I
THE about a being is not his to or praise, but the manner in which he to put in twenty-four hours a day. It is this which puzzles the long-shoreman about the clerk, the Londoner about the bushman. It was this which puzzled Carol in to the married Vida. Carol herself had the baby, a larger house to for, all the telephone calls for Kennicott when he was away; and she read everything, while Vida was satisfied with newspaper headlines.
But after years in boarding-houses, Vida was for housework, for the most detail of it. She had no maid, wanted one. She cooked, baked, swept, supper-cloths, with the of a in a new laboratory. To her the was the altar. When she shopping she the of soup, and she a or a of as though she were preparing for a reception. She a bean and crooned, “I this with my own hands—I this new life into the world.”
“I love her for being so happy,” Carol brooded. “I ought to be that way. I the baby, but the housework——Oh, I I'm fortunate; so much off than farm-women on a new clearing, or people in a slum.”
It has not yet been recorded that any being has a very large or permanent from upon the that he is off than others.
In Carol's own twenty-four hours a day she got up, the baby, had breakfast, talked to Oscarina about the day's shopping, put the on the to play, to the butcher's to choose and chops, the baby, up a shelf, had dinner, put the to for a nap, paid the iceman, read for an hour, took the out for a walk, called on Vida, had supper, put the to bed, socks, to Kennicott's on what a Dr. McGanum was to try to use that X-ray of his on an epithelioma, repaired a frock, Kennicott the furnace, to read a page of Thorstein Veblen—and the day was gone.
Except when Hugh was naughty, or whiney, or laughing, or saying “I like my chair” with maturity, she was always by loneliness. She no longer about that misfortune. She would have been to Vida's in Gopher Prairie and the floor.
II
Carol through an number of books from the public library and from city shops. Kennicott was at over her of them. A book was a book, and if you had thousand of them right here in the library, free, why the should you your good money? After about it for two or three years, he that this was one of the Funny Ideas which she had as a and from which she would recover.
The she read were most of them by the Vida Sherwins. They were American sociologists, English realists, Russian horrorists; Anatole France, Rolland, Nexo, Wells, Shaw, Key, Edgar Lee Masters, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Henry Mencken, and all the other and were everywhere, in batik-curtained studios in New York, in Kansas farmhouses, San Francisco drawing-rooms, Alabama for negroes. From them she got the same which the other felt; the same to be class-conscious without the class of which she was to be conscious.
Certainly her reading her of Main Street, of Gopher Prairie and of the Gopher Prairies which she had on with Kennicott. In her appeared, jaggedly, a of an at a time, while she was going to sleep, or her nails, or waiting for Kennicott.
These she presented to Vida Sherwin—Vida Wutherspoon—beside a radiator, over a bowl of not very good and from Uncle Whittier's grocery, on an when Kennicott and Raymie had gone out of town with the other officers of the Ancient and Affiliated Order of Spartans, to a new chapter at Wakamin. Vida had come to the house for the night. She helped in Hugh to bed, the while about his soft skin. Then they talked till midnight.
What Carol said that evening, what she was thinking, was also in the minds of in ten thousand Gopher Prairies. Her were not but of a futility. She did not them so that they can be in her words; they were with “Well, you see” and “if you what I mean” and “I don't know that I'm making myself clear.” But they were enough, and enough.
III
In reading popular and plays, Carol, she had only two of the American small town. The tradition, in of every month, is that the American village the one sure of friendship, honesty, and clean sweet girls. Therefore all men who succeed in painting in Paris or in finance in New York at last of women, return to their native towns, that are vicious, their and, presumably, in those until death.
The other is that the of all villages are whiskers, iron dogs upon lawns, gold bricks, checkers, of cat-tails, and old men who are as “hicks” and who “Waal I swan.” This the stage, illustrators, and newspaper humor, but out of life it passed years ago. Carol's small town thinks not in hoss-swapping but in cars, telephones, ready-made clothes, silos, alfalfa, kodaks, phonographs, leather-upholstered Morris chairs, bridge-prizes, oil-stocks, motion-pictures, land-deals, sets of Mark Twain, and a of national politics.
With such a small-town life a Kennicott or a Champ Perry is content, but there are also hundreds of thousands, particularly and men, who are not at all content. The more people (and the widows!) to the with and, despite the tradition, there, returning for holidays. The most of the them in old age, if they can it, and go to live in California or in the cities.
The reason, Carol insisted, is not a rusticity. It is nothing so amusing!
It is an background, a of speech and manners, a of the by the to appear respectable. It is . . . the of the dead, who are of the for their walking. It is as the one positive virtue. It is the of happiness. It is self-sought and self-defended. It is God.
A people, food, and afterward, and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs with decorations, to music, saying about the of Ford automobiles, and themselves as the in the world.
IV
She had as to the of this upon foreigners. She the quality to be in the first-generation Scandinavians; she the Norwegian Fair at the Lutheran Church, to which Bea had taken her. There, in the bondestue, the of a Norse farm kitchen, in with gold and beads, in black skirts with a line of blue, green-striped aprons, and very to set off a fresh face, had og lefse—sweet and milk with cinnamon. For the time in Gopher Prairie Carol had novelty. She had in the mild of it.
But she saw these Scandinavian their and red for and white blouses, the Christmas of the for “She's My Jazzland Cutie,” being Americanized into uniformity, and in less than a in the new they might have added to the life of the town. Their sons the process. In ready-made and ready-made high-school phrases they into propriety, and the American had without one of another invasion.
And along with these foreigners, she herself being into mediocrity, and she rebelled, in fear.
The of the Gopher Prairies, said Carol, is by of and in the of knowledge. Except for a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that of which it is so easy to come by. To be “intellectual” or “artistic” or, in their own word, to be “highbrow,” is to be and of virtue.
Large in politics and in co-operative distribution, knowledge, courage, and imagination, do in the West and Middlewest, but they are not of the towns, they are of the farmers. If these are supported by the it is only by occasional teachers doctors, lawyers, the labor unions, and like Miles Bjornstam, who are by being as “cranks,” as “half-baked socialists.” The and the at them. The cloud of them in and futility.
V
Here Vida observed, “Yes—well——Do you know, I've always that Ray would have a rector. He has what I call an religious soul. My! He'd have read the service beautifully! I it's too late now, but as I tell him, he can also the world by selling shoes and——I wonder if we oughtn't to have family-prayers?”
VI
Doubtless all small towns, in all countries, in all ages, Carol admitted, have a to be not only but mean, bitter, with curiosity. In France or Tibet as much as in Wyoming or Indiana these are in isolation.
But a village in a country which is taking pains to and pure, which to succeed Victorian England as the of the world, is no longer provincial, no longer and in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a to the earth, to the and sea of color, to set Dante at Gopher Prairie, and to dress the high gods in Klassy Kollege Klothes. Sure of itself, it other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a the of China and of cigarettes over for centuries to the of Confucius.
Such a functions in the large production of automobiles, watches, and safety razors. But it is not satisfied until the entire world also that the end and purpose of is to in flivvers, to make advertising-pictures of watches, and in the to talking not of love and but of the of safety razors.
And such a society, such a nation, is by the Gopher Prairies. The is but a Sam Clark, and all the and presidents are village lawyers and bankers nine tall.
Though a Gopher Prairie itself as a part of the Great World, itself to Rome and Vienna, it will not the scientific spirit, the mind, which would make it great. It at which will visibly money or social distinction. Its of a is not the manner, the aspiration, the pride, but labor for the and in the price of land. It plays at cards on oil-cloth in a shanty, and not know that are walking and talking on the terrace.
If all the were as as Champ Perry and Sam Clark there would be no for the town to great traditions. It is the Harry Haydocks, the Dave Dyers, the Jackson Elders, small men powerful in their common purpose, themselves as men of the world but themselves men of the cash-register and the film, who make the town a oligarchy.
VII
She had to be in the surface of the Gopher Prairies. She that it is a of similarity; of of construction, so that the camps; of neglect of natural advantages, so that the are with brush, the off by railroads, and the with dumping-grounds; of of color; of buildings; and and of the streets, so that there is no from and from of the of land, any to the along, while the which would be in an of makes the low shops the Main Street the more by comparison.
The similarity—that is the physical of the of safety. Nine-tenths of the American are so that it is the to from one to another. Always, west of Pittsburg, and often, east of it, there is the same yard, the same station, the same Ford garage, the same creamery, the same box-like houses and two-story shops. The new, more houses are in their very at diversity: the same bungalows, the same square houses of or brick. The shops the same standardized, wares; the newspapers of three thousand miles have the same “syndicated features”; the boy in Arkansas just such a ready-made as is on just such a boy in Delaware, of them the same phrases from the same sporting-pages, and if one of them is in college and the other is a barber, no one may which is which.
If Kennicott were from Gopher Prairie and to a town away, he would not it. He would go the same Main Street (almost it would be called Main Street); in the same store he would see the same man the same ice-cream to the same woman with the same and records under her arm. Not till he had to his office and another on the door, another Dr. Kennicott inside, would he that something had happened.
Finally, all her comments, Carol saw the that the no more to the farmers who are their of than do the great capitals; they to on the farmers, to provide for the large and social preferment; and, the capitals, they do not give to the in return for a and permanent center, but only this camp. It is a “parasitic Greek civilization”—minus the civilization.
“There we are then,” said Carol. “The remedy? Is there any? Criticism, perhaps, for the of the beginning. Oh, there's nothing that the Tribal God Mediocrity that doesn't help a little . . . and there's nothing that helps very much. Perhaps some day the farmers will and own their market-towns. (Think of the they have!) But I'm I haven't any 'reform program.' Not any more! The trouble is spiritual, and no League or Party can a for gardens than dumping-grounds. . . . There's my confession. WELL?”
“In other words, all you want is perfection?”
“Yes! Why not?”
“How you this place! How can you to do anything with it if you haven't any sympathy?”
“But I have! And affection. Or else I wouldn't so. I've learned that Gopher Prairie isn't just an on the prairie, as I first, but as large as New York. In New York I wouldn't know more than or fifty people, and I know that many here. Go on! Say what you're thinking.”
“Well, my dear, if I DID take all your seriously, it would be discouraging. Imagine how a person would feel, after hard for years and helping to up a town, to have you in and say 'Rotten!' Think that's fair?”
“Why not? It must be just as for the Gopher Prairieite to see Venice and make comparisons.”
“It would not! I are of to in, but we've got bath-rooms! But——My dear, you're not the only person in this town who has done some for herself, although (pardon my rudeness) I'm you think so. I'll admit we some things. Maybe our isn't as good as in Paris. All right! I don't want to see any on us—whether it's street-planning or table-manners or ideas.”
Vida sketched what she “practical that will make a and town, but that do to our life, that actually are being done.” Of the Thanatopsis Club she spoke; of the rest-room, the against mosquitos, the for more gardens and shade-trees and sewers—matters not and and distant, but and sure.
Carol's answer was and enough:
“Yes. . . . Yes. . . . I know. They're good. But if I put through all those at once, I'd still want startling, things. Life is and clean here already. And so secure. What it needs is to be less secure, more eager. The which I'd like the Thanatopsis to are Strindberg plays, and dancers—exquisite tulle—and (I can see him so clearly!) a thick, black-bearded, Frenchman who would about and drink and sing and tell and laugh at our proprieties and Rabelais and not be to my hand!”
“Huh! Not sure about the of it but I that's what you and all the other want: some your hand!” At Carol's gasp, the old squirrel-like Vida out and cried, “Oh, my dear, don't take that too seriously. I just meant——”
“I know. You just meant it. Go on. Be good for my soul. Isn't it funny: here we all are—me trying to be good for Gopher Prairie's soul, and Gopher Prairie trying to be good for my soul. What are my other sins?”
“Oh, there's of them. Possibly some day we shall have your Frenchman (horrible, sneering, tobacco-stained object, his and his with liquor!) but, thank heaven, for a while we'll manage to keep with our and pavements! You see, these are coming! The Thanatopsis is somewhere. And you——” Her the words—“to my great disappointment, are doing less, not more, than the people you laugh at! Sam Clark, on the school-board, is for ventilation. Ella Stowbody (whose you always think is so absurd) has the to the of a space at the station, to do away with that lot.
“You so easily. I'm sorry, but I do think there's something in your attitude. Especially about religion.
“If you must know, you're not a at all. You're an impossibilist. And you give up too easily. You gave up on the new city hall, the anti-fly campaign, papers, the library-board, the association—just we didn't into Ibsen the very thing. You want perfection all at once. Do you know what the thing you've done is—aside from Hugh into the world? It was the help you gave Dr. Will baby-welfare week. You didn't that each be a and artist you him, as you do with the of us.
“And now I'm I'll you. We're going to have a new in this town—in just a years—and we'll have it without one of help or from you!
“Professor Mott and I and some others have been away at the men for years. We didn't call on you you would the pound-pound-pounding year after year without one of encouragement. And we've won! I've got the promise of who that just as soon as war-conditions permit, they'll vote the for the schoolhouse. And we'll have a building—lovely brick, with big windows, and and manual-training departments. When we it, that'll be my answer to all your theories!”
“I'm glad. And I'm I haven't had any part in it. But——Please don't think I'm if I ask one question: Will the teachers in the new go on the children that Persia is a yellow spot on the map, and 'Caesar' the title of a book of puzzles?”
VIII
Vida was indignant; Carol was apologetic; they talked for another hour, the Mary and Martha—an Mary and a Martha. It was Vida who conquered.
The that she had been left out of the for the new Carol. She her of perfection aside. When Vida asked her to take of a group of Camp Fire Girls, she obeyed, and had out of the Indian and and costumes. She more to the Thanatopsis. With Vida as and she for a village nurse to families, the fund herself, saw to it that the nurse was and and and intelligent.
Yet all the while she the Frenchman and the dancers as as the child sees its air-born playmates; she the Camp Fire Girls not because, in Vida's words, “this Scout will help so much to make them Good Wives,” but she that the Sioux would color into their dinginess.
She helped Ella Stowbody to set out plants in the park at the station; she in the dirt, with a small and the most of gauntlets; she talked to Ella about the public-spiritedness of and cannas; and she that she was a temple by the gods and empty of and the of chanting. Passengers looking from saw her as a village woman of prettiness, virtue, and no abnormalities; the her say, “Oh yes, I do think it will be a good example for the children”; and all the while she saw herself through the of Babylon.
Planting her to botanizing. She got much than the tiger and the wild rose, but she Hugh. “What the say, mummy?” he cried, his hand full of grasses, his with pollen. She to him; she that he life more than full; she was . . . for an hour.
But she at night to death. She away from the of that was Kennicott; into the and, by the in the door of the medicine-cabinet, her face.
Wasn't she visibly older in as Vida and younger? Wasn't her nose sharper? Wasn't her granulated? She and choked. She was only thirty. But the five years since her marriage—had they not gone by as and as though she had been under ether; would time not past till death? She her on the of the and against the gods:
“I don't care! I won't it! They so—Vida and Will and Aunt Bessie—they tell me I ought to be satisfied with Hugh and a good home and seven in a station garden! I am I! When I die the world will be annihilated, as as I'm concerned. I am I! I'm not to the sea and the towers to others. I want them for me! Damn Vida! Damn all of them! Do they think they can make me that a of potatoes at Howland & Gould's is and strangeness?”
