Part 38 (1/2)

I have always been paid, I find, in proportion to the indignities I bore--in proportion to the amount I humiliated myself before the rich and the vulgar. These vile, bejeweled, befeathered women, these loathsome, swinish men--_these_ are the people who have money to spend. They go through the world scattering their largess with royal hand; and you can get down and gather it up out of the mud beneath their feet.

I come home at night worn out and weak, sometimes almost in a stupor; but I am never too ill to brood over that hideous state of affairs. I gaze at it and I wring my hands, and I cry: Oh my Father in heaven, will it always be like this?

Think of it--this money that these people squander--do you know what it is?

It is the toil of society! That is what it is,--it is _my_ toil--it is the toil of the millions that swarm in the tenements where I live--it is the toil of the laborers, the beasts of burden of society, in the cities and in the country.

Think about it, I cry, think about it!--Can I not find any word, is there nothing I can do or say now or at any time, to make men see it? Why, you take it for granted--_I_ have taken it for granted all my days--that money should belong to the brutal rich to squander in whatever inanity may please them! But it never dawns upon you that this money is _the toil of the human race_! Money is the representation of all that human toil creates--of all _value_; it is houses that laborers build, it is grain that farmers raise, it is books that poets write! And see what becomes of it--see! _see_! Or are you blind or mad, that you _will_ not see?

Have you no more faith in man, no more care about the soul?

You think that I have been made sick by my work in that one haunt of vice.

But it is not only that, it is not only that fever district where all the diseases of a city gather. I have been all _over_ the city, and it is everywhere the same. Go to the opera-house any night and you may see blasphemous vanity enough to feed the starving of this city for a year.

Walk up Fifth Avenue and see them driving; or go to Newport and see them there. Why, I read in the papers once of a woman who gave a ball--and the little fact has stuck in my mind ever since that she wore a dress trimmed with lace that cost a thousand dollars a meter! I do not speak of the infinite vulgarity of the thing--it is the monstrous _crime_ of it that cries to me. These people--why, they have society by the _throat_!

I bury my face in my pillow and sob; but then I look up and pray for faith.

I say we are only at the beginning of civilization, we can see but the first gleams of a social conscience; but it will come--it must come! Am I to believe that mankind will always submit to toil and pant to make lace at a thousand dollars a meter to cover the pride-swollen carcase of a society dame?

How is it to be managed? I do not know. I am not a political economist--I am a seeker after righteousness. But as a poet, and as a clear-eyed soul, I stand upon the heights and I cry out for it, I demand it. I demand that society shall come to its own, I demand that there shall be intelligence in the world! I demand that the toil of the millions shall not be for the pride of the few! I demand that it shall not be to buy diamonds and dresses and banquets, horses and carriages, palaces and yachts! I demand that it shall be for the making of knowledge and power, of beauty and light and love!

Oh, thou black jungle of a world!--What know you of knowledge and power, of beauty and light and love? What do you dream of these things? The end of man as you know it is to fight and struggle like a maniac, and grab for his own all that he can lay his claws upon. And what is your social ideal--but to lavish, each man upon himself, all that he can lavish before he dies?

And whom do you honor save him who succeeds in that? And whom do you scorn save him who fails?

Oh thou black jungle of a world!--I cry it once again--

Where savage beasts through forest midnight roam, Seeking in sorrow for each other's joy!

I sit alone and think of these things, until my breath comes hard with rage. I say: ”It is these that I serve--it is these who own the fruits of my toil--it is these for whom I am starved and crushed--it is these by whom my G.o.d-given power is trampled into annihilation!”

March 4th.

I gave the place up this morning. I have thirty-one dollars. I think such a sum of money never made me less happy.

I have nothing to do but drag myself back to my room and wait there until the eighth, to take back my ma.n.u.script. It will be five weeks that he has kept me--I suppose that is not his fault.