They crouched until the ghost-mists of dawn appeared
at the window, drawing close to the panes, and looking
in at the prostrate, heaving body of the mother.
The babe, Tommie, died. He went away in a white,
insignificant coffin, his small waxen hand clutching
a flower that the girl, Maggie, had stolen from an
Italian.
She and Jimmie lived.
The inexperienced fibres of the boy’s eyes were
hardened at an early age. He became a young
man of leather. He lived some red years without
laboring. During that time his sneer became chronic.
He studied human nature in the gutter, and found it
no worse than he thought he had reason to believe
it. He never conceived a respect for the world,
because he had begun with no idols that it had smashed.
He clad his soul in armor by means of happening hilariously
in at a mission church where a man composed his sermons
of “yous.” While they got warm at
the stove, he told his hearers just where he calculated
they stood with the Lord. Many of the sinners
were impatient over the pictured depths of their degradation.
They were waiting for soup-tickets.
A reader of words of wind-demons might have been able
to see the portions of a dialogue pass to and fro
between the exhorter and his hearers.
“You are damned,” said the preacher.
And the reader of sounds might have seen the reply
go forth from the ragged people: “Where’s
our soup?”
Jimmie and a companion sat in a rear seat and commented
upon the things that didn’t concern them, with
all the freedom of English gentlemen. When they
grew thirsty and went out their minds confused the
speaker with Christ.
Momentarily, Jimmie was sullen with thoughts of a
hopeless altitude where grew fruit. His companion
said that if he should ever meet God he would ask
for a million dollars and a bottle of beer.
Jimmie’s occupation for a long time was to stand
on streetcorners and watch the world go by, dreaming
blood-red dreams at the passing of pretty women.
He menaced mankind at the intersections of streets.
On the corners he was in life and of life. The
world was going on and he was there to perceive it.
He maintained a belligerent attitude toward all well-dressed
men. To him fine raiment was allied to weakness,
and all good coats covered faint hearts. He
and his order were kings, to a certain extent, over
the men of untarnished clothes, because these latter
dreaded, perhaps, to be either killed or laughed at.
Above all things he despised obvious Christians and
ciphers with the chrysanthemums of aristocracy in
their button-holes. He considered himself above
both of these classes. He was afraid of neither
the devil nor the leader of society.
When he had a dollar in his pocket his satisfaction
with existence was the greatest thing in the world.
So, eventually, he felt obliged to work. His
father died and his mother’s years were divided
up into periods of thirty days.
