To MY FATHER
WHOSE IDEALS IN LIFE AND CONSPICUOUS ABILITY IN STATESMANSHIP HAVE TAUGHT ME THAT IN THIS GOVERNMENT THE RIGHT INEVITABLY WILL PREVAIL
The door shook, and there was the dull thump of heavy impact, as if the panels had been struck by a sack of meal. Old Sullivan, reading his paper behind the flat desk in the far corner, did not look up. That was the manner in which most of his guests came in. Simpson, who had signed the register and was on his way to the sleeping quarters, paused and turned his purplish face toward the door that had been shaken by the blow. Keener witted than most of the derelicts who drifted into this house of refuge, he wondered whether the place could furnish him amusement. Also, he was making a mental bet that there could come in nobody more wretched looking than he.
After a short, dead silence outside, there followed the sound of hard flesh and rough fingernails scraping and clawing on the woodwork. The door swung in very slowly, and that which had sounded like a sack of meal stood wavering in the opening, like a spectre, his right shoulder against the door-jamb, his left hand still on the knob. He trembled visibly, and, without removing his shoulder from the wood against which he leaned, passed his right hand wearily across his forehead, the long, pale fingers moving loosely against his coal-black, tangled hair. He wore no hat. His beard, a week old, completed the dark, circular frame for his dead-white face, made all the ghastlier by the big, fever-lit eyes.
The eyes were terrific. They had in them the flame of terror. It was as if the fierceness of it lighted up all the badges of misery that he wore. His collar was gone, showing the neckband of his shirt fastened with a bone collar-button. The rusty coat hung open, exposing a tear in his shirt just over his heart, and from the right cuff of his coat sleeve, as he moved his hand with that peculiar, crawling motion, dangled a long piece of cloth. His trousers, baggy and shapeless, flapped slightly as his knees knocked together. His clothes, too big for him, made him look like a draped skeleton. His torn shoes spread out as if they had been filled with mush.
The terror that was in his eyes was also in his heart. It was more apparent, more real, than any terror that had ever faced Simpson the bum, or old Sullivan. It was something supernatural—something ghostly.
Simpson shivered.
Sullivan, who had let his paper slide noisily to the floor, got to his feet.
"Hello!" he said, trying to make the word a mere greeting. In reality it was a command to the stranger to speak, to banish the spectral impression.
The trembling man sprang into the room with the agility of a cat, slammed the door shut, and fell hard with his back against it. He looked like one who has run a great distance and makes one last effort to escape pursuit. His burning eyes glanced at Simpson and then at the few articles in the barely furnished room, but they took no knowledge of what they saw. The flame of them, brilliant and steady, went toward Sullivan.
"What can we do for you?" the old man asked brusquely, disliking the brilliant eyes.
The stranger, a grotesque flattened against the door, licked his lips twice and tried to speak. When he did so, it was in a rattling whisper, and he moved his neck curiously as if his throat hurt him.
"Help me," he said, and there was in the whisper something that sounded unpleasantly like a whine.
"All right!" Sullivan, having pulled himself together, assured him. "Come over here."
The visitor trembled as if invisible, irresistible hands had hold of him, and again his burning eyes surveyed the room blindly. He came away from the door with an infinity of caution, his breath audible in his nostrils. He came slowly, his knees half giving way beneath him. As he walked, half of the sole of his right shoe fell away from his foot and flapped against the floor. His arms hung loose at his sides.
"Will you"—he said, whispering, when he almost had reached the desk—" will you help—help me?"
Although the whine of appeal was still in the whisper, there was, back of that, something which sounded like a new definition of despair. It announced that he had no hope of finding help.
"Sure!" Sullivan answered him breezily.
The stranger lurched against the desk and fell forward, the hardness of his bony elbows making a knocking noise. With his head bowed, his nose mashed against the hard wood, he flung up his right arm, his hand shaking, the fingers moving through the air with the slow, crawly motion, and screamed aloud, one prolonged note.
"Ee-ee-ee!"he lamented shrilly. "I'm afraid of it!"
He lifted his head so that it was flung far back on his shoulders, and stared at Sullivan.
"I've run through the streets," he said in a whisper, "through the streets and through the fields—a thousand miles! And it was always—always behind me. It held on to my shoulder."
He clapped his left hand to his right shoulder, hesitated a moment, and grinned sheepishly, trying to cover up his failure to capture that which threatened him.
"Nearly got it then!" he declared.
The whisper, more than the burning eyes, made Sullivan all sympathy. He held forward a pen and spun the register around.
"Can you sign your name?" he inquired kindly.
The stranger. took the pen and pushed the torn piece of coat-sleeve out of the way, preparatory to writing. He paused, the pen wobbling in his hand, while a new and grayer horror spread over his face. Then, with the new ugliness upon him, he began to laugh in a silly, scarcely audible, fashion.
"My name?" he giggled. "Somebody's stolen it!" Then, slowly, the words coming one by one through his vacuous laughter: "I—don't—know— my—name. Sortof a joke. I don't know who I am."
"All right," Sullivan said lightly, taking the pen from the other's palsied fingers. "I'll sign for you." He wrote it down and spoke it: "John Smith. There you are. That all right?"
"Yes."
John Smith laughed vacantly and began to look round the room furtively. The tramp Simpson, who had been watching him with absorbed interest, thought that every bit of the man's personality had been concentrated into the uncanny fire of the terror-stricken eyes. But apparently they saw nothing. They entirely ignored Simpson's steady, searching glance.
"Here, you, Simpson!" old Sullivan suddenly called out. "Get to your bunk! Don't bother this man!"
The tramp went out through the other door, but, as he went, he looked back over his shoulder at John Smith, and whistled softly to himself, expressing his amazement.
The stranger had let his head go down against the desk again. Sullivan, watching the shaking shoulders, saw that he was sobbing.
"How about you now, John Smith?" he asked cheerily. "Feel better?"
"Do I?" the other returned, bewildered, and lifted his head, resting his chin in the cup of his two hands.
He kept that attitude while Sullivan, recognizing the extremity of the man's suffering, unlocked a small cabinet back of the desk and brought forth a flask of whisky and a glass. Smith, watching him, sobbed once or twice convulsively while terror made new furrows in his features. His eyes grew in brilliance.
Sullivan, pouring some of the whisky into the glass, extended it toward him, with the pleasant invitation:
"Take this drink. It's medicine now."
Smith, his face writhing, his whole body jerking and contorted, fought against the agony of his fright. Then, by a supreme effort, he drew himself to his full height, like a man about to be shot, and put out a tremulous hand toward the glass. He tried to grin, but succeeded only in drawing his lips away from his teeth as if they had been moved by strings manipulated from the back of his head.
"Go ahead!" urged Sullivan.
Smith took the glass in his right hand and immediately transferred it to his left.
"Look," he said timidly. "I've got it—right here —right here in my hand." He spoke now in a hoarse, deep voice, and put eagerness into his tone. "Fve got hold of it—haven't I?"
"Sure!" agreed Sullivan. "Drink it!"
From somewhere strength came back to John Smith. There was in his eyes force enough to compel the gaze of Sullivan, and there was in his backbone strength enough to hold him erect. His big, bass voice boomed like thunder.
"Old man," he said, the glass entirely steady in his left hand, "I've come down from high, awful places —places so high that the peals of thunder sounded no louder than a robin's call—so high that the pale ends of lightning whips cracked harmless against my eyeballs—so high that escaping souls went by me like thin, white flames!"
He stood a moment rigid, his ardent glance holding Sullivan.
"Old man," he swept on, "I've come up from the blackest depths of deepness, where there was no life, not a bit, and yet worlds crawled in slimy, sickly motion, forever—where there was no light, and yet millions of miseries swelled into my eyes—where there was no sound, and yet the passing of every thought was a screaming curse. Ah! that's a thing you'll know some day, that thoughts have tongues— shrieking tongues that lash and burn and shrivel up the heart."
He accomplished a smile, patronizing Sullivan.
"Old man, you've never been where I've been. I've seen dead souls shrouded in dreams denied—poor, still souls. I've heard dying souls sob and shriek when they were cast over the edges of eternity. I've learned that spirits die. Consider that! Spirits sometimes die."
He paused to set the glass on the desk, and the terror that had let him alone caught him up again, straining his limbs and making curious patterns on his face.
"And I've come back—come back down long corridors that lead to nowhere," he mourned, flinging his arms wide. "I came because they drove me. They drove me with fear. They scourged me with terror. They whipped me with shame. A million bayonets always within a hair's-breadth of my back—a thousand swords, heavy as horror, dangling in the sunlight at the end of a silken thread—just above my ears!"
The strength returned to his backbone. He stood erect.
"They showed me no mercy," he explained, the ghost of pride in his voice. "I asked none. I did not look back or up. Without looking, I could see the bayonets and the swords. Old man, for at least a thousand years I've fled—fled with all the furies of hell at my heels."
He crumpled up on the desk, his misery-marked face in the cup of his two hands, and fixed the flame of his eyes on the wondering Sullivan.
"For God's sake!" the old man cried out. "Drink the whisky! Here!"
Smith began to laugh foolishly, a sound devoid of mirth or cheer, and, his shoulders sagging, backed away from the desk and the drink. He stood so a long moment, pointing a weak hand at the glass.
"And," he giggled, "I've arrived—after a thousand years—I've arrived at that!"
He came back to the desk and stared at the glass.
"Old man, do you know what that is?"
He was so subject to his own thoughts that he did not hear the street door open behind him. Not even the swish of a woman's evening gown came into his consciousness. Sullivan, leaving him staring at the glass, went to meet her. She was young, scarcely more than twenty, and tall and slender. She wore in her black hair a red rose, and her opera cloak, falling slightly away from her shoulders, showed her columnlike neck. As she stood, graceful even in her stillness, awaiting Sullivan's approach, her welcoming smile illumined the grave beauty of her face. She seemed to sense the tragedy.
"Is there anything very wrong?" she asked in a whisper.
She was all loveliness and fragrance and graciousness.
He's pretty sick, Miss Edith," the old man whispered back. "But don't you worry."
"Help him, can't you?" she questioned, and, seeing Sullivan's nod, added: "I came to see the matron. You know, I'm going to Washington tomorrow, and"
Smith, pointing once more at the glass, had begun to speak:
"It's my enemy!" his voice boomed forth. "It's the thing that stole my soul away!"
The girl, motioning Sullivan to go back to the sick man, stood and watched the scene.
"It's a million women's tears, the fountain of another million women's tears. Women's woe! It's full of the blue lips and twisted smiles of starving children. Children of hunger! It's the ruin of strong men whom it has cheated. Poor, ruined men!"
He snatched the glass from the desk, spilling the whisky, and held it far from him in his left hand. Without taking his eyes from it, he put the heavy grip of his right hand on Sullivan's shoulder.
"Ah, man!" he entreated. "Look at it! Can't you see? There! The thing that makes its home there! His hands are too white, and he's got ashes on his shoes—ashes of dead souls. Think where he walks! He's dancing with a woman. She's a pretty woman. Ah, watch! She's laughing. They're going out through that door—and the laughter freezes on her lips! Out into the long, dark corridor that leads to nowhere—forever! And in that corridor are ghosts, grim ghosts, ghosts of murdered loves, ghosts of great intellects, ghosts of ambition, ghosts of those once virtuous. And she will meet them, will sit in that congress of eternal woe, weep forever with that everlasting troop of torment!"
Sullivan, submitting to the grip on his shoulder, saw that the girl at the door leaned forward, her lips half-parted, her eyes wide with astonishment.
"Look quick!" John Smith was saying. "He's talking to a young man, telling him lies, charming lies! But his lips are too pale, and there are ugly stains under his fingernails. Did you hear that door slam? The young man's gone—gone! I heard one like him scream, up there on the edges of eternity."
His voice shrilled:
"Look how he works—lashing the backs of men, breaking the hearts of women, stealing away the laughter of children. Look at him—all ghoulish eyes.
His mouth's a grinning gap. And he's got ashes on his nice new shoes—ashes of dead souls."
He pushed Sullivan from him, and with both hands held the glass close against his chest, slopping over to the floor the last few drops of the whisky. There was no thunder left in his voice. Emotions played with him as high winds thresh the trees in November. All his old terror beat upon him.
"I'm afraid of him!" he shrieked, the sound bringing a half-stifled cry from the girl at the door.
His hands grew nerveless, and the glass dropped, unbroken, to the floor. He looked at Sullivan, the torches of terror relit in his eyes, and whispered hoarsely:
"Old man, that's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid of him!"
On the end of that confession one great sob shook him, and he screamed, clapping his left hand to his shoulder:
"He's got me!" he lamented. "I've fled for a thousand years—and—he's got me!"
He stood, weak and uncertain on his feet, and wept, the tears flowing unheeded down his sunken cheeks. Then, suddenly, in a flash, fury tensed him, made him strong enough to grind the glass to pieces under the ragged sole of his shoe.
"Curse him! Curse him!" he yelled. "Damn him!"
Immediately, as quickly as it had come, the false strength left him.
"What's the use?" he moaned weakly. "He's got"
The girl, rushing forward, reached him as soon as Sullivan. Both of them caught him as he reeled and was about to fall.
"Oh!" she said, looking down upon the pallor of his face while they held him between them.
"He's in awful bad shape, Miss Edith," Sullivan explained, his voice lowered involuntarily.
Smith, with a desperate effort, stood upright, shaking off their support. He was unnaturally calm. An insane smile played with his lips.
"Look behind me," he said, his voice low and strained, his eyes fixed. "Look behind me and tell me exactly where he's standing—exactly. You can tell him by the ashes on his shoes."
The girl, putting a hand on his shoulder, leaned forward and tried to engage with her glance his unwavering gaze.
"Who are you?" she asked.
He was silent, the smile still playing with his lips.
'He don't know, Miss Edith, "volunteered Sullivan. Doesn't know?" she breathed, and urged him with a pressure on his shoulder: "Tell us. We want to help you. What's your name?"
There was no answer. Instead, Smith collapsed in Sullivan's arms, his lips still lifted to a smile, his bluish eyelids falling like thin curtains over the fixed, flaming eyes.
"Very white ashes on his shoes," he whispered; "ashes of dead souls—ashes of—poor, dead souls!"
FIVE YEARS GO OVER
Senator Mallon was inordinately fond of two things: his reputation and his roses. He had cultivated both with the greatest care for many years. Seated at his breakfast table, the meal finished, he was reading a big-headlined article on the front page of his newspaper and was forming rapidly the conviction that his reputation was in danger of losing a little of its bloom.
His daughter, at the head of the table, gazed at the cluster of roses between them, the corners of her lips lifted by the touch of happy fancies. The roses were perfect.
The Senator threw down the paper and, straightening in his chair, looked at his daughter across the roses.
"This fellow Smith!" he said sharply. "I don't like him!"
Miss Mallon also straightened in her chair. If her father had been an observant man, her attitude would have reminded him of a strong, slender flower.
"But I do," she said, the statement completing the smile the roses had begun.
"Why? Fd like to know why! Tell me why!"
He made each of his phrases conversational pistol-shots. He was a nervous man of about fifty-five years, his voice sharp and authoritative. Before going to the Senate, he had done big things in business and had been accustomed to speak in the key of power. He passed his hand quickly through his sparse, bristly gray hair and jerked his glasses from his high, thin nose.
"Because he is what he is," she replied, totally unimpressed by the signs of paternal displeasure.
"What is he? Tell me what he is!" he demanded.
"He's a great man with a big idea," she said evenly,
"He's a big fool with a crazy idea—that's what he is," her father said flatly, picking up the newspaper. "Have you read this stuff about him?"
"Yes."
"Before breakfast, I suppose?" he suggested impatiently.
"Yes," she said quietly, "before breakfast."
The Senator's irritability merged into anxiety. He slapped the paper down on the table and leaned forward toward his daughter.
"Ah—er—look here, Edith," he said nervously. "You're not—you can't be thinking about this fellow seriously!"
She threw back her head and laughed, the sound of it soft and silvery. It was very much in keeping with the grave beauty of her face, with the fragrance of the roses, with the brightness of the October morning sunlight in the garden outside.
"What do you mean, father?" she asked.
"I mean" he said, his irritation returning, "whether you intend to marry him!"
"Why, the idea! Why should you suggest such a thing?"
"Til tell you why," he answered crisply: "Because you're seen too much with him, because he's too much at this house, because people are beginning to gossip, because he's a nobody, a crank, a lunatic. That's why!"
"Still," she said, quite serious, "I like him very much, very much, indeed."
"Bah!" he exclaimed. "Why? Will you tell me why?"
"I've told you why, father. He's a great man, and he's doing a great work. Why, think of it! He's come to Washington with the calm announcement that he'll compel Congress to amend the Constitution of the United States. Of course I like him."
"Amend the Constitution! And amend it for nation-wide prohibition! The thing's ridiculous."
"And yet," she persisted, her big brown eyes meeting the steely gray of her father's, "somehow, I feel sure he'll succeed."
He knew when his daughter's mind was made up. He knew also the quiet determination with which she followed her own convictions. A girlhood and young womanhood without a mother, necessitating self-reliance, had given her a character-strength with which he could not always successfully cope. But this was something which might hurt his reputation. He could not afford to have his name or his daughter's linked with that of a cheap reformer.
"Edith, you amaze me!" he declared, rolling the newspaper tightly in his nervous hands. "This fellow is not the kind of man I want about this house."
Miss Mallon wished to avoid the argument. She was looking at the roses.
"You don't even know who he is," he continued sharply. "I don't know. Nobody knows."
She lost interest in the flowers.
"That's a peculiar thing to say, father," she criticised gently.
"A very natural thing, and I'll tell you why," he said, making his speech emphatic with a wave of the newspaper. "Nobody knew anything about him up to five years ago. At that time he became prominent among the temperance people as a street-corner speaker and cheap platform lecturer. He did some bizarre, effective work for those cranks in some of the liquor fights in the various states. After that he took a short whirl at the Chautauqua lecture circuit. Now he's come to Washington to take things by storm!"
"And that's why you dislike him?"
"Why doesn't he say who he is—who he was?" Why all this mystery about him? Where's his family or his father?"
"Why should he say?" she inquired, her glance again on the roses.
"Because most of these people are reformed drunkards with a past that won't stand scrutiny. That's why!"
The Senator had lost his temper.
"He may be a murderer for all you know," he declared.
"No," she contradicted, her voice still calm and even; "I don't think so. He is merely a man who has reformed because he learned by bitter experience the evils of drinking."
"What do you know about him?" her father inquired, leaning still farther forward. "What makes you say that?"
"It is merely my idea."
He got up from the table and went to the window, standing a few moments silent before he wheeled toward her and delivered his ultimatum:
"Well, I don't approve of him, and that's all there is to it. I don't want him to come to this house any more. That was why I told you the other day I'd be glad to see you marry Dick Mannersley. Mannersley's a good fellow, one of the best in Congress.
Marry him—marry anybody you choose, but cut out this Smith person. That's my last word on it!"
More than ever, his daughter looked like a strong, graceful flower.
"Father" she said, her voice a whole octave lower, "I can t."
"What!" he stamped his foot. "I tell you there's something wrong with him—something wrong sure. I tell you he's unfit for you to associate with. The first thing you know, there'll be something in the papers about his coming here so much. I can't stand it! I can't stand having my daughter mixed up in something that would hurt the family reputation. It will get into the papers sure."
"That," she said, in the same low tone, "would make not the slightest difference in the world to me."
The atmosphere was becoming volcanic.
"Then," said the Senator, his head thrust forward on his long neck, his tall body bent forward almost like a half-hoop, "I'll forbid him the house!"
"Oh," she breathed, "you wouldn't!"
"Wouldn't I? The next time he comes here I'll— if it's necessary—I'll throw him out. I'll"
The threat was interrupted by somebody who burst through the hangings at the door into the hall. The intruder, in riding costume, was blond and chubby and bubbling with laughter. The laughter still bubbled, even when she saw that her precipitate entrance had cut off the anger on the Senator's tongue-tip.
"Ah!" she cried, her face a conspiracy of dimples, " a serious discussion at breakfast! What a mistake! My dear Senator, no one can be human so early in the morning. ,,
Mrs. Griswold Kane had to her credit widowhood, charm, and a great heart. Still aglow from her gallop in the park, she brought with her the suggestion of the russets and browns and reds of the changing foliage there. She turned to Edith.
"That is," she added, "not unless you ride. Give me some breakfast, do!"
The Senator started out of the room, with the explanation :
"I was lamenting the unreasonable demands of my constituents, Mrs. Kane."
"Oh," she corrected him, "constituents are things to be left at home. Never bring them to Washington with you. Politics wouldn't be any fun if you did."
She was all animation, excitement, glow. After the butler had brought her the coffee and rolls, she began to say to Edith the things she had made up her mind to say.
"There is," she remarked, munching a roll, "only one way for a man to make a woman love him forever. That is, to die within eighteen months after he has married her."
Edith poured her a cup of coffee.
"You know, Edith," she said next, "you are the most wonderful catch in this fair city of ours. You are rich and you are beautiful—forgive me, my dear, if I engage in this saccharine conversation at this ungodly hour of the day—and, what is more to the point, you have brains. Behold the modern miracle —a really lovely woman with real brains."
"Really, Nellie," Edith expostulated indifferently.
"And that is such a rare combination—so delightful!" Mrs. Kane bubbled on. "Think of me! I am not beautiful, and I have to overwork my brains to appear charming, to make my arms look chubbier, to gown myself stunningly, to disarrange my blond hair attractively—oh, everything. But you—you can have your 'Thursdays for girls' dear work of telling the poor things how to make a living and not lose a virtue, and do all your other queer charities, and yet —and yet, be the belle of every ball!"
"Honestly, Nellie, what does it all mean?" the younger, more serious, woman asked.
Mrs. Kane put down her piece of roll and brought matters to a climax.
"My dear Edith," she asked, simulating real concern, "why don't you tell me whether you intend to maxry the man?" Whatman?" Yesterday afternoon I played golf with Eddie Foster—stupid thing to do; my knees always crack when I stoop, and that's not romance—and later we encountered his mother. Wonderful creature, that old woman! She imparted to me the interesting information that you are going to marry Dick Mannersley."
"Which, of course," commented Edith, "is absurd."
"Naturally. I knew it was false. Everything about her is false except her eardrums. And that's why I ask you to tell me whether you intend to marry Mr. Smith, Mr. John Smith."
Miss Mallon looked Mrs. Kane full in the eyes.
"How can I, Nellie? He hasn't asked me."
This was not sufficient answer for the young widow.
"I know," she said. "What I mean is, when, according to your plans, is he to ask you?"
Edith, her face grave, showing neither mirth nor resentment, reached over, and pulling one of the long-stemmed roses from the bowl in front of her brushed her lips with the flower of it.
"I don't think," she said, a little shade of sadness in her voice, "he will ever ask me."
Mrs. Kane cast off her lightness. She was as responsive to Edith's moods as flowers are to the dew.
"Oh!" she said regretfully. "Then you don't know who he is—do you?"
"I know what everybody else knows," the other woman answered. "It should be enough."
"No, no!" Nellie cautioned her. "Never make that mistake! It isn't enough."
Edith rose and went to the window, where her father had stood a few minutes before.
Mrs. Kane, looking at her shoulders, fancied that the graceful figure bowed a little.
"Accept this from me," she forced the gayety back into her voice; "if a man hides his past from you, you may kiss him—good-bye."
After a moment, she put a question:
"Who is he, Edith? Really and truly, who is he?"
Edith turned toward her, smiling.
"A great man. That's enough, surely, isn't it?"
Mrs. Kane regarded her seriously for a long moment.
"No," she said incisively, "not even if he were as great as George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, and William Shakespeare—all rolled into one."
There was about John Smith some indefinable thing which other men did not have, a tenseness and swift force that made him seem the white fire of life. He flamed through his days. He dominated dinner tables in the evenings. The quick turn of his head, the flash of his black eyes, the strong, fast movements of his hands, the sureness of his stride—these were the unmistakable, flaunting banners that caught the eye and drew attention to the masterful spirit of the man. He was brilliant. There had been born in him a marvellous faculty for stripping from a situation all extraneous and inconsequential facts so that he might see, and make others see, the stark-naked figure of an issue, a truth. The most striking thing about him was his confidence, his final conviction that what he proposed to do he would do. He was absolutely alien to doubt. And, while he devoted himself to a serious work, a tremendous task, he was alert, sparkling. His mind was electric. Physically he was like wires. Tall, thin, broad of shoulder and narrow of thigh, he perpetually was strung taut. His reserve energy never was exhausted.
He had come to Washington early in the preceding May to conduct a fight which made the young laugh and the old pray. Practically unheralded, entirely unadvertised, he had taken his place almost within the shadow of the Capitol's dome and had made the calm announcement:
"Whisky must be thrown out of the United States!"
Charles Waller—euphoniously known among his associates as "Cholliewollie"—printed in his paper a short announcement of Smith's arrival and mission. "What the agitator wants," the article said, "is action by Congress on the pending resolution to authorize an amendment to the Federal Constitution providing for the absolute abolition of the liquor traffic in the United States and its possessions. He says he will be satisfied with nothing less than that. He is not here for a compromise. He wants to force the big fight."
A few days later Waller called on "the agitator" in his unpretentious office in a small building three blocks to the northwest of the Capitol. Cholliewollie was always on the lookout for something unusual. He had decided to take Mr. John Smith seriously.
"What I want," he explained, " and what you want for the sake of your fight, is something hot, something that will be printed on the front pages of the newspapers. Give me a good interview, and I'll fix it up in great shape."
Smith ran his right hand across his black hair— a characteristic gesture of his—and studied Waller's eyes.
"How," he asked, rising from his chair with his lightning-like rapidity of movement, "how would you like to have something about the attitude of the big men of the country in regard to the liquor question?"
"Pump it out!" Waller agreed pleasantly.
He was a stout, fair-haired man of about thirty-five, and carried a cane. He spoke in a slow, agreeable drawl, and his smile was always ready. He gave the impression that he could not possibly take life seriously, particularly Washington life.
"Why is it," began Smith, the embodiment of emphasis and fervour, "that neither of the great political parties in this country has ever had the sense or the courage to come out for prohibition? Why doesn't the party that's in power now come out for it? We hear a lot of stuff about the evil corporations grinding down the masses of the people. We read whole columns every day about the high cost of living, the education of the young, and a world peace. We are asked again and again to fight against the ravages of tuberculosis and to cut down the death-rate from cancer. Those things are not a drop in the bucket compared with the death-rate, the crime, the poverty, and the women's tears that are caused by whisky."
He put a hand on Waller's shoulder for greater emphasis.
"Mr. Waller," he said, "according to the best figures obtainable, alcohol is killing off every year as many Americans as there have been men killed in many of the great wars of the world in the last twenty hundred years. Roll that over in your mind. Picture what that mortality is."
"Say!" interjected Waller, the drawl still in his voice, "do you mean you want me to quote you as attacking directly the party now in power for not coming out for this constitutional amendment for nation-wide prohibition?"
The reply was instantaneous.
"Most certainly I do! The big parties and the big leaders of this country have enough to say about every other conceivable subject under the sun. What I want to know now, and what the public has a right to know now, is why this party has failed to declare itself either way on this issue. Why are they immune from the charge of cowardice when they run away from the subject? There must be a reason for this silence in places so high, in places from which come great pronouncements about everything else that touches, or is supposed to touch, the public welfare. What is it? That's what I want explained to me."
"Make that a little more direct, a little more succinct" suggested the newspaper man, his attention utterly absorbed.
"Let's determine," complied Smith, "whether the saloon and the influence of the saloon are so wrapped up in politics that the politicians are afraid to go against it. Let's ascertain why men will not vote down a traffic on behalf of which all of them are afraid to lift their voices in public advocacy."
"And suppose they refuse to notice this challenge, as they probably will?" Waller's drawl elaborated the interview.
"That's their funeral—not mine!" Smith waved his right arm in careless finality.
"Also, suppose they become hostile to the prohibition movement as a result of this attack?"
Smith struck the desk once with his clenched hand.
"Ah!" he declared, exultation in his voice. "They don't dare! That's the remarkable part of this business. They work for whisky, but they do it in the dark. They fling a sop to the public conscience and the public demand by abolishing whisky and its use in the Capitol building, on Indian reservations, in the army and the navy. But they do the will of the liquor interests when they say to the masses of the people: 'We will not destroy your privilege of self-destruction. Our soldiers and sailors we will save. But you—oh, you can go to the devil your own way.' Why, it would be just as reasonable for the Government to pass a law licensing butchers and grocers to sell consumers a certain amount of typhoid germs every year!"