Thyrsis was forever evolving plans of this sort; plans for doing
something concrete, for coming into contact with the world of every
day. The pursuit of literature was something so cold and aloof, so
comfortable and conventional; one never pressed the hand of a person
in distress, one never saw the light of hope and inspiration
kindling in another's eyes. So he would dream of running a
publishing-house or a magazine, of founding a library or staging a
play, of starting a colony or a new religion. And then, after he had
made himself drunk upon the imagining, he would take himself back to
his real job. For that summer his only indiscretions were to buy
several thousand copies of the "Appeal to Reason", and hire the old
horse and buggy, and distribute them over some thirty square miles
of country; also to help to organize a club for the study of
Socialism at the university; and finally, when he was in the city,
to make a fiery speech at a meeting of some "Christian Socialists."
Because of this the newspaper reporters dug out the accounts of his
earlier adventures, and "wrote him up" with malicious bantering. And
this, alas--as the publisher pointed out--was a poor sort of
preparation for the launching of the war-novel.

Needless to add, the two did not fail to wrestle with those
individuals whom they met. Thyrsis got a collection of pamphlets,
judiciously selected, and gave them to the butcher and the grocer,
the store-clerks and the hack-drivers in the town. But a
college-town was a poor place for Socialist propaganda, as he
realized with sinking heart; its population was made up of masters
and servants, and there was even more snobbery among the servants
than among the masters. The main architectural features of the place
were fraternity-houses and "eating-clubs", where the sons of the
idle rich disported themselves; once or twice Thyrsis passed through
the town after midnight, and saw these young fellows reeling home,
singing and screaming in various stages of intoxication. Then he
would think of little children shut up in cotton-mills and
coal-mines, of women dying in pottery-works and lead-factories; and
on his way home he would compose a screed for the "Appeal to
Reason".

Section 7. Another victim of their fervor was the Rev. Mr. Harding,
who stopped in to see them several times upon his tramps. Thyrsis
would never have dreamed of troubling Mr. Harding, but Corydon found
"something in him", and would go at him hammer and tongs whenever he
appeared. It must have been a novel experience for the clergyman; it
seemed to fascinate him, for he came again and again, and soon quite
a friendship sprang up between the two. She would tell Thyrsis about
it at great length, and so, of course, he had to change his ideas
about Mr. Harding.

"Don't you see how fine and sensitive he is?" she would plead.

"No doubt, my dear," said Thyrsis. "But don't you think he's maybe
just a bit timid?"

"Timid," she replied. "But then think of his training! And think
what you are!"

"Yes, I suppose I'm pretty bad," he admitted.

This discussion took place after he and Mr. Harding had had an
argument, in which Thyrsis had remarked casually that modern
civilization was "crucifying Jesus all over again." And when Mr.
Harding asked for enlightenment, Thyrsis answered, "My dear man, we
crucify him according to the constitution. We teach the profession
of crucifying him. We invest our capital in the business of
crucifying him. We build churches and crucify him in his own name!"

After which explosion Corydon said, "You let me attend to Mr.
Harding. I understand him, and how he feels about things."

"All right, my dear," assented Thyrsis. "When I see him coming, I'll
disappear."

But that would not do either, it appeared, for Mr. Harding was a
conventional person, and it was necessary that he should feel he was
calling on the head of the family.

"Then," said Thyrsis, "I'm supposed to sit by and serve as a
chaperon?"

"You're to answer questions when I ask you to," replied Corydon.

Through Mr. Harding they made other acquaintances in Bellevue. There
was a Mrs. Jennings, the wife of the young principal of the High
School; they were simple and kindly people, who became fond of
Corydon, and would beg her to visit them. The girl was craving for
companionship, and she would plead with Thyrsis to accompany her,
and subject himself to the agonies of "ping-pong" and croquet; and
once or twice he submitted--and so one might have beheld them, at a
lawn-party, hotly pressed by half a dozen disputants, in a debate
concerning the nature of American institutions, and the future of
religion and the home!

Thyrsis seldom took human relationships seriously enough to get
excited in such arguments; but Corydon, with her intense and
personal temperament, made an eager and uncomfortable propagandist.
How could anyone fail to see what was so plain to her? And so she
would bring books and pamphlets, and lend them about. There was a
young man named Harry Stuart, a fine, handsome fellow, who taught
drawing at the High School. In him, also, Cordon discovered
possibilities; and she repudiated indignantly the idea that his
soulful eyes and waving brown hair had anything to do with it. Harry
Stuart was a guileless and enthusiastic member of the State militia;
but in spite of this sinister fact, Corydon went at him. She soon
had her victim burning the midnight oil over Kautsky and Hyndman;
and behold, before the autumn had passed, the ill-fated
drawing-teacher had resigned from the State militia, and was doing
cartoons for the "Appeal to Reason"!

Section 8. Corydon's excitement over these questions was all the
greater because she was just then making the discovery of the
relationship of Socialism to the problems of her own sex. Some one
sent her a copy of Charlotte Gilman's "Women and Economics"; she
read it at a sitting, and brought it to Thyrsis, who thus came to
understand the scientific basis of yet another article of his faith.
He went on to other books--to Lester Ward's "Sociology", and to
Bebel's "Woman", and to the works of Havelock Ellis. So he realized
that women had not always been clinging vines and frail flowers and
other uncomfortable things; and the hope that they might some day be
interested in other matters than fashion and sentiment and the
pursuit of the male, was not a vain fantasy and a Utopian dream, but
was rooted in the vital facts of life.

Throughout nature, it appeared, the female was often the equal of
the male; and even in human history there had been periods when
woman had held her own with man--when the bearing of children had
not been a cause of degradation. Such had been the case with our
racial ancestors, the Germans; as one found them in Tacitus, their
women were strong and free, speaking with the men in the
council-halls, and even going into battle if the need was great. It
was only when they came under the Roman influence, and met slavery
and its consequent luxury, that the Teutonic woman had started upon
the downward path. Christianity also had had a great deal to do with
it; or rather the dogmas which a Roman fanatic had imposed upon the
message of Jesus.

It was interesting to note how one might trace the enslavement of
woman, step by step with the enslavement of labor; the two things
went hand in hand, and stood or fell together. So long as life was
primitive, woman filled an economic function, and held her own with
her mate. But with slavery and exploitation, the heaping up of
wealth and the advent of the leisure-class _rГ©gime_, one saw the
woman becoming definitely the appendage of the man, a household
ornament and a piece of property; securing her survival, not by
useful labor, but by sexual charm, and so becoming specialized as a
sex-creature. For generations and ages the male had selected and
bred in her those qualities which were most stimulating to his own
desires, which increased in him the sense of his own dominance; and
for generations and ages he taught the doctrine that the proper
sphere of woman was the home. If he happened to be a German emperor,
he summed it up in the sneer of "Kuche, Kinder, Kirche". So the
woman became frail and impotent physically, and won her success by
the only method that was open to her--by finding some male whom she
could ensnare.

Such had been the conditions. But now, in the present century, had
come machinery, and the development of woman's labor; and also had
come intelligence, and woman's discovery of her chains. So there was
the suffrage movement and the Socialist movement. After the
overthrow of the competitive wage-system and of the leisure-class
tradition, woman would no longer sell her sex-functions, whether in
marriage or prostitution; and so the sex might cease to survive by
its vices, and to infect the whole race with its intellectual and
moral impotence. So would be set free the enormous force that was
locked up in the soul of woman; and human life would be transformed
by the impulse of emotions that were fundamental and primal. So
Thyrsis perceived the two great causes in which the progress of
humanity was bound up--the emancipation of labor and the
emancipation of woman; to educate and agitate and organize for which
became the one service that was worth while in life.

Section 9. The nights were beginning to grow chilly, and they
realized that autumn was at hand, and faced the prospect of another
winter in that lonely cabin. Paret, who had come down to visit them,
had given it a name--"the soap-box in a marsh." Thyrsis saw clearly
that he could not settle down to hard work while they were shut up
there. Corydon's headaches and prostrations seemed to be growing
worse, and she could simply not get through the winter without some
help. As the book was ready, they had some money in prospect, and
their idea was that they would buy a farm with a good house. So they
might keep a horse and a cow and some chickens; and there might be
some outdoor work for Thyrsis to do, instead of trudging aimlessly
over the country.

They utilized their spare time by getting the old horse and buggy,
and inspecting and discussing all the farms within five miles of
them; an occupation which put a great strain upon their diverse
temperaments. Thyrsis would be thinking of such matters as roads and
fruit-trees and barns--and above all of prices; while Corydon would
be concerned with--alas, Corydon never dared to formulate her
vision, even to herself. She had vague memories of dilettante
country-places with great open fire-places, and exposed beams, and a
broad staircase, and a deep piazza, and above all, a view of the
sunset. Whenever she came upon any vague suggestion of these
luxuries, her heart would leap up--and would then be crushed by
some reference to ten or fifteen thousand dollars.

Corydon was a poor sort of person to take an inspection-trip. She
would gaze about and say, "There might be a piazza here"; and then
she would look across the fields and add, "There'd be a good view if
it weren't for those woods"--and wave the woods away with the
gesture of a duchess. So, of course, the observant farmer would add
a thousand dollars to the asking-price of his property.

On the other hand, when Thyrsis with his remorseless thoroughness
would insist on getting out and inspecting some dilapidated and
forlorn-looking place--then what agonies would come! Corydon would
pass through the rooms, suffering all the horrors which she might
have suffered in years of occupancy of them. And there was no use
pleading with her to be reserved in her attitude--she took houses in
the same way that she took people, either loving them or hating
them. So, from an afternoon's driving-trip, she would come home in a
state of exhaustion and despair; and Thyrsis would have to pledge
himself upon oath not to think of this or that horrible place for a
single instant again.

There were times when Thyrsis, too, in spite of his lack of
intuition, felt the atmosphere of evil which hung about some of
these old farms. Having lived for a year and a half in the
neighborhood, and been favored with the gossip of the washerwoman,
and of the farmer's wife, and of the girl who came to clean house
now and then, they had come to know the affairs of their
neighbors--they had got a cross-section of an American small-farming
community. It was in amusing accord with Thyrsis' social theories
that the only two decent families in the neighborhood inhabited
farms of over a hundred acres. There were several farms of fifty or
sixty acres occupied by tenants, who were engaged, in plundering
them as fast as they could; and then a host of little places, of
from one to twenty acres, on which families were struggling
pitifully to keep alive. And with scarcely a single exception, these
homes of poverty were also homes of degradation. Across the way from
Thyrsis was an idiot man; upon the next place lived an old man who
was a hopeless drunkard, and had one son insane, and another
tubercular; and then down in the meadows below the woods lived the
Hodges--a name of direful portent. The father would work as a
laborer in town for a day or two, and buy vinegar and make himself
half insane, and then come home and beat his wife and children.
There were eleven of these latter, and a new one came each year; the
eldest were thieves, and the youngest might be seen in midwinter,
playing half-naked before the house. The Hodges were known to all
the neighbors for miles about, and the amount of energy which each
farmer expended in fighting them would have maintained the whole
family in comfort for their lives.

Thyrsis had travelled enough about the New England and Middle
Atlantic states to know that these conditions were typical of the
small-farming industry in all the remoter parts. The people with
enterprise had moved West, and those who stayed behind divided and
mortgaged their farms, and sunk lower and lower into misery and
degradation. This was one more aspect of that noble system of
_laissez faire_; this was the independent small-farmer, whose
happiness was the theme of all orthodox economists! He was,
according to the newspaper editorials, the backbone of American
civilization; and once every two years, in November, he might be
counted upon to hitch up his buggy and drive to town, and pocket his
two-dollar bill, and roll up a glorious majority for the Grand Old
Party of Protection and Prosperity.

Section 10. The date of publication of the book had come at last. It
was being generously advertised, under the imprint of a leading
house; and Thyrsis' heart warmed to see the advertisements. This at
last, he felt, was success; and then the reviews began to come in,
and his heart warmed still more. Here was a new note in current
fiction, said the critics; here were power and passion, a broad
sweep and a genuine poetic impulse. American history had never been
treated like this before, American ideals had never been voiced like
this before. And these, Thyrsis noted, were the opinions of the
representative reviews--not those of obscure provincial newspapers.
Victory, it seemed, had come to him at last!

He came up to the metropolis on the strength of these triumphs; for
he had observed that when one had a new book coming out was the
psychological moment to attack the magazine-editors. One was a
personality then, and could command attention. It was the height of
a presidential campaign, and the Socialists were making an
impression which was astonishing every one. The idea had occurred to
Thyrsis that some magazine might judge it worth while to tell its
readers about this new and picturesque movement.

To his great delight the editor of "Macintyre's Monthly" looked with
favor upon the suggestion, and asked to see an article at once. So
Thyrsis shut himself up in a hotel-room and wrote it over night. It
proved to be so full of "ginger" that the editorial staff of
Macintyre's was delighted, and made suggestions as to another
article; at which point Thyrsis made a desperate effort and summoned
up his courage, and insinuated politely that his stuff was worth
five cents a word. The editor-in-chief replied promptly that that
seemed to him proper.

Two hundred dollars for an article! Here indeed was fame! The author
went home, and thought out another one, and after a week came up to
the city with it.

In this new article Thyrsis cited a presidential candidate before
the bar of public opinion, and propounded troublesome questions to
him. Here was the capital of the country, heaping itself up at
compound interest, and demanding dividends; here were the people,
scraping and struggling to furnish the necessary profits. Would they
always be able to furnish enough; and what would happen when they
could no longer furnish them? Here were franchises obtained by
bribery, and capitalized for hundreds of millions of dollars; and
these millions, too, were heaping up automatically. Were they to
draw their interest and dividends forever? Here were the machines of
production, increasing by leaps and bounds, and the product
increasing still faster, and all counting upon foreign markets. What
would happen when Japan had its own machines, and India had its own
machines, and China had its own machines? Again, the processes of
production were being perfected, and displacing men; here were
panics and crises, displacing--yet more men. Already, in England, a
good fourth of the population had been displaced; and what were
these displaced populations to do? They had finished making over the
earth for the capitalists; and now that the work was done, there
seemed to be no longer any place on the earth for them!

Such were the problems of our time, according to Thyrsis; and why
did the statesmen of the time have nothing to say about them? When
this article had been read and discussed, young "Billy" Macintyre
himself sent for Thyrsis. This was the "real thing", said he, with
his genial _bonhomie_; the five hundred thousand subscribers of
Macintyre's must surely have these mirth-provoking meditations.
Also, the editors themselves needed badly to be stirred up by such
live ideas; therefore would Thyrsis come to dinner next Friday
evening, and, as "Billy" phrased it, "throw a little Socialism at
them"?

Section 11. So Thyrsis moved one step higher yet up the ladder of
success. The younger Macintyre occupied half a block of mansion up
on Riverside Drive--just across the street from the town-house of
Barry Creston's father. Thyrsis found himself in an entrance-hall
where wonderful pictures loomed vaguely in a dim, religious light;
and a silent footman took his cap, and then escorted him by a soft,
plush-covered stairway to the apartments of "Billy", who was being
helped into a dress-suit by his valet. Thyrsis, alas, had no
dress-suit, and no valet to help him into it, but he sat on the edge
of a big leather chair and proceeded to "throw a little Socialism"
at his host. Then they went down stairs, and there were Morris and
Hemingway, of the editorial staff, and "Buddie" Comings, most
popular of novelists, and "Bob" Desmond, most famous of
illustrators. And a little later on came Macintyre the elder, who
had also been judged to stand in need of some Socialism.

Macintyre the elder was white-haired and rosy-cheeked. He had begun
life as an emigrant-boy, running errands for a book-shop. In course
of time he had become a partner, and then had started a cheap
magazine for the printing of advertisements. From this had come the
reprinting of cheap books for premiums; until now, after forty
years, Macintyre's was one of the leading publishing-concerns of the
country. Recently the important discovery had been made that the
printing of half-inch advertisements headed "FITS" and "OBESITY"
prevented the securing of full-page advertisements about
automobiles. The former kind was therefore being diverted to the
religious papers of the country, whose subscribers were now getting
the "blood of the lamb" diluted with twenty-five per cent. alcohol
and one and three-fourths per cent. opium. But such facts were not
allowed to interfere with the optimistic philosophy of "Macintyre's
Monthly".

The elder Macintyre seemed to Thyrsis the most naГЇve and lovable old
soul he had encountered in many a year. When he espied Thyrsis, he
waited for no preliminaries, but went up to him as he stood by the
fire-place, and put an arm about him, and led him off to a seat by
the window. "I want to talk to you," said he.

"My boy," he went on, "I read that article of yours."

"Which one?" asked Thyrsis.

"The last one. And you know, Billy's got to stop putting things like
that in the magazine!"

"What!" cried Thyrsis, alarmed.

"I won't have it! He must not print that article!"

"But he's accepted it!"

"I know. But he should have consulted me."

"But--but I wrote it at his order. And he promised to pay me--"

"Oh, that's all right," said the old gentleman, with a genial smile.
"We'll pay for it, of course."

There was a moment's pause, while Thyrsis caught his breath.

"My boy," continued the other, "that's a terrible article!"

"Um," said the author--"possibly."

"Why do you write such things?"

"But isn't it true, sir?"

Mr. Macintyre pondered. "You know," he said, "I think you are a very
clever fellow, and you know a lot; much more than I do, I've no
doubt. But what I don't understand is, why don't you put it into a
book?"

"Into a book?" echoed Thyrsis, perplexed.

"Yes," explained the other--"then it won't hurt anybody but
yourself. Why should you try to get it into my magazine, and scare
away my half-million subscribers?"

Section 12. They went in to dinner, which was served upon
silver-plate, by the light of softly-shaded candles; and while the
velvet-footed waiters caused their food to appear and disappear by
magic, Thyrsis fulfilled his mission and "threw Socialism" at the
company.

The company had its guns loaded, and they went at it hot and heavy.
The editors wanted to know about "the home" under Socialism; to
which Thyrsis made retort by picturing "the home" under capitalism.
They wanted to know about liberty and individuality under Socialism;
and so Thyrsis discussed the liberty and individuality of the
hundred thousand wage-slaves of the Steel Trust. They sought to
tangle him in discussions as to the desirability of competition, and
the impossibility of escaping it; but Thyrsis would bring them back
again and again to the central fact of exploitation, which was the
one fact that counted. They insisted upon knowing how this, that,
and the other thing would be done in the Cooperative Commonwealth;
to which Thyrsis answered, "Do you ask for a map of heaven before
you join the Church?"

It was "Billy" Macintyre who brought up a somewhat delicate
question; how would such an institution as "Macintyre's Monthly" be
run under Socialism? Thyrsis replied by quoting Kautsky's formula:
"Communism in material production, Anarchism in intellectual". He
showed how the state might print and bind and distribute, while men
in "free associations" might edit and publish. But one could not get
very far in this exposition, because of the excitement of the elder
Macintyre. For the old gentleman was like a small boy who is being
robbed of his marbles; if there had been a mob outside his
publishing-house, he could not have been more agitated. He took
occasion to state, with the utmost solemnity, that he disapproved of
such discussions; and "Billy", who sat between him and Thyrsis, had
to interfere now and then and soothe the "pater" down.

Mr. Macintyre's views on the subject of capitalism were simple and
easy to understand. There could be nothing really wrong with a
system which had brought so many great and good men into control of
the country's affairs. Mr. Macintyre knew this, because he had
played golf with them all and gone yachting with them all. And this
was a perfectly genuine conviction; if there had been the slightest
touch of sham in it, the old gentleman would have been more cautious
in the examples he chose. He would name man after man who was among
the most notorious of the country's "malefactors of great
wealth"--men whose financial crimes had been proven beyond any
possibility of doubting. He would name them in a voice overflowing
with affection and admiration, as benefactors of humanity upon a
cosmic scale; and of course that would end the argument in a gale of
laughter. When the elder Macintyre entered the discussion, all the
rest of the company moved forthwith to Thyrsis' side, and there were
six Socialists confronting one business-man. And this was a very
puzzling and alarming thing to the old gentleman--his son and his
magazine were getting away from him, and he did not know what to
make of the phenomenon!

Section 13. Thyrsis judged that the tidings must have got about that
there was a new "lion" in town; for a couple of days after this he
was called up by Comings, most popular of novelists, who asked him
to have luncheon at the "Thistle" club. And when Thyrsis went,
Comings explained that Mrs. Parmley Fatten had read his book, and
was anxious to meet him, and requested that he be brought round to
tea. The other was tactless enough to let it transpire that he knew
nothing about Mrs. Patton; but Comings was too tactful to show his
surprise. Mrs. Patton, he explained, was socially prominent--was
looked upon as the leader of a set that went in for intellectual
things. She was interested in social reform and woman's suffrage,
and was worth helping along; and besides that, she was a charming
woman--Thyrsis would surely find the adventure worth while. Then
suddenly, while he was listening, it flashed over Thyrsis that he
_had_ heard of Mrs. Patton before; the lady was in mourning for her
brother, and Corydon had recently handed him a "society" item, which
told of some unique and striking "mourning-hosiery" which she was
introducing from Paris.

Thyrsis in former days might have been shy of this phenomenon; but
at present he was a collecting economist on the look-out for
specimens, and so he said he would go. He met Comings again at five
o'clock, and they strolled out Fifth Avenue together to Mrs.
Patton's brown-stone palace. Thyrsis observed that his friend had
been considerate enough to omit his afternoon change of costume, and
for this he was grateful.

Mrs. Patton was still in mourning, a filmy and diaphanous kind of
mourning, beautiful enough to placate the angel Azrael himself. A
filmy and diaphanous creature was Mrs. Patton also--one could never
have dreamed of so exquisite a black butterfly. She was very sweet
and sympathetic, and told Thyrsis how much she had liked his
book--so that Thyrsis concluded she was not half so bad as he had
expected. After all, she might not have been to blame for the
hosiery story--it might even have been a lie. He reflected that the
yellow journals no doubt lied as freely about young leaders of
intellectual sets in "society" as they did about starving authors.

Mrs. Patton wanted to know about Socialism, and sighed because it
seemed so far away. She made several remarks that showed real
intelligence--and this was startling to Thyrsis, who would as soon
have expected intelligence from a real butterfly. He got a strange
impression of a personality struggling to get into contact with life
from behind a wall some ten million dollars high. Mrs. Patton had
three young children, and her husband was one of the "Standard Oil
crowd"; she complained to Thyrsis that "Parmy"--so she referred to
the gentleman--was always in terror over her vagaries.

It was a new discovery to the author that the very rich might live
under the shadow of fear, quite as much as the very poor. Their
wealth made them a target for newspaper satire, so that they dared
not depart from convention in the slightest detail. Mrs. Patton told
how once she had ventured to romp for a few minutes with some
children on the grounds of the "Casino", and the next day all the
world had read that she was introducing "tag" as a diversion for the
Newport colony.

There came other callers, both women and men; Percy Ambler, man of
fashion and dilettante poet; and with him little Murray Symington,
who wrote the literary chat for "Knickerbocker's Weekly", and was
therefore a power to be propitiated. There came Blanchard, the young
and progressive publisher of the "Beau Monde", a weekly whose
circulation rivalled that of "Macintyre's". There came also young
Macklin, Mrs. Patton's nephew, with his monocle and his killing
drawl. Macklin came by these honestly, having been brought up in
England; but Thyrsis did not know that--he only heard the young
gentleman's passing reference to his yacht, and to his passion for
the poetry of StГ©phane MallarmГ©; and so he had it in for Macklin.
Thyrsis had got involved in a serious discussion with Mrs. Patton
and Symington, and was in the act of saying that the social problem
could not be much longer left unsolved; and then he chanced to turn,
and discovered young Macklin, surveying him with elaborate
superciliousness, and asking with his British drawl, "Aw--I beg
pawdon--but what do you mean by the social problem?" And Thyrsis,
with a quick glance at him, answered, "I mean you." So Macklin
subsided; and Thyrsis learned afterwards that his remark was going
the rounds, being considered to be a _mot_. It appeared the next
week in the columns of a paper devoted to "society" gossip; and many
a literary reputation had been made by a lesser triumph than that.

Thyrsis got new light upon the making of reputations, when he looked
into the next issue of "Knickerbocker's Weekly". There he found that
Murray Symington had devoted no less than three paragraphs to his
personality and his book. It was all "sprightly"--that was Murray's
tone--but also it was cordial; and it referred to Thyrsis' earlier
novel, "The Hearer of Truth", as "that brilliant piece of work".
Thyrsis read this with consternation--recalling that when the book
had come out, not two years ago, "Knickerbocker's Weekly" had
referred to it as a "preposterous concoction". Could it be true that
an author's work was "preposterous" while he was starving in a
garret, and became "brilliant" when he was found in the drawing-
room of Mrs. "Parmy" Patton?

Section 14. Thyrsis went on to penetrate yet deeper into these
mysteries; there came a call from Murray Symington, to say that Mrs.
Jesse Dyckman wanted him to dinner. Jesse Dyckman he recognized as
the name of one of the most popular contributors to the magazines
--his short stories of Fifth Avenue life were the delight of the
readers of the "Beau Monde".

"But I can't go to dinner-parties with women!" protested Thyrsis. "I
don't dress!"

Murray took that message; but in a few minutes he called up again.
"She says she doesn't care whether you dress or not."

"But then, I don't _eat!_" protested Thyrsis, who had recently
discovered Horace Fletcher.

"I know _that_ won't count," said the other, laughing. "She doesn't
want you to eat--she wants you to talk."

Mrs. Jesse Dyckman inhabited an apartment in a "studio-building" not
far from Central Park; and here was more luxury and charm--a
dining-room done in dark red, with furniture of some black wood, and
candles and silver and cut glass, quite after the fashion of the
Macintyres. Thyrsis was admitted by a French maid-servant; and there
was Mrs. Dyckman, resplendent in white shoulders and a necklace of
pearls; and there was Dyckman himself, even more prosperous and
contented-looking than his pictures, and even more brilliant and
cynical than his tales. Also there was his sister, Mrs. Partridge,
the writer of musical comedies; and a Miss Taylor, who filled the
odd corners of the magazines with verses, which Corydon had once
described as "cheap cheer-up stuff".

So here was the cream of the "literary world"; and Thyrsis, as he
watched and listened to it, was working out the formula of magazine
success. Mrs. Dyckman sat next to him, displaying her shoulders and
her culture; it seemed to him that she must have spent all her spare
time picking up phrases about the books and pictures and plays and
music of the hour, so as to be ready for possible mention of them at
her dinner-parties. She had opinions on tap about everything;
opinions just enough "advanced" to be striking and original, and yet
not too far "advanced" for good form. Jesse Dyckman's short stories
were the sort in which you read how the hero handled his cigarette,
and were told that the heroine was clad in "dimity _en princesse"_.
You learned the names of the latest fashionable drinks, and the
technicalities of automobiles, and met with references to far-off
and intricate standards of social excellence.

To Thyrsis it appeared that he could see before him the whole career
of such a man. He had trained himself by years of apprenticeship in
snobbery; he had studied the fashions not only in costume and
manners, but also in books and opinions. He had been educated in a
"fraternity", and had chosen a wife who had been educated in a
"sorority"; they had set up in this apartment, with silver
service and three French servants, and proceeded to give dinners,
and cultivate people who "counted." And so had come the pleasant
berth with the "Beau Monde"; one or two stories every month, and one
thousand dollars for each story--as one might read in all newspaper
accounts of the "earnings of authors".

The "Beau Monde" might have been described as a magazine for the
standardizing of the newly-rich. A group of these existed in every
town in the country, and had their "society" in every little city.
They would come to New York and put up at expensive hotels, and get
their education in theatres and opera-houses and "lobster-palaces";
in addition they had this weekly messenger of good form. In its
advertising-columns one read of the latest things in cigarettes and
highballs and haberdashery and candies and autos; and in its
reading-matter one found the leisure-class world, and the
leisure-class idea of all other worlds. Young Blanchard himself was
in the most "exclusive" society; and if one stayed close to him, one
might worm his way past the warders. Among the regular contributors
to the "Beau Monde" and to "Macintyre's", there were a dozen men who
had risen by this method; and some of them had been real writers at
the outset--had started with a fund of vigor, at least. But now they
spent their evenings at dinner-parties, and their days lounging
about in two or three expensive cafГ©s, reading the afternoon papers,
exchanging gossip, and acquiring the necessary stock of cynicism for
their next picture of leisure-class life.

It was what might have been described as the "court method" of
literary achievement. The centre of it was the young prince who held
the purse-strings; and the court was a coterie of bookish men of
fashion and rich women whose husbands were occupied in the
stock-market. They set the tone and dispensed the favors; one who
stood in their good graces would be practically immune to criticism,
no matter how seedy his work might come to be. Nobody liked to
"roast" a man with whom he had played golf at a week-end party; and
who could be so impolite as to slight the work of a lady-poetess
whom he had taken in to dinner?

Section 15. Thyrsis studied these people, and measured himself
against them. He was not blinded by any vanity; he knew that it
would not have taken him a week to turn out a short story which
would have had the requisite qualities for Macintyre's--which would
have been clever and entertaining, would have had genuine sentiment,
and as large a proportion of sincerity as the magazine admitted. He
could have suggested that he thought it was worth five hundred
dollars, and "Billy" Macintyre would have nodded and sent him a
check. And then he could have moved up to town, and got a
frock-coat, and paid another call upon Mrs. "Parmy" Patton. Then his
friend Comings would have put him up for the "Thistle", he would
have got to know the men who made literary opinion, and so his
career would have been secure.

Nor need he have made any apparent break with his convictions. In
"society" one met all sorts of eccentrics--"babus" and "yogis",
Christian Scientists, spiritualists and theosophists, Fletcherites,
vegetarians and "raw-fooders". And there would be ample room for his
fad--it was quite "English" to be touched with Socialism. All that
one had to do was to be entertaining in one's presentation of it,
and to confine one's self to its literary aspects--not setting forth
plans for the expropriation of the house of Macintyre!

Thyrsis had one grievous handicap, of course. He would have had to
keep his wife and child in the background; for Corydon, alas, would
not have scored as a giver of dinner-parties. From a woman like Mrs.
Jesse Dyckman, skilled in intellectual fence, and merciless to her
inferiors, Corydon would have turned tail and fled. Thyrsis was able
to sit by and let Mrs. Dyckman wave the plumes of her wit and spread
the tail-feathers of her culture before his astonished eyes, and at
the same time occupy his mind with studying her, and working out her
"economic interpretation". But Corydon took life too intensely, and
people too personally for that.

But she would have let him go, if he had told her that it was best.
So why should he not do it--why should he turn his back upon this
opportunity, and return to the "soap-box in a marsh" to wrestle with
loneliness and want? The fact of the matter was that the thing which
seemed so easy to his intellect, was impossible to his character.
Thyrsis could not have anything to do with these people without
hypocrisy; merely to sit and talk pleasantly with them was to lie.
They were to him the enemy, the thing he was in life to fight. And
he hated all that they stood for in the world--he hated their ideas
and their institutions, their virtues as well as their vices.

He had been down into the bottom-most pit of hell, and the sights
that he had seen there had withered him up. How could he derive
enjoyment from silks and jewels, from rich foods and fine wines,
when he heard in his ears the cries of agony of the millions he had
left behind him in that seething abyss? And should he trample upon
their faces, as so many others had trampled? Should he make a ladder
of their murdered hopes, to climb out to fame and fortune? Not he!

It seemed to him sometimes, as he thought about it, that he alone,
of all men living, had power to voice the despair of these tortured
souls. Others had been down into that pit, and had come out alive;
but who was there among them that was an _artist;_ that could forge
his hatred into a weapon, sharp enough and stout enough to be driven
through the tough hide of the world of culture? To be an artist
meant to have spent years and decades in toil and study, in
disciplining and drilling one's powers; and who was there that had
descended into the social inferno, and had come back with strength
enough to accomplish that labor?

So it seemed to him that he was the bearer of a gospel, that he had
to teach the world something it could otherwise not know. He had
tried out upon his own person, and upon the persons of his loved
ones, the effects of poverty and destitution, of cold and hunger, of
solitude and sickness and despair. And so he knew, of his own
knowledge, the meaning of the degradation that he saw in modern
society--of suicide and insanity, of drunkenness and vice and crime,
of physical and mental and moral decay. He knew, and none could
dispute him! Therefore he must nerve himself for the struggle; he
must deliver that message, and pound home that truth. He must keep
on and on--in defiance of authority, in the face of all the obloquy
and ridicule that the prostitute powers of civilization could heap
upon him. He must live for that work, and die for it--to make real
to the thinking world the infamies and the horrors of the capitalist
_rГ©gime_.






BOOK XV

THE CAPTIVE FAINTS




   _"Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?
        Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on."

"Do you remember how you used to tell me that?" she whispered.
"Hoping--always hoping!"

"And always young!" he added.

"How did I keep so?" she said, with wonder in her voice; and he
read--

   "Thou nearest the immortal chants--of old!-
        Putting his sickle to the perilous grain
            In the hot corn-field of the Phrygian king,
        For thee the Lityerses-song again
            Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing!"

Then a smile of mischief crossed her face, and she asked, "Which
Daphnis?"_

Section 1. Thyrsis came back to his home in the country, divided
between satisfaction over the four hundred dollars worth of booty he
had captured, and a great uneasiness concerning his novel. It had
had with the critics all the success that he could have asked, but
unfortunately it did not seem to be selling. Already it had been out
three weeks, and the sales had been only a thousand copies. The
publisher confessed himself disappointed, but said that it was too
early to be certain; they must allow time for the book to make its
way, for the opinions of the reviews to take effect.

And so, for week after week, Thyrsis watched and hoped against
hope--the old, heart-sickening experience. In the end he came to
realize that he had achieved that most cruel of all literary
ironies, the _succГ©s_ _d'estime_. The critics agreed that he had
written a most unusual book; but then, the critics did not really
count--they had no way of making their verdict effective. What
determined success or failure was the department-store public. It
would take a whim for a certain novel; and when a novel had once
begun to sell, it would be advertised and pushed to the front, and
everything else would give way before it, quite regardless of what
the critic's had said. A book-review appeared only once, but an
advertisement might appear a score of times, and be read all over
the country. So the public would have pounded into its consciousness
the statement that "Hearts Aflame", by Dorothy Dimple, was a
masterpiece of character-drawing, full of thrilling incident and
alive with pulsing passion. The department-store public, which was
not intelligent enough to distinguish between a criticism and an
advertisement, would accept all these opinions at their face-value.
And that was success; even the critics bowed to it in the end--as
you might note by the change in their tone when they came to review
the next work by this "popular" novelist.

So Thyrsis faced the ghastly truth that another year and a half of
toiling and waiting had gone for nothing--the heights of
opportunity were almost as far away as ever. He had to summon up his
courage and nerve himself for yet another climb; and Corydon would
have to face the prospect of another winter in the "soap-box in a
marsh".

It was now November, and Thyrsis had written nothing but Socialist
manifestoes for six months. He was restless and chafing again; but
living in distress as they were, he could not get his thoughts
together at all. He must have been a trying person to live in the
house with at such a time. "You ask me to take love for granted,"
said Corydon to him once; "but how can I, when your every expression
is contradictory to love?"

How could he explain to her his trouble? Here again was the pressure
of that dreadful "economic screw", that was crushing their love, and
all beauty and joy and hope in their hearts. They might fight
against it with all the power of their beings; they might fall down
upon their knees together, and pledge themselves with anguish in
their voices and tears in their eyes; but still the remorseless
pressure would go on, day and night, week after week, without a
moment's respite.

There was this little house, for instance. It was all that Thyrsis
wanted, and all that he would ever have wanted; and yet he could not
be happy in it, because Corydon was not happy in it. He must be
plotting and planning and worrying, straining every nerve to get to
another house; he might not even think of any other possibility--that
would be treason to her. So always it seemed--he had to turn his face
a way that he did not wish to travel, he had to go on against every
instinct of his own nature. His love for Corydon was such that he
would be ashamed whenever his own instincts showed themselves. But
then he would go alone, and try to do his work, and then discover
the havoc this had wrought in his own being.

Just now the tension had reached the breaking point; the craving for
solitude and peace was eating him up.

"What is it that you want?" asked Corydon, one day.

"I want to be where I don't have to see anybody," he cried. "I want
to rough it in a tent, as I did once before."

"But it's too late to go to the Adirondacks, Thyrsis!"

"I know that," he said. "But there are other places."

He had heard of one in Virginia--in that very Wilderness of which he
had written so eloquently, but had never seen. "Isn't there some one
who could come and stay with you?" he pleaded.

"I don't know," replied Corydon. But the next day, as fate would
have it, there came a letter from Delia Gordon, saying that she had
finished a certain stage of her study-course, and was tired out and
in fear of break-down. So an invitation was sent and accepted, and
Thyrsis secured the respite which he craved.

And so behold him as a hermit once more, settled in a deserted cabin
not far from the battle-field of Spotsylvania. He had got rid of the
vermin in the cabin by burning sulphur, and had stocked his
establishment with a canvas-cot and a camp-stool and a lamp and an
oil-can, and the usual supply of beans and bacon and rice and
corn-meal and prunes. Also he had built himself a rustic table, and
unpacked a trunkful of blankets and dishes and writing-pads and
books. So once more his life was his own, and a thing of delight to
him.

He had promised himself to live off the country, as he had before;
but the principal game here was the wild turkey, and the wild turkey
proved itself a shy and elusive bird. It was not occupied with
meditations concerning literary masterpieces; and so it had a great
advantage over Thyrsis, who would forget that he had a gun with him
after the first half-hour of a "hunt".

Section 2. It had now become clear to Thyrsis that he had nothing
more to expect from his novel; it had sold less than two thousand
copies, which meant that it had not earned the money which had
already been advanced to him. But all that was now ancient
history--the entrenchments and graveyards of the Wilderness
battlefield were not more forgotten and overgrown with new life than
was the war-book in Thyrsis' mind. He had had enough of being a
national chronicler which the nation did not want; he had come down
to the realities of the hour, to the blazing protest of the new
Revolution.

For ten years now Thyrsis had been playing at the game of
professional authorship; he had studied the literary world both high
and low, and had seen enough to convince him that it was an
impossible thing to produce art in such a society. The modern world
did not know what art was, it was incapable of forming such a
concept. That which it called "art" was fraud and parasitism--its
very heart was diseased.

For the essence of art was unselfishness; it was an emotion which
overflowed, and which sought to communicate itself to others from an
impulse of pure joy. It was of necessity a social thing; the supreme
art-products of the race had been, like the Greek tragedy and the
Gothic cathedral, a result of the labor of a whole community. And
what could the modern man, a solitary and predatory wolf in the
wilderness of _laissez_ _faire_--what could he conceive of such a
state of soul? What would happen to a man who gave himself up to
such a state of soul, in a community where the wolf-law and the
wolf-customs prevailed?

A grim purpose had been forming itself in Thyrsis' mind. He would
suppress the artist in himself for the present--he would do it, cost
whatever agony it might. He would turn propagandist for a while;
instead of scattering his precious seed in barren soil, he would set
to work to make the soil ready. There was seething in his mind a
work of revolutionary criticism, which would sweep into the
rubbish-heap the idols of the leisure-class world.

It was his idea to go back to first principles; to study the bases
of modern society, and show how its customs and institutions came to
be, and interpret its art as a product of these. He would show what
the modern artist was, and how he got his living, and how this
moulded his work. He would take the previous art-periods of history
and study them, showing by what stages the artist had evolved, and
so gaining a stand-point from which to prophesy what he would come
to be in the future. Only once had an attempt ever been made to apply
to questions of art the methods of science--in Nordau's "Degeneration".
But then Nordau's had been pseudo-science--three-quarters impertinence
and conceit. The world still waited to understand its art-products in
the light of scientific Socialism.

Such was the task which Thyrsis was planning. It would mean years of
study, and how he was to get the means to do it, he could not guess.
But he had his mind made up to do it, though it might be the last of
his labors, though everything else in his life might end in
shipwreck. He went about all day, possessed with the idea; it would
be a colossal work, an epoch-making work--it would be the
culmination of his efforts and the vindication of his claims. It
would save the men who came after him; and to save the men who came
after him had now become the formula of his life.

Section 3. Thyrsis would come back from a sojourn such as this with
all his impulses of affection and sympathy renewed; he would have
had time to miss Corydon, and to realize how closely he was bound to
her. He would be eager to tell her all his adventures, and the
wonderful plans which he had formed.