Read Ebook: The Color of a Great City by Dreiser Theodore Falls C B Charles Buckles Illustrator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 285 lines and 34499 words, and 6 pages

"As long as we, who are the men and women of the world, are willing to continue our present fashion of giving up living in order to get a living, one planet will never be large enough for us. If we can only get our living in one place and have it to live with in another, the question is, To whom does this present planet belong--the people who spend their days in living into it and enjoying it, or the people who never take time to notice the planet, who do not seem to know that they are living on a planet at all?"

"I may not be very well informed on very many things, but I am very sure of one of them," said The Mysterious Person, "and that is, that this present planet--this one we are living on now--belongs by all that is fair and just to those who are really living on it, and that it should be saved and kept as a sacred and protected place--a place where men shall be able to belong to the taste and colour and meaning of things and to God and to themselves. If people want another planet--a planet to belong to Society on,--let them go out and get it.

"But don't you believe in newspapers?"

At this point The Mysterious Person reached out his long arm from his easy-chair to some papers that were lying near. I knew too well what it meant. He began to read.

"Look at that!" said he. He handed the paper to The P. G. S. of M., pointing with his finger, rather excitedly. The P. G. S. of M. looked at it--read it through. Then he put it down; The Mysterious Person went on.

"Do you not know what it means when you, a civilised, cultivated, converted human being, can stand face to face with a list--a list like that--a list headed 'BOOKS OF THE WEEK'--when, unblinking and shameless, and without a cry of protest, you actually read it through, without seeing, or seeming to see, for a single moment that right there--right there in that list--the fact that there is such a list--your civilisation is on trial for its life--that any society or nation or century that is shallow enough to publish as many books as that has yet to face the most awful, the most unprecedented, the most headlong-coming crisis in the history of the human race?"

The Mysterious Person made a pause--the pause of settling things.

At all events The Mysterious Person having asked a question at this point, everybody might as well have the benefit of it.

In the meantime, it is to be hoped that in the next chapter The Presiding Genius of the State of Massachusetts, or somebody--will get a word in.

Parenthesis To the Gentle Reader

This was a footnote at first. It is placed at the top of the page in the hope that it will point at itself more and let the worst out at once. I want to say I--a little--in this book.

I do not propose to do it very often. Indeed I am not sure just now, that I shall be able to do it at all, but I would like to have the feeling as I go along that arrangements have been made for it, and that it is all understood, and that if I am fairly good about it--ring a little bell or something--and warn people, I am going to be allowed--right here in my own book at least--to say I when I want to.

I is the way I feel on the inside about this subject. Anybody can see it. And I want to be honest, in the first place, and in the second place I never have had what could be called a real good chance to say I in this world, and I feel that if I had--somehow, it would cure me.

I dare say I am all wrong in striking out and flourishing about in a chapter like this, and in threatening to have more like them, but there is one comfort I lay to my soul in doing it. If there is one thing rather than another a book is for it is, that it furnishes the one good, fair, safe place for a man to talk about himself in, because it is the only place that any one--absolutely any one,--at any moment, can shut him up.

This is not saying that I am going to do it. My courage will go from me . Or I shall not be humble enough or something and it all will pass away. I am going to do it now, a little, but I cannot guarantee it. All of a sudden, no telling when or why, I shall feel that Mysterious Person with all his worldly trappings hanging around me again and before I know it, before you know it, Gentle Reader, I with all my I shall be swallowed up. Next time I appear, you shall see me, decorous, trim, and in the third person, my literary white tie on, snooping along through these sentences one after the other, crossing my I's out, wishing I had never been born.

Postscript. I cannot help recording at this point, for the benefit of reckless persons, how saying I in a book feels. It feels a good deal like a very small boy in a very high swing--a kind of flashing-of-everything through-nothing feeling, but it cannot be undone now, and so if you please, Gentle Reader, and if everybody will hold their breath, I am going to hold on tight and do it.

More Parenthesis--But More to the Point

I have gotten into a way lately, while I am just living along, of going out and taking a good square turn every now and then, in front of myself. It is not altogether an agreeable experience, but there seems to be a window in every man's nature on purpose for it--arranged and located on purpose for it, and I find on the whole that going out around one's window, once in so often, and standing awhile has advantages. The general idea is to stand perfectly still for a little time, in a kind of general, public, disinterested way, and then suddenly, when one is off one's guard and not looking, so to speak, take a peek backwards into one's self.

I am aware that it does not follow, because I have just come out and have been looking into my window, that I have a right to hold up any person or persons who may be going by in this book, and ask them to look in too, but at the same time I cannot conceal--do not wish to conceal, even if I could--that there have been times, standing in front of my window and looking in, when what I have seen there has seemed to me to assume a national significance.

There are millions of other windows like it. It is one of the daily sorrows of my life that the people who own them do not seem to know it--most of them--except perhaps in a vague, hurried pained way. Sometimes I feel like calling out to them as I stand by my window--see them go hurrying by on The Great Street: "Say there, Stranger! Halloa, Stranger! Want to see yourself? Come right over here and look at me!"

Nobody believes it, of course. It's a good deal like standing and waving one's arms in the Midway--being an egotist,--but I must say, I have never got a man yet--got him in out of the rush, I mean, right up in front of my window--got him once stooped down and really looking in there, but he admitted there was something in it.

I was born to read. I spent all my early years, as I remember them, with books,--peering softly about in them. My whole being was hushed and trustful and expectant at the sight of a printed page. I lived in the presence of books, with all my thoughts lying open about me; a kind of still, radiant mood of welcome seemed to lie upon them. When I looked at a shelf of books I felt the whole world flocking to me.

I have been civilised now, I should say, twenty, or possibly twenty-five, years. At least every one supposes I am civilised, and my whole being has changed. I cannot so much as look upon a great many books in a library or any other heaped-up place, without feeling bleak and heartless. I never read if I can help it. My whole attitude toward current literature is grouty and snappish, a kind of perpetual interrupted "What are you ringing my door-bell now for?" attitude. I am a disagreeable character. I spend at least one half my time, I should judge, keeping things off, in defending my character. Then I spend the other half in wondering if, after all, it was worth it. What I see in my window has changed. When I used to go out around and look into it, in the old days, to see what I was like, I was a sunny, open valley--streams and roads and everything running down into it, and opening out of it, and when I go out suddenly now, and turn around in front of myself and look in--I am a mountain pass. I sift my friends--up a trail. The few friends that come, come a little out of breath , and a book cannot so much as get to me except on a mule's back.

It is by no means an ideal arrangement--a mountain pass, but it is better than always sitting in one's study in civilisation, where every passer-by, pamphlet, boy in the street, thinks he might just as well come up and ring one's door-bell awhile. All modern books are book agents at heart, around getting subscriptions for themselves. If a man wants to be sociable or literary nowadays, he can only do it by being a more or less disagreeable character, and if he wishes to be a beautiful character, he must go off and do it by himself.

This is a mere choice in suicides.

The question that presses upon me is: Whose fault is it that a poor wistful, incomplete, human being, born into this huge dilemma of a world, can only keep on having a soul in it, by keeping it tossed back and forth--now in one place where souls are lost, and now in another? Is it your fault, or mine, Gentle Reader, that we are obliged to live in this undignified, obstreperous fashion in what is called civilisation? I cannot believe it. Nearly all the best people one knows can be seen sitting in civilisation on the edge of their chairs, or hurrying along with their souls in satchels.

"Where are you going to be putting--those?" I said, pointing to a lot of funny little churches and funny little schoolhouses he was holding in both hands.

"From Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand," he said.

I looked at them a minute. "You don't think, do you?" I said--"You don't really think you had better wait over a little--bring them back and let us--finish them for you, do you? one or two--samples?" I said.

He looked at me with what seemed to me at first, a kind of blurred, helpless look. I soon saw that he was pitying me and I promptly stepped down to the dining-saloon and tried to appreciate two or three tons of flowers.

I do not wish to say a word against missionaries. They are merely apt to be somewhat heedless, morally-hurried persons, rushing about the world turning people right side up everywhere, without really noticing them much, but I do think that a great deliberate corporate body like The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions ought to be more optimistic about the Church--wait and work for it a little more, expect a little more of it.

It seems to me that it ought to be far less pessimistic than it is, also, about what we can do in the way of schools and social life in civilisation and about civilisation's way of doing business. Is our little knack of Christianity quite worthy of all this attention it is getting from The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions? Why should it approve of civilisation with a rush? Does any one really suppose that it is really time to pat it on the back--yet?--to spend a million dollars a year--patting it on the back?

I merely throw out the question.

More Literary Rush

We had been talking along, in our Club, as usual, for some time, on the general subject of the world--fixing the blame for things. We had come to the point where it was nearly all fixed when I thought I might as well put forward my little theory that nearly everything that was the matter, could be traced to the people who "belong to Society."

Then The P. G. S. of M. spoke up and said:

"But who belongs to Society?"

"All persons who read what they are told to and who call where they can't help it. What this world needs just now," I went on, looking The P. G. S. of M. as much in the eye as I could, "is emancipation. It needs a prophet--a man who can gather about him a few brave-hearted, intelligently ignorant men, who shall go about with their beautiful feet on the mountains, telling the good tidings of how many things there are we do not need to know. The prejudice against being ignorant is largely because people have not learned how to do it. The wrong people have taken hold of it."

The cultured man is the man who can tell me what he does not know, with such grace that I feel ashamed of knowing it.

NOT. It is the very essence of a cultured man that when he hears the word "must" it is on his own lips. It is the very essence of his culture that he says it to himself. His culture is his belonging to himself, and his belonging to himself is the first condition of his being worth giving to other people. One longs for Elia. People know too much, and there doesn't seem to be a man living who can charm them from the error of their way. Knowledge takes the place of everything else, and all one can do in this present day as he reads the reviews and goes to his club, is to look forward with a tired heart to the prophecy of Scripture, "Knowledge shall pass away."

Where do we see the old and sweet content of loving a thing for itself? Now, there are the flowers. The only way to delight in a flower at your feet in these days is to watch with it all alone, or keep still about it. The moment you speak of it, it becomes botany. It's a rare man who will not tell you all he knows about it. Love isn't worth anything without a classic name. It's a wonder we have any flowers left. Half the charm of a flower to me is that it looks demure and talks perfume and keeps its name so gently to itself. The man who always enjoys views by picking out the places he knows, is a symbol of all our reading habits and of our national relation to books. One can glory in a great cliff down in the depths of his heart, but if you mention it, it is geology, and an argument. Even the birds sing zo?logically, and as for the sky, it has become a mere blue-and-gold science, and all the wonder seems to be confined to one's not knowing the names of the planets. I was brought up wistfully on

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are.

But now it is become:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, Teacher's told me what you are.

Even babies won't wonder very soon. That is to say, they won't wonder out loud. Nobody does. Another of my poems was:

Where did you come from, baby dear? Out of the everywhere into here.

Where did you come from, baby fair? Out of the here into everywhere.

And the bookcases stared at me.

It is a serious question whether the average American youth is ever given a chance to thirst for knowledge. He thirsts for ignorance instead. From the very first he is hemmed in by knowledge. The kindergarten with its suave relentlessness, its perfunctory cheerfulness, closes in upon the life of every child with himself. The dear old-fashioned breathing spell he used to have after getting here--whither has it gone? The rough, strong, ruthless, unseemly, grown-up world crowds to the very edge of every beginning life. It has no patience with trailing clouds of glory. Flocks of infants every year--new-comers to this planet--who can but watch them sadly, huddled closer and closer to the little strip of wonder that is left near the land from which they came? No lingering away from us. No infinite holiday. Childhood walks a precipice crowded to the brink of birth. We tabulate its moods. We register its learning inch by inch. We draw its poor little premature soul out of its body breath by breath. Infants are well informed now. The suckling has nerves. A few days more he will be like all the rest of us. It will be:

Poem: "When I Was Weaned."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet