Windy McPherson's Son

ardship of his mother's position had given life a bitter taste in his mouth, and Telfer sweetened it. He entered with zeal into Sam's

g his arms about, quote Poe or Browning or, in another mood, would compel Sam

is boy goes for a five-cent piece. I have watched him. A travelling man goes out of town leaving a stray dime or nickel here and within an hour it is in this boy's pocket. I have talked t

freely as he talked to Valmore and Freedom Smith and to other cronies of his on the streets of Caxton. Walking along the road he would point with his ca

would stand with open mouth listening as Telfer swore or laughed at a book as he did at Valmore or Freedom Smith. He had a fine portrait o

inning. "Getting yourself discussed by women and

ton and the people misunderstood and distrusted her. Taking no part in the life of the town and keeping to herself and to her books she awoke a kind of fear in others. Because she did not join them at church suppers, or go from porch to porch gossiping with other women through the long summer evenings, they thought her something abnormal. On Sundays she sat alone in her pew at church and on Saturday afternoons, come storm, come sunshine, she walked on country roads and through the woods accompanied by a col

lished. The years in the school in Massachusetts restored her health but did not break this habit. She came home and took the place in the schools to earn money with

hat, at least once, had taken definite form and had come near driving her from the town and schools. That she did not succumb to the storm of cri

er friendship for Sam, but he had known of it. In those days he knew of everything that went on in the town-his quick ear

had been in love with Mary and had wanted to desert his wife and go away with her. One night he had driven to Mary's house in a closed buggy and the two had dri

shaken his head in alarm and declared that it must be looked into. He called Mary into his little narrow office in the school building, but lost courage when she sat before him, and said nothing. The man in t

He remembered with a shock the crude levity with which the loafers in the shop had greeted the repetition of the tale. Their comments had come back to his mind as he walked through the streets with his newspapers and

the schools. The house at the edge of the town, the property of her mother, had come down to her and she lived there with an old aunt. After the passing of the wind of

future as she and Telfer were. Boylike, he counted it a tribute to himself rather than to the winsome youth in him, and was made proud by it. Having no real feeling

pinion of a woman. Their opinions, like the books they sometimes write, are founded on nothing. They are not the real things. Women know

uch in the company of Mary

a world of unrealities. They like even vulgar people in books, but shrink from the simple, earthy folk about them

he read and the ideas she advanced appealed to him less and less. He thought that she, as Telfer held, lived in a world of illusion and unreality and said so. When she lent him books, he put them in his pocket and did not read them. When

eople preaching the doctrine of beauty. It began with a scene on a hillside in a

rom his seat under a tree by the roa

pitch his tent on a hillside. A man in a tent on a hillside in a storm would be cold and wet and getting the rheumatism. To be writing

ater in life he learned that there are men who could write love letters on a piece of housetop in a fl

mments on the life and people of Caxton, but did not share his love of books. When she sometimes went to sleep in her chair during the Sunday afternoon readings he poked her with his cane and laughingly told her to wake up and listen to the dream of a great dreamer. Among Browning's verse

hy beaut

Nicean bar

would demand whether or not the writing of

veway by the side of his house for hours at a time and declaring he would be a great trotting horse. He could recite the colt's pedigree with great gusto and when he had been talking to Sam of some book he would repay the boy's attention by saying, "You, my boy, are as far superior to the run of boys a

a cracker barrel at the back of Wildman's grocery. It was a summer evening and a breeze blew through the open doors swaying the h

o time jabbing with his cane at Sam's legs, J

turned line they forget to look at well-turned ankles. He who sings most passionately of love has been in love the least; he woos the goddess

ack pipe, and who now brought his feet down upon the floor with a bang. Admiring Telfer's flow of words he pretended to be filled with scorn. "The ni

is finger, thrust

he beasts roar; we will have a st

ack, quick eyes. Seeing Sam sitting with swinging legs upon the cracker barrel she spoke to her father

lay upon the cigar case, to avoid the comments he feared his going might excite among the men by the stove. In his heart he trembled lest the girl should have disappeared down the street, and with his eyes, he looked guiltily at the banker, who h

et, Sam found the girl waiting for him. She began to te

ome with my sister," she

ng him uneasy nights, and overcome with the wonder of it the blood climbed through his body and made his head reel so that he walked in silence unable to understan

walk with this girl through the lighted Main Street. Had she not chosen him from among all the boys of the town; had she not, with a flutter of her little, white hand, called

lamps at street crossings, getting from each other wave after wave of exquisite little th

on her shoulder. In the darkness on the other side of the street a man stumbled homeward along a board sidewalk. The lights of Main Street glowed in the dis

tled down on Main Street. It was inconceivable that the grocer could still be wrapping packages for banker Walker. Worlds had been remade. Manhood had come to him. Why! the man should have wrapped the entire store, package after

sat the men into whose midst he had it in his power to cast a thunderbolt. He might walk to the door and say, truthfully enough, "Here before you is a boy that

f the boy's slinking entrance. Indeed, their talk had sunk. From talking of love and of poets they talk

s but another shower or two and we shall have a record crop. I pla

erested in the talk. Still his heart thumped; still a throbbing went on in his wr

to the livery barn for a game of pinochle. And John Telfer, twirling his cane and calling to a

with his cane and from time to time calling sharply to the dogs that, filled with d

d love he is like a hen that has seen a hawk in the sky. He runs about in circles making a fuss. 'Here! Here! Here!' he cries, 'you are making public something that should be kept hidden. You are doing in the light of day what should only be d

appeared across a long pasture, their master letting them go. From time

jestic. I see the long corn rows with the men and the horses half hidden, hot and breathless, and I think of a vast river of life. I catch a breath of the flam

a ring in my voice to look at them. 'These orderly armies has mankind brought out of chaos,' I say to myself. 'On a smoking black ball flu

legs spread apart. He took off his hat and t

hop merrily about in the road to avoid it. "Flung by the hand of God out of illimitable space-eh! not bad, eh! I should be in Congress. I am wa

ked in silence. Suddenly, putting his arm on the boy's shoulder, he stopp

-you will not be a little business man. What have you? You have the gift of seeing dollars where the rest of the boys of the town see nothing and you are tireless after those dollars-you will be a big man of dollars, it is plain." I

In the summer madness of the talking man there was something soothing to the fever in his bl

he waist of a girl, her head upon his shoulder. Far in the distance sounded the faint call of the dog

he said, making a wide sweep with his arm eac

ng corn that formed a kind of wall behind them. The moon was in the sky and shone down across bank afte

ould come to grips with him. She also has a mark toward which she goes. She is at war with him and has a purpose that is not his purpose. She believes that the pursuit of women is an end for a life. For all they now condemn Mike McCarthy who went to the asylum because of them and who, while loving life, came near to taking life, th

ighted cigarette in the air and the boy who had begun to think again of the dark-skinn

tle feet running over a dance floor will retard your growth for years. No man or boy can grow toward the purpose of a life while he thinks of women. Let him try it and he will be undone. What is to him a passing humour is to them an end. They are diabolically clever. They will run and stop a

bing at the grou

icture he has painted. In the school I watched for a look in the eyes of the girl students and went about with them night after night winning, like Mike McCarthy, fruitless victories. Sleepy Jock had the best of it. He did not look about with open eyes but kept peering instead at the face of the master. My days were full of small successes. I could wear clothes. I could make soft-eyed girls turn to look at me in a dance hall. I remember a night. We students gave a dance and Sleepy Jock came. He went about as

up his hand

at at fifty I, who might have been an artist fixing the minds of thousands upon some thing of beauty or of truth, hav

k me where I got the taste for that, I tell you that I got it when I saw it lurking in a

is rare silences. The boy thought of girls that had come into his mind at night, of how he had been thrilled by a glance from the eyes

tic American what-boots-it attitude toward the needs of childhood, that it was well for growing boys and girls to be much alone together. To leave them alone together was a principle with them. When a young man called upon his sweetheart, h

n't tear the house down," th

s, thrilled and half frightened, getting through their instincts, crudely and without guidance, their first peep at the mystery of li

other evenings as a drunkard to his cups. After such an evening they found themselves, on the next morning, confused and filled with vague longings. They had lost their keenness for fun, they heard

red his sister's affair with a young farmer and shuddered at the crude vulgarity of it. He looked over the shoulder of the man sitting beside him absorbed in thought, and saw the rolling fields stretched away in the moonlight and into his mind came Telfer's speech. So vivid, so moving, seemed the picture of the armies of standing corn which men had set up in the fields to protect themselves a

n. I will try to not have anything to do with them

over and lying on his sto

burst forth as though throwing some

e boy. Shaking off the reaction upon his sensitive nature of the emotions of the boy Telfer arose. His sang froid had returned to him. Cutting right and left with his