it is nine o’clock of a summer’s night. the great city all about is still astir, active, interested, apparently comfortable. lights gleam out from stores lazily. the cars go rumbling by only partially filled, as is usual at this time of night. people stroll in parks in a score of places throughout the city, enjoying the cool of the night, such as it is.
in any one of these, as the evening wanes, may be witnessed one of the characteristic spectacles of the town: the gathering of the “benchers.” here, while one strolls about for an hour’s amusement or sits on a bench, may be seen the man whom the city has beaten, seeking a place to sleep.
what a motley company! what a port of missing men! this young one who slips by me in shabby, clay-colored clothes and a worn, dirty straw hat, is only temporarily down on his luck, for he has youth. it may be a puling youth, half-witted, with ill-conceived understanding of things as they are, but it is youth, with some muscle and some activity, and as such it is salable. some one will buy it for something for a little while.
but this other thing that comes shambling toward me, dirty, dust in its ears, dust in its eyes, dust in its hair, a meager recollection of a hat, dull, hopeless, doglike eyes—what has it to offer life? nothing?220 practically so. an appetite which life will not satisfy, a racked and thin-blooded body which life cannot use, a rusty, cracked and battered piece of machinery which is fit only for the scrap-heap. and yet it lingers on, clings on, hoping for what? and this third thing—a woman, if you please, in rags and tatters, a gray cape for a shawl, a queer, flat, shapeless thing which she wears on her head for a hat, shoes that are not shoes but cracked strips of leather, a skirt that is a bag only, hands, face, skin wrinkled and dirty, yet who seeks to rest or sleep here the night through. and now she is stuffing old newspapers between her dress and her breast to keep warm. and enveloping her hands in her rag of a shawl!
yet she and those others make but three of many, so grim, so strange, so shabby a company. what, in god’s name, has life done to them that they are so cracked and bruised and worthless?
no heart, or not a good one perhaps, in any of these bodies; no stomach, or a mere bundle of distorted viscera; no liver or kidneys worthy the name, but only botched or ill-working organs of these names in their place; eyes poor; hearing possibly defective; hair fading; skin clammy. merciful god! is it to this condition that we come, you and i, if life be not merciful?
i am not morbid. i know that men must make good. i know that to be useful to the world they must have a spark of divine fire. but who is to provide the fire? who did, in the first place? where is it now? what blew it out? the individual himself? not always. man is not really responsible for his actions. society?221 society is not really responsible for itself or for its individuals. nature? god? very likely, although there is room for much discussion and much illumination here.
the man on the bench
but before we point the finger of scorn or shrug the shoulder of indifference, one word: life does provide the divine fire, and that free and unasked, to many. it does provide a fine constitution, and that free and unasked, to many. it does provide beauty—aye it pours it into the lap of some. life works in the clay of its interests, fashioning, fashioning. with some handfuls it fashions lovingly, joyously, radiantly. it gives one girl, for instance, a passion for art, an ear for music, a throat for singing, a joy in humor and beauty, which grows and becomes marvelous and is irresistible. into the seed of a boy it puts strength, suppleness, facility of thought, facility of expression, desire. it not infrequently puts a wild surging determination to do and be in his brain which carries him like powder a bullet, straight to the mark.
but what or who provided the charge of powder behind that bullet? who fashioned the chorded throat? who worked over this face of flowerlike expression, until men burn with wild passion and lay kingdoms and hierarchies and powers at its feet? we palaver so much of personal effort. we say of this one and that: he did not try. i ask you this: had he tried, what of it? how far would his little impulse have carried him? what would it have overcome? would it have placed him above the level of a coal-stoker or a sand-hog? would it have fitted him to contend with even these?222 would it have matched his ideas, or his ideas have matched it? who? what? how? dark thoughts!
“ah!” but i hear you say, “that is not the question. effort is the question, not where his effort will carry him.” true. who gave him his fitness for effort, or his unfitness? who took away his courage? why could it be taken? dark thought, and still more dark the deeps behind it.
here they are, though, pale an?mic weeds or broken flowers, slipping about looking for a bench to sleep on in our park. they are wondering where the next meal is coming from, the next job, the next bed. they are wondering whither they are going to go, what they are going to do, who is going to say something to them. or maybe they are past wondering, past dreaming, past thinking over lost battles and lost life. oh, nature! where now in your laboratory of dark forces, you plan and weave, be merciful. for these, after all, are of you, your clay; they need not be destroyed.
yet meantime the city sings of its happiness, the lights burn, the autos honk; there are great restaurants agleam with lights and merriment. see, that is where strength is!
i like this fact of the man on the bench, as sad as it is. it is the evidence of the grimness of life, its subtlety, its indifference. men pass them by. the world is elsewhere. and yet i know that below all this awaits after all the unescapable chemistry of things. they are not out of nature. they cannot escape it really. they are of it—an integral part of the great mystery and beauty—even they. they fare ill here, now, perhaps—very. yet it is223 entirely possible that they need only wait, and life will eventually come round to them. they cannot escape it; it must use them. the potter has but so much clay. he cannot but mold it again and again. and as for the fire, he cannot ultimately prevent it. it goes, somewhat wild or mild, into all he does.
