The Poet and the Peasant

THE OTHER DAY a poet friend of mine, who has lived in close communication with nature all his life, wrote a poem and took it to an editor. It was a living pastoral, full of the genuine breath of the fields, the song of birds, and the pleasant chatter of trickling streams. When the poet called again, with hopes of a beefsteak dinner in his heart, it was handed back to him with the comment, 'Too artificial.' Several of us met over spaghetti and Dutchess County Chianti and swallowed indignation with slippery forkfuls. And there we dug a pit for the editor. With us was Conant, a well-arrived writer of fiction—a man who had trod on asphalt all his life and who had never looked upon bucolic scenes except with sensations of disgust from the windows of express trains. Conant wrote a poem and called it 'The Doe and the Brook.' It was a fine specimen of the kind of work you would expect from a poet who had strayed with Amaryllis only as far as the florist's windows and whose sole ornithological discussion had been carried on with a waiter. Conant signed this poem, and we sent it to the same editor. But this has very little to do with the story.

Just as the editor was reading the first line of the poem the next morning, a being stumbled off the West Shore ferryboat and loped slowly up Forty-second Street. The invader was a young man with light blue eyes, a hanging lip, and hair the exact color of the little orphan's (afterward discovered to be the earl's daughter) in one of Mr. Blaney's plays. His trousers were corduroy, his coat short-sleeved, with buttons in the middle of his back. One bootleg was outside the corduroys. You looked expectantly, though in vain, at his straw hat for ear-holes, its shape inaugurating the suspicion that it had been ravaged by a former equine possessor. In his hand was a valise—description of it is an impossible task; a Boston man would not have carried his lunch and law books to his office in it. And above one ear, in his hair, was a wisp of hay—the rustic's letter of credit, his badge of innocence, the last clinging touch of the Garden of Eden lingering to shame the goldbrick men.

Knowingly and smilingly, the city crowds passed him by. They saw the raw stranger standing in the gutter, stretching his neck at the tall buildings. At this, they ceased to smile and even to look at him. It had been done so often. A few glanced at the antique vase to see what Coney

'attraction' or brand of chewing gum he might be thus dinning into his memory. But for the most part, he was ignored. Even the newsboys looked bored when he scampered like a circus clown out of the way of cabs and street cars.

At Eighth Avenue stood 'Bunco Harry,' with his dyed mustache and shiny, good-natured eyes. Harry was too good an artist not to be pained at the sight of an actor overdoing his part. He edged up to the countryman, who had stopped to open his mouth at a jewelry store window, and shook his head.

"Too thick, pal," he said critically, "too thick by a couple of inches. I don't know what your lay is, but you've got properties that are too thick. That hay, now—why, they don't even allow that on Proctor's circuit anymore."

"I don't understand you, mister," said the green one. "I'm not looking for any circus. I've just run down from Ulster County to look at the town, being that the haying's over with. Gosh! but it's a whopper. I thought Poughkeepsie was some punk, but this here town is five times as big."

"Oh, well," said 'Bunco Harry,' raising his eyebrows, "I didn't mean to butt in. You don't have to tell me. I thought you ought to tone down a little, so I tried to put you wise. I wish you success with your graft, whatever it is. Come and have a drink, anyhow."

"I wouldn't mind having a glass of lager beer," acknowledged one.

They went to a café frequented by men with smooth faces and shifty eyes and sat at their drinks.

"I'm glad I came across you, mister," said Haylocks. "How'd you like to play a game or two of seven-up? I've got the cards."

He fished them out of Noah's valise—a rare, inimitable deck, greasy with bacon suppers and grimy with the soil of cornfields.

'Bunco Harry' laughed loudly and briefly.

"Not for me, sport," he said firmly. "I don't go against that make-up of yours for a cent. But I still say you've overdone it. The Reubs haven't dressed like that since '79. I doubt if you could work Brooklyn for a key-winding watch with that layout."

"Oh, you needn't think I ain't got the money," boasted Haylocks. He drew forth a tightly rolled mass of bills as large as a teacup and laid it on the table.

"I got that for my share of my grandmother's farm," he announced. "There's $950 in that roll. I thought I'd come into the city and look around for a likely business to go into."

'Bunco Harry' took up the roll of money and looked at it with almost respect in his smiling eyes.

"I've seen worse," he said critically. "But you'll never do it in those clothes. You want to get light tan shoes, a black suit, and a straw hat with a colored band, and talk a good deal about Pittsburgh and freight differentials, and drink sherry for breakfast in order to work off phony stuff like that."

"What's his line?" asked two or three shifty-eyed men of 'Bunco Harry' after Haylocks had gathered up his impugned money and departed.

"The queer, I guess," said Harry. "Or else he's one of Jerome's men. Or some guy with a new graft. He's too much hayseed. Maybe that's his—I wonder now—oh no, it couldn't have been real money."

Haylocks wandered on. Thirst probably assailed him again, for he dived into a dark groggery on a side street and bought beer. Several sinister fellows hung from one end of the bar. At first sight of him, their eyes brightened, but when his insistent and exaggerated rusticity became apparent, their expressions changed to wary suspicion.

Haylocks swung his valise across the bar. "Keep that awhile for me, mister," he said, chewing at the end of a virulent claybank cigar. "I'll be back after I knock around a spell. And keep your eye on it, for there's $950 inside of it, though maybe you wouldn't think so to look at me."

 

Somewhere outside, a phonograph struck up a band piece, and Haylocks was off for it, his coat-tail buttons flopping in the middle of his back.

 

"Divvy? Mike," said the men hanging upon the bar, winking openly at one another.

 

"Honest now," said the bartender, kicking the valise to one side. "You don't think I'd fall for that, do you? Anybody can see he ain't no jay. One of McAdoo's come-on squad, I guess. He's a shine if he made himself up. There ain't no parts of the country now where they dress like that since they run rural free delivery to Providence, Rhode Island. If he's got nine-fifty in that valise, it's a ninety-eight-cent Waterbury that's stopped at ten minutes to ten."

 

When Haylocks had exhausted Mr. Edison's resources to amuse himself, he returned for his valise. Down Broadway, he gallivanted, culling the sights with his eager blue eyes. But still and evermore, Broadway rejected him with curt glances and sardonic smiles. He was the oldest of the 'gags' that the city must endure. He was so flagrantly impossible, so ultra-rustic, so exaggerated beyond the most freakish products of the barnyard, the hayfield, and the vaudeville stage that he

excited only weariness and suspicion. The wisp of hay in his hair was so genuine, so fresh and redolent of the meadows, so clamorously rural, that even a shell-game man would have put up his peas and folded his table at the sight of it.

Haylocks seated himself upon a flight of stone steps and once more unearthed his roll of yellow-backs from the valise. The outer one, a twenty, he peeled off and waved to a newsboy.

"Son," he said, "run somewhere and get this changed for me. I'm nearly out of cash; I reckon you'll get a nickel if you hurry."

A hurt look appeared through the dirt on the newsy's face. "Aw, what do you think! Go on and get your funny bill changed yourself. You ain't dressed like no farmer. Go on with your stage money."

On a corner lounged a sharp-eyed steerer for a gambling house. He spotted Haylocks, and his expression suddenly turned cold and virtuous.

"Mister," said the rural fellow, "I've heard of places in this town where a fellow could get a good game of old sledge or try his luck at keno. I've got $950 in this valise, and I've come down from old Ulster to see the sights. Know where a man could get some action on about $9 or $10? I'm looking to have some fun, and maybe then I'll invest in a business of some sort."

The steerer looked pained and inspected a white speck on his left forefinger nail.

"Ease up, old man," he murmured reproachfully. "The Central Office must be crazy to send you out looking like such a bumpkin. You couldn't get within two blocks of a sidewalk crap game in those Tony Pastor getups. The latest Mr. Scotty from Death Valley has you beat a crosstown block when it comes to Elizabethan scenery and mechanical accessories. Let it be skedaddle for you. No, I don't know of any fancy places where you can wager a patrol wagon on an ace."

Once again rebuffed by the discerning city quick to spot artificiality, Haylocks sat on the curb and contemplated his situation.

"It's my clothes," he mused, "darn it all if it ain't. They think I'm a country bumpkin and want nothing to do with me. Nobody ever poked fun at this hat in Ulster County. I suppose if you want folks to pay attention to you in New York, you've got to dress up like they do."

So Haylocks went shopping in the markets where men talked through their noses, rubbed their hands, and eagerly ran the measuring tape over the bulge in his inside pocket, where a red ear of corn with an even number of rows lay nestled. Messengers bearing parcels and boxes streamed to his hotel on Broadway, amidst the glow of the Long Acre lights.

At nine o'clock in the evening, a figure descended to the sidewalk whom Ulster County would have disowned. Bright tan shoes adorned his feet; his hat was the latest style. His light grey

trousers bore deep creases, while a vibrant blue silk handkerchief fluttered from the breast pocket of his elegant English walking-coat. His collar could have graced a display window at the laundry; his blond hair was neatly trimmed, and the wisp of hay was no more.

 

For a moment, he stood resplendent, with the leisurely demeanor of a boulevardier, contemplating the route for his evening amusements. Then, with the effortless and graceful stride of a millionaire, he turned down the vibrant, bustling street.

But in that fleeting moment of pause, the wisest and sharpest eyes in the city had already taken notice. A stout man with grey eyes signaled to two of his companions among the row of loungers in front of the hotel.

"The plumpest mark I've seen in six months," remarked the man with grey eyes. "Let's go."

It was half-past eleven when a man rushed into the West Forty-seventh Street police station, his breathless voice recounting his misfortune.

"Nine hundred and fifty dollars," he gasped, "all my share of grandmother's farm."

The desk sergeant extracted the name Jabez Bulltongue from him, of Locust Valley Farm in Ulster County, and then proceeded to gather descriptions of the strong-arm individuals.

When Conant visited the editor to inquire about the fate of his poem, he was ushered into the inner office, adorned with statuettes by Rodin and J. G. Brown, skipping past the office boy.

 

"When I read the first line of 'The Doe and the Brook,'" began the editor, "I recognized it as the work of someone intimately acquainted with nature. The polished artistry of the verse did not blind me to that truth. It was as though a wild, free child of the woods and fields had donned the garb of high fashion and strolled down Broadway. The essence of the man was beneath the attire."

"Thank you," replied Conant. "I suppose the check will arrive on Thursday, as usual."

The moral of this story seems to have become entangled. You can choose between "Stay on the Farm" or "Don't Write Poetry."