DUKE 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/autobiographyoff01turn 
 
THE 
 
 UTOBIOGRAP 
 
 FAILURE 
 
 By Harry Turner 
 
THE 
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 OF A FAILURE 
 
 By HARRY TURNER 
 
 PRICE ONE DOLLAR 
 
rVC\ nhr 
 
 Jfamttori 
 
 I submitted the manuscript of this abbreviated memoir to the 
 President of the Board of Governors of the New Saint Louis 
 Country Club, in order that any inaccuracies occurring therein 
 might be called to my attention. The manuscript was held for a 
 month by that body and then returned to me without comment. 
 
 Observation : There is a chasm between dumbness and 
 silence, in fact, the two are antitheses. Under which head the 
 muteness of the Board comes, I do not pretend to be able to say. 
 Should I allege that their taciturnity was caused by dumbness, 
 they will hold dumbly that silence is at the bottom of it, and 
 they are bound to be right lor they are ten to one, and the ma- 
 jority is always right in a Democracy. 
 
 Be that as it may, if some one had written as frankly about 
 himself as I have written about myself in this memoir, I should 
 certainly buy his book. It would be necessary to buy it, for 
 one would never be able to get it from the library-, on account of 
 the demand, even if the library had it. Were it not for its 
 frankness, I shouldn't recommend it to a friend — if I possessed 
 one. Like the political orator, whose name a negro voter could 
 not remember, but about whom the latter remarked, nevertheless, 
 that he had ''certainly given himself a mighty fine recommenda- 
 tion," I have done my best. If you do not think that I am all 
 right after reading this book, you're prejudiced, that's all. 
 
 To be able to make money out of a situation as herein de- 
 scribed by selling a book about it, is forever to dispose of the only 
 charge that I have heard made against me, viz. : that I am not "a 
 good business man." 
 
"Woe unto the happy, full-blooded aristocrat! Mental and 
 physical cripples will overpower him by sheer force of numbers 
 —they will even invent a hell for him, a place of eternal torment." 
 
 — Friedrich Nietzsche. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Having learned so much that I now know nothing, I shall 
 proceed to write a book. 
 
 In order that the following story may be comprehensible, 
 it is necessary that I preface it with some facts about myself; 
 where I came from, who I am and what I have done with myself 
 to date. 
 
 I am not at all sure that what I am about to recite will be 
 interesting. I write it as I have written most things, merely as 
 a cure for nervousness. I am far too cynical to think that my 
 statement of the case will convert anyone to my view of it, 
 and I am far too tired of the subject to care whether it does or 
 not. I have discovered, however, that if I write a thing that 
 is on my mind, or that is puzzling me, it seems to shift the 
 burden, and I can go on and think of something else. 
 
 I was born in either 1875 or 76 at Normandy, Missouri, 
 on Christmas day. I have never been able to determine defi- 
 nitely in which of the two years the overpowering event oc- 
 curred. Some members of my family have said one year and 
 some another, and naturally my own memory would be un- 
 reliable in a matter of that sort. I have never regarded the 
 accuracy of the date as of sufficient importance to warrant an 
 exhaustive investigation. That one is here in the world 
 through no fault of his own is the important thing; the date of 
 the incident is a trivial matter. 
 
 To those who object to the liberal use of the pronoun I, 
 and to those who believe that psychanalysis is a repellant form 
 of egotism, I would say that they had best proceed no further. 
 As for myself, I am always interested to hear a person discourse 
 about himself without affectation or concealment, for I assume 
 that he knows something of his subject, and it is extremely 
 doubtful if that can be said when he allows himself the luxury 
 of discussing others for true psychologists are rarae aves. In 
 fact, I think that most of the evils of the world come from mis- 
 understanding, and misunderstanding comes largely from a 
 false conception of the meaning of modesty. We are all afraid 
 to reveal ourselves as we are. We go on through life conceal- 
 ing with great pains our worst and our best thoughts, but prin- 
 cipally the latter, until one day we see a play or read a book 
 in which some artist has stripped us naked, torn away our mask, 
 and held us up to view, and we blush and are ashamed and 
 mutter that the play is overdrawn, or that the book is untrue 
 to life, or that the artist is a sentimentalist. With our dying 
 breaths we will protest that we are not what we are. 
 
 I am intensely interested in myself. I am a never-ending 
 source of surprise to myself. The study and analysis of my own 
 
moods keep me quite well occupied. No doubt that is egotism, 
 but it is the truth, which is more important, and besides if one is not 
 an egotist, what sense is there in life at all? In fact, to be inter- 
 ested in someone else, on the theory that the other will reciprocate, 
 is superlative egotism. 
 
 I cannot remember a time when I was not in love, or 
 thought I was, and so I can say, in a general way, that all my 
 life has been divided between thinking of some woman or 
 other, and self analysis. However, there has hardly been a pe- 
 riod since I finished school that I have not been engaged in some 
 business, but I always regarded business as a conventional sort 
 of thing that had to be endured, for some reason which I had not 
 fathomed, and I generally managed it with the little finger of my 
 left hand. 
 
 When I say that my interests were divided between some 
 woman and myself, I do not mean that quite literally, nor that 
 I spent all of my time gazing at my own belly, like a Chinese 
 God, or in performing psychological vivisection on some speci- 
 men of femininity, but I mean that literature, the theatre, music, 
 nature, everything that attracted me, I realized at bottom led 
 back to me or to a woman, and not necessarily to a woman 
 sexually considered. There is nothing interesting in sex to me 
 — in the abstract — although I see nothing wrong in it. It is 
 no different in man than in the lower animals (or shouldn't be), 
 and as a subject for study it is quickly exhausted. The Latins 
 said all there was to be said about sex, long before the Anglo- 
 Saxons discovered its existence. But the soul of a woman is the 
 most fascinating, absorbing, never-ending interest a man can 
 have, and I think the most legitimate. 
 
 Part of my education was received in a Catholic College. 
 I know priests. It is possible they believe the things they 
 teach. It is not possible that I could. I am not a Catholic. 
 
 When I was sixteen years old, I went to Colorado and en- 
 tered the railroad business as a clerk in the auditor's office. 
 Whether it was my superior ability or a certain "pull" that 
 did it, I have never cared to decide even for myself, but in less 
 than a year I became General Manager's secretary. 
 
 Railroading in Colorado was an interesting life in those 
 days. The operation of the road was dangerous and exciting, 
 and outside of the office there was also romance and to spare. 
 Colorado was the scene of my first love affair. I was seventeen. 
 She, of course, was much older and married, and very beauti- 
 ful and all that. I should not care to see her now. One should 
 hold to one's illusions if possible. I don't know but that it would 
 be a good thing for every boy of seventeen if he could have a 
 love affair with a married woman of thirty and be discarded by 
 her. It fits him for life far more quickly and inexpensively 
 than the usual method of getting married, or going through 
 college. Toward the end of my third year in Colorado, the 
 General Manager was caught robbing the company, by means 
 of a system of rebates to shippers; that is, the road was charged 
 
 —6— 
 
with the rebates and the shippers never received them, or re- 
 ceived only part of them. There was no prosecution, because 
 both the shippers and the railroads were engaged in rebate 
 transactions, which were criminal offenses against the laws. 
 The General Manager was also implicated in a system of carry- 
 ing straw men on the payrolls, but I do not believe he ever 
 received the "profits," for I, as his secretary, would have known 
 it. At any rate another man was convicted and got ten years' 
 sentence and was pardoned in two. I have often wondered 
 what the effect would have been on me of this experience had 
 I been seriously intent on becoming a successful business man. 
 I imagine I should have become either completely discouraged 
 or a great crook. What a pity I was not more serious ! 
 
 After the expose, the General Manager "resigned," and a? 
 is customary, I did too, and came to St. Louis, where I became 
 secretary to the General Manager of one of the large trunk 
 lines. I held this position for two years and until that gentle- 
 man suspected that I had conveyed information to his wife 
 regarding his numerous amours along the line from Texas to 
 Colorado. I was not guilty. In fact, I have never been guilty 
 of anything like that; it would have been a sin against my 
 nature, but I was weary of the position anyway, and felt that 
 I would as lief be the scape-goat as to see someone else lose 
 his position, who no doubt needed it, and so I resigned. 
 
 As I look back on it now, I think those two years were 
 perhaps the most profitable in my life from an experience stand- 
 point (and what other is there?). It cannot be denied, too, that 
 there is a certain fascination in the railroad business, if one is in 
 position to regard it romantically. Even in being a general man- 
 ager's secretary, there is a feeling of power, and a certain sort 
 of satisfaction, that I have never been able to analyze. There is a 
 pleasure in giving an order and seeing it carried out down to the 
 last man in an organization of ten thousand. I do not know but 
 that my position was as interesting as any in the service. I was in 
 touch with every department of the road and in confidential rela- 
 tions with the "'visible head of the church on earth" ; and was in a 
 place to see all that transpired, without suffering from a feeling of 
 responsibility, that of necessity goes with the office of general 
 manager. 
 
 There are no end of amusing incidents constantly occur- 
 ring in a big railroad organization. There are thrills, too, such 
 as^ one gets when a rush message comes into the office to the 
 effect that Coxey's army has stolen a freight train at Pueblo 
 and is coming East at a terrific rate, with no orders, and the 
 cars filled with "wean- Willies." I remember my admiration 
 for the General Manager went up several points that morning, 
 as I saw him read that message, realize at once what it meant, 
 and rush to the telegraph key, where he personally handled the 
 whole situation. The division superintendent had, of course, 
 sidetracked all trains and the trick was to catch Coxey. The 
 ''Old Man" hesitated a moment, while he held the line open. 
 
and then he began to telegraph as though he were sending 
 Associated Press stuff and was afraid they would take the line 
 away from him before he got it all over. About two hours 
 later he got word that Coxey and his army had deserted the 
 train and taken to their heels. What the "Old Man" had done 
 was to telegraph to two water tanks ahead of the stolen train, in- 
 structing the agents to drain the tanks. At the third station 
 there was a tank that had been abandoned on account of alkali 
 water. Here was where the Coxey engine replenished its supply. 
 
 For those who are not versed in such matters, I will explain 
 that alkali creates a foam in the boiler of an engine that puts 
 it out of commission as effectively, or more so, than if there 
 was no water at all ; even a fresh tank will foam for awhile. 
 
 It was clever work to regain possession of the line and the 
 train without a wreck or a fight, and the General Manager's 
 prompt action showed how clearly he carried that five thousand 
 miles of railroad in his head. Were it not for this ability, or gift, 
 I should have nothing but contempt for this man, for in every 
 other sense he was very small. 
 
 There is something about a railroad that makes grafting 
 seem legitimate. If there was anyone on this line that was not 
 "getting his," I cannot think of him right now. One of my 
 duties was the countersigning of passes. We had a general 
 superintendent's chief clerk who, it seemed to me, issued a great 
 deal of free transportation to "roadmaster's wives." On one 
 occasion I discovered that one "roadmaster's wife" had traveled 
 from a point in Arkansas (a well-known health resort) at the 
 same time she was supposed to be returning. So, acting en- 
 tirely without malice, but merely to show a proper attention 
 to duty, I wrote a letter to the chief clerk requesting an explana- 
 tion, and asked the "Old Man" to sign it personally, which he 
 did, and wrote on the bottom of it, "We want 'Quid pro Con* 
 for every pass issued from your office." He was very fond of 
 Latin phrases, and got them off on all occasions very much as 
 a parrot would, always inaccurately and with no distinct idea 
 of their meaning. The answer from the Chief Clerk came ad- 
 dressed to me. It was "Peccavi, Peccavi." "That means," said the 
 General Manager when I showed it to him, "that my orders were 
 received and understood." 
 
 "Yes, sir," I replied, and the incident was closed. 
 
 These railroad experiences have nothing whatever to do 
 with the "central theme" of this tale, except insofar as they 
 may have influenced me in forsaking a business career, and I 
 will relate only a few more of them and then pass on. 
 
 Among my other duties it fell to me to order supplies to 
 stock private cars. Whenever an order was placed I invariably 
 received a box of cigars from the grocer, and always the butcher 
 remembered me at Thanksgiving, Christmas and other days set 
 aside for feasting and merriment, with a turkey or a few prairie 
 chickens or some other delicacy, but that it was grafting never 
 
 —8— 
 
occurred to me. In fact, I don't think the word was used in 
 that connection in those days. 
 
 I recall having gone home on one occasion (I lived then 
 at Normandy in St. Louis County) to spend Sunday. About 
 eleven that night, after everyone had retired, a messenger came 
 from the city with a letter for me from our chief clerk, saying 
 that the President of the Railroad Company (who was on his 
 way from New York to Omaha, and thence to Buffalo Bill's 
 ranch in Nebraska, where a hunting expedition had been planned) 
 had suddenly changed his mind at Detroit, would reach St. Louis 
 at seven in the morning and desired to leave for the South as 
 soon thereafter as possible. 
 
 It was eleven-thirty when I had finished reading the letter. 
 It meant a special train, composed of engine, commissary car, 
 vice president's, general manager's and general superintendent's 
 cars, and that they would all have to be cleaned and stocked, 
 the train made up and in the station, ready to go, by seven 
 A. M. 
 
 I gave the messenger who had brought the letter the ad- 
 dresses of all the cooks and porters — I had them in my head 
 fortunately — and told him to have them meet me at the grocer's, 
 as near one o'clock as possible, and then I sent him away on the 
 last train returning to the city. 
 
 After that I dressed, and, in the meantime a horse had been 
 hitched to a buggy for me, and I drove in to town where I could 
 get a telephone. Here I called up the superintendent of motive 
 power, and got him out of bed. I impressed on him the urgency 
 of getting our regular engine and crew and the balance of the 
 train in readiness and backed into the station at seven o'clock. 
 
 "Why the two-sixty-four is pulling number three and left 
 here at nine tonight," he said. 
 
 "Where is she now?" I asked. 
 
 "Somewhere about S ," he answered. 
 
 "Well, wire the agent there to turn her back and let num- 
 ber three grab a freight engine somewhere." 
 
 "All right," he said, and hung up the receiver. 
 
 I then called up the butcher and grocer at their respective 
 homes, and explained the situation. They agreed to go to their 
 stores and open them, and to get wagons to haul the supplies to 
 the station. 
 
 Fortunately all the negro cooks and porters were on hand, 
 and helped load the wagons. At six-thirty we were at Union 
 Station, but the train had not yet backed in. The wagons were 
 driven through the Twentieth street entrance, and then we 
 found we could not get out of the midway to the- tracks, without 
 tearing out a part of the iron fence that separates them, so this 
 was done, and the procession of wagons drove out and lined up 
 alongside of track twenty-two. A few minutes later the Special 
 backed slowly in. Immediately a small army of car cleaners 
 was at work inside and outside and on the roof like a swarm 
 of flies, and in fifteen or twenty minutes the cars were cleaned 
 and ready to stock. 
 
 —9— 
 
The train from the East, luckily, was twenty minutes late,, 
 due to hauling the heavy car of the President. I hoped against 
 hope that it might be further delayed in the yards, for it was 
 apparent that it was not humanly possible to stock four cars in 
 the time before us, but the President's train pulled in just 
 twenty minutes late. 
 
 Mike, our engineer, was grouchily oiling around. He had 
 been up all night. "What the hell does this mean, and where 
 are we going?" he asked me as I came up to him. "Ask me 
 something easy," I replied. "We are going South, that's all 
 I know." 
 
 The train from the East had now discharged its passengers 
 and had pulled out, after cutting off the President's car. Our 
 "Special" then ran out beyond the signal tower and backed down 
 "on to" the big yellow car from New York. In the meantime 
 it was necessary for the wagons to drive around to track twenty- 
 one. Here the cooks and porters and helpers were pitching 
 boxes and bottles and packages as fast as they could, as I came 
 up. Just at this juncture, the President appeared on the plat- 
 form of his car, in dressing gown and smoking a cigar. "Why 
 aren't we off?" he asked, and then, "What are those wagons 
 doing there? Those things should be attended to at the proper 
 time." 
 
 "Yes, sir," I said, — which is the correct form to use in ad- 
 dressing a superior. 
 
 The anti-climax of the situation struck me as being amus- 
 ing, and I looked at the conductor and smiled. He winked at 
 me, and then raising his right hand, gave the signal, and we 
 pulled slowly out of the yards, with about half of the supplies 
 still in the wagons. 
 
 We learned during the course of the day that we were 
 bound for Texas where the President wished to do some shoot- 
 ing, and that we were expected to run three hundred and fifty- 
 two miles before dark. We did it, but the fireman fainted with 
 exhaustion and his place had to be taken by the train porter. 
 
 "Those things should be attended to at the proper time," 
 kept running through my head all that day. I wondered why 
 I gave myself so much trouble. The hundred .and fifty dollars 
 a month was of no importance to me. Apparently one's efforts 
 are of importance only to oneself. The more I reflected on it, 
 the sillier I felt. The absurdity of working, of giving oneself 
 endless trouble, except when it was the only means of pre- 
 serving life — seemed as plain as a pike staff. The utter fatuity 
 of the whole expedition was borne in on me that night. Here 
 we were, a small army of men, operating a special train costing 
 well over two thousand dollars a day, that the President might 
 kill a few birds and other things in Texas. There -were two 
 guards patrolling the train that night, with Winchesters slung 
 over their shoulders. I met them as I returned from the tele- 
 graph office and I had to explain who I was. I made up my 
 mind later as I lay in bed thinking, that there was really very 
 little deference between being conspicuously rich and being on 
 
 —10— 
 
the rock pile, for, in both circumstances, one is guarded by men 
 with Winchesters. I felt what kttle ambition I had oozing, and 
 some three weeks later, when the general manager voiced his 
 suspicions about my having carried tales to his wife, I w r as too 
 tired of the whole business to deny it, and thus ended a most 
 promising career as a railroad magnate. 
 
 I never will know what induced me to go into the stock 
 brokerage business. I met a friend at lunch one day, and that 
 afternoon I was a broker. Stock brokerage is either farce-com- 
 edy or tragedy, depending on how yon look at it. I was ex- 
 pected, as a broker, to go up to a customer who was studying 
 the board, and advise him to buy or sell a certain stock, about 
 which I didn't know, or couldn't know, more than the man in 
 the moon. I didn't mind doing it, but to ask me to keep a 
 straight face was too much. I always expected the customer 
 to say: "Why don't you buy it?" but none ever did. Perhaps 
 that wouldn't be ethical, in the stock brokerage business. 
 
 The tragic part of the game is, so far as my observation 
 went, that everyone who speculates eventually loses, and often 
 embezzles. I remember visiting the insane asylum at Farm- 
 ington, Mo., a year or more after concluding my Wall street 
 career, and seeing one of our ex-customers, who had "gone 
 broke" in the office. He had been a very well-knowm "society 
 man." When I saw him he was stark naked, and the attendants 
 said clothes could not be kept on him ; that he tore them into 
 strips, and that he imagined the strips were ticker tape and 
 that lie was reading quotations. He's dead now. I didn't like 
 the brokerage business at all. 
 
 I tried real estate after that. This is a business in which 
 you sell your goods for one price and put another in the deed 
 which you advertise in the papers as the correct price. When 
 you are not doing this you are engaged in the congenial task of 
 evicting tenants who can't pay the rent, or foreclosing mort- 
 gages. I didn't enthuse over the real estate business. 
 
 And so I gave up a commercial career, not because I found 
 it all crooked, not that I wouldn't have stolen "success" merrily 
 and cruelly as the rest of them were doing, had it been neces- 
 sary, but simply because it seemed to me the quintessence of 
 stupidity to go against one's nature when there was no pressing 
 need for it. 
 
 By way of amusement, after a year or two of idleness (I 
 think it was in the summer of 1889), I purchased in a little town 
 in Massachusetts, a Stanley steam carriage. It was the first auto- 
 mobile the people of St. Louis or I had ever seen, and naturally 
 it attracted much attention on the streets. It led finally to my 
 taking an agency for the manufacturer and opening a small 
 store. I wanted something to do, and this did not seem to be a 
 legitimate business. I thought at first it would be merely 
 something to occupy my time. It was perfectly marvelous 
 how those things sold. Sober, solid business men w r ould jour- 
 ney up to my little store on Twelfth street and pay seven or 
 
 —IX— 
 
eight hundred dollars for a toy that was not only useless but 
 was positively dangerous. Truly, "men are but children of a 
 larger growth." 
 
 Before I knew it I was in business again and up to my ears. 
 So fast did the trade increase that I was forced to move up town 
 into larger quarters. Then the gasoline car came. I think I 
 was the first local possessor of one of these devil's devices of 
 the present accepted standard, viz. : vertical cylinders and slid- 
 ing gear transmission. And still the business grew and grew 
 until it got to be a horrible bore. 
 
 About this time one of my most intimate friends purchased 
 a car from me, and a week or so later telephoned to the garage 
 one night to have the machine sent to his house. The man in 
 charge reported over the 'phone that the car was out, where- 
 upon my friend assumed that I, and one Edgar Lackland, were 
 "joy riding" in the same, and gave the police instructions to ar- 
 rest us on sight. The fact was that Edgar and I were passing 
 a week end at the Illini Yacht Club, above Alton, and were 
 surprised to receive the papers containing accounts of our dis- 
 appearance with the gentleman's automobile. It turned out 
 that the garage foreman had made an error and did not know the 
 car referred to, which was all the while reposing peacefully on 
 the garage floor. My friend hastened to make amend by going 
 to the newspapers and withdrawing his charge, which he said 
 had been made in the way of a joke. However, this amend 
 turned out to be more disastrous than the injury, for it adver- 
 tised the fact that our garage was an unreliable place in which 
 to keep one's property, and of course all clever people saw 
 through the apology as being merely the desire of a friend to 
 help me out. Our esteemed competitors nursed this view and 
 it became quite general. Our attorney suggested a suit for 
 damages, but I could not see what good the money would do 
 me, as I should only have spent it on my friend from whom it 
 had been obtained, in an effort to regain his friendship, which I 
 then did, and do now, value more highly than a few dollars. 
 
 Incidents like these and frequent arrests for speeding by a 
 single officer who was irritated with us because we persisted in 
 trying to collect a bill of fifty-four dollars for repairs to an auto- 
 mobile owned by this gentleman (his name was Ferguson), 
 caused us to be looked upon with suspicion by our bankers. Finally 
 the president of the bank (a gentleman of Jewish blood, but not 
 a bad fellow by any means) "called" us. I, in turn, called his at- 
 tention to the fact that he had charged us one per cent for the 
 use of money for ten days, which was at the rate of thirty-six 
 per cent cr over for the year and somewhat in excess of the 
 figure permitted by law, whereupon the said banker asked me 
 if I "couldn't take a joke." 
 
 Now, I do not claim to possess any great amount of humor, 
 and so the jokes of my friends and my banker began to bore 
 me. They were what one might call impractical jokes, which are 
 worse than the other kind, and so after starting a motor bus 
 
 —12— 
 
line across the river, a trucking company and a corporation 
 which introduced the taxicab to St. Louis (an offense, by the 
 way, for which I should have been banished), I betook myself to 
 the woods of Northern New York, in the Adirondack Mountains, 
 where I remained all summer, excommunicado. 
 
 On my return home in the Fall, I discovered that my 
 manager had, in my absence, expanded still further, and that my 
 little Stanley steam carriage had grown into a sort of American 
 Car and Foundry Company. I felt sure there was a catch in it 
 somewhere. It came out the day after my return, in the form 
 of a number of unpaid accounts and other obligations which I 
 was supposed to personally care for, but which I had had none 
 of the fun of incurring; also I discovered that some of our rich 
 patrons were not paying their bills with that alacrity that might 
 be expected from the ow r ner of a hundred thousand dollar home 
 in Portland or Westmoreland Place. 
 
 Now, I do not believe in corporations. It seems to me that 
 every individual should be responsible for his acts, business or 
 personal, but then I did not make the laws. I tried con- 
 scientiously for three days to sell the business, but all of the 
 people who had been anxious to get in were now of another 
 mind. It would have been an excellent thing for anyone who 
 was ambitious to have bought, but I have found that there is 
 nothing so rare in the world as individual judgment. It was 
 impossible to convince anyone that I had no ambition to be a 
 "captain of industry," and that was why I wished to sell. They 
 were too smart to believe that. If one wants to get out of 
 business in America it must be because he has to. To wish to 
 do anyuiing but eat, drink, grab and breed is an indication of 
 weakened mentally. 
 
 I was never in doubt as to the wonderful proportions the 
 automobile industrv would reach. I remember one evening: 
 some eight or ten years ago discussing the subject with Mr. 
 Fred Lehmann. among others, in Fausts' Cafe. I made the state- 
 ment that within ten years the horse would be the exception. 
 I vizualized the motor truck, the taxi-cab, the motor bus and 
 gasoline farm machinery. The other members of the party- 
 were so disgusted with me as to be unable to conceal it, but 
 Mr. Lehmann was politely skeptical, and. as a lesson to me for 
 the future in the matter of spinning cobwebs, we all, at his sug- 
 gestion, got into my automobile and journeyed to his home in 
 South St. Louis, although it was nearly two in the morning. 
 There, after quite a search. Mr. Lehmann located the object of 
 the journey, a water color by Cruikshank. done in the time of 
 Dickens, showing a number of horses turned out to pasture, 
 and a steam omnibus passing on the highway. It was called 
 "The Passing of the Horse." Still I learned no lesson from it. 
 
 While I regard money beyond one's needs for the simnlest 
 sort of a life as a more or less imaginary thing, and success 
 as purely a question of what one's individual definition of the 
 word is, I can still understand how- one must pursue those wiH- 
 
 —13— 
 
o-the~wisps as long as they appear to him to* be real and desir- 
 able things. The differences in men are largely differences in 
 their imaginative qualities. For instance, the philosopher can? 
 reason that war in a mechanical age is a stupid and cruel thing,, 
 and requires nothing but his imagination to arrive at that con- 
 clusion. The unimaginative person, however, must actually 
 see an aeroplane in action and vizualize its power of destruc- 
 tion, before he can appreciate the futility of wholesale murder 
 in the name of the flag or of patriotism. 
 
 However, if one is incapable of creating anything from a 
 saw buck to a poem, he must be a business man. He has no 
 other means of livelihood, but he should not pride himself on his 
 incapacity, and an arrogant attitude toward his superiors, the 
 artisan and the artist, is at least unbecoming. 
 
 Running a big business is like keeping a ball, a plate, a 
 walking stick and a silk hat in the air at the same time. It can 
 be done by nearly anyone who will practice it sincerely, and 
 the onlookers will say "marvelous," but what's the use, if one 
 doesn't like it. 
 
 On the fourth day after my return from the Adirondacks, 
 I was called up at home by one of the corporation's creditors, 
 I remember I was in the midst of Montaigne's essays, and the 
 incident of being interrupted was so annoying, that I decided 
 on the spot to turn the business over to the creditors and let 
 them run it, if they wished. With that in view I telephoned a 
 firm of attorneys and they advised me that the only method of 
 accomplishing what I desired was to place the concern in bank- 
 ruptcy, which I instructed them to do. And thus ended a long 
 and amusing flirtation with the Goddess of America. I came out 
 by the same door as in I went, which I believe is better luck 
 than most have who become entangled with the Goddess. 
 
 If one does not believe in business he can no more make a 
 success of it than he could make an honest confession to a 
 priest if he were not a Catholic. I shall always have a tender 
 spot in my heart for old Montaigne. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 I had a great feeling- of relief — of freedom — when it was all 
 over. It was delightful to lie in bed in the mornings and read, or 
 get up and fuss about with books, and to feel that one did not have 
 to go to a damnable office and lie and lie and lie. 
 
 In the succeeding days I played a little at golf, rode horseback, 
 read a great deal., went to a dinner occasionally and generally 
 lived an honest life. 
 
 I have always loved to drift. Bernard Shaw says : "To drift 
 is to be in Hell, to steer is to be in Heaven," and Napoleon says on 
 the other hand : ''A man who doesn't know where he is going, is 
 probably going far." Careful observation has taught me that the 
 ones who steer hit as many rocks as the ones who drift The princi- 
 pal difference is that the steerers have a set and serious counte- 
 nance, while the drifters "go laughing down the fleeting mile.'' 
 And, after all, is it not more satisfactory (or rather less unsatisfac- 
 tory) to strike a rock when ycu are drifting than when you have 
 your hand on the rudder ? In the former case Fate is to blame and 
 not you. However, be that as it may, there is no doubt that Na- 
 poleon is right, for by drifting I found myself in St. Louis Society. 
 
 It is very amusing to be in society. To receive a telephone 
 message at five requesting one's presence at a dinner at seven, to 
 realize that one is asked to fill in as a last resort, to take the place 
 of some guest who at the final moment was prevented from at- 
 tending, is altogether charming. It is like an adventure to go to 
 a dinner under these circumstances, and I never sidestep an ad- 
 venture. 
 
 The form of the invitation is usually something like this: 
 "'Oh, is that you, Mr. Turner? I've been trying to get you for 
 days. Where in the w r orld do you hide?" 
 
 "No wonder you couldn't find me," you reply, "'I've been up in 
 the country shooting for a week past." (The sight of a shot gun 
 makes me nervous, and I have never killed anything larger than 
 a fly in my life.) After this prelude comes the invitation. Not 
 being accustomed to the ways of society, you reply. "Why, yes. 
 I'll be delighted." This is not the way at all. If you were 
 versed in the ways of the polite world, you would say, "Can I call 
 you in half an hour? I have an engagement to dine with the Van 
 Rensaellers tonight, but I'd so much rather go to you. I'll try to 
 get off by telling them I'm suddenly called out of town or some- 
 thing." 
 
 Then the thing to do is to watch the clock and at the end of 
 half an hour, or better thirty-five minutes, you call up and say 
 something like this : "I've fixed it — Had an awful time getting 
 off — Be sure and keep my secret — Seven, did you say?" 
 
 —15— 
 
The purpose of all this is to show that you are a person not 
 to be trifled with socially, and to insure future popularity. 
 
 I much prefer these last minute invitations. The premeditated 
 affair, where you receive the note a week or so before the event., 
 stick it in the mirror as a memorandum, and then forget to look at 
 yourself that day (as only people not in society ever forget to do) 
 and the event comes and goes while you are playing pool at the 
 club, does not appeal to me. It is too cut and dried. I like to re- 
 flect on the frame of mind of the hostess who has asked seven 
 girls and seven men to dine and, at the last moment, one of the 
 men has declined. I like to picture her telephoning all of the 
 available men of her acquaintance, but without result, for one 
 reason or another, and then just as she is becoming desperate, or 
 perhaps after she has become so, thinking of me. Then her in- 
 decision, and the final plunge. My prompt acceptances, I always 
 feel, leave her with a sense of having committed a social error. 
 
 On the evening of receiving one of these calls for help, I pro- 
 ceed as follows : At six-thirty, I take my bath, and after that I 
 dress with great care. As a rule everything goes all right until I 
 get to the white waistcoat. Never have I attempted to don this 
 sartorial piece de resistance, but I am one or more buttons shy. 
 My usual procedure at this juncture is to punch a hole in the 
 fabric of the waistcoat with my penknife and insert a sleeve but- 
 ton. After that I pose before the mirror to note if the deception 
 will be discovered. If everything seems satisfactory to my criti- 
 cal eye, I mix a cocktail, drink it, light a cigarette, walk down 
 two flights of stairs, step into my car and shortly thereafter ar- 
 rive at the scene of gaiety. 
 
 I usually find that I am the first to arrive. This is due to ab- 
 sent-mindedness. I invariably forget that seven does not mean seven 
 in society. The maid looks surprised, but admits me when she 
 observes that I am properly attired. I am shown into a sepul- 
 chral drawing room. The dining room is immediately behind it 
 and only separated by draperies. I know it is the dining room by 
 the sound of rattling silver and clashing dishes. "There are only 
 fifteen spoons," I hear from behind the draperies in a stage whis- 
 per. "Put a kitchen spoon at Mr. Billings' place," I hear in 
 another deep stage whisper. Mr. Billings is the husband of the 
 hostess. 
 
 Above stairs there are sounds of tramping feet and much scur- 
 rying about, and a few minutes later the hostess descends, a vision 
 of loveliness. 
 
 "I'm so glad you've come," she says. "Really you're the hardest 
 person to find." 
 
 It is very difficult to lie gracefully on one cocktail, unless one 
 has a social instinct, so I merely say, "Am I?" After that there is 
 silence for awhile, and then the hostess to relieve her own em- 
 barrassment — nothing short of an earthquake could do anything 
 for me — calls, "Hurry up, William, Mr. Turner is here." 
 
 —16— 
 
Enter William in short dinner coat and black tie. He almost 
 forgets to speak in his consternation at observing my full evening 
 regalia. 
 
 More guests arrive. The men are also in long coats and 
 white waistcoats, looking as uncomfortable as people with good 
 reputations always do. Mr. Billings absents himself unobtru- 
 sively, to return a few minutes later, just as some more guests 
 arrive. This time he is also magnificent in de rigeuer costume. 
 The last arrivals are Mr. and Mrs. Fitzhugh, Miss Carroll and 
 Mr. Carter from New York. The latter is in dinner coat with 
 black tie. He is introduced to everyone and the conversation 
 takes on a general tone of heaviness about subjects lighter than 
 air. Again Mr. Billings disappears, to return forthwith in short 
 dinner coat, but with white tie and white waistcoat — a sort of 
 compromise. His better-half gives him one of those inquiring 
 looks, which he returns with a short, quick glance of defiance, as 
 though to say : "I don't care — this goes." 
 
 It is nearly eight when dinner is announced, the draperies are 
 thrown back, and the hostess loses one of the wrinkles in her fore- 
 head. 
 
 Little cards are placed about the table bearing the names of the 
 guests, and indicating where they are to sit. I observe that I am be- 
 tween a debutante and a married woman of reputation for austerity. 
 It is my habit after delicately placing the chair under my dinner 
 partner on my right to say something tactful, witty and pithy, as I 
 take my own seat. I usually say : "I knew I should be lucky to- 
 day." This gives the ladies on either side an opportunity to inquire 
 "Why?" which they do simultaneously, with artfully simulated 
 interest. "Because," I reply in my most gracious and insinuating 
 manner, "I found a four-leaf clover, hence this seat." My idea is to 
 start the ball rolling. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. If 
 there is a lull, which there often is, I drink my cocktail, the debu- 
 tante sips a glass of water, and the austere one gazes straight 
 ahead. 
 
 It has always been very difficult for me to converse at the 
 same time I am receiving impressions. It is like expecting a 
 storage battery to give of! current at the moment it is being 
 charged, and with the exception of my opening remark, I have no 
 canned conversation. 
 
 The debutante breaks the ice. "Oh, Mr, Turner," she says, 
 turning in her seat with carefully cultivated impulsiveness, "I 
 hear you are wonderfully clever!" (Business of beating the 
 chest with both hands and looking interested.) "Do say some- 
 thing clever." 
 
 You begin to speak, but everything goes black before vou. The 
 table seems to be floating in the air. Your lips are dry and your 
 voice sounds far away. At length you hear yourself saying : "I am 
 afraid that my reputation has been exaggerated," and then you try 
 to look inscrutable, as though you had said something bright and 
 snappy. 
 
 —17— 
 
There are two maids waiting on the table, who hold something- 
 out at you, all the while studying the face of the hostess, who is 
 accomplishing that peculiarly feminine trick of talking to the man 
 next to her with her mouth and managing the maids with her eyes. 
 
 There is a long delay before the wine comes, or so it seems 
 to me, filled in with talk that at times borders on conversation, but 
 never quite reaches it. After the wine is poured things begin to 
 take form. Mr. Billings tilts his mask a little to one side, and enters 
 into animated conversation with Mr. Smithers about the effect of 
 the elections on the wholesale hardware business. The debu- 
 tante forsakes me entirely for the young man on the left, evident- 
 ly with the mental reservation that what I had observed about 
 my reputation being exaggerated was quite true, and I am left 
 alone on a desert island with the austere person whose name I 
 cannot for the life of me remember. She knows me, though, by 
 reputation. I can tell it by the expression of hauteur in the back 
 of her head. 
 
 "Delightful hostess, Mrs. Billings?" I observe. 
 
 The austere one turns and looks at me. "Mrs. Billings is more 
 than a good hostess, she is a good mother," she says in what 
 seems to me a tone of rebuke. 
 
 "You bet she is," I reply, and wonder what that has to do with 
 
 it. 
 
 Later I make another attempt, which also ends in disaster, 
 and then I give up that lead and confine myself to looking over 
 the flowers at the girl across the table, as though I had endless 
 things to say to her, if the opportunity would only present itself, 
 and with a mental note to take good care that it does not. 
 
 One can always tell when a dinner is nearly over by observing 
 the careworn look of the hostess gradually disappear, and by the 
 increasingly obtrusive joviality of the host. I always begin to feel 
 better then, and find the wine improving in aroma. By the time 
 the ladies have departed, leaving the men to their cigars, I am 
 feeling almost as well as before I came. Paradoxical as it may 
 seem, however, this is the time when I suffer most, for I am con- 
 scious of a desire to talk welling up in me. 
 
 "Strange," I observe, looking at the gentleman who has taken 
 the young lady's seat across the table, " what an iconoclastic age 
 we live in. Did you notice that story in this morning's paper to 
 the effect that they have discovered that even Rameses the Second 
 was a faker?" (I had intended to finish my sentence with the 
 statement that the story was to the effect that he had not built 
 the pyramids, but had only inscribed his name on them, but was 
 interrupted by my vis-a-vis :) "What," says he, growing almost 
 excited, "have they gone in the Trust?" I do not understand the 
 allusion at this time, but am informed later that the gentleman is 
 in the retail cigar and cigarette trade, and that there is a cigarette 
 named after the Egyptian. 
 
 From the end of the table, I catch the words : "American Lady." 
 "The American woman, in my opinion," I volunteer, enthusias- 
 tically, "is the equal of any woman in the world. Perhaps from 
 
 —18— 
 
the standpoint of I am continuing, when I observe a blank 
 
 look on the face of the gentleman to whom I have addressed my 
 remark. "We were talking of The American Lady shoes, made 
 by Smith & Jones," says he with vast irony. 
 
 After that I subside into meditative silence, and a little later 
 we adjourn to the drawing room. 
 
 After attending a social function in St. Louis, it is my invariable 
 rule to drop in the saloon on the corner and talk socialism with the 
 bartender until he closes up, which no doubt shows that a silk purse 
 cannot be made from a sow's ear. 
 
 I hasten to explain, however, that I am not interested in "isms," 
 but that I am interested in a bartender, or in anyone else who sincere- 
 ly believes in something and talks and acts as he feels. That sort 
 are so refreshing and naive, after a plunge into society. On the 
 other hand there is nothing so rejuvenating as "society," after one 
 has been talking overmuch to bartenders. 
 
 To my mind the most successful woman in the world today, 
 judged by any or all of the standards, save perhaps that of the en- 
 vious scandal-monger, is Miss Maxine Elliot. On an occasion some 
 years since I was lunching with her at the Country Club, and sud- 
 denly remembering a ball to be given that evening, suggested that 
 she permit me to accompany her. She seemed pleased at the pros- 
 pect, said she would wear a new gown just received from Paris, and 
 for me to meet her at the Garrick stage entrance after the perform- 
 ance. It seemed to me that she would lend grace and esprit to the 
 affair, which I anticipated it would not be overburdened with, and 
 so imagine my surprise to be informed by my hostess when I asked 
 over the telephone for an invitation for Miss Elliot, that I was an 
 outrageous person for even suggesting such a thing. With my dis- 
 torted sense of valuations I had thought Miss Elliot was conferring a 
 favor upon St. Louis society in appearing, but it was no such thing. 
 
 I struggled with my problem for the rest of the afternoon, and 
 then threw myself on Miss Elliot's mercy. She laughed heartily, 
 just as I might have known a clever woman of the world would, 
 and then musingly said "What a charming story to tell Lady Ran- 
 dolph when I return to London." 
 
 In thinking the matter over, I have concluded that the reason I 
 have lost my taste for society is because I have become blase. It 
 must be that, for I can remember when, some ten years ago, I went 
 with enthusiasm to dinners, presided over by women of grace and 
 tact and breeding, where I found men of culture and wit and sympa- 
 thy, or so they seemed to me, but no doubt that was the effect of 
 the rose-colored glasses of youth, for, as everyone knows, the St. 
 Louis of today is socially far ahead of the town of ten years since. 
 
 —19— 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 When my interest in society began to wane. I seriously be- 
 thought me of marriage, thereby reversing the usual order. Matri- 
 mony, as Robert Louis Stevenson has observed, is a more serious af- 
 fair than death. My apartment overlooked a busy boulevard, and I 
 was in the habit, after my coffee in the morning, to lie in the window 
 seat and observe the people in their goings and comings. I was en- 
 gaged in this congenial occupation one morning, and ruminating as 
 usual on the subject then uppermost in my mind, when 1 observed a 
 lady bustling out of the hotel opposite. Her maid followed, carrying 
 a large box. The chauffeur held the door of the limousine open, and 
 I could see her giving directions to the maid and the chauffeur. 
 She seemed overwrought and anxious. "No doubt," I thought, "she 
 is going to the modiste's, and the box contains a gown that must be 
 refitted." Finally she is inside the car. The chauffeur cranks the 
 motor, but it gives forth a report like the explosion of dynamite and 
 apparently does not start. He cranks again, but there is no result. 
 He opens the door and talks with his mistress. Then he goes up 
 the stairs and into the hotel. He returns anon and removes the 
 hood from the engine. I recognize the car as one I sold to a gen- 
 tleman who gave a note for part payment, which he afterwards had 
 great difficulty in meeting. Soon a force of mechanics arrives and 
 after half an hour of labor the motor starts and they are off, to the 
 modiste's. On other mornings when I have been awake at an early 
 hour, I have observed the husband of this lady walking toward the 
 car on the corner in a dignified manner. I have seen him suddenly 
 drop his dignity and run for the overcrowded car half way down 
 the block, and be pulled aboard by the passengers on the back plat- 
 form. Thinking of these things caused me to ponder more seriously 
 than ever on marriage. Try as I would I could not bring myself to 
 believe that I should wade through other people's blood to acquire a 
 limousine and a wife and a chauffeur and a maid and modiste's bills. 
 Life seemed so simple. Why should one complicate it unnecessarily, 
 I wondered. 
 
 My principal objection to marriage, in the abstract, is that it 
 limits the imagination. As things are, the world is mine, so to 
 speak. If the fancy overtakes me, I need never finish this page, but 
 can start for Ceylon, or any other place, within half an hour. I 
 have no idea of doing anything of the sort, but I imagine if I were 
 married and the thought occurred to me, I would at once be conscious 
 of the ball and chain, and a sense of captivity. I should no longer 
 be my genial and jovial self, but a disappointment to one woman 
 rather than a thing of joy to a great many. I finally came to the 
 conclusion that it would be the quintessence of selfishness for me to 
 marry, and much as I admire selfishness, on the theory that one ad- 
 
 —20— 
 
mires that which he is unable to be, I shall never commit matrimony. 
 
 I have been accused of advocating free love, but I have never 
 advocated anything. It is provincial to advocate. A man of the 
 world might do it. but it would never occur to a man of the universe ; 
 still I cannot imagine love without freedom, and I should not desire 
 freedom without love. 
 
 I never proposed marriage but once in my life, and then it was 
 in verse and through a third person. Like all people who idealize 
 boldness, I am as timid as a squirrel. 
 
 The object of my tender passion was at the time seated on the 
 lawn at a fashionable resort, engaged in the profitable occupation of 
 watching a game of lawn tennis, and I, moved by some sudden and 
 uncontrollable impulse, indited the following, and handed it to a 
 woman friend of mature years and ripe judgment, and requested 
 that she act as a sort of minister plenipotentiary for me : 
 
 "Be you a friend of mine, 
 
 And wish to serve 
 
 Me. where I lack the nerve, 
 
 Then hie you to 
 
 Yon grassy green, 
 
 Where sits a woman — 
 
 You will know her 
 
 By her gracious mien 
 
 And by those deep gray pools 
 
 She calls her eyes. 
 
 But mark you well 
 
 That in them something lies, 
 
 And mortal man 
 
 Had best not gaze too long, 
 
 Or he will lose his soul 
 
 Ere he knows aught is wrong. 
 
 Delay not. friend, nor wait. 
 
 For ere the moon 
 
 Sheds her pale light once more, 
 
 I'd know my fate. 
 
 And if 
 
 To outer darkness I am cast 
 
 I'll not complain, 
 
 But to sweet Xature will I turn 
 
 And let God's rain 
 
 Cool my burning soul, and then 
 
 Take up life's load 
 
 And on my lonely way again." 
 The very jerkiness of the verse proves its sincerity. In fact it 
 is a work of art. revealing the emotions of a man in my fix, but I 
 was surprised later to be told by the young lady with withering 
 scorn that I "wasted my life and fooled away my time." I was given 
 the impression that she considered me no more than a court jester or 
 an amiable idiot. Stung by the animadversions I again resorted 
 
 —21— 
 
to verse, which is the recourse of the "stung," and produced the fol- 
 lowing, which I forwarded to her, and concluded the affair : 
 "So you, who've barely tasted life, 
 Tell me that mine's a wasted life — 
 
 Tu m'amuses. 
 To dress and tea and bridge and flirt 
 And count with glee the men you've hurt, 
 
 If that's to win, I'd rather lose. 
 I've loved and dreamed and worked and fought^ 
 Done other things I hadn't ought; 
 
 I even like good booze. 
 But then you see, I'm just a man 
 Whose living life the best he can^, 
 
 I've really no excuse. 
 And that's the reason I sought yon 
 That you might tell me what to do,. 
 That I might be some use — like you, 
 
 N 'est ce pas? 
 
 Now that it is all over, I suppose it will not be ungallant for me 
 to say that I am glad it turned out as It did. It seems to me, on 
 mature thought, that perhaps one should not agree to bind himself 
 for life "for better or worse." If it isn't for better, there is really 
 very little excuse for going to so much trouble. Still that is only 
 my own opinion, and on that account entitled to no respect. Those 
 who like marriage no doubt praise it very highly, and even those 
 who do not like it never fail to recommend it for others. As an 
 institution for others there is nothing to compare with it. See the 
 old ladies, how anxious and solicitous they are that no one shall 
 escape matrimony. 
 
 I should imagine that the finest sport could be had by a young 
 man of some pulchritude and more money, in evading matrimony. 
 Every known device, and new and hitherto unknown ones, will be 
 employed to trap him. It is the world against his wits. When he 
 is young (I imagine) the trap is baited with Sunday night suppers, 
 and domesticity, and invitations to "affairs"; these failing, a touch 
 of Bohemianism is added, i.e., the bait is permitted to emerge from 
 the trap for an instant and then dart back again. If the young man, 
 in his excitement, should follow the bait into the trap, all well and 
 good, and he is settled for the rest of his life. But should he catch 
 the bait on the outside of the trap, ah, that is different. There will 
 be wailing and gnashing of teeth (I imagine), and his "sense of 
 honor" will be appealed to, and then his emotions will be worked 
 upon, and these producing no effect, the "mailed fist" will be shown 
 him ; and he still declining to capitulate, the law will be brought into 
 the matter. If he still has the courage of his convictions, he may 
 escape by a compromise settlement. I have an absurd and impracti- 
 cable idea that if the two parties most concerned were let alone to 
 work out their own destiny all this would not be; but then I have 
 always been visionary. 
 
 I would really like to be married if I could find an affectionate, 
 reasonably good looking woman, with some common sense, who 
 
 —22— 
 
would "have me, but sometimes I think to find all those qualities, one 
 must commit bigamy. I would, no doubt, be far more comfortable 
 ■married, but one must stick to one's principles. 
 
 I do not think I should care to marry a rich woman. I imagine 
 about the third time she said "my" automobile or "my" house, I 
 would be out in search of a position as a chauffeur ; but as my 
 friend, the bartender at Sullivan's, has observed, "If you're going 
 to marry at all, marry a rich one, because you're not going to get 
 along with either."' But he, of course, is a cynic. 
 
 My views about marriage are undoubtedly peculiar; I do not 
 seem to take into account the numberless young girls who have 
 been trained with no other idea than that of matrimony, and who 
 are of "good family" and "accomplished." I do not. I cannot help 
 It ; I am not interested. I vastly prefer to give a two-dollar dinner to 
 a girl that isn't used to any, rather than a twenty-dollar dinner to 
 a girl who is used to the twenty-two-dollar kind. And yet I am 
 not prejudiced, for occasionally I like to give a twenty-four- 
 dollar affair to a girl that is tired of the eighteen-dollar variety. 
 It is all a matter of taste. 
 
 The foregoing may or may not be pertinent to what Is to fol- 
 low. I will include it and a great deal more that is to come and 
 which is of doubtful relevancy, because I am in a quandary. I am 
 confronted with a problem on which I have expended much thought, 
 with no other result than to come to the conclusion from a priori 
 reasoning, that may be entirely false, and I desire the reader's aid 
 in disentangling the puzzle ; therefore I wish to place all the facts 
 that could have the slightest bearing on the enigma at his disposal. 
 
 —23— 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 It will be seen from what I have written that I am not re- 
 ligious (although I have always found time to write Christ out 
 in full instead of making an X to designate His name), that I have 
 not that exalted respect for business success that is more or less the 
 rule, that I am not industrious like the little busy bee, that I am not 
 a celibate and yet have no great reverence for the institution of 
 marriage, based, as it is in modern society, on money only. 
 
 Broadly speaking those are the things thait I am not. On the 
 other hand I do care for women, children, books, good conversation 
 and the society of men of brains, which is unusual in the middle 
 west, if not positively immoral. 
 
 I believe in the human soul, in a great poetic justice, and in this 
 life and in no other. I believe in living as intensely, as intelligently 
 and as completely as possible, and I believe that there is no sin save to 
 deliberately add suffering to a world already overflowing with it, and 
 I believe, further, that that sin is never committed, because if suf- 
 fering is added, it is done through stupidity, and not with intention. 
 I believe that all crime is misunderstanding — limited vision — but 
 not such stupid misunderstanding — such limited vision, as the 
 punishment inflicted for it by the "Holier than thou." The idea 
 that there is "good" and "evil" is blasphemous and is a condemna- 
 tion of life. 
 
 I hold many other eccentric and peculiar beliefs. For instance, 
 should a highwayman demand my money, and I had none I should 
 go and get some for him, if I had to borrow it, and in addition I'd 
 find him a job, if he'd let me, as being a more effective method than 
 punishment. I have no desire to join the pack in hunting the outcast 
 —I have no passion for personal revenge. 
 
 I believe that if the North Pole was discovered at all Dr. Cook 
 was the first man there. I believe that because the evidence to 
 support Cook is just as credible as the evidence to support Peary's 
 claim, and then psychology creeps in. If I had reached the Pole 
 after years of struggle and found that someone had been there 
 ahead of me, I should probably, in my first fierce disappointment, 
 have cursed and raved, as Peary did. If I had actually arrived there 
 first, after much privation and suffering, and then been disbelieved 
 and discredited, ridiculed and charged with avarice, I should have 
 conducted myself exactly as Cook did. I should have given the 
 world my story with a feeling of melancholy compassion for human- 
 ity, provided I had no sense of humor, and gone into seclusion. In- 
 asmuch as I know of no one else who believes in Cook, this view 
 is bound to be regarded as peculiar, but to not be peculiar is to be 
 mediocre. 
 
 —24— 
 
The only person outside of myself who has ever expended any 
 energy in an attempt to find out what I am is a certain poet, who 
 made the following poetical, psychological analysis : 
 
 "You catch the gleam of the suspended knife, 
 You feel long fingers "round your aching throat. 
 You hear a voice that dies upon the note 
 Of the wild waste and weariness of life. 
 The flowers you gather grow above a grave 
 Where your dead self these many years lies deep — 
 Aye where your dead self lies, but does not sleep : 
 You are so tired, and yet you are so brave. 
 And I who love the faintest touch of hands 
 Held toward me in caressing friendliness. 
 Wonder, my friend, you sometimes dare to smile. 
 When there is scarcely one who understands 
 The shy. sweet moods that torture and that bless 
 Your spirit groping like a lost exile." 
 Now I object to that line about being '"tired and brave." I 
 was born tired, but I am not brave. The balance of the poem 
 I think is good psychology. I do think there is an unnecessary 
 amount of waste and weariness in life and that it could be made 
 better, and so far as personal ambition is concerned. I do gather 
 flowers, to speak poetically, over my own grave, but that I should 
 ever dare to smile? I wonder that I ever stop laughing. 
 
 I am not brave, though. There is no doubt about that. I feel 
 sure if war broke out I should lack the physical courage to enlist. 
 In fact, I think I would have the moral courage to stay home even 
 though I were the only one. I am reminded of a story. Pardon me 
 a second : Jake Rosenthal and Morris Cohn were traveling north 
 in Arkansas over the Iron Mountain railroad. "Here." said Jake, 
 a- they crossed the Red river, "is where I enlisted in the Southern 
 army.''' "Oh." said Morris, in great surprise, "T thought you 
 were drafted in Missouri. Jake." 
 
 Courage is a very peculiar thing. It comes and goes. Beer- 
 bohm Tree tells a story about a mouse that went into the cellar 
 and discovered a pool of whiskey on the floor that had leaked 
 from a cask. The mouse put his front leg into the whiskey and 
 then sat up and licked it off ; then he put his other leg into it and 
 licked it off. and then he turned around and swished his tail about 
 in it and licked it off. and then he hopped up the stairs, and 
 seating himself at the top wanted to know in a loud tone of voice 
 what had become of "that damn cat" that was looking for him 
 yesterday. (A new story when I wrote it, but old now — how fast 
 life goes !) 
 
 Xo — I think it was taking advantage of poetic license in call- 
 ing me brave. 
 
 I really cannot be very brave, because brave men all use vio- 
 lent and heroic language : "Stick to the ship." and "Don't fire until 
 you see the whites of their eyes," and "You may fire. Gridley, when- 
 ever you are readv." 
 
However, I have been known to use violent and obscene lan- 
 guage under severe provocation — such as an English witticism — 
 but, as a rule, I am a mild-mannered person. Still I agree with 
 Victor Hugo that General Cambronne was the greatest man at 
 Waterloo. 
 
 Come to think of it, however, I recall another person who tried 
 his hand at analyzing me in a short sketch. It was Alexander 
 Harvey, America's Maupassant, who once summed me up in a letter 
 to a friend, as follows : 
 
 "Turner has been in to see me. He is a perfect spirit, though 
 spoiled by some mysterious touch of a leering lip. He is a chalice 
 — a golden chalice — from which the sparkling wine is sipped by the 
 Lucifers, rather than the Gabriels; and what the Gabriels have 
 missed. Not that Turner cares — quite the contrary. That is the 
 tragedy to me." 
 
 What a marvelous thing is Injustice — out of Envy by 
 Jealousy, as we would have said on the race track. Injustice 
 seems to destroy my theory of human society, for it is an aristo- 
 crat, born of two proletarians. Injustice, the great stimulant 
 and strengthener, the raison d'etre of the stronger man — and of 
 such poor antecedents! Truly this thought makes existence ap- 
 pear as a circle. What would strong, giving, over-flowing, 
 artistic natures do were it not for Injustice? They would per- 
 haps perish of boredom. 
 
 Except for Injustice, how could I, in decent taste, have 
 quoted Harvey? Except for Injustice, how could I, in decent 
 taste, have mentioned the Country Club in print? Thanks to 
 Injustice, I am enabled to write this book and advertise Harvey, 
 The Country Club and myself. Never let me hear it run down 
 again. Like a real Christian, I returned good for evil — the Club 
 tried to make me infamous and I made it famous. Injustice born 
 of Envy and Jealousy is the parent of Justice, aye of Good Taste, 
 which is Justice's nom de plume — but I am getting ahead of my 
 story. 
 
 I am not much concerned with happiness or unhappiness. No 
 man is happy save when fighting and no one will fight with me any 
 more, except John Barleycorn, and while I can best him during the 
 early part of the battle, he always wins in the end. 
 
 I have no desire to be rich. I quite realize that in making 
 that statement here in America, I furnish evidence to my 
 enemies which they may be able to use to keep me there, when 
 I am finally incarcerated in an institution for the harmless in- 
 sane. Nothing could tempt me to be either rich or poor, but 
 if a choice were unavoidable I would prefer to be poor, because 
 life is so simple then ; all there is to do is make money, 
 which is easy — provided one has nothing else to do and 
 no sense of true value. But if one is rich, life is com- 
 plicated, intricate, puzzling. One never knows whether he, his 
 jokes, or his money are being laughed at. There is no known 
 method by which a rich man can tell whether he is a bore or a great 
 
 —26— 
 
wit. There is no known method by which a rich man can test his 
 friends or his wife. 
 
 The disadvantages of conspicuous wealth, under a Christian 
 Democracy, are greater than its advantages. In a Democracy 
 the general aim is to be safe. What other aim could there be? 
 Great wealth buys nothing but notoriety and the hatred of the 
 crowd, that is to say, the powerful (under Democracy) ; thus 
 money bu) T s not safety, but danger. 
 
 I have been with the rich on their yachts and have seen 
 them send letters and telegrams in a vain effort to "make up a 
 party." No one, who is of any importance, has time to go yacht- 
 ing with the rich. There are too man} r interesting things in 
 life. The conspicuously rich do not hold themselves aloof be- 
 cause they want to. They are the real outcasts. One should 
 not become conspicuous by the possession of things outside of 
 oneself. It is inartistic. 
 
 A great many things merely amuse me that most people re- 
 gard as of vital importance. The preachers of "morality," for 
 instance. I think there is nothing quite so ridiculous as seeing 
 a man standing up on his hind legs, waving his arms about and 
 haranguing an instinct. It is as ridiculous to lecture a young 
 man on "morality" as it would be to caution an old one against 
 "immorality." After all there is only one humorist. Her name 
 is Madame Nature. 
 
 I claim for myself but one virtue ; I have never given anyone 
 advice (when I seem to be giving it, I am only talking to myself), 
 and vet I have received millions of dollars' worth of it, but it 
 must be remembered that advice is like money — those who are 
 freest with it can least afford to be. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 One cold, rainy evening, after dining at home, I received a 
 telephone message. It was from "Her" and said "Not tonight," 
 and so, to pass the time, I played solitaire for a little while, 
 and then tried to read, but I could not become interested. At last 
 I took a pencil and began to scribble aimlessly; and almost 
 before I was aware of it, I found that I was analyzing my own 
 mood on paper. The result of my scribbling was a sort of essay, 
 The next morning I put it in my pocket, and meeting the editor 
 of the St. Louis Mirror, gave it to him. He called me up later 
 in the day, and told me that it was "the best thing he had had in 
 five years — the best thing since George Sylvester Viericks' 
 'Confessions of a Barbarian/ " It was printed the following week 
 under the heading, "What Shall I Do?" and the pen name of 
 "M. Evelyn Bradley." It attracted quite a lot of attention. Why 
 it did, I am sure I do not know, for it was a simple statement of 
 fact. 
 
 After that I tried my hand at other articles and short stories. 
 They must have been very odd or very immoral or something,, 
 for they were reproduced in New York and San Francisco, and 
 one, "The Pigmy," was translated into French by some admiring 
 Frenchman, and appeared in Paris. I began to wonder if I really 
 had a literary gift. I have always thought it the greatest na- 
 tural gift that one can have — the gift of another world— to 
 be born again, so to say — but I did not, though, feel elated at 
 the possibility of it; instead I felt a sense of responsibility. I 
 felt as if I had been caught, like everyone else is sooner or later, in 
 the soft asphalt of life. Henceforth, I would be chained to an 
 occupation. I was no longer free. I had been caught and la- 
 beled, and yet underneath it all, I felt grateful for the knowl- 
 edge of the gift, which is the psychology of all gifts. It was an 
 automatic answer to "What Shall I Do?" While I have seen 
 enough evidence to convince me that I have some sort of literary 
 talent, I have no discrimination about my own work. I am entirely 
 incapable of deciding for myself what is good and what is 
 utterly worthless, in the opinion of others. Some of my real 
 masterpieces, in my own judgment, were rejected by the editor 
 of the Mirror, and never got into print at all, and his standing 
 as a critic of literature is unquestioned wherever the meaning of 
 the word is understood and he is known. Why anyone, for 
 instance, should have taken the trouble to translate "The 
 Pigmy/' or I should have had the nerve to write it, is beyond 
 me, but as I grow older, I find more and more things beyond 
 me, instead of less and less, as I thought it would be. Life, 
 if one is going straight, is a continually widening horizon, a 
 succession of disappearing mirages in the desert. 
 
 —28— 
 
That I ma)' shed all the light possible on my own character. 
 :as having some bearing on the solving of the mystery which 
 I will come to later, I wish to say that my favorite poet is 
 William Shakespeare, although I think the Ballad of Reading 
 Gaol is the finest English poem. I am very fond of Swinburne, 
 too. His Hertha I think a big thing, but it is a poem for poets. 
 It is without meaning to the unpoetical temperament. But the 
 Ballad of Reading Gaol is not only a tremendous poem, it has 
 had, and is having, an unconscious effect on the attitude of the 
 public mind toward the victim of its idealism, the scape-goat 
 of its economic system and its false morality — the convict — 
 "without whom a Rockefeller or a priest would be an impossibility, 
 and vice versa. 
 
 I have no choice of prose writers. I have fads with regard- 
 to them. At one time, I was even consumed with enthusiasm 
 for Balzac, although, in justice to myself, I must say that I have 
 never been guilty of any inclination toward Eugene Sue. I 
 wonder, though, after all, if Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" is not. 
 in the realm of novels, the only finished work of art. 
 
 I loathe filth in conversation or in literature, and yet I 
 adore Rabelais. I love his esprit, his sparkling wit, his splendid 
 -sympathetic nature and his hatred of shams. When he handles 
 filth it becomes funny, and only hypocrisy becomes filthy. He 
 analyzes filth, and while he seems to enjoy his task a bit too 
 much, he leaves his reader with the impression that there is 
 nothing really filthy save a hypocrite. Forty years in a monastery 
 •convinced him of this fact in psychology. 
 
 Of all the men of all times, not excepting Shakespeare, I 
 should rather have known Dr. Rabelais. I like him because the 
 only things in the world I hate are eroticism and hypocrisy 
 (and this is not what TurgeneifT calls a "reversed platitude"). 
 I like Maupassant for the same reason, and by the same token 
 I despise the modern American magazine with its stories of 
 tawdry sentimentalism, thinly disguising a nasty obsession with 
 sex, and sex only becomes nasty when it becomes an obsession. 
 
 With philosophers, criticism is impotent, and valuations are 
 useless. One should approach philosophy in an open, free re- 
 ceptive state of feeling, and then note the effect of his reading 
 on his frame of mind. 
 
 Now Hartmann, Schopenhauer and Spinoza affect me un- 
 pleasantly. Schopenhauer with his theory that the ''Sum total 
 of pain in the world is greater than the sum total of pleasure," 
 would depress me to the point of self-destruction, did he not 
 follow up his statement with an example, i. e. : "When the hawk 
 swallows the sparrow, his pleasure is not as great as is the spar- 
 row's pain," hence, "The sum total of pain in the world is 
 greater than the sum total of pleasure." So if, let us say, life 
 is sixty per cent pain and forty per cent pleasure, which Schopen- 
 hauer would probably agree was fair, then has not the hawk 
 done the sparrow a good turn, and is not the hawk who must 
 continue to live the greater sufferer, and if so, why talk about 
 
 —29— 
 
the pain of the sparrow, I ask? I do not dispute Mr. Schopen- 
 hauer's original statement — no one can, for it is merely specula- 
 tion — I only maintain that his own example rather disproves it 
 than the reverse, and yet he is a great prophet. He is the pro- 
 tagonist of nihilism, which must precede optimism. 
 
 And Hartmann, with his theory that man is a mistake of 
 Nature's and who committed suicide at thirty-two, bores me. 
 These Germans needed a week at Baden-Baden. 
 
 But even Shakespeare got quite sad at times : "Blow, blow, 
 thy wintry wind, thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude. " 
 These lines are neurotic. What does one want with gratitude? 
 Is not that a form of compensation? As some healthy cynic has 
 observed, "Gratitude is a lively appreciation of favors to come,' 7 
 and besides there is something fine and stimulating about a 
 "wintry wind." 
 
 Socrates is fascinating in his method of reasoning, but I 
 think he was a degenerate. There was no occasion for his drink- 
 ing the hemlock. He could easily have escaped, but it was 
 more dramatic to do it, and there is always something stagey 
 about Socrates, as he is reported to us. It seems to me I catch 
 a faint whiff of Oscar Wilde when I read of him. 
 
 Emerson is soothing. Almost soporific. He is like a sum- 
 mer breeze blowing over one. Very pleasant, but not good for 
 me. I need something more stimulating. However, his "Law 
 of Compensation" is among the very greatest contributions to the 
 philosophic world. 
 
 I think nothing of Wilde's hot house philosophy, as applied 
 to me, and yet I think he was the greatest philosopher of them 
 all, for when all is said and done, the test of your philosoph}^, 
 is whether or not it serves you ; and his served him, after he 
 had owned the world and lost it through his own silly bravado. 
 He didn't drink hemlock, and a philosophy that sustains one 
 under circumstances such as he experienced, is not to be too 
 lightly brushed aside. Still, I suppose philosophy is like intel- 
 lect, you never acquire it until you need it, which perhaps ac- 
 counts for the fact that pretty women are seldom brilliant. 
 
 I cannot stand the optimistic philosophers. I cannot see 
 that anything can come from deliberate optimism but evil. How 
 could it be otherwise? If one makes himself believe that a 
 good is going to happen, he has anticipated the pleasurable 
 sensation, and nothing but a disappointment can occur. One 
 may grow impatient with the pessimistic philosophers, but the 
 conscious optimist is disgusting — Elbert Hubbard, for instance. 
 One should resist optimism — if he would be optimistic. 
 
 When I read Nietzsche, I feel as if some one had opened a 
 window and let in fresh, mountain air. I feel stimulated, as if 
 being a man amounted to something. He gives me a sense of 
 power, of desire to achieve, to really achieve, viz. : to do some- 
 thing that has not been done a million times before; to be a 
 successful idler (i. e., to be subjective when everyone else is 
 objective), for instance, which is the most difficult thing in 
 
 —30— 
 
the world. He makes me ashamed of a miserable ease and of 
 remorse for so-called sins and mistakes. He is not soothing- 
 like Emerson, depressing like the pessimists, disgusting like the 
 optimists, cloving like Wilde, or patronizing like Plato. I think 
 Nietzsche must be my philosopher. 
 
 I know nothing of the technique of music. My opera is 
 Madame Butterfly, which statement no doubt renders the open- 
 ing sentence in this paragraph superfluous, in the opinion of 
 musicians. But the music of Butterfly expresses to me a pas- 
 sionate soulfullness, an elusive sensation of exquisite pain and 
 pleasure blended, that I have found nothing like anywhere else. 
 I think Pucinni has caught the cry of a woman's soul in anguish, 
 and held it for a second, in a strange, heart-rending harmony. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 As for my sins of omission and commission which might have 
 bearing on the mystery that inspired these writings, I have 
 never been connected with any public scandal (which, perhaps, 
 only indicates that I have friends on the newspapers), no one 
 is the worse off financially on account of my having been in 
 the world — though the opposite of that is not quite true ; I have 
 never persuaded a lady to a "life of shame" — although I have induced 
 at least one to forsake it (which was to accept a responsibility). 
 I can. at the moment, recall no other sins of omission. 
 
 On the other hand, I have been arrested some twenty-odd 
 times for offenses against the peace and dignity of the State, 
 connected with automobiling. I have spent on that account 
 much of my youth in police courts, and I have never seen a 
 judge sentence a "criminal" that I did not feel that I would 
 rather be the "criminal" than the judge. Still I feel no animus 
 towards judges — just a sort of depression with regard to them. 
 There is something heart breaking in witnessing, morning after 
 morning, one of these poor, stupid manufacturers of misery in 
 a world where misery is the only thing that there is too much 
 of, sitting there in self righteousness and meting out revenge 
 to this poor devil and that one, just as though he were God 
 and these people had asked to be brought into his world. If 
 the police judges were psychologists — they would sentence them- 
 selves to life imprisonment. 
 
 —31— 
 
I have gotten hilariously drunk on occasions, which I some- 
 times regretted and sometimes not. I have come to no decision 
 with regard to alcohol. Whether I am better or worse than 
 other men, I do not know. Perhaps curiosity on that score is 
 in part the motive for this abbreviated memoir, for it is clear that 
 I must be different, else why the letter that follows a bit further 
 on? 
 
 The foregoing is the best word picture of myself of which 
 I am capable. If it has failed to conve}' a clear impression it 
 is not through insincerity, but because I lack the power. I have 
 shown how I felt toward things in general, my opinions on 
 weighty matters and how I arrived at them; in fact, I have 
 revealed my innermost soul. Whether I had a right to be 
 surprised or not upon receipt of the following letter is for the 
 reader to decide : 
 
 ST. LOUIS COUNTRY CLUB. 
 
 June 6, 191 L 
 
 Mr. Harry S. Turner, 
 Saint Louis, Mo. 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 At a meeting of the Board of Governors of the New Saint 
 Louis Country Club, it was unanimously resolved that your 
 resignation as an active member of the Club be requested, which 
 is accordingly done. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 (Signed) Oliver S. Richards, 
 
 Acting Secretary . 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Naturally, upon receipt of the foregoing communication, 
 there was but one course for a gentleman to pursue. I im- 
 mediately set about stuffing up the key holes, putting towels 
 about the door and window openings, etc. Having gotten every- 
 thing shipshape and air-tight, I sat down and wrote a few farewell 
 notes — real masterpieces in their line. I read them over several 
 times. They were very sad, and I was quite proud of them. I 
 almost regretted that I should not be alive to see them in print. 
 Suddenly, however, one of those strange whims of mine overtook 
 me. and it occurred to me that it was inartistic and undramatic to 
 write farewell notes, so I tore them up. I argued the matter this 
 wise : If one is to one's "own quietus make," it should be a wordless 
 play. To write notes is like explaining the point of a joke ; it is 
 unpardonable. Still the temptation to have one's say when there is 
 no possibility of contradiction is strong — one feels like a Judge on 
 the bench or the editor of a weekly paper — and it required no little 
 moral courage for me to bring myself to destroying those epistles. 
 However, I reflected, if one has been denied the grace to live as a 
 member of the Country Club — if one has been unclubby in his life — 
 it is no reason why he should not die irreproachably, which thought 
 removed some of the sting. 
 
 My next move was to select a suit of pajamas that had been 
 given me as a combination Christmas and birthday present. They 
 were of China silk and had forest scenery embroidered on them 
 by loving hands. I could not help remarking, as I inadvertently 
 caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, that I looked rather well. 
 For a fleeting second I had some regrets about dying, but then 
 the awful alternative loomed up before me, and I went on with the 
 preparations, I was calm and cold as ice now. Deliberately and 
 with a steady hand, I turned full on each one of the four gas jets, 
 switched off the electric light and went to bed. For a time I was 
 undecided as to the most becoming attitude in which to die. First 
 I put my hands under my head, but it occurred to me that the effect 
 would appear studied, so finally I decided to fold them across my 
 breast in the simplest and most conventional way. (For once I 
 would be conventional.) Then, there being nothing further to do, 
 I waited for Death. I admit, now, that I did not even then give 
 up all hope of a reprieve in the shape of a letter from the Board 
 of Directors, saying that it was all a mistake. But it did not come, 
 and so I died. 
 
 The next thing I knew the sun seemed to be shining in my 
 face. I was sure it was Heaven; still, as I looked about me the 
 scene seemed familiar. At last it dawned on me that I was at 
 home, and that it was afternoon and the western sun was shinins; 
 
 —33— 
 
in through the cracks between the shades and the window ledges. I 
 was perplexed and disappointed, I arose and examined the gas jets. 
 They were turned full on, but there was not the slightest odor ofgas 
 issuing from them. I felt like a man who has been cheated. Slowly 
 it came over me what had happened. I had not paid the gas bill. 
 Strange as it may seem to members of the Country Club and others 
 in the higher social circles, I was glad to find that I was alive, but 
 what pleased me most was the discovery that it is not only a wrong 
 thing to do to pay one's gas bill, but that it is a careless and a 
 dangerous thing as well. But, I reflected, inasmuch as Fate has 
 intervened at the last moment and saved my life, I shall not tempt 
 the trickster, by making another attempt on myself. Instead of that 
 I dressed myself and went to my only remaining club, The Racquet, 
 where I held forth with some old cronies till well into the night, 
 repeatedly crooking the elbow, and freely jesting upon one sub- 
 ject or another, for hath not the immortal William of Avon said : 
 
 "With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come, 
 
 And let my liver rather heat with wine 
 
 Than my heart cool with mortifying gloom." 
 
 The next morning I awakened, as is usual with me, in an 
 entirely different mood. All desire for a pathetic ending had passed, 
 and I felt almost as well as people who have never belonged to 
 the Country Club. Instead of a feeling of sadness, I found that 
 I was possessed with a driving curiosity. I determined, before 
 taking any other steps, to find out, if possible, why the Board had 
 singled me out for their attention. It occurred to me that perhaps 
 it was just a trick to secure my autograph, but I dismissed that, 
 for I recalled the fact that it could be got off the bar checks with 
 less trouble. Of course, I had violated every rule of the Club, 
 except that one against tipping the servants ; which thought sug- 
 gested that perhaps all of the members had received a letter like 
 mine. So I called up two of them on the telephone, but they 
 said they had not received anything in the way of a communication 
 from the Country Club (except the usual notice that they were 
 posted), and, as the afternoon paper contained no account of whole- 
 sale suicides of our best people, I was forced to the conclusion that 
 I alone had been honored by the Board. While I appreciated the 
 saving of several hundred a year, not to mention numerous articles 
 of wearing apparel, that annually disappeared from one's lockers, 
 I was still curious to determine why the said honor was thrust upon 
 me, entirely unsolicited as it was. 
 
 And so, in a proper spirit of humility, as is befitting when ad- 
 dressing so important and serious a body, I wrote the following 
 letter to the Board : 
 
 H. S. TURNER, 
 St. Louis. 
 
 Board of Governors, June 8th, 191 L 
 
 Country Club. 
 Dear Sirs : 
 
 When I received your letter I was at first bewildered. 
 
 —34— 
 
That I am stabbed in the dark from behind, not by one man. 
 but by a set of men, whose plain duty it was to protect me with 
 their advice if they thought it necessary, rather than to seek to under- 
 mine me. rs not of the greatest importance. It might happen to 
 anyone. But my reason says insistently, "Why?" 
 
 I do not know of whom the Board is composed, nor do I wish 
 to know. I admit that I was hit, but I was not hit fair. 
 
 I suppose when you gentlemen find out you have done me an 
 injustice you will apologize. 
 
 In the meantime, I shall try to get along without the Countrv 
 Club. 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 (Signed) H, S. Turner. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 After waiting several days and receiving no answer, to the 
 letter in the preceding chapter. I hied me to the office of one 
 Benjamin Gratz. the President of the said Xew Saint Louis 
 Country Club (although he has other business), and after waiting 
 some little time was ushered into his presence. Mr. Gratz is a 
 short, peculiar-looking man (but I forget — this is not an inter- 
 view). To make a long story short. I asked him point blank why 
 the Board had written me their interesting communication. "Xo," 
 he said. "I cannot explain." 
 
 "Will you tell me,''' I asked, ''who furnished you with the 
 information on which you acted?" 
 
 "No one." he said in a sepulchral voice, and with h : s head 
 dropped on his chest, in what struck me as a Xapoleonic attitude, 
 and then he added, as he eyed me sharply. "We acted on our own 
 initiative." 
 
 "I do not know of whom the Board is composed," I replied. 
 "But you evidently voted against me, although you had never met 
 me." 
 
 Mr, Gratz nodded, and I could not help observing again how 
 like Napoleon he was. Now I do not admire Xapoleons attitude 
 toward life, nor a single one of his acts — not even his treatment 
 of Josephine — but he has made some excellent epigrams. 
 
 "Mr. Gratz," I said, "was any charge made against me?" 
 
 "I cannot answer that." he said, and then he sat low in his chair 
 and gazed at me steadily, and I thought mysteriously. It was not 
 quite clear to me whv he couldn't answer my question, but I had 
 
 - —35— 
 
no desire to press the subject and make myself unpopular, so after 
 the silence had become oppressive, I said : 
 "Well?" 
 
 He began to chant in a sort of monotone : "The women of the 
 Country Club must be protected. The women of the Country 
 Club must be protected," etc., etc. 
 
 "Yes, yes," I said, eagerly, "go om" 
 
 But he only repeated again, "The women of the Country Club 
 must be protected." 
 
 Now, while I considered that statement open to argument, I 
 had no desire to discuss it with him at the time, as I could not 
 see that it had anything to do with the subject of our conversation, 
 but it was all I could get him to say, until just as I was leaving he put 
 his hand on my shoulder, in a most fatherly manner, and announced. 
 I thought with a tinge of pathos in his voice, "You could be a 
 success if you tried." 
 
 "The women of the Country Club must be protected." It 
 dawned on me after I got outside what he meant. Don Quixote 
 Gratz will now buckle on his armor, adjust his helmet, take up 
 his reliable spear, mount the faithful Rosinante, and fare forth 
 in search of ladies to protect from the blandishments of that bold 
 and wicked knight, Sir Harold of Normandy. 
 
 And his other remark, "You could be a success if you tried." 
 That statement set me to wondering what success was ; I pondered 
 over it all the way home. I thought of a man who had been my 
 intimate friend for years. He had no money at all until he was 
 past thirty, and then he came into an enormous fortune. We were 
 at school together, where we both spent our time, I am afraid, to 
 not the best advantage. He was as handsome a man as one could 
 wish to see ; over six feet tall and beautifully made, and in ad- 
 dition he was the possessor of a pretty wit and a fine heart, and 
 as a companion was incomparable. He never made even a bluff 
 at work. His inheritance changed neither his friends nor his 
 disposition, and if ever money was put to a good use, his was. 
 He never replied to a "touch" verbally. He allowed his money to 
 do the talking. He died at thirty-four, and I have never ceased to . 
 miss him, but was he a "Success"? 
 
 Then I thought of another young man of immense inherited 
 wealth, now in his thirties. He is personally pulchritudinous and 
 of fine physique, but unfortunately, lacking in imagination. With 
 all this power in his hands — youth, health, good looks and money — 
 he is a park commissioner at a salary of some two or three thou- 
 stand a year from the commonwealth (which is really taken out of 
 the pocket of some more efficient man, who really needs it), and he 
 spends his time looking after roadways and grass plots and 
 sprinkling carts. No doubt he is a "success" in most people's eyes, 
 but to me it seems a life wasted. He always reminds me of John 
 Galsworthy's careful man who was forever trying to make an 
 omelet without breaking any eggs, and while he clearly made no 
 omelets, on the other hand he had no broken eggs. How can a man 
 with the power of a god and the soul of a gardener be called a 
 "Success"? I gave it up. 
 
 —36— 
 
Again, I remember another man of somewhat obscure ancestry, 
 of no means, and who began his career as a newspaper reporter. 
 Alone and worse than unaided (for he was combated by powerful 
 forces at every turn), he has painfully, patiently and with rare 
 good judgment made a name for himself that is known wherever 
 English literature penetrates. But that, in my opinion, is not the 
 greatest of his achievements, for he has given a helping hand to 
 more than one desperate girl and been instrumental in getting more 
 than one poor down-and-out fellow from the work-house or the 
 penitentiary, and giving him a chance for life. Also he has dis- 
 covered and made through his encouragement and advice many a 
 writer who would otherwise have been unheard of. All the while 
 that he was doing these things he was engaged in editing the most 
 remarkable weekly paper in the whole world, and one that has never 
 side-stepped the truth for fear of losing an advertiser, which alone 
 should place him among the immortals. Also he is a delightful 
 conversationalist, with a peculiar, grim sense of humor. 
 
 But is he a ''Success"? I don't think he is, though by some 
 standards he is perhaps more of a success than either of the other 
 two examples, for he has been as true to himself as he could be. 
 which isn't very true, in that he is by nature a perpetual disharmony, 
 torn between his heart and his reason. He seems never to be able 
 to co-ordinate them, and so his life is one long series of contradic- 
 tions. He reminds me of one of those oscillating electric fans, 
 which moves slowly from one extreme to the other, but nevertheless 
 is always whirling merrily and stirring up a bit of breeze, which 
 is something, even if it doesn't blow the hair off one's head. He 
 never hits the mark, this editor, although he crosses it, going in 
 one direction or the other, a thousand times in the course of a year. 
 He is the sort of man who desires everything, but who cannot hold 
 his mood or concentrate long enough to grab what he wants. I 
 am always reminded, when I am with him. of the character in 
 Victoria Cross' book, who stood in front of Life's shop window, 
 seeing everything, but unable to decide on any one thing, which it 
 is quite necessary to do in Life's shop, unless one has everything, 
 or unless one would pass on empty-handed. It is useless to endeavor 
 to deceive oneself into believing that one has everything by calling 
 oneself a philosopher, when the fact is, that in reality, one only 
 lacks the courage of one's desires. 
 
 His contempt for everything outside of himself proves his hope- 
 less plebeianism ; even his erudition crumbles somewhat when 
 you touch it. He has w r aded too much in romanticism, i. e., 
 slush, and he has too strong a predilection for digging in manure 
 piles and deceiving even himself into the belief that he is search- 
 ing for rare flowers. In short, he has been spoiled by sacerdo- 
 talism, which fills him with the egotism of beneficence, but we 
 are "on to" beneficence these days. The priest has overworked 
 it in his efforts to overpower us. This type always becomes 
 prominent in decadent periods, as at present, for this type is the 
 protagonist of decadence. 
 
 —37— 
 
I do not think I have ever seen a successful man or even read of 
 one. Oscar Wilde might have been but for his fatal weakness, for 
 he had the dual mind, i. e., the balanced mind, that comprehends 
 all sides of a question simultaneously, such a mind as Shakespeare 
 invested Hamlet with, only of finer quality, in that it leaned toward 
 humor rather than toward melancholy, though the dividing line 
 between the two is made of very fine hair. Wilde's mind did not 
 oscillate. His was the intellect of the superhumorist — Homeric-like, 
 almost God-like. How ironical that a body should have betrayed 
 that giant intellect, and what becomes of the "mind-over-matter" 
 theory ? Had Wilde's body been a match for his mentality, I should 
 have called him a successful man. He was one, in his own opinion, 
 for De Profundis is an insincerity ; but brilliancy, unaccompanied by 
 physical strength, is only the "phosphorescent glimmer of rotten- 
 ness/' the dull glow of punk. 
 
 But wait a minute. How about Edward E. Paramore? Here 
 is perhaps a successful man. Surely he possesses every material 
 thing that one could wish for ; he has in addition a fine spirit, 
 irrepressible humor; physiologically he is exceptional and he is a 
 true philosopher. His heart is so fine, that I have never seen him 
 exhibit the slightest trace of sentiment. He is far too sentimental 
 for that. When I consider how much he has lived, how much he 
 has seen and how much he knows, and now, near the meridian 
 of life, observe that he retains all of his pristine boyishness ; when 
 I reflect upon his utterly charming family, his delightful home 
 life and yet on the other hand his companionable quality, the trace 
 of the vagabond in him, his healthy, joyous cynicism, and on top 
 of it, his perfect sense of values and his understanding of men in 
 all the walks of life, in short his universality of spirit, I feel that 
 perhaps I have been straining my eyes toward the distance, when 
 what I sought, the successful man, was standing at my elbow. 
 Paramore has a fine legal mind ; also he has a knowledge of and 
 instinct for finance that is superior to the knowledge and instinct 
 of anyone of the professional financiers I have happened to know. 
 In his facility of instantaneously finding a story to demonstrate a 
 point, even Abraham Lincoln was not his equal. This quality en- 
 ables him to accomplish his end without lacerating the feelings of 
 his antagonist, and would have made of Paramore an unequaled 
 diplomat, or, being as he is, a born narrator, as a novelist he would 
 have added much to literature. 
 
 I cannot escape the conclusion that, judged by every true stand- 
 ard, Paramore is a superior man ; and yet. perhaps, if I tested him 
 or any other big man with "moralic acid," he would crumble into 
 dust, from which I take it that "moralic acid" is the most subtle 
 and dangerous of poisons. 
 
 If I am wrong, I cannot help it. It is an astigmatism in my 
 eye, so bear with me. If I can not "see" an Anthony Comstock or a 
 Gratz or the "advanced" literary crowd in New York, it is some- 
 thing, perhaps, lacking in me. However, if my view were not 
 different, there would be no point in expressing it. 
 
 —38— 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 I am well aware of the triviality of the whole affair, regarded 
 by itself. I am quite conscious of my own insignificance and that 
 of the Country Club, I fully realize that compared to something im- 
 portant like ''making money," the whole matter is not even a good 
 joke. Our disagreement will, no doubt, appeal to the disinterested 
 bystander ; as in the case of the backwoodsman's wife who came into 
 the clearing in front of her cabin and discovered her husband in 
 a death struggle with a bear. In remarking on it afterwards, she 
 said it was the only fight she ever saw where she didn't care who 
 won. 
 
 There is, notwithstanding, a principle involved in this contro- 
 versy which goes as deep as anything in human life. It is whether 
 an individual shall have his reputation, his money or his life 
 taken away by the herd without a chance to defend himself. It 
 so happens that I can defend myself quite satisfactorily, because 
 I have time to do it. and because I can write, and because 
 I have a sense of the ridiculous, which is only a sense of proper 
 proportion, which enables me to take an institution like the 
 Country Club at its proper valuation. I know a number of 
 young men belonging to that organization, however, who regard 
 it so seriously that had they received the communication which 
 I did, and been refused an explanation, would actually have 
 clone that which I played at doing in an earlier part of this story. 
 One member of my family took the matter quite to heart, and 
 I have never been able to convince her that I do not know why 
 the Board of the Club saw fit to write me that letter. The 
 other members of the family, however, regarded it as I do, 
 viz. : a mystery of motive, but not a matter of life and death. 
 I repeat that the principle involved is, or should be, a matter 
 of interest to every man who believes in fair play, which none 
 but losers believe in. I do not wish to give the impression that I 
 am paraphrasing that ancient and false platitude of the overcharged 
 customer : "I didn't care for the money — it was the principle of the 
 thing." In my case it was quite the reverse. I was glad to save 
 the money, but I couldn't get away from the principle of the thing. 
 
 The following facts are not inspired by a touch of "sour 
 grapes." To those who may think so, I would say that the 
 difference between seeing straight and crooked, is largely one 
 of being able to determine which is cause and which is effect. 
 The confusion of cause and effect is the most common of in- 
 tellectual errors. For instance, w r e hear that a wife gets a 
 divorce from her husband because he drinks, whereas the fact 
 may be, and usually is, that the husband drinks because he 
 cannot get a divorce from his wife. Drink is not the cause of 
 
 —39— 
 
divorce. Inability to get a divorce is the cause of drink, very 
 often. In my case it is possible — remotely possibly — that^the 
 reason I was asked to resign was on account of some references 
 to the club's shortcomings. I do not now point out those short- 
 comings because I was asked to resign. I have no desire to 
 do anything that would injure the Club or the members of 
 the Board. I merely wish to relieve myself of the necessity 
 of trying to solve a puzzling enigma, and, having tried every 
 other imaginable method, I am forced to the one I am employing, 
 viz. : to write the whole story, which, as I explained in the be- 
 ginning, always relieves me. I am afraid if I didn't get this 
 poison out of my system, I might, like the husband referred to, 
 take to drink, whereupon the Board of Governors would say : 
 "See, he drinks. We were right in requesting his resignation." 
 No, I am not malicious nor vindictive in the premises. If I 
 were, I should not confine myself to mere ethical criticism, but 
 might be inclined to recite some club history, that would make 
 this little book one of the season's best sellers. 
 
 The plain unadorned truth is that the St. Louis Country 
 Club had become a disgrace to the City in its run down con- 
 dition. The service in the cafe was slow and dirty and costly. 
 The golf links were inferior, regarded from every standpoint, 
 to any other course in the city. The locker rooms were indecent. 
 Men were crowded together in a space three feet wide among 
 ill-smelling clothing, and in a state of nudity that was disgusting. 
 The stables and out buildings were dilapidated and the verandas 
 about the club house were rotten and full of holes. 
 
 No doubt the Japanese servants presented quite a smart 
 appearance, but they were woefully inefficient, and it always 
 grated on my sensibilities, in old St. Louis, settled by my good 
 forefathers, to see the bourgeoise of yesterday become the pseudony- 
 mous aristocracy of today, and the old, self-respecting black 
 servant superseded by the smirking, cringing, treacherous yellow 
 man. 
 
 I hope these statements of fact will not be attributed to the 
 fable of Aesop's to which I have already alluded. Of course, 
 it is idle for me to deny that I will miss the melodious voices of the 
 members issuing from the bar on Saturday evenings in various de- 
 grees of disharmony, as they warble the strains of "It's always fair 
 weather when good fellows get together," or "I wonder who's kiss- 
 ing her now." And those thrilling dinner dances, where everyone 
 gets up from the tables, jostle and jolt each other for ten minutes, 
 and then get jammed in the doorway, as they all try to go home at 
 once ! I shall be lost without them. 
 
 And Genevieve, that Danish female impersonator, who has 
 been a residing member of the club, sans dues, for lo these many 
 years. Who will take his place? . 
 
 Never again will I have the pleasure of seeing the Ben Greet 
 players perform "As You Like It" on the lawn, by. the light of the 
 pale moon. Never again will I hear the dulcet tones of Rosalind 
 in soliloquy, as she emerges from the Forest of Arden, the while 
 
 — 40 — 
 
Ben Gratz' colored chauffeur is carving a chunk out of Mr, 
 Stickney's coachman with a bowie knife on the front porch. As a 
 wag remarked on that occasion of the Country Club's excursion 
 into art: "It seems to me that Ben Greet isn't giving as good a 
 show as Ben Gratz tonight." 
 
 But I maintain that comparisons are odious, and why be hyper- 
 critical? Where, save at the Country Club, could one see at a 
 single performance a comedy by Shakespeare and a tragedy by 
 Gratz, with a real negro in the part of the jealous Moor? 
 
 And who but the Board of Governors of the Country Club 
 would have selected "As You Like It" to produce for the delecta- 
 tion of the members in their first and only artistic effort? "As 
 You Like It" — Shakespeare laughing at his audience, giving them 
 what they like, inasmuch as they were incapable of understanding 
 his serious works — Shakespeare in cynical, satirical mood, saying 
 "Here Fools, is something as you like it." What could have been 
 more apropos, and what a pity the matchless poet could not have 
 witnessed the performance? But his reputation as a deer stealer 
 would have worked to prevent his becoming a member of the 
 Xew Saint Louis Country Club. Still he might possibly have dis- 
 guised himself as a stock broker, and thus entered upon the sacred 
 domain. 
 
 How I shall miss those charming afternoons on the lawn, 
 where the different feminine cliques distribute themselves at 
 proper distances apart, and make disparaging remarks about each 
 other, all the while each one wishing she were at home, lying on 
 the bed in comfortable matinee with a cigarette and a novel. 
 
 And the ball team, which is only permitted by the Board to 
 challenge teams that are its social equal ! Xo more will I see it 
 in soul-stirring struggle with the nine from the Wednesday Club. 
 
 Surely life is hard ; still I might have borne up were it not 
 for the realization that henceforth our society leader will perform 
 on the flute, and I will not be there to hear the saccharine notes, un- 
 less perchance I should secrete myself beneath some friendly rose 
 bush, nearby an open window. 
 
 Ah, it is very sad to have to give up so much, but then, "Life 
 is not all beer and skittles." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Having received numerous messages by grapevine and tele- 
 phone to the effect that the news of the request for my resignation 
 was being diligently circulated, and as that was interesting to a 
 psychologist as a matter of motive, I wrote the following letters : 
 
 H. S. TURNER, 
 St. Louis. 
 
 To the Board of Governors, 
 
 Country Club : 
 Dear Sirs : 
 
 Supplementing my previous letter, I learn today, from 
 sources that are unquestionable, that the matter of my being asked 
 to resign from your Club has been reported by a member of your 
 Board, holding an honorary and confidential position, to a person 
 or persons in no way connected with your Board. The matter is 
 now public property through the instrumentality of this officer. 
 
 I do not deny your legal right to request my resignation, but I 
 do deny your right to humiliate members of my family, who still 
 have the bad taste not to think me undesirable. The humiliation of 
 myself is another and separate matter. 
 
 I ask that you will, in one week, convene in special meeting 
 and instruct your Secretary to withdraw his request for my resig- 
 nation. 
 
 Assuring you of my highest respect, I am 
 Very sincerely, 
 
 6-12-11. (Signed) H. S. Turner, Jr. 
 
 No answer was received — hence the following: 
 
 H. S. TURNER. 
 St. Louis. 
 To the Board of Governors : 
 
 I am entitled to reply to my letters to you under any concep- 
 tion of ethics. 
 
 This affair that you have started with me is clearly "unfin- 
 ished business/' As the matter stands now your Honorable Board 
 is in the position of having struck in the dark and then run 
 away. It is nothing less than (I have carefully weighed the 
 word) cowardly. 
 
 Boards like yours are of course like juries, controlled by one 
 individual with a strong incentive. 
 
 I am prepared to answer any charge, but of course I cannot 
 answer no charge. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 June 27th, 191 L (Signed) H. S. Turner, Jr. 
 
 —42— 
 
These letters brought forth the following from the Board and 
 my reply thereto. I suspect the attorney of the Board must have 
 inspired this communication. It's lucidity of phrase, its wealth of idea, 
 its simple directness, could have emanated from no other source. 
 
 ST. LOUIS COUNTRY CLUB. 
 
 July 1, 1911. 
 
 Mr. H. S. Turner, Jr., 
 
 Saint Louis, Mo. 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 Answering your letter of 6-19: 
 
 The request of the Board for your resignation has never been 
 complied with. Therefore it is impossible to give you any answer 
 at this time. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 (Signed) H. H. Langenberg, 
 Diet. Secretary. 
 
 H. S. TURNER. JR. 
 5023 Delmar Boulevard, 
 St. Louis. 
 To the Board of Governors, 
 Dear Sirs : 
 
 The very lucid letter of your new Secretary, signed with the 
 typewriter, is received today. By careful analysis, with the aid 
 of a lantern, I find that it is intended to mean that the reason you 
 refuse to give the reason for requesting my resignation is, that I 
 decline to resign without knowing what that reason is, and if I 
 resign without knowing what it is, you seem to intimate that then 
 perhaps, if you feel like it, you will announce it. 
 
 A very learned man, Mr. Amiel, has observed that "Action is 
 but coarsened thought," and I have no desire to be coarse if it can 
 be avoided, but you may rest assured I am going to have a rea- 
 son for your action, if there is any possible way to get it. You 
 have to your credit the destruction of a fine patrician youth of un- 
 usual quality. I refer to Dan Tracy. No one knows why you 
 did it, but there are the most revolting and impossible stories in 
 circulation, all of them different and all equally unbelievable — and 
 all due to your action. I shall not suffer his fate even if I have to 
 do so unethical a thing as to bring your Honorable Board out in the 
 open. 
 
 The Country Club is not of the slightest interest to me, but 
 psychology is. There could have been but one object in your action 
 and that was to humiliate me, and there would be no humiliation 
 unless the story was circulated, which you proceeded to do with 
 promptness and thoroughness. To now leave the matter in this 
 indefinite shape is Mjachivelian in its nastiness, but perhaps the final 
 result may give a little tang to the otherwise dull Summer Season. 
 
 Yours most respectfullv, 
 7-3-11. (Signed) H. S. Turner, Jr. 
 
 —43— 
 
There was a lull after this and I had time to reflect on the 
 principle involved in this attack on me. When I realized the full 
 meaning of that first letter ; when I began to see the state of mind 
 of a set of men who had accepted my money for some fifteen-odd 
 years, and had maintained pleasant relations with me, and then 
 without assigning a cause or without warning, had attempted to un- 
 dermine me in a most wanton and cowardly manner, I was for the 
 first time in my life afraid, I wondered if all my theories of life 
 were wrong-, if my idea that humanity was fine at bottom, but that 
 it was handicapped by its own absurd laws, was simply error. And 
 then I comforted myself with the thought, that I had always held 
 that if one is looking for treachery he will not find it in the 
 "Bottoms Gang" nor in "Egan's Rats," but in just such places as 
 I had found it. And so my whole fabric did not crumble, as for a 
 moment I thought it would. Instead it flashed over me that these 
 men had done what they considered a clever thing. They had 
 tried to stab me in the dark, and missed me, and that I had a 
 knife and a light in the shape of a typewriter and the gift of gar- 
 rulity, and so, dear reader, do not take the balance of the cor- 
 respondence in this volume too seriously. It is merely the cat 
 playing with the mouse, 
 
 H. S. TURNER, JR. 
 St. Louis. 
 
 July 17, 1911. 
 
 To the Board of Governors, 
 
 Country Club, City. 
 Dear Sirs : 
 
 If you get as much amusement out of reading my letters as I 
 get out of writing them, it is plain that I have added somewhat to- 
 the sum total of mirth in the world, and it is doubtful if any of you 
 can say that you have done as much. 
 
 One of the most humorous situations in Robin Blood is where 
 old Friar Tuck becomes incensed at Robin, over some trivial mat- 
 ter, and stamps and fumes and froths in his efforts to think of a 
 suitable revenge. Finally he shouts out "I'll excommunicate you !" 
 
 It never fails to amuse the audience immensely. Excommuni- 
 cation of a greater person by a group of lesser ones always touches 
 the risibilities. But even the Church, notoriously unfair in its petty 
 spites, does not go so far as to excommunicate without first giving a 
 reason. 
 
 It is trite and platitudinous, I know, but ne'ertheless an axiom 
 that people living in glass houses should not throw stones. There 
 may be some of your directors who are not living in glass houses, 
 but, on the other hand, there are some who are living in isinglass 
 houses, which a puff of wind will disastrously disarrange. 
 
 But seriously, Gentlemen, now that you see you have erred, 
 would it not be a more courageous and a more common sense 
 thing to do, to withdraw your childish letter to me, with proper 
 apologies. In which event I might resign from your archaic in- 
 stitution, as I have no desire to contribute to its support under the 
 
 —44— 
 
circumstances. In the future if we needs must fight, let us fight 
 like gentlemen, according to the rules, and not like assassins and 
 anonymous letter writers. 
 
 In case I resign, I shall even be willing to write you my resig- 
 nation in verse, which you can no doubt sell, after my death, for as 
 much as an initiation fee. 
 
 Most respectfully, 
 
 (Signed) H. S. Turner. 
 
 The following letter addressed to the Honorable Daniel G. 
 Taylor, was sent the morning after the interview, or collision, or ex- 
 plosion or whatever one wishes to call it, which occurred at the 
 Racquet Club upon my request of the said Taylor, in person, for 
 an answer to my communications to the Board of the Country 
 Club: 
 
 H. S. TURNER, JR. 
 5023 Delmar Boulevard. 
 St. Louis. 
 
 August 18, 1911. 
 
 D. G. Tavlor, Esq., 
 
 City/ 
 Dear Dan : 
 
 You seemed to me unduly excited last evening, and conse- 
 quently may not have gotten a clear understanding of my position 
 in the Country Club matter, hence this note. 
 
 Your Board by its action has left me in a position where any 
 enemy of mine may make any allegation he or she may see fit as 
 to the causes behind your request for my resignation, and I am help- 
 less. I have pleaded with you, appealed to your sense of right, of- 
 fered myself for any investigation, in order that you may assign to 
 me some reason for your peculiar action, even though it be so 
 trivial as that I have brown eyes. But you decline to answer at all, 
 except to remark as you did last evening, "Now you will get all 
 that is coming to you." Have I ever asked for more or less? All 
 I want is "All that is coming to me." 
 
 If there is no way that you can be appealed to as men, then I 
 shall have to go after your pocketbooks, and I hereby bind myself 
 to turn over to "charity" the amount of any judgment I may secure 
 against you. less expenses. If I obtain no judgment at all, I shall 
 have got what I want, viz. : a reason for your action. My life 
 contains no secrets (and perhaps yours doesn't), and I cannot rest 
 under the insinuation that it does. 
 
 Be assured that I shall use every weapon I can command to 
 obtain for myself simple justice in this matter. No man worthy of 
 the name could do otherwise. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 (Signed) Harry, 
 
 —45— 
 
5023 Delmar Boulevard. 
 
 August 11, 1911. 
 
 D. G. Taylor, Esq., 
 
 City. 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 Since writing you, it occurred to me why not have the Board 
 of the Country Club write me a letter asking my resignation on 
 the ground that I am persona non grata to a member of the Board, 
 or of the Club. In the event they will do this I will resign from both 
 the Country and Racquet Clubs, and forget it. There is no trick 
 in this. I have no desire to do anything other than to be permitted 
 to resign without implied disgrace. I have never consciously done 
 anything to any member of the Country Club, and this vindictive- 
 ness is puzzling to me. I cannot see how any body of sensible men 
 can expect me to tactily admit that I am guilty of some outrageous 
 thing that makes association possible with me no longer. To strike 
 as they did without warning, after all these years of membership 
 and pleasant relations, is incomprehensible to me. Even a rattle- 
 snake warns before it strikes, but rattlesnakes are true to their in- 
 stincts — men are not. 
 
 Will you advise me what you think of this and whether you 
 will recommend it or not, so that I may know how to act. Surely 
 this much is due me from you. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 (Signed) H. S. Turner, Jr. 
 
 Jesse McDonald. Daniel Taylor. 
 
 Mcdonald & taylor. 
 
 Attorneys and Counselors at Law. 
 Third National Bank Building. 
 St. Louis. 
 
 August 22, 1911. 
 
 Dear Harry : 
 
 I have yours of the 19th inst., and have delayed writing be- 
 cause I have hardly known just what to say. 
 
 You probably do not realize that in each of your letters you 
 insert some sentence that makes it a little bit difficult to answer 
 you calmly. (Rather amusing, this. — H. S. T.) 
 
 I do not believe that I can succeed in getting the Board of the 
 Country Club to comply with your request, to the effect that they 
 stated that your resignation was requested on the ground that you 
 were "persona non grata to a member of the Board or of the Club." 
 1 cannot speak for the Board, nor do I feel at liberty to make any 
 statement with respect to their action. But I will, as soon as the 
 Board convenes, present your request that they formulate some 
 charge against you, or make a statement to you of their reasons for 
 requesting your resignation. 
 
 The Board must decide as a body what it will do in the prem- 
 ises. I can neither speak for them nor decide this matter for them. 
 
 —46— 
 
It is needless for me to say to you that there are many reasons 
 why the existing situation is particularly distressing to me. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 (Signed) Dan. 
 
 Harrv S. Turner, Jr., Esq,, 
 5023 Delmar Blvd., 
 St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 The foregoing letter of the Honorable Taylor's I think contains 
 the real comedy "hit" of the whole affair. I refer to the u You prob- 
 ably do not realize" which begins the second paragraph of his able 
 letter. Note, gentle reader, that my "persona non grata" proposi- 
 tion had a string to it. Had it been agreed to, I should have asked 
 in my usual urbane and mild manner for the gentleman's name, and 
 thus the whole plot would have been revealed. 
 
 The following letter sounds as though I had written it after 
 talking with Teddy Mallinckrodt. It is so serious and genuine. 
 
 H. S. TURNER, JR. 
 5023 Delmar Boulevard. 
 St. Louis. 
 
 Sept. 27th, 1911. 
 
 Board of Governors, 
 
 Country Club. 
 Dear Sirs : 
 
 I have waited patiently for several months thinking I would 
 be given the courtesy of some explanation of your request for my 
 resignation from your club. 
 
 I have felt from the first, and feel even more strongly now. 
 that to resign from it is to be relieved of something that I have 
 outgrown ; but it did seem, after so many years of membership, 
 during which I was never conscious of enmity, nor ill-feeling", and 
 during which I had done my part as well as I knew how, that I 
 was at least entitled to a reason for your act. You evidently do not 
 see fit to give one, for the very simple reason that you have none, so 
 that I am forced to arrive at a conclusion through my reasoning- 
 powers. 
 
 I, have examined myself fairly, as I would a third person held 
 at arms length, and find nothing in my life, either in or out of the 
 club, that could be the basis of this affair. 
 
 I have been active and successful in many occupations since my 
 sixteenth year. I have always been on the side of culture — the 
 broader view of life. My interests, outside of business, have had a 
 trend toward literature, and I am the author, over a pen name, of 
 philosophical articles and short sketches and stories in some maga- 
 zines that have given rise to comment. 
 
 It had not occurred to me before I began thinking of a reason 
 for your letter, to give myself much thought in these aspects ; but 
 a system of elimination brings me to this conclusion : that the mat- 
 ter is one of personal antagonism. 
 
I have put the following questions to myself, and then have 
 answered them to the best of my ability. If I have not answered 
 them accurately then it is for you to set me straight. 
 
 Q. Is it because I am ill-bred? 
 
 A. No. Because no one in the city has a longer or more hon- 
 orable lineage. All the living members of my family are creditable 
 men and women. 
 
 O. Is it because I am not honest in business matters ? 
 
 A. Tis true I have not accumulated a great deal of money, but 
 avarice has always been foreign to my nature. On the other hand, 
 no man can say I have ever robbed or cheated him, 
 
 Q. Is it because I am personally repugnant to other members ? 
 
 A. No, for I have been much sought after and have sought 
 no one. 
 
 Q. Is it because I have been connected with a scandal? 
 A. The Club has many members who have been, but I have 
 never been. 
 
 Q. Is it because I have violated any rule or law of the Club? 
 A. No. I may have done so. but I am unaware of it, and if I 
 had, the Board would allege that as a reason for this letter. 
 Q. Is it because of my opinions? 
 
 A. No, for no one but myself knows what they are. I have 
 created some fictional characters who have expressed opinions, but 
 which are no more necessarily mine, than because an author creates 
 a murderer, he is himself one ; and besides, punishment for opinions 
 is rather medieval. 
 
 Q. Is it because some individual in the Board has conceived 
 a hatred of me — not for the qualities I lack, but for the qualities I 
 have? 
 
 A. Yes. There is no other answer. There is an alchemy 
 in hatred as there is in friendship, and there is no accounting for 
 it. There was but one way that this person could make me con- 
 scious of his existence, and that was to attack me from behind, 
 and from the ambush of a board of directors, as he has done. 
 
 I am fully aware that there is no real power behind the let- 
 ter of the Board: that it resolves itself into merely an anony- 
 mous and gratuitous insult, and I could ignore it if I cared to, and 
 nothing further would come of it. 
 
 But permit me to call your attention to one thing : A rule 
 permitting you to write a letter of that sort, will in the end re- 
 duce your club to a very low standard. A man of delicacy and 
 breeding will, of course, retire upon receipt of such a communica- 
 tion, but your thick-skinned individual will ignore it. In the end 
 the vulgarian must triumph. He gets into the Board by asserting 
 himself, and then tries to eliminate other members of better blood, 
 brains and culture, in order to make himself comfortable. 
 
 You see, you must pardon me for speaking up for myself, but 
 what can one do when he is being attacked from several sides, not 
 for what he has done, but for what he is? 
 
 No, Gentlemen, your club has been used to vent a personal 
 spite. So be it! Life is a road we are all traveling, and if one 
 
 —48— 
 
stops to throw stones at every dog that barks at his heels, he is 
 nowhere when evening comes. 
 
 Please accept my resignation, and let us call the incident 
 closed. I do not to this day know who the directors are. with the 
 exception of one. so that when we meet it will be they who are em- 
 barrassed and not I. Yours truly, 
 
 (Signed) H. S. Turner. 
 
 Nothing more happened it seems until Mr. G. H. Walker got 
 excited and wrote the following letter. G. H. stands for George 
 Herbert, who if I mistake not, was a learned divine who wrote 
 some theological works in England some centuries ago (I have no 
 memory for dates — unless they are in the future). The present 
 George Herbert's letter shows that he has profited by being named 
 after so illustrious a man. 
 
 I append his communication, together with my poor reply, 
 from which it will be observed that I do not believe in fighting the 
 devil with fire — in fact that is the only thing he should not be 
 fought with. It is giving him too great an advantage. 
 
 G. H. WALKER. 
 Saint Louis. 
 
 H. S. Turner, Jr., Esq.. October 6th. 1911. 
 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 Mr. Gratz informs me today that he has received from the 
 secretary of the Country Club your resignation to the Club, and 
 that you attribute the previous action of the Board to the influence 
 of one of the directors who is your personal enemy. As I have 
 heard from several sources since my return home, that I am the 
 enemy referred to, I wish to say in justice to myself that I have 
 had nothing to do with the matter. I was not present at the meet- 
 ing at which the action was taken and had no knowledge that 
 charges were to be preferred against you, nor that your name 
 would come before the meeting in any manner whatsoever. Neither 
 had I ever, to my recollection, discussed your name with any mem- 
 ber of the Board, with the exception of Judge Taylor when a mem- 
 ber of the Racquet Club Board and then regarding Racquet Club 
 affairs. I am not seeking to avoid any responsibility and had I been 
 ''after you," as I am told you think. I would not have taken this 
 method of trving to show it. Very truly yours, 
 
 (Signed) G. H. Walker. 
 
 _H. S. TURNER. JR. 
 5023 Delmar Boulevard. 
 St. Louis. 
 
 Mr, G. H. Walker. Oct. 7, 1911. 
 
 St. Louis, Mo. 
 Dear Bert : 
 
 If others knew what I am thinking, thev'd know as much as 
 
 I do. 
 
 You ought to ask Gratz to show you that letter. The Club asks 
 me to resign and assigns no reason. I metaphorically get on my 
 
 —49— 
 
knees to them in my effort to get at a reason. They sit m smug 
 and stupid silence. Therefore I was forced to, by logic, arrive at as 
 conclusion that would satisfy my reason. I racked my brain for 
 nights and days. I had violated no rule or law of the club. I was 
 absolutely clear on all points. I examined myself ruthlessly, and the 
 conclusion was finally forced on me that it was a case of personal 
 animus. Eliminating all other causes, this was what remained. 
 
 My letter did just what I hoped and expected it would do, 
 viz. : bring home to the Board the absurdity of not informing me of 
 the reason of their action. It is not only unjust to me, it is equally 
 so to you. You say you had no connection with the matter, which 
 is no doubt true. But why in the name of common sense 
 doesn't the Board w r rite me that, instead of letting you do it, in 
 justice to you and me; and then why doesn't it go on and finish 
 the matter up by writing me a simple and dignified letter alleging 
 some cause — any cause — I don't care what? 
 
 My whole point in this matter has been from the beginnings 
 that the only thing objectionable to me was the mystery atmosphere, 
 I insisted, begged, cajoled, implored, threatened — to no purpose. 
 No, the Board is deaf and blind. A man who has been a member for 
 the best fifteen years of his life is suddenly written a grossly in- 
 sulting letter by a set of men whom he had no reason to regard 
 other than as friends, and then is refused the courtesy of a simple 
 explanation. 
 
 I don't, in my heart, think the Board of Governors are in- 
 tentionally injuring me. But they are behaving in a rather stupid 
 manner. They, no doubt through a misconception, arrived at an es- 
 timate of me that seemed to them at the time, to justify their action, 
 and now that they are in a hole, they don't know how to get out of 
 it. 
 
 I have never mentioned this subject outside of the Board until 
 someone first mentioned it to me, and yet the matter is a town 
 scandal. The man who is responsible for that should be asked to 
 resign, surely. 
 
 The idea of your animus toward me came first from that old 
 lady, Isaac Cook, and he never fails to inform me that you "Have 
 it in for me" and repeats to me something that you have said of me. 
 There was no escaping my conclusion. The road ran straight, with 
 no turns. Now, that you destroy that theory, the thing is a greater 
 mystery than ever. So long as it is a mystery, so long will it be a 
 scandal. If ever a man's life was "open for inspection," mine is. 
 Though the Board would be just as wrong in its position if I were 
 a moral leper. Why don't those giant intellects in the Board either 
 make a case against me or capitulate ? 
 
 Are they afraid of legal action? Please quiet their fears. 
 They are damaging me now by asking me to resign, spreading the 
 news and refusing a reason, but I don't care for the hundred thou- 
 sand or so, I could get by suing, because, believe it or not as you 
 wish, I am afraid of too much money. I've seen too many men 
 ruined by it. Not enough has never hurt any one. 
 
 —50— 
 
Permit me one word more. Were I as stupid, as mean, as 
 short-sighted and as small as the Board of Governors of the Coun- 
 ty Club, I could say to you now, "I don't believe what your note 
 contains," and force the Board to cease ignoring me. 
 
 From a material standpoint I am delighted to be rid of the 
 Country Club, but the underhanded, cowardly manner in which I 
 was handled has given me an object in life. For two years past 
 I've wondered why I contributed $100.00 a year toward the sup- 
 port of an old, broken-down club house, and the poorest golf links, 
 without exception, around St. Louis. Perhaps it was on account of 
 the social prestige ( ?) it gave me. I pause to smile. Society doesn't 
 interest me nearly so much as I seem to interest it. 
 
 Pardon the length of this epistle, but I am rather full of the 
 subject, and when I get on it, never know when to stop. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 H. S. Turner. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Speaking of philosophy (not that anyone was, but why not, as 
 Maurice Ketten says), there are worse philosophers than Tod 
 Sloan, the one-time premier jockey of the world. I remember 
 once when he was valetting me in a "gentleman's" race at the old 
 Fair Grounds some advice he gave me before the start. ''Remember, 
 they don't pay off in the back stretch," said Tod. "Wait, wait, 
 they'll come back to you." It turned out on that occasion, that I 
 was so engaged in thinking of Tod's philosophy that I forgot to 
 win at any stage of the race, but that doesn't disprove the philoso- 
 phy. 
 
 And Brooklyn Tommy Sullivan, that great little general of the 
 prize ring, he has a philosophy, too. It is idle to deny that Attell 
 can box rings around him, and yet there is no record of its having 
 availed Abie. Tommy used to say to me, "Make the other guy 
 lead — make him come to you and stall while you're strong. The 
 secret of de game," he would iterate, "is to make him lead and 
 miss and den you kin do what you want wit him. Hold your punch 
 — never hit him as hard as you kin 'till you git him where you kin 
 knock him out." 
 
 I think one of the most profound things that was ever uttered 
 is that of Wilde's : "What one does in one's secret chamber, he will 
 some day shout from the housetops." I have tried to live in accord - 
 
 —51— 
 
ance with the suggestion contained in that wonderful bit of psy- 
 chology with indifferent success, but that is not the point. I wish 
 to call attention to the fact that psychology is fast becoming so 
 exact a science that one with the gift of it can read in the faces of 
 men the story of their secret lives. He can recognize at a glance 
 the man who has spent his day behind closed doors in a down 
 town office scheming devilment, or in the face of the society 
 woman, he can see the starved maternal instinct, the cruel lust 
 for power, the perverted womanliness. Psychology is the greater 
 politics. 
 
 All things extremely anti, or extremely pro, are funny in vary- 
 ing degree, but a female anti-suffragist is the quintessence of amus- 
 ing things. The only possible excuse for her position is the desire 
 for a "miserable ease," but she has not the intelligence to know 
 that to be anti-suffrage at this time is not the way to secure it. I 
 love to see a great locomotive spin its drivers when starting a heavy 
 train. It is such an inspiring exhibition of power. The anti-suf- 
 fragist is the grease on the rails that causes the engine to spin its 
 drivers. The militant suffragist is the one redeeming feature in 
 modern life, the one puzzling feature to a philosopher. She is 
 the only sign pointing away from decadence. How long has it been 
 since anyone died for a principle? Quite a time, I believe. The 
 action of the young militant who threw herself under the King's 
 horse, would have stirred the poets of other days, but nothing stirs 
 a modern poet except erotica or money. 
 
 -52— 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 It is very difficult for me to hold to the subject-matter of this 
 book. I'm so much more interested in other things — but to return 
 to our pork chops : 
 
 About this time there was another lull in the correspondence 
 and I found myself wondering if all this tempest in a tea cup had 
 been stirred up by some action of an ancestor of mine, and not being 
 familiar with my own genealogy, I resolved to look into it. Meet- 
 ing my cousin. Mrs. Elisha Dyer, Jr., on the street in New York, 
 and knowing that she had followed this sort of thing, I asked her if 
 any of us had ever been hung. Next morning she sent me the fol- 
 lowing, which if correct, shows that I have no excuse for having 
 been asked to resign from the Country Club, nor for any other 
 disreputable action of which I may be guilty, so far as my pater- 
 nal inheritance goes. 
 
 "The spelling of the name Turner is of no moment, as it varies 
 even among first cousins of the direct line, and is variously spelled 
 as follows : Tour-noir, Tournour, Tumour, and Turner, as pro- 
 nounced in Virginia since 1708. 
 
 The original seat of the family in Normandy was Le Tournoir 
 (The Black Tower) from which comes the name, and its owners 
 were known as "je Suis de Tournoir" and bore the motto e 'Epec 
 Quane VMese" (to be — not to seem to be). 
 
 A visit to the family graveyard of the Virginia branch at 
 Smith's Mount, Westmoreland County, Virginia, in 1854, showed 
 the graves to have been well cared for. Beneath the inscription on 
 the tomb of Major Harry Turner, of King George, could be seen 
 deeply and beautifully carved the Turner coat of arms, "He 
 beareth ermine on a quarter-pierced argent," by name Turner 
 of Parendon in Essex, Kt. Crest : Lion Rampant, supporting 
 an hour glass. 
 
 The first of the line known to English history was Edward 
 ( Tournour) Turner, a Norman Knight of noble origin, who went 
 to England with the Conqueror, and was rewarded for his valor 
 by large grants of land, and was seated at Haverill in Suffolk. 
 Arthur Turner, a descendant, was a bencher of the Middle Tem- 
 ple in the reign of James I, and Edward, his son, was Captain of 
 the King's Guard, in the time of Charles I, and was seated at Lit- 
 tle Paringdon, Essex. 
 
 During the political changes of that period the Turner fam- 
 ily suffered many hardships. Their lands were confiscated and 
 many of the family were imprisoned and many suffered death, 
 but Edward (Tournour) Turner, a direct descendant of the Nor- 
 man Knight of the same name, born in 1617 at the home of his 
 uncle, Sir Thomas Moulson, Lord Mayor of London, in Thread- 
 
 —53— 
 
needle street, London, rose to distinction and in a measure re- 
 trieved the family fortunes. Educated at Oxford he was ad- 
 mitted to the Middle Temple in 1634, and called to the bar in 
 1640; was in Cromwell's second and third Parliaments, represent- 
 ing Essex ; was also in the Parliaments of Richard, the Protector 
 (1658) ; was again in Parliament in 1660, and in 1662 was re- 
 stored his title and estates, and immediately on the restoration 
 was counsel for the King in the trial of the regicides, and espe- 
 cially distinguished himself in those of Harrison and Cook (see 
 ''Old Judges"). Was elected speaker of the House of Commons 
 and held that position for twelve years ; was solicitor general to 
 the King and made Chief Baron of the Exchequer, which position 
 he held for four years. Died March, 1676, and was buried in the 
 chancel of Little Paringdon Church, Essex. 
 
 Sir Edward Turner, the subject of this sketch, was twice 
 married. The oldest son by his first wife was Sir Edward 
 Turner, member of Parliament from Oxford, in Suffolk, whose 
 daughter, Sarah, was the grandmother of Edward Turner Garth, 
 and was in 1761 created Baron and in 1675 Earl of Winterton. 
 
 Sir Gregory Page, dying without issue, his title and estate 
 descended to his nephew, Arthur Turner; hence the blending of 
 the Page-Turner arms. 
 
 Dr. Thomas Turner, brother of the first Sir Edward above 
 mentioned, better known as Turner of Walsingham, was born at 
 Little Paringdon, Essex, in 1619; was educated at Oxford, mar- 
 ried and came to Virginia about 1650. He took up large grants 
 of land in King George, Essex and Prince William Counties, 
 known as Walsingham, Natzattico, Port, Conway, etc., and was 
 first of his line in Virginia ; was late in life legal heir to the fam- 
 ily title and estates, but for political reasons refused to return to 
 England to secure them ; died at Walsingham leaving a son, 
 Thomas Turner II, who married in 1711, Martha, the daughter of 
 Colonel Richard Talifaerro, and had Major Harry Turner of 
 King George, who married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of 
 Colonel Nicholas Smith, of Smith's Mount, Westmoreland 
 County, Virginia, by whom he had three sons, only one of whom 
 lived, namely : Thomas Turner III, who married Jane, daughter of 
 Colonel William Faunt le Roy, of Naylor's Hold, Richmond 
 County, Virginia ; fourth in descent from Moore Faunt le Roy, 
 first of his line in America and twenty-fifth in the line of descent 
 from Henry I, of France, and Ann of Russia, through the mar- 
 riage of Tristan Fauntleroy, in 1539, to John Stourton, daughter 
 of Lord Stourton. So it will be seen that the Turners also trace 
 to the baronial house of Stourton Fitz-Harding and Berkely in 
 Gloucester, England, and the feudal houses of Courtenay and 
 De Lusignan, of France. (See Brown's "Americans of Royal 
 Descent.") 
 
 Thomas Turner III, and Jane Faunt le Roy, his wife, had 
 issue as follows : Elizabeth Taliaferro, Harry Smith, Richard, 
 George, Jane, Faunt le Roy, Thomas and Marie. Elizabeth mar- 
 ried Charles Cooke, of Charles City County, Virginia. Henry 
 
 —54— 
 
Smith, second child and eldest son, born 1770, inherited Smith's 
 Mount, Westmoreland County, and Wheatlands, Jefferson 
 County, and in 1796 married Catherine Scott Blackburn, daugh- 
 ter of Colonel Thomas Blackburn, of Ripon Lodge, Prince Will- 
 iam County, Virginia, and his wife, Christian Scott, who was 
 daughter of Rev. James Scott, of Westwood, Prince William Coun- 
 ty, Virginia, and wife, Sarah Brown Scott, eldest of the ''lovely 
 nine," consequently daughter of Francis Fowke and Dr. Gustavus 
 Brown of Nanjemoy, Charles County, Maryland. 
 
 Colonel Henry Smith Turner and his wife, Catherine Scott 
 Blackburn, had issue as follows : Susan, married Alibone ; Jane, 
 married Byrd ; Christine, married Cordell ; George, Bushrod 
 Washington and William Fauntleroy. George Turner, major in 
 the United States Army, was killed at Harpers Ferry during the 
 John Brown raid. Bushrod Washington Turner was lost at sea. 
 AVilliam Fauntleroy Turner married Ellen Beirne ; issue one 
 daughter, who married Colonel John Selden Saunders, United 
 States Army and Confederate Army; issue Ellen Beirne Saun- 
 ders, who married Steward, United States Navy; W. F. Turner 
 Saunders, United States Navy. Sidney Patterson Saunders mar- 
 ried Vernon, United States Navy, and Martha Saunders married 
 Charles Carroll of Baltimore. 
 
 William Fauntleroy Turner married, second, Sidney Patter- 
 son, of Baltimore ; issue Sidney Smith Turner, who married first 
 Donnell Swan ; issue Laura Patterson Swan, second husband 
 Elisha Dyer, Jr., of Newport, R. I. 
 
 Thomas Turner IV, son of Thomas III, married Eliza Ran- 
 dolph, daughter of Colonel Robert Randolph, of Eastern View, 
 Fauquier County, Virginia; issue Major Harry Smith Turner, 
 United States Army, of St. Louis, who married Julia Hunt. 
 
 The Lees, Turners, Fauntleroys, Harrisons, Washingtons. 
 Lewises, Taliaferros, St. Georges, Tuckers, Beverle}^s and many 
 other colonial families are descendants of the original Sir Edward 
 Turner." 
 
 * * * 
 
 Major Harry Smith Turner and Julia Hunt were my grand- 
 parents. My father was Thomas T. Turner and my mother is 
 Harriet S. Turner — nee Brown, of Tennessee. 
 
 On my mother's side I find there have been some "cut ups." 
 For instance, there was my grandfather, who was a friend and 
 disciple of Lord Byron's and who bore a striking resemblance to 
 him. They say he was a very bad boy. He took the "short way 
 out of it" at thirty-three. Then there was old General Ewell, 
 who was most eccentric, and who liked to be left alone for days, 
 and would never permit anyone in his apartments. And then, 
 on the other side, was General Lee, himself, w r ho it seems was a 
 rebellious spirit, still I have never been conscious of a warlke 
 tendency. I vastly prefer peace on any decent terms. 
 
 —55— 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The correspondence next following would be exceedingly 
 dry and uninteresting were not the reader behind the scenes, so 
 to speak. From that vantage point we can instruct ourselves 
 by observing the business methods of clubs and organizations, 
 operated by great business men. I am so accustomed to being 
 patronized by business men that I have come to enjoy it. Note 
 how that great business genius, George Herbert Walker, sold 
 my stock for my account by taking it over to the St. Louis Union 
 Trust Company and handing it to the Secretary of the Club. 
 The usual commission in the brokerage business, I believe, is one- 
 quarter of one per cent, but in this instance I was not charged 
 anything. 
 
 NEW ST. LOUIS COUNTRY CLUB. 
 Office of Secretary. 
 
 H. H. Langenberg, Secretary, 
 Chamber of Commerce Bldg. 
 
 St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 14, 1911. 
 
 Mr. H. S. Turner, Jr., 
 5023 Delmar Ave., 
 City. 
 Dear Sir: — 
 
 Your letter of the 13th to hand, and contents noted. 
 
 I enclose you Certificate of Membership in the New St. 
 Louis Country Club. 
 
 Please send to me the receipt issued you by the St. Louis 
 Union Trust Co., for the share of stock which you turned in to the 
 old St. Louis Country Club. 
 
 The reason for my delay in answering your several letters 
 is due to the fact that I have been out of the city for the past 
 few months. 
 
 I am, Yours very truly, 
 
 (Signed) H. H. Langenberg. 
 
 H. S. TURNER, JR., 
 St. Louis. 
 
 G. H. Walker, Esq., Broker, St. Louis, Oct. 14, 1911. 
 
 St. Louis. 
 Dear Bert. 
 
 I enclose certificate of stock in the Country Club. Please 
 have the same sold for my account in the regular course of 
 business, and oblige, Yours truly, 
 
 G. H. Walker, St. Louis. (Signed) H. S. Turner. Jr. 
 
 —56— 
 
October 17th, 1911. 
 
 Dear Harry : 
 
 Yours of the 16th with certificates of C. C. received. 
 I have sent same over to Tom West, Jr., Treasurer, and he 
 advises me that he will remit directly to you a check for Four 
 Hundred Dollars. 
 
 Trusting that it will reach you. in due time, I am, 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 (Signed) G. H. Walker. 
 To H. S. Turner, Jr., Esq., Xo. 5023 Delmar Avenue, St. Louis, 
 Missouri. 
 
 H. S. TURNER. JR.. 
 St. Louis. 
 
 St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 19, 1911. 
 To the Board of Governors, C. C. 
 
 On July 1st, I received the following letter from the Board 
 of Governors of the Country Club, which seemed to imply, that 
 if I resigned they would tell me the reason for writing letter of 
 June 6th : 
 
 "Answering your letter of June 29. The request of the 
 board for your resignation has never been complied with. 
 Therefore it is impossible to give you any answer at this time.'" 
 
 During the latter part of July and early August (I made no 
 memorandum of the date) Mr. Lee Benoist told me that Mr. 
 Walker had been to see him, or that he had met him, and that 
 Mr. Walker had told him to tell me that if I would resign from 
 the club, that their letter requesting my resignation would be 
 withdrawn. I told Mr. Benoist to tell Mr. Walker that he had 
 conveyed the message to me, and that there was no answer. 
 
 On August 22nd I received the following letter from Dan'l. 
 G. Taylor, a member of your board : — 
 
 "I have yours of the 19th inst., and have delayed writing be- 
 cause I have hardly known just what to say. 
 
 "You probably do not realize that in each of your letters you 
 insert some sentence that makes it a little bit difficult to answer 
 you calmly." 
 
 "I do not believe that I can succeed in getting the Board of 
 the Country Club to comply with your request, to the effect that 
 they stated that your resignation was requested on the ground 
 that you were "persona non grata" to a member of the Board or 
 of the Club. I cannot speak for the board, nor do I feel at libertv 
 to make any statement with respect to their action. But I will, 
 as soon as the board convenes, present your request that they 
 formulate some charge against you, or make a statement to you 
 of their reasons for requesting your resignation. 
 
 "The board must decide as a body what it will do in the 
 premises. I can neither speak for them nor decide this matter 
 for them. 
 
 —57— 
 
"It is needless for me to say to you that there are many rea- 
 sons why the existing situation is particularly distressing to me.' 7 
 
 Today I received another letter from D. G. Taylor as follows : — 
 
 "It is utterly impossible for me to say to you what action the 
 Board of Directors of the Country Club are going to take. I was 
 not present at the last meeting and have not heard what action 
 was taken. I am afraid that you take an exaggerated view of the 
 importance of the attitude of the club on the subject." 
 
 After writing numberless letters, and using ever}^ means at 
 my command to induce you to do me the simple justice of re- 
 moving the mystery surrounding your letter of June 6th, I de- 
 termined to comply with your letter of July 1st, in the hope that 
 you were sincere in what you said in it, and on September 27th I 
 wrote you, stating that I would resign from your club. 
 
 That is nearly a month ago. You have not had the courtesy 
 or consideration to reply to that letter, or acknowledge it in any 
 way. 
 
 In the meantime Mr. G. H. Walker came to me in the Rac- 
 quet Club and gave me his verbal promise that he would recom- 
 mend that the board write me the letter that I desired. 
 
 Judge Taylor has not kept his promise to me, the Board of 
 Governors have not kept their more or less ambiguous promise 
 to me, and of course I have no means of knowing whether Mr, 
 Walker has or not. 
 
 I had assumed from what Mr. Walker told me, that his rec- 
 ommendation would be sufficient to secure for me the letter that 
 I desire, and on that assumption, and in perfect good faith I sent 
 him my certificate of stock, and asked him to find a purchaser for 
 it. I received from him today the following letter: — 
 
 "Yours of the 16th with certificate of C. C. received. 
 
 "I have sent same over to Tom West, Jr., Treasurer, and he 
 advises me that he will remit directly to you a check for Four 
 Hundred Dollars. 
 
 "Trusting that it will reach you in due time, I am," 
 
 I also enclose copy of my reply. 
 
 Now inasmuch as there has been unquestionably, according 
 to the evidence, a deliberate attempt to injure me in the eyes of 
 this community, and inasmuch as you have not seen fit to carry 
 out any of your promises or agreements, verbal or otherwise, I 
 hereby withdraw my resignation, and will have no further direct 
 communication with your board, or any member of it. 
 
 Yours truly, (Signed) H. S. Turner. 
 
 Mr. Benj. Gratz, Pres. New St. Louis Country Club, St. 
 Louis, Missouri." 
 
 H. S. TURNER, JR. 
 5023 Delmar Boulevard, 
 St. Louis. 
 
 Dear Mr. West:— October 31, 1911. 
 
 I return herewith voucher No. 741 for Four Hundred Dol- 
 lars ($400.00). 
 
 —58— 
 
Please see my letter to Mr. G. H. Walker, also my letter to 
 the Board of Governors, which will explain my action. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 (Signed) H. S. Turner. 
 Mr. Thomas H. West, Jr., 401 Locust Street, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 ST. LOUIS COUNTRY CLUB. 
 Office of Treasurer. 
 
 St. Louis, October 19th, 1911. 
 
 Mr. H. S. Turner, Jr., 
 
 5023 Delmar Boulevard, 
 St. Louis, Mo. 
 Dear Harry: 
 
 Yours of the 19th received. You are evidently under a mis- 
 apprehension as to the present procedure in regard to the trans- 
 fer of membership in the Country Club. Under the old organi- 
 zation memberships could be sold and the certificate transferred, 
 but under the present order of things when a resignation be- 
 comes effective and so soon as the board elects some one to fill 
 the vacancy a check for $400.00 is remitted by the Treasurer of 
 -e Country Club to the person resigning. There is no such 
 thing as stock ownership any more, as the Club now has the 
 same kind of charter as the Racquet, University and other clubs. 
 Hence a certificate of membership after a member has resigned 
 and his resignation has been accepted means nothing, excepting 
 rhat the Treasurer of the Club will demand its surrender before 
 remitting the $400.00. 
 
 In view of your letter I will ask the Treasurer to hold off for 
 the present until I hear further from you. 
 
 Very trulv vours, 
 (Signed) G. H. Walker. 
 
 P. S. — There is no way of doing what you wish. 
 GHW— MM GHW. 
 
 ST. LOUIS COUNTRY CLUB. 
 Office of Treasurer. 
 Thos. H. West, ]~r., Treas. 
 401 Locust St. 
 
 St. Louis, October 19th, 1911. 
 
 Mr. H. S. Turner, Tr., 
 5023 Delmar Blvd., 
 
 St. Louis, Missouri. 
 Dear Sir: — 
 
 Enclosed find check for $400.00, redemption of your mem- 
 bership in the New St. Louis Country Club, to which you are en- 
 titled on account of your resignation from said Club, according 
 to the By-Laws. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 (Signed) Thos. H. West, Jr., 
 
 Secy. 
 
 —59— 
 
H. S. TURNER, JR., 
 5023 Delmar Boulevard, 
 St. Louis. 
 
 October 19, 1911. 
 
 Dear Bert : — 
 
 I was surprised to receive yours of the 17th, this morning. 
 I thought my letter to you, enclosing certificates in the Country 
 Club was explicit, and that I wrote to you as a broker, and asked 
 you to find an individual to purchase the certificate. 
 
 I had no idea that you would turn it over to the Country 
 Club treasurer, which of course I could have done myself, but, 
 for reasons of my own, did not wish to do it. 
 
 Will you kindly write to the Treasurer of the Country Club, 
 and get possession of the certificate and return same to me. 
 
 Thanking you in advance, I am, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 (Signed) H. S. Turner. 
 Mr. G. H. Walker, 309 N. 4th St, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 NEW T ST. LOUIS COUNTRY CLUB. 
 Office of Secretary. 
 H. H. Langenberg, Secretary, 
 Chamber of Commerce Bldg. 
 
 St. Louis, Mo, Oct. 23, 1911. 
 
 Mr. H. S. Turner, 
 
 City. 
 Dear Sir : — 
 
 At the regular monthly meeting of the Board of Governors 
 of the New St. Louis Country Club, held October 12, 1911, your 
 letter of resignation was placed before the board and it was 
 moved and voted that your resignation be accepted. 
 
 The Treasurer of the Club will, as soon as your membership 
 is disposed of, send you a check for Four Hundred Dollars. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 (Signed) H. H. Langenberg, Secy. 
 
 ST. LOUIS COUNTRY CLUB. 
 Office of Treasurer. 
 Thos. H. West, Jr., Treas. 
 401 Locust St. 
 
 St. Louis, October 25th, 1911, 
 
 Mr. H. S. Turner, Jr., 
 5023 Delmar Blvd., 
 
 St. Louis, Missouri. 
 Dear Harry: — 
 
 I am in receipt of your letter returning voucher issued by 
 New St. Louis Country Club for $400.00, which I sent you in 
 payment for your membership. 
 
 I spoke to Bert Walker and he states that you turned in 
 to him your certificate of membership asking him to dispose of 
 
 —60— 
 
same for you. I think that you have the wrong impression 
 about the way this business is now handled. 
 
 Before the Club was re-organized we had certificates of 
 stock, which could be bought and sold, but in the Xew Club the 
 retiring member has nothing that he can dispose of, and simply 
 holds a certificate of membership, which is nothing more than a 
 receipt for his initiation fee. and is not negotiable. You, no 
 doubt, have the Xew Country Club Book, and if you will read 
 Section 9 of Article 1 of the By-Laws on page 12, this matter is 
 fully explained. 
 
 The rule is that a retiring member is entitled to S400.00 when 
 vacancy caused by his retirement is rilled, so I herewith return 
 you check, and trust that I have made the matter plain. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 (Sigend) Thos. H. West, Jr. 
 
 H. S. TURNER, JR. 
 5023 Delmar Boulevard, 
 St. Louis, 
 
 October 26, 1911, 
 
 Dear Sir : — 
 
 I have a letter from Langenberg this morning stating that 
 my resignation is accepted. 
 
 You gentlemen remind me of the Festive Ostrich. You 
 think that because your heads are in the sand that nobody can 
 see you. 
 
 So after you received my last letter you consulted your by- 
 laws and made a discovery! Your stupidity is terrifying. It is 
 only equaled by your heartlessness. 
 
 Can you not see what is as plain as a pike start; that it is 
 not I that can be injured in this skirmish? In fact I am the only 
 one who can't be injured. When it all becomes public, it may 
 be accepted humorously — it has some comedic aspects — but it 
 might not — might not I said, and if it isn't, it may result in serious 
 complications — I said may; and all because you haven't sense 
 enough to know when you are licked and are not men enough to 
 say "we are mistaken." 
 
 I wonder how the women of the Country Club and of the 
 city generally, will like your remark to me in your office, ''That 
 they have to be protected" — a vicious calumny of every woman 
 who goes to your club. Please do not ''protect" any of the 
 women members of my family who may go out there. They can 
 take care of themselves. 
 
 To foresee your last letter required a little prophetic quality, 
 but not much. 
 
 After I wrote you the last time, I made a rough draft of 
 what I thought your reply would be, and gave it to a friend. 
 Your reply is not word for word, because my letter was written 
 in good English, but with that exception it is about the same. 
 
 One should be under obligations to another who does him 
 an injustice, because in the interim between when the latter re- 
 
 —61— 
 
sists righting the wrong and when he finally does it, he's on the 
 griddle, to the intense amusement of the first party, and amuse- 
 ment is the greatest asset we have. 
 
 I think Bert Walker has the best head among you. Its the 
 only reason I deliberately made him an enemy, that I might have 
 a foil. But he lost the road. He should have given his talents 
 to bigger things instead of to the Country Club. However he is 
 acting with more discretion than any of the rest of you, and 
 while that is not much, still it is something, and even the devil 
 isn't such an awfully bad fellow, come to know him. 
 
 Thanking you in advance for your letter of apology, I am 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 (Signed) H. S. Turner. 
 
 Mr. Benj. Gratz, Pres., 
 Country Club, 
 
 St. Louis, Mo. October 26, 191 L 
 
 H. S. TURNER, JR., 
 5023 Delmar Boulevard, 
 St. Louis. 
 
 Dear Tom : 
 
 I have yours of October 15th, and return herewith voucher 
 for $400.00. 
 
 You were correct in a sense, for I was laboring under the 
 impression that the certificate was the same as stock, and I 
 wanted it then sold in the regular way to prove my sincerity in com- 
 plying with the following letter of the board : 
 
 July 1, 1911. 
 
 "Mr. H. S. Turner, Jr., 
 
 Saint Louis, Mo. 
 Dear Sir: — 
 
 Answering your letter of June 29. 
 
 The request of the board for your resignation has never been 
 complied with. Therefore it is impossible to give you any an- 
 swer at this time. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 H. H. Langenberg, 
 
 Secretary." 
 
 I did this for the purpose of exhausting every possible 
 means of obtaining from your board the simple justice of a rea- 
 son for your previous letter requesting my resignation. How- 
 ever, if you will refer to your By-Laws you will find that a resig- 
 nation is not effective until the board has acted on it, and after 
 waiting nearly a month, and not hearing of any action being 
 taken, I withdrew my resignation which left the matter exactly 
 as it was before I resigned. 
 
 Therefore you will see that it is necessary to accept return 
 of this voucher, and that I remain a member until the matter is 
 
 —62— 
 
settled to my satisfaction. Surely the heathen Chinee has noth- 
 ing on your honorable board. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 (Signed) H, S, Turner. 
 
 Mr. Thomas H. West, Jr., 
 401 Locust Street, 
 St. Louis, Mo, 
 
 H. S. TURNER, JR. 
 5023 Delmar Boulevard, 
 St, Louis. 
 
 Dear Dan : 
 
 Can you give me an approximately correct idea as to when 1 
 am going to "get what is coming to me" from the Country Club. 
 Fear of a thing is always worse than the thing itself, and nat- 
 urally I wish to cease trembling as soon as possible. 
 
 Sincerely, 
 (Signed) Harry Turner. 
 
 October 17, 1911. 
 
 The delay in righting this wrong is injuring me seriously, 
 (Laughter.) 
 
 fL S. T. 
 
 DANIEL G. TAYLOR, 
 St. Louis. 
 
 October 18th, 1911. 
 Personal. 
 
 Dear Harry: 
 
 It is utterly impossible for me to say to }^ou what action the 
 Board of Directors of the Country Club are going to take. I was 
 not present at the last meeting and have not heard what action 
 was taken. I am afraid that you take an exaggerated view of 
 the importance of the attitude of the club on the subject. 
 
 Sincerely, 
 (Signed) Dan. 
 
 H. S. Turner, Jr., Esq., 
 5023 Delmar Blvd., 
 St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 H. S. TURNER, JR., 
 5023 Delmar Boulevard, 
 St. Louis. 
 
 October 19, 1911. 
 
 Dear Dan : 
 
 Sure. It's only a good joke now — but it was very serious 
 when you all sat around the board and proceeded to put the knife 
 into me. 
 
 You say you don't know what the board is going to do, but 
 you said to me at the Racquet Club, in the following words : 
 
 —63— 
 
"If that's your attitude you'll get what's coming to you. 
 I'll advise the board to not answer your letters." So that's the 
 reason I wrote to you. 
 
 G. H. W. has given me his verbal promise that he will rec- 
 ommend to the board that they write me their reasons for their 
 letter, but I am in the position of the small boy who was with 
 his father when they met a man who had just moved into the 
 country. "Come out and see me sometime," said the man from 
 the country, "And bring the boy. We have a fine apple or- 
 chard, and ponies to ride, and a fine hay loft." The father of 
 the boy thanked the man and was about to pass on when he felt 
 a tugging at his coat: "Papa," said the boy, "Ask that man 
 when." 
 
 I know the Country Club is going to give me a reason all 
 right. Yes, I know that, but what I'm trying to get at now is 
 when, and I thought naturally if you had the power to prevent 
 their answering my letters, according to your own statement, that 
 it was reasonable to assume that you had the power to induce 
 them to answer them, hence my note. 
 
 I agree with you that the whole thing is an excellent joke, 
 but unfortunately very few have as keen a sense of humor as you 
 and I. 
 
 Sincerely, 
 (Signed) H. S. Turner. 
 
 Hon. Dan'l S. Taylor, 
 
 Third National Bk. Bldg., 
 St. Louis, Mo. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The following correspondence is fun, pure and simple. There 
 is no malice in it, and as every one knows, there can be no sin 
 without malice. I do not know whether I am a member of the 
 Country Club or not and have no idea of trying to find out by 
 putting in a personal appearance on the grounds of that insti- 
 tution. However, I sent my horse out there, he not being as 
 sensitive, or else more contemptuous than I am, and I received 
 a bill for his board in due course of time, which I have not as yet 
 paid, for clearly if I am not a member I was not entitled to send 
 my horse to the Club's stables, and if I am a member it is 
 through no fault of mine. 
 
 H. S. TURNER, JR. 
 5023 Delmar Boulevard, 
 St. Louis. 
 To The Board of Governors, 
 
 Country Club. 
 Dear Sirs : — 
 
 As a member of the Country Club, I wish to call your attention 
 to the statement made to me by Mr. Benjamin Gratz, in his office, 
 on the ninth day of June last. 
 
 . I went there for the purpose of ascertaining from him, the 
 reason behind your letter of June 6th. He refused to say anything 
 except "We must protect the women of the Country Club." What 
 this had to do with the subject about which I called on him, I do not 
 know, but that it is a vicious, scandalous and false statement, there 
 is no doubt. 
 
 As a member of the Club, and as a man with seven sisters, I 
 submit that Mr. Gratz should withdraw this statement, or be asked 
 to resign from the Club. 
 
 I shall be glad to appear before you in person, should I be re- 
 quired. Yours respectfully, 
 
 (Signed) H. S. Turner. 
 
 H. S. TURNER, JR. 
 5023 Delmar Boulevard. 
 St. Louis. 
 
 Board of Governors, Nov. 23, 1911. 
 
 Country Club, 
 City. 
 Gentlemen :- 
 
 I expect to leave the city to-night to be gone a week, so if you 
 require me to appear before you with regard to my charges against 
 Mr. Gratz, kindly postpone the meeting until my return. 
 
 —65— 
 
I am not in the least surprised that you do not answer my 
 letters ; in fact, I would be surprised if you did, because I know 
 you are advised by the Honorable Daniel G. Taylor. 
 
 I once heard Hon. Daniel G. Taylor express himself on an 
 occasion when the House of Lords of England invited George 
 Bernard Shaw to speak before it, and after that gentleman had made 
 a speech full of wit and common sense, the members of the House 
 of Lords arose in a body and solemnly left the Chamber without an- 
 swering Mr. Shaw. The Honorable Daniel G. Taylor could not 
 conceal his admiration of the insult offered Mr. Shaw, and thought 
 the House of Lords had done a thing of dignity and force. That 
 was the beginning of the end of the House of Lords. To-day it is 
 an extinct volcano, and Mr. Shaw looms up a gigantic figure in the 
 w r orld. So you see I realized from the first what the attitude 
 of the Board of Governors of the Country Club, advised by the 
 Honorable Daniel G. Taylor, would be. If the theory of evolu- 
 tion was the survival of the fattest, I realize that I would have no 
 chance. 
 
 I am very anxious to resign from the Country Club, and do 
 not like to be placed in the position that you have got me into, 
 viz. : that you will not accept my resignation except on terms no 
 man worthy of the name would accept. I assure you that it is 
 very humiliating to me to belong to a Club headed by a man 
 guilty of the statement about womankind that I am prepared to 
 prove Mr. Gratz made. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 (Signed) H. S. Turner. 
 
 H, S. TURNER, JR. 
 5023 Delmar Boulevard, 
 St. Louis. 
 
 Board of Governors, January 17, 1912. 
 
 New St. Louis Country Club. 
 Gentlemen : — 
 
 Some two weeks since I sent a letter of resignation to the New 
 St. Louis Country Club, addressed to Mr. Thomas H. West, Jr., 
 and received no acknowledgment, other than a check for $400. My 
 recollection is that I paid $1000.00 for this stock, and in addition 
 several assessments, but that is not the point I wish to make. 
 
 Your By-Laws state that a resignation is not effective until 
 your board has met and acted on the same, and notified the per- 
 son resigning to that effect. 
 
 I note now that there is a proposition to sell if possible, your 
 present archaic plant and purchase a new site and erect build- 
 ings thereon, no doubt due to my criticism. Inasmuch as the 
 only members capable of financing a thing of this sort have 
 built homes around the present Club house, and their property 
 would be depreciated by the contemplated move, they, in true 
 club spirit, are against it. Therefore, from three to five hun- 
 dred dollars will be assessed against each member. 
 
 —66— 
 
Now I want it distinctly understood that I am not a mem- 
 ber of the New St. Louis Country Club, your By-Laws to the 
 contrary notwithstanding, and if you did not meet and act and 
 notify me, the fault is not mine, and I will not hold myself re- 
 sponsible for this assessment. I do not consider the present 
 mediocre Golf Club worth that amount to me, and, as I do not 
 expect to be in St. Louis two or three years hence, which time it 
 would take to get a new site in running order, I am not inter- 
 ested in the proposition. I also feel that the statement of your 
 President to the effect that the women of the Country Club can- 
 not be trusted, is an additional reason for my lack of interest. 
 
 I not only wrote you repeatedly and put my desire to re- 
 sign in every conceivable form, but allowed my emissary, Mr. 
 Paramore, to meet with you in regard to the subject. He ad- 
 vised me afterwards, that your attitude seemed to be to "Let 
 it drop" or "Say nothing more about it." Now I cannot in jus- 
 tice to myself do this, and shall notify you that under no circum- 
 stances will I continue as a member. 
 
 In view of the fact that I could get no action from your 
 board I had contemplated submitting the matter to the club at 
 large, but that would have resulted no doubt in a request for 
 a resignation of Benjamin Gratz, but as he was never heard of 
 before he was president of your organization and would no 
 doubt sink into complete obscurity if he resigned, and as I bore 
 not the slightest ill-will toward him, I decided that action on my 
 part would not be fair. It is true, of course, that he might be 
 elected President of the Columbian Club on his name alone, but 
 even that is doubtful. 
 
 Please take notice that notwithstanding the personal so- 
 licitation of a Falstaman member of your board, I must decline to 
 longer remain a member of the club. As an outsider, I feel that 
 I am free to take any action that I may see fit, without the 
 slightest grounds for a charge of unclubable conduct. 
 
 With best wishes, I am, 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 (Signed) H. S. Turner. 
 P. S. — Since dictating the above I have learned that the mem- 
 bers owning homes surrounding the club are not in the financial con- 
 dition I imagined, and as I wish to do no injustice, I withdraw the 
 statement. 
 
 —67— 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Mr. Paramore reported to me, after his interview, that 
 Messers. Walker, West, Gratz, et al., complained that I had not 
 asked them to do anything for me ; and there you have the crux 
 of the whole matter. True enough, I had only asked for the 
 reason of their actions, or rather demanded it. I had not, on 
 bended knee, asked that the letter be withdrawn. Imagine me, 
 Harry Turner, asking a Gratz or a Walker or a West tor any- 
 thing! I seem to hear peals of Homeric laughter. These gen- 
 tlemen apparently regard themselves as Deities — "Ask and you 
 shall receive." They wanted to humiliate me, that was all. And 
 that is about all life is, a perpetual struggle on the part of the 
 proletarian to humiliate the aristocrat. He has never succeeded 
 in doing it and he never will, for the true aristocrat vastly pre- 
 fers annihilation, and hence Christian democracy merely means 
 a degenerating standard, until finally the lowest and largest 
 number prevails. The proletarian, by sheer force of numbers, 
 eliminates the aristocrat, and is in turn put out of business by 
 the Jew, who will be superseded by the negro or some other low, 
 anwarlike type. 
 
 The fight between the North and the South was the pro- 
 letarian of the North versus the aristocrat of the South. The 
 Southerners fought better, but were out-numbered. The North 
 was jealous of the brains, breeding, culture and wealth of the 
 South and so made slavery (a purely abstract question) a pre- 
 tended issue, just as though there was not a worse form of 
 slavery existing in the mills of the North in the shape of child 
 labor and wage bondage. The South fought for its property, 
 which it had bought from the Northern slave traders, and then 
 the North started a war to free the negro. It is to laugh. The 
 hell of a lot the North cared about the negro. (Or am I wrong? 
 Did they care more for the black man than they did for their 
 own flesh and blood?) The North wanted to destroy the aris- 
 tocracy of the South and slavery was the catch word used to 
 do it. 
 
 And still the fight goes merrily on. If one is superior 
 mentally, physically, genealogically and financially, he will be 
 overpowered in some other direction by hosts of his inferiors. 
 The usual method is to adopt "morality" as a slogan, just as 
 though the object of morality was not to create just such a type 
 of aristocrat ; or, if the reverse be true, and the superior man by 
 mental, physical, genealogical and financial standards is an im- 
 moralist, then is not "morality" the thing to be questioned and 
 not the superior man? In other words, if so-called immoral men 
 are superior in every other valuation, is it not possible that we 
 have a false concept of "morality," and that the abstraction 
 
 —68— 
 
should be attacked rather than the individual? Mental, physical 
 and financial cripples are "moral" perforce, just as eunuchs are, 
 but is the eunuch a superior being because he is sexless, and is 
 not the creation of the superior man the aim of life? Socrates, 
 the preacher of virtue, was both impotent and hideous to look 
 upon. "Verily, many times have I laughed at those weaklings 
 who think they are good because they have lame paws." Talk 
 of virtue to young men and you encourage solitary vice ; talk of 
 vice to old men and you will stir up yearnings that will cause 
 them to hate you. 
 
 Vice is a monster of so frightful mien 
 As to be hated, needs but to be seen. 
 But seen too oft, familiar with its face, 
 We first endure, then pity, then embrace. 
 
 Did Pope intend to mean that vice improves on ac- 
 quaintance and is not so bad as it appears at first blush? If 
 so, I do not agree with him. I think, however, Pope intended 
 to convey the impression that vice is frightful, but he did not 
 succeed in making himself clear. However, vice is the result of 
 the ideal of virtue, which is an impossible ideal, but are not all 
 ideals impossible and are they not therefore ugly and mis- 
 chevious in that they disparage that which is real and true in 
 favor of that which is false and unattainable, and hence lead to 
 misery and morbidity? 
 
 This was Ibsen's sole idea. All of his works are variations 
 of this one theme. 
 
 That men prefer virtue in a woman, in a physical sense, is 
 not true. Men of means, i. e., free men, seem to lean the other 
 way. The man of the world prefers the woman of the world. To 
 be obsessed with chastity in a woman is to be obsessed with 
 the physical. Virgins often have no souls. How could they? for 
 to extirpate a part of life is to extirpate it all. The man who 
 marries a woman because she is virtuous, loves respectability 
 (i. e., the opinion of others), or licentiousness, more than he 
 does the woman. 
 
 Oh, the amount of misery and death and destruction, I have 
 seen this belief in "morality" cause. How could immorality 
 (i. e., sex relations outside of the sanction of the church) cause 
 suicide, murder, degradation, abortion, social-evil, etc., were it 
 not for a belief in the sanction of the church? And yet a be- 
 lief in the sanction of the church is not as strong and cannot be 
 as strong at the instinct to procreate. How could it be? To be- 
 lieve that it is, is to have cause and effect so fundamentally con- 
 fused that happiness, even contentment, even temporary peace 
 of mind, is impossible. 
 
 And at its best, to what does this belief in "morality" lead? 
 To nothingness, to nihilism, for those who are economically 
 free. Immorality is a compromise between nirvana and love, 
 and so long as love is spat upon in favor of ease or respectability 
 or virtue, so long will immorality be in the ascendancy, as at 
 present. 
 
 —69— 
 
Men preach "morality" (and not o-ne of them is without 
 "sin"), because they wish to convey the impression that they are- 
 chaste, that is, superior, to ordinary mortals. It would be noth- 
 ing more than cheap self-deception, this assumption of superiori- 
 ty and hardly worthy of notice, were it not that this preaching 
 of morality by whited sepulchers deceives fine, pure, strong, 
 sincere, passionate natures (to whom chastity is terribly difficult, 
 if not impossible) into a belief in their own unworthiness, often 
 causing them to become misanthropes, even suicides. Cheap., 
 paltry people, to whom deceit is second nature, and to whom 
 passion is merely curiosity, manage very nicely. To judge men 
 by moral law, which is an artificial standard invented by the 
 weak, impotent and degenerate herd in order to overpower the 
 strong, free, life-giving individual, is to reverse the true purpose 
 of life. 
 
 The object of baseball is not to amuse, nor to make money ? 
 it is to produce a Ty Cobb. The object of life is the same in a 
 biological and world sense. If virtue interferes with this pur- 
 pose, away with it. If vice interferes with it, down with vice. 
 At this stage of civilization, the stronger men are being de- 
 stroyed by hosts of gnats who call themselves "moralists," and 
 hence it were better to give "immorality" value in order to cir- 
 cumvent them. When virtue per se becomes desirable, the way 
 to restore it will be to forbid it. Truly virtuous people, in the 
 Roman sense, i. e., the strong .and free and fearless, are invaria- 
 bly attracted toward that which is forbidden. If it be desirable, 
 to encourage exceptional men and women toward certain ac- 
 tions, forbid those actions. Exceptional men and women have 
 no fear and the forbidden to them has untold fascinations. 
 This all psychologists know. As Wilde puts it: "Women should 
 be happier than men — so much more is forbidden them." 
 
 If virtue were forbidden by the bourgeoisie, and the penalty 
 for it were death, I might perhaps become so virtuous, that com- 
 pared to me Caesar's wife would have been a Cleopatra. 
 
 I Love Christ and Machiavel, Nietzsche and the Pope, Mary 
 Magdalene and The Virgin Mary, God and the convict, my 
 Father and myself. I hate the Bourgeoisie. 
 
 When we no longer believe in God, as at present, we must 
 believe in men, but when men are all equal, theoretically, as in a 
 democracy, that is impossible ; so logically as night the day, 
 nihilism follows ; and after that, the discovery that men are not 
 equal, which means the end of the theory of democracy (even 
 Christianity). The discovery that one great individual is worth 
 numberless thousands of mediocre men is the beginning of the 
 rennaissance — of the pyramid — with the aristocratic thinker and 
 poet at the top, the slave at the bottom and all the varying ranks 
 in proper position between, which is the natural order of 
 society. 
 
 Only the aristocrat is fit to govern, in that he understands 
 and sympathizes with all classes, because he has in him the 
 blood and traditions of all classes. The proletarian cannot un- 
 
 —70— 
 
derstand the aristocrat, because the latter is on higher ground 
 and has a larger vision. One can remember what one has been, 
 even generations before, but only philosophers can vizualize 
 what they are becoming. Woodrow Wilson is a ruler. How 
 •clever of him to allow Bryan, of the Bourgeoise (the fish out 
 of water at present), to have his own way. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 There was some additional Country Club correspondence 
 which I seem to have mislaid, It was not important ; in fact 
 none of it was important, save as a rack on which to hang some 
 of my pet theories, also some of Nietzsche's, or perhaps it would 
 be better to say, furnished tangible evidence of the correctness of 
 those theories. This lost correspondence consisted of a sweet 
 letter from Gratz, in which he expressed kindly feelings tor me 
 and hoped that I would make of myself "a decent, reliable and 
 respectable citizen." I replied to him in a proper spirit of hu- 
 mility, such as one should adopt toward one's Saviour, and ex- 
 plained that he should have added the words "like me"— after 
 "citizen" — also ; that I had no desire to be a "fellow citizen" at 
 all. Afterwards I sent the file of correspondence to a friend 
 in St. Louis. He returned it with a note somewhat as follows : 
 ■"Interesting, but what a waste of good brain stuff, what a cast- 
 ing of pearls before swine. You must conserve yourself for big- 
 ger things." 
 
 Of course he was right, in a sense, but I could see no reason 
 why I should not continue to amuse myself at the Country 
 Club's expense, so long as I saw fit, and really nothing is 
 wasted — it can't be; and so I wrote this book at odd moments. 
 Intellectual fun is the only kind in which one may indulge in a 
 democracy without making oneself liable to arrest, and even then 
 he isn't safe, but of all monotonous things a feeling of safety is 
 the quintessence. Whenever I hear a man pleading for "love" 
 and "justice" and "peace," I know he's a he-woman, a non- 
 entity, a decadent. Love should never be spoken of. It is too 
 delicate a thing to handle. To mention it vulgarizes it. One 
 should live dangerously. To try to live safely is not to live at 
 all. Only he who is forever trying to make himself safe is 
 always in a state of fear, and nothing in this world is as bad as 
 the fear of it. As for "justice," I doubt if God Himself knows 
 what it is, but that all men are entitled to the same treatment, it is 
 surely not. 
 
 —71— 
 
I think the club was right in requesting my resignation. 
 That we secured a divorce was a good thing for both of us. 
 For them to not state the reason, however, was an unnecessary 
 attempt to be vindictive. The club bored me, and I bored the 
 club, in that I did not always allow the members to enjoy that 
 smug complacency, which is the ultima Thule of the Pharisee. If 
 one wishes the peace of the Walt Whitmann cow, one must expect 
 to be milked. 
 
 In all of my knocking about the world, from one coast to 
 another, and from one country to another, and among all sorts 
 and conditions of people, I have observed that invariably where 
 money is concerned men are treacherous, but that, I have always 
 held, is the system's fault and not the men's, and hence is to be 
 accepted as a fact, and in no way enters into the realm of psy- 
 chology. This case, however, is one in which all of the usual mo- 
 tives are lacking, and it remained for me to discover the motive, 
 and thus add my little bit to philosophy. It is geographical, 
 too, in a way. It could not have occurred in any other than a 
 provincial community. But as Nat Goodwin, the actor (though 
 better known as the husband of his country), once remarked to 
 me anent an unfair criticism : "You have to go to St. Louis to 
 discover that you're rotten." 
 
 "Oh, pshaw, Nat," I replied, "it is better, as Caesar says, to 
 be first in a village than second in Rome." 
 
 But Nat wouldn't let it pass. "If you're first in St. Louis 
 you'll be last in Rome or anywhere else," he said, and then added 
 in his dry way, "that is, if you hustle." 
 
 We hear St. Louis criticised from the standpoint of climate. 
 That isn't the trouble, for its climate is no worse than that of 
 other cities, and, besides, hear what Samuel Johnson says of cli- 
 mate. Boswell is speaking: 
 
 "I mentioned a friend of mine who had resided long in 
 Spain and was unwilling to return to Britain." Johnson : 
 "Sir, he is attached to some woman." Boswell : "I rather be- 
 lieve, sir, it is the fine climate which keeps him there." John- 
 son : "Nay, sir, how can you talk so? What is climate to hap- 
 piness? What proportion does climate bear to the complex 
 system of human life? You may advise me to go to Bologna 
 and live that I may eat sausages. The sausages there are the 
 best in the world ; they lose much by being carried." 
 
 Not long since I met John Drew, the actor, on the street 
 in New York. "Look here, Turner," he said, "I've been re- 
 ceiving most insulting letters from a collecting agency in St. 
 Louis about a bill for automobile hire. Now, I never hired an 
 automobile from anyone but you out there, and I think I paid 
 before I left. Don't think, however," he added, "that is why I 
 didn't go to St. Louis this year." 
 
 "Give me the ten, John," I said, "and refer the collecting 
 agency to me." 
 
 He did so, and then joined me at lunch and the money wa? 
 exchanged for a broiled pompano, a roasted duck and a bottle 
 
 —72— 
 
of Chamber-tin. "Why don't you come to St. Louis any more, 
 we miss you?" I asked. 
 
 "Shhhh," he answered with his finger to his lips, "one 
 should never go where one is not wanted, and you," he continued, 
 "you don't seem to stay there much!" 
 
 "Shhhh," I said, with my fingers to my lips, "one should 
 not ," but he understood without my finishing the sentence. 
 
 There is no real reason why St. Louis should be a pariah 
 among cities any longer ; she might as well get over her grouch 
 and smile and be pleasant like other places. What she needs 
 is not Carnegie libraries and free bridges ; she needs one or two 
 devoted admirers who can sense her hidden charms, and whose 
 intentions are honorable, to move around among her people — 
 all of her people, from chauffeurs to captains of industry, and 
 from working girls to the socially elect, and from the south 
 side to the north side, and inject into them a get-together spirit, 
 so that they all (including the Board of Governors of the Coun- 
 try Club — I would not ostracize anyone) may come to a better 
 understanding, and make a religion of the words Saint Louis. 
 
 Oh, for a great, purifying holocaust of the dead district. 
 After the sacrifice we could permit the English insurance com- 
 panies, under the direction of Tom Barnett and Bill Crowell, to 
 build for us the American Athens, and an Athens needs no 
 B. M. L. nor City Club to advertise it. 
 
 When I said in an earlier paragraph that I was not re- 
 ligious, I, of course, meant in an orthodox way. Everyone is 
 religious in his way. A man could not be a waiter unless he 
 made a sort of religion of being a waiter. St. Louis is long on 
 solid citizens, meaning a man who pays his bills on the first of 
 the month, or would if he ran any bills, and does absolutely 
 nothing else. St. Louis on the other hand is short on dilletantes 
 and court jesters like myself, and be it remembered that no one 
 but the court jester may tell the king the truth. If the solid 
 citizens were really clever they'd endow me on condition that 
 I never leave the city limits. But permit me to say that I will 
 not accept a contract with the city unless it is endorsed by 
 Tom Randolph, Russell Gardner and Jack Thompson, and yet 
 Thos. H. West, of the Frisco Railroad, says that I am not a good 
 business man. He must have overlooked the fact that I have 
 traded St. Louis for New York, even. He has never made as 
 good a bargain as that, I am sure, unless the Frisco receivership 
 should turn out to be one. 
 
 What Goodwin said at that time was as true as any statement 
 ever is. But St. Louis has changed since then and for the bet- 
 ter. After the World's Fair it fell into the hands of the Philis- 
 tines, headed by a misguided, narrow-visioned fanatic in the per- 
 son of Joseph W. Folk, and it has been sick, very sick, ever 
 since, but it is now convalescent. One standing off and look- 
 ing at it from a distance can see that it is improving: perhaps 
 not commercially, but for St. Louis to be ambitious commercially 
 (in comparison with Chicago or New York), would be as if I 
 
 —73— 
 
Were to tfy and compete with the Steel Trust in the matter e>f 
 making money. St. Louis is destined to be the center of art, 
 culture and literature of the United States. It is to be a city 
 of tine homes and line people, with ideals above the Business 
 Men's League. It has produced three poets who have at- 
 tracted attention as far away as London. I refer to Orrick 
 Johns, Zoe Akins and Sara Teasdale. William Marion Reedy is 
 looked upon as one of America's great critics in literary circles ; 
 Augustus Thomas is constantly referred to as our greatest play- 
 wright. (Sad, but true.) Pulitzer was the greatest journalist 
 the world has known ; Clark McAdams is a more reliable and 
 sweeter humorist than Mark Twain, and the St. Louis woman 
 stands out as a splendid creature wherever one finds her. 
 
 There must be some quality about the Mississippi River which 
 sweetens men, for it has produced a M'cAdams and a Clemens, and 
 there, too, is Henry Turner, of Ellistoun, on the bluffs overlook- 
 ing the junction of the Missouri and the Mississippi. He, also, 
 is a poetic dreamer. He, too, seems to have absorbed some of 
 the repose and sweetness, tenderness and strength which the 
 great stream seems to communicate to her lovers. To have 
 never heard his merry, musical, explosive laughter, to have 
 missed its tonic quality, is to have been robbed of one of the real 
 joys of life. 
 
 I wonder if all seriousness is not physiological or rather 
 pathological. There is some connection between an over-seri- 
 ous mind and a sick body, but here is a question of cause and 
 effect that is too much for me. I can find no starting-point — 
 no thing to grip in endeavoring to determine whether ill-health 
 causes seriousness or seriousness causes ill-health. There are 
 certain diseases, of course, which cause a sense of gaiety, a feeling 
 of optimism — locomotor ataxia for instance — but they are dis- 
 eases of the brain. I am rather inclined to the opinion that a 
 fixed idea, causing one to be over-serious for long periods will 
 produce a pathological condition physiologically. Mere guess- 
 work, however. I have never been serious for a long enough 
 period to damage my own health, nor do I intend to be in the 
 cause of science. Instead I have purchased a cruising-cabin 
 boat and will spend the winter on the bosom of the mother of 
 waters somewhere between St. Louis and the Gulf, in an effort 
 to absorb some of the quality of insouiciance which she seems 
 to dispense to those whom she nurses. 
 
 — ?4— 
 
CHAPTER XVIL 
 
 I am an optimist against my will. I wish to be a pessimist, 
 for a pessimist can have no disappointments, but I cannot repress 
 my feeling of optimism. The world is hell-bent toward nihil- 
 ism, which is a condition of no ideals, no beliefs, absolute skep- 
 ticism — in short, decadence (Omar Kyamism — witness the increased 
 use of alcohol per capita) ; a condition through which the 
 world must pass, before it experiences another great ascending, 
 healthy, exuberant period. Everything points to the conclusion 
 that we are on the eve of violent and fundamental changes in 
 valuations, particularly moral valuations. The decline of the in- 
 fluence of the church is a healthy sign. It indicates ultimate 
 world improvement, a higher morality. We dare to live now 
 for this world. We no longer require the promise of another 
 existence in order to bear this one. Skepticism is always a sign 
 of convalescence. To be not afraid to question, indicates good 
 spirits. Faith (the will to believe that which we know is not 
 true) is degeneracy ; weariness, the desire to place the responsi- 
 bility on someone else. If one claims to have faith in me, I un- 
 derstand the meaning of that. It is that he believes I have 
 something to give away, something for nothing, and he is willing 
 to take something for nothing, which is a characteristic of the 
 descending man. 
 
 In a democracy, which is only incipient nihilism, all one 
 has to do to gain distinction is to remain quiet, to not degener- 
 ate, which is perhaps the better plan, for if he exerts himself to 
 ascend in a decadent period, he will go so high that he cannot 
 be seen. The higher one soars the smaller he appears to those 
 who cannot fly. In an age such as this, one must be contemptu- 
 ous of the mob that he may not lose confidence in himself and go 
 with it. 
 
 During Nietzsche's life, for instance, only the soles of his 
 feet were visible to the next highest man. Now even an editor 
 can see to his shoe tops and hence imagines that he is all feet ; 
 still that is "progress." He who ascends to the point where 
 Nietzsche can be looked squarely in the eye, will surpass him. 
 Even Nietzsche will be surpassed, but it will require centuries to 
 accomplish it. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 One should talk and act as one feels — nothing else matters.. 
 It is a short cut to one's goal. If one feels right, so much the 
 better. If one feels wrong, so much the quicker is he out of his 
 misery. 
 
 There was a period when I was lacerated by sympathy for 
 the poor and disinherited, and realizing that charity was not 
 only beyond my means, but that it was fundamentally a false 
 palliative, inasmuch as anyone could see that it was like mop- 
 ping up the bath room floor but neglecting to turn off the spigot, 
 (an observation for the blind), I took up sociology with all my en- 
 thusiasm. I ran the gamut of ''isms," and the more I saw of them, 
 the more skeptical I became of all systems. There is no funda- 
 mental difference in them ; no one '"ism" is better than another, 
 although some are far more plausible than others. The only 
 scheme that will help the helpless, even temporarily, is to en- 
 large the earth, and that being impractical, the survival of the 
 fittest theory becomes more and more apparently correct. Who 
 are the fit? Why, those who survive under conditions as they 
 are, and will be for sometime to come. No other answer is pos- 
 sible. The survival of the fittest, by some secret standard of 
 nature's, seems to be the plan, and no one can change it, no, not 
 even a Dr. Parkhurst or a Gratz. 
 
 "Free the land," says Henry George (whose "ism" is the 
 most rational of them all which is why I concern myself with 
 it). To what end please? That it may be occupied by the 
 hovels of hosts of the unfit, i. e., those who cannot survive un- 
 less the land is freed — those who will breed like rabbits so long 
 as they have an inch to stand on? I admit Mr. George's solu- 
 tion postpones the trouble, but only to make the problem larger 
 in the end. Surely it solves nothing. 
 
 He insists that land held out of use is at the bottom of all 
 of our ills, and yet the only land that is beautiful to contem- 
 plate is that held out of use. That in use cannot be seen, be- 
 cause it is covered with breweries, saloons, slums and other 
 hideosities. Wheat fields and grazing lands are held out of use, 
 according to George. It is not strange that his vision was lim- 
 ited. Plow could a printer-proletarian evolve a scheme for any 
 class other than his own? Those possessing the foresight, the pa- 
 tience, the will to be alone — in short, a philosophy of life — are the 
 only ones who can own land. 
 
 All of the "isms" are the result of what Nietzsche calls the 
 "herding instinct" of the proletarian — the instinct to crowd together 
 under one banner or another temporarily in order to overthrow 
 the strong individual, or perhaps to test his strength. If I 
 
 —76— 
 
fall before the herd, of whom I have become quite contemptu- 
 ous, let me go, say I. It is my destiny. I am not strong enough, 
 but if the herd is held in check by one man, no matter how he 
 does it, I'll make my best obeisance to him. He is what we have 
 been searching for, a real leader, sans a banner or an "ism" ; in 
 short, the higher type of man. 
 
 Sooner or later the weak and degenerate must be crowded 
 oft the earth, and without the assistance of the Eugenists either. 
 To free the land is to prolong the disease and permit it to spread, 
 and in the end make the matter more difficult to handle. 
 
 Of course, if one observes all of the laws he will perish, 
 which is just as it should be, for if one has not sufficient mental- 
 ity to see that the laws regulating personal conduct are made by 
 the proletariat ostensibly to protect the weak, but, in reality, to 
 destroy the strong, then he does not deserve to exist. All laws, 
 save property laws, and those preservative of life, are based on 
 the theory of the survival of the unfit, that is to say, the law- 
 makers really believe that is their theory, because they are in- 
 capable of analyzing their own motives. The fact is that they, 
 the lawmakers, crave power over the strong, and unconsciously, 
 perhaps, use this method to obtain it. 
 
 In all the u isms" one hears much of the ''big sob" about 
 property being placed ahead of men. Property should be placed 
 ahead of men. There is only a fixed amount of property. Most 
 men do not know how to do anything else than reproduce them- 
 selves. Births can and should be prevented, but the sum total 
 of land cannot be increased. Men exist for the purpose of serving 
 the world (and one higher type of man serves it better than mil- 
 lions of a lower caste). The world does not exist in order to 
 serve man. That conventional idea is merely his childish 
 egotism. The satisfaction of men who have done great work 
 is not translatable into ordinary language, which average men 
 can understand. The supermen have a feeling of partnership 
 with Xature herself, of serving her ends and being served by 
 her in return. Their reward is an indescribable sense of power 
 therefrom, although to the average man, they appear alone and 
 deserted and merely eccentric. It is w r ell that they do usually 
 appear thus during their lives, for if the mob knew, it would 
 crucify them. , 
 
 There is one way and one only, you sentimentalists and 
 underhanded cravers after power, you sneakers under the tent, 
 that you can make the last man equal to property and that is 
 by making him property, i. e., a slave ; and to be freed of eco- 
 nomic responsibility — the necessity for thought — is a desideratum 
 for the slave type of man. 
 
 Whether it be right or Avrong, judged by some abstract 
 standard, the aristocracy of the future, the rulers of the world, 
 will be the land owners. Only the land owner can fit himself to 
 rule, for he is the only one who has real leisure and true power 
 and thus can afford to be generous and sympathetic. Investment 
 in commercial undertakings, subject to strikes and always 
 
 —77— 
 
dependent on management and legislation, is not, in a real sense, 
 property at all. Land can be forg-otten and still it increases in 
 value, so that the normally acquisitive man (and all men are 
 acquisitive in some degree) is satisfied, and can devote himself 
 to the study of government literature and the arts. In short, he 
 can perfect himself, and for his living from the community, make 
 himself valuable to the community. 
 
 Private land ownership is the only check on population. 
 It is to the interest of the mill-owner and the mill-laborer that 
 as many be born as possible. No matter how feeble, each child 
 is an asset, so long as child-labor is permitted. The land owner 
 must have population to give value to his land, but it must be a 
 healthy population, able and inclined to till the soil, from which 
 springs the finer men and women. The land owner does not 
 use up human material, he strengthens and develops it, not that 
 he is a philanthropist, but because it is to his interest, and to 
 expect human nature to be disinterested is not to comprehend 
 it. God deliver me from a so-called disinterested man. To find 
 out another's real interest, is half of the fun of the game of life. 
 It is to discover the weak spot — the Achilles heel — of the holy 
 hypocrite. 
 
 Labor is no doubt noble, still everyone wishes to escape it. 
 The Georgian idea is based on the theory that no one should be 
 allowed to escape it, that one by his own efforts must not endeav- 
 or to free himself from the necessity for labor, and that he must 
 see to it that those who have fought or worked themselves free 
 are put back into bondage. The fact is that there is no freedom 
 save to own land or to be an artist. Everything else requires 
 more labor than it is really worth. George would place the 
 courageous, independent-minded pioneers who risked life itself 
 in unknown dangers (in order to escape civilization and acquire 
 land) on the same footing with the jackals who followed the 
 commissary wagon. 
 
 It would be as fair to say that one who repeated the fore- 
 going, without placing it between quotation marks, was my 
 equal, for I am an intellectual pioneer. 
 
 And why shouldn't industry be taxed? Is industry, com- 
 pelled by necessity from the outside, or inability to be calm from 
 the inside, the end of existence? Is it even superior to idleness? 
 To be able to be idle indicates a philosophical temperament, and 
 the philosopher is the true creator of all values. The more a 
 busy man is taxed, the busier he will be. The more honey you 
 take away from bees, the more they will produce. It is the 
 raison d'etre of the bee. As long as there is no honey in the 
 hive, the bee will continue to produce it. He is not a philosopher ; 
 he is a bee. The ability to be idle cannot be taxed. It is an 
 inherent quality, and therefore superior, for idlers are allies of 
 Nature. One might as well speak of taxing the lilies of the field. 
 
 And what do these prodigious laborers bring forth? Usually 
 a mouse. I am weary of hearing of the number of hours Edison 
 works each day. What he has done seems to me of relatively 
 
 —78— 
 
no importance. I would not give up any one of the great poets 
 or philosophers for electric light. If it came to the point, I 
 should choose the tallow dip and the poets, rather than electric 
 light and the New York Journal. The busy man has no time for 
 thought. That is why he is so busy. 
 
 If it is not more important to be than to do ; if doing does 
 not lead to being, then what is the purpose of action? 
 
 Marxism, Socialism, Anarchism. Communism and Syndi- 
 calism are merely nauseating, but Georgism is subtle and 
 poisonous because so passionately sincere and so perfectly log- 
 ical, if its false premise be accepted. Accept the premise that 
 all of humanity should and wishes to labor and that the world is 
 elastic, and Single Tax is inescapable. Eliminate aristocracy, 
 art, literature, beauty and human nature and substitute labor 
 and a limitless world, and you will be perforce a Single Taxer. 
 Even assume that slavery is wrong, that is slavery by any other 
 name, such as one man employing another to work for him 
 because of the latter s need, and you will probably be a convert 
 to Single Tax. 
 
 Georgism strikes at the very roots (to be somewhat plat- 
 itudinous), of our social system, and yet suggests no better one. 
 It is potentially more dangerous than a million McNamaras 
 would be, for it is unanswerable to the man in the street to whom 
 a world view is impossible. Land ownership is the last fortress 
 of the present order. Our governing class had best forget 
 "white slavery" and other vagaries of the minds of naif legis- 
 lators. "We had best get over the peculiarly American notion 
 that vice is crime. We had best conserve the energy spent on 
 preventing "'spooning''' in the parks and turn our attention to 
 Georgism, before Ave discover that the fox lias run awav with 
 the cheese, and that we have been despoiled of our birthrights, 
 while we argued over non-essentials. The light against labor has 
 been lost. Let us forget that and beat Georgism into a pulp. 
 
 Imagine the LTiited States as a small island rather than a 
 large one and attempt to apply Single Tax. Eor instance, there 
 is a city, let us say. in the centre of the island, and the land sur- 
 rounding it is taxed on its value, created by the increasing pop- 
 ulation of the city. This would cause the holders of the propertv 
 to erect structures thereon in order to prevent its confiscation 
 by taxation. Of course the effect of this would be to bring into 
 the tax zone the next surrounding area of land, and it would have 
 to be built upon, thus creating additional value — compounding 
 it so to speak. Labor would be in great demand, so that the 
 more children born the merrier. In fact it would be a A'eritable 
 proletariat org}'. But the question naturally arises, how long 
 would it be before the island was completely covered with struc- 
 tures to the water's edge (an ideal condition from a Georgian or 
 labor point of view), and how long after that before a real bat- 
 tle at close quarters would take place to determine who were fit 
 and consequently were to survive? Xo doubt history would re- 
 peat itself. The true ruling class, temporarily dethroned, i. e.. 
 
the aristocratic thinkers, would have foreseen the result and 
 prepared against it. They would have cornered the market on 
 the sinews of war and would destroy all of the proletariat whom 
 they did not overpower, and after that, until another Henry 
 George sprang up, life would be life once more and cease to be an 
 "ism." 
 
 And yet Single Tax stands at the top in the realm of economics, 
 which Carlyle has called "the dismal science," though it isn't a 
 science at all. Fortunately for us, Georgism has taken hold in 
 England, which happens to be a small island, and it is possible it 
 may be exploded on the other side of the water before it becomes 
 a fact on this side. There isn't an "ism" so far invented that is 
 worth a shovelful of ashes. Men who desire to herd together 
 under a banner, reveal by that very token their lack of anything 
 approaching a ruler instinct. Rulers are lonely, solitary men 
 and silent. 
 
 It would be cruel to teach the proletarian the meaning of 
 futurism in art. Why tell him that the immediate future is 
 chaos, nihilism, and thus rob ourselves of the honey he produces 
 and himself of his raison d'etre? Rather let him think that he 
 is overcoming us. It keeps him cheery while he works, just as 
 roustabouts chant hymns about another world while they carry 
 bales of cotton. Why should anything be accelerated or re- 
 tarded? Life is nothing but life, and none of us is God. 
 
 Nowadays in our Christian democracy, when the ruling class 
 wants anything, it is called "class legislation," but single tax, 
 which is labor legislation, is all right of course. All legislation 
 is class legislation. How could it be otherwise? Life is not a 
 Sunday School picnic, held for the purpose of pinning a blue rib- 
 bon on the most virtuous maiden in the village. Life is a battle 
 from start to finish, which it should be for men. I hate to see 
 women in it, but when men have degenerated as at present, and 
 women have surpassed them, the women must take up the fight. 
 They will get the vote, use it until they have straightened things 
 out for themselves and then forget all about voting. Votes for 
 women means that women want to be heard. When they have 
 said their say, I believe we men will see their point, agree to it, 
 and women will thereafter gradually cease to become a factor in 
 government. 
 
 Life, it seems safe to say, will always be a struggle between 
 classes and between individuals, a never-ending, strengthening 
 struggle for power. Show me a man who does not desire the 
 feeling of power that comes with knowledge or self-development 
 — either physical or mental, and I will show you a decadent or a 
 'possum. It is not the business of men to legislate for the weak. 
 Conservation of the race is woman's sole concern. She has an 
 instinct for the fit. A true woman will sacrifice home, honor, 
 ease, and all the other knick-knacks, for love, i. e., for the oppor- 
 tunity to mate with the higher type of man, by natural standards, 
 in order that she may produce something still higher. All of the 
 laws and punishments that mediocre men can invent in the name 
 
 —80— 
 
of "morality" will not deflect Madame Nature from her ultimate 
 purpose one inch, which purpose is the higher man. Single tax 
 which attempts to arbitrarily place labor higher than things so 
 high that labor cannot see them, is contrary to the scheme of 
 things. All laws which attempt to regulate conduct are reac- 
 tionary. The owners of the land are the owners of the world, 
 and the owners of the world will rule it sooner or later, as they 
 have done in former times. 
 
 I am familiar with life in most of the capitals of the world. 
 Undoubtedly there are great numbers in distress, but nothing in 
 comparison to the number of "representatives" of those in dis- 
 tress. The number of the latter, i. e., single taxers, preachers, 
 journalists, novelists, moralists and philanthropists is appalling. 
 I always deal with principals. 
 
 There is nothing in sociology. It was sociology that pro- 
 duced the frame of mind responsible for the following verse. If 
 sociology has ever produced anything more than an unpleasant 
 mood, I have been unable to discover it. What follows is, of 
 course, morbid and anything that causes morbidity must be 
 not even useless, which is my opinion of the efficacy of sociology. 
 I must have been reading Henry George on the early morning 
 on which I gave birth to this jeremiade : 
 
 "Sweet, silent night, you'll soon be gone, 
 For in the East I see the dawn, 
 Which presages the shameful day, 
 
 The garish sun, the clanging car, 
 The slowly fading morning star, 
 The prelude to the tragic play. 
 
 With hunted eyes, cheeks painted red, 
 The weary harlot seeks her bed, 
 Thrice o'er she's earned her pay. 
 
 I hear the whistles, loud and shrill, 
 Those summons to the shop and mill, 
 They starve who disobey. 
 
 And now the cosmic hippodrome 
 Will take its toll from every home, 
 The children from their play. 
 
 I hear the tread of many feet 
 That hurry ever on to meet 
 The merciless beasts of prey. 
 
 Each sweat shop, with its poisoned air, 
 Each store and mill will take its share 
 Of human toil and shame. 
 
 —81— 
 
That in the church across the way, 
 The parasites may preach and pray 
 In the Lord Jesus' Name, 
 
 That you, my mistress, sleeping there, 
 May jewels, silks and satins wear. 
 Ah, God, a stupid game. 
 
 To speak overmuch at this time is not to know. To know 
 is not to speak. Writers nowadays are not teachers; they are 
 pupils. I am a human question mark. I desire to be refuted. I 
 would not wish to be dumb, but I would like to possess, in 
 greater degree, the power to be silent. It is useless to talk to 
 will-less decadents. I know a woman who has been beaten, 
 crushed, caluminated, outlawed, and yet, except when she is gay, 
 she is as silent as the sphinx, which is why I admire her. She 
 is on higher ground, which means that she is deeper, than I am. 
 When I have learned to be silent (when I am not gay), I too, 
 shall have mastered life. We must love that which is both higher 
 and deeper than ourselves. Cheer up, you lonely ones, you finer 
 men and women, your day, or that of your children, is not so far 
 distant. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 But about the Country Club. Even my real friends would say 
 nothing, would gaze into space, and assume a look of patient 
 skepticism, when I iterated that I did not know the cause of the 
 Board's action. I do not blame my friends. I should have to 
 know a man's character very well, before I could believe that a 
 body of so-called respectable men had, without cause, done such 
 a thing to him. It is not reasonable. It is anything but plausi- 
 ble, and yet there it stands, an incontrovertible fact that Daniel 
 G. Taylor, an attorney in the Third National Bank Building, who 
 has dined at my table more than once, and at my father's house 
 too often to enumerate (and it is no small matter to feed Taylor) ; 
 that Benjamin Gratz, a merchant, I believe, but comparatively 
 a stranger to me ; Geo. D. Markham, an insurance ag-ent, and a 
 casual acquaintance, and one-time competitor ; Harry Potter, a 
 bond broker's clerk, whom I had regarded as a tentative sort of 
 friend; Thomas H. West, Jr., a clerk in the St. Louis Union 
 Trust Company, with whom I was on more or less familiar 
 terms ; George P. Doan, a commission merchant, whom I had 
 known pleasantly for years, and G. H. Walker, a stock broker, 
 did sit around that board, and did knife me in the back, out of 
 pure deviltry, so far as I can learn from any fact which they 
 have put in my possession. 
 
 It is possible that Taylor may have been the instigator of 
 this farce comedy. He prides himself on his Machiavelian quali- 
 ties, viz., his embrace is dangerous. If he could care as much for 
 some one else as he does for Taylor, the romance of Paul and 
 Virginia would appear as a vulgar liason. He is quite capable 
 of wishing to undo me, but I think lacked the necessary power. 
 
 Far be it from me to criticise the Honorable Taylor, or for 
 that matter Michiavelianism, for I am aware that Macaulay has 
 written an able defense of that doctrine, holding that in an age 
 when underhandedness was the custom and deemed the quin- 
 tessence of cleverness, that Machiaveli was a superior man ; I 
 merely maintain that "it is not being done this season" — that the 
 fine Italian hand was entitled to be admired in its day perhaps — 
 but that the Honorable Taylor is distinctly out of fashion. 
 
 Markham? No, he'd be afraid to send a letter like that 
 through the mails, without consulting his attorney. 
 
 Doan? A perfect lady, with all the airs and graces of the 
 sterner sex; who would never take the initiative in anything un- 
 less it were to run, if we happened to meet on the street. 
 
 Thos. H. West, Jr.? A good-natured son of his father, who 
 has troubles of his own. No. it wasn't Tom. 
 
 Gratz? Ne\~er. A kind-hearted old simpleton, who not 
 only doesn't know anything, he doesn't even suspect anything. 
 
 —83— 
 
While he paid an absurdly high price for the presidency of the 
 Country Club, and would like to get his money's worth by in- 
 sulting his superiors from behind that bulwark, the original let- 
 ter bore traces of education, and that lets Gratz out. 
 
 Walker? A great financier among Parsifals, and a Parsifal 
 among financiers, but no Parsifal at his more serious occupa- 
 tions, bridge and poker. I place a ( ?) here, notwithstanding his 
 denials, for I find I am puzzled in trying to explain to myself 
 why he sent me the message by Benoist, and why he made a 
 proposition to withdraw the original letter if I would resign. 
 Why was he so desirous of my elimination? A plain denial by 
 him does not satisfy my reason, although I am quite sure he is 
 a man of the highest integrity. However, tell me the sort of 
 stories a man enjoys — the kind of humor he appreciates — and I 
 can tell you what that man is. Walker, for instance, has a story 
 which I have heard him recite numerous times with great glee. 
 To him it seems to embody all there is of wit and quaint humor. 
 He tells it as having happened to a certain great financier and 
 high official in the Rock Island Railway. It is about as follows : 
 
 The certain financier was dining one evening when the but- 
 ler announced a caller, who was shown in. He proved to be an 
 old friend of the millionaire's in his less prosperous days, and told 
 a story of hard luck — a big family and starving children. The 
 millionaire listened attentively to his story, occasionally wiping 
 a tear away, and when the caller had finished his recital, turned 
 to the butler. "Show him out, Smithers," he said, "he's break- 
 ing my heart." 
 
 As a matter of fact the story originated with the diabolical 
 La Rochefoucauld and his valet, but can be made to apply to any 
 rich man, although it seems to me libelous if not credited to its 
 proper origin. 
 
 I never see Walker with his friends but that I am re^ 
 minded of what a certain Irish poet and philosopher said when 
 he was asked if he was a friend of Bernard Shaw's. "Shaw," 
 replied the scape-goat of the English aristocracy, "Why he hasn't 
 an enemy in the world," and then he added thoughtfully, "but 
 his friends don't like him." 
 
 My goodness, I nearly forgot Potter. He is always being 
 forgotten. Pardon me, Harry. No, it was not you. 
 
 It has been suggested by a person not directly connected 
 with the Board, that a woman scorned was at the bottom of the 
 matter, but that shows a failure to comprehend my temperament. 
 I, Gargantua Turner, the rake and roue, scorn a woman. The 
 idea is preposterous. 
 
 If I may be pardoned the redundancy, I wish to emphasize 
 the point that it is the psychological question involved in this 
 case that interests me. Why was the letter written, is a ques- 
 tion that will not down in my mind. I am so constituted that I 
 must find a solution to my queries, if I would sleep or eat, and 
 to those that are insoluble from any facts at hand, I can only 
 apply my reasoning powers. In this instance I am refused data, 
 
 —84— 
 
therefore I can only speculate. It is a mystery that perhaps will 
 never be solved, but in my own mind, I have settled it, and in- 
 tend to think no more about it, when I have finished this bit of 
 typewriting and handed it to the publisher. 
 
 If the original letter had been framed as follows, all this 
 would have been avoided and I should have had the usual dull 
 summer. Had the Secretary of the Board of Governors of the 
 New St. Louis Country Club been as honest and fearless as he 
 was ambitious and cowardly, he would have written this sort of 
 a letter, in place of the one he did write : 
 
 ''Dear Mr. Turner: 
 
 ''There is a member of this Board who is insanely jealous of 
 you. We think without reason. However, he has quite a lit- 
 tle influence over our financial destinies, and insists that we re- 
 quest your resignation. We regret the necessity for it, but as 
 you can see we are helpless. If you will resign, it will relieve 
 us all of much embarrassment." 
 
 To which I should have replied : 
 "Gentlemen : 
 
 *'My resignation hereby. 
 
 "Please assure your member that his jealousy is unfounded, 
 although he pays my reputation as a connossieur of femininity 
 a most subtle compliment." 
 
 And there the matter would have ended and I would have 
 had little or nothing to occupy me and might have even gotten 
 into mischief, who knows? As it is I am indebted to the Board 
 of Governors of the Country Club for the only intelligent answer 
 I received to my article called, "W^hat Shall I Do?" but still the 
 struggle of the proletarian to humiliate the aristocrat goes mer- 
 rily on. 
 
 While there is no intention on my part to point a moral and 
 adorn a tale in this instance, I cannot refrain from calling atten- 
 tion to the utter futility of jealousy, that gnaweth like a worm in 
 the bud. Here it is seen that the green-eyed monster is at the 
 bottom of much misunderstanding, that greatest of evils to 
 which I referred in one of my earlier passages. However, I 
 have come to regard jealousy as a sickness of the soul that rav- 
 ages the intellect, sours the milk of human kindness and adds 
 bitterness to existence — for the one who suffers from it. I could 
 wish no worse evil to befall an enemy than that he should become 
 jealous. It sometimes leads to murder, but the murdered one is 
 far better off than the murderer. Death is nothing. It may be, 
 as Socrates has observed, the best thing that can happen to a 
 man. At least no one can argue conclusively to the contrary. 
 But to be jealous would seem to be perhaps the worst calamity 
 to befall a man. Poor little Dan Tracy's road was made a bit 
 harder by it, and he is as fine a patrician youth as one will meet 
 in many a day. 
 
 The world has been good to me. It has given me on a silver 
 platter, to speak figuratively, what I see other men struggling, 
 
 —85— 
 
stealing and knifing each other for. I am deeply grateful for life. 
 I hear people talking of things they take to put them to sleep. I 
 wish I could stay awake all of the time. No day (well, very few 
 days) have ever been long enough for me. My own thoughts are 
 my best companions. 
 
 I am still interested in the ego, and I still think that the soul 
 of a great woman is the most wonderful thing in the world. One 
 may be interested in a thing, such as the ego, however, and yet 
 not wish particularly to preserve it. I am rather indifferent to 
 my own welfare, and I am a rather good fatalist. I would make 
 excellent material out of which to manufacture a bomb to be used 
 in furthering a hopeless cause. Perhaps a little of the fighting 
 blood of old General Lee and the rest did trickle through after 
 all. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 And now to play my favorite role, the one of him who is not 
 without honor save in his own country. 
 
 To have written a history of the past is important, but to be 
 able to write a history of the future — to be already looking back- 
 ward at the future — that is genius. Certain philosophical dis- 
 coveries placed in combination produce certain results in the 
 realm of philosophy, just as certain chemicals produce certain 
 results in the chemical world. 
 
 This age of materialism cannot last much longer. The types 
 of men with which I have just been occupied are passing. The 
 man of "neither wit, nor words, nor worth, action nor utterance, 
 nor the power of speech to stir men's blood" is seeing the writ- 
 ing on the wall. We have wearied of our toys. We have con- 
 quered the sea, the air, and to a certain degree, space. The 
 whole world has been explored, and there is no more escape for 
 the world-weary people of the types of my ancestors. If one is 
 tired unto death of trickery, knavery, lies and treachery, he must 
 stand and wait, or else fight for the return of the natural rank of 
 man. There is no other thing he can do. 
 
 We are on the way, though it is a long way, to the return 
 to a view of life as it was in the ascendant period of ancient 
 Greece and Egypt. After nihilism, we are to reverence blood, 
 art, poetry, idleness, philosophy, beauty and physical perfection 
 once more, but we will, in addition, reverence that which the 
 Athenians did not — the soul of man, which means that we will 
 
 —86— 
 
adopt a healthier, more innocent, less serious attitude toward the 
 senses. 
 
 We will forget sociology and "morality," and put our house 
 in order for the coming of the superman by building good roads, 
 deepening the rivers and beautifying the world. What is 
 the Nietzschean superman? He is to be one with the heart of 
 a Christ, the intellect of a Nietzsche, and the body of an Apollo. 
 Visionary? Yes, but what can be visualized, will be, or else 
 imagination is a mockery, and my imagination has never yet 
 betrayed me. The only way we can help the lowest man is 
 to recognize the highest when he comes. 
 
 Self-preservation is not to be the first law of life. Soul 
 preservation is to be the first law. The soul of the convict is 
 to commune with the soul of the virgin, and the soul of the Mag- 
 dalene is to commune with the soul of the artist. Life is to be life. 
 Isms will disappear. The pyramid will take form again. In the 
 meantime : 
 
 "I hae a penny to spend 
 There thanks to naebody. 
 
 "I hae naething to lend, 
 And Fll borrow frae naebody, 
 
 "I am naebody's lord 
 
 And I'll be slave to naebody, 
 
 "But I hae a gude braid sword 
 And I'll take dunts frae naebody." 
 
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