Of Time and the River & Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe
with a loud and cheerful word for every one, Mr. Joseph Bailey, secretary of the Altamont Chamber of Commerce, short, broad, and ruddy, came up by them with a hearty gesture of the hand:
“Hello, boys!” he cried. “How’re they going?” But before either of them could answer, he had passed on, with an encouraging shake of his head, and a deep applauding “THAT’S right.”
“WHAT’S right?” said Eugene.
But before George Graves could answer, the great lung specialist, Dr. Fairfax Grinder, scion of one of the oldest and proudest families in Virginia, drove in viciously from Church Street, with his sinewy length of six feet and eight inches coiled tensely in the deep pit of his big Buick roadster. Cursing generally the whole crawling itch of Confederate and Yankee postwar rabbledom, with a few special parentheses for Jews and niggers, he drove full tilt at the short plump figure of Joe Zamschnick, men’s furnishings (“Just a Whisper Off The Square”).
Joseph, two yards away from legal safety, hurled himself with a wild scream headlong at the curb. He arrived on hands and knees, but under his own power.
“K-hurses!” said Eugene. “Foiled again.”
’Twas true! Dr. Fairfax Grinder’s lean bristled upper lip drew back over his strong yellow teeth. He jammed on his brakes, and lifted his car round with a complete revolution of his long arms. Then he roared away through scattering traffic, in a greasy blue cloud of gasoline and burnt rubber.
Joe Zamschnick frantically wiped his gleaming bald head with a silk handkerchief and called loudly on the public to bear witness.
“What’s the matter with him?” said George Graves, disappointed. “He usually goes up on the sidewalk after them if he can’t get them on the street.”
On the other side of the street, attracting no more than a languid stare from the loafing natives, the Honorable William Jennings Bryan paused benevolently before the windows of the H. Martin Grimes Bookstore, allowing the frisking breeze to toy pleasantly with his famous locks. The tangles of Neaera’s hair.
The Commoner stared carefully at the window display which included several copies of Before Adam, by Jack London. Then he entered, and selected a dozen views of Altamont and the surrounding hills.
“He may come here to live,” said George Graves. “Dr. Doak’s offered to give him a house and lot in Doak Park.”
“Why?” said Eugene.
“Because the advertising will be worth a lot to the town,” said George Graves.
A little before them, that undaunted daughter of desires, Miss Elizabeth Scragg, emerged from Woolworth’s Five and Ten Cent Store, and turned up toward the Square. Smiling, she acknowledged the ponderous salute of Big Jeff White, the giant half-owner of the Whitstone hotel, whose fortunes had begun when he had refused to return to his old comrade, Dickson Reese, the embezzling cashier, ninety thousand dollars of entrusted loot. Dog eat dog. Thief catch thief. It is not growing like a tree, in bulk doth make man better be.
His six-and-a-half-foot shadow flitted slowly before them. He passed, in creaking number twelves, a massive smooth-jowled man with a great paunch girdled in a wide belt.
Across the street again, before the windows of the Van W. Yeats Shoe Company, the Reverend J. Brooks Gall, Amherst (‘61), and as loyal a Deke as ever breathed, but looking only sixty of his seventy-three years, paused in his brisk walk, and engaged in sprightly monologue, three of his fellow Boy Scouts — the Messrs. Lewis Monk, seventeen, Bruce Rogers, thirteen, and Malcolm Hodges, fourteen. None knew as well as he the heart of a boy. He, too, it seems, had once been one himself. Thus, as one bright anecdote succeeded, or suggested, a half-dozen others, they smiled dutifully, with attentive respect, below the lifted barrier of his bristly white mustache, into the gleaming rhyme of his false teeth. And, with rough but affectionate camaraderie, he would pause from time to time to say: “Old Male!” or “Old Bruce!” gripping firmly his listener’s arm, shaking him gently. Pallidly, on restless feet, they smiled, plotting escape with slant-eyed stealth.
Mr. Buse, the Oriental rug merchant, came around the corner below them from Liberty Street. His broad dark face was wreathed in Persian smiles. I met a traveller from an antique land.
In the Bijou Cafe for Ladies and Gents, Mike, the counter man, leaned his hairy arms upon the marble slab, and bent his wrinkled inch of brow upon a week-old copy of Atlantis. Fride Chicken To-day with Sweet Potatos. Hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert. A solitary fly darted swiftly about the greasy cover of a glass humidor, under which a leathery quarter of mince pie lay weltering. Spring had come.
Meanwhile, having completed twice their parade up and down the street from the Square to the post-office, the Misses Christine Ball, Viola Powell, Aline Rollins, and Dorothy Hazzard were accosted outside Wood’s Drug Store by Tom French, seventeen, Roy Duncan, nineteen, and Carl Jones, eighteen.
“Where do you think you’re going?” said Tom French, insolently.
Gayly, brightly, in unison, they answered:
“Hey — ee!”
“Hay’s seven dollars a ton,” said Roy Duncan, and immediately burst into a high cackle of laughter, in which all the others joined, merrily.
“You craz-ee!” said Viola Powell tenderly. Tell me, ye merchants’ daughters, did ye see another creature fair and wise as she.
“Mr. Duncan,” said Tom French, turning his proud ominous face upon his best friend, “I want you to meet a friend of mine, Miss Rollins.”
“I think I’ve met this man somewhere before,” said Aline Rollins. Another Splendor on his mouth alit.
“Yes,” said Roy Duncan, “I go there often.”
His small tight freckled impish face creased again by his high cackle. All I could never be. They moved into the store, where drouthy neibors neibors meet, through the idling group of fountain gallants.
Mr. Henry Sorrell (It Can Be Done), and Mr. John T. Howland (We Sell Lots and Lots of Lots), emerged, beyond Arthur N. Wright’s, jeweller, from the gloomy dusk of the Gruner Building. Each looked into the sub-divisions of the other’s heart; their eyes kept the great Vision of the guarded mount as swiftly they turned into Church Street where Sorrell’s Hudson was parked.
White-vested, a trifle paunchy, with large broad feet, a shaven moon of red face, and abundant taffy-colored hair, the Reverend John Smallwood, pastor of the First Baptist Church, walked heavily up the street, greeting his parishioners warmly, and hoping to see his Pilot face to face. Instead, however, he encountered the Honorable William Jennings Bryan, who was coming slowly out of the bookstore. The two close friends greeted each other affectionately, and, with a firm friendly laying on of hands, gave each to each the Christian aid of a benevolent exorcism.
“Just the man I was looking for,” said Brother Smallwood. In silence, slowly, they shook hands for several seconds. Silence was pleased.
“That,” observed the Commoner with grave humor, “is what I thought the Great American People said to me on three occasions.” It was a favorite jest — ripe with wisdom, mellowed by the years, yet, withal, so characteristic of the man. The deep furrows of his mouth widened in a smile. Our master — famous, calm, and dead.
Passed, on catspaw rubber tread, from the long dark bookstore, Professor L. B. Dunn, principal of Graded School No. 3, Montgomery Avenue. He smiled coldly at them with a gimlet narrowing of his spectacled eyes. The tell-tale cover of The New Republic peeked from his pocket. Clamped under his lean and freckled arm were new library copies of The Great Illusion, by Norman Angell, and The Ancient Grudge, by Owen Wister. A lifelong advocate of a union of the two great English-speaking (sic) nations, making together irresistibly for peace, truth, and righteousness in a benevolent but firm authority over the less responsible elements of civilization, he passed, the Catholic man, pleasantly dedicated to the brave adventuring of minds and the salvaging of mankind. Ah, yes!
“And how are you and the Good Woman enjoying