. Her robust use of
the language bothered him, although Uncle Reuben talked

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

about the same and Lije never gave a thought to that. I had
noticed before that when Great-Uncle Lije came home, ex-
pecting to find Great Aunt Elizabeth in the house, and she
was out somewhere, he seemed to lose his grip. He was inat-
tentive to what was said, and disapproving of what he heard,
until he saw his wife coming over the Salem Street hill. She
only came that way, because of the gang of loafers around
Black Ann's corner.

There were other things about Ruth that rubbed Lije the
wrong way. He was not sure it was decent for a woman to go
out shooting or fishing with a gang of men, dressed in men's
clothes. He never complained because she could make vege-
tables and flowers grow, and make things out of wood with her
lathe. Of course, he was handier with tools than she was, but
whatever he touched in the yard showed the kind of perverse
resistance to his will that Zach displayed. A few years back he
had decided, for instance, to plant some summer squash, some
pumpkins, and some cucumbers, so he bought some seeds in
the little narrow alley of Faneuil Hall, prepared the soil, and
planted them in rows, side by side. Now when a man in Linden
did anything like that, the innocent way in which his neighbors
let him go ahead, was marvellous to see. They would come and
lean on the fence, as the plants were coming up, and talk about
how nice it would be to pick fresh squash and cukes and pump-
kins from his own vines. Even Mr. Weeks, as shy and free from
malice as he was, came over two or three times that season, and
walked up and down, as Lije was weeding. When the vines
grew luxuriantly and flowered, the bees came over from the
nearby clover fields. It seemed as if they never could get
enough, as they crawled and burrowed and rubbed their wings.

Ruth Coffee, sensing that Lije was not enthusiastic about her,
and taking it in good part, did not join the other neighbors
at the fence, but Lije had seen her looking at his garden in a

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Being Seen and Not Heard

mischievous way, and had heard her laughing afterwards, when
he saw nothing to laugh at.

Zach got loose that year, several times, as he always did, and
tramped and nibbled quite a few of the other vegetables, but
he seemed to be scrupulously careful not to go near the cu-
cumbers, the squash or the pumpkin vines.

Packard, when he stopped to deliver groceries when Lije
was home, asked my great-uncle if, maybe, he would not have
some cucumbers left over, that Markham could buy, and knock
off the price from Lije's bill.

Nothing in Alice in Wonderland could compare with
what appeared in Lije's garden that summer. A cucumber
would start out at one end as a cucumber should, then develop
an abnormal series of knobs and bumps like summer squash,
and flare out into a pumpkin shape, with the colors all patched
and mingled. The dark green of the cucumbers was splotched
all over the pumpkins. The same men who had watched the
vines grow and the bees wallow in the flowers made believe
they were astonished and impressed at the riotous mixup that
nature had achieved.

My great-uncle gritted his teteth, and bore it for a little
while, then he hitched up Zach, ploughed up the whole mess,
and glared at his wife all evening, just waiting for her to smile.
She controlled herself until, about nine o'clock, she heard
Ruth Coffee and three or four men who were over in Ruth's
cottage playing seven-up, let out peals and bellows of laughter.
She started laughing, choked and could not stop, and for three
nights Lije slept in another bedroom and said nothing at the
table or between meals in the daytime. He noticed, of course,
too late, that Ruth and all the other good gardeners had
planted their cucumbers, squash and pumpkins, and whatever
else grew on similar vines, in separate patches at a safe distance
from one another, but those vegetables did not appear on

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

Lije's table for three or four years, and my great-aunt, the first
time she risked serving squash in a pie, was careful to invite
the minister for dinner.

The Saturday evening Dr. Worcester was in Linden, he
went with Doc Moody to the Massasoit for supper, and praised
Jeff Lee's baked beans and brown bread. According to Uncle
Reuben, who was not exactly talking to me, he made quite a
hit with all the regulars, although neither of the doctors would
say a word about what was uppermost in everyone's mind.
They let it be understood that the schoolteacher was going to
get well, and that was all. That took a heavy load from Ginger's
mind.

As the evening wore on, Mr. Wing asked Dr. Worcester
about Packard's powders, whether it was possible to mix up a
medicine that stirred up the women, without doing any harm.
Packard was present, but maintained his usual noncommittal
air, neither admitting nor denying any knowledge of such a
formula.

Dr. Worcester smiled in his quiet, unassuming way, and the
Admiral, Mr. Stowe, the fishman, Walt Robbins, Ginger, and
the others hovered around expectantly. All the talk in the back
room quieted down, so those at a distance could hear.

"In Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy,' 9 Dr. Worcester be-
gan, "he quotes some old authorities of the time of Charle-
magne. The great emperor, it seems, for years had been in love
with a woman who was ugly and old, and none of the courtiers
or ladies of the court could understand why a man who ruled
the world, and could summon any beautiful young girl to his
chamber, was content with an old hag whom even the stable
hands and roustabouts would not have stayed with."

"You mean this old party would really stop a clock," said
Ginger. By that time, even Pehr the Finn had overcome his
diffidence and was standing by.

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Being Seen and Not Heard

"Clocks were not invented until fifty years later," Mr. Wing
interposed.

The doctor nodded. "That one would have stopped an hour
glass," he said. "And even after she died, Charlemagne had
her body embalmed and kept her in the palace, inconsolable.
He would not leave her side, his appetite fell off, he paid no
attention to the public welfare. It got to such a point that the
bishop, trying to find out what could be done, prayed to the
Lord, and it was revealed to the bishop, according to the testi-
mony of contemporary writers, that the hideous old woman
had some kind of a love charm on her person.

"The bishop waited until the emperor was asleep, then stole
into the royal bedroom where the old witch was lying in state,
and found the love charm, a stone or some powders tied up in
a sack. The bishop took it from the folds of her gown and
started away."

"Did that cure the king?" the Admiral asked.

"That made things worse," the doctor said. "Charlemagne
awoke while the bishop was still in the room, tackled him from
behind, and what happened to His Grace can better be ima-
gined than described, in company."

"Let's hope it was a Protestant bishop," said Ginger, fer-
vently.

"The bishop, as soon as he could get away, threw the love
charm into a lake nearby, and from that moment on the great
emperor loved the lake, and would not leave its shores. He
built a palace there, and there he died."

The listeners chuckled, roared and applauded, and as soon
as the commotion died down, Mr. Wing turned to Ginger.

"I ought to tell you, Ginger," he said, "that there were no
Protestant bishops until six hundred years later."

Ginger crossed himself and groaned.

The Admiral urged Dr. Worcester to stay the night, but

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

the doctor said he had to take the last train back to Boston,
because there were sure to be several cases of Saturday night
paralysis brought into the hospital, and the interns did not
know exactly how to handle them.

"Saturday night paralysis?" asked Uncle Reuben, suspect-
ing a gag.

"We never have less than a dozen cases over the week-end.
It's the same in all large cities," said the doctor. "A man, or,
unfortunately, sometimes a woman, gets drunk, lies in a gutter
to sleep it off, and rests an elbow on the granite curbstone.
The sleep is so deep that the blood circulation in the arm is cut
off for hours, and when the drunk wakes up he can't move his
arm, sometimes for two or three days."

"I never get any cases as simple as that," Doc Moody said,
ruefully.

Before Dr. Worcester started for the depot, he asked to use
the telephone.

"I've surely got to put in one of those things," the Admiral
said, apologetically.

"You know," Dr. Worcester said. "It's got so that around the
hospital we use them, just to save ourselves running up and
down stairs."

240

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Pursuits of Happiness

SUNDAY was bright and clear. A little earlier than usual, I
finished dinner and went across the street to Miss Stoddard's
yard, where I sat under the sassafras tree to wait for her to come
out. There were two large trees in the Stoddard yard, the
sassafras, with leaves shaped like mittens on a remnant counter
at Raymond's, and a tall cherry tree from which I picked the
fruit each year. The rest of the front yard had small pear trees,
very old, and a long grape arbor which, each fall, was loaded
with the finest Concord grapes.

From the back of the Stoddard home to the creek, the land
sloped downward, and was a sanctuary for the frogs and garter
snakes which elsewhere in Linden were not properly esteemed.

We took the path to Elephant's Back that day, Miss Stoddard
and I, and sat to enjoy the broad panorama below, within a
yard of where I had hidden the paring knife. Usually our con-
versation was brisk and touched a variety of subjects. On that
afternoon not much had been said, because Miss Stoddard was
reluctant and uncertain as to how far she should go, and I,
being entitled to an explanation, was not willing to delay it
by talking about something else.

"Elliot," she began, at last. "I'm not sure how much I ought
to tell you. The truth is not free, like the air. Little chunks of
it belong to other people, and those we can't pass around, with-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

out their consent Suppose you tell me what you think hap-
pened the other night, and then, perhaps, I can explain."

That was a typical Miss Stoddard subtlety, which I under-
stood. The more I had found out for myself, the more she
could discuss, without violating a confidence.

"I think that Elvira doesn't like Ruth Coffee. Elvira's jealous
because her sister likes Ruth, and will do what Ruth asks," I
said. I saw from Miss Stoddard's expression that I was on the
right track.

"Go on/ 1 she said.

"I think that when Ruth started out of Mrs. Townsend's
house to look for Alice in the woods, when it was dark, Elvira
followed her and stabbed her," I continued.

To emphasize my words, I leaned over, took the knife from
its hiding place and handed it to Miss Stoddard. This really
surprised her, and broke down what was left of her reluctance
to speak.

"Where did you get that?" she asked.

"Not far from where we found Ruth, Friday night," I said.

In her anxiety, Miss Stoddard asked: "Does anyone know?"

I looked at her reproachfully.

"Excuse me," she said. "You are doing our friends a very
great favor."

I sighed. I was still in the fog.

"Last Fourth of July, when some Dago from Boston. ..."
I said.

She interrupted. "Some Italian," she corrected.

"When some Italian from Boston got drunk and cut Pep
Marincola's father, the man was arrested and got sixty days,"
I said.

"Ruth does not want Elvira arrested," Miss Stoddard said.

"I know that. But why?" I asked.

Miss Stoddard took her turn, and shook her head, smiling

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Pursuits of Happiness

at me ruefully. "Why seems to be your favorite word/' she
said.

"Isn't it better to find out about things?" I asked.

"That," said Miss Stoddard, thoughtfully, "is a very hard
question. But if you're built that way, you have to find out.
You don't sleep as well nights as those who are not curious.
Too bad. There's no alternative."

"Why doesn't Ruth want Elvira to be arrested?" I persisted.

"As long as Ruth has that hold over Elvira and Mrs. Town-
send, she can make them agree to do what's best for Alice,"
Miss Stoddard said.

"You mean, for Alice to stay with Ruth?"

"Exactly," Miss Stoddard said.

"Forever?" I asked.

"Forever is only a word. Nothing goes on after it is finished
and done with," she said. "Right now, while Alice is so nerv-
ous, it is bad for her to have two other nervous people around
her all the time. As long as she stayed with her mother and
sister, she would never get well."

As she spoke, Miss Stoddard looked with distaste at the
stained knife in her hand. She rose, tucking it into her belt,
handle upward, and we started walking toward Sugar Pond.

"The doctor from Boston," she began.

"Dr. Alfred Worcester," I said.

"That's right. Good man," she said. "You heard that old
Dr. Goodenough from Maiden said Alice was crazy and in-
curable."

"Dementia praecox," I said, nodding in agreement. "Dr.
Moody didn't agree."

"You seem to know as much as I do," said Miss Stoddard.

"I don't yet," I said. "What did Dr. Moody and Dr. Wor-
cester think was wrong, that made her act so queer, make such

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

a fuss over nothing, sleep for days, lose her job, and hide her-
self in a chest?"

"Hysteria," Miss Stoddard said. "Strain and worry, day after
day, year after year. They tested her brain, and found it was as
good as anyone's . . . who didn't have a better one to start
with."

"Don't brains get better, as a person gets older?" I asked.

"No," Miss Stoddard said.

I did not like that much, but it was not the moment to start
Miss Stoddard on another track.

"What's hysteria?" I asked.

"Nerves," she said.

"Just nerves," I said.

"Dr. Worcester told Ruth that sometimes he thought the
doctors knew as much about brains as about people's nerves.
That would be next to nothing," she said.

We had reached the edge of Sugar Pond, where the sugar
maples, spaced a few feet apart, just far enough to make room
for boughs and branches, stood with their trunks in the water.
Between were frog's eggs and lily pads, with tips of rushes
sticking up, and water spiders skipping nimbly in zigzags.
Some turtles who had been sunning themselves, slid casually
into the water. A water snake, whose eyes and the flattened top
of his head were just above the surface, ducked under, but not
too hurriedly, and by virtue of effortless motion, more liquid
and perfect than Annette Kellerman or Pavlowa could ever
achieve, moved from where he had been to wherever he was
going.

I watched him fade into the Rembrandt background of
depth and brownness, and so did Mary Stoddard. Then I
looked up at her, she looked at me and then at the knife, and
slowly drew it from her belt and, as I nodded assent, tossed it

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Pursuits of Happiness

into the water, where it sank, not ungracefully, and hid itself
forever in the ooze.

I had one more question.

"What is Mrs. Townsend going to do. ..." I stopped,
always loath to talk about money.

"Without Alice's salary, you mean?" Miss Stoddard asked.

I nodded.

"We are coming to that, later," she said.

Before the afternoon was over, I knew what she meant. A
maneuver of diplomacy was afoot, in a characteristically Lin-
den way.

When it became apparent to Dr. Moody that Alice would
have a better chance, away from her tremulous family, he had
at first thought of an institution or a nursing home. Ruth had
been horrified by that suggestion, and she and the doctor were
sure it would throw the Townsend women into a panic. Mrs.
Townsend would accept aid, services and occasional donations
of food for the invalid, but never cash. And obviously the
mother could not pay for Alice to be kept in a sanitarium. The
public institutions and clinics were all for the feeble-minded
or the insane, and Dr. Moody would as soon have thought of
chloroforming Alice himself as sending her to an asylum.

Ruth had money enough, or could make enough, to take
care of Alice, but that would still leave Mrs. Townsend and
Elvira without funds, so Ruth used her excellent head and
figured out a solution. Cobb, Bates and Yerxa, fancy grocers
and importers in Boston, had started a department where fresh
"homemade" cakes, pastry, rolls, crullers and doughnuts were
on sale, or could be delivered on order in the metropolitan
area. Like S. S. Pierce, "Cobb, Bates" had built a reputation
for integrity that went back almost to Colonial times, and
when they advertised goods as "homemade," it meant they
had to be made in somebody's home. So they had made ar-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

rangements with housewives in the Boston suburbs to install
large baking ovens and equipment, to be paid for as used, and
furnished by the gross the delicacies Cobb, Bates sold. The
store supplied the materials and the recipes, which had to be
followed scrupulously, and thus many women, by working
hard and long, in their own homes, were able to make a good
living. "Cobb, Bates" tried to locate worthy women who had
children they could not leave alone, and no men folks to sup-
port them.

So Ruth went first to Dawson Freeman, as who did not when
favors were sadly needed, and Dawson made such an impres-
sion and stated the Townsend predicament so eloquently that
all the partners of Cobb, Bates and Yerxa were making free
use of their handkerchiefs and readily consented to make an
exception to their rule of employing mothers with young
children. Ruth insisted on paying for the ovens and baking
equipment outright, and letting Mrs. Townsend believe it was
furnished by the firm. The only hitch, then, was Mrs. Town-
send' s frenzied hatred of Ruth, who she believed had be-
witched and stolen her daughter, and turned Elvira into a
potential murderess.

Miss Stoddard had suggested to Ruth that she ask my mother
to talk with Mrs. Townsend about the opportunities for bak-
ing for Cobb, Bates and Yerxa, so Mrs. Townsend would never
know the idea had come from Ruth. Ruth, in turn, believed
Miss Stoddard had more influence with Mother than Ruth
did. So on that Sunday afternoon, before Miss Stoddard and I
finished off the day, at twilight, with chocolate and animal
crackers, and a story she read from Tolstoi or Chekhov, we
stopped at our house to ask Mother if she would see Mrs.
Townsend and put over the deal that would save them from
starvation.

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Pursuits of Happiness

Mother understood readily that Mrs. Townsend might be
resentful and suspicious of Ruth. Although Mother seldom
took sides, if she could help it, she had listened to those women
in the Social Circle who thought Dr. Moody and Ruth and the
stranger from Boston had acted highhandedly in taking Alice
from her mother's house. That those good women did not
know about Elvira and the knife, had led them into hasty
conclusions.

"They all think it's Alice who's crazy, when really it's El-
vira," I said later to Miss Stoddard, when we were alone.

"Dr. Worcester said, and I have also noticed, that when one
member of a family is cracked, some other member is the one
who breaks down," Miss Stoddard said. I thought about that
a long time, and have often thought about it since.

Of course, my mother warmed to Ruth, when she learned
how much trouble Ruth had taken to provide for Mrs. Town-
send. So on Monday, my mother put on her best hat and coat,
her Sunday shoes, and sweetest, most persuasive expression,
and not only did Mrs. Townsend consent to the proposition,
but welcomed it, prayerfully, as coming, through my good
mother, directly from God. That made my mother a little
ashamed of herself, taking credit for a plan that was not hers.

Anyway, Mrs. Townsend and Elvira were soon busy from
morning until night, and their mental and physical health
seemed much improved. The deliverymen from Cobb, Bates
and Yerxa, swore roundly because of the thirty outside steps
down which tray after tray of hot homemade rolls and tarts had
to be carried, but the partners, on account of Dawson Free-
man's eloquence, had told the superintendent to tell the drivers
to give the Townsends every consideration, and the drivers
were helpless to protest.

The little red cottage, trimmed with white, and surrounded
by sweet peas, sunflowers, phlox, asters and petunias, in which

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

Ruth and Alice lived, turned out to be one of the snuggest and
happiest homes in Linden. Ruth in dungarees and simple
blouses worked indoors and out, her cheerful voice resound-
ing. Alice, as dainty and fragile as a rose, grew more lovely,
more confident, and shyly radiant each day. I often found
reasons for calling on them, or lingering in their antique shop
or yard, because I felt the same harmony, the same unspoken
understandings, the tenderness that was not objectionable be-
cause it was restrained, the mutual esteem and the relish of
the passing hours that soothed me, and intrigued me, when I
had visited Mr. and Mrs. Ford, or Lawyer Perkins and lovely
Cousin Ella. I cannot tell you how deeply I believed, as a child,
that people should have a good time, should do things they
liked to do, and live with those who loved them. Again
Telemachus.

"TuanJ" Alice would ask softly, of Ruth. She called her
Tuan, or master of the house, to tease her. "TuanT 9 she would
say. "What shall we have for tea? Fresh raspberries, from the
bushes beyond the fountain? With thick cream, from Mr.
Weeks' pans in the well? From a pan without a mouse? And
nut wafers?"

Ruth seldom agreed right away. She liked to make a counter-
suggestion, and talk a while, watching Alice's expressions, her
naive gestures, her blooming health and timid joy.

"We might have cinnamon toast and bayberry preserves,
and a little shot of Medford Rum in the tea," Ruth would say.

My Great-Uncle Lije, across the way, if he heard, sometimes
got so upset that he squashed an egg in his hand, in picking it
up from the yard, where some hen had strayed. Lije's hens laid
eggs almost anywhere except in the nests. The more trouble
he took to keep the hen house clean and dry, the more the hens
ignored their conveniences. They often roosted in the willows
down by the creek, where the muskrats could find them, while

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Pursuits of Happiness

the ducks waddled up from the water and plucked young pansy
plants from the front yard.

Lije's cucumbers and summer squash were famous, all over
the county and the Cape. He topped them, later, with his rab-
bit house. Instead of building it up in the barnyard, where he
would have to water the rabbits from the pump, he conceived
the idea of putting it near enough the creek so the rabbits could
drink when they felt like it, if the tide was going out and the
water was fresh. Again, the neighbors watched, in all inno-
cence, and offered no advice. But Mary Stoddard, when she
heard about it, and the rabbit house was half-built, and the
runway surrounded with chicken wire, laughed until the tears
ran down her cheeks, between the warts and moles.

"Lutie," she said to my mother. "Tell Lije that rabbits don't
drink."

"They don't drink?" my mother asked, astonished.

Then she could not help smiling. My gentle mother was
not going to be the one to spring this information on Great-
Uncle Lije, but she told Great-Aunt Elizabeth. My great-aunt
did not care to tell her husband, either. So she resorted to
what, for her, was a wily subterfuge. She wrote the Boston
Globe, which Lije read every day, asking the editor if it were
true that rabbits did not drink, and if so, how they got along
without water. Day after day she watched the Globe's cor-
respondence column and the morning it appeared, she was so
nervous that she burned the muffins twice, before she got the
breakfast table set. The Globe confirmed Miss Stoddard. Rab-
bits got the moisture they needed from the dew on fodder and
lettuce and the juice the greens contained.

"What's got into you, Lizzie?" Lije asked, when he noticed
that her hand was shaking so that the saucer was shimmering
and the coffee slipping over when she passed him his moustache
cup.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"I don't know why I feel so nervous this morning. Must be
the change of moon," she said.

"That's all tommyrot," Lije said, then his eye hit the little
Doric head over the letter signed "Housewife" about rabbits.
He did not say a word. Grimly he finished the eggs, fried po-
tatoes and country sausage on his plate, ate four buttered muf-
fins and drank three cups of coffee. My great-aunt waited and
watched. Lije was not going to the shipyard that day, and she
saw him cross the street. Ruth and Alice were at breakfast.
They had some pet rabbits, because they could not bear to
throw away the lettuce they had left over. Each head had been
tended so carefully, as was everything that grew around the
cottage, that Alice said she felt she knew them personally and
that their feelings would be hurt if she tossed them on the pile
with grass-cuttings and raked-up leaves for mould.

"Mind if I look at your rabbits?" Lije asked.

"Why, no. Go ahead," said Ruth. "I haven't fed 'em yet.
I'll be out in a jiffy."

When Ruth went out, with a dish of clover and lettuce in
her hand, Lije was glaring into the rabbit hutch. No dish for
water was provided. He made the rounds of several barnyards
that morning, and his observation was the same. When he got
back home, in a most difficult mood, he found that Tom Bag-
ley's local express had delivered a wooden case addressed to
him. Bewildered, he opened it, while my Great-Aunt Elizabeth
looked curiously on. It was a case of what was called "tonic,"
that is, soft drinks flavored weakly with strawberry, lemon or
sarsaparilla, in half-pint bottles with tin caps on top.

"Did you order any such hogwash as this?" Lije asked his
wife.

"Why, no," she said

Then Lije saw a card, picked it up, turned green and gray,
and stuffed it quickly in his pocket. It read:

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Pursuits of Happiness

"To Elijah Prentiss Griffin, Esq., for his rabbits.

Compliments of his fellow-members of the

Linden Improvement Association."

Rover, who had been sitting behind the stove, got up
quietly, made his way to the screen door, pushed it open, and
crossed Salem Street into the woods, and was not seen again
that day. When something got Lije mad, the sympathetic New-
foundland was likely to do that. He was not afraid of his mas-
ter, he liked better not to witness the manifestations of his
temper.

Lije started pell-mell for the south side of the tracks, to find
Tom Bagley and find out who gave him that case of tonic to
haul, but Tom was not home, and by the time the day was over,
Lije had mastered his emotions and set out for a voyage to
Rockport in his boat While he was gone, my Great-Aunt
Elizabeth hired Irv Walker to dismantle the unfinished rabbit
house by the creek and carry all traces of it away.

She did not know until later that Lije, when his motor had
kicked back and hurt his wrist, had jerked it out of the Petrel
II and dumped it over the side, although it weighed four hun-
dred pounds, avoirdupois, and had negotiated the difficult
course over the marsh, and along the coast, threading in and
out of some of the world's most treacherous reefs and hidden
shoals, with nothing but sails and a stout pair of oars. Lije felt
better after that, because nobody else in Linden could have
done it, and not more than three men on Cape Ann.

That was the year the Italian women, not the ones who had
settled in Linden, began searching the woods and fields for
dandelion greens, slippery elm, spruce gum, and various roots,
herbs and simples. They were as conspicuous and mysterious
as Gypsies, with their gaily colored bandanas on their heads,
shawls around their shoulders, earrings and loops in their ears,
and six or more full petticoats.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

When a Greater Boston meat packer, one of the pioneers
of streetcar advertising, bought a vast truck farm in Revere,
not two miles east of the Linden line, he hired a lot of Italians-
men, women and children who moved from Boston's crowded
North End to the land on the border of the marsh. The Linden
housewives, from below the Square, could see them moving,
with push-carts and borrowed junk wagons, cloth bundles and
innumerable babies. Every Saturday and Sunday the immi-
grants would swarm to the new settlement, where they had
made first payments on small tracts of land, which they staked
out, fenced, planted, and made ready for ramshackle little
houses. They were under the protection of Senator Mangini,
an Italian from Chelsea, and one of the first of his extraction
to be elected to and attain wide influence in the Massachusetts
legislature. The Senator was known and trusted by all Italians
and Jews north of Boston, and preserved the reputation as
long as he lived of never cheating a countryman or a member
of a minority race, or permitting such men to be cheated with
impunity. Immigrants in those days had small trust in banks,
or understanding of their impersonal functions. They kept
their savings in their socks, or hid them in buried lard pails,
until they were ready to turn over a sum to Senator Mangini,
for transportation of incoming kinfolk from Italy, to post as
bonds for small subcontracts, to buy expensive musical instru-
ments on the installment plan, or for the purchase of land.
That was the dream closest to each immigrant's heart, to own
his home and a plot of ground in free America.

Thus, weekly feasts and celebrations enlivened the former
stretch of wasteland between the Massasoit's skating pond and
the meat packer's farm, the last of its acreage and scope in
northeastern Massachusetts. Accordion music was borne on the
breeze, red wine flowed, and one by one, small tar-paper shacks
went up, with detached little backhouses, all kinds of make-

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Pursuits of Happiness

shift fences, and small trees transplanted from the woods or
orchards. To the immigrants, the settlement was a heaven on
earth, which could be tasted, smelled, and touched. To the
middle-class Lindeners, it was an eyesore.

So when the Italian women used to come across the Linden
line, with huge clothes baskets and flat kitchen knives or
trowels, to pick bushels of greens and pecks of mushrooms,
few citizens took pleasure in meeting or greeting them, par-
taking of their dreams and traditions, or sharing what went on
in their hearts. This is sad, but it is true, and thus was lost much
education.

Trigger Bacigalupo, one of Linden's smartest boys, tried to
talk with these newcomers, but the dialect his parents had
taught him, Siciliano, was not understood by Italians from
provinces on the mainland, so when Frigger noticed that the
old and wise Italian women were collecting certain plants,
roots and bark, the uses of which he did not comprehend, he
called on Palmira Di Brazzio as interpreter.

When Palmira relayed to Frigger what she had learned from
herpaesani, his delight knew no bounds. He made her promise,
on pain of revealing to her father what went on at the Massa-
soit, not to say a word about the new discoveries to anybody,
until he could get the proposition organized on a commercial
scale. Some of the natural stimulants the Italian women
gathered were believed to have all the virtues attributed to
Packard's powders, and others would relieve the unlucky con-
sequences of having loved, not wisely but too well.

This was the apex of an inverted pyramid of prosperity
that Frigger Bacigalupo is enlarging to this day. It chanced that
soon after Frigger had bought all he could of the medicines,
prepared and wrapped by the immigrants at very low rates,
Big Julie had been obliged to confide to the girls at the Massa-
soit, who passed on the information to their men friends, that

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

she was in trouble. The big good-natured girl made little
fuss about her condition, but she was worried, and when Frig-
ger offered her, for only five dollars, a sure cure for her woes,
and she had tried the stuff and it had worked, Trigger's stock
went up promptly around town. Because of the success of his
birth-control preparation, more men were willing to try out
his aphrodisiacs. Through the grapevine the news spread
among the women, as far as the ultrarespectable Social Circle,
and a mild mass hysteria developed which began to step up
Linden's birth rate, and decrease the percentage of lovers who
had to leave town.

Poor Dud Shultz was bombarded with questions, not only
by the Massasoit jokers, but by his most reputable customers,
and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown again when
Uncle Reuben, the Admiral, Mr. Wing and others among the
patrons of the bar, framed up another prank, of which Dud
was to be the butt.

As everybody knew, Dud continued his weekly excursions
to Boston on the trolley car, without ever saying a word to any-
one as to where he went or how he spent his time. It was Dud's
night to roam, and Big Julie had told the men she was going
to town that evening, so they suggested that, no matter how
few people there were on the car, she sit right up close to Dud
and try to lead him astray,

"He can't edge away no farther than the end of the car,"
Ginger said.

"Go on. You're twice his size," said Hal Kingsland. "Make
him give in."

Big Julie looked a little sorry for the nervous little man, in
advance, but she agreed to do what she could.

"Tell him you took some of the Italian herbs, and can't sit
still," the Admiral suggested.

When the 8:15 car jolted past the Massasoit that evening,

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Pursuits of Happiness

many pairs of eyes were watching. It was one of those old-
fashioned cars with plush seats along both sides and an aisle in
the middle. The Massasoit regulars were convulsed with laugh-
ter when they saw that little Dud and Julie were the only pas-
sengers. And notwithstanding that, they had the entire car to
themselves, Julie was sitting, knees wide apart, right up next
to Dud, whose face showed consternation.

That was the last they saw of either of them for quite a
while, and when they came back, they were married. Julie
never would tell anyone what had happened, and with her to
protect him, no one could take advantage of little Dud again.
Julie watched over him like a mother hen. She kept house,
cooked his meals, washed his ears, shampooed his hair, and
even cut his toenails. When Dud was resting, upstairs, and
Julie tended the drugstore, she gave back the ribald customers
as good as they sent, with all her former gusto. The Linden
folks began to respect the little druggist, who lost his sense of
inferiority and became quite cocky.

I am proud to say that the Linden gallants were as capable
of chivalry as of mischief, so Julie's past was allowed to drift
back into oblivion.

"Upon my word, he calls her 'Twinkle/ " said Mr. Wing,
a few days after the honeymooners had returned. I think Mr.
Wing, always a restrained and courteous gentleman, took as
much pleasure in the unexpected romantic development as
anyone in town. Mr. Wing did not exaggerate. The tiny little
druggist, five feet three, with a husky, squeaky voice, addressed
his six-foot strapping wife as "Twinkle" and she called him
"Bunny."

"Twinkle," Dud would say, rather pettishly, when things
got too much for him, "come here."

"Yes, Bunny, Why sure," Big Julie would reply, and drop

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

whatever she was doing, instantly, to go to his side and resolve
his minor difficulty.

Sometimes the efforts of the customers to rattle Julie now
they seldom got a chance at Dud turned out constructively.
For instance, Hal Kingsland, soon after he became a full-time
fireman, said one day to Julie, while Dud was fussing and
pottering at the prescription counter:

"What's the matter around here? Don't you know all first-
class drugstores have soda fountains these days?"

"It's better to be a second-class druggist than a first-class
jerk," Julie answered, right off the bat.

But two weeks later a soda fountain and all the necessary
equipment were delivered at the Linden depot, addressed to
Dudley R. Shultz, Esquire, and with "Twinkle" presiding as
the first local soda-jerker, the innovation became a Linden
institution.

There, where loneliness and anxiety had been, was another
happy home.

"Darned if it isn't nice to have something turn out decent,"
Uncle Reuben said.

256

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Of Racial Minorities

IHE problems of race antagonisms, in a world that was grow-
ing more complicated daily, were neatly simplified in Linden.
The middle-class Protestants who lived north of the Saugus
Branch tracks constituted the majority group, about two-thirds
of the population. The proletarian Catholics on the south side
of town numbered nearly one-third. There was one Negro,
Jeff Lee, the justly famous cook at the Massasoit; two Jews,
little Moe Selib, who ran the tailor shop and lived two miles
away, in Faulkner, and Ben Friedmann, the junkman from
Lynn; and one Chinese, Wong Lee, who toiled in steam and
Oriental fragrance from early until late, every weekday and
all the holidays except Christmas and the Fourth of July.

In the course of the years I was in Linden, there were three
Wongs Lee, one after the other, but the sign over the laundry
doorway was never changed. A few of the customers keenly
sensitive to personalities, like the Admiral, Uncle Reuben, or
Mr. Wing, noticed the switch, when a different Chinaman ap-
peared behind the little counter. Lots of the Linden folks did
not.

Chinese coolies in those years had a fixed price in the Boston
area, and Chinese laundries flourished in every small com-
munity and nearly every city block. There was absolutely no
awareness among Linden people of the awakening in the
Orient, of Sun Yat Sen and his Republic, of clouds and dreams

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

and global unity. The Linden Chinaman had little or no con-
nection with the civic life or the body politic, except to do a
prodigious amount of work for a paltry sum of money, even
according to the nineteenth-century standards. Starched shirts
were laundered for five cents apiece, and stiff collars, two cents.
Detached cuffs were two cents the pair.

The little one-story shack in the Square which was occupied
by Wong Lee had a front room with shelves and a counter
and a smaller kitchen behind it, which was screened from pub-
lic view by a bead curtain which portrayed, in a very free style,
Jesus among the little children. The only English words in
sight were on a Chinese red pasteboard placard on the wall of
matched boards. This read: "Suffer the little children to come
unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of
Heaven." The first two Wongs Lee did not know what those
words meant. They could neither read nor write English. But
one of the boss Chinamen in Boston had given Number i the
placard and had told him it was a good thing to have on his
wall. Wong's not to reason why.

The standard price in Boston, for specific Chinese coolies
smuggled in, was six hundred dollars. They were brought, for
the most part, by Chinese theological students of the better
class, who had been induced by missionaries in China to come
to Boston in order to prepare themselves for the Christian
ministry and to help convert the 600,000,000 of their heathen
countrymen to the religion that bore the name of Jesus of
Nazareth. Now the Chinese students cared relatively little for
Jesus of Nazareth or any of His teachings, except that somehow
the setup gave them a free trip to the Western world and the
opportunity of learning English and American languages and
ways. The educated Chinese preferred the Taoist philosophy
and Confucian ethics to those of Christ, but they were careful
not to let the missionaries or their teachers in the seminaries

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Of Racial Minorities

know that, since it might have made them feel badly, and be
more careful with their funds.

So the Chinese theological students who were opulent
bought one or more coolies in Boston for six hundred dollars
apiece, put them to work in small laundries, and took enough
of the profits to enable them to live a lifetime in luxury in
China. When the rich students had completed their courses
and felt the urge for their homeland, they resold the coolies
to incoming Chinese freshmen, or to one of the Tong bosses
who could always find use for a good industrious man who
spoke and understood little English.

The chief smuggler of Chinese into Massachusetts lived at
the Castle Square Hotel in Boston. But one of his leg men, a
mild-mannered, studious-looking expressman, with a soft voice
and wistful brogue from the old sod, the laugh with a tear in it,
and all the equipment of the professional or stage Irishman,
Tom Bagley by name, lived in Linden, and, when he worked
at all, helped the "Chief" bring Chinese over the Canadian
border. Tom had freckles, pale-blue eyes, mild red hair, and
would talk with anyone by the hour about anything except
what was really on his mind. Tom was the first man I ever met
who, by instinct, or on principle, never told the truth. Peri-
odically he would disappear from Linden for about a week.
His wife, Nora, was a quiet, pious woman who kept their two
red-headed children, a boy and a girl about my age, spic-and-
span, accompanied them to and from school, much to the boy's
embarrassment, walked regularly to Maplewood for Mass, and
seemed to be beyond reproach.

Tom Bagley owned a horse and wagon and ran a "Private
Express." In cases of emergency, he would consent to haul a
trunk or a box to or from the Linden depot. Usually he found
some reason why he could not accept the commission. He and
his family lived well, but not extravagantly, and it was not

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

until years later, when Tom and Trigger Bacigalupo were in
the rum-running organization of the same chief smuggler, that
the word got out, explaining Tom's mysterious absences from
home, over a period of years.

Tom used to drive over the Canadian border, from Ver-
mont, with an empty wagon and return with sacks of potatoes
or onions. The Chinese, hunched into one or two of the bottom
sacks, thus gained their entry into the land of the free. There
was an "underground" route, carefully mapped out and kept
in operation by the Chief, from a Canadian port of entry to
St. Johns, then through the province of Quebec to the Vermont
line at Philipsburg, and through northern New England to
Boston and Providence. Most of the coolies went to Boston
operators. The opium went to Providence.

It is not likely that those astute men who guided Sino-
American affairs in the metropolitan area would have assigned
a laundryman to a town in which lived the man who had
brought the coolie over the border. So Wong Lee and Tom
Bagley had no previous acquaintance.

Most Linden people were firmly of the opinion that all
Chinamen looked alike, and it was not until some years later
that I learned, from a charming normal school student, a
Chinese girl who had been sent by the Republican government
to Salem to learn to be a teacher, that to the Oriental eye
Americans are hard to distinguish, one from another. She said
that she spent several weeks in the normal school before she
could tell her teachers apart.

Wong Lee fascinated me, from the beginning. There were
a few men, like Jerry Dineen or Mr. Weeks or Charley Moore
with his law books, who showed a fair amount of application,
but the Chinaman never let up for a moment. When the first
train left Linden for Boston each morning, Wong Lee was
working in his tiny kitchen, prodding wash boilers full of

260

Of Racial Minorities

shirts and soapy water with a forked wooden stick. Later he
appeared at the counter where he did his ironing, squirting
water from his mouth to aid him in achieving a flawless polish.
Wong seemed to know that I had no unfriendly intentions
toward him, and made no objections when I stood silently in
the shop, after having received and paid for my brother Charles'
laundry. I watched Wong with black ink and a brush write
Chinese characters on red squares of paper, then tear them in
two, one for the customer, one for the package on the shelf,
when the work was finished. I tried to ask him, or to figure out
for myself, what the strange marks meant, whether they were
words, mottoes like those in our penmanship books, pictures, or
numbers. Now and then I asked him to tell me the Chinese
word for lichi nuts or joss sticks or firecrackers or shirts and
collars, but he would smile briefly and evade the question, if
he understood it. Nothing interrupted the tempo of his work.
Whether he was at the washboard, or the ironing board, or
making change, or preparing slips of paper, Wong moved
swiftly, quietly and efficiently.

On Saturday evenings, Wong caught the last streetcar that
moved across the marshes toward Boston, and returned on the
last car into Linden on Sunday evening. He dressed in loose
black trousers, a loose black jacket, and wore heelless slippers
which made a soft shuffling sound when he walked. The first
and second Wong Lee had queues, the third had a sort of
convict's haircut. It was the common belief in Linden that
Chinamen who cut off their queues could not return to China.
Also, most Linden people were sure that Chinese women were
curiously unlike white girls. In fact, one of the minor articles
that Frigger Bacigalupo had for sale, before he broke into the
big-time rackets, was a post-card picture of a Chinese woman
exposed in such a way as to confirm the popular belief about
the Chinese female anatomy. Already, when the century was

261

Linden on the Saugus Branch

so young and the art of photography still in its infancy, trick
photography was commercially exploited.

I always wondered about Wong Lee, and the mysterious far
side of the world he represented, what his childhood had been
like, what he thought and felt, what made him work so hard
and endlessly, whether the world as he saw it made sense, and,
if so, what kind of sense. I wondered what I should do, if I were
in China, with no one to talk to or listen to from Sunday mid-
night until Saturday midnight, week after week. I envied him
his knowledge of the strange and beautiful writing, with paint
brush and black ink; his having travelled such distances; the
lure of Chinatown in Boston; his haunting singsong speech;
the colored sketches on his boxes of tea. Without Wong, I
should have doubted my geography books. My Great-Uncle
Lije and several of my seafaring relatives had touched the ports
of China, but they said as little about it as Wong Lee did. I
wondered if I should ever go there, or go anywhere. When
I learned how Chinamen were smuggled in, and had their
existences mapped out for them, I felt sometimes a little re-
gretful that there were no corresponding arrangements in
Peking or Shanghai. Only I was sure that I would never be
good at doing laundry or wrapping packages. I was fairly sure
that I would never be very good at doing anything useful. I
only hoped that I should be happy and lucky, like my Uncle
Reuben, and urbane, like Mr. Wing.

No Jew ever lived in Linden. All of his customers liked Moe
Selib, and found his workmanship satisfactory, but Moe did not
stay in Linden overnight. For sleeping, and the rest of his home
life, he walked to Faulkner where nearly everyone was Jewish,
or rode to Chelsea, where the Irish, Jews and Italians ran the
city, and made up seven-tenths of its population.

Quite early in the century, when surrounding communities
were receiving a steady influx of Jews, the Linden Protestants,

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Of Racial Minorities

and the more prosperous Catholics who owned their homes,
banded together into what was called the "Linden Improve-
ment Association." No one, in my hearing, questioned its pro-
priety or called it un-American. There was no personal anti-
Semitism, because Ben Friedmann, the itinerant junkman, and
Moe Selib were personally very popular, smart and amusing.
Ben bought and sold the junk. Moe made and pressed the suits,
honestly, gaily, and in a citizen-like manner. Moe had taken
out his first papers. Ben had not, although he intended to some
time, and never got around to it until his son came home from
Dartmouth College in time for the First World War.

The purpose of the Linden Improvement Association was
to protect real estate values in Linden, which meant a thor-
oughgoing understanding between all property owners that
neither houses nor lots would ever be sold to Jews. It was purely
a business proposition. Wherever the Jews crowded in, as they
had already in Chelsea and Faulkner, property values went
down, and the Jewish children swarmed into the schools, Jew-
ish adults bought up all the small and large businesses, and
Gentiles had either to become a minority without influence or
pull up stakes and move. The men I liked most, the most lib-
eral and jolly and tolerant and companionable, were charter
members of the Improvement Association. These included my
Uncle Reuben, Great-Uncle Lije, my brother Charles, prac-
tically all the Protestant deacons, small business men, and
Protestants who worked in Boston.

Occasionally a Jewish travelling salesman would stop at the
Massasoit. The Admiral would receive him with his unfailing
geniality; Jeff Lee would cook for him with the talent that had
given Jeff a state-wide reputation; Nick Spratt would serve him
flawlessly at the bar. Big Julie, little Gertie Walker, Palmira
Di Brazzio, the solemn-faced Irish girl, Maive Bagley, or any of
the more accommodating and sociable of the young Linden

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

women who were easier than most to get acquainted
would sit at the Jewish drummer's table, drink with him, and
later inspect the current equivalent of what are now referred
to as "etchings" in his room. They would assure each other,
men and women alike, after the Jew had departed, that there
seemed to be nothing wrong with him. He was neat, clean,
amusing, a good spender, a good business man, considerate in
behavior, not too loud. He cheated nobody, offended nobody.

In cases where a visiting drummer was a Gentile, ninety per-
cent of the time in those years, the same accommodations and
companionship would be offered, but afterward no one would
feel the obligation to defend him. That distinction, trivial or
abysmal, obtains in Linden to this day.

It was from Moe Selib that I got my first direct insight into
Jewish life in old Russia and Poland. Concerning America,
Moe voiced no complaint. If Jews could not buy homes in Lin-
den, there were places nearby where they could buy the city
hall. Moe was not embarrassed in talking about Jewishness,
and when I got used to that fact, I lost much of my self-con-
sciousness in listening and asking questions. I was really on
the defensive. Our friendship started out when I called at his
shop one afternoon to get Charles' dress suit he intended to
wear that evening in a minstrel show. I had a book under rny
arm about Dick Whittington, I think. At least, the hero was a
poor English boy who became important later.

Moe smiled his rueful knowing smile, behind the thick-
lensed glasses.

"I want you should read about a Jewish poor boy in the old
country, one hundred percent as it was," he said. And the next
time I went to his shop he handed me a paper-covered edition
otHerschel the Yid, by B. Borovsky.

When I read the book, I was flattered because Moe had not
considered me too young to read about things as they were, in

264

Of Racial Minorities

whatever country. I saw at once that Moe understood much
better what was going on in the outside world, at least in Rus-
sia and Europe, than almost anyone in town. Miss Stoddard
had no political interests. Mr. Wing's reading was mostly of
the English classics, with a bit of Hawthorne, Poe and Melville,
not to mention Thoreau, Emerson, the Lowells, Longfellow
and Whittier. Herschel the If id was one of my first excursions
into the realm of realistic literature and I found it so refreshing
and satisfying, in comparison with the mutilated English stand-
bys we had to read in school, that it marked an enlargement of
my horizon. For contrast, I got hold of Victor Hugo's By Order
of the King about that time, a vigorous dose of the romantic
approach. Miss Stoddard had introduced me to Chekhov's
short stories, and some of Tolstoi. My grandmother, without
knowing it, got me started on Rabelais. I liked to read practi-
cally anything that was not handed me by a school teacher, or
that was free of what is known as "whimsey." That quality
sickened me then, and does today. When I read that in a New
York theatre, Maude Adams, dressed as a boy, had asked the
audience of grown people, "Do you believe in fairies?" and the
customers had shouted, "Yes," I had felt the kind of profound
discouragement that has come over me many times, in later
years, when my fellow Americans have shown themselves in
unfavorable lights.

Moe Selib told me that when he was about my age, his father
got permission to take him to a theatre, in Kharkov. In the
middle of the performance, the Cossacks rode in, and made
everybody get out. They did not say why. Cossacks did as they
pleased. As Moe and his father filed out, with the other mem-
bers of the audience, a mounted Cossack at the door thought
Moe's father was not stepping along quite fast enough, so he
snapped his whip and caught Mr. Selib in the seat of his pants
with a crack like a revolver shot. Moe pronounced the word:

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"revolver" something like "rewolower," which threw me for
a minute.

"My father was a very dignified man," Moe said. "Naturally
he couldn't say anything to a Cossack, and get himself beaten
to death with sticks or tramped under the horses' hoofs. But
when he got home, and inside the house, he turned and looked
at me. I knew his pride and dignity were very hurt. Maybe
there was something in my eye not respectful enough, so he
batted me one across the ears that knocked me flat."

Moe smiled understandingly, knowing just how his father
had felt.

"Here, cops don't carry whips, and ride horses into theatres,"
Moe said.

"Why did the Cossacks close the show?" I asked.

"The Tsar didn't like to have too many people meet to-
gether," Moe said.

I never saw a man as sad as little Moe Selib when he got the
first news of the unsuccessful revolution of 1905. He closed his
shop, but he sat inside it, sorrowingnot wishing to go home
where his wife would try to talk. He told me, later, how he had
studied in a revolutionary school, in a cellar, and how, when
the school was betrayed or discovered, when luckily he was not
there, the Tsar's officers had shipped in three or four wagon-
loads of Polish peasants to burn down the Jewish houses, do
what they liked with the women and massacre the men. Moe's
father, that time, was not humiliated. He was murdered; "I
hope quickly," Moe said. Moe's mother escaped with him
through a vegetable garden that had deep trenches between
rows, and they had walked about a week, he thought, to some
other village where she had an uncle, and there she got a few
things together and opened a little store, "not as big as a shoe-
shine stand."

From this enterprise came the price of Moe's transportation

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Of Racial Minorities

to America. He was smuggled into Austria, and from there to
Hamburg, in Germany, and had landed, after a prolonged
Gethsemane in the steerage, in Portland, Maine.

"So if they don't want me to buy a house in Linden, I buy
one somewhere else," Moe repeated. "And if my young cousin
can't belong to a fraternity in high school, he gets good marks
and has friends who like him anyway. Myself, I can't belong to
the Linden Improvement Association, so I don't have to pay
dues. Everyone, to be happy in America, should live one week
in Russia."

Moe sighed and took up his iron again. He did not work
with steady desperation, like Wong Lee, or potter around like
Dud Shultz. Moe worked hard when lots of customers were in
a hurry, but normally he took his time, enjoying America and
the brotherhood of man, in dreams and reality, and relative
freedom, and good talk when he could get it. He never got
rich, and never was poor, once he got started.

Jeff Lee got through a long and happy life in our town. In
fact, after the big Balm of Gilead had been demolished and
carted away, Jeff was the nearest claim to distinction Linden
had. On one of the few occasions when the Lieutenant Gov-
ernor and the Governor's Council visited Linden, on a tour of
the public institutions of Middlesex and Essex Counties, at the
suggestion of my cousin Fred Tarr, it was arranged for the
party to eat at the Massasoit a shore dinner cooked by Jeff.

At the last moment, the Governor's secretary telephoned
the Admiral (who by that time had succumbed to that disturb-
ing instrument) and tried to ring in a few extra political guests.

"I'll have to ask Jeff," the Admiral said, and gingerly low-
ered the receiver until it dangled from the cord. At first the
Linden users of the telephone regarded it as a sort of inde-
pendent menace, if left to its own devices. Jeff did not like to
throw his weight around. He was pained, but firm. The clam

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

chowder had already been started, and he could not stretch it.
Nor would it look right to serve a different soup course to some
members of the official party. That was enough for Admiral
Quimby, who was a Democrat from birth. He told the Repub-
lican secretary of all the Republican officials that the original
number of guests was the highest he could accommodate, and
keep up the standards of his hotel.

After that lunch, not a day passed for several weeks in the
course of which Jeff did not receive a flattering offer to cook for
some rich state politician, but he could not leave Linden or
his lifelong employer or his devoted clientele. He spent many
a fine day off in the colored section of Boston, either on the
back of Beacon Hill or over toward Lafayette Street, and knew
how city life was, how gay and how diverse, how filled with
enjoyment and temptation. But he felt as much a part of Lin-
den as the granite quarry or the depot. He had grown up with
the place, and was accepted there, because not once, from baby-
hood to dignified old age, did Jeff ever express any desire to
marry some white man's sister. For that matter, he never
looked too long at any black man's sister, either. He thought
woman's place was in someone else's home, and as far from the
kitchen as possible.

Jeff had one of his moments of triumph when a group of
Maiden boys, high school athletes, gave a dinner to honor their
new coach, an ail-American end from Dartmouth, named Bul-
lock, who had trained them to victory over their traditional
rivals, Medford High, in the annual Thanksgiving game.
Bullock was taller than Jeff, quite lean and angular, and ap-
proximately the same shade of black, somewhere between
lignum vitae and mahogany. The boys urged Jeff to sit with
them and Bullock at the table, which, of course, Jeff would
not do. His duties were too pressing. But he joined them all
for coffee and cigars.

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Of Racial Minorities

No member of the Linden Improvement Association would
have sold a house or lot to a Negro, quite certainly, although
the offer to purchase was never made by any of them until after
World War 1. 1 doubt if at any time in its history, Linden has
had more than six Negro residents. The only families capable
of supporting hired girls or servants of any kind, the Part-
ridges, Dawson Freeman, and Deacon Clapp, hired Scandina-
vian and Irish girls, alternately, and tried between-times to
decide which kind had the fewer drawbacks.

There is no denying that the Linden Protestants were clan-
nish and somewhat smug, in racial matters, and that the re-
gional feeling between them and the Irish Catholics was such
that social intercourse was limited. That did not mean they
could not be neighbors, or could not do business together. The
younger ones mixed on the athletic fields and back lots, gener-
ally speaking, on the merit system. Good ball-players were
fairly numerous, but outstanding ones had a special rating,
wherever they appeared. Race discrimination and segregation
reached its height in the high school, where fraternity mem-
bers felt superior to nonfraternity members and the latter, for
the most part, felt a loss o caste and humiliation that varied
with individual temperaments. No high school fraternity in
Maiden then invited either Catholics, Jews or Negroes to join.
The national or international bylaws of all the fraternities
then prescribed, as part of the initiation ceremony, that each
new member must affirm that he was "of the Caucasian race."

Jeff Lee's baked beans were soaked all Friday night. On Sat-
urday morning, about seven, the water was poured off and the
beans, acceptably swelled, but not cracked, were sorted care-
fully. One tiny pebble, overlooked, might mean a broken
tooth. But that was not the reason Jeff sorted them with care.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

They would taste better if his clients could attack them with
freedom.

Soaked and sorted, the beans were placed in a large earthen
bean pot, salted in layers, and morsels of fat salt pork about
one inch by one and a quarter by one and a quarter (which
would shrink in baking about thirty percent by volume) were
tucked in. The beans and pork were then covered with fresh
cool water which had no unpleasant mineral taste, and were
flavored with black molasses, covered, and the pot was slid into
the oven, which was moderate, not more than three hundred
degrees If, because of other things being baked in the course
of the day, the oven had to be much hotter than that, the beans
were taken from the oven and allowed to sit, covered, on the
back of the stove near the closed damper. From time to time,
a few spoonfuls of hot water were added, to take the place of
that lost by evaporation. This was continued until midaf ter-
noon, when the fragrant juice of beans and pork and molasses
was allowed to thicken naturally, about fifty percent.

Each time the cover of the bean pot was lifted, the ritual
incense ascended, and the odor disseminating in spindrifts
and invisible tendrils was caught by the household drafts, crept
into nooks and corners, wavered, enticed, ennerved and in-
vited.

Baked beans on Wednesday or Thursday, say what you will,
are not exactly beans on Saturday evening. They taste good,
but they have a way of throwing a man off his stride, of work-
ing havoc with his subconscious.

Of the several kinds of beans that may be raised, purchased
or imported, Jeff favored the northern pea bean and the red
kidney bean, two-thirds of the white and one-third of the lat-
ter. Crude black molasses from the barrel is better than the
refined stuff sold in bottles. There should be plenty of fat pork,
with a faint streak of lean in each piece, and the beans must be

270

Of Racial Minorities

cooked until they are "done," but never until they are soft or
mushy. Each individual bean, golden-brown and shining in
modest resurrection, contributes according to its quality and
perfection to the ensemble. Ideal communism of the comesti-
ble. Democracy of the delicious. Free men's food.

For sheer visual beauty, it is hard to beat a steaming plate of
beans, juicy golden-brown, shaped and heaped by divine engi-
neering, the tones of topaz, garnet, old gold and mahogany,
set off by the blue and white patterns of Spode, with which
New England then abounded. The tactile contrasts of smooth,
well-cooked beans and pork with the intermediate texture of
the steamed brown bread, generously buttered, yield nuances
which are gustatory, sensual, aesthetic, social and spiritual. A
man who wolfs his plate of beans, and cannot tell the difference
between good and vile ones, is not to be recommended as an
acquaintance, employee, employer, friend, lover, counsellor
or teacher.

Linden people, back in the days when each man knew his
neighbors and was careful at first about strangers, were in-
clined to view with suspicion anyone who was careless about
food, either in raising it, buying it, transporting it, cooking it,
serving it, or eating it. It is safe to say today, of the United
States in general, that with the best and most abundant supply
of foodstuffs in the world, the highest purchasing power, the
most ingenious and practical utensils, devices, and machines
for cooking, and the most leisure for eating, the nation is de-
plorably fed, with a standard of cooking as low as can be found
anywhere on this planet, save possibly in England. That could
not have been said about Linden, at the turn of the century. If
it ranked below Rouen or Toulouse, it was miles above New
York or Los Angeles, today.

271

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Barbershop

PROBABLY the first woman I knew well in Linden who
might have been called a "feminist" was my grandmother,
who died in 1902, overlapping the new century by two years
and extending by the same span the Biblical allotment of
three-score years and ten. And her principal interest was not
merely in securing rights for women but defending what she
called "common sense." In her day, that had not been easy. I
shall leave it to the reader as to what extent it is, or is not easier
today.

The old tintypes indicate that she had been handsome, as a
young woman, and in middle age. My own memory holds her
image as a regal and dignified old lady, who wore styles that
were becoming, carried herself erectly, and spoke out firmly in
support of her beliefs and opinions. Her limited means and the
valvular heart trouble that restrained her, but not too rigidly,
made it impractical for her to take an active part in the current
crusades, but she followed the women who did with her logic
and approval.

She was one of the first on Cape Ann to ridicule the doctrine
of infant damnation and to reject the then-popular conception
of a Hell of fire and brimstone. She had joined the Unitarian
Church, to the horror of her family of Congregationalists. That
did not prevent her from preferring the works of Thoreau to
those of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I have already mentioned that

272

The Barbershop

she was the mainstay of one of her sisters who got a divorce.
She thought it was nonsensical for men to learn what they
knew from women schoolteachers and at the same time deny
women the vote. She called Carrie Nation a crackpot and
fanatic, and Mary Baker Eddy a fraud. She admired the young
women who rode horses astride, and rode bicycles, and the few
who played lawn tennis in Linden she encouraged to modify
their corsets and skirts in order to have the requisite freedom
of motion.

When Mary Stoddard went to work in an office, in prefer-
ence to being a schoolteacher or a librarian, my grandmother
applauded her decision, and I think she envied Dr. Mary
Walker, who got a degree in medicine, attended soldiers at the
front and finally had her hair cut short and wore men's clothes,
the latter by sanction of an act of Congress.

Just before my grandmother died, one of her last expressions
of indignation was occasioned by a newspaper report that a
New York policeman had threatened to arrest a woman on
Fifth Avenue because she was smoking a cigarette.

"Whose business is it, if a woman wants to smoke?" she
asked. "Probably that same officer has a mother in Ireland who
smokes a pipe."

On the other hand, my grandmother had little patience with
the younger women who let themselves be led into all kinds of
absurdities by the arbiters of styles. When she saw a hat with
an enormous brim, laden with plumes, birds' heads, wings and
feathers, clusters of artificial grapes, plums and cherries, she
would warn us to keep away from it, so we would not catch
fleas or hen lice, or get bitten by hornets. The long clumsy
skirts that were dragged through mud and dust, the hefty bos-
oms that protruded in front and the bustles that stuck out
behind, with a wasp waist in between, brought forth her caustic
comments.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Women have been placed in such a ridiculous position that
they act like clowns, and dress like nightmares. There's noth-
ing left for them to do except make fools of themselves," she
said.

"Let 'em go far enough, and the men'll get scared, and make
believe that women have some sense, for a change," said Daisy
Hoyt, one of my grandmother's favorite companions, although
Daisy was thirty years younger.

My grandmother was vexed when my older brother, Charles,
decided to run for city councilman, as she was when Fred Tarr,
her favorite nephew, went into politics. She and Miss Stoddard
were alone in condemning the way Henry Cabot Lodge and
Teddy Roosevelt forced the war upon Spain and slandered
Grover Cleveland. Of McKinley, she said:

"All he's good for is to pee whenever Mark Hanna eats
asparagus."

All this was painful to Charles, who from adolescence to the
day of his death was the most loyal and sincere Republican
in the country. Charles prided himself on his balanced mind
and considered judgment, and rightly. He would have been as
fair a judge as he was reliable as a civil engineer. He permitted
himself only two out-and-out enthusiasms among the leaders of
the party, Teddy Roosevelt in his youth, and Herbert Hoover
years later.

Whenever the newspaper contained an item that riled the
feminists, my grandmother was likely to have callers that day-
Mathilda Stowe, Mary Stoddard, and Ruth Coffee. A female
wrestler was arrested at Crescent Beach, where she had offered
to take on all comers, men or women, catch-as-catch-can. I was
sent to Maiden with Grandmother's bank book, to draw out
some money so she could help pay the Amazon's fine.

Mathilda, my grandmother particularly admired, because

274

The Barbershop

she did as she pleased, in such a way that no one could interfere,
and when Mathilda appealed to her to ask Charles, as Linden's
councilman, to take steps to make the city health department
remove the public drinking ladle from the fountain in Linden
Square, my grandmother agreed. Both women knew that if
Dr. Moody took the initiative, he would be thought of as a
crank, and his practice, what there was of it, would suffer.

It was not easy to get rid of that public ladle on a chain.
Most of the men around the Square, and others who frequently
refreshed themselves at the fountain, made violent objections.
Charles, who had been working with the Metropolitan Water
Works and knew something, technically, of the dangers of con-
tagion, was willing to make the motion, but Dawson Freeman,
who already had pegged Charles as Linden's first governor of
the commonwealth, tried to talk Charles out of it.

"Let somebody else do the things that are unpopular," was
Dawson's advice.

That was a little shocking to Charles, who went right ahead,
resolved to do his duty as he saw it. That evoked from Dawson
even greater admiration, and Dawson went all over Maiden
telling the story and saying that, at last, Linden had a council-
man who had the courage of his convictions.

Actually, the drinking ladle was not removed until three
years later, when some drunk yanked it off, accidentally, and
threw it down the drain. It was never replaced.

After Grandmother died, Ruth Coffee ran across a drawing
of Dr. Mary Walker in Harpers Weekly. The sketch showed
the style of Dr. Walker's haircut, which was a moderate bob.
That fascinated Ruth. She would look at the magazine, again
and again, and stand before her mirror, trying to visualize
what she would look like, bobbed that way.

"Won't it make you conspicuous, Tuarii" asked Alice, who
was enjoying their privacy and relative seclusion so profoundly

275

Linden on the Saugus Branch

that she was reluctant for Ruth to do anything that might
ruffle the calm.

"Folks would soon get used to it," Ruth said.

"But where would you go?" Alice asked.

"To the barbershop. Why not?" Ruth said. The impulse
was growing.

"You wouldn't," Alice said, actually trembling at the
thought of entering that den of ribald masculinity. As a matter
of fact, she was not far wrong.

Webb Higginson, the Linden barber, was a tartar. He was
a nervous, disagreeable little man, about the size of Dud Shultz,
with freckles all over and sparse auburn hair he kept plastered
down with petroleum jelly and combed with microscopic exact-
ness in the least becoming way. His rust-colored moustaches
were limp, so he had to use a moustache cup to keep the fringe
out of his coffee, which he drank intermittently, all day long.

"Don't that stuff keep you awake?" Doc Moody asked.

"It helps," snapped the cocky little barber, in his squeaky,
rasping voice.

Webb had opinions, on any and all questions, but on certain
subjects he was as violent and voluble as a terrier. His best
customers-the Admiral, Uncle Reuben, J. J. Markham, Pack-
ard, George Sampson, Henry Laws, Luke Harrigan, all the
men around the Square went daily to Webb to be shaved, as
much to get him going on his pet obsessions as to avoid what
now is called a "five-o'clock shadow." They all had individual
shaving mugs, lettered with their names or initials, in a rack
on the wall.

When race meetings were in progress at any of the distant
tracks Old Saugus and Reading were near enough so that all
the men attended it was difficult to get a shave or haircut with-
out Webb's being interrupted by a telegraph boy from the
depot The telegrams were addressed to Webb Higginson, ton-

276

The Barbershop

serial artist, but without opening them he took them across the
street to Eben Kennedy's poolroom. Even in those early days,
the reformers were busy, trying to make it difficult and hazard-
ous for citizens to back their judgment or try their luck on the
sport of kings. Western Union, which then operated mostly in
the railroad stations, had made a rule, as a concession to the
unco guidj that telegrams would not be accepted for or deliv-
ered to poolrooms, where the wicked bookies flourished. I sup-
pose there never has been a period in history when some people
have not been trying to keep other people from betting.

Webb had fixed ideas about that. "A man's got a right to
make a God-blamed fool of himself if he wants to," Webb said.
"We all know every race is crooked. . . ."

"Not every race," Uncle Reuben would say.

Webb would flare up like a torch in a tunnel.

"Every last one of 'em. There isn't a single solitary race that
isn't fixed. No, sir!" the barber would say, snapping his scissors
like the bill of an angry stork and tapping the floor with his
dainty patent leather boots, the smallest size.

"I saw a man lose five dollars on the Ben Hur Chariot Race,
the other night at Mechanic's Hall," the Admiral said.

"Who'd be fool enough to bet against Ben Hur?" asked
J. J. Markham. "That's one race that's fixed, all right, and
everybody knows it."

"This fellow bet on Ben. He and his friend from down in
Maine matched quarters to see who'd get which chariot, and
the loser drew Ben. Something went wrong with the turntable
and the other driver came in first," said the Admiral.

"You see?" said Webb Higginson, grimly. "You can't de-
pend on nothinV*

Webb's definition of a thoroughgoing son-of-a-bitch was a
man who asked for a haircut on a Saturday night. Haircuts
were a quarter, shaves a dime.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

Of the sporting events I heard argued back and forth in and
around Webb's shop, two stand out in my mind. First, the Jef-
fries-Fitzsimmons fight, in which Lanky Bob from Australia
was knocked out by the California boiler-maker in eleven
rounds. This contest resulted in a number of fights among the
boys in Linden, because Jeffries, up against the trickiest boxer
then known to the ring, had adopted a crouch that no one
seemed to understand, but all the boys who fancied themselves
as scrappers had to try out.

The other event that lingers in my memory was the race in
which the trotter, Croesus, broke the world's record, doing the
mile in two minutes, flat. There was a similarity in those two
contests, because Fitzsimmons, more freckled than Webb Hig-
ginson, with abnormally broad shoulders tapering down to a
slim waist and legs that had nothing but length, was a freak in
appearance. And Croesus, champion of trotters, had a head like
my Great-Uncle Lije's Zach, shaped like a jug, with ill-matched
ears and an ultra-roguish eye. I have always been drawn to
freaks and monsters, and extreme ugliness and distorted shapes
have excited me as much or more than conventional form and
beauty.

Webb was one of the first in Linden to install gas lights, but
his shop continued to smell of Ed, Pinaud's hair tonic, bay
rum, tobacco smoke, hair and lather, and kerosene. He used
kerosene in the small stove on which he kept his coffee hot.

"It's a wonder you wouldn't put gas lights in that old dis-
orderly house of yourn," Webb said to the Admiral.

"Not on your tintype," said the Admiral. "I see in the papers
every day where some hayseed wanders up to Boston, gets him
a room, then blows out the gas."

That was true. Every hotel room had conspicuous signs:
"Don't blow out the gas," and the house detectives made the
rounds many times each night, not to interrupt the guests'

278

The Barbershop

pleasure, but to sniff for leaking gas. If some jay blew it out
and died, the detective got fired.

On Saturdays or before holidays, Webb hired Rad Yarbor-
ough to help him. The barber did this, not so much for the
convenience of his customers, as to make Rad suffer and defer
to him. Webb knew that Rad hated him, so passionately that
it drove Rad almost to desperation, and still, Rad had to eat,
and barbering was his only trade. Between-times, Rad hung
around with the gang at the blacksmith shop. He was a lean,
hard-faced alcoholic who spent most of his days "on the wagon"
in order to keep out of jail. He was one of the most violent
men in Linden, by nature, also one of the most repressed and
restrained. Whenever either Webb or Rad sharpened a razor,
he thought longingly of the other's tender throat.

"Some day I'm goin' to kill a man," Rad would say, over and
over again, sometimes to himself, again to whomever was lis-
tening. When drunk, he would say this gleefully, with a de-
moniacal gleam in his merry slate-blue eyes. When he was
sober his eyes were cold and his manner listless, but he knew
his trade, and never took a drop while he was working or
showed up in the shop with liquor on his breath.

"I'll come to see you fry in the chair," Webb said to Rad.

"Mebbe so, mebbe not," was Rad's reply.

Webb Higginson lived over on Elm Street, in one of the
muddiest stretches, so he did not walk home at lunchtime. In-
stead, his old Danish mother put up a lunch for him and he
ate it in the shop, whenever there was a lull. Rad worked only
on busy days, when there was no time for lunch. He had no
taste or appetite for solid food. Webb would work deftly, paus-
ing every moment to carry on his vehement arguments. After
talking at the top of his voice several minutes, Webb would
turn to the other chair.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Isn't that right, Rad?" Webb would ask.

Very incisively and coldly, Rad would answer, "No," and go
on stropping or clipping or shaving. Rad's hatred could be
felt, could be cut with a razor, and also Webb's perverse satis-
faction. There were not many he could bully and irritate. His
old mother, his subdued red-headed daughter Emily, and,
because Rad had to have a little money, his helper.

One of the remarkable things about Webb Higginson was
his consummate skill. He might get angry, curse and shuffle
and choke, because Mrs. Vanderbilt or Mrs. Astor had watered
a horse from a solid gold pail, or women had swooned and
stampeded at a New York cathedral when an American girl had
married a title. Between spasms, he would turn to his customer
in the chair, and his dual personality, that of master-craftsman
and hysteric, would assert each facet in turn. Barbers who cut
a man while shaving him, did not charge for the job. None of
Webb's customers complained. Rad Yarborough was quite
skillful, but not as fast or as sure.

It was on a Friday before Labor Day that Ruth Coffee took
the plunge, and showed up at the barbershop to have her hair
bobbed. Knowing how Webb detested women, and took it out
on them whenever he got a chance, Ruth made sure that a few
good friends of hers were on hand. Mr. Wing, who patronized
the barber on the days his valet was drinking, my Uncle Reu-
ben, Luke Harrigan, and the Admiral all were there, and all
knew what was coming off. So did all the gang around the
Square.

Ruth came down the street, waving comradely greetings to
the clerks and proprietors of the stores, and the customers,
opened the barbershop door, was greeted casually by the men
in whom she had confided, and took a vacant chair to wait her
turn. Everyone acted as if nothing unusual were happening,
except Webb, who began to turn all colors, to grit his teeth,

280

The Barbershop

narrow his eyes, and show what looked like symptoms of apo-
plexy.

"Was there something you wanted, ma'am?** he asked, after
a pause. It was unwritten law that no women, except mothers
with young children, ever entered the premises.

"I'm not in a hurry," Ruth said.

All the men rose, with elaborate politeness.

"Please take my turn," each one said.

"What is this?" demanded Webb, shaking with anger.

Ruth took from her breast pocket the clipping from Har-
per's Weekly and showed the sketch of Dr. Walker to Webb.

"I want my hair cut like that," she said.

"This ain't no penitentiary," said the irate little barber.

Rad Yarborough, who was from Tennessee, suddenly re-
verted to type.

"I'd be proud to cut your hair, madam," he said, with a bow
and a flourish.

"Thanks, Rad," said Ruth, and got into his chair.

While the men watched, with covert glee, and Webb glared
and chewed his moustaches, Ruth's haircut proceeded. She had
a well-shaped head, quite noble, and when Rad had finished
and she looked at herself, before and behind, in the mirror and
hand glass, all the customers outdid themselves in admiring
the result. The only time in anyone's memory, Webb Higgin-
son, stropping a razor furiously, cut his best strap clean in two.
Ruth paid her quarter, added a dime for a tip, which Rad gra-
ciously accepted, said: "So long, everybody," and departed.

When the last customer had gone away that night, and they
were closing the shop, Webb said, his reddish-brown eyes
smouldering:

"I won't be needing you here any more."

Rad smiled his most dangerous smile. "Oh yes, you will, you
little runt," he said.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Who's boss around here?" demanded Webb.

"The one who's been covering up for Kennedy with the
racing results," said Rad.

The two barbers looked at each other with venom, one calm
and collected, the other flushed and mad. Webb dropped his
eyes, and the next day, Saturday, Rad came in to work as usual
and nothing more was said.

The only young man in Linden who took a fancy to Emily,
Webb's daughter, and wanted to marry her, was Dick Evans,
the second clerk in Markham's store. Evans was frugal and
thrifty, and never patronized the barbershop. While he was
courting Emily, he called at Webb's house every Wednesday
evening and Sunday afternoon, and Webb and his taciturn old
mother did everything possible to make the young folks un-
comfortable. Webb let this go on for a year or two, waiting, and
when Evans, according to the custom then prevailing, had a
private talk with the father and asked for Emily's hand, Webb
glared with satisfaction.

"Where do you get shaved?" Webb asked.

"I shave myself," Evans stammered.

"In that case," said Webb, "you might as well be your own
bride."

So the courtship ended abruptly and Emily left Linden to
go into training as a nurse in the Peter Bent Brigham hospital
in Boston. She never came to Linden to see her father and
grandmother again.

282

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Law and Order

1HE Linden Improvement Association was organized, pri-
marily, to keep foreigners out of Linden. The President was an
Englishman named Newcomb, who lived at the crest o the
Salem Street hill, not far from Great-Uncle Lije's place, and
the Treasurer was a newcomer, a young man named Ashley,
who had letters from a New Hampshire congregation and
joined the Congregational Church right away. Naturally, the
most influential member, who held no office, was Norman
Partridge, the local rich man. My brother Charles was active
in the Association before he went away. My relatives belonged.
All the Protestant deacons who were landowners attended the
meetings, and by some very tactful diplomacy on the part of
J. J. Markham, the few well-to-do Irishmen who had property
interests in Linden were persuaded to join.

There were few women members, because not many women
owned land or houses in Linden and most of those were timid
widows who never would speak out in meeting and trusted
their male neighbors to advise and protect them. The excep-
tion was Mary Stoddard, whose old mother, when she died, had
left Mary the house and lot almost across from ours, on Beach
Street. This house had been rented to Henry Laws, the Eng-
lish cobbler, who also belonged to the Association.

Beginning with the year our house burned down, there was
quite a building boom in Linden and this, added to Faulk-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

tier's predicament with a Jewish influx that amounted to a
flood, and the ragged but happy Italian peasants who were
settling across the Linden line in Revere, prompted the public-
spirited Linden residents to a burst of activity that was new to
the community, and somewhat incongruous.

The old wooden schoolhouse was destroyed by fire, which
no one regretted, and another one of brick, with a dome about
the size of a large maple sugar kettle, the color of Roquefort
cheese, was put up two blocks west, on Oliver Street. Linden
now had acquired a firehouse of its own. Four or five two-
family houses had been put up on vacant lots, for investment,
and had been rented promptly. Then Norman Partridge de-
cided to build a warehouse, on the edge of the marsh by the
Saugus Branch tracks, just beyond the Lynn Street grade cross-
ing. It was Linden's first modern building, in industrial style.

The Partridge warehouse was built of corrugated metal,
with a cement floor and a tar-paper roof, that was almost flat
and was supported from within by pillars made of iron pipe
filled with concrete, and steel girders. It was about fifty yards
square, and twenty feet high, and because of its location it
acted as a windbreak for the northeast blizzards and piled up
drifts as high as the roof itself, so that children playing there
frequently dropped clean out of sight and narrowly escaped
suffocation. An elaborate wire fence was built around the area,
with metal gates for the admission of wagons and pedestrians.
All in all, it looked like the forerunner of a modern death
house and concentration camp. Besides, when a long freight
train tried to switch a car or two of leather onto the Partridge
side track, it puffed and wheezed back and forth for hours,
blocking all traffic through Linden by way of Beach Street and
Lynn Street. As if this were not enough, Jim Puffer, whose
grocery had failed for the third time, was removed from local

284

Law and Order

commerce by Mr. Partridge and placed in charge of the ware-
house, with easygoing Irv Walker for an assistant.

The metal walls, in hot weather, radiated heat like an oven,
and the tar paper on the roof smelled a mile. Inside there was
such a freak echo that men shouting instructions back and
forth could not understand one another, and with practically
every carload that came in, some kind of accident to the help
occurred. The inexpert locomotive engineers and firemen sent
to Linden by the Boston and Maine were always developing
hotboxes or knocking down the bumpers at the end of the
side tracks. In short, Linden's first venture into the industrial
field, like so many other aspects of our town, was predomi-
nantly a comedy value.

The general meetings of the Linden Improvement Associa-
tion were held in Associate Hall, unless the weather was too
cold and the Hall furnace had broken down, in which case the
members stepped over the line into Revere and accepted the
hospitality of the Massasoit House banquet room. In either
case, there were enterprising boys who followed the debates
from hidden points of vantage, and seldom were they sorry
they had come.

The growing Italian colony on the edge of the marsh, within
sight of Linden, was troubling the leading spirits of the Im-
provement Association no end, for Italians, in large numbers,
depressed real estate values as low as the Jews did, and the Lin-
den women did not relish the strong smell of garlic on the
trolley cars. There was no way to prevent Senator Mangini
from arranging the purchase by his countrymen of lots in
Revere, or making effective protests because of the nature of
the ramshackle buildings they put up. But one of the mem-
bers of the executive committee of the Association had been
reminded by his wife that most of the work done by the Italian
homesteaders was performed on Sunday, which was against

285

Linden on the Saugus Branch

the law. Each Sunday, swarms of immigrants, in full view of
the Linden churchgoers, worked with old boards, tar paper,
second-hand window frames and doors, hammer and nails,
pick and shovel, building and gardening from dawn until dark.

At the meeting when the subject was introduced, Mr. New-
comb was the first speaker, and he complained that the array
of shacks, privies, and impromptu fences, jerry-built and over-
crowded, was an eyesore.

Miss Stoddard arose, and the organizers who had planned a
smooth course for their resolution, sighed and shuffled ner-
vously.

"Mr. Chairman," Miss Stoddard said. "May I ask the last
speaker a question?"

The Chairman, little Mr. Ashley, could think of no reason
why a question would be out of order.

"If the gentleman wishes to answer," Ashley said, glancing
uneasily at Mr. Newcomb.

Newcomb rose. "Certainly. Certainly," he said, and looked
as if he expected the worst. No man had ever tangled with Miss
Stoddard and come out with the long end of the stick.

Miss Stoddard's homely face wreathed itself in a most dis-
arming smile. Mr. Wing, the Admiral, Luke Harrigan, and
my Uncle Reuben sat up straight, glanced expectantly at one
another and waited.

"The last speaker," said Miss Stoddard, "has objected to
the houses of our prospective new citizens in Revere on aesthe-
tic grounds."

"Pitch 'em a little lower, Mary," whispered Uncle Reuben.
"That went over their heads."

She smiled again. "On account of their appearance," she
said.

"Does the lady wish to ask a question?" the Chair asked
timidly.

286

Law and Order

"I should like to ask the gentleman, through the Chair, if
he is charmed and uplifted by the sight of the warehouse
within the Linden limits, put up by one of our leading citizens
who can afford the best?"

Heads turned and faces with pained expressions glanced at
Norman Partridge, who was sitting about four rows in front of
where Miss Stoddard was standing. She went on, warming to
her subject

"I should like to ask, while we are objecting to the blights
on our landscape, if the former speaker has ever seen a build-
ing, erected for any purpose whatsoever, with more unsightly
proportions, more incongruous materials, more utter disre-
gard for Linden's appearance, not to mention convenience. I
should like to inquire if the gentleman has ever sat on his
heels, an hour or two, in order to cross the tracks on Beach
Street, our main thoroughfare, because of the situation of the
said warehouse? I hope the gentleman will not object if I move
to include in any resolution condemning as eyesores any build-
ing or buildings, in or outside of Linden, the warehouse I
have mentioned."

Miss Stoddard sat down, and the silence was tense. Mr. New-
comb was uncertain as to what he ought to say. Some men
were grinning, others frowning. Norman Partridge was mo-
tionless, and not resentful, but he was dismayed and aston-
ished. It was plain that he had never thought about the looks
of the warehouse before, and that, now he thought of it, it
seemed to him atrocious. It was the temporary chairman who
saved the situation.

"The suggested amendment," Mr. Ashley said, "is out of
order, being outside the scope of the original motion."

Miss Stoddard did not press the matter further. As the com-
mittee had planned, a delegation of three was appointed to
call upon the selectmen of the town of Revere, and to send

287

Linden on the Saugus Branch

written protests against open violation of the Sunday laws to
the representatives and senators from the district in the Gen-
eral Court.

Senator Joseph Mangini, of Revere, was also chairman of
the board of selectmen. He was genial, energetic and popular,
and one of his pet projects was the removal of Italians from
the slums of Boston into "God's fresh air" where they could live
in health and happiness and vote directly for him. In this
endeavor he had the full cooperation of the Democratic ma-
chine in Boston, because in those years Italian citizens voted
the Republican ticket.

The Senator's law offices were on Tremont Street, in Boston,
and every prosperous legal firm in that city had associates rep-
resenting all the racial elements of the population, so that if a
presiding judge were a Yankee, the firm could send a Yankee
lawyer to plead the case; or if the jury were predominantly
Irish or Jewish, the counsel was Irish or Jewish, as the case
might be. On Mangini's outer door, the following names were
stencilled neatly on the clouded glass pane:

Giuseppe Antonio Mangini
Aloysius J. O'Rourke
Elisha Feinstein
Charles Sumner Frothingham

Senator Mangini received the Linden delegation, listened
carefully to what they had to say, and returned soft answers.
His constituents were poor men who worked hard all the
week, and only on Sunday could they find the time to build
their homes. Mr. Newcomb explained that his Association
did not wish to be unreasonable, that it was really the appear-
ance of the buildings that troubled the Linden real estate men
and property owners, not so much the Blue Law violations.

288

Law and Order

"You mean, gentlemen, that you would wink at my friends'
breaking the laws, if they would spend more money on their
houses and sustain your real estate values?" the Senator asked.

Mr. Newcomb and the others hesitated, uneasily. Senator
Mangini became more suave and agreeable.

"Let's all enforce the laws," he said, and the next Saturday
evening, he had a formidable array of banjo torches set up
around the busy little colony and precisely at midnight they
were extinguished in unison and all work stopped. Sunday
dawned, and although the Italians feasted and drank, and
played music all day, not a stroke of a hammer or a drone of a
saw was heard. Senator Mangini and some of his aides drove
out to the marsh, in a magnificent shining black carriage, and
passed from shack to shack, joining the festivities and par-
taking of the hospitality.

From the windows, porches and broad lawns of the Massa-
soit House, the regulars watched with glee, the news spread
westward over Linden, and a feeling hung in the air that some-
thing was about to happen.

The junior associate of Mangini, O'Rourke, Feinstein and
Frothingham was a product of Groton and Harvard, with
uncles on State Street and aunts in Louisburg Square. He was
a presentable young man, tall but not too tall, well built with-
out being crudely athletic, conventionally dressed, but im-
maculately, and had a friendly manner, correct and reserved
but not snobbish. When he got off the streetcar that Sunday
afternoon, with a fine new camera and a pair of field glasses
strapped over his shoulder, no one knew who he was, or what
were his connections or intent.

It happened that Norman Partridge and his mousy, red-
faced little wife liked to have their children interest themselves
in gardening. So that certain of the flower beds that beautified
the Partridge estate were not planted and tended by the gar-

289

Linden on the Saugus Branch

dener, but belonged to one or another of the Partridge chil-
dren, who were sixteen, thirteen, and eleven, respectively.

Theodora, the younger sister, thirteen, had a fine bed of
pansies in the front yard, near the corner of Lawrence and
Beach Streets. She was a studious girl, intelligent, rather shy,
never popular with boys, but her homework kept her busy
through the week and on the Sunday when young Mr. Froth-
ingham chanced to be in town and the weather was ideal for
amateur photography, Theodora was weeding her pansies,
kneeling on a piece of sailcloth to protect her long cotton stock-
ings and modest Sunday dress. Her father, the benevolent shoe
manufacturer, was kneeling by her side, helping her.

Having taken several snapshots of Mr. Partridge and Theo-
dora busily at work, young Frothingham tracked down Spike
Dodge, the cop, and asked him to arrest Mr. Partridge for vio-
lation of the Lord's Day statutes. Theodora, being a minor,
could not be charged directly on that count, but her parents,
according to another old Massachusetts law, were responsible
for her Sunday conduct and unless Mr. Partridge could estab-
lish that the weeding of that particular bed of pansies was
"necessary," as the word had been interpreted by the early
Massachusetts courts, he was liable to fine or imprisonment,
or both.

"Look, Ferdy," Spike said. "You see that field of cabbages
over there?"

"There's no one working on the cabbages," young Frothing-
ham said, not getting the point.

"I tell you what," Spike continued. "Why don't you count
'em. And if yuh find one missing, just stay there."

"Am I to understand that you decline to arrest Mr. Norman
Partridge?" young Frothingham asked, ignoring the persiflage.

"You're smarter than I took you for, mate," agreed Spike,
and sauntered away.

290

Law and Order

By the time Spike had reached Black Ann's Corner, the
Harvard lawyer caught up with him again, and this time
Frothingham had with him two witnesses, both of whom had
seen Mr. Partridge and Theodora weeding the pansies and
were willing to swear to it. This time Spike was more respect-
ful, because one witness was Tim Curtin, the one-armed hero
of the Cuban campaign, and the other Steve O'Shaugnessy,
who was studying to be a priest.

"Have a heart, Steve," Spike said. "Can't you and Tim ex-
plain to this young fellow who Norman Partridge is? Besides,
who cares about a few pansies being weeded?"

"It's the law," said young Frothingham. "And the law is no
respecter of persons."

"I haven't seen a thing," said Spike. "And if you gents want
to make a complaint, why don't you go up to the station, and
leave me alone."

Young Frothingham now was making copious notes of all
the conversation. His next call was on Alderman Trumbull,
who lived across from Weeks' field, on Salem Street. The alder-
man was a choleric, excitable old gentleman who was com-
pletely upset by any new idea, sprung on him suddenly, and
who talked and spluttered as if he had a hot potato in his
mouth. He came out on his front porch in his shirtsleeves,
still half-dazed by the awakening from his Sunday afternoon
nap.

"What's this? What's this?" asked Mr. Trumbull, after
Frothingham had begun to state his case.

"You are an alderman of the city of Maiden, are you not?"
asked Frothingham.

"Of course. Of course. What of it?" said Mr. Trumbull,
impatiently.

"I have complained of a flagrant violation of the law, in your
precinct. I have brought the matter to the attention of your

291

Linden on the Saugus Branch

local police officer. He informs me that a Mr. Norman Par-
tridge, because of his affluence and social position, is not sub-
ject to arrest/' said Frothingham.

"Arrest Norman Partridge? You're crazy, young man. What
for?" spluttered Mr. Trumbull.

"Weeding pansies," Frothingham said calmly.

The alderman, not believing he had heard correctly leaned
forward and cupped his ear.

"Weeding pansies," Frothingham repeated.

Mr. Trumbull turned red and purple. "You mean to say
there's any fool law against weeding pansies? Young man, who-
ever you are, go away. I say, go away."

"The law does not specifically mention pansies. It forbids
any kind of work on the Lord's Day, unless the work is neces-
sary and cannot be accomplished on another day," young
Frothingham explained.

"Most confounded nonsense I ever heard in my life," said
the alderman.

"Would you repeat that, please?" asked young Frothingham,
writing in his notebook.

"I've got a good mind to chuck you down the steps," Mr.
Trumbull said, his anger rising. "Coming out here to raise
up a mess. Mind your business. Go back where you came from."

"By what right would you throw me downstairs?" young
Frothingham said, taking off his glasses. Unluckily for every-
one, one of Trumbull's five sons, all of whom were famous
halfbacks, had been listening from inside. It was Walton, and
he promptly rushed young Frothingham down the steps to the
sidewalk and blacked his eye.

"Sorry I haven't time for a fight, just now. We'll settle this
another day," the young Harvard man said, calmly, as he
dusted himself off and started out to find Spike Dodge again.
The cop, not expecting to be bothered twice on the same af ter-

292

Law and Order

noon, was in a cool grape arbor in a corner of the Calkins yard
with Maive Bagley, and when Frothingham found Spike, hav-
ing been tipped off by the Spanish War veteran who disliked
everybody, the officer was not wearing his belt, holster or
night stick, and had shed his helmet and uniform coat.

The candidate for the priesthood, who again was accompany-
ing Frothingham, looked at Maive reproachfully and she
blushed all over, where anyone could see. The urbane young
Harvard lawyer raised his hat.

"I am sorry, ma'am, to intrude, and if Mr. Dodge will ac-
company me, to arrest the son of Alderman Trumbull, who
has assaulted me, there will be no need to mention this charm-
ing little respite from his duty," Frothingham said.

Spike was not too quick on the trigger, but he got that one,
all right, and had to go with Frothingham back to the Trum-
bull residence. This time a sizeable crowd, men and boys who
had heard something of what was afoot, went right along be-
hind the Harvard man. The terrible-tempered alderman
stormed out to meet them on the sidewalk.

"I'm responsible for what happened. Not my son. Arrest
me. I demand it," Mr. Trumbull said. "We'll go get Norman,
too. We'll see if this young whippersnapper from Harvard
can play fast and loose with the people around here. We'll get
to the bottom of this."

When Norman Partridge was informed of what had taken
place, and that he was being charged with violation of the
Sunday laws, he took the matter very gravely. If he, thought-
lessly, had been at fault, he must set a proper example. He was
the last man who wanted any special favors, because of his
money or position. Unescorted, Mr. Partridge drove all the
way to the police station in Maiden Center to give himself up.

293

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Rich and the Needle's Eye

VERY early in life I grasped the fact that being the richest
man in the community had its drawbacks. Too much was ex-
pected of Mr. Partridge in the way of good examples and
patriotic and Christian behavior. With a practically unlimited
bank account to draw on, he could not spend his money, and
think about the wisdom of it afterwards, as Dawson Freeman
or Uncle Reuben did. He could not frankly make pleasure
and high living his goal, like Mr. Wing.

Mr. Partridge was quiet, quite diffident in manner. He was
good-looking, too, in an inconspicuous way. As the principal
pillar of the Congregational Church, he had to make up defi-
cits and pay off mortgages unostentatiously. Even in his wife's
simple and ordinary neighborly charities, Mrs. Partridge had
to be especially tactful and many kind acts she performed were
productive of resentment which, if unexpressed, was percep-
tible. The children, Millicent, Theodora and Leroy, had the
toughest time of all. Their father was a member of the school
committee, so their unquestionably high scholarship was al-
ways being covertly questioned. Leroy provided the footballs,
baseballs, mitts, masks and gloves. His father had a basketball
court laid out, and a tennis court, so Leroy's friends could
have the best equipment witfy which to play. The boy was
about my age, and, as classmates, we skipped every other grade
in the grammar school. Leroy was not strong, but he was game.

294

The Rich and the Needle's Eye

He was not an outstanding athlete, but felt obliged to knock
himself out, in competition with faster and heavier playmates.
Not a day passed in the course of which Leroy, somehow, did
not have to take a lot of unjust and self-inflicted punishment
merely for being the son of the man who was his father.

The girls were brilliant, intelligent, charming, but local
boys were wary about going with girls who had brains, and the
Partridge girls both resembled, physically, their homely
mother and not their handsome father.

I suppose Mr. Partridge spent about twenty thousand dollars
a year on his family and household, not an enormous sum,
but almost astronomical according to Linden standards. He
must have been a good businessman, because his shoe business
increased in size and importance.

Mr. Partridge's house was not elaborate and showy, nor even
good architecture. The design was stuffy and without distinc-
tion, but the place was large and comfortable. The furnishings
were likewise inartistic, in a Victorian way, but they were
luxurious and practical, and nothing was lacking in what then
was known as modern convenience. The whole house, from
concrete cellar to finished attic was heated by steam, with radi-
ators that were noiseless and tractable, and responded to the
handles of their valves. And reliable steam heat, when it was
needed, would be one of the first requisites of heaven in the
minds of the average Lindener.

It was said of Mr. Partridge that he treated his help well
and fairly, and all Linden knew how good he was to his rela-
tives and in-laws. There were few Linden houses that had not
felt the touch of his generosity and kindness, still I could not
escape the feeling that Mr. Partridge's good deeds gave him
more embarrassment than simple pleasure. He loved horses
and drove smart ones, but they were fonder of the stable man
than of him. He had no intimate friends among the men, al-

295

Linden on the Saugus Branch

though they all liked him. He did not hunt or fish, drink or
smoke, philander or gamble. The front he presented in Linden
was the measure of the man. His health was not bad, and not
rugged. Actually, Norman Partridge was very much the kind
of man my brother Charles turned out to be, only Charles had
many friends and associates and neighbors in Dayton who were
as prosperous, or more so, than he. And Charles had no chil-
dren. My point is that both of them had an authentic quiet
worth, and orderly instincts amounting almost to nobility,
and all their virtues and talents were more noticeable than
their ability to have fun.

Imagine such a man as Norman Partridge, in the Maiden
police station, aware that he had desecrated the Lord's Day
and broken the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The scene, that Sunday afternoon, was a memorable one.

Alderman Trumbull, in the course of the three-mile ride
on the streetcar, from Linden to Maiden Center, had had time
to cool off a little, and to wonder even more dazedly just what
the whole thing was about. As he glared at young Frothingham,
who was seated across the way, trying to make conversation
with the disgusted Spike, the alderman could not quite see a
Maiden police chief or a judge paying serious attention to
anything the young dude might say. What was he saying, any-
way? Mr. Trumbull did not pretend to understand, but he
knew he had lost his temper, that his son, Walton, had com-
mitted a pardonable indiscretion, and that it would be best
for all concerned if, somehow, the matter could be patched up,
or let drop and be forgotten. The alderman, therefore, was
further disconcerted when he encountered Norman Partridge
in the Maiden station, the Partridge carriage horses having
far outstripped the conveyance furnished by the Maiden and
Lynn Street Railway Company. Mr. Partridge was not trying
for a quiet, peaceful settlement. He had already told the

296

The Rich and the Needle's Eye

Maiden chief of police that he had done wrong and must face
the consequences, like any ordinary citizen. At that stage of
the game, Mr. Partridge did not know that the Trumbull
family was involved, to the extent of assault and battery.

Charles Sumner Frothingham, III, was as calm as if he had
been practicing several generations. He presented his card, and
the police chief, who had instantly had the impulse to have
him thrown bodily out of the station, on general principles,
caught his breath. On the card the young Harvard whipper-
snapper's name appeared as the associate of Senator Mangini,
and the Chief, who had been placed in his good job by the
Republican politicians of Maiden, knew well that his backers
would as soon offend the Angel Gabriel as the powerful Italian
senator from Revere, who was then in the act of removing in
wholesale lots from Democratic Boston where their votes were
lost in the landslide, brand-new Republican voters who would
be most useful in the voting districts of which Maiden and
Revere formed a part.

"Now, gentlemen," said the Chief. "This is all a misunder-
standing. Let's not be hasty. Supposing I call Senator Mangini,
and see if we can't smooth the whole thing over."

Alderman Trumbull bubbled enthusiasm for that sugges-
tion, his torrent of words piling up over one another's dead
bodies, like victims in a theatre disaster. Young Frothingham,
however, had his eye on Norman Partridge, who, at the idea
that law-breaking could be condoned by political chicanery,
had turned pale and even more grave than before.

"Naturally, I should defer to the opinion of my associate,
the Senator from Revere," the Harvard man said, "but Mr.
Partridge would be placed in an embarrassing position. Un-
fortunately, his neighbors throughout Linden all know what
has occurred, and if he is not booked, and goes scot-free, it
would be remembered against him by his fellow townsmen

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

who hold him in such high regard. They would be forced to
the conclusion that wealth and influence outweighed common
justice. Am I stating your position correctly, Mr. Partridge?"

"I ask no special consideration," Mr. Partridge said.

"Mr. Partridge feels that the citizens whose antecedents have
been in America from the first, should be especially scrupulous
about obeying the law, and not plead ignorance of it as an
excuse," Frothingham continued.

"Never mind what Mr. Partridge feels. He's right here. Let
him speak for himself," the Chief said, grinding his teeth.

"Have I misstated your position, sir?" young Frothingham
asked Mr. Partridge.

"I stated my position before you arrived, young man," said
Mr. Partridge. "If I have violated the law, I should be
charged. ..."

"What kind of a charge is weeding pansies?" growled the
Chief.

"If you'll pardon me," said young Frothingham. He took
from a shelf on a wall that was covered with law books the last
volume of the Revised Laws of Massachusetts, flipped it open,
and showed the Chief the statute, passed in 1800.

The young Harvard lawyer, overjoyed because of Mr. Par-
tridge's naive cooperation, took advantage of every angle of the
situation. He did not want the alderman or the alderman's son,
on a charge of assault and battery. The bigger game had al-
ready come within range.

"I am willing to forget the attack upon my person," the
young lawyer said. "I quite understand that the alderman
was annoyed. His nap was interrupted. His son acted in good
faith, without grasping the circumstances. Why not book Mr.
Partridge, as he wishes, let him post a nominal sum for
bail. ..."

The Chief narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists.

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The Rich and the Needle's Eye

"I'm running this station," he said. "Mr. Partridge don't
have to put up any bail. He's free on his own recognizance."

"Quite," said young Frothingham. "But you haven't booked
him yet."

"I'd like to book you, on the other side of your kisser," the
Chief said, and went through the formalities of booking Mr.
Partridge, who signed his name, wrote his address in the book,
blotted the words carefully.

"I'm sorry, sir," the Chief said. "This isn't my idea. Who
isn't ignorant of the law, I'd like to know? Why just last week
the City Council and the Board of Aldermen passed that
basketful of ordinances" (the Chief indicated a wire basket
loaded to the brim) "that I haven't had a minute to read yet.
And not only those. The County Commissioners turn out a
batch, whenever they feel like it. And the State Legisla-
ture . . ."

"The Commonwealth. . . . General Court," prompted
young Frothingham.

"Don't tell me what to say!" said the Chief, turning on the
young lawyer so violently that he tipped over the inkwell and
forgot what he was saying.

Young Frothingham turned to Mr. Partridge, as man-to-
man. "The original statute, taken in Colonial times from the
English common law, would have made it necessary to expose
you in the stocks, sir. Now it's only a fine, or imprisonment,
or both," he said.

At the mention of the stocks, Mr. Partridge winced and
looked at the floor.

"They must have thought up these fool laws about the time
they chartered Harvard College," said the Chief. "The stocks!"

The young Harvard man smiled again. "Ah, yes. And don't
forget the ducking stool. . . . But that was mostly for women.
Elderly women/' he said.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Look, Portia," the Chief said, rising. "I don't have to take
any more guff from you."

"I was just going, 1 ' said young Frothingham, amiably. He
held out his hand to Alderman Trumbull, courteously, and
the irate old man was trapped by a reflex action into grasping
it, then dropping it like a hoptoad. Frothingham bowed to Mr.
Partridge and extended his hand to him, and, after hesitating,
Mr. Partridge could think of no reason for refusing it.

"Sorry to have made all this work for you, Spike," the young
man said to Dodge. "And you, Chief! You might give me a ring
whenever you're in doubt about the law. Glad to oblige."

With that, young Mr. Frothingham bowed himself out of
the room. The Chief glared at Spike, trying hard to think of a
pretext to fire him off the force. Mr. Partridge went out to
where his horses were hitched and drove back to Linden, after
offering the alderman a ride. Alderman Trumbull had other
ideas. He had escaped a personal disaster, and if he could hush
up Mr. Partridge's predicament, as far as the press was con-
cerned, no one would be hurt too much. So while Mr. Partridge
was on his way home, the alderman sought out a Maiden editor,
influential in Republican politics and all Maiden affairs. I
think that was the evening that Mr. Trumbull decided that
those of his sons who could get through high school should
attend, not Harvard, but Tufts.

The Maiden editor shall remain nameless, but he readily
agreed that not a word concerning Mr. Partridge's arrest
should appear in his paper, and volunteered to see Senator
Mangini that same evening, and arrange with him to call off
his fresh young associate. So the editor took a streetcar over to
Revere, found Senator Mangini in the midst of an Italian
wedding feast, in the course of which he had already con-
sumed about a dollar's worth of the finest imported Chianti.
Chianti, that year, sold for fifty cents a gallon, wholesale.

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The Rich and the Needle's Eye

"Don't give it a thought," the Senator said to the editor.
He knew about the editor's influence in Maiden, and thought
he would get more out of him than he could gain by harassing
Norman Partridge, in the interest of the West Revere prole-
tariat. Senator Mangini ordinarily kept his word, quite scru-
pulously, but that evening he was having a fine Italian-Ameri-
can time and by the time he tried to send word to Charles
Sumner Frothingham, III, to suspend his crusade for the Blue
Laws, the young man was not to be found.

Young Frothingham was relaxing, at Jake Wirths in Boston,
after what seemed to him a fruitful day. The Blue Laws assign-
ment, in Linden, was the first chance he had had to distinguish
himself in an office to which he had been admitted more on
account of his name than his ability. With Frothingham, also
celebrating, in terms of the wonderful Wiirzburger beer that
Wirth kept on tap, was a reporter on one of the Boston dailies,
another Harvard man. Harvard graduates were plentiful in
Boston, and it seemed to the working newspapermen that the
number of Harvard boys who were willing to work without
wages, just for the experience in what they called "journalism,"
always ran above four figures. The reporter, having been given
the Blue Laws story as an exclusive, had earned some kind
words from the night city editor, who had already started a
cartoonist drawing the Partridges among the pansies in Lin-
den, from photographs Frothingham had provided. But it was
the policy of that newspaper, whenever a prominent man was
charged with anything, or attacked, to give the victim a chance
to make a statement, if possible in the same issue in which the
story was printed. My boys, there were newspapers then.

The Boston daily had no representative in Linden. In fact,
the night city editor up to that time had never heard of such a
place. His local reporter in Maiden had no telephone. So he
tried Lynn. In Lynn, the paper was represented by a conscien-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

tious and careful reporter named Charley Archer, who
worked on the Lynn Item. Charley was respectable, present-
able, meticulous about forty years of age. He felt the dignity
of his calling, and would take no nonsense from anyone who
disdained the press. Charley was definitely an old-school re-
porter, who abhorred slang and sensationalism, denounced the
typewriter as a clattering nuisance that clogged the flow of
thought, and doggedly verified all names, dates and places be-
fore he turned in his copy. Charley was respectably married,
had bought a house in Lynn, and was already firmly set in his
ways, but, like most good reporters of that era, he loved dearly
to drink. His wife, a singer who earned as high as twenty-five
dollars a Sunday in some of the more prosperous Greater-Bos-
ton churches, and who had social and professional ambitions,
was stern, almost rabid in her opposition to alcohol. Their vital
disagreement on this point made life somewhat difficult for
both of them. Charley loved and admired Viola, and felt guilty
about having restricted her prospects. She had known when she
married him that newspapermen were scandalously underpaid,
but she thought they had influence with the right people, and
an entree everywhere.

It had been agreed between them that Charley could drink
a decorous amount, in line of duty, on weekdays, but on his
day off, which was Sunday, the understanding was that he
would be abstemious and devote himself to her. In order not
to let it appear to her that he wasted too much of his substance
on drink, Charley had never disclosed to Viola that he did
occasional assignments in Lynn and vicinity for the Boston
paper, and thus was able to spend what he earned on space-
rates without her audit. The Sunday of which I am writing
was about like other Sundays, for Charley. Viola had turned
in a creditable ''Face to Face" and "The Palms" at a morning
service in the Salem Baptist Church, and was attending a re-

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The Rich and the Needle's Eye

hearsal of the local branch of the Handel and Haydn Society
that evening. Charley, at the time the copy boy from the Item
had found him, and given him the message from Boston, was
listening drowsily to a dozen mixed voices singing snatches
of "The Messiah," with unorthodox starts and stops. He was
thinking very wistfully of whiskey, rum and ale.

When Charley had to deceive Viola, ever so slightly, it made
him nervous and self-conscious, and his manner, when he told
her he had a hurry call from his paper was such that she was
sweetly skeptical.

"Shall I wait up for you, darling?" she asked, in a way that
made him certain that she would. Viola had a nose that could
pick up through an olfactory fog of cloves a zephyr of booze
that an ant would muff.

"Please don't, dear. I've got to go to Linden," he said.

"Whatever for?" asked, in mock horror, the choirmaster who
had overheard. Outsiders were likely to speak that way of Lin-
den, when they mentioned it at all.

Charley made his way to the Item office, and, with much
grumbling and protesting, got the Boston city editor on the
telephone. He disliked and distrusted telephones more than
he did typewriters. Having in mind that Viola would have to
see something tangible, to justify his long absence, Charley
asked the Boston editor if he could cover the Item on the story,
too. Since the Item was an afternoon paper, there was no ob-
jection.

More light-heartedly, Charley headed for a livery stable.
This was not the epoch of press cars with sirens, the drivers of
which kept the motors running at the curb in case an emer-
gency arose. But by nine-thirty, in a city like Lynn (if there is
another like it), the horses and buggies for hire had been well
weeded out. The horse Charley got had a spring halt, harness
sores, and no impulses to hurry. The buggy was spattered with

803

Linden on the Saugus Branch

mud from the last rainstorm, and had not recently been
greased. Charley bought a pint from the livery stable man,
since the saloons in Lynn were closed on Sunday, and bottled
goods could not be procured in the ordinary way. Liquor by
the glass, to be consumed on the premises, was available in
restaurants if food was served. This was the law in most Massa-
chusetts cities that countenanced liquor at all. The result was
that in hundreds of taverns, including the Massasoit, a prop-
erty fried egg, made of rubber and skillfully colored, was at-
tached by means of a large pin to the center of the tables
around which customers were drinking. That covered the let-
ter, if not the spirit, of the statutes.

Norman Partridge went to bed about ten o'clock each eve-
ning, and was sleeping steadily before the reporter from Lynn
had got five miles on his way. The girls and Leroy, all were
studying. About the time Millicent, the oldest, had reached
high school, she had become persuasive and logical enough to
convince her pious father that improving the mind was a
proper activity for the Sabbath. All the Partridge children
liked to study.

About eleven o'clock, Charley Archer, having consumed the
pint and tried his best to urge the hired horse along, rounded
Black Ann's Corner. Outside the stone crusher he saw a group
of men, one in police uniform, and heard them disputing
violently. He pulled up his nag, wound the reins around the
whip in the socket, and got out of the buggy. The men who
were reviling the cop, all Irish and well oiled up, were so in-
tent that no one noticed the stranger on the sidelines.

From what was being said, Charley quickly understood that
the four Irishmen, who worked weekdays at the quarry, had
been playing cards in the office, by the light of the watchman's
lantern. The reporter was delighted, since the incident was in
line with his assignment. Spike Dodge, after warning the card

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The Rich and the Needle's Eye

players, had intended, quite naturally, to go on about his busi-
ness, but when Charley stepped up, presented his card as a
Boston reporter all roving reporters carried engraved cards
indicating that they represented the Boston Evening Tran-
script and asked if the men who had been playing cards on
the Sabbath were to go scot-free, Spike was on another spot.
Spike's task was not simplified by the attitude of the drunken
Irish quarrymen, who tipped over Charley's buggy and were
determined to throw him, clothes and all, into the nearby
creek. In the free-for-all that ensued, Spike had to make use of
his billy, and was lucky to come out with his life. He had only
one set of cuffs, which he used on Chuck O'Riordan, the night
watchman. The other three, Luke McGann, Pie-Face O'Day,
and Terry Haigenny, deployed in as many directions. Terry
started for Cliftondale under the misapprehension that he
was going the other way, toward home. Pie-Face O'Day, who
was an exponent of direct action, staggered into the woods
toward the underground storehouse to get a stick of dynamite.
Luke, leaning forward at such an angle that he had to run to
keep from falling flat on his face, headed for the south side of
the tracks for reinforcements. Meanwhile, the unlucky Spike
had to call for the wagon, while the handcuffed watchman tried
to kick and bite him as he phoned in the tiny little office.

All this was meat for Charley, who came out of the affray
only slightly dishevelled, but midnight was the deadline, he
had not yet interviewed Mr. Partridge, so he had to leave Spike
to his own devices, and, after taking down the names and
addresses of the card players and roisterers, he and a few by-
standers righted the buggy, adjusted the harness and awakened
the horse, who had dropped off to sleep in spite of the com-
motion.

The reporter found the Partridge residence, hitched his
horse to the ornate iron post, mounted the steps and pushed

305

Linden on the Saugus Branch

the bell. Leroy opened the door. It was eleven-thirty by that
time, and no callers had ever arrived as late as that, but the
appearance of Charley Archer and his neatly engraved card
counteracted any misgivings that the faint odor of bay rum,
cloves and whiskey had aroused in the boy.

"I'm sorry to disturb you/' Charley said. "My editor is most
anxious to give Mr. Partridge the opportunity to make a state-
ment, about the charges against him."

"Papa is abed," Leroy said, but Millicent and Theodora
appeared at the head of the stairway and decided that their
father would want to be awakened, under the circumstances.
When, a few minutes later, Charley interviewed the bewil-
dered head of the house, all the children sat in. Millicent, who
had a sharp sense of satire and of humor, was especially intent.

Mr. Partridge gave his simple version of what had happened,
not sparing himself.

"You believe in one day's rest in seven?" Charley asked.

"I do," said Mr. Partridge.

"Do you think our immigration laws are likely to bring
about a Continental Sabbath?" Charley asked.

"Those who come here should benefit by our customs," said
Mr. Partridge.

"Do you believe in Sunday sports, like baseball, for in-
stance?"

"Emphatically not."

"Do you go driving?"

"To visit the sick."

"I notice your son was studying," Charley said.

Mr. Partridge looked uncomfortable, but Millicent spoke
up.

"It is always proper to improve one's mind," she said.

"Do you approve of Sunday card games?" Charley asked.

"Certainly not. Card playing is never necessary."

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The Rich and the Needle's Eye

"Is card playing in Linden on the Sabbath generally dis-
approved?"

"I think so," Mr. Partridge said. "I sincerely hope so."

"If men defied the law and played cards openly on the Lord's
Day, would you be in favor of having them prosecuted?"

"To the full extent of the law," Mr. Partridge said.

Charley thanked him, bowed to Millicent and Theodora,
shook hands with the boy, and got ready to depart. "By the
way," he asked disarmingly. "Are you a member of the Linden
Improvement Association?"

"A charter member," Mr. Partridge said.

"Your association excludes certain races from the Linden
area?"

"Careful, Papa," said the wary Millicent. Mr. Partridge
looked at her in surprise.

"I have nothing to hide," he said to his daughter. Then he
turned back to Charley, who was at the doorway, and whose
manner was most casual.

"It's the same in Lynn. Jews and Poles have ruined property
values," he said. "My own house and lot have depreciated fifty
percent."

"That's the unfortunate effect of an influx of foreigners,"
said Mr. Partridge. "Our association has no prejudice."

Charley smiled, sympathetically.

"You believe, then, that it's all right to admit Jews to the
country, but not to Linden," he suggested.

"Father," warned Millicent. But Mr. Partridge was deter-
mined to be honest.

"That is not inconsistent," he said. "There are many persons
to whom we would not wish to deny the rights and privileges
of American citizenship, and whom we would not select as
neighbors or companions."

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Many thanks. You've been most kind. Good night," said
Charley. But he had a few more questions.

"Do you employ any Jews, Mr. Partridge?" he asked.

"I think not," Mr. Partridge said.

"Any Irish?"

"Probably a few. I'd have to look it up," he said, and a
shadow passed over his earnest, troubled face. "There was a
time when the head of Partridge and Company knew by name
and appearance every man who worked for us. Sometimes I
think I liked things better, then. Business, lately, has become
impersonal, almost out of individual control."

"Do you approve of unions?"

"Please, Father," begged Millicent.

"Our men have no complaints. We do our best for them,"
Mr. Partridge said, serenely. "When there's no disease, no cure
is needed."

This time Charley made his getaway, warm with inner satis-
faction. As he opened the door, the clang of the Maiden patrol
wagon, which had not been heard in Linden for years, if ever
before, was arousing Beach Street more thoroughly than the
Minute Men were stirred years before by Paul Revere.

At the Massasoit bar that Sunday evening, the talk had re-
volved around the advent of young Mr. Frothingham, the
pansy-weeding episode, and Senator Mangini's campaign for
law and order. When a reporter came in, just before midnight,
and started telephoning a Boston paper, everyone in the
Massasoit gathered within earshot, to hear what was reported.
Charley fussed and snorted, shouting at the top of his voice
to the rewrite man, and the drinkers of Linden were regaled
with Norman Partridge's views and the arrest and detention
of the four Irishmen O'Riordan, O'Day, McGann and Hai-
genny for gaming and rioting at the quarry. When Charley
assured the rewrite man that Mr. Partridge, free from a charge

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The Rich and the Needle's Eye

of Sabbath-breaking on his own recognizance, advocated the
utmost penalties for the four working men who had been
caught playing cards, the Admiral, Mr. Wing, Uncle Reuben,
and all the others grinned and pricked up their ears. It was
apparent that Linden would be on the lips of hundreds of thou-
sands the next morning who had never heard of it before, and
that Mr. Norman Partridge was getting the works, at the hands
of a coterie of experts.

There was a halt in the telephone conversation. Charley
Archer covered the transmitter and turned to the Admiral.

"The editor wants to know, Mr. Quimby, if there are
prominent citizens in Linden who do not agree with Mr.
Partridge, who favor a more liberal Sabbath, for instance?"
Charley asked.

"May I give him some names," said the Admiral, reaching
for the phone. Expansively, the Admiral introduced himself,
then reeled off a list of his friends who would be glad to be
quoted, against class or race discrimination, or fanatic Blue
Laws that interfered unreasonably with a citizen's pleasure.
To each Linden name, the Admiral, in his element, attached a
high-sounding title: Miss Ruth Coffee, eminent feminist;
Christopher Van Volkenburgh Wing, Manhattan society
leader with property interests in Linden; Patrick G. Me-
Sweeney, street railway official; Jefferson Madison Lee, inter-
nationally famous chef de cuisine; Herr Doktors Pehr and
Paavo Wallenius, of Helsingfors and Linden, well-known
sculptors; Walter Grosvenor Packard, student and practitioner
of mesmerism; Jonathan Cheever, sanitary inspector (the Lin-
den swill man); Alexander Graydon, descendant of the
financier-patriot; Elbridge Gerry, lineal descendant of the
signer of the Declaration of Independence by that name.

"You may quote Mr. Gerry as follows," said the Admiral.
"My ancestors did not visualize a nation that would nurture

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

bigotry and prejudice, with one rule for the rich and another
for the poor/'

"Are all these people willing to go on record?" the editor
asked.

"I give you my word. I will vouch for each and every one
of them," continued the Admiral. "Miss Mary Stoddard, of
the staff of Photo Era. Her principal reason for advocating
votes for women, sir, is her belief that women will repudiate
the Blue Laws, so that on the one day a man and his wife
may be together, they may enjoy legitimate entertainment and
work together and improve their modest little plots of ground."

By the time Charley Archer got back on the phone, the Bos-
ton editor realized that he had a sensational story, on which he
was beating the world. He offered Charley on the spot what
the latter had always desired, a steady job on the Boston daily,
beginning that moment, and he asked Charley to stick close to
Linden until further notice, with headquarters at the Mas-
sasoit House. Instantly Charley was received into the fold with
the traditional Massasoit hospitality, with the initial result
that, some time about dawn, my Uncle Reuben drove the
hired horse back to Lynn, with Charley snoring on the seat
beside him. Having been told about Mrs. Archer's aversion to
drinkers, my uncle tried to smooth things over for his new
friend. He found the address, saw a light in the window, and
when, as he was helping Charley out of the buggy, Mrs. Archer
appeared in the doorway, my uncle drew himself up and said:

"You must not think your husband has been drinking to
excess. He has sustained a severe electric shock, in the line of
duty, while he was using a defective telephone."

Mrs. Archer unbent, to the extent of helping my uncle get
Charley upstairs, but the effect was spoiled when, on the top
most stair, my uncle caught his heel on the brass rim of the
stair carpet, lost his balance, and fell backward down to the

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The Rich and the Needle's Eye

lower hallway, taking with him a section of the banister rail.
It took a let to put Uncle Reuben out of commission, so he
got up, made his exit with what dignity he could, and found
his way to the Saugus Branch station, to get the first train back
to Linden. The tired horse, who had slipped my uncle's mind,
along with the buggy, wandered disconsolately around Lynn
for a couple of hours and finally showed up, driverless, in the
livery stable.

811

CHAPTER TWENTY

Of Public Entertainment

SAMUEL BUTLER defined happiness as a state in which
one was not actively aware of being miserable. The great novel-
ist might have been thinking of Linden. From the high ground
of Salem Street to the flats where the Irish were regaled with
piggery odors from over the Everett line, from the head of
Beach Street to Black Ann's Corner and the Square, there was
usually a comforting absence of tension and struggle that has
not been enjoyed anywhere on this planet in recent years.
When an event shot up a fresh stalk and bloomed like the
fabulous century plant, such as the Blue Laws episode, involv-
ing the technical arrest of Norman Partridge, and nation-wide
publicity that was Linden's own, the quiet relish of living, the
matter-of-fact acceptance of the daily routine, was suffused
with glee. Pulses beat faster, people tingled and liked each
other and were willing to take chances. Acquaintances be-
came friends, and friends became inseparable. Ginger ran his
streetcar more recklessly, fiercely clanging his gong. Horses
that all their lifetime had stood without hitching suddenly
took it into their heads to have one coltish fling, and ran wild,
scattering goods and wagon parts, and giving someone a chance
to be a hero by stopping them, when the horses were about
ready.

There were three men of Linden I have not yet mentioned
who, when the community was stimulated and unified by par-

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Of Public Entertainment

ticipation in a rare experience, knew what folks were doing
and saying from one end of town to the other. They were:
Roger Kaulbach, the letter carrier; and the huge, good-natured
brothers, Fat and Randy Clarke, who owned the ice company,
each driving a wagon.

Roger made the rounds twice daily, and knew all the front
doorways. The icemen were familiar with each and every back
door, back porch, and kitchen.

Everybody called Roger Kaulbach by his first name, and
quite a few Linden people who had known him well for years
could not have told you his last name. He was never in too
much of a hurry, and talked aloud to himself almost con-
tinually, either reproaching himself for being behind-time,
or the correspondents of his clients for sending too much or
too little mail. He had a little niece somewhere who was a
passionate collector of stamps, so that when, for instance, my
brother Charles was getting quite a few letters from Frank
Weymouth, an engineer who was then in Nicaragua, Roger
would wait expectantly, taking off his uniform cap and wiping
his forehead with a bandanna, while Mother tore off the corner
of the envelope on which was the foreign stamp. His gratitude
when Mary Stoddard, after her mother's death, gave him an
almost complete set of the first United States issues, was so
profound that it kept Roger skipping and hopping and doing
sudden pantomimes for days.

Roger's disconcerting habit o assuming a ballet posture
and circling a lamppost with mincing dancing steps two or
three times, when he was absolutely alone on an uninhabited
stretch of one of Linden's sparsely populated streets, led some
unthinking people to hint that he was slightly crazy. That was
far from the truth. He was completely crazy, but as harmless
as a hassock and extremely useful. Now and then he would cry,

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

for no reason at all, and when anyone would ask him what was
the matter, he would insist that he was mourning for his wife's
first husband. His wife, Vernona, was Linden's only Christian
Scientist, and there had been some talk when her first husband
died, because she had refused to call a doctor until his
jaw, which was frightfully swollen, had burst of its own
accord.

It was well known throughout Linden that Roger and Veiny,
as Vernona was called, had not spoken to each other directly
for years. Instead, they kept a wheezy pug dog and addressed to
him what each wanted the other to overhear. Not only did
they not converse, but each one bought provisions and cooked
his or her own meals, eating them at separate tables, Roger's
in the kitchen, and Verny's in the dining room. Their house
was high on the rocky lane that led from Salem Street through
the woods to the Pike, and Roger had laid out his mail route
so he could have lunch at the Massasoit.

Getting mail delivered by Roger was like being an umpire
when Nick Altrock was clowning. Roger would mount the
front steps and ring the bell. Then he would start rummaging
through his large leather sack, as the door was opened.

"Mmmm. Now let me see. Ah. Mmmmmm," he would mur-
mur, frowning and sometimes letting his feet execute a dance
step or a shuffle. "What have we here? An advertisement from
Jordan's. A bargain sale, ma'am. Don't go. Don't believe them
figures. When it says 'Marked down from a dollar to ninety-
nine cents' it means the moths have got into the stuff so they're
marking it up from fifty cents to ninety-nine. And Mrs. Paul.
Don't be fooled about them pennies, either. Every penny you
save costs you more than a dime. I can prove it. Good day,
ma'am. I'll prove it next Thursday. Today, I'm five minutes
behind."

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On the following Thursday, Roger would remember, and
would insist that pennies wore out pocketbooks and pockets,
carried serious infections, smelled like crowded streetcars, and
made a man feel rich, by their weight, when he had not enough
to buy a pot to cook in.

"Ah. Mmmmm. Now then. I thought I had something here,"
Roger would begin. He would shuffle a while, and then hand
over the letter. "From Charles," Roger would say. "You're
fortunate, ma'am, to have a son like that. Fine, honest young
man, Charles. He'll make some good woman a husband, one of
these days."

Roger would take back the letter and glance at the postmark
again. "Still in Philadelphia, I see. Thought I heard he was
goin' out West. When you write him, tell him that's where
the money is. Out West. They don't bother with pennies out
there. No, ma'am. Don't forget."

And Roger would trip lightly down the steps, as if he were
holding a lady's long train. While the roots of the Balm of
Gilead were still bulging over the sidewalk, Roger would
always pretend to trip, and when he felt extra good, he would
actually fall, and beg the tree's pardon.

Roger had served in the National Guard during the Spanish
War, but he would not permit anyone to call him a veteran
because he only got as far as Chickamauga. As a matter of fact,
Roger had provided so much spontaneous relief and amuse-
ment for the troops that were shuddering with malaria and
burning with yellow fever that no officer would have escaped
lynching if Roger had been transferred elsewhere. Besides,
Roger was a phenomenal penman. He could write, with free-
arm motion, embellishing his letters with scrolls, birds, fishes
and animals. His Major at Chickamauga had disliked writing
letters, so Roger had opened, read and answered all the anxious

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

and passionate letters that arrived with each mail sack from
the Major's doting wife.

"That," Roger explained, "was why I couldn't go and get
my head shot off."

Sometimes he would pretend to cry about it, and now and
then got to weeping in earnest. Nearly every day, at dinner-
time (noon), Roger and Tim Curtin would get into an argu-
ment as to which was worse, San Juan Hill or Chickamauga.
But it was on the strength of his army service that Roger got
his job.

When Roger would see Dick Lanier pottering in his small
garden, he would yell:

"What yuh doin f , Dick?"

"Manurin* my strawberries," Dick would say.

"I'm peculiar. I like cream on mine," Roger would retort.

This routine was just as good with other farmers, about
gravy on potatoes, or butter on green corn. Often Ginger
would stop the car, so his passengers could hear what Roger
said. Then Roger would sit on the track, and have to be
dragged off by main force.

Roger thought the greatest man in the world was Harry
Lauder, and would sing "Oh She's My Daisy" when he met an
old woman or an old maid on the street, enacting one of his
vivid pantomimes until the woman in question would wish
she could drop through the ground. But no one was really
offended.

The Linden icemen did not carry out the conventional ice-
man's role, by cuckolding all the Linden husbands. They both
were too big and heavy, and had too much else to do, even if
the women had found them irresistible. Actually, they had
nothing whatever to do with women, and in spite of their bulk

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and strength and capacity for overexertion, their voices had
never changed and were high-pitched and incongruously
boyish.

"Fat!" his brother Randy would say. "Some day I shall for-
get myself and strike that horse. He's gone and eaten all of
Mrs. Plummer's moss roses."

"Plague take him," Fat would say, and look at the horse so
reprovingly, his huge moon face aquiver with emotion, that it
seemed as if any beast would be touched, and would instantly
reform. Actually, the iceman's horses were extraordinarily
dependable and intelligent. They were as deliberate and slow
as the fire horses were eager and fast, but were fine, well-kept
geldings, all four of them chestnut brown.

The Clarke brothers lived on the edge of Pickle Pond, so
named because of its shape, and their father had built the ice
house, with its derricks and long wooden chute. They had
always been bashful and awkward, too big for the largest seats
and desks provided in the Linden school. Their father had
died when they were in their middle teens, they had always
worked hard, and their old mother had beaten them with
switches when they were running the business and three times
her size. They were so good to her that they pretended to
suffer and would beg for mercy when she felt like whaling
them.

"Now, Ma," Randy would say, according to my Great-Aunt
Elizabeth, one of the few women old Mrs. Clarke would have
anything to do with. "Now, Ma! Don't you thrash Fat. It's my
turn today."

"It isn't, either. Go on, Ma. Randy got it last time," the
brother would insist.

"I got a good mind to lash both of you till the blood runs,"
the old lady would say. "I saw what he did to that calf."

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Please, Ma. Don't yell. What if other folks hear you?" the
boys would say, squirming with shame and embarrassment.

" 'Twould serve you right. Take down your pants!"

"Now, Ma. We're busy today."

By the time I was entrusted with watching the icebox and
putting the card in the window, the Clarke boys were thirty
and thirty-one years old, and their mother was dead. One of her
last acts had been to throw a mug of porridge all over Randy
because Fat had forgotten to put molasses in it.

It may seem inhuman, but one of the standing amusements
in Linden was to stuff the Clarke boys with food, the hotter
the weather the better, to see how much they could hold with-
out getting what was called "a sunstroke."

"Randy. You've got to taste that lemon pie," Daisy Hoyt
would say, showing the iceman a sample of her cooking that
fairly blossomed with meringue. "Some folks don't know that
it's better, made with duck eggs."

Wherever they would go, they would be tempted with sand-
wiches, pastry, puddings and cake, and their appetites were
colossal. They could not refuse, and when the humidity was at
its worst they knew all too well what the consequences would
be. Not a day went by that the Clarke boys did not drink a
dozen bottles of beer, apiece, and when they collapsed in some-
body's back yard or on their wagons, five or six men would
stretch them out in the shade, pack loose ice around them and
pry open their mouths to pour in a bracer of coffee or whiskey.
No one knows how they stood it, but they always came out of it
all right, if severely shaken.

Either one of the Clarke boys could have covered Linden in
a single day, but they had customers in Broadway, Everett,
and Cliftondale, and no one wanted ice delivered after eleven
o'clock in the morning. By that time, half the heat of the day

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was gone. So Fat and Randy each drove a wagon, from six in the
morning until nearly noon, and in the afternoons they did
their housework, including sewing and embroidery, and slept.
Sometimes in the spring or the fall, when the weather was too
pert for them to sell much ice, and not pert enough to freeze
the pond so they could cut it, they slept twenty hours or
more each day, and all the time they were up they were
eating.

Like many of the connoisseurs in Linden, who had never
known the word, the Clarke boys got their cider from the post-
man, Roger Kaulbach. Roger made superb cider, and bought
apples and ran a little mill on the side. The only person in
Linden who would not drink Roger's cider was Vernona, who
made a barrel of her own and would never let her husband
even sample it. Vernona once left Roger, and stayed with a
sister in Swampscott for a week, because Roger took their sick
pug to a vet in Clif tondale.

"God is good, you stupid lunkhead. More than that we
cannot ask," she muttered, glaring at the dog who was in the
throes of what seemed to be asthma, then at her husband.

The Clarkes were Roger's best customers for cider, and they
delivered the cider he made to his other clients.

Those of you who started out in life with Frigidaires and
Quiet Mays will not remember how important it used to be
not to forget the ice card. On a hot muggy day in Linden, the
ice melted so fast in those old-fashioned iceboxes that you
could hear it dripping in a kind of mocking telegraphy into the
pan that was set underneath. Remembering to keep the pan
there was important, too. Otherwise you ruined the oilcloth
on the floor.

The Clarkes' ice cards could be turned four ways. They were
conspicuously oblong, and colored half red and half yellow on

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

each side, with large black figures on the yellow, and large
white figures on the red, so by placing it in the front window,
flat side down, with the figure "5" on top, you could inform
the iceman that you needed a five-cent piece that day. The same
card, reversed with the flat side still down, and the "10" upper-
most, meant a ten-cent piece. With the narrow edge down, the
other side of the card would indicate a fifteen-cent or a twenty-
five-cent piece. For a quarter the Clarkes brought in about two
hundred pounds.

All summer they kept their ice stored in sawdust, which
they bought from the carpenter, Mr. Carlson. The ice was put
away, and loaded into the wagons, in two-hundred-pound
chunks, and was skillfully trimmed with pick and ice tongs to
the requisite measure. The Clarke boys knew every icebox in
Linden, its shape and capacity, and shaped the ice they brought
in so on hot days the chest would hold the maximum amount
and the food would not spoil. They felt ashamed and quite
apologetic if their ice melted too quickly, or contained a little
fish in a state of suspended animation.

In winter, all the boys would go to Pickle Pond to watch
when the Clarke brothers cut the ice, with large two-man saws,
and hoisted it into the ice house, by block and tackle up the
chute. They laid the pieces in sawdust and built up their piles
as carefully as the Finns laid stones on a walk. They had
handled ice since they were able to stand, had lived within its
chill and knew the patterns of the frost, the stratification and
crystallization, the translucence and the mystery, its virtues
and its perversities. And they were the last of the Clarkes to
live as Clarkes always had. For even while they were toiling
and collapsing, trenchering, guzzling, and carrying loads on
their backs that would stagger a mule, twentieth-century prac-
tical science, at which their countrymen were most adept, was

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making them obsolete, like the coopers, the blacksmiths, the
livery stable proprietors, the bicycle dealers, the whalers, the
motor men, and other good men and true who were likewise
unaware of what was happening.

I shall never forget Roger's antics on the Monday morning
that Linden, the Blue Laws, the pansies, the Protestants and
the Irish were all over the front page of the Boston paper. Of
course, by afternoon, all the Boston papers had picked up the
story, and the Associated Press had telegraphed it to New
York, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, and all points West
and South. When he got off the streetcar, leather sack on his
back, he had a newspaper spread in his outstretched hands.
While all the neighbors watched and chuckled, Roger sat on
the curbstone and pretended to read. He rose, clutched his
forehead, electrified by what he had seen in print. Daintily he
plucked a little flower, and started tripping away, like Oscar
Wilde. Then he became the cop, by stretching to his full
height, reversing his cap and taking up a stick. Acting one
part, then the other, he threatened, protested, and led himself
off to jail by the ear.

At every front door, Roger had a laugh with some housewife,
and the Clarkes, fitting ice into ice chests, clucked and shook
their heads in sympathy as their customers made their com-
ments. In a few of the houses where the church people lived
strictly, there was indignation against the Italians and their
politician, and that insufferable young Harvard man. Everyone
suspected that Linden would see much more of him. Roger, in
fact, reported that Frothingham had been on the steps of City
Hall when the doors were opened that morning, in order to
bail out the four Irish quarrymen who had been kept in jail
overnight. There the young lawyer had met Mr. Partridge
who, when he had seen the paper and read his own horrifying

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

opinions, as interpreted by the newspapermen, had decided
not to go to his office that morning until he had paid the Irish-
man's fines. The meeting between Mr. Partridge and young
Frothingham had been a very cool one, on Mr. Partridge's part,
while the Harvard lawyer had assured his victim that no one
from the Senator's office had been responsible for the word-
ing of the newspaper accounts or the editorial opinions ex-
pressed.

The first headlines, accompanied by an effective cartoon
four columns wide, read like this:

LINDEN'S TOP BRAHMIN
SHATTERS SABBATH LAW

Norman Partridge, Rich Shoe Man,

Church Deacon, Local Leader,

Admits Weeding Pansies;

Freed Without Bail

FOUR COMMON LABORERS
DETAINED IN JAIL

Maiden's Anti-Jewish Suburb

Split Into Hostile Camps

By Blue Laws Crusade

FOES OF PURITANISM
DENOUNCE DISCRIMINATION

In the text of the story, prominently displayed, was the inter-
view with Charley Archer, that Mr. Partridge read with some-

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thing approaching consternation, since his own words had been
used in such a way that he could not deny them.

The accused shoe magnate said
that immigrants should learn
American ways, and not import
loose customs from Europe.

After admitting that he was an
active member of an organization
consecrated to keeping Jews out of
Linden, the wealthy defendant
said:

"It is not inconsistent to admit
Jews into the United States, and
exclude them from Linden. There
are plenty of citizens with whom
one prefers not to associate/'

"Do you employ any Irish immi-
grants?"

"I'm not sure," said Mr. Part-
ridge.

"Any Jews in your plant?"

"None that I know about," the
manufacturer said.

Mr. Partridge does not believe
in unions, holding that just em-
ployers give the workers no cause
for complaint.

In answer to a question, Mr.
Partridge admitted that he had
voted for a resolution at a meeting
of the Linden Improvement Asso-
ciation protesting Lord's Day vio-

lation on the pan of Italians in
nearby Revere.

"Did you know that your com-
mittee had tried to make a trade,
offering to condone violations of
the Sunday laws if the new resi-
dents of Revere would cooperate
in sustaining Linden's real estate
values?" Mr. Partridge was asked.

"That was done without my
knowledge," the accused man in-
sisted.

"But you heard about it after-
ward?" the reporter asked.

'Tes. But I did not approve,"
was the reply. Under further ques-
tioning he admitted that he had
made no formal protest.

"Any Italians employed in your
factory?" he was asked.

"None. The Poles are larger,
stronger men," the manufacturer
said.

"Any Poles in Linden?"

After consultation with his older
daughter, the shoe magnate replied
that he thought there might be a
few. Evidently he had not met the
Linden Poles socially, or the Ital-
ians, the Jews or the Irish.

There was much more, equally true and equally mislead-
ing. Nearly everyone felt sorry for Mr. Partridge, and at the
same time they were highly amused.

The subsequent proceedings in the courtroom were over
in less than ten minutes, but the place was jammed, with a
huge overflow crowd outside, and the visiting newspapermen
and sketch artists swarmed over Maiden Center like locusts
and were taken to Linden on a special trolley car, to view the
pansy bed marked "X," the Partridge estate, and the scene of
the crime at Black Ann's Corner. Mr. Partridge was convicted

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

and fined, at his own insistence, and so were O'Riordan, Mc-
Gann, O'Day, and Haigenny, but the courtroom was thrown
into hysterics by the plea, in behalf of the Irish defendants, by
Charles Sumner Frothingham.

"In this country, men are free and equal before the law, if
not in Linden drawing rooms," the young lawyer said.

"There are no Linden drawing rooms," the judge said.
"What you call drawing rooms in Back Bay are called sitting
rooms here."

"I stand corrected," Frothingham said. The four Irishmen
were proud of having their names and pictures in the papers,
knew all their expenses were being paid by someone they
would like to shake by the hand, if they knew who he was, and
had been given a few stiff drinks by their Harvard attorney,
who, in spite of his pronunciation of words like "raazberries"
and "eyether," was turning out to be a fine lad, after all.

"My clients, although they are poor working men, with only
rudimentary education and only the natural social graces in-
herent in free men everywhere, are nevertheless sensitive and
proud. Mr. O'Day, I believe, is the most recent arrival from the
Old Country, having been only two hundred and eighty years
behind the Mayflower, a span of years that will diminish in
impressiveness as the centuries roll on."

"Let us permit the centuries to roll on, and get this case
disposed of," said the judge.

"I could start back in tracing the ancestry of these four
gentlemen with Brian Boru; and the eminent authority, Mr.
Geoffry Keating, contends that all Irishmen are the descendants
of a son of Noah who left the Ark before the advent of the Dove
of Peace, by means of a raft on which he took with him all the
beautiful women who had survived the deluge. The raft drifted
to the shores of Ireland. . . ."

"Hurrahl" yelled Pie-Face O'Day, who was drinking in with

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rapture every word. The judge forgot himself and threatened
to have him ejected from the courtroom.

"Your Honor," said Frothingham, blandly, "we could
scarcely proceed without the defendants."

The judge turned beet-red and swore under his breath.

"The point!" the judge said. "The point!"

"My point is that these honest men, so pure in heart that
they were not aware a friendly card game was wicked, do not
wish to be outdone by Mr. Norman Partridge. They request,
your honor, to be fined as much as he was . . . apiece, that is
to say."

"Granted," the judge said, and finally got the next case
under way. The rest of Frothingham's carefully prepared state-
ment was handed to the reporters, however, with enough copies
to go around. The photographers outdid themselves in taking
plate after plate of the Irishmen digging into their pockets
and paying their fines in nickels, dimes and even pennies.

Again the newspapers had a field day. Mr. Partridge's money
was refused by his codef endants, and that was enough for more
headlines.

On the following Sunday, the entire membership of the
Wenepoykin Bicycle Club of Linden, of which Charles had
been an enthusiastic founder, was arrested on the marsh road
leading through Revere to the seashore, not only for perform-
ing what was termed "unnecessary work" on the Sabbath, but
for riding on the sidewalks, the road having been doused with
the entire contents of the Revere water wagon to make it all
but impassable. It was a lucky coincidence for Charley Archer
that he and his photographer chanced to be in the bushes by
the roadside just in time to cover the arrest

The day, on the whole, was a bleak one for Charley, because
his wife, determined that he should not be debauched into a
hopeless drunkard by his vicious new friends at the Massasoit,

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

had closed the house in Lynn, appeared with her trunks at the
hotel, and said she would stay there and share his room until
he had finished the assignment.

A stranger to Massachusetts might take it for granted that
the reductio ad absurdum of Lord's Day observances would
have resulted in prompt repeal of the Blue Laws, or a tacit un-
derstanding that they would not be enforced beyond reason-
able limits. Actually, the whole history of that quaint com-
monwealth is replete with examples to the contrary. The more
absurd a law or a method of official procedure in Massachusetts
appears to the liberals of the outside world, the more frantically
will the leaders of the old Bay State rally around, to prove that
they are right and the outsiders are wrong. One could cite the
witchcraft trials; the destruction of the first American May-
pole; the Red Flag Law of World War I that caused the arrest
of Harvard students by the score, Harvard's color being vivid
crimson; the law illegalizing "parodies" of "The Star-Spangled
Banner" which, until it was hastily amended, prevented in-
strumental renditions of the national anthem by soloists, bands
and orchestras, because it had been originally written as a
four-part song; the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, on evi-
dence that would have been laughed out of court in the Fiji
Islands, or by an Eskimo tribe; and the suppression of the
works of many of the reputable and talented contemporary
authors who elsewhere are read by young and old.

Before the ink was dry on Norman Partridge's court record,
various Protestant organizations in Boston and throughout the
commonwealth held special meetings, to defend the Blue Laws
to the letter, and oppose any relaxation of the Puritan Sab-
bath. The Watch and Ward Society of Boston took the lead.
President Eliot of Harvard, who in the course of his forty years
as head of that institution and many more as President emeri-
tus seldom overlooked a chance to make himself conspicuous,

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advised extreme caution in tampering with the wisdom of the
Founding Fathers. Nearly all the Boston Protestant clergy fell
into line, with some brilliant exceptions which included the
Reverend Edward Estlin Cummings, of the Arlington Street
Church.

Against this array of conservatives, Senator Giuseppe Man-
gini took up the gauntlet, with the help of our friends who
hung around the Massasoit, and a fair share of the Fourth
Estate, not to mention bicycle manufacturers, seed merchants,
and sportsmen, generally.

In Linden, where the spark was ignited, things settled back
to normal, and were quiet for a while, but not for long.

327

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Church Fair

ONE of the reasons why Linden was such a satisfactory
birthplace is because folks there, as a rule, were not ambitious.
Whether this was due to the widespread and continuous em-
phasis of the teachings of Christ, I cannot say. Modern psy-
chologists would say that most of the Linden people were very
"well adjusted." The girls wanted to get married, and their
mothers sometimes tried to help them, as the literature of the
period will testify, but a change had come over the young
people, rightly or wrongly, and they had begun to feel that
times were different and that they should not pay too much at-
tention to the wisdom of their parents.

So the romantic dreams were, in terms of Linden life, a job
that was pleasant and paid fairly well, a small house financed
by the Improvement Association, children who were not
maimed by firecrackers on the Fourth of July and would be
thrilled by what one could afford to give them for Christmas,
a healthy stretch of what Joyce described as "father's pants
will soon fit Willy," and lastly, "Silver Threads Among The
Gold."

Of course, anyone who was troubled with a consuming
ambition left Linden, and the advantage was mutual.

Boys did not like to be considered too smart. I still remember
with shame and horror that while I was in the fifth grade, the
principal of the school came into our classroom one after-

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Church Fair

noon, had a whispered consultation with the teacher, and I was
asked to go with him into the hall. Naturally, a number of
reasons why my superiors might want to punish me ran through
my mind. Instead of being shaken or rattaned, however, I was
escorted to the eighth-grade room and what I saw there got me
really worried.

Billy Thole, of the family in Wing's block that had the world-
famous puppets, one of the larger boys I had always especially
liked and admired, was standing, flushed and sullen, at the
blackboard. Billy knew more about the world than his teachers
did, but he was not apt at arithmetic. The atmosphere of the
classroom was bristling with hostility toward the principal, the
teacher, and me.

I glanced at the figures on the board. The problem was not
beyond my scope, in fact, seemed quite easy, although a little
complicated.

"Elliot. Will you show Billy how to solve that problem?" the
principal asked.

Billy looked down at me and turned away disgustedly.

I have always been easily confused, in public, and it took me
several seconds to get the inspiration that saved me from gcave
unpopularity.

"Certainly," I said, and the expressions on the faces of Billy's
classmates hardened.

Feeling numb and helpless, I began to work on the black-
board, and suddenly I realized that I was not obliged to ac-
commodate our persecutors. After I chalked up my first mis-
take, and felt the atmosphere clearing and the principal freez-
ing, I made an epic hash of the rest. It came to me, and I have
tried ever since not to let it slip my mind, that I was not put on
earth to set other people right. So the principal had done bet-
ter than he knew, as far as I was concerned. I had learned a
lesson quite beyond the range of arithmetic.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

My vanity, I regret to say, was such that after school that day,
I showed Billy Thole and the others that I could solve the
problem, but they forgave me for that.

Not many of the young men in Linden had horses and
buggies, nor could they afford to hire them from the livery
stable in Maplewood. Lovers knew where to find countless
quiet nooks and corners empty sheds, grape arbors, haylofts,
porches of the churches and public buildings, natural shelters
afforded by stone walls and bushes, shady lanes, haymows,
spaces under railroad platforms. One of the favorite rendezvous
for spooning (now called "necking") was the long carriage
shed alongside the Congregational Church, well shaded by a
thick hedge on the adjoining property. I think it is safe to say
that as many new lives were started there as there were funeral
services inside.

In the winter, arrangements were not so easy. Even if the
older people wanted to be considerate, there were not many
houses that were heated all through, and everybody had to
huddle together in the rooms where the hot air registers
worked best

"Our Heavenly Father is no blamed fool," Uncle Reuben
said, once. "He knows it's easier for sinners in the summer,
and for married folks in wintertime."

My uncle had interesting theories about summer and winter.
One day at the Massasoit, when Frieda, Dawson Freeman's
large, blonde, husky, slow-moving hired girl walked by, the
Admiral remarked that she would be fine for the winter.

"That's where you're off your base," my uncle said. "In the
heat of summer, you want one of those great big lazy girls.
Their skin keeps cooler. Now for the winter, I'll take one of
the little dark restless kind. One of them could heat up As-
sociate Hall/'

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Church Fair

The telephone did much to diminish the practice of writ-
ing love letters, as lovers formerly did although they might see
each other every day. The first horseless carriages were not
designed for dalliance, and made too much trouble anyway.
Electric lights were either on or off, and could not be turned
low, as in "Just A Song At Twilight." In the winter, the girls
who could play the piano or melodeon began to learn popular
songs, not of the old-fashioned variety like "In The Gloaming,"
but a new strain of music, for better or for worse, that came
from Tin Pan Alley.

The first ragtime arrived in Linden with the century, not
the genuine Negro music that was sprouting in New Orleans,
but a vaudeville or white man's version which, although inade-
quate and unjust to the original, gave those of us who are built
that way a tremendous kick. The first ragtime song I remember
was restrained, indeed, in its syncopation, and was inspired
by the advent, or increased popularity, of the telephone.

The most popular two-step was "Red Wing," and the ar-
rangement contained only the three basic chords, no more.
Dancing was tolerated, but not encouraged by the Congrega-
tionalists, condemned by the Methodists, while the Episco-
palians permitted dancing in the Parish House, and charged
admission. The Catholics danced when and where they pleased,
but never in church.

There were many Linden parents who believed that the
playing of popular songs and the new ragtime unfitted a child
for a creditable rendering of "The Happy Farmer," "Valse
Bleue," "Star Of The Sea," and the other "classical" pieces
favored by the local music teachers. I sought to disprove this
theory by beating out as solid a "Soldiers' Chorus" from Faust
and "Pilgrim's Chorus" from Tannhauser as could be found
in the countryside.

At church socials Charles went in for serious numbers, like

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Asleep In The Deep/' "When The Bell In The Old Tower
Rings," "Forgotten," or "I Hear You Calling Me." The last-
named song I had to transpose two full notes downward from
the John McCormack key, and then risk a fuzzy high note on
Charles' part. He was much better on the low notes, at the bot-
tom of "Asleep In The Deep" and "Jedidiah."

One could not attend a church social in those days without
hearing some bass sing "Cousin Jedidiah."

There's A unt Sophia,
And Hezikiah,
Maria,
Josiah,

And Cousin JEDIDI
1
1
I
A
A
H.

Oh won't we have a jolly time
Oh won't we have a jolly time
Go, Polly, put the kettle on,
We'll all have tea!

There was sure to be a girl graduate from the Emerson
School of Oratory, where Delsarte gestures were de rigueur.
She would do a dude monologue like: "I cawn't thee why
fellowth wide in twolley earth," or a "Wynken, Blynken and
Nod" that made boys want to kick over baby carriages.

Early in the fall each year, the Kickapoo Indian Show would
make Linden, stopping first in the Square, then on Beach Street
under our big tree, then around to Black Ann's Corner. The

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Church Fair

performers were Negroes dressed as Indians and the barker
came from a circus, was extra white and pale, and wore a stove-
pipe hat and frock coat. They sang songs, war-whooped and
did Indian dances, and tricks of sleight-of-hand. The show
bored me, but I liked to hear the barker, and to see who fell
for his spiel and bought the Snake Oil, at fifty cents a bottle.

I was a member of a little orchestra that played for the
church entertainments and other Linden shows, and we really
got hold of "Smoky Mokes" and the "Maple Leaf Rag" and
never let them up till they were hollering. Of course, we did
not then have the benefit of the Dixieland Jazz records, but
we did the best we could. Our hillbilly numbers were far
superior to the sickly whining of store cowboys today, for we
had Uncle Reuben, Mr. Daley, Mr. Wing and a number of old-
time chorders and fiddlers. When we played "The Arkansaw
Traveller" or "Turkey In The Straw," the customers some-
times stamped the church until it threatened to come down.
One spoonful of that kind of music in a bathtub of tepid water
is what one hears on the radio today.

My mother, as I have already made clear, was a timid, un-
aggressive woman, who did more than her share of the church
work, but liked to keep herself in the background. It had to be
her luck to accept the chairmanship of the committee to stage
the Congregational Church Fair on the year it was held in
Associate Hall, and nearly was the Fair to end all Fairs, bring-
ing down upon Linden another deluge of excitement and
publicity. I had expansive ideas about production and enter-
tainment that I had never been able to give their full scope,
and Mother, being busy with other details, incautiously
listened to me. I wanted it to be the most varied and lively
show the town had ever seen, and I think it was, in ways quite
unforeseen.

In the first place, Ruth Coffee's immense energy and dy-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

namic personality were enlisted, and her ideas of production
dwarfed mine. At any stage of life, Ruth would have been as
likely to go into a bear's cage as a church, but since Alice had
been with her, Ruth had persuaded her to spend Sundays with
her folks and to go to church with them, as she did before the
break. Alice was chosen, with Mrs. McNeir, to act on the com-
mittee with my mother, so Ruth rolled up her shirt sleeves and
took hold.

By now Ruth wondered how she had endured living alone
so long and Alice, sometimes when she woke up in the night,
shuddered to think of what existence had been when she was
exposed to the buffets of fate and the scramble for survival.
Her mother, baking for Cobb, Bates and Yerxa, also felt a
stiffening of her spine and held her head high, but neither she
nor Elvira could bear the mention of Ruth's name.

Ruth and Alice were busy from morning until night, and
no longer did Ruth accompany the men on their shooting trips
on the marsh, or linger with them at the Massasoit bar. Alice
worried too much, if Ruth were away, with a shotgun, and
was timid about staying alone in the cottage after dark. She
was careful not to stay too long in the hot sun, or expose her-
self to the winter's cold. If she felt the least bit dizzy she
used smelling salts, and Ruth personally saw to it that on
frosty days she was wrapped up snug and warm, had a soapstone
in her bed, and stayed under the covers in the morning until
Ruth had stirred up the fire and had a warm breakfast ready
in the kitchen.

The Newcombs next door had an unused barn, near the
boundary between the two lots and this Ruth bought to use as
an antique shop, with the land around it for an out-of-door
display. Pehr and Paavo built a new stone walk to the Salem
Street sidewalk.

The barn had solid oak timbers, and a chestnut floor, with

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Church Fair

two-inch planks a foot wide. Ruth stripped off the old boards,
reinforced the walls with two-by-fours, and nailed on clap-
boards in a way that drew a grunt of appreciation from the gruff
Swede carpenter, Carlson, from whom she bought the lumber.
The roof was freshly shingled, the stalls were converted into
show places for old furniture. Slowly the barn was filled with
Mclntyre eagles, old Windsor chairs and rockers, butterfly
tables, Duncan Phyfe tables, Lafayette benches, framed chro-
mos of George and Martha Washington, Miles Standish, John
Alden and Priscilla, and sturdy New England relics, with
quite a few choice Sheraton, Chippendale and period pieces
from France and England, sets of dishes, pewter ware, Indian
wampum and Colonial coins, stamps, buttons, wooden salad
bowls, carved whale's teeth, whalebone canes, old colored en-
gravings, and Colonial pottery, odd rolls of Early-American
wallpaper, daguerreotype albums, family Bibles, spinning
wheels, hooked rugs and rag rugs, patchwork quilts, and other
treasures from the years gone by.

The acquisition of each article was for Ruth and Alice an
adventure, from which the maximum of delight was wrung,
and customers began to come from far and wide. Alice polished
the old silver and pewter, and became very skillful in mend-
ing dishes and pottery. Ruth repaired the broken furniture,
and never passed off a piece that had been retouched for a
hundred percent original. The bric4-brac was displayed as
tastefully and carefully on the shelves as the teas were served
in late afternoon. Not one cross word ever passed between the
partners.

Pehr and Paavo, as Ruth began to have more and more calls
to help refurnish old houses, were drawn into the orbit and
spent less time carving names and inscriptions on gravestones.
No matter what he did in the daytime, Pehr lit out, as usual,
for the Massasoit bar when he was through, but Paavo grad-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

ually gave up reading Swedenborg and spent part of each eve-
ning sitting with "Miss Cough-fee and Miss Toonsund." Ruth
noticed, with some misgivings, that Paavo's honest eyes were
fixed on Alice whenever Alice was in sight, that the big Finn
watched every birdlike movement of Alice's hands, was thrilled
at the sound of her voice, and picked up whatever she dropped
before it fairly touched the ground.

Mother was a little dismayed when I talked to her about
having a different entertainment program each evening, from
Monday until Saturday, but she let me go ahead. The members
of the Wenepoykin Bicycle Club agreed to give a blackface
minstrel show with an olio featuring a prize cakewalk after
intermission. That was scheduled for the opening night. On
Tuesday, the members and friends of the Eagle baseball club,
on whose team Leslie was catcher and I was the shortstop, were
to perform a melodrama, coached by Luke Harrigan. Mr.
Wing took over Wednesday evening, for a program of folk
dances. On Thursday evening, we got up a concert program,
at which Mrs. Archer and other professional church singers
agreed to sing, and all the music teachers and their best pupils
were signed up to play piano solos and duets, selections on the
violin, cornet, clarinet and 'cello. It was Friday evening I was
most excited about. The renowned Thole family consented,
for the first and only time in Linden, to donate their services
and present a puppet show. On Saturday, we settled for a
sumptuous bean supper, to be followed by an auction when
all the wares, goods and art objects unsold were to be disposed
of, with Dawson Freeman as auctioneer.

Linden got into the spirit of the occasion, and denomina-
tional lines were cut to shreds. Catholics, Episcopalians and
even Methodists joined with the Congregationalists, and the
hardened sinners of the Massasoit worked harder for the Fair's
success than the deacons and their wives. For before the days

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Church Fair

when canned entertainment on the air, phonograph records,
and the screen was everywhere, those who had the instinct to
perform were as eager as those who wished to enjoy the show
from out in front. The magnitude of the plans and arrange-
ments already had my mother dazed and filled with foreboding,
but Ruth Coffee, Dawson Freeman, Uncle Reuben, and other
cohorts went vigorously ahead. Every Linden merchant, shop-
keeper, or tradesman donated what he could afford, and the
housewives cooked and delivered their specialties.

Ruth, from the stock of the antique shop, loaned and set up
typical New England rooms in which the various articles for
sale could be displayed to the best advantage. There were
counters, each in charge of a subcommittee, which were piled
high with groceries, provisions, pies, cakes, homemade candy,
embroidery, dry goods, hardware, second-hand books, fruit,
tea cosies, hassocks, pin cushions, glassware, toys and Indian
sweet-grass baskets. Beside those, there were special booths for
sweet corn dipped in hot melted butter, popcorn with molasses,
fish and clam chowder, baked beans and brown bread, hot
boiled lobsters, fried oysters and clams, oysters and clams on the
half -shell, jellies and preserves, jams, pickled pears and candied
watermelon rind, hams, fancy sausages, pickled pig's feet,
corned beef, smoked lamb, smoked fish, wild ducks, woodcock,
venison, fresh salmon and trout, sea snails, walnuts, chestnuts,
butternuts, nigger-toes, almonds and castanas, sarsaparilla and
root beer, grape juice, sweet cider, perry and lemonade. All
the booths were festooned with colored bunting and evergreen
boughs.

As the opening day drew nearer, the work to get things ready
at the Hall got faster and more furious, and lasted far into
the nights. It seemed to Ruth and the others, when Saturday
came around, that they would not be able to make the grade.
They worked all morning, and in the afternoon more men

337

Linden on the Saugus Branch

who were free a half -day on Saturdays joined them. But some-
one slipped into the Hall while everyone was out for supper
and by tampering with the pendulums, slowed down both
banjo clocks. No one thought about the hour.

When the Hall clocks indicated the hour of eleven-thirty,
outside it was a quarter past twelve, and well into the forbid-
den Lord's Day. Ruth, Alice and Paavo, and even Pehr, were
putting the finishing touches to Ruth's decor when in came
the cop, Spike Dodge, flanked by Charles Sumner Frothing-
ham, III, and a flock of witnesses the lawyer had collected. Of
course, Charley Archer and some other reporters brought up
the rear guard.

"Sorry, Miss Coffee, Miss Townsend," said Frothingham,
showing them his watch. Paavo, understanding imperfectly
what was going on, stood by, but when he saw that Spike was
about to lay hands on Alice, the gentle, honest Finn became
a madman, as suddenly as a geyser shoots up toward the sky.
Near to his hand, unluckily, was an antique pestle, and before
anyone realized what was happening, Paavo had floored Spike
Dodge with a blow that would have jarred an elephant, and
had started for Charles Sumner Frothingham, III. That young
man, who had run the quarter-mile for Harvard, made a flying
start, but he ran square into the arms of Pehr, who was amiably
drunk, but not hors de combat. In an instant, two Finns and a
Frothingham were spinning like a giant pinwheel. Alice saw
that Spike was bleeding and unconscious and promptly fainted.
The reporters hovered on the sidelines.

Frothingham would have liked to call the whole thing off,
but more police came, and Paavo was arrested for assaulting an
officer with a dangerous weapon, in pursuance of his duty, so
Ruth and Alice decided to go along, and plead guilty to an-
other Lord's Day violation, in order to help the Finns, if they
could. Pehr and Paavo both had said farewell to reason. It

338

Church Fair

took eight men to get them into the wagon, and even more,
when they arrived in Maiden Center, to get them out again.

Dr. Moody, as soon as he had examined Spike's injury, sent
a hurry-call for an ambulance to take him to the Maiden hos-
pital, and in less than two hours it appeared. Meanwhile, the
doctor had told the reporters that Spike's skull had been frac-
tured and that he was suffering from concussion of the brain.

If a prevailing mood of gaiety and gemutlichkeit could be
built up in Linden in preparation for a church fair, a sudden
tragedy or disaster could plunge the community into gloom,
so that chipper little men like J. J. Markham, who ordinarily
darted and chuckled around his grocery store like a pet bird,
slackened his pace, became morose and was continually forget-
ting behind which ear he had stuck his pencil.

The Congregational Church bell started clanging at nine-
thirty, hours after the early Catholics had dribbled past our
house bound for Maplewood. But Deacon Parker did not put
his weight on the rope with his customary zest. From all points
of the compass, along Linden's streets, the worshippers con-
verged, but none of them were sprightly or self-satisfied. My
mother, dressed for church, looked as apprehensive and re-
morseful as if she had clouted Spike Dodge herself, after start-
ing all the fracas. I was blackly depressed, myself. I did not
want the cop to die, or Paavo to be strapped in the electric
chair. And I was ashamed of myself for not being able to keep
those two possibilities uppermost in my mind, when actually
I could not forget the five shows that were coming along, one
evening after another. In all of them I had some part to play,
either as accompanist or, as in the melodrama, the villain's
role, the Count de Courville.

The Reverend K. Gregory Powys, whatever his faults, was
not the man to haul in his neck after having wrestled with him-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

self, asked God's advice on his knees, and decided on the text
of a sermon. Again the subject was an unfortunate one. The
Congregationalist preacher, sturdy little Welshman that he
was, had believed it his duty to speak out, plainly, on the Lord's
Day controversy. None of his parishioners knew that, and none
of the other Linden folks who went to the other Protestant
churches, or the Congregational Church that morning would
have had standing room only.

Eleven oclock arrived. The last bell stopped clanging. The
regulars were all in place, in their pews, with a fairly good
crowd of occasional churchgoers, like my Uncle Reuben, Daw-
son Freeman and Roger, the mail man, who did it to infuriate
his Christian Science wife.

Mrs. Ford played the organ. She had had a busy week re-
hearsing singers, pupils and dance acts for the Fair, so she stuck
to the tried and true selections she could play with her eyes
dosed. The mixed quartet sang "Softly appear, over the moun-
tain, the feet of those who preach," etc. Of all the quartet num-
bers, this puzzled me the most, because, as I visualized the
action, the preachers coming over the mountain would have to
be walking on their hands. On that Sunday morning, however,
I felt an emptiness in my stomach when I smiled to myself.
Spike Dodge, I repeated grimly, must not die. The Sunday
papers I had seen at Dawson Freeman's had mentioned that the
wife of the stricken police officer was prostrate at the bedside,
and one Boston daily, whose copyreaders had never heard of a
Protestant cop, had a priest administering extreme unction. I
shuddered at the words, only dimly knowing what they meant.

As always on Sunday morning, the moment arrived when
the Reverend Powys squared off, straightened his lapels, took
two paces forward to the podium and flung himself upon the
enormous Book. When I heard his resonant voice bawl out the
text, I felt gooseflesh all over. It was Mark II, 27.

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Church Fair

"And he said unto them. The sabbath was made for man,
and not man for the sabbath."

Of course, Norman Partridge, his wife, two daughters and
one son, were only five rows from the front, on the aisle, stage-
right. And Mrs. Townsend, with Elvira and Alice, who was
out on bail, and worried sick about the Finn, were seven rows
back, stage left.

The Reverend Powys began his sermon, and thirty seconds
afterward his flock discovered that he was not lined up with
the Watch and Ward Society, President Charles W. Eliot, or
the die-hard Yankees who would not read a Sunday paper. He
favored the views of the unregenerate black sheep who men-
aced the peace and morals of Linden from that sink of iniquity,
the Massasoit House.

"No man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new
wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the
bottles will be marred," the preacher quoted.

"The Massachusetts B ... the B .... the Blue ... the
Blllllllue Laws, wrrrrrritten in an age of darkness and super-
stition .... b-b-b-b-borrowed from England from which
Americans had fled .... are not fit to contain the wine of
present-day life," he said.

"Our Lord Jesus, one day, went through the cornfields with
His disciples, and as they went, the disciples began to pluck the
ears of corn. Do you not think that, by going a little farther,
they could have found some cuh . . . . some cu-cu-cu-corn
already plucked?

"And the Pharisees said unto Jesus, 'Behold, why do they
on the sabbath-day that which is not lawful?' "

The Reverend Powys laid down his sermon and stepped
clear of the podium, rotating his right index finger raised aloft.
He was vibrating like an overcharged boiler. His eyes glared
and his moustaches trembled.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Did our Lord say to the Pharisees, 'Arrest us? Fine us? In
future we will obey the letter of a foolish law?' Or did He put
the Pharisees in their place?

" 'The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sab-
bath/

"Jesus did not say He and His disciples would wait for re-
vision of the statutes. He did not suggest that He would apply
to the Low Priests, so that they in turn could consult the High
Priest, who would talk it over with the t-, with the t-, with the
ttttttttttyrants of Rrrrrrome, with the result that, perhaps, years
later, after our Lord had died, been buried and after three days
had risen again, he outmoded laws would be corrected. With
his other Divine qualities, our Lord had common sense.

"I know it is claimed, by the Pharisees of today that men
should wait and tarry, until, after due process, a bad law is
amended. I say, 'You are doing no service to the cause of law,
by prolonging ancient follies.' There are times to turn the
other cheek, and times to protest, as the life of our Saviour
indicates. Each man's conscience is his own, but he should
think as long and pray for guidance as meekly before clinging
to old errors as he would hesitate before committing new ones.

"Let us pray!

"Oh God in Heaven, who has lent His children, as well as
hands and hearts, a mind, help them to go forward, not back-
ward, in the light of reason. Aid those of us, we pray Thee, who
enjoy the blessings of government of the people, not to be the
servile victims of government by other people, but to take the
lead.

"Have mercy on those who are passing through the valley
of the shadow of death, and those, who in a sudden burst of
temper, upset the fruits of a lifetime of toil."

I understood that the peppery little Welshman not only
was putting in a word for Spike, but for the Finn as well, and

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Church Fair

that Norman Partridge, who paid nine-tenths of the bills, had
been told off, and no mistake. I thought my poor mother was
going to dissolve in apprehension. When the meeting was over,
I intercepted Lincoln Freeman, in whose house there was a
telephone, and learned that Spike was still unconscious. No
change. I had four rehearsals to attend that afternoon, and
each one went worse than the one preceding. My mother's Fair,
I felt sure, was already a flop and I wanted, if not to die, to go
to sleep like an enchanted prince for fifty years or more, when
the mess we were in probably would have blown over.

Pehr, the older Finn, who had assaulted only young Froth-
ingham and eighteen assorted cops, without permanently or
gravely maiming any of them, had been freed on bail, which
Frothingham furnished. The lonely mason had walked straight
from Maiden Center to the Massasoit, and had stood morosely
at the bar, about twelve consecutive hours, after which the Ad-
miral and Jeff Lee had lugged him upstairs and put him to bed.

Monday was a terrible day. Spike still was dead to the world,
and the doctors had decided that an operation was the only
thing that would save him, if anything would. Pehr slept until
six p.m., and then started drinking again. At that same hour,
the Fair was officially opened. An hour before, my mother,
Ruth Coffee and a dozen faithful men and women had gath-
ered fearfully in Associate Hall, not knowing what else to do.
Among them was Jeweller Drown, who noticed that the banjo
clocks were slow and readjusted them.

About half-past five, groups of Linden people began moving
toward the Square, and from every trolley car and Saugus
Branch train, throngs of curious outsiders, attracted by the
wave of publicity, arrived. Before the Fair had been open fif-
teen minutes, the Hall was filled to capacity, but no one had
bought anything excepting slices of cake and pieces of pie,
fudge, taffy and chocolate drops, bananas and oranges, sweet

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

corn with butter, popcorn and molasses, fish and clam chowder,
ham and chicken sandwiches, pickled pigs feet, and quantities
of other edibles. Up to that day, I had never heard of a buffet
supper, but, in retrospect, I realize that Linden and her guests
had an almost historic one that Monday night. Some of the
booths were cleaned out before it was time to herd the cus-
tomers into various niches and corners in order to place the
settees on the floor for the minstrel show. The Hall had a bal-
cony that had permanent benches and would seat seventy-five
persons. Usually, not more than twenty sat up there. That
evening we packed in one hundred and ten.

I must not give the impression that the opening was gay. It
was funereal and ominous. My mother and others were on j ins
and needles to see if Norman Partridge would come, after the
attack on him from the pulpit the day before. When Mr. Part-
ridge showed up, with his family and in-laws, they found other
matters to worry about. But none of them was more worried
than I was. Backstage, in the small drafty dressing rooms,
pantry and kitchen, with an overflow down in the coal cellar,
the members and associates of the Wenepoykin Bicycle Club
were blacking up and dressing. Among them was the most
promising of the end men, from Boston, who at rehearsals had
kept everyone in stitches: Charles Sumner Frothingham, III.
Not only did he play a diabolical banjo. He was to sing a solo,
"You're a good old engine, but you done broke down," and
I could not help wondering what would happen if, before we
got that far, the news we all were dreading, about Spike, had
been announced. In the olio, Frothingham's act was not so
topical. He impersonated a blackface dude, with the tradi-
tional lisp and broad "a," who had worked as a waiter in a
Harvard mess hall and was trying to train the cheering section
of the newly established Negro college down South.

"Now you'all, when we'unth team appeahth, we'unth mutht

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Church Fair

give three wouthing cheeahth, not tho boithterouth ath to be
obnothiuth, yet with prethithion."

Those are a few lines I still remember. The whole mono-
logue was a knockout.

Ordinarily I should not have taken such a load on my con-
science. I had the faculty of watching and relishing harmless
fiascoes with the best of them. But my mother was chairman
and my orchestra I thought of it as mine, although I was only
eleven years old had to sit between those kerosene footlights
and the crowd.

Les Wilson, who once had trod the boards with the Ben
Greet players, and now was a piano tuner and salesman who
lived on Lawrence Street, was the interlocutor, stage manager
and director of the minstrel show. He was a pompous little
chap, with a large head, bulbous nose, and short legs holding
up a normal-sized body. But he was quite a showman, and
knew crowd psychology better than I did. After a huddle with
Frothingham and Milly Thole, whom the Fair seemed to be
bringing together in no uncertain way, Wilson amplified the
rehearsed arrangements for Frothingham's coon song.

The Hall was jammed, aisles and all. If a modern fire chief
had glanced in, he would have fainted. The orchestra sailed
into the overture, "Smoky Mokes," but the start was as ragged
as a regatta. Actually, it was not until we reached Uncle
Reuben's chorus on the jew's-harp that we got together. The
curtain parted, one half as it should, and the other, after being
hauled with main force by a brace of volunteer stagehands.
Deacon Parker refrained from coughing that night, but little
Edna Prescott had swallowed a fish bone, and had to be carried
out, retching and shooting her chowder, which, because of the
crowded aisle, spattered more than a dozen of the customers.
Mr. Wing, from the piano, seeing my face, smiled, winked
and leaned over.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Weak stomach," he whispered, grinning broadly, without
missing a beat. "Or are we that bad?"

His philosophical attitude cheered me, and I picked the
guitar with more zest. I was to play a half-dozen different in-
struments before the week was over.

The next bit of audience participation came from the gal-
lery. You all know how the old-time minstrel shows were set
up, on the stage. The interlocutor, most elaborately dressed,
occupied a throne, stage-center, and around him sat the black-
face chorus, in tiers, so those in front did not obscure the
others. The Wenepoykin Club had found six good end men,
who sat near the wings, three on a side, with bone clappers,
harmonicas, banios, sweet-potato whistles, and tambourines.
The end men crack most of the jokes, using the interlocutor as
straight man, sing most of the solos and do most of the bur-
lesque or comedy routines. The trio on the left were: Roger,
the mail man; Packard, the lady-slayer; and William Daley, St.,
the only Negro comedian extant who had a rich Irish brogue.
The right wing was held down by Charles Sumner Frothing-
ham, III; Mrs. Dud Shultz, ne Big Julie Goan; and a little
man no one had noticed before, until he wistfully had pre-
sented himself at rehearsal. This dark horse among the min-
strels gave his name as Professor Marlowe, and then quite a few
of the performers remembered having seen him around the
blacksmith shop. Even fewer then recognized him as a part-
time barker they had seen at Austin and Stone's, in Scollay
Square.

Les Wilson had arranged the program so the numbers would
contrast with one another. After the opening chorus, Roger
Kaulbach, after a pantomime of trying to telephone the inter-
locutor, sang "Hello, My Baby," and warmed up the house.
His fellow end man, Mr. Daley, knew no coon songs and
seemed allergic to learning them, but he had a fine natural

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Church Fair

tenor voice, with all the Irish nostalgia in it and, as a gag, it
had been arranged for him to sing, black as coal: ''Ireland
must be heaven, for my mother came from there/'

Mr. Daley got no farther than that line when Pie-Face O'Day
and his cronies from the gallery began to yell and fight. All
the Irish were for enough along in liquor so that they did not
recognize, under the burnt cork, their fellow Irishman and
friend, Bill Daley. Dick Lanier, Ginger and a few of the cooler
heads tried to shush them, and instead provoked a free-for-all.
Arms, legs and heads tangled and the nest of outraged Irish
and those who had been drawn into the mtee rolled squeal-
ing, kicking, gouging and biting down the stairs, out the back
entrance and into the little railroad park, from which the
sound of it competed with the show for a while.

Still, the show was not going over. The harder the talent
worked, on the stage, the less resonance the audience seemed
to afford. The moment for young Frothingham's solo was get-
ting closer and closer, and the rumors I had heard that the
Trumbull boys were planning to rush the stage were discon-
certing. Not only on account of art for art's sake, but because
whoever rushed the stage had to go over the orchestra pit, in
which there were several valuable instruments, as well as mu-
sicians of both sexes, ranging in age from sixty to eleven.

While Big Julie was singing "The Old-Time Religion" with
a voluptuous shimmy as part of the accompaniment, the young
Harvard man slipped from the stage. Evidently he was going to
make a more elaborate entrance than most of the soloists did,
who simply rose from their places when summoned by the in-
terlocutor, and took the stage front and center.

As Big Julie finished, and before the scant applause died
down, Dawson Freeman, unblacked but jubilant, rushed on-
stage and silenced the bewildered audience by holding up his
hand.

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

"Ladies and gentlemen," Fred announced. Even the Rev.
K. Gregory Powys peered in from the wings. "I am overjoyed
to announce, and I knew each and every mother's son of you
will be as glad to hear, that Officer Clarence Spencer Dodge has
been declared by the attending physicians out of danger."

Everyone got up and started cheering, and most of the
women started to cry. Dawson checked them for another mo-
ment.

"The operation was entirely successful and the officer is now
fully conscious and has spoken with his wife. The prayers of
Linden have been answered."

Then Paavo was not a murderer. What else they might find
against him was trivial, after that. For an instant, I came about
as near believing in God as I ever did. The instant passed. I
reminded myself, in time, that God, if he existed, could have
rewritten the whole scene in advance, but I had a brief thrill,
as who did not who was then in Associate Hall. Fred, smiling
and waving, reluctantly went off-stage. We of the orchestra
struck the chord of G-major, one short, one long, and went into
the vamp for Frothingham's song. The interlocutor rose, and
to an audience that had been inspired and aroused in one split
second, announced that Mr. Banjo was going to sing "You're
a good old engine, but you done broke down."

Again the crowd stood up and yelled, and even my mother,
for the first time in days, laughed aloud. For Charles Sumner
Frothingham, III, the blackest member of a very black troupe,
came in wearing a cop's helmet and uniform, and holding a
large pewter club which bent, absurdly, whenever he leaned on
it or turned it in his hands, and which he deformed and
straightened as he sang, in a way that illustrated picaresquely
faint ribald implications of the lyrics, although he had dry-
cleaned them resolutely for the occasion.

It seemed to be fate's intention, that amid such general re-

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Church Fair

lief and rejoicing, my bashful and powerful Great-Uncle Lije
should be the fall guy. After I cannot tell you how much per-
suasion on the part of his male and female friends and rela-
tives, Lije had consented to be blacked up, to wear a long
curly wig with ringlets, to be introduced as Professor Samson,
and do a strong-man act. After the intermission, when the
olio was half over, Lije came onstage, to a torrent of applause
Our orchestra had Remick's folio for incidental music on the
stands, and turned to the appropriate numbers, for suspense
in dangerous acts. Lije picked up a standard anvil, raised it
high above his head, let it down behind his neck, straightened
his arms to the limit again and set it softly down on the stage,
without raising a sweat. Instead of making the stunts look hard,
honest Great-Uncle Lije was doing them with the greatest of
ease. He had to exert himself, however, to tear in two a Mont-
gomery Ward catalogue. He straightened out a horseshoe,
lifted both of the Clarke boys at once, and as a climax of his
performance, undertook to break a tennis ball with his hands,
by compression.

The stage manager, to give variety to Lije's act, had coached
him to do the tennis-ball-crushing routine in profile, turning
first to one side of the audience, then the other. I do not quite
know how to explain what occurred, except that the silence was
profound and the audience's attention highly concentrated.
The incidental music was suspended, so that we could come
in with full chords to swell the applause after Lije was suc-
cessful. I do not know whether it was caused by something he
had eaten, or by his anxiety because the tennis-ball trick was
the hardest of all, but he strained, turned, strained, grunted, re-
versed, his muscles swelled, his veins protruded. And then,
before the seams of the ball gave way, a sharp yet fuzzy report,
like the tearing of cloth, resounded through Associate Hall,
from the stage. Lije, in a panic, dropped the tennis ball and

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

plunged offstage, and the yells, shrieks, whoops and guffaws
shook the building. No one could help laughing, excepting a
few women who, trying to be prim, were all the more conspicu-
ous.

It was a full ten minutes before the show could proceed,
without Great-Uncle Lije, it goes without saying. He never
tried a feat of strength again, and only one man, who paid
dearly for his lack of caution, ever asked him to.

When the opening night was all over, and Mother, as com-
mittee chairman, with a few of her faithful helpers, was mak-
ing ready to let Tommy Craven lock up the Hall, I noticed she
was looking as troubled as over, while the rest of us were all
elated. The night's receipts were being counted, and the higher
they mounted, the more panic-stricken Mother became.

"Why, Rena. Two hundred and sixteen dollars . . . More?
That's impossible. What shall I do?" Mother said, to Mrs.
McNeir.

Usually, the Fair netted the church about twenty-five dollars
a night, when all expenses were paid.

Benjamin McNeir, Rena's husband, volunteered to walk
over with the cash to the Massasoit House, to ask the Admiral
to lock up the money in his safe. That relieved Mother's mind.
She would not have slept a wink with all that money in the
house. As it was, Rena McNeir was the wakeful one, since
Benjamin did not show up at home, after his errand, until half-
past three. Benjamin seldom got a chance at the Massasoit, and
made the best of it. My Uncle Reuben, who took Benjamin
home, increased his already stupendous unpopularity with his
friends' wives.

On Thursday evening, the night of the sferiotts concert,
which most of us feared secretly would be a frost, the enigmatic
little Professor Marlowe saved the occasion. His burnt cork
removed, his silver hair, cut long, and his expressive silver eye-

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Church Fair

brows, the hurt look around his mouth and his great glowing
eyes proclaimed him as an actor, and moreover, a tragedian.
The modern movies would have us believe that whenever good
fellows got together, in pioneer or olden days, some broken-
down actor would deliver the soliloquy from Hamlet. Not
Professor Marlowe. His big number was "The Ballad of Read-
ing Gaol."

Before staging his "Ballad," the intense little man, a stranger
to Linden, consulted with Mr. Wing, who put his purse at the
Professor's disposal for costumes and properties. So after Mrs.
Archer had sung "I know a place where the sun is like gold, and
the daffodils dance with spring," the stage lights were dimmed,
that is to say, half of them were blown out. Before the curtains
parted, the shuffling of feet and the murmuring of voices were
heard. As the stage was exposed, the audience saw a circle of
men (mostly bums from the blacksmith shop) in convict's
stripes, caps, and heavy hob-nailed boots, tramping around and
around in a circle, in lock step, one hand on the shoulder of
the man ahead, the other holding a tin cup by the handle.
Round they went, and as they trod more softly, the Professor,
in convict's garb, stepped out of line and into the spotlight,
baring his silver head. The martyred Wilde should have been
there.

The Professor scarcely looked up at the audience as he
began:

He did not wear his scarlet coat,

For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands

When they found him with the dead.

You could have heard a caterpillar drop.

I shall not regale you with an account of the Fair in toto,

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

but Friday evening, with the Tholes, was one I could never
forget. Their puppet play, which they had written and pre-
pared to use on the road, in the Sunday evening "concerts"
which were permitted in vaudeville houses, minus dance acts,
was entitled "The Prodigal Son." Every man, woman and
child in Linden was familiar with the Bible story, if a little
confused about the moral it conveyed. Before the play was
over, Mattie Freeman had to be helped out into the hallway,
laughing so hard that tears streamed down her cheeks; her
corset-strings gave way with a snap, and actually she could not
stand up, without support of two or three strong men.

Unquestionably, the puppet shows conceived by the Tholes
and their talented contemporaries were the forerunners of the
animated cartoons in Technicolor so popular now.

Heroic measures had been taken throughout the week to
replenish the stocks at the Fair, which were drained by such
an unexpected demand. By Saturday night, there was nothing
left for Dawson Freeman to auction off, and another of
Mother's advisers persuaded her to substitute a flapjack-eating
contest*

There were only three entries: Fat Clarke, Randy Clarke,
and Mrs. Loomis from the rooming house in the Square. I
would not dare to estimate the amount of money that was put
up, with the stakeholder, Admiral Quimby, at the Massasoit.
Jeff Lee was to officiate at the Associate Hall kitchen range,
measuring the batter for each flapjack, and allowing one spoon-
ful of pure maple syrup per cake.

This crowning event was the one that came nearest to being
a flop, but everyone was satisfied. When the two icemen and
the mountainous Juno, who together grossed a third of a ton,
got as far as their sixtieth flapjack apiece and were sweating
and blowing like porpoises, Dr. Moody put his foot down and
stopped the contest, refusing to be a party to triple man-

352

Church Fair

slaughter, so all bets were off. It was just as well, for after the
fiftieth round, some of the impressionable and dainty women
among the spectators were stifling screams as each mouthful
was swallowed.

Thus ended that memorable Congregational Fair, and
Mother slept soundly that night.

While she was sleeping, Charles Sumner Frothingham, III,
unfastened his Phi Beta Kappa key, at the Massasoit bar, and
bestowed it on Pie-Face O'Day.

353

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Professor and the Stonecutter

JT LANTAIN weeds spring up in a New England yard, ap-
pearing in one corner as fast as they are dug out of the grass
in another. So it was with Linden's wellspring of energy that
was cloaked under a deceptive mantle of inertia and tran-
quillity. If there were nothing doing south of the tracks, some-
thing broke out on Beach Street. During a dull few moments
in the Square, mild excitement would be brewing at Black
Ann's Corner. When there were no feuds in the Girls' Friendly
Society of the Episcopal Church, dissent was popping in the
Ladies' Social Circle. If all the ministers were at peace with
their flocks, then some overzealous patron of the Massasoit was
getting himself on the temporary black list by whacking at
snakes that were not there. The seasons brought comedy and
tragedy, and the coming events sometimes cast their shadows
before, and frequently did not. Many, many of the footprints
left on the sands of time by Linden folks were soon washed
away. One can safely say that Linden life was real, if not
earnest, and while the grave seemed to be the goal, there was
plenty of scrimmaging around the center of the field.

Everyone felt sorry when Paavo Wallenius was sentenced to
four years in the Charlestown State Prison for assaulting an
officer with a dangerous weapon. Spike Dodge was sorriest of
all. All the politicians, including Senator Mangini, tried to get
him off, but nothing could be done.

854

The Professor and the Stonecutter

Paavo, in the prison, worked steadily twisting rope, and be-
tween-times read Swedenborg and dreamed about Alice, who,
with Pehr and Ruth, was faithful about calling on visiting days.
The Finn seemed to have found, in his cell, the peace that
passeth all understanding. As long as Pehr had promised to
work every day, and only drink at night, the younger brother
was satisfied. Just what he expected, in connection with Alice
Townsend, it was impossible to understand. With so much
time on his hands, Paavo had scrambled the physical with the
metaphysical so intricately that no one hoped to untangle them
for him again. He had identified Sweet Alice with an angel
whose name, so she had told him, was Rhama, and both Rhama
and Alice were to meet him at the Last Judgment, hand in
hand, and would take their places on the right of the Throne.

Then, again, alone with Pehr, Paavo would begin to lecture
his brother on what one of them should do, if the other got
married, how they should stay together, as their mother had
wished, and all concerned would be safe and happy.

"I can't make him out,'* the warden said to Ruth one day,
apropos of the Finn.

"If ever you do, call me," Ruth said, heartily, but she was
worried, just the same, and so was Alice. Already they were
dreading the day when Paavo would be unrestrained again.
Both women, and Brother Pehr, although the latter never
talked about it, knew that Paavo was madly in love, and get-
ting farther from reality, day by day.

. Faithful to his promise to his brother, Pehr straightened
himself out, moved back into the house and shop, and worked,
all by himself, each day. Pehr was the one seen daily in Linden,
and whose lonely persistent figure, at work or in silence at
the bar, wrung their sympathetic hearts. But Pehr was as un-
approachable as he was proud and determined. No one knew
what to do for him, until one morning, the silver-haired Pro-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

fessor Marlowe, who, seedy and restless as a captive animal,
was pacing back and forth in front of the blacksmith shop,
registered the making of a decision, faced right, and walked
deliberately across Lynn Street to Pehr's stone yard, as if he
were going onstage.

"Good morning," the Professor said, in his sonorous, well-
modulated voice. "I trust I am not intruding."

"Gude morning. I'm busy," Pehr said, but not unkindly.

The Professor sat carefully on a blank gravestone of con-
venient height, as if he were stage-center and the audience sat
between them and the Saugus Branch embankment.

"You are fortunate, sir," the Professor said, weighing his
words, "to have an honorable profession which depends, not
on the caprice of scheming publicans and impresarios, and the
fickle public, but on the other hand is remunerative and health-
ful, eternal and dependable. No man looks at you askance.
No landlord dogs your footsteps like Uriah Heep."

"I knew two fellows, cousins, by name Heep," Pehr said po-
litely. "One was Irish fellow, the other worked on the rail-
road."

The Professor ignored the interruption, rose and struck an
attitude. "We followers of Thespis, alas, are not the darlings,
but the stepchildren of fate. One day we are smothered with
public acclaim, with laurel on our brows; the next, impov-
erished and despised; our services scorned, our triumphs for-
gotten."

Pehr, trying to catch the Professor's drift, was concentrating,
his chisel ready, his mallet poised. Across the street, a dozen
of the bums were watching covertly, wondering how it would
all end.

"Continue with your work," the Professor said. "Continue,
I beg of you, sir. I shall meditate."

The Professor sat down on the stone again, face toward the

356

The Professor and the Stonecutter

expanse of marsh, over which a thin restless mist was gathering.

"If you'll excuse me," Pehr said, and resumed carving the
granite.

A few minutes later, Ruth came over from the cottage with
a dish in her hands covered with a napkin.

"Hello, Pehr. *Lo Professor," Ruth said, and to Pehr: "I
brought you some gingerbread, for your dessert."

Pehr thanked her, shyly, and watched her as she carried her
gift into the house. He listened, guiltily, as if he expected an
outburst. He was not disappointed. Ruth strode out of the
house and up to Pehr, arms akimbo, trying to make him look
her in the eyes.

"What did you have for breakfast, you big chump?" she
demanded.

"I had some coffee," said Pehr, sheepishly. Miss Coffee was
the only thing on two feet that could buffalo him.

"Cold?" Ruth snapped.

"Brother used to make the fire," Pehr said. "For me, it's too
much trouble."

"Last night you ate at the Admiral's free lunch, I suppose,"
she went on.

"Like always," agreed Pehr.

"And what about today's lunch?"

"I'll read the paper," Pehr said. "I don't get hungry now."

The Professor rose. "I was about to suggest," he said, "that
while Mr. Wallenius's brother is, let us say, the guest of the
commonwealth, and unavoidably absent, that perhaps I might
be of service."

"You?" Ruth paid, in astonishment

"I am not unacquainted with the culinary art," said the
Professor.

"How much. . . ."Ruth began.

The little silver-haired actor looked pained. He held up his

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

hand, bowed his head, and shuddered in a way that would
have carried to the highest balcony.

"Madam. Prate not of filthy ducats. Nothing was farther
from my mind. To share the repast I had prepared, that would
be within the bounds of fellowship. But honorariums! Fees!
Emoluments! Fah!" The Professor raised his head while Ruth
apologized.

"I'll help you clean up the dump/' she said. Then, to Pehr:
"Keep right on working, squarehead. I've got another job for
you, the minute you get done. A stone porch in Swampscott."

The Professor looked at Pehr admiringly. "I have always
envied those who have an aptitude for work. Toil brings its
own relief, methinks."

The little old man and Ruth entered the shop, and hurried
through into the living rooms behind. They paused, gasped
and looked at each other.

"Confusion now hath made his masterpiece," the Professor
said.

Together they set to work, and before many minutes had
passed, Ruth was wondering why she had passed that little man
and overlooked him so many times. He was humming softly
and happily, bringing order out of chaos in a gentle, quite
delicate way.

"A diamond in the rough. An enfant terriblel" the Profes-
sor exclaimed, softly, with an indulgent shrug toward the yard
where Pehr was working.

Ruth saw the fishman coming along Salem Street and, stand-
Ing in the doorway, bellowed and beckoned. A little later, Mr.
Stowe pulled up his cart in front of the doorway. The Pro-
fessor, now wearing an apron tied up under his armpits, and
An improvised dust cap fashioned from a napkin, went out to
the tail of the cart, cocking his noble head from side to side
as he looked over the fish display. Ruth watched, amused and

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The Professor and the Stonecutter

fascinated. The bums across the street were moving like hens
in a crate, trying to miss nothing of the spectacle, but awed by
the presence of big Ruth and the terrible Finn.

The Professor built a fire in the range, grilled the mackerel
he had selected, boiled some beets and baked some potatoes,
made coffee, using an eggshell to settle the grounds, and hur-
ried over to Weeks' barn to get fresh cream and whip it for the
gingerbread.

"I'll be damned," was all Ruth could say. She stayed for
lunch, and while Pehr worked that afternoon, the Professor
stretched himself luxuriously on Paavo's empty bunk, dozing,
reading from his pocket Shakespeare, and rehearsing a few
recitations he had delivered in former years, as he expressed
it, "with phenomenal success." When it came time for the six
o'clock blast, he put on his hat and patched frock coat and
went out into the yard, standing beside Pehr as if the spectacle
they were about to witness was on a par with the attack on Fort
Sumter or the stoning of the woman taken in adultery.

The warning whistle blew, the men with red flags hurried
along the car tracks, to warn vehicles and pedestrians. High
on the face of the ledge, the granite pattern wavered, rose in
fragments, disintegrated into dust, slid and plummeted down
to the level of the pit. Black smoke, shot with white and sul-
phur, billowed and churned. Around them dropped flying
chips of stone.

"I think we better get a drink," Pehr said.

"If I were in funds. . . ." the Professor said, regretfully.

Til pay," Pehr said.

"That I could not countenance," said the Professor. "While
I have lost much and suffered cruel reverses, I am not a leech."

Pehr shrugged. He had done his best, and was not good at
persuasion. The Professor hastily changed his tone.

"Nevertheless and notwithstanding," he said, "I know from

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

sad experience how bleak it is to drink alone. And bleaker still,
to drink not at all. Perhaps our good host, Admiral Quimby,,
could find it in his heart to extend me temporary credit. . . .*"

By that time he was walking along at Pehr's side, across the
fields toward the Massasoit. Thereafter, he and Pehr were in-
separable, and Linden was thankful for having been relieved
of the spectacle of Pehr's loneliness.

It was incredible how the little actor bloomed, with his
new feeling of comradeship and security. He kept house for
Pehr, and it was a toss-up as to which one took the other home
at midnight. Professor Marlowe held the bottle-companions
spellbound with the Porter's soliloquy from Macbeth, whole
scenes from Lear, in which he was, in turn, the fool, the king,
and the treacherous daughters. The Professor's "Barbara
Frietchie" could not have been excelled by the original cast.
He got his trunk out of hock, and moved it into Pehr's house.
In it were odds and ends that fascinated Ruth and Alice when-
ever they spent an afternoon with the Professor.

Odd bits of costumes or properties were among the Profes-
sor's relics, along with yellowed theatre programs, from the
West Coast, and the South, and along the Mississippi and the
Ohio rivers. The little actor had been around, but seemed to
have missed New York, Chicago and London. He had a visored
Confederate cap from some Civil War play. He borrowed a
sunbonnet from Alice. When anything was done at the Mas-
sasoit, it was done thoroughly and well, so Elbridge Gerry, at
the Admiral's request, spent hours of an afternoon taking the
duck shot from some shotgun shells. So that when, in the course
of the Professor's recitation, the rebel soldiers fired and shat-
tered Barbara's flagstaff, the old actor, with the visored cap on
his head, could fire the gun, filling the barroom with thun-
derous sound and smoke, and startling the daylights out of any

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The Professor and the Stonecutter

newcomer who chanced to be present. "Barbara Frietchie,"
complete with sunbonnet, flag and pole, Stonewall Jackson,
and the shotgun, became one of the Massasoit's features, and
the quality of it, along with the fame of Jeff's shore dinners,
was praised from the Berkshires to the tip of Cape Ann, and
farther Down East than Bangor, Maine.

The early fall in Linden began the magic season when the
weather was predictable for a while, bright enough to be en-
couraging, sharp enough to be stimulating, not too windy or
too calm, days not long enough to be wearisome, nights not
too short and inadequate. Perhaps too much has been written
about New England and the autumn leaves, perhaps not
enough. It is useless to pretend that one has seen color, unless
one has witnessed that startling and progressive transformation
of the orchards, groves and hillsides. It was as if some divine
hand had lifted out the blue from all the warm and radiant
hues, so that the sky was pure, aloft, and the earth displayed all
vegetable and mineral tints and shades, vivid and subtle, stark
and sensitive, rigid and moving, buff and coral, russet and
sienna, ochre, chrome, purple and indigo, flame, ruby, ver-
milion, scarlet, black and gold.

One autumn morning none of the bums at the Linden black-
smith shop on Lynn Street was saying much, and the devil
knows what they were seeing, of the larger perspective. Pehr
was working in his yard, the loafers were playing mumblety-
peg. Their faces were twisted between glee and depravity when,
with suppressed grimaces and lewd remarks, sotto voce, they
saw the Professor, wearing an apron and a boudoir cap he had
crocheted himself, emerge with a well-loaded basket to hang
Pehr's clothes on the line, and his own, more flimsy and re-
fined. They fluttered, those damp garments, white and colored,
as if cloth colors in rowboats had sighted the unexplored con-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

tinent of colors on the northern hills and were signalling in
a puny way, to see if the mainland were inhabited.

Soon all hands were intrigued by the approach of a light
spring wagon, drawn by a sorrel horse, and containing three
men strange to Linden. The rig pulled up, not at Pehr's stone
yard or the blacksmith shop, but alongside a swampy vacant
field that stretched from the Finns' place toward Lawrence
Street. The three men got out and unloaded wooden cases con-
taining surveyors' instruments, a transit, a level, a chain and
a rod.

The gang around the blacksmith shop watched the sur-
veyors skeptically, not being able to guess what anybody would
want with that particular lot. The Finns, next door, had built
up theirs on a foundation of tin cans and ashes, covered with
crushed stone, sand and loam, so that it stood four feet higher
than the neighboring ground. The Linden boys began to as-
semble, attracted by the mysterious instruments and the
cryptic signals and measurements the surveyors made. The sur-
veyors replied good-naturedly but noncommittally to all ques-
tions, enjoying the avid curiosity and conjecture their work
inspired. Before the day was over, they had driven corner stakes
south of the Finns' southern boundary line to a depth of one
hundred and fifty feet on a frontage of one hundred feet.

My Uncle Reuben threw a scare into Bart and the black-
smith shop crowd by saying that the new lot was being bought
by the Salvation Army, which intended to put up a meeting
house and save the whole gang.

Ginger McSweeney, who spent long periods of waiting on
the turnout nearby, assured the bums that Mother Shannon,
from Saugus, was going to put up a branch cat-house, to give
her Saugus trollops a change of scenery.

Mr. Newcomb, of the Improvement Association, insisted
that the land did not belong to any member of the Associar

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The Professor and the Stonecutter

tion, but to a party named Knowland, John Jacob Knowland,
who lived in Winthrop. The officers of the Association had
been intending to get in touch with him, but had procras-
tinated because the land was unpromising.

"Jacob, eh?" asked the Admiral, significantly. "A Jew,
maybe?"

"John Knowland doesn't sound Jewish," Mr. Newcomb
said, but he was troubled, just the same.

He was more troubled after the investigator for the Asso-
ciation reported that while Knowland had been an Aryan
while he lived, he was dead, and that his heirs had recently
sold the entire strip, from the Finns' down to Lawrence Street,
to Senator Mangini. An emergency meeting was called, and
there were rather sharp recriminations. Someone had slipped
up badly. The Jewish question in Linden had come to public
notice again, when the Reverend K. Gregory Powys was eased
out of his pulpit, having stated in the press that he was cate-
gorically opposed to racial discrimination, as being exactly
contrary to the teachings of Christ.

My Uncle Reuben, the Admiral and Mr. Wing, all members
of the Association, took the floor at the emergency meeting
and spoke, not unkindly, but indignantly, reproaching the
committee for a lapse that might well cost Linden its one
hundred percent non-Jewishness. After the meeting, the trio
got into the Admiral's rig and drove southeastward across the
marshes.

At the bar that evening, Pehr and the Professor did not
have a dull moment. The regulars insisted that they knew the
secret of who their new neighbors would be. This, they both
denied.

A few days after, a string of six dumpcarts drove to Lynn
Street, from Cliftondale, loaded with empty cans and ashes,
and started filling in the swampy ground. The drivers had been

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

hired to load the dumpcarts from the Clif tondale town dump,
and spread the ashes between the stakes on the Lynn Street
property. That was all they could say.

Day after day, dumpcarts filled with ashes drove in, loaded,
the tailboard was let down and the body of the cart tipped
backwards. The whoosh and thud of falling ashes and the rattle
of cans were accompanied by a cloud of dust that drifted across
Lynn Street and dimmed the crowd of loafers for a while.

By the time the snow fell, the new lot had been brought up
to the level of the Finns' land, and the ashes had been covered
with a layer of crushed stone from the quarry nearby.

But when, from the Atlantic, the first northeaster blew, cov-
ering Linden with a blanket of snow, all construction and local
animosities were suspended. In winter, it was hard for the
most frantic xenophobes to fret about something that could
not happen before spring.

864

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Nomads and Dilettantes and Music

OUR yard was a small one, about sixty feet by one hundred,
but because in those days there were few houses to obstruct
the view, it seemed as if all of us had unlimited space. Weeks'
field lay in front of our porch, and beyond it, the woods. By
turning east by north, we could see all the way to the ocean.
I had brought woodbine and ferns from the woods and trans-
planted them, training the vines on a trellis to shade the front
doorway and setting out the ferns in shady corners where the
grass did not flourish for lack of sun. Woodbine is one of the
first vines to show the autumn colors, and is one of the most
brilliant, hardy and rapid of growth. Around the linden tree
that had been planted to reconcile me, grew tall English
violets. Farther back, Mother had a bed of cinnamon pinks,
pure white, and rose bushes marked the borders between our
yard and the adjoining ones. We had a small fir balsam tree in
the back that stubbornly refused either to grow more than ten
feet high or to perish. The struggle went on a decade or more
and when the balsam gave up, it died a lingering death through
five or six more years. In a town and a country made for trees,
that stunted fir of ours was the least promising that could be
found, and still I would never cut it down.

From the damp days of spring, before all the patches of
snow had left the woods, until the leaves turned and were
blown from their branches, Linden was drenched and sur-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

rounded with flowers. In the woods, anemones, purple, white
and yellow violets, lady's-slippers, columbines, crocuses, gen-
tians, and jacks-in-the-pulpit grew in silence; rich and delicate
points and color tones, alternately, in profound shade and
dazzling sunshine, enlivening without insistence the greenness
that tinged the atmosphere, from treetops to rocks and black
soil, and the carpets of pine needles. The wild fruit trees, apple,
plum, and cherry, all had their time to bloom and suddenly
from unnoticed corners asserted in blossoms their exquisite
shapes, which at other seasons were blended into the back-
ground. The berry bushes flowered, bore fruit, then subsided:
wild blackberries, raspberries, checkerberries flat on the rocks,
elderberries with heavy drunken fragrance, huckleberries, wild
strawberries, and barberries, Chinese vermilion. It was enough
to see them and touch them, without fretting too much about
their names.

In the swamps stood blue, white and yellow fleur-de-lys, cat-
o'-nine-tails, skunk cabbages, and the red-winged blackbirds
and bobolinks swayed. The bobolink, among all the reed birds,
had an undeserved lack of popularity with New England boys,
because of the jingles William Cullen Bryant had written,
under the title: "Robert of Lincoln."

Merrily swinging on briar and weed,
Near to the nest of his little dame,
Over the mountain-side or mead,
Robert of Lincoln is telling his name:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Spink, spank, spink.

After having been forced to memorize eight stanzas of that
kind of eyewash, Linden schoolboys who at heart were sound
and kind, would start out hunting bobolinks with slingshots,

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Nomads and Dilettantes and Music

being unable to get at the bard directly. It was a pity, on both
counts.

I have often wished that the bobolinks had been able to
quote to Mr. Bryant and his devotees a line from "The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," by T. S. Eliot, another New Eng-
land poet, but a truly gifted one. The line is:

That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.

On the Linden ponds, frogs' eggs, turtles, pond lilies with
flat leaves, not shaped like plates, or hearts or anything else
in nature: shaped like leaves. One could feel a rising excite-
ment, as if something wonderful were about to happen, just
thinking of the shapes of leaves, the oaks, maples, elms, sassa-
fras, birch, beech, poplar, willows, horse chestnuts.

In summer, milkweed and Queen Ann's lace, the meadows
and fields were swept and steeped with color. Buttercups,
daisies, dandelions; and later, goldenrod and wild asters. Sun-
flowers against the barns, wild roses along the stone walls. It
did not seem possible that Linden had room for so many. One
could walk the length of Beach Street in ten minutes, but not
without seeing thistles and tansy at the corner, water lilies
along the creek, white and yellow in profusion all over Weeks'
field, and Partridge's field, besides the flower beds in all the
front yards.

When the sap started running, a few of us went to Sugar
Pond with jackknives and lard pails. The ice between the
sugar maples would hold sometimes, and other times, not,
but if we got wet feet, or got in up to our waists, we simply built
a fire and dried ourselves and our clothes. From willow
branches, easily whittled into shape and bored with a spike
we heated for the purpose, spigots were made, and holes were

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

bored in the maple trees, a few feet from their base, with a
one-inch bit and brace. The lard pails were hung on the
spigots, and each day we went back to collect and store the
sap. I do not know to this day who owned those miles of woods,
or the marshlands. The question never was raised. Each man,
in Linden, had a vast estate. He was important He was lord
of all he surveyed. Shapes, hues, patterns, odors or colors were
spread over immeasurable areas for him.

We have visited briefly a few of the houses in the Irish and
Italian colony of Linden, Mario Bacigalupo's and Tom Bag-
ley's. The Irish outnumbered the Italians at least fifty to one,
and made up about one-quarter of Linden's population. Be-
hind their houses were level fields, rather soggy underfoot, and
a piggery, not a model one like the pork packer's in Revere,
but a porcine circle of Hell where pig souls wallowed in mire,
got only the inferior grades of Linden swill, from the poorer
houses, and in revenge for their shabby treatment, sent out
clouds and quintessences of stink that was so vile it was also
comical. One inhaled it, shuddered, and laughed like a loon.
A cacophony of olfactory sensations passed over Linden when
the wind blew from the south, but some of the Linden Irish
near the border could smell it when there was no wind at all.
Nothing could be done about it, because the piggery was tech-
nically a remote part of the township of Everett, which cared
not a tinker's damn whether Linden stank or not.

Between the Irish houses and Holy Cross Cemetery stood
a detached grove of trees where each year a band of Gypsies
camped. Why the Gypsies chose that spot, with so many miles
of better woods available to them, I never understood, or
asked. But I learned, in talking with them and watching them,
quite a few things about Gypsies, why they live as they do,
what they like, what they avoid, and what leaves them indif-

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Nomads and Dilettantes and Music

ferent. I think, like the actors on a Chinese stage, they "make
their own scene" with themselves, their trappings, and their
costumes. They are not more sensitive than other people to the
beauties and wonders of nature. In ways they are less so. What
they want is self-determination and lack of restraint from the
outside. Actually, the discipline in the tribe of Gypsies that
camped in Linden was stricter than any other discipline in the
town.

I do not mean that the leader of the Gypsies was harsh or
cruel, that he cracked his blacksnake whip and, like Ben Bolt,
caused the Gypsy girls to tremble at his frown. He was a pleas-
ant, easygoing man, large, tall, and handsome, in spite of
smallpox scars, and his name was Andreas. By outsiders, he was
addressed as Andy. His wife was broad and capable, with a
thrilling husky voice. Her name was Marie.

Before any of the Gypsy women left camp to go to Everett,
Maplewood or Linden, they checked with Andreas or Marie
for permission. The leaders liked to know where all their
tribesmen were and what was going on. Neither Packard nor
Dick Lanier, nor any of the Linden wolves could ever get close
to one of the Gypsy girls, or talk with her alone. This the
young men regretted infinitely, but stopped trying, after years
and years.

The girls were handsome, in a dark, mysterious way, with
flashing eyes and white teeth, and a dangerous smile. They
seemed to enjoy flirting, but that was the end of it. This band
of Gypsies was so clean that cleanliness seemed sometimes to be
their principal occupation. There were two tents set apart as
bathing tents, one for women and young children, the other
for men. They were continually in use. The Gypsies built fires
in the open, heated stones among the coals, and used the hot
stones to heat their bath water. They wore gay colored scarfs,

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

shawls, bodices and skirts, with dozens of petticoats, long stock-
ings and slippers. All of these articles of clothing, and others
more intimate, like long ruffled drawers and complicated un-
derwear, not on the modern dainty side, were continually
being washed. The men's clothes were washable, too. The
Gypsies were traders. The men traded horses, saddles, har-
nesses, horse blankets, and Gypsy salve and liniment that my
two sporting relatives, Lawyer Birch and Uncle Luther, swore
by. The women traded or sold colored cloth, scarfs and shawls,
peasant jewelry and ornamental slippers.

I introduced Ruth and Alice to Marie, the head Gypsy's
wife, and they bought out the tribal supply of wrought silver
bangles, clasps and bracelets, and many of the gay colored
scarfs. After the first season, Ruth made an arrangement with
Marie to buy all the jewelry the tribe could collect in the
winter, but when the Gypsies arrived at the grove, the sale was
conducted without vulgar haste. Each little article had to be
displayed and admired, offered and withdrawn, and the bar-
gaining took days and weeks which were a joy to us and to
them.

Everyone else in Linden was sure that Ruth had gone crazy,
and she did not advertise the fact that she and Alice each
winter held a private exhibition in a swanky New York hotel
and made such a handsome profit that invariably they would
be ashamed to keep it all, and would buy extravagant presents
for the Gypsy women in order to even things up. The whole
relationship was warm and lovely, filled with mutual esteem
and friendliness.

Andreas never got the worst of a horse trade, but he was
firm about his technique. If a man had a horse to trade, or
wanted to buy one, Andreas would ask him if he "knew about'*
horses. Should the man admit that he did not, Andreas would
not make a deal unless his customer brought into the trans-

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Nomads and Dilettantes and Music

action a non-Gypsy who was willing to say that he did know
about horses.

"A Gypsy will not cheat an ignorant man/' he said, gravely.

It was in the Gypsy season that Mr. Wing was happiest, and'
our common liking for the nomads brought us into close
friendship, with music as another bond.

I got my first ideas of leisure and elegance from Mr. Wing.
He was a gentleman, at all times of day and night, in every
season. He was never hasty, and never dull. He never had pon-
derous reasons for doing, or not doing this or that, and moral
considerations to him were not like Indian clubs or dumb-
bells with which to exercise his conscience. Right and wrong
were matters of politeness or rudeness with him, or questions
of taste,

"De gustibus non est disputandum" was a favoritie motto
of Charley Archer's, but Mr. Wing always remarked that taste
was one of the things worth thinking about.

"Why don't you ever stir off that broad beam-end of yours
and do a .day's work?" Uncle Reuben asked Mr. Wing one
afternoon.

"I have money," replied Mr. Wing, calmly, blowing a ring
of lavender cigar smoke.

The better I got to know Mr. Wing, the more money I
thought he had. His investments were in real estate and some
magic documents extant in those days known as "gilt-edged
bonds/'

"Elliot/' Mr. Wing said to me one day, while his deft man,
Pfeiffer, was giving his topcoat a. final whisk before holding it
exactly at the most convenient angle and handing Mr. Wing
his pigskin gloves, "if ever I had had to work for a living, you
would find me hanging around with the boys at the black-
smith shop/'

That worried me a little, because I had been trying to decide

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

what, if anything, I could ever do for a living, and how I could
get some apartments and enough bonds to live as Mr. Wing
did.

"You could play the piano," I suggested.

"You are not old enough yet to know where," he said, but
I knew what he meant. Since Mr, Wing was so unpretentious
himself, I did not let on that I knew, for I thought it would
annoy him if he thought I was precocious.

The patience and consideration with which Mr. Wing
spared Pfeiffer any wear and tear, during the valet's periodical
drunks was equalled only by Pfeiffer's solicitude for Mr. Wing
between lapses.

"You can live anywhere you want to. What made you hit
on Linden?" the Admiral asked one day.

"If I lived in the city, I should become jaded," said Mr.
Wing, thoughtfully. "I would not be able to relish to the full
my visits to New York and London."

Mr. Wing spoke of London rather wistfully, and every other
summer he went there, on a Cunard liner, taking with him one
or the other.of his girls. Mr. Wing was fastidious when it came
to women, and was fond of only two: a petite and serious bru-
nette named Consuelo Nuera, who taught in a Boston art
school; and an ample blonde named Julieta Van Lennep, who
ran a millinery business. There was no dissembling. The girls
knew and seemed to like each other, but they never came to see
Mr. Wing together. They visited him in Linden on alternate
weeks, on Wednesday or Thursday.

"A man needs a good solid woman after one of those soulful
and sorrowful kind," Hal Kingsland remarked, when he saw
Mr. Wing and Julieta out driving.

Someone said that Mr. Wing had an understanding with
both his women that they were never to ask him outright for
anything, and that because Miss Van Lennep forgot herself

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Nomads and Dilettantes and Music

and coaxed him to take her to Europe one summer, Miss Nuera
was the one who made the voyage. This brought Pat Finley,
the crossing tender, to the verge of a nervous breakdown. Pat,
absorbed for years in the Frank Meniwell triangle, involving
Elsie the blonde and the dark Inza Burrage, had identified Mr.
Wing's two girls with the dime-novel rival heroines. Pat was
such a passionate advocate of the big Dutch girl that he would
growl like a terrier, and mutter to himself whenever he set
eyes on the trim, dark Consuelo, who, secretly, was my can-
didate.

When the Gypsies were camped off Eastern Avenue, I would
call at Mr. Wing's flat so that we could walk up to the camp
together, to hear the Gypsies play and sing.

Many of the high spots in my haphazard life have occurred
when I first heard a new kind of folk music, new to me, that
is to say. Before my father died, he took me to Powderhorn
Hill at sunset one day, to hear a brass band. The sound of those
instruments and the glint of the setting sun on the bass horns
and the buttons of the uniforms excited me to such a point
that I ran a high fever that night, and could not sleep. I was
then in my third year. Five or six years later, when I heard the
Gypsies playing, on an evening in summer, I thought I should
burst. I could not breathe or move or think. I wanted to run
around in circles, or fly. I could not believe what I was hear-
ing. Those dark exotic men and women plunged into their
music as if it were surf, and stayed there until its ebb left them
stranded again.

Andreas himself played a set of pipes of Pan. One of his
cousins played the guitar. Another Gypsy called Zoltan played
first violin; another played a strange kind of stringed instru-
ment like a mandolin; a very old man with white hair played
the cymbalum, with hammers that flew and bounced like drops
of rain on a puddle. Marie and some of the girls danced and

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

sang, in a language I did not understand, in words, but under-
stood too well, in feeling.

"What's wrong with you?" my mother would ask, when I
was suffering a dazed reaction. "You've been with those Gyp-
sies again/' She was afraid that intense experiences were not
good for me, that they would unhinge what little practicality
I had.

Wild songsl Passionate sounds! The Gypsies quietly went
crazy, stopped and started unexpectedly, shaking the music as
a terrier shakes a rat, brewing storms and calms; and wherever
they went with their music, they carried me with them. Mr.
Wing's appreciation was not as naive or abandoned as mine. He
enjoyed the music as he savoured his fine wines and cigars, with
exact discrimination.

Some of the simpler melodies, and most of the poignant har-
monies I was able to remember, and reproduce in a lesser way
on the zither or the piano at home. I can hear them today, as
I write, and see the Gypsy colors, the hues of eggplant and red
and green peppers, tomatoes, summer squash. The Gypsies per-
formed for money, infrequently, but in camp they liked to
sing and play, and the only folks from Linden they liked to
have listening were Ruth Coffee, Mr. Wing, Bill Daley, Senior
and Junior, Uncle Reuben, Mario Bacigalupo, Olympia Di
Brazzio, Professor Marlowe, Pehr, and me. Others came and
stood at the edge of the grove, but they were inattentive and
made fun of the clothes and the tents, and the outdoor cooking.

At all times of the day the Gypsy women seemed to be cook-
ing, and the Gypsy children, instead of playing games, were
usually at work, learning to cook or mend or train the horses
and take care of them. The men did relatively little, but liked
to watch what was going on, to advise and correct the efforts
of the women and children. All transactions with outsiders the
men, or older women, conducted.

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Nomads and Dilettantes and Music

Andreas had a distaste for law and authority that was deep-
rooted and inwardly violent. Neither he nor any of his tribe
got into trouble in Linden, but in Boston one winter he was
arrested, and had not only to pay a fine but modify his ways.
A Boston cop, walking his beat on Temple Street, up the wrong
side of Beacon Hill between the State House and the North
Station, was startled to see, one winter morning, the head of
a horse, which was snorting and blowing out his frosty breath
from an open third-floor window. Andreas and his Gypsies had
not travelled south that year, with the birds, but had holed in,
for some reason, in a few cheap rooms in the North End slums
of Boston, had led their favorite horses up the wooden flights
of stairs and stabled them in the smaller rooms.

The Gypsies did not like the cold. When the nights in Lin-
den began to get chilly, Andreas moved them on. I did not
want to be a Gypsy, or to go along with them, but I admired
them.

When, before and during World War II, I heard of the un-
speakable brutalities of the Nazis toward the Gypsies in
Europe, I thought of Andreas, Marie and their band, and
hoped they were on the safe side of the ocean. Hitler's insane
jealousy of the Jews because of their intelligence was matched
by his hatred of Gypsies, who, of all men who speak about
freedom, need most to be free. They cannot exist otherwise,
never could, and never wilL It has occurred to me that while
the Americans I then knew in Linden have scattered to the
four winds, that band of Gypsies, those who then were chil-
dren, are probably together somewhere right now. What is
permanence? Which ones of us are nomads?

A word more about Mr. Wing, from his disciple. I did not
start drinking heavily until after I was fifteen years old, and
have enjoyed it ever since. Much of the etiquette I learned

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

from observing my old friend, whose manners were compar-
able with Kreisler's mastery of the violin.

"Gentlemen," he would say as he approached the bar, "let
us match for the honor of paying."

"One never discusses in daylight the indiscretions of the
night before." That was another of his maxims.

Let us hope that in our postwar world, now somewhat
amorphous and fluid, we shall find room for men like Mr. Wing
who do nothing useful except to enjoy themselves in a civilized
way. Their example is instructive and inspiring to those who
work hard, in the hope of having more leisure. Without them,
the beneficiaries of improved social justice and economic
equality would have to learn through trial and error what the
gay old parties of darker ages had raised to the level of high
art.

376

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

ff The Wind Blows the Water
White and Black"

IN COMPARING American life today with that of the
early nineteen hundreds, without assuming that change is
necessarily progress, or the contrary, which is equally unten-
able, the resemblances are more striking than the differences.
One is inclined toward the conclusion that history is like the
ocean, replenished constantly from above and all sides. If it gets
saltier and shrinks, the rate of diminution is so slow as to be
negligible, from the human standpoint. Our civilization does
not hop from floe to floe, like Eliza crossing the ice, with the
bloodhounds of evil in pursuit and salvation on the shore
ahead. It is all of a piece, like Einstein's continuum of time
and space an unfinished mess or masterpiece.

Not long ago, John L. Lewis called off the most recent
anthracite coal strike, which I weathered in California, breath-
ing balmy air through open windows and enjoying the fra-
grance of full-blown roses from the yard. The coal strike of
1902, which marked the meteoric rise to public favor of Teddy
Roosevelt, overtook our family in Linden, on which also
descended, via the bleak marshlands, the first blizzards of
one of the hardest winters that rugged little precinct ever saw.

For the Pauls, that was a grim period. Grandmother Dowsett
had died that summer, and in cutting the rind of a squash to

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

make pies for Thanksgiving, for Leslie and me she did not
care for them my mother knocked a tiny bit of skin from the
thumb of her right hand. A few days later she got a severe cold.
Nearly everyone had a series of colds from fall to spring in
Linden. But this one made Mother so ill that she had to stay
in bed. That, with the housework and the meals and the fires
and the mending that had to be done, was unheard of.

A few days later, she gave in, and consented to have the
doctor called. He was bewildered about her temperature,
which was high at one time, and below normal the next. On
this third call, Mother took her swollen right hand from under
the covers, and the doctor gasped and hit the ceiling. No one
from Cape Ann, who had handled thousands of lobsters and
all kinds of spiny fish, paid much attention to a sore and swol-
len hand those days. Mother was astonished to find that the
slight injury to her thumb had become infected and that she
ivas suffering from what was called "blood poisoning."

From then on until after the first of the year, the daily and
nightly life at 63 Beach Street was tinged with nightmare quali-
ties that inexorably took possession of our minds and surround-
ings. The doctor came twice daily, then two doctors came
several times daily. Mother was moved downstairs in the sit-
ting room. There was one operation, then two. Then I lost
count of operations. I could only see Mother trying not to
scream, then screaming, then unable to scream, as her smooth
right arm was punctured, ripped, sliced and drained, until it
bore no resemblance to anything human, and carbolic acid
mixed with the smoke from kerosene lamps, and hovering
death were all the smells that remained.

Leslie, with his unfailing gift for timing, went down with
what they called "quinsy" sore throat, an acute form of ton-
silitis most painful and dangerous. He was put to bed upstairs

378

"The Wind Blows the Water White and Black"

in the guest room, that usually was not heated in winter. It
was not heated very much that winter, either. Linden had no
coal. It was not a question of price, although we could not
have paid a high one. The coal bins of J. J. Markham were
empty, for the only time anyone could remember. He had
put in his orders, but they had not yet been filled. The strike
was over some time in October, but Linden being where it
was, and what it was, Precinct 2 of Ward 6 got its first dabs of
coal some time late in February.

Aunt Emma Noble, from Gloucester, came to us from the
Cape to take charge. She brought with her, unknowingly, a bad
case of German measles, and was put to bed in Charles' room,
which was empty because Charles was in Philadelphia, and
was above the kitchen, so the temperature was not as far below
zero as it was in my room next door.

We had a trained nurse, Helen Gordon, in attendance,
another of the women I have always deeply loved, and she
faded away from utility like a delicate angel, and was put to
bed with tonsilitis in what had been the dining room.

On the night of the most radical of the eleven operations,
Mrs. Graydon, who had seen us through five or six operations
before, came to help the doctors, and was holding the kerosene
lamp so they could see better what they were doing and un-
doing, and I, the only member of the Paul family on my feet,
saw the lamp waver, Mrs. Graydon turn the color of ashes and
sway, and caught the burning lamp as she thudded to the floor,
and the surgeon swore under his breath, and, from ever so far
away, it seemed, Mother let out the echo of a scream, under
chloroform.

I have before me, as I write, the chart kept by Miss Gordon.
Up to 105, down to 97, that jagged line I had tried to hold
steady by the force of will and desperation. It terrifies me now
more than it did then, because then I was refusing, during

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

every waking moment, to admit that it would be possible for
my mother to die.

Dawson Freeman shovelled what bituminous coal he had in
his cellar into a cart, and had it dumped in our cellar, and
Rena McNeir, one of Mother's best friends, showed me how
to use it in our stove and furnace. Meanwhile, Dawson and his
large family, and all our anxious neighbors, who brought in
our meals, wore heavy overcoats, mittens and mufflers in their
unheated houses.

Charles got home on Christmas Day, when that chart eased
up from its vicious fluctuation between 105 degrees and 95,
and only hit 10314. A week later, it was wavering around
normal, and each microscopic detail of living: minutes, hours,
forenoons, afternoons and evenings had taken on high lights
and colors, and the snow was whiter and the bare trees blacker,
and one could hear each little sound, and no screaming, and
the bituminous coal dust choked up the grates and warped the
stove linings, but who cared.

Mother's hand and right forearm, after she was "out of
danger" (fatuous phrase) looked as grotesque and useless as
it had in the course of the eleven operations. It seems that my
mother had talked with the doctors, who wanted, in order to
save her, to amputate her arm, below the shoulder, and that
she had told them she would continue living, through no mat-
ter how many operations, and had not agreed to the unan-
swerable one.

For months she could not use her right hand at all, and on
baking days, I loaned her my hands in the kitchen and learned
how to follow exact instructions. I began to think of cooking
the way I formerly had thought about painting, the blending
of colors and textures, the application of heat, to produce an
aesthetic effect, in the realm of taste instead of sound or color.
Mother learned to write with her left hand, and did so for two

380

"The Wind Blows the Water White and Black"

or three years, while massaging and manipulating her right.
She would not give in, and within five years had a seventy per-
cent use of the injured hand.

Between the time I was three and five years old, Mother
taught me most of what children were supposed to learn in
the grammar school. I was an uneasy child and liked to be
learning something. So I entered school equipped with arith-
metic, reading, writing, spelling, as much grammar as I know
now, and a fair idea of geography. Grandmother Dowsett
talked Mother out of attempting to teach me history, insisting
there was no such thing, on paper. I have always been thankful
that Mother started teaching me ahead of time, because it
enabled me to skip half the grades in school and thus get out
quicker. To me, attending school was a gloomy and unjust im-
prisonment for offenses I had not yet committed. I still think it
is unfair for the authorities to assume that children are going
to be so wicked that they are prepared arbitrarily for institu-
tional life instead of activities in the open.

In Linden, as elsewhere, grief and misfortune touched all
the houses, and if the fragments of Linden life I have tried to
evoke seem predominantly gay, take into account that New
Englanders like best to talk about amusing things, and avoid
mention of what touches them most deeply or leaves scars
in their minds. This is fatal, according to the present-day
swamis who encourage their fellows to spill a full twenty-five
dollars' worth each hour they talk of the past. I hope the
pendulum swings, some day, and authors, at least, are paid
corresponding rewards for refraining from talking about their
personal frustrations.

I was in my middle teens before Mother came right out and
told me that my father had died in the Danvers Insane Asylum.
Always I had had a vague feeling that in some way we were set
apart from others in town. I cannot truthfully say that I be-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

lieved there was something wrong with me. I felt, quite frankly,
that I was right about many things, and the others were mis-
taken.

My father died before I was four years old, but I have defi-
nite memories of him and of scenes in which he took part. I
know he was a man who loved life, and was impractical. His
dreams were bright and large, his nature optimistic, and he
was alternately a successful and an unsuccessful businessman.
One recollection is of a Christmas Eve when he carried me on
his shoulder to see an illuminated Christmas tree in the vestry
of the Congregational Church. We always had trees at home,
but the one in the church must have been so much bigger
and more colorful that it is the one I remember. Memory is
like that, fusing smaller and less poignant items into a kind
of synthesis, for the convenience of a cluttered mind.

The afternoon at twilight when he took me to Powderhorn
Hill, and I heard my first band, is also very vivid. And I re-
member his winning an informal catboat race at Land's End,
where, during his life, we had a summer cottage in Rockport.
He had an argument, a very good-natured one filled with boast-
ing and laughter, as to whether he or some other man made the
best Johnnycake, and in the end, my father baked it, with a
metal reflector and hot rocks. The quality of his voice was so
much like that of his brothers that I have since confused the
sounds of all of them.

On the wall of our sitting room, behind the old square
piano on which I played hour after hour, was a tinted and
enlarged reproduction of an old tintype from the family album,
softened and sweetened and colored like a baby's bedroom,
blue eyes and pink cheeks, soft brown hair, neatly parted, and
soft brown moustache. The broad shoulders, which his brothers
all had, too, and his sons all inherited, had been modified.
My mother, I think, liked the picture very much, or perhaps

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"The Wind Blows the Water White and Black"

it was the best one she had. When I tried to bring her around
to the subject of my father, she shied away, sadly, and men-
tioned that he sang in the church choir, had worked in a bank,
had developed Land's End, and had owned a factory that had
burned. The fire, I was given to understand, had marked the
collapse of the family fortune, and my father's health.

I did not believe a line or tint of that picture, and the longer
I stared at it, the more I distrusted it. Undoubtedly I should
have asked my uncles what Father was like, and many times I
was on the verge of doing so. I felt no impulse to ask Charles,
because his standards were so different from mine.

When I was twenty-eight years old and wrote my first novel,
of which the manuscript was lost, the opening scene as it came
to me had to do with my father, on his knees, with other men
struggling to quiet him and my mother in tears. I saw it in
every detail, and when finally my mother read my description
of the scene, she was shocked and dismayed. It was brutally
accurate, as was another following, in which a cold black
wagon drove up to the house and strange men in white coats
came to take Father away. This time he was bound securely
in torn strips of sheeting.

Those childhood ordeals, the terror of which I must have
felt, were buried so deep in my mind that they only rose to the
surface twenty-five years later. Quite a few others have arisen
since, to make things clearer.

To me, my father is the unknown, intangible hero whose
reality I have seldom been able to contact, and the man who,
in departing this world, left practically no trail behind him
that I could follow. I have never cared to hear about him from
persons I considered to be poorly qualified witnesses, how-
ever dear they were to me. Too much had been told me vaguely
about his sterling qualities and his virtues, but always by the
kind of people who speak well of the dead, and are not the

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

shrewdest observers of the living. I should like, sometime, to
know what my father was like when he was alive. I should like
to be able to reassure him that, no matter how he failed in
business or in health, and was tagged to die a long and agoniz-
ing death, before we got acquainted, I consider the adventure
on which he helped launch me fantastically worthwhile.

When I was thirty years old, in the throes of my first mar-
riage, Charles, on a visit from Dayton, Ohio, where he was then
City Manager, took me aside. I knew something embarrassing
to him and probably both of us was coming. I had learned
through the years to recognize that serious expression on his
face and the way his voice thinned out and rose in pitch when
he was forcing himself to a painful duty.

"Elliot," Charles said. "I hope you have not been worry-
ing about . . . the way Father died."

I was startled into replying with the exact truth.

"I have worried about it a great deal," I said. That was true,
but had not prevented me from doing whatever I felt impelled
to do.

"Before I was married, I looked into the matter, and found
there was nothing that could be . . . passed on to us," he said.

I mumbled my thanks, and we never referred to the subject
again.

Our lack of money I never actually thought of it as poverty
for the most part did not trouble me, because I had nearly
everything I wanted badly. Once in a while, the dearth of coins
became acute. One of the girls in my class in school, and one
I liked and admired, was called out of the classroom one day
and it was whispered around that her father had died. Any
reference to anyone's father at that time caused me to shrink
and try to get away, or change the subject. In those years, I
was perpetually aware that I did not have one, alive, and
that life for me, on that account, was not well rounded.

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"The Wind Blows the Water White and Black 9 '

Late that afternoon, Leroy Partridge, who had been se-
lected by a group of our schoolmates, called at our back door
and said that each of them was going to give a quarter toward
a wreath of flowers for Mabel's father's funeral. I went inside
and asked Mother for a quarter and she must have been espe-
cially harassed just then. She said, very sadly, that we could not
spare a quarter.

I stole soundlessly down the cellar stairs, and waited for
the bewildered Leroy to go away, and when I heard his foot-
steps receding down the steps and driveway, I left the house
by the cellar door, went to the Square with the blood pounding
in my temples, not knowing exactly what I should do, stole a
quarter from the cash drawer in Seymour Batt's little dry-
goods store, pretending to look for thread, hurried to the
Partridge back door, and gave the quarter to Leroy, explain-
ing hurriedly that Mother had not been feeling well when
he called at our house, and that I was sorry to have kept him
waiting. My conscience never has troubled me concerning the
small theft. I did the best I could. But the way I felt while
Leroy Partridge was waiting and waiting on our back porch
has caught me in the strangest times and places and surround-
ings, twinging and throbbing like an old wound, and causing
my cheeks to grow hot and my mind to be numb for a moment,
like a limb that has "gone to sleep."

Charles, my older brother, shouldered his heavy responsi-
bilities heroically, but without fuss. That was his way. It was
not many years before our monthly forty dollars swelled to
sixty, and more, as he made his way upward in the engineering
world. At the age of fifteen I went West and got a job that paid
handsomely, according to the standards of that year, and from
that time onward spent money faster than I could get my
hands on it, from any source whatever. That was the result, for
me, of the early years of penury, and my constant awareness

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

that my mother was scrimping and saving. So the same set of
misfortunes and events made of Charles a truly noble char-
acter, unpretentious, restrained, and with a conservative view
of the value of money and everything else. My brother Leslie,
a year younger than I am, or not quite so old, if you prefer
to put it that way, adjusted himself in a way not like Charles' or
mine. Whatever he has had, in the way of income, which has
always been close to the average but not more, he has simplified
or amplified his needs accordingly, so that each day, each week
and each year he comes out square with the world. Today, as I
write, it is Wednesday. I venture to say that Leslie's week's pay
is about two-thirds gone and he has begun to go easy until
Saturday.

I sometimes felt guilty, having so much fun and action my-
self, thinking that Charles, with his eminence in his profession,
his place as a respected leader in his chosen city, Dayton, Ohio;
his wife, Camilla, who was ideally qualified to share his kind
of career; and money in several banks, safely and carefully
invested; was not getting enough out of life. Probably I was
wrong, but I never felt that way about Leslie, who has shied
away from responsible positions as fast as they were offered,
content with moderate means, comparative obscurity, and not
too much strain.

If I have reproached my family and relatives with over-
reticence, I must admit that I am not a chatterbox myself,
when it comes to revealing what has hurt or disappointed me.
When I was eight years old, and had just heard Great-Uncle
Lije explain how to jig for herring, I got up at dawn, having
rigged up a reel and line, with hooks in series for jigging.
Alone I walked miles across the mysterious marsh, among the
horseshoe crabs and waterfowl, to a bridge over the Saugus,
where the herring were running. I got there so early that no
other fishermen had put in an appearance and, thrilled as I

386

"The Wind Blows the Water White and Black"

was with any new experience, unreeled my long line, letting
the heavy sinker swing above the water.

Something happened so suddenly that at first I could not
believe it. I, the descendant of fishermen and sailors, had
forgotten to make fast the end of the line to the reel, so my
line and tackle disappeared into the stream and I was faced
with the long walk back home, empty-handed.

I was so ashamed of having done such a foolish thing that
never, before today, have I told anyone about it. I was thankful
that no one had been with me. I shall never forget the way that
loose line looked, when it slid from the reel and wriggled into
the river's surface like Balzac's "adder into a bowl of milk."
I sobbed with mortification and laughed aloud, at the same
time, it was so startling and comical. Everything was right
and all set, but that one little failure to tie the line to the reel,
before I wound it. I have thought of the way the water looked,
from the bridge, of the herring that may or may not have been
under the surface, of how that morning would have turned
out, if I had jigged a number of herring. Nothing ever im-
pressed me so sharply with the detestable truth that however
many apples some men can pick in one day, other men will
take bad falls because a pig chances to rub himself against the
ladder.

When he was in funds, Uncle Reuben was generous and
solicitous, and although I never remember having asked him
for anything directly, he came through handsomely when he
knew what I wanted. My oil colors were an example. Once he
grasped the desire I had for them, he was lavish. I had ex-
plained that ultramarine blue would be all right, and was
cheaper than cobalt. Result: Uncle Reuben brought me
enough cobalt blue to have lasted Tintoretto a year. My
bicycle was also a present from Uncle Reuben, and, while I was

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

in high school, my first tuxedo, cut down by Moe Selib,
after my uncle got too stout to wear it.

At all ages, and in all economic brackets, my tastes have
been expensive, and no substitutes would ever do for what
I had set my capricious mind upon. All of us had childhood
problems and frustrations, or else suffered from a lack of
them, due to overindulgence by parents. I do not wish to over-
emphasize mine, and I cannot honestly ignore them. I have
always felt somewhat cheated because I never had a religious
faith to lose, or a fear of Hell to conquer.

Up to the age of fifty-six, I have seen no evidence of Divine
justice operating here below, and frequently have been rather
glad there was none. I studied physics, and am willing to let
the physicists have their law of action and reaction. In hu-
man affairs there is luck, and I have had my share, mostly
good and some atrocious.

It is impossible to mention Linden without a salute back
through the decades to Luke Harrigan. His was a great poetic
soul. He dressed as nattily as the late Jimmy Walker, and in
better taste than James M. Curley.

Luke had no brief for politicians, whether they were Maiden
Republicans who gave the short end of every stick to Linden,
or Boston Democrats who stole the city blind. He was an
artist. With the slightest encouragement he would have worn
a flowing black tie, and a broad-brimmed black felt hat His
wife, whom he adored and feared, would not let him.

Whenever boys in Linden, either Catholic or Protestant,
wanted advice or help in any of their projects, large or small,
they headed for Luke Harrigan's house over on Elm Street, just
behind the Linden Grammar School. He helped them raise
money by subscription for football gear and baseball suits,
was stage manager for all their benefit entertainments, and he
was one of the few Linden commuters who had a good job in

388

"The Wind Blows the Water White and Black"

the city (drawing down fifty dollars or more each week) and
whose work could be seen, pointed out with pride, and in-
spected by any kid from Linden who made a trip to Boston.
Luke was head window decorator in a Boston department
store on Tremont Street, and was the Dali of his day.

The busy weeks before Christmas, his display took up most
of the ground floor of the popular establishment, with lavish
decorations in Santa Claus red, white cotton batting, tinsel
trimmings, stars, wise men bearing tribute, sleigh bells, ar-
tificial snow and communal good cheer. Luke was the store
Santa, with an uncanny way of finding out what impression-
able or bashful children wanted and keeping the unruly ones
within bounds. Candles never burned more brightly than in
Luke Harrigan's domain, and if a branch or two of evergreens
caught fire, it was promptly extinguished.

When the candles gave way to colored electric bulbs, after
the Iroquois fire had made America conflagration-conscious,
Luke had a way of making them high-light the multihued
bangles and he burned a pot or two of candle-grease incense to
heighten the illusion. It was Luke who persuaded his pro-
prietors to import some live reindeer, from heaven knows
where, who saw to it that all letters to Santa were answered,
who spent his own pay in supplementing the resources of
family groups who seemed to need special attention, in the
interest of the holiday spirit.

In one of Luke Harrigan's windows, live little girls wore
dolls' dresses, in gala costumes of all nations. His kitchenware
counters had faces of Brownies and all the little people sketched
on pans. His boys' department gave away puppies from the
Animal Rescue League with boys' suits and shoes and rubbers.
Luke first thought of "trading-stamps"; he had a Punch and
Judy show in his children's book department; and a monkey
who used a toothbrush in the drug department. He stationed

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

cooks in full regalia who made flapjacks in the windows, and,
when they got in burlesque arguments with the Irish dish-
washers, forgot to catch the hot cakes, now and then, when
they tossed them in the air. Those spilled hot cakes were
charged to display advertising.

The safe and sane Fourth of July had not denatured the
national independence day when Luke was in his prime, and
he was the one who went to the city council and saw that
Linden got a share of the appropriation for public fireworks,
collected money from the men who could afford it to supple-
ment the public funds, and when on Fourth of July evening
the rockets and Roman candles, the monkey puzzles and pin-
wheels were set off, Luke lighted the fuses, and topped it off
with a set piece depicting the American flag.

Luke Harrigan's bosom friend in Linden, outside of his
brothers and cousins among the Irish, was Alec Graydon, and
Alec, who seldom earned much money, was lavish with his
time and the services of his old mare, Daisy, and his wagon.

In politics, Alec Graydon and Luke Harrigan had another
firm bond. It was natural for Harrigan, as an Irishman, to be
a Democrat, but Alec was one of the few and faithful among
the Protestant Democrats, and Luke saw to it that his friend
had odd jobs, driving voters to the polls, representing the
minority party when votes were counted, mowing and burning
vacant lots when the weather was too dry, and helping shovel
out the snowplow when the going got too tough after a
blizzard.

The example set by Luke Harrigan was a little trying to
some of the other Linden husbands and young men who were
eager to make an impression on their girls. For each Saturday,
when he got off at the Linden depot from the last north-bound
train, he carried under one arm a long beribboned box of
flowersviolets, lilies of the valley, or American Beauty roses

390

"The Wind Blows the Water White and Black"

for his wife. In his other hand he had a two-pound box of
chocolates, Page and Shaw's, no less. Saturday was the busiest
day in the Boston department stores and Luke was on duty
until late in the evening. In order to have his window dis-
plays ready for the new week on Monday, Luke had to take
the streetcar into Boston Sunday evening and work with his
assistants from one minute after midnight until the store
opened Monday morning. Then he was free until Wednesday.

Monday afternoon he spent in the Linden barbershop, hav-
ing his hair trimmed and shampooed, and enjoying, after the
shave, a series of hot and cold towels that freshened his com-
plexion and his relish of existence. His wit and logic were
baffling to the Linden Republicans.

"Gentlemen," he would say. "You have most of the votes,
so at least admit we have the arguments."

Luke never ranted, or raised his voice. He would shake his
head, sigh deeply, and take a pitying attitude toward the stand-
patters who, just then, were sold on the "white man's burden,"
the "little brown brother" in the Philippines, the "manifest
destiny" of the United States as an imperial power, the gold
standard, the protective tariff, and the philanthropies of multi-
millionaires.

"The SassenachV 9 Luke would say, sadly. "Now shouldn't
the world be proud of John Bull. I weep when I think of the
martyrdom of Ireland."

"Indeed. Are there any bleedin* 'Arps left over there?"
George Hobart, the Cockney, would say. "I thought the last
load 'ad just joined the Boston police force, or the 'od-car-
riers' union. 'Ard to say which is 'igher society."

As he spoke, Luke would absent-mindedly be taking a good
cigar from his vest pocket and extending it toward the Cock-
ney, who, still bristling, would accept it in a casual way.

391

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The Penultimate

I N THE days when Spain was free, and men were gathered
at the bar, no one ever proposed a final drink. That word
had too harsh and ominous a sound. They called the last
drink "La Penultima" Thus in parting they felt no breach
in the continuity of acquaintance or friendship. Writing about
Linden, I feel the same way. I could never exhaust the subject.
There would always be less on paper than was contained in the
memories I had not touched upon. So let this chapter be the
penultimate, and the reader, from his own boyhood recollec-
tions, or his curiosity as to how his fathers lived, may continue
this work to an individual conclusion.

The late Gertrude Stein, a dear friend of my Paris days,
said, that the immediate past seems farther away than periods
more remote in point of time, since the present is made up of
reactions against it, and it has not yet become historical. I
repeat that what I have recorded about Linden constituted
"modern life" then, as "modern" as anything taking place to-
day. The present is continuous, and all we experience directly
is in the present tense. We remember it that way. What we have
lived is always with us, whether we are thinking about it at the
moment, or not.

In the first chapter of this book I mentioned a few men
who were born in Maiden, near Linden, and whose names had
become well known elsewhere F. P. A., Erie Stanley Gardner,

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The Penultimate

and the late Harold Stearns. Perhaps Linden's most authentic
claim to fame springs from Joe Walcott, welterweight cham-
pion in 1901, and as game a fighter as ever put on gloves. Joe,
black as a silk hat, with lithe legs and stocky shoulders, used
to do his road work up and down Eastern Avenue. He did not
exactly live in Linden, but we claimed him. He used to run
from Broadway past the cemetery and through Linden Square,
and invariably he would take a turn around the Massasoit
House, giving it a wide berth and refusing, in pantomime, the
frantic invitations from Jeff Lee and the regulars to drop in a
moment and break training. Colored fighters had a hard row
to hoe in those days, seven years before Jack Johnson became
heavyweight champion, but Linden has always been proud of
Joe Walcott, as every Maiden High School alumnus thinks
back with affection to Bill Bullock, our football coach, and
one of the first of his race to be chosen All-American end
when he played for Dartmouth.

A few years ago, the last of the Davenport heirs left her mag-
nificent mansion and estate in Maiden Center to the city, for
use as an old folks' home. Her will stipulated that "nothing in
the house or on the grounds should ever be changed." That is
quite an order for the city fathers. One can foresee that, a thou-
sand years from now, if a Davenport memorial toilet gets out
of order, the future authorities of Maiden may have to do some
archeological excavation in order to find a spare part. The
conditions for admission into the "home" are rather rigid. In
fact, not a single living inhabitant of present-day Maiden, still
including Linden, has been found who qualifies. The city
authorities are reluctant to contest the will, for fear that the
splendid property across from the high school and next to the
Public Library, on Pleasant Street, will fall into other hands.

To be admitted into the "home," an applicant must have
been a resident of Maiden twenty years. In a suburban city

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

over which a metropolis is creeping, that term of residence is
rare. Furthermore, the citizen seeking shelter and repose in the
Davenport place must have been married thirty years, to the
same person. Outside of that, he or she must be a Protestant.

I doubt if anyone from old Linden will ever be found in that
institution. Hen Richards, the hermit, died before World
War I, and besides, Hen never was married thirty seconds,
let alone thirty years. He died quietly, in his sleep, without
disturbing anyone, and all the secrets about his youth the mem-
bers of the Ladies' Social Circle would have given much to
know were buried with him, not in Potter's Field, but in a
respectable cemetery plot his neighbors paid for. Mario Baci-
galupo, who then had a fruit store of his own, put on his old
clothes, dismantled Hen's old shack, cleaned up the area, and
the grass of Day's field grew over it again. No one asked Mario
to do this, and he consulted no one. He thought that was what
Hen would have liked to have done, so he carried out the
hermit's unexpressed wishes. With Hen's passing there must
have been an infinitesimal readjustment of the circulation of
United States' currency, for the twenty-five dollars yearly he
accepted for value received, and spent mostly for flour, salt,
sugar, coffee and condensed milk, without Hen to handle
them, had to find other channels.

Shall we ever have an accounting machine, supersensitive as
a seismograph, to mark a little dip in the curve when such losses
to our economy occur?

Jerry *Dineen, the industrious newsboy who everybody was
sure would succeed, has done so. He is the owner and operator
of a chain of filling stations north of Boston, and his wife, who
was Phyllis, the red-haired Bagley girl, has lived with him more
than thirty years. But they are Catholics, not Protestants, and
may not darken the doors of the Davenport home, in case they
lose their fortune. Jerry got his real start when Mr. Wing, up

394

The Penultimate

early in order to go duck shooting, stopped him one morning
as Jerry was about to deliver his paper.

"Jerry," Mr. Wing said. "You may not be aware of it, but I
am tremendously indebted to you."

"Why, no, Mr. Wing," Jerry replied. "Your monthly bill is
paid, up to date. Mr. Pfeiffer attends to it."

Jerry called every man, including valets, "Mister."

Mr. Wing drew himself up, and inhaled the salt air.

"I am speaking, young sir, of that which is more precious
than money," he said. "You have made possible for me much
enjoyment of life."

"Gee. Thanks," said Jerry, groping, but receptive.

"You enter my building, I am informed, between five o'clock
and six each morning, leave the appropriate papers, neatly
folded, at the several doors, for the accommodation of me and
my tenants," said Mr. Wing.

"I try to be quiet," said Jerry.

"That is the point You have been considerate and noiseless
each day, including Sundays, for about ten years. That means
that, thanks to you, I have benefited by ... three times three
hundred and sixty-five times ten . . . you're good at figures,
Jerry "

"Ten thousand nine hundred and fifty," Jerry said, with
deference.

"In a weary world, where worry and fatigue press like a
soiled blanket over man's dreary lot, what should you say
would be the value of ten thousand nine hundred and fifty
hours of blissful sleep and oblivion?" asked Mr. Wing. "In
round figures, my boy."

"I've made quite a little money by not sleeping those hours,"
replied Jerry, quick on the trigger.

"Another item of my indebtedness," said Mr. Wing. "If
there were not staunch American boys like you, unafraid of

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

honest toil and aware of its dignity, an indolent and useless
member of society like me would not feel justified in taking
it easy."

"Why should you work if you don't have to?" Jerry asked,
kindly.

"We all have our separate gifts. I daresay you could not be
idle if you tried," said Mr. Wing.

"That's the truth, Mr. Wing," said Jerry. "Two years ago
my old lady made me go to York Beach, Maine, for a week's
vacation. Before the first day was up, I had to get a job, wash-
ing dishes at one of the hotels, to keep from going bughouse."

"Dear me," said Mr. Wing, distressed. "Let's not pursue the
subject farther. I merely wanted to ask you what you would
like best to do ... not all your life, perhaps . . . but how
would you like to make your beginning? I've watched you.
George Sampson could hardly get on without you. Now you
can take a bicycle apart and put it back together in less time
than Edgy Gerry can pump up one of the tires. This newspaper
route? Of course, pennies count up, and accumulate, but a
smart boy like you should not work for chicken feed. Your
country has need of you, in larger ways."

"The way I loolk at it," Jerry said, "the bicycle is on its way
out, and the coming thing is the automobile. I wish I had a
bicycle repair shop of my own, built so I could convert it into
an automobile repair shop and a garage, like a few I've seen in
Boston."

"Can you keep a secret?" Mr. Wing asked.

"If I couldn't, lots of people on my route would be out of
luck," Jerry said, sincerely. "The things I've seen, out early in
the morning."

"Discretion is the better part of popularity," said Mr. Wing.
"That is one talent we have in common, my boy."

To Jerry's amazement, Mr. Wing told him that he wished

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The Penultimate

to finance Jerry's plan, not as a partner, not as a philanthropist,
but as a sound investment. Mr. Wing offered to loan Jerry
whatever money he needed, to acquire a building site suitable
for a garage and, until there was demand for automobile re-
pairs on a large scale, a bicycle shop. Jerry was still a minor, so
Mr. Wing suggested that the leases and contracts remain in
his name, to be transferred to Jerry as soon as the latter could
be legally responsible.

"Can I tell my mother?" Jerry asked, in a daze.

"Never tell a woman anything, young man. That's a lesson
you must learn," said Mr. Wing.

"All right," Jerry said, doubtfully.

That was the underlying explanation of the high jinks, with
surveyors around the mysterious lot adjacent to the Finns' near
Black Ann's Corner. Actually, Senator Mangini, who was in on
the joke, had not sold the land outright to Mr. Wing, because
in that case the transaction would have to be recorded. The
lot had been leased for ninety-nine years, only half of which
have thus far passed by.

The Blue Laws controversy continued throughout the com-
monwealth for years and years, and has not been fully resolved
even now. A bill was introduced into the General Court, as a
result of the commotion in Linden, and each year the legisla-
tors had to find ways of ducking the issue, which was political
dynamite.

Every bill introduced into the Massachusetts legislature in a
lawful way must be read in the House or the Senate, whichever
branch receives it first, be referred by the Speaker or the Presi-
dent to an appropriate committee, and the committee must
advertise and conduct a public hearing at which any and all
interested parties may be heard. Each year the Blue Laws hear-
ing was one of the most widely attended and hotly contested.
All the Puritan throwbacks and advocates of individual liber-

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

ties swarmed to the State House, contradicted, ridiculed and
abused one another; invariably the committee, which was com-
posed so that it would be sure to straddle the fence, recom-
mended that the bill be referred to the next General Court.
The next year, the process was duplicated, with increasing
vehemence and animosity.

Now when in Massachusetts a legislative problem becomes
too troublesome and acute, and the political leaders in power
stand to lose something, no matter how it is decided, they have
a way of salving the proponents and opponents by appointing
a joint recess committee of members of the House and Senate,
with funds and the authority to hire a secretary, in order to
"study" the question.

That practice is beloved by all the Boston newspapermen
who cover the State House, because it is unwritten law that
one of them shall get the secretaryship of the committee, and
be paid $1,000, for keeping records of committee meetings
and hearings and writing the committee's report. This entails
not more than a dozen hours of work, as a rule, and includes
all kinds of trips or junkets, at the public expense, that the
secretary's imagination is capable of conceiving and making
plausible.

In the year the Blue Laws fight had reached the point where
it became necessary to appoint a recess committee to stall off
the public another year or more, John Daniels, a good reporter
and talented amateur entertainer, was given the secretaryship,
in return for having used the Republican steering committee
relatively easy in his Democratic paper. John convinced the
senators and representatives that, in order to observe and re-
port on how the other half lives on Sunday, they must visit
New York City, in a body. The committee members, having
liberal expense accounts, were nothing loath.

Daniels, a most convivial gentleman, was an inspired guide

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and started out fairly early one Saturday morning in New York
with the Massachusetts statesmen under his wing. The full
details, and the adjective is used advisedly, of that excursion
have never been revealed, but a New York reporter, at two
o'clock that Sunday morning, cursing his luck because he had
to work so late, strolled into the Night Court. He blinked, and
gasped, unable to believe his eyes.

For lined up, looking the worse for wear, and utterly inco-
herent, were a bevy of gentlemen, obviously from Boston,
although the names and addresses they gave were unconvinc-
ing, if not trite. The New York reporter recognized the secre-
tary and what was left of the membership of the Massachusetts
recess legislative committee to study the Blue Laws, all plead-
ing guilty on the Sabbath to being drunk and disorderly. The
women who seemed to be with them, while each one was some-
body's daughter, and a few of them somebody's mother, did
not look like senators' or representatives' wives. For a while,
the Massachusetts Blue Laws committee backed Harry Thaw
right off the front page. The report that committee made, con-
taining recommendations for Sunday conduct, is still on file,
as a public document, and may be examined at the Massachu-
setts State House, by anyone who cares to browse through its
pages.

It was in 1922, 1 believe, that the Blue Laws were modified
slightly in the periodical revision of the laws of Massachusetts.
"Common pipers and fiddlers," who formerly had been subject
to fine and imprisonment, were taken off the black list, with
the approval of the musicians' union. Unnecessary work on the
Sabbath, including pansy weeding, is still unlawful, although
in some communities the statute is not strictly enforced.

My Great-Uncle Lije did not live to see the years of Pro-
hibition, but his yawl, the Petrel II, having fallen into the serv-
ice of the same group of smugglers that used to run Chinamen

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Linden on the Saugus Branch

and dope over the Vermont border, did yeoman service be-
tween Rum Row and the Linden marsh. By that time, Trigger
Bacigalupo far outranked Tom Bagley in the organization, and
one of the tricks Frigger had learned by observing my Great-
Uncle Lije's fine Newfoundland named Rover also helped him
to keep thirsty citizens from going dry. The Italians who had
settled in Revere made quantities of good red wine, and some
white that was passable, too, and they kept it on the little
farms which had threatened, years before, to depress Linden
real estate values. Whenever strangers approached, the fierce
turkeys kept by the Italians for the purpose, attacked them,
and held them at bay. If the strangers in question were recog-
nized, or had the proper password, dogs who had been trained
to chase away the turkeys were let loose and the customers
admitted. In case the strangers turned out suspiciously, the
turkeys were left to hold the line, and always gave the Italians
plenty of time in which to get rid of their illegal liquor before
the government agents could effect an entrance.

Just before Paavo Wallenius was released from prison, Ruth
and Alice left their little red cottage and transported their
antiques to Santa Barbara, California, where they lived hap-
pily ever afterward, as the storybooks used to say. Old Professor
Marlowe, who had taken such good care of Pehr while his
brother was away, vanished, without a word, the day Paavo was
due back home, and his body was found in the woods, near
Elephant's Back, months afterward.

Ginger eventually married Little Gertie, and two of their
boys, at least, drive airplanes instead of horsecars. Believe me,
he brought up all his kids to be careful what they did in the
snow.

The Admiral, disgusted with free men who would vote for
Prohibition, closed his famous Massasoit House, took Jeff Lee
and old Gimp Crich with him to Paris, and there, very happily,

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they died, comfortably boiled, in reverse order to that in which
I have named them. The old inn burned down, and the chest-
nut trees were destroyed to make way for a four-lane highway
that also bends around Black Ann's Corner. Sic transeunt com-
potari mundi!

The Reverend K. Gregory Powys, that sturdy Welshman
with the steeple-crowned black hat, who defied his congrega-
tion on the Jewish question, was called to another church,
much larger and more important, but a few years afterward,
Linden was flabbergasted when he eloped with Frances Ash-
down, a lovely nurse, and a sister of Rena McNeir. From re-
ports I have heard, they have been so happy on earth that what
comes later will hardly matter.

Salute, little Linden, and, for the moment, an revoir. What
I observed among your people and mine as a child has grown
upon me, as each day and each year I have been better equipped
to evaluate and appreciate my memories of you. Wherever I
have been, in whatever surroundings I have found myself,
I have felt more like an observer than a participant.

Everyone has a birthplace, and to that locale and its inhabi-
tants, who can say how much he owes? My real schools were
the streets, woods, houses, stores and marshes of Linden, and
my teachers were Linden men and women, children, and, yes,
the animals. I am afraid I did little for those places or persons,
in return for what they did for me. If I have resurrected a little
of old Linden, so that a fragment of it may be preserved, in
all its serenity and beauty, I am content.

Friendsl Your glasses! La Penultima!

401