The Fate of the Jury/Part 5

V

Now when that evening Merival reached LeRoy
The streets were full of talk about the failure
Of Samuel Ritter's bank, the day's event,
Which meant some loss to Merival—let that go.
What shocked him was this ruin of his friend,
His Harvard classmate, intimate these years,
Who helped him when this Elenor Murray inquest
Dragged through the weeks. So down to Ritter's house
He hurried, where the maid was all alone;
Ritter was out, had not been home to dinner;
The wife was in Chicago. But that night
As Merival was settled to his books
To break or aid reflection Ritter knocked
And entered, looking hunted, gray and old.
"Well, this is pretty bad," said Merival.
"I tried to see you when I returned to-night.
What can I do? Can't we make up a pool
And put the bank upon its feet again?
You know you can command me." Ritter said,
"The wreck is too complete. I've come to talk
Before I go away—or kill myself."
"Such nonsense, you will stay and fight it out;
You have done nothing surely to involve
Yourself in law toils?" "Knowingly I haven't;
But who can tell what angered depositors,
Stockholders may not do? Give me some Scotch,
I want to talk. Instead of writing out
What has been eating at my heart these years
For you and all the rest to read—oh no!
I can't do that. I have that boy, you know—
She's gone away again and taken him;
And I can't sue her for divorce—I can't;
She has me in a corner. I've worried so
About this woman I have had no mind
For business; and this Murray inquest took
My eyes away, and while they were away
Some loans were made, which made a hole which let
The water in, but worst the captain's skill
Was lacking, blunted by anxiety
About this woman, wife, about my boy.
I mean that one soul, just yourself shall know
What's gnawed my heart these years. . . . I'll tell you now—
Then I believe I'll simply disappear,
Assume another name and hide away.
But now where to begin? You knew, of course,
Our home lacked harmony. You did not know
How, when it all began. So I'll go back
To the day I married her, and tell you all.
Listen with care. You may think out a way
How to divorce her, which no lawyer can.
They say I'm stuck. Why, yes, if I could end
This marriage, have my boy sometimes, I'd stick,
Work out this failure of the bank. With her
Around my neck I can't. You never saw
Such hatred, bitterness in a woman's heart.
No pity for my failure! When she left
This morning this is what she said to me:
'Now you are down, and when depositors
Rush to step on you, you will know who set
Their feet to do it!' Why, she'll do this, too;
And she defies me, dares me to file suit
Against her; and these years she's filled her purse
With money from my hands—and walks off now,
With threats and with my boy. . . . Let me begin:

"She was and is devoted to the arts,
Plays the piano, sings, can act a part,
Reads French, reads poetry. I blamed myself
More at first than later when I fell
In slumber as she read to me. My work
Was heavy always, as our business grew
My labors multiplied. A man goes home
Half dead at night—but to begin the tale.
"I met her here when she was visiting
Some twenty years ago, and heard her play,
And heard her talk. She's very fanciful,
And witty, and devoid of gifts myself
I love them in another, in a woman.
Soon she returned to Omaha, her home,
To teaching music for her self-support,
And for a widowed mother. In these days
My fortune had begun, this business thrived;
And she could see herself provided for,
And rich at last through me—it happened so.

"First we exchanged some letters, then I went
To Omaha to see her, and the mother
Approved me at the start, and helped along
My suitorship. But Margaret had a friend—
Here started all my trouble through her friend
Named Georgine, who repulsed me from the first,
And cut me with her tongue. . . . I hated her,
She was so pushing, powerful and coarse.
I wondered then how Margaret could like her
Being herself so feminine and fine,
And asked her why. And she explained to me
That they had known each other from school days,
And from school days were bound in kindred aims;
And that Georgine's exterior was a box
Of brass which held a store of priceless balm.
Those were her very words—she routed me.
Well, I proposed to Margaret, and she said
That she would write me. I returned to work,
And after a time a letter came accepting,
And so I went to Omaha again.
I might admit I'm not the greatest lover
The world has known, never could learn to dance,
Can't turn a compliment, and I realize
How big my hands are, and how bald my head.
I did my best, however, and her responses
I thought were due to coyness. I didn't see
Myself in awkward postures, awkward words
As well as I could now. But all the while
Georgine was near. And when she spied upon
A kiss or tenderness she laughed at me,
Or stabbed me with a word, while Margaret
Forbore her lips, or danced away from me.
The laugh at me was being treated so,
As well as for my awkwardness.

As well as for my awkwardness."So the day
Was set at last, and with a string of pearls,
And the wedding ring I went to Omaha,
And found all things preparing—but no bride.
The flowers were ordered, they were baking cakes
And Margaret's mother said that she had gone
To Council Bluffs with Georgine, would be back
On any train, and sent me to the clerk
To get the marriage license. There I waited.
The day arrived—no Margaret. And the day
Passed and no Margaret. Like a fool I went
To Council Bluffs to find her. There she was.
And when I entered in the hotel room
Georgine stole out. I questioned Margaret,
Who wept and stammered, but at last confessed
That Georgine feared our marriage, and believed
Our temperaments, so different, would conflict,
And end in misery; from which reasoning
Her mind had grown bewildered till she fled
Half ill to Council Bluffs. I talked her out
Of Georgine's fears. And then she told me what
Seemed the real reason of her change and flight,
Which was that she had loved another man
From whom she parted, and who went away
And married but she still remembered him;
She feared her memory of him would shadow
Her heart forever. This was news to me.
But I brought forth the pearls and round her neck
Fastened them, growing eloquent with words
About the home I'd build, the limousine,
Travel abroad—my business will was up,
And in the absence of Georgine I seized
Her wavering fancy, won her. And in short
I took her from that room before the clerk,
And married her. Georgine was there. And then
I brought her here.

I brought her here."I furnished that lovely house,
Where you have dined with us, with everything
That money buys. And she went on with art
And music, in eight years our son was born.
And I was deep in business growing rich,
And fooled myself into a happiness.
We entertained, dined out. I tried to dance,
I studied French, and fought to keep awake
At dinners and in drawing rooms. One time
This other man was here. She had him call.
I studied him and studied them together
And satisfied my mind she didn't care
For him, and furthermore had never cared
As much as she pretended. But at last
I found a picture of this other man
Among some trifles, other photographs;
And on the instant quickness of a glance
I caught the proof in eyes and shape of nose
Of their resemblance to my son's. Well then
I had some days of hell, till I had studied
By close comparison the proof away.

"Meanwhile and all the while elusiveness,
An air of subtle temperateness, and words
Of sunlit mist, strange nothings marked the ways
Of Margaret toward me. Or else she raged
With passionate angers, or revealed her soul
In shrinking and abhorrence of my flesh,
And mocked my hands, my baldness; epithets
Like gila monster, saurian, water dog
She hurled at me when angry. From the first
She couched with me with shudders and contemned
The act as vile . . . as making her the sluice
Of filth, and from the first was scarce a wife.
And from our son's birth on she slept alone,
And came to me only when I had forced
Compliance.

Compliance."So the years went. All the while
Georgine was much with Margaret, in fact
Moved here to live soon after we were married.
When I came home at night Georgine was there—
Just going. If I chanced at luncheon time
To hurry home Georgine was there, or else
Had just been there. They took up women's rights
Together, read together, played Chopin
Together, and together acted parts
In little theaters; golfed together, too,
And in my limousine were inseparable;
My home life like a weighted trellis fell;
The order of my house to smallest things
Obeyed Georgine, who whether in my rooms
Or absent was the magnet which controlled
The momentary life of Margaret
Arranging them as filings. As for me
I paid the bills.

I paid the bills."Of course I made complaint,
First gently, then more firmly—to no good.
She said no marriage gave the right to stop
Old friendships, or to sever friend from friend,
And that she loved Georgine so much she'd die
Before she'd suffer separation. And so
I couldn't think and plan a thing to do.
But when last summer—it was early June—
She planned a trip to Paris—then I rose,
I put my foot down, thinking time was now
To end Georgine, and end her tyranny.
I said to Margaret you may go, but not
With Georgine. She submitted. And I went
With Margaret to New York, and saw her off,
Then back to work.

Then back to work."One night I rummaged round
In Margaret's writing desk and trunk to see
What I could find about this other man.
Sometimes I felt convinced he was the father
Of our son, and so I looked old diaries up
To fix the dates of Margaret's visits home
In Omaha; and at last I found a date,
A probable time of seeing him, and the count
Of months thereafter proved he was the father
Of my little son. There in that lonely room
From diaries noting dates, and looking at
His photograph I had a fiery hell,
Whose flames were lapped away by greater flames:
In an old box I found a pack of letters
From Georgine to my wife, and read them all.
The clock struck three when I had finished them;
And I undressed and tossed and puzzled over
These letters and their words of tenderness,
Which pledged fidelity and exacted it.
In one Georgine had written: 'My adored,
Since you have promised and have kept the word
Not to be soiled by him again, you are
Once more my purest angel. I forgive you
The past, this love of mine enables me.
I long for you. How will to-morrow be?
Last night I woke with trembling from a dream.
I dreamed I felt your kiss upon my lips;
I dreamed I breathed the odor of your hair;
I felt the rapture of your lovely breasts,
Pressed against mine.'

Pressed against mine.'"Here, look at it and read,
See for yourself. That very day I hurried
To catch a boat for Paris in New York.
Having the afternoon I saw a noted
Psychologist, and let him read the letters.
He told me there were forms between the metals
And the nonmetals, forms transitional;
And forms transitional between plants and beasts;
Between the plants that blossom and merely leave.
He told me in some persons there's a mixture
Between the male and female elements;
That a woman's outer body may be a woman's
And that her inner body may be a man's,
Born so, he said, and from the embryo
An intermediate sex. Well, I had heard
Of such pathologies from the school yard on.
And he said it was pathology if you called
A color blindness a pathology,
Not otherwise, abnormal, but not sick;
But seen in flowers and in the worker bee,
Which cannot propagate, but feels its sex,
And uses it to serve the racial plans
Of bees, which proved that Nature did not mean
All women or all men should propagate
As test of natural sex. He said this love
Between my wife and Georgine multiplied
Among those formed by nature for such love
Would bring the world of comrades, an ascent
Of Nature's plan, and natural as the birth
Of children, more divine for being soul
Evolved from flesh, and destined to subdue
The world's materialism—rot like that, such rot!
Well, if 'twere true, what of my life, my God
What of my boy to grow up and to know
His mother was this sort of woman? She knows,
She knows her vileness, and she uses it
To rope me down. She says I dare not charge
Her with this thing and bring our boy to shame;
And if I do that she will kill me. Well,
What is the use to charge her since it is
No ground for a divorce? She knows that too.
It isn't adultery; it's nothing in law.
I might, the lawyers say, bring separate
Maintenance on this ground, but they refuse
To act for me upon such accusation.
So here I am with a ruined bank on hand,
And with this Fury, this Lesbian pervert
In sole possession of our boy and gone."
Then Merival asked, "What happened there in Paris?"
"Yes, I forgot; I ramble on you see.
Well, that psychologist in New York. He charged
A pretty fee, I paid him, took the boat;
Arrived in Paris, went to the hotel
Where Margaret was, and sent for her to come
Down to the lobby. Meanwhile as I waited
Georgine strolled by in masculine attire,
Hair bobbed, but didn't see me, took the lift.
In a moment Margaret appeared all fear,
All trembling. I accused her. She confessed.
She wept. And I arose and took her back
To a writing room where we could talk alene,
Out of the view of people strolling by.
My first thought was to leave her there in France
Among the French and the Napoleon code
Which tolerates such vice. But there—my boy!
I wanted him. I said to her at last:
'I'll take the boy, and you can stay in France
With Georgine, what you will.' She flushed at that,
She flashed fierce eyes. She answered: 'You will take
That boy when you have killed me. You can go
To court about it here in Paris, win,
But then you'll have to kill me, but perhaps
It will be you who will be killed.' With that
She wilted down and writhed and clutched her hands
Tight in her lap. And for some minutes then
No words were passed. Then she looked up at me,
Stared at me, searched me with great beaded tears
Which almost plopped, and then with self-control,
But with intensity she faltered, 'Could—
Could you forgive me?' 'Forgive you! Well—' my voice
Went off in aspirates. 'Forgive me, yes;
Be noble, generous, forgive me this.
Give Georgine money to return. Take me,
Let us begin again' Now look how God
Played devil then! That very moment ran
My boy into the room, and with a cry
Leaped on me, flinging arms about my neck,
And shouting 'Papa!' So my tears came, too;
He saw them, 'What's the matter, Papa? Why
You're crying" Then he saw his mother's tears,
And said, 'And Mamma's crying, what's the matter?'
'Nothing,' I said—'just give me a good hug,
And run away a bit, and after while
We'll take a ride or something.' Hugging me,
Then going to his mother with a kiss,
He left the room, keeping his wondering eyes
Upon us both until he closed the door.
Well, then a silence; nothing at all was said.
And then at last with hidden averted eyes
She said, 'We owe that boy our very best;
If I have given my worst, it will not help
If you turn hard and give your worst to him.'
Well, Merival, I never have obeyed
Any good impulse without getting stung;
I never did a generous thing and found
A comprehending, generous response.
Most men learn to refrain from nobleness,
Perceiving early that they waste themselves
To no account with nobleness. It is this,
This studied skepticism of the good which makes
Business, finance, the state, society
So hard, so cynical, so cruel, cold,
So unrepentant when they trample down,
And gain thereby; then like a pugilist
Who is victorious, lift their fallen foe
And carry him to his corner—charity!
And so it is that firm, strong, self-contained
Men who give nothing, save the measure of law
Pass for wise men, just men, and are esteemed,
Remembered, while the noble win a sigh
From natures like themselves, 'He sacrificed,
He died for truth, he gave his fortune up—'
And so on. . . . Well, I let the opportune
Moment for my advantage slip my hands.
I might have let her keep the boy. I might
Have placed some money in a Paris bank
To feed and school him, pay a guardian;
And left her without money to work or starve,
Or be supported by Georgine. So caught
She might have come to reason, freeing me
To marry again; and then in after years
I might have had the boy. I see this now.
But at that moment an impulse surged my heart
To forgive—this Christian ethic rots the world,
All of it's false, all lies, all sophistry,
All words, all sick perversion of the truth
For action, conduct, dealing with our lives.
There she sat frozen, helpless. But I forgave,
I took her to my breast again, I warmed
Her fangs to life. Back to LeRoy we came;
And for a time she was companionable,
Life brightened for me—and I loved the boy.
But while this Elenor Murray inquest took
My mind's attention, that and bank affairs,
Becoming tangled, she was taking trips
To meet this Georgine in Chicago. Last
Week I discovered this. I found her scrawl,
My wife's, a passionate adoration scrawled
To Georgine, in a moment's recklessness
Half torn and flung away. I showed her this,
I charged her with this vice—she laughed at me,
She snapped her fingers at me—then she left
And took the boy. On top of this the bank
Crashed down. And now, my friend, just let me sleep,
I have some sleeping powders; let me sleep
For this night in your house."

For this night in your house."So Merival
Took Ritter to a room, and tucked him in.
And the next morning rapped upon his door,
And called him. With no answer coming back
Merival entered, and found an empty room.
Ritter was never seen again. Some years
After a skeleton of a man was found-
In an old abandoned coal mine. No one knew
Whether 'twas Ritter's, or a doctor's who
Mysteriously disappeared, as Ritter did.
But Ritter at least was never seen again
After that night of talk with Merival.

Now with the failure of the bank was lost
The fund which had been raised to set a bronze
Of Elenor Murray in the public square,
Which Ritter started at the inquest's end.
With him a bankrupt, and the rest poor men
The burden fell on Merival to restore
The fund; which done, Newfeldt, the juryman,
Who in his youth had studied Adam Smith,
And since had studied tariffs, land and money,
Conferred with Merival about the figure
Which would express the soul of Elenor Murray
As child, as woman and as patriot.
They had found drawings at the Ritter bank,
Among the Ritter papers, as if concealed;
At least he had not shown them to the rest,
To Merival and Newfeldt. They were drafts
Made by the ardent Smulski who had dodged
The war as pacifist and been interned,
As punishment as well for sculptured scoffs
At war, shaped to ferocities of hate.
He kept a studio in a little shed
Back of his father's shop, who was a smith,
And shod the horses for the heavy drays
Of packers and of truckers. He had drawn
For Elenor Murray's bronze such bitter things
As spoke his fiery, gifted, iron hate
For America, which had fooled his father's hope,
An immigrant, and roused his youth's contempt.
Such, too, as bodied forth what Elenor Murray
Was as he saw her, and what the war had done
To use her and destroy her. So he scrolled
A decorate lotus with its roots in mud,
But flowering in the sun. Or else he drew
A vaguest coil of something huge and vile
Which wrapped a broken wing. One drawing showed
The head skin of a lamb which peeped a face
Too easily perceived as Lowell's face,
The wolfish editor of the hated Times,
Who howled the war, and stood for all its lies,
And turned his pharisaic screeds in peace
Against saloons to drying all the brews
That soldiers might have bread from grain conserved!

These drafts had angered Ritter who desired
Pure beauty, as he called it, something benign
To inspire, to show this Elenor Murray's face
In a light divine of sacrifice and love.
And he had kept them thus in secrecy,
While asking Smulski to try again, and saying
To all the rest that when all drafts had come
They would sit down together and decide,
Meanwhile except for Merival he had turned
This Smulski off for an artist higher souled.

Now on a day Newfeldt and Merival
Studied the Smulski drafts. And Newfeldt spoke
At once for something sharply edged and new,
Ironical, to picture war, and show
How it devours the dreamers, the true of heart.
"What money does to art," Newfeldt began,
"Is shown by Ritter's holding back these drafts,
For fear that you and I, the rest of us,
Might choose some of these Smulski drafts. You see
Money wants war, and war must have for friend
Money. It wouldn't do to have such bronzes
Which bare their friendship and their game, and what
They do to life. Now as I sat quite still
While all of you talked freely when we met
To reach our verdict on Elenor Murray's death,
I may talk now, especially as I'm bound
To write my story, but fear that I shall fail
For time, or for the words to make it plain.
My story's poverty, to use a single word,
Which cramped my usefulness, and clipped my hopes,
And kept me dreaming, wandering in the quest
Of a better state. Now poverty with me,
With this America is a rocky shelf
Which grows the cactus and the cypress tree
Wind bent and twisted. But this rocky shelf
Lies by a cornfield where the obese ears
Make riches and make rulerships; besides
Make books and pictures, bronzes, shape a faith
From Jesus—in a word religion, art,
If that be art which genuflects the corn
Not in the field, but on the board of trade.
It isn't art, for art's the rebel soul;
Its beauty is its courage and its truth;
It is a satire on the man which men
Through civilization make, and it's a curse
Of social lies.

Of social lies."This bronze of Elenor Murray
Should show the worm which gnaws America,
The deep disease which irritates its life;
And how great souls which find no sympathy
"No beauty, no nobility, no ideals
In this vast mediocrity of materialism,
Turn from their hatreds of it to the hopes
Some past inspires, and live Utopia;
Or else in desperation fling themselves
To war, imagining behind the gas
And smoke of battlefields, the alluring shapes
Of lovelier things, new eras, richer life;
Just as the cypress tree in the bitter wind
Becomes a colophon which tells the tale
Of what it has endured. Withdraw and dream,
And give us beauty? No, the men who stand
To know America and to fight for her
Will from their irritation satirize
Her vast apostasy, which furnishes
No audience for truth, devoid of faith
In anything but the stomach, being herself
A hulk of flesh, mixed blood and embryo nerves.
When will it change? As well to ask me when
Poor seed corn will be good if you persist
In planting poor, for corn and human seed
Obey the selfsame laws. America!
There is America the land, but no
America as people, or as soul.
For dinner buckets and prosperity
Are appetites, not soul. And if you took
The whole of Europe, added Africans,
Some Asiatics, you would have this breed
Which never stirs to one united cause,
Save it be money or a war.

Save it be money or a war."One time
I went with Ritter to the studio
Of Smulski in Chicago. It was Sunday,
And many workers were gathered in a square.
There sat they with low brows and big of face,
Lips thick, mouths coarse, the upper lips too long,
Cheek bones too high, or chins too weak, or jaws
Prognathous, noses goose-billed. Are these best
Of Europe's stocks? They are not best, but worst,
And we are burdened with them by the men
Who talk religion and prosperity,
Your business man and patriot—American;
Who from the first followed the money lust
And captured slaves to work the sugar fields;
And lured by false pretenses the pauper class
From English towns; and shipped the criminals,
The insane, the imbeciles, kidnaped on the streets
Of starving London, till the colonies
Were sown with this poor seed corn to the half
Of all their acreage. Yes, in our day
Came pauper labor for the mills, for votes
Coerced and bribed to swell a privilege.
Do these vote for the men who know their lot,
And strive to better it? No, never that;
They vote for those who keep them where they are,
For those who use and work them, not for those
Sprung from their ranks, or wise men like yourself
Who sacrifice to give them liberty.
It would not be America to let
A man like you have office, or some sprout
Of this trash corn; it is American
To clothe with sovereignty the sons of those
Who first imported slaves and imbeciles,
And paupers. Thus the Anglo-Saxon cult
Is kept, you see, the foreign scum subdued;
And so religion is preserved, the seed
Of all dissentient madness which was mixed
With imbeciles and paupers for first ships
Which brought Ridge Hermits, Pietists and such
Plagues which escaped the opening of the Book,
To make this land one vast and howling ward
Of madness, where elections are always won
By lies and money, using ignorance,
And morality its brother here.

And morality its brother here."Look now
At us prodigious, powerful and rich,
With never a guide, a molder of our life.
Jesus! What Jesus? Imagine Chinamen
Saying, Confucius! What Confucius? He
Who threatened he would break up families,
And breed dissension cannot mold a race
To unity, but only mold it as
America is molded, of many faces,
As numerous as his words. Have we a god
To shape us to enlightened prudence, truth,
To dignity of soul, to liberty,
To taste, nobility, to brotherhood
Where gentlemen are brothers? None. Besides
Who honors those who have these virtues? None.
Who cares for Epictetus, or Aurelius,
Here where the general thought is cast beyond
To a heaven when it is not bent upon
Commercial fraud, or war or stealing isles?
My suffering for this makes up the sum
Of my life's story. Can I write it out
Better than I have talked it now? I know
The Ritter secret, and I grant as well
The masculine trouble generally concerns
How he resisted or surrendered self
To a woman's breast. Not mine that story is.
I am of those who have been sent to hell
By America, and who have lived in hell
Accepted the fate—for what? To tell in chief
What the hell is America has made,
And put me in. While I am cursed by those
Who sent me there, for telling what I saw,
Suffered and lived. So always it has been
From Dante down to Shelley.

From Dante down to Shelley."Thank the gods
I saw this hell from China before the West
With trade and guns and Jesus scaled her walls,
And broke her ancient order. There I saw
Their vice of exaltation and of dreams,
Who would prefer the anger of whisky eyes?
There I saw virtues nurtured and sustained
By purely human worships without priests,
Rewards or gods. There harmony of life
Was the goal. There wisdom, gentleness,
And temperance were the tenets. There I saw
Their art of mountains ethereal as smoke,
Intangible as dreams, divined as soul,
Which turns to clouds of light the very rocks,
And brings a peace which only the pure of heart
Can ever know.

Can ever know."All this I saw afar
From the hell I fled, compelled to enter it
Again and roost upon its lower shelves
Here in LeRoy. Living indeed! How reach
The open air again, how pull the land
Out of this hell? Take Christianity
And boot it forth, deracinate its roots,
Burn oft the sod.

Burn oft the sod."Before this have you voice,
Have I in the state's affairs? We but submit
To that majority which rules, but worse
Crushes and stifles the minority.
Yes, even a party with political
Adherents by the millions, and with hopes
For the country are all waste, as even you
Are waste, and thrown away, a man like you,
Because you did a novel work while probing
The life and death of Elenor Murray, one
That seemed eccentric to these sanest minds
That rule our country. How can our state be sound
With millions in a pulseless life submerged,
Where rot ensues from mere inactive blood,
Denied participation in policies,
But worse despoiled of private rights that touch
Diversion, drink, and worship? Were it only
What party wins and there an end, because
Our inmost lives were free of politics,
Who'd care? Not I. But it means bread at first,
And bread means freedom, progress, joy of life.
There's not a capillary at its tendril's end
That is not poisoned by this corrupted blood.
It makes us cringers for the means of life;
It fouls the press, contaminates our books;
It breaks the honest publisher. It stretches
Its sucking and envenomed tentacles
Where children learn. It warps the sense of truth
In reasoning men, until mere money want
Which flows from disobedience to this rule
Breaks down the will to sullen abdication.
Where you have this as a pandemic ill
What's your republic? And this gibbous thing,
Privilege, or plutocracy—call it that,
Which is the church and is political
Strikes down our liberty for moral's sake—
Look down, great God, and see! Morality
It fouls with fox feet or with oxen feet,
For fat prosperity to be passed around
By those who stole it. It shouts down the truth
With what? The clamorous voices of insane,
Bribed, system fashioned suffragans who feed
Upon the loot, who being fed ride down
My liberty and yours, the country's too.
Lawmakers, judges, teachers, editors,
And clergymen are moral—do you say?
Well, then bootleggers are, and gunmen, thieves,
Or moraler, since they strike too low to hit
The heart of liberty.

The heart of liberty."Well, Merival
My tale is poverty, and God save the mark.
Its good I have no greater talents, since
My waste would then be greater. I am glad
My strength is such that broken time and work
To win support defeat no genius task;
And that work doled, which work may be withdrawn
If I show independence, though it breed
A sense of shame, and conflict between the hate
One feels for such a life, and love of days
Which honor merit and the thinking man—
Still that such work amid such circumstance
Wears down no Leonardo—in my case.
But the best of men endure what I endure,
That is the wrong, the waste; for they could serve
America. Yes, poverty is the word;
It is the worm which gnaws the precious flower
Of genius and of character.

Of genius and of character."Now the statue
To Elenor Murray. How would a skeleton
With swift, long, bony strides come out in bronze,
With bony fingers gripped about her hand,
With eyeless sockets staring an abyss
To which he led her hastening—an abyss
Which smoked with war—and something I don't know,
To show the war was waged for business?"

To show the war was waged for business?"Then
After a silence Merival returned,
"We'll find this Smulski once again. I like
His savage fancy, and his love of truth."