of her quaint, enthralling caresses. My admiration of Sophy cleansed me of any possible disdain I might otherwise have had of the Negro people, and I am glad of it; for else I might have closed my heart against the Hindu and so missed the best part of my life's experiences. I have had a great artist make the sketch of her back which I reproduce at the end of this chapter; it conveys something of the strange vigor and nerve-force of her lovely firm body. But it was written that as soon as I reached ease and content, the fates would reshuffle the cards and deal me another hand.
First of all, there came a letter from Smith telling me how he had had a bed wetting one night and had caught a severe cold. The cough then had returned and he was losing weight and heart. He had come to the conclusion, too, that I had reached, that the moist air of Philadelphia was doing him harm, and the doctors now were beginning to urge him to go to Denver, Colorado, all the foremost specialists agreeing that mountain air was the best for his lung-weakness. If I couldn't come to him, I must wire him and he'd stop in Lawrence to see me on his way west, he had much to say-. A couple of days later he was in the Eldridge House and I went to see him. His appearance shocked me: he had grown spectre thin and the great eyes seemed to burn like lamps in his white face. I knew at once that he was doomed and could scarcely control my tears. We passed the whole day together and when he heard how I spent my days in casual reading and occasional speaking and my Topsy-turvey nights, he urged me to throw up the law and go to Europe to make myself a real scholar and thinker. But I could not give up Sophy and my ultra-pleasant life. So I resisted, told him he overrated me: I'd easily be the best advocate in the state, I said, and make a lot of money and then I'd go back and do Europe and study as well. He warned me that I must choose between God and Mammon; I retorted lightly that Mammon and my senses gave me much that God denied. «I'll serve both,» I cried, but he shook his head. «I'm finished, Frank,» he declared at length, «but I'd regret life less if I knew that you would take up the work I once hoped to accomplish. Won't you?» I couldn't resist his appeal.
«All right,» I said, after choking down my tears, «give me a few months and I'll go, round the world first and then to Germany to study.» He drew me to him and kissed me on the forehead: I felt it as a sort of consecration. A day or so afterwards he took train for Denver and I felt as if the sun had gone out of my life.
I had little to do in Lawrence at this time except read at large and I began to spend a couple of hours every day in the town library.
Mrs. Trask, the librarian, was the widow of one of the early settlers who had been brutally murdered during the Quantrell raid, when Missourian bandits «shot up» the little town of Lawrence in a last attempt to turn Kansas into a slave-owning state. Mrs. Trask was a rather pretty little woman who had been made librarian to compensate her in some sort for the loss of her husband. She was well read in American literature and I often took her advice as to my choice of books. She liked me, I think, for she was invariably kind to me and I owe her many pleasant hours and some instruction. After Smith had gone west I spent more and more time in the library, for my law work was becoming easier to me every hour. One day, about a month after Smith had left, I went into the library and could find nothing enticing to read. Mrs. Trask happened to be passing and I asked her,
«What am I to read?» «Have you read any of that?» she replied, pointing to Bohn's edition of Emerson in two volumes. «He's good!»
«I saw him in Concord,» I said, «but he was deaf and made little impression on me.» «He's the greatest American thinker,» she retorted, «and you ought to read him.» Automatically I took down the volume and it opened of itself at the last page of Emerson's advice to the scholars of Dartmouth College. Every word is still printed on my memory: I can see the left-hand page and read again that divine message. I make no excuse for quoting it almost word for word:
Gentlemen, I have ventured to offer you these considerations upon the scholar's place and hope, because I thought that standing, as many of you now do, on the threshold of this College, girt and ready to go and assume tasks, public and private, in your country, you would not be sorry to be admonished of those primary duties of the intellect whereof you will seldom hear from the lips of your new companions. You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. 'What is this Truth you seek? What is this beauty?' men will ask, with derision. If nevertheless God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say, 'As others do, so will I: I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions: I must eat the good of the land and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season»; -then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history, and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. It is this domineering temper of the sensual world that creates the extreme need of the priests of science… Be content with a little light, so it be your own.
Explore and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope. The truth of it shocked me: «Then perish the buds of art and poetry and science in you as they have perished already in a thousand thousand men!» That explained why it was that there was no Shakespeare, no Bacon, no Swinburne in America, where, according to population and wealth, there should be dozens. There flashed on me the realization of the truth, that just because wealth was easy to get here, it exercised an incomparable attraction and in its pursuit «perished a thousand thousand» gifted spirits who might have steered humanity to new and nobler accomplishment. The question imposed itself: «Was I too to sink to fatness, wallow in sensuality, degrade myself for a nerve-thrill?» «No!» I cried to myself, «ten thousand times, no! No! I'll go and seek the star-lit deserts of Truth or die on the way!» I closed the book, and with it and the second volume of it in my hand, went to Mrs. Trask. «I want to buy this book,» I said. «It has a message for me that I must never forget!»
«I'm glad,» said the little lady smiling. «What is it?» I read her a part of the passage. «I see,» she exclaimed, «but why do you want the books?» «I want to take them with me,» I said. «I mean to leave Lawrence at once and go to Germany to study!» «Good gracious!» she cried. «How can you do that? I thought you were a partner of Sommerfeld's; you can't go at once!» «I must,» I said.
«The ground burns under my feet. If I don't go now, I shall never go.
I'll be out of Lawrence tomorrow!» Mrs. Trask threw up her hands and remonstrated with me: such quick decisions were dangerous; «why should I be in such a hurry?» I repeated time and again. «If I don't go at once, I shall never go. The ignoble pleasure will grow sweeter and sweeter to me and I shall sink gradually and drown in the mud-honey of life.» Finally seeing I was adamant and my mind fixed, she sold me the books at full price and, with some demur, then she added, «I almost wish I had never recommended Emerson to you!» and the dear lady looked distressed. «Never regret that!» I cried. «I shall remember you as long as I live because of that and always be grateful to you. Professor Smith told me I ought to go, but it needed the word of Emerson to give me the last push! The buds of poetry and science and art shall not perish in me as they have 'perished already in a thousand thousand men!' Thanks to you!» I added warmly, «all my best heart-thanks: you have been to me the messenger of high fortune.» I clasped her hands, wished to kiss her, foolishly feared to hurt her, and so contented myself with a long kiss on her hand and went out at once to find Sommerfeld. He was in the office and forthwith I told him the whole story, how Smith had tried to persuade me and how I had resisted till this page of Emerson had convinced me. «I am sorry to leave you in the lurch,» I explained,
«but I must go and go at once.» He told me it was madness: I could study German right there in Lawrence; he would help me with it gladly. «You mustn't throw away a livelihood just for a word,» he cried. «It is madness. I never heard a more insane decision!» We argued for hours: I couldn't convince him any more than he could persuade me. He tried his best to get me to stay two years, at any rate, and then go with full pockets. «You can easily spare two years,» he cried; but I retorted, «Not even two days: I'm frightened of myself.» When he found that I wanted the money to go round the world with first, he saw a chance of delay, and said I must give him some time to find out what was coming to me. I told him I trusted him utterly (as indeed I did) and could only give him the Saturday and Sunday, for I'd go on the Monday at the latest. He gave in at last and was very kind. I got a dress and a little hat for Lily, and lots of books besides a chinchilla cape for Rose, and broke the news to Lily next morning, keeping the afternoon for Rose. To my astonishment I had most trouble with Lily: she would not hear any reason. «There is no reason in it,» she cried again and again, and then she broke down in a storm of tears. «What will become of me?» she sobbed. «I always hoped you'd marry me,» she confessed at last, «and now you go away for nothing, nothing-on a wild-goose chase-to study,» she added, in a tone of absolute disdain, «just as if you
