The Genius (4 page)

The city of Chicago—who shall portray it! This vast ruck of life
that had sprung suddenly into existence upon the dank marshes of a
lake shore. Miles and miles of dreary little houses; miles and
miles of wooden block-paved streets, with gas lamps placed and
water mains laid, and empty wooden walks set for pedestrians; the
beat of a hundred thousand hammers; the ring of a hundred thousand
trowels! Long, converging lines of telegraph poles; thousands upon
thousands of sentinel cottages, factory plants, towering smoke
stacks, and here and there a lone, shabby church steeple, sitting
out pathetically upon vacant land. The raw prairie stretch was
covered with yellow grass; the great broad highways of the tracks
of railroads, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, laid side by side and
strung with thousands upon thousands of shabby cars, like beads
upon a string. Engines clanging, trains moving, people waiting at
street crossings—pedestrians, wagon drivers, street car drivers,
drays of beer, trucks of coal, brick, stone, sand—a spectacle of
new, raw, necessary life!

As Eugene began to draw near it he caught for the first time the
sense and significance of a great city. What were these newspaper
shadows he had been dealing with in his reading compared to this
vivid, articulate, eager thing? Here was the substance of a new
world, substantial, fascinating, different. The handsome suburban
station at South Chicago, the first of its kind he had ever seen,
took his eye, as the train rolled cityward. He had never before
seen a crowd of foreigners—working men—and here were Lithuanians,
Poles, Czechs, waiting for a local train. He had never seen a
really large factory plant, and here was one, and another, and
another—steel works, potteries, soap-factories, foundries, all
gaunt and hard in the Sunday evening air. There seemed to be, for
all it was Sunday, something youthful, energetic and alive about
the streets. He noted the streetcars waiting; at one place a small
river was crossed on a draw,—dirty, gloomy, but crowded with boats
and lined with great warehouses, grain elevators, coal pockets—that
architecture of necessity and utility. His imagination was fired by
this for here was something that could be done brilliantly in
black—a spot of red or green for ship and bridge lights. There were
some men on the magazines who did things like this, only not so
vivid.

The train threaded its way through long lines of cars coming
finally into an immense train shed where arc lights were
spluttering—a score under a great curved steel and glass roof,
where people were hurrying to and fro. Engines were hissing; bells
clanging raucously. He had no relatives, no soul to turn to, but
somehow he did not feel lonely. This picture of life, this newness,
fascinated him. He stepped down and started leisurely to the gate,
wondering which way he should go. He came to a corner where a lamp
post already lit blazoned the name Madison. He looked out on this
street and saw, as far as the eye could reach, two lines of stores,
jingling horse cars, people walking. What a sight, he thought, and
turned west. For three miles he walked, musing, and then as it was
dark, and he had arranged for no bed, he wondered where he should
eat and sleep. A fat man sitting outside a livery stable door in a
tilted, cane-seated chair offered a possibility of information.

"Do you know where I can get a room around here?" asked
Eugene.

The lounger looked him over. He was the proprietor of the
place.

"There's an old lady living over there at seven-thirty-two," he
said, "who has a room, I think. She might take you in." He liked
Eugene's looks.

Eugene crossed over and rang a downstairs bell. The door was
opened shortly by a tall, kindly woman, of a rather matriarchal
turn. Her hair was gray.

"Yes?" she inquired.

"The gentleman at the livery stable over there said I might get
a room here. I'm looking for one."

She smiled pleasantly. This boy looked his strangeness, his
wide-eyed interest, his freshness from the country. "Come in," she
said. "I have a room. You can look at it."

It was a front room—a little bed-room off the one main living
room, clean, simple, convenient. "This looks all right," he
said.

She smiled.

"You can have it for two dollars a week," she proffered.

"That's all right," he said, putting down his grip. "I'll take
it."

"Have you had supper?" she asked.

"No, but I'm going out soon. I want to see the streets. I'll
find some place."

"I'll give you something," she said.

Eugene thanked her, and she smiled. This was what Chicago did to
the country. It took the boys.

He opened the closed shutters of his window and knelt before it,
leaning on the sill. He looked out idly, for it was all so
wonderful. Bright lights were burning in store windows. These
people hurrying—how their feet sounded—clap, clap, clap. And away
east and away west it was all like this. It was all like this
everywhere, a great big, wonderful city. It was nice to be here. He
felt that now. It was all worth while. How could he have stayed in
Alexandria so long! He would get along here. Certainly he would. He
was perfectly sure of that. He knew.

Chicago at this time certainly offered a world of hope and
opportunity to the beginner. It was so new, so raw; everything was
in the making. The long lines of houses and stores were mostly
temporary make-shifts—one and two story frame affairs—with here and
there a three and four story brick building which spoke of better
days to come. Down in the business heart which lay between the lake
and the river, the North Side and the South Side, was a region
which spoke of a tremendous future, for here were stores which
served the buying public, not only of Chicago, but of the Middle
West. There were great banks, great office buildings, great retail
stores, great hotels. The section was running with a tide of people
which represented the youth, the illusions, the untrained
aspirations, of millions of souls. When you walked into this area
you could feel what Chicago meant—eagerness, hope, desire. It was a
city that put vitality into almost every wavering heart: it made
the beginner dream dreams; the aged to feel that misfortune was
never so grim that it might not change.

Underneath, of course, was struggle. Youth and hope and energy
were setting a terrific pace. You had to work here, to move, to
step lively. You had to have ideas. This city demanded of you your
very best, or it would have little to do with you. Youth in its
search for something—and age—were quickly to feel this. It was no
fool's paradise.

Eugene, once he was settled, realized this. He had the notion,
somehow, that the printer's trade was all over for him. He wanted
no more of that. He wanted to be an artist or something like that,
although he hardly knew how to begin. The papers offered one way,
but he was not sure that they took on beginners. He had had no
training whatever. His sister Myrtle had once said that some of his
little thumb-nail sketches were pretty, but what did she know? If
he could study somewhere, find someone who would teach him… .
Meanwhile he would have to work.

He tried the newspapers first of course, for those great
institutions seemed the ideal resort for anyone who wanted to get
up in the world, but the teeming offices with frowning art
directors and critical newspaper workers frightened him. One art
director did see something in the three or four little sketches he
showed, but he happened to be in a crusty mood, and did not want
anybody anyway. He simply said no, there was nothing. Eugene
thought that perhaps as an artist also, he was destined to be a
failure.

The trouble with this boy was really that he was not half awake
yet. The beauty of life, its wonder, had cast a spell over him, but
he could not yet interpret it in line and color. He walked about
these wonderful streets, gazing in the windows, looking at the
boats on the river, looking at the ships on the lake. One day,
while he was standing on the lake shore, there came a ship in full
sail in the offing—the first he had ever seen. It gripped his sense
of beauty. He clasped his hands nervously and thrilled to it. Then
he sat down on the lake wall and looked and looked and looked until
it gradually sank below the horizon. So this was how the great
lakes were; and how the great seas must be—the Atlantic and the
Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Ah, the sea! Some day, perhaps he
would go to New York. That was where the sea was. But here it was
also, in miniature, and it was wonderful.

One cannot moon by lake shores and before store windows and at
bridge draws and live, unless one is provided with the means of
living, and this Eugene was not. He had determined when he left
home that he would be independent. He wanted to get a salary in
some way that he could at least live on. He wanted to write back
and be able to say that he was getting along nicely. His trunk
came, and a loving letter from his mother, and some money, but he
sent that back. It was only ten dollars, but he objected to
beginning that way. He thought he ought to earn his own way, and he
wanted to try, anyhow.

After ten days his funds were very low, a dollar and
seventy-five cents, and he decided that any job would have to do.
Never mind about art or type-setting now. He could not get the last
without a union card, he must take anything, and so he applied from
store to store. The cheap little shops in which he asked were so
ugly they hurt, but he tried to put his artistic sensibilities
aside. He asked for anything, to be made a clerk in a bakery, in a
dry goods store, in a candy store. After a time a hardware store
loomed up, and he asked there. The man looked at him curiously. "I
might give you a place at storing stoves."

Eugene did not understand, but he accepted gladly. It only paid
six dollars a week, but he could live on that. He was shown to a
loft in charge of two rough men, stove fitters, polishers, and
repairers, who gruffly explained to him that his work was to brush
the rust off the decayed stoves, to help piece and screw them
together, to polish and lift things, for this was a second hand
stove business which bought and repaired stoves from junk dealers
all over the city. Eugene had a low bench near a window where he
was supposed to do his polishing, but he very frequently wasted his
time here looking out into the green yards of some houses in a side
street. The city was full of wonder to him—its every detail
fascinating. When a rag-picker would go by calling "rags, old
iron," or a vegetable vender crying "tomatoes, potatoes, green
corn, peas," he would stop and listen, the musical pathos of the
cries appealing to him. Alexandria had never had anything like
this. It was all so strange. He saw himself making pen and ink
sketches of things, of the clothes lines in the back yards and of
the maids with baskets.

On one of the days when he thought he was working fairly well
(he had been there two weeks), one of the two repairers said, "Hey,
get a move on you. You're not paid to look out the window." Eugene
stopped. He had not realized that he was loafing.

"What have you got to do with it?" he asked, hurt and half
defiant. He was under the impression that he was working with these
men, not under them.

"I'll show you, you fresh kid," said the older of the two, who
was an individual built on the order of "Bill Sykes." "You're under
me. You get a move on you, and don't give me any more of your
lip."

Eugene was startled. It was a flash of brutality out of a clear
sky. The animal, whom he had been scanning as an artist would, as a
type, out of the corner of his eye, was revealing himself.

"You go to the devil," said Eugene, only half awake to the grim
reality of the situation.

"What's that!" exclaimed the man, making for him. He gave him a
shove toward the wall, and attempted to kick him with his big,
hob-nailed boot. Eugene picked up a stove leg. His face was wax
white.

"Don't you try that again," he said darkly. He fixed the leg in
his hand firmly.

"Call it off, Jim," said the other man, who saw the uselessness
of so much temper. "Don't hit him. Send him down stairs if you
don't like him."

"You get to hell out of here, then," said Eugene's noble
superior.

Eugene walked to a nail where his hat and coat were, carrying
the stove leg. He edged past his assailant cautiously, fearing a
second attack. The man was inclined to kick at him again because of
his stubbornness, but forebore.

"You're too fresh, Willie. You want to wake up, you dough face,"
he said as Eugene went.

Eugene slipped out quietly. His spirit was hurt and torn. What a
scene! He, Eugene Witla, kicked at, and almost kicked out, and that
in a job that paid six dollars a week. A great lump came up in his
throat, but it went down again. He wanted to cry but he could not.
He went downstairs, stovepolish on his hands and face and slipped
up to the desk.

"I want to quit," he said to the man who had hired him.

"All right, what's the matter?"

"That big brute up there tried to kick me," he explained.

"They're pretty rough men," answered the employer. "I was afraid
you wouldn't get along. I guess you're not strong enough. Here you
are." He laid out three dollars and a half. Eugene wondered at this
queer interpretation of his complaint. He must get along with these
men? They musn't get along with him? So the city had that sort of
brutality in it.

He went home and washed up, and then struck out again, for it
was no time now to be without a job. After a week he found one,—as
a house runner for a real estate concern, a young man to bring in
the numbers of empty houses and post up the "For Rent" signs in the
windows. It paid eight dollars and seemed to offer opportunities of
advancement. Eugene might have stayed there indefinitely had it not
failed after three months. He had reached the season of fall
clothes then, and the need of a winter overcoat, but he made no
complaint to his family. He wanted to appear to be getting along
well, whether he was or not.