Km L74SZb NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY | 11' »i' LIBRARY T _ W *» T EVANSTON, ILLINOIS $ Volume VI May, 1917 Number 2 THE KIT-KAT Published four times a year at the Sign of the Green Wreath V>.£hA».nlin*E IS Cents the Copy Columbus, Ohio 50 Cents the Year THE KIT-KAT Being Some Personal Glimpses of Literature and Life THE FOUNDATION Landon C. Bell Charles C. Pavey Herbert Brooks W. R. Pomerene Thomas S. Brooks Emilius O. Randall James E. Campbell Daniel J. Ryan Maurice H. Donahue Lowry F. Sater Charles E. Holmes C. E. Sherman Alexander W. Mackenzie Harry P. Ward Claude Meeker E. J. Wilson Osman C. Hooper Henry A. Williams Editor, Osman C. Hooper, 212 Jefferson Ave. Subscription Manager, Charles C. Pavey, Brunson Building. CONTENTS Portrait of Hon. James E. Campbell Frontispiece Politics of Other Days James E. Campbell Portrait of Nicholas Vachel Lindsay. Facing A Peddler of Dreams g^ Elizabeth Harrison Binford Revelation. A Poem ^ William Lucius Graves A Glimpse of Bird Life in My Garden , J J Herbert Brooks John James Piatt. An Appreciation r W. H. Venable *7 Westminster Abbey. A Poem Ella C. Beseman Kit-Katicisms. Editorial Bookplate of William Wilberforce (with reproduction) A. W. Mackenzie 96 f»wr ir.wesw* Unlv»rattr UlwWS' Nicholas Vachel Lindsay a peddler of dreams 65 A PEDDLER OF DREAMS By Elizabeth Harrison Binford The thing that eats the rotting stars, On the black sea-beach of shame, Is a giant spider's deathless soul, And Mammon is its name. —The Soul of a Spider. The thing that breaks Hell's prison bars, And heals the sea of shame, Is a fragile butterfly's great soul, And Beauty is its name. —The Soul of a Butterfly. THE ABOVE stanzas contain the keynote to the genius of Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, who, a youth from Lincoln's city, some five years ago, just out of Hiram College, Ohio, and more recently from the Art School of Henri and Chase, was wearing out shoe leather, in New York City, on weary pilgrim¬ ages to the art centers and marts of literature. Vainly he tried to sell his wares—-pictures, cartoons and verses. None would buy. Thoroughly discouraged, he return¬ ed to his lodgings to think things over; to.cast up his accounts and to discover, if he could, just what his assets might be. The world of art and literature had almost persuaded him that his ledger held only liabil¬ ities. A long time he sat and pondered; he was dejected and felt friendless and hopeless. Sitting thus, his head supported by his hands, he thought of Poe, and the many discouragements and disappointments he had met with in life. This young man from his little boy- 66 THE KIT-KAT \/ hood had been a student and an admirer of Poe. He suddenly remembered what the inspired bard had said of dreams: They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions, they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find they have been upon the verge of the Great Secret. Vachel Lindsay could not see the Master Poet, but he felt his presence near and distinctly heard him say: You have-loved ,apd. admired .. .and, .followed me from your boyhood; when o.thers..sneered, calliag. .meJTliTjmgle- man,'t-.l'jt.,^ad-oiown - with bells," "the-drunkard," you believed in me, and loved me and emulated my art. """When on earth I askeTlorT'f ead, mejOtayi;'^e^TrnTl'r, after I li'ad passed over to tR~e "beautiful country, where the Tree of Life is blooming, I looked down and saw in Lincoln's Town a boy who believed in me; a boy who knew^there had been a Real Ann able Lee; who had visited in his dreams the Valley of the Many Colored Grass; who had wept for the Lost Lenore; who knew and worshipped and adored his High Born Kinsman. I asked our High Born Kinsman to let me go back to earth sometime, to be an inspiration and a help to this lad. Our Kinsman said, "Yes, in his hour cf need, when he shall want you most, you may go." Arise! Vachel Lindsay! Despair no more! I breathe into you, through the power and goodness of God, my spirit, my talent, my gift of poesy; the same, yet not the same; the same, purified and made more beautiful; for in the shade of the Tree of Life, God had made known to me the Great Secret. Take courage, my son; arise and start on a long, long,journey, taking.aKith you neither purse nor script; go forth. 'dATY.ddler ofJlceamsT' You have a special message to give the world, 0 A PEDDLER OF DREAMS 67 and a bundle of printed pamphlets, containing some of his poems, entitled Rhymes to be Traded for 'Bread, Nicholas Vachel Lindsay began,.his little journey in the world, preaching his Gospel of Beauty and the Brotherhood of Man. Each day brought to him a brand new world; the beauty he found he passed on to others less fortunate. Where night overtook him, in his wanderings, there he stopped; sometimes it was at a farmhouse, then again he rested in a friendly hay stack. But always the country people were hospitable to the stranger within their gates. At one house he gave his Rhymes to be 1 raded Jor Bread; at another he pointed out the beauties of nature and life; some he set to thinking on the dignity of labor and the beauty and joy of service; in other homes he took the children 011 his knee, and drew for them some odd, fantastic picture; or perchance he interpreted to the small folk what the tree-frog said; or told them to listen to the Rachel-Jane, in her early morning joy, as she sang amid a hedge of thorns: Love and life, Eternal youth— Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, Dew and glory, Love and truth, Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet. In any church or chapel, which came in the way of his wanderings, if the congregation would open their doors to him, he preached to them "without money and without price, The Gospel of the Hearth; 7he Gospel of Voluntary Poverty; The Holiness of Beauty." The poems most frequently recited, on this mendicant preaching tour, were The Proud Farmer, 'I he Illinois Village, and On the Building of Springfield. Of them he says: "Taken as a triad, they hold in solution my 68 THE KIT-KAT theory of American civilization." Thus living and working for others, this only son of a gifted Southern father, Dr. Vachel Lindsay, of Springfield, Illinois, and a brilliant-minded, middle-West mother, whose mind and heart and soul fairly overflow with the spirit of missions, cast his bread upon the waters, and it is being returned to him a hundred fold. His Creed of a Beggar is as follows: f I believe in God, the creeping fire, the august and I whimsical creator, maker of all religions, dweller in all xclean shrines. "5 I am convinced that the great religions, Christianity, '.Judaism, Mohammedanism, Confucianism, Buddhism, are absolutely different from one another in core and essence, 'though God made them all. I choose jChwstfajiity. I believe in Christ, the Seclarist, the Beautiful, the per¬ sonal Saviour from sin, the singing Immanuel. I believe in that perilous, maddening flower, the Holy Ghost. I believe in the Sermon on the Mount, as the one true test of society, though I scarcely expect to live up to it one hour in my life. I believe in all institutions that are the result of reading the words of Christ and meditating upon them. I believe the hope for the union of Christians is my special inheritance, since all my people were pupils of Alexander Campbell. I believe in the Unitarians, I believe in all the Evangeli¬ cal Protestants, especially the Disciples of Christ. I believe in the Mass, the Eucharist, the Virgin Mary. I believe in the far flung Battle Line of Christian Mis¬ sions, and pray for its advance. I take for my brother the Lord Buddha, remembering with happy tears the hours when he was my Master. I take for my friend the founder of Christian Science. I cannot accept her teachings, but I can rejoice in the peculiar presence I have found in her churches. In a special sense I take St. Francis for my Adaster, that I may attain to his divine Immolation. I believe in the hospitality ,of ..my fellow^fiuman. for it has never failed me. -— . UinlvemW UiMWSf A PEDDLER OF DREAMS 69 It is a far cry from Hellas, down through the Dark and Middle Ages, across Italy, Transalpine Gaul, England, and Scotland, to the twentieth Century, but Mr. Lindsay, in his art, is harking back to Homer, and is coming down the centuries to us with the spirit of the Greek tragedians, the wandering troubadours, and the border minstrelsy. His is an eccentric genius, yet a genius and absolutely original. His Muse does not walk sedately in conventional grooves, but sings in thought and expression, not drawn from other writers, but fresh from the Springs of Helicon. It is Mr. Lindsay's thought that poetry has become almost a lost- artj but he believes that .it. can be restored to the people through the renewal of its appeal to ear. He insists that.it is. a song-art and consequently appeals ^ more tojthe ear than to the eye. He is making stren¬ uous efforts to restore it to its proper place in our daily life; in the audience chamber; in the living room; in God's beautiful out-of-doors. He wishes to take it from the book closet and library shelf, where it has been so long relegated. He is an enthusiast over the half chanted lyric, and in an American vaudeville form has given us some of his finest poems. These poem studies in philosophy and psychology, to be felt and appreciated must be half spoken, half sung, with a swing and a musical ring, in deep bass, shrill staccato, soft plaintive, or mournful dirge, as the meter, the rhythm and the theme may command. Read, if you would laugh and cry at the same time, his Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty, to farmer landlords, farm hands, cow boys, stable boys, tramps, section hands, and children, in houses, barns, stores, schools and churches, on his tramp as a vaga¬ bond, the summer of 1912, through Illinois, Missouri, 70 THE KIT-KAT Kansas, Colorado, and into New Mexico. Of himself and his mission, he says in The Santa-Fe Trail: I am a tramp by the long trail's border, Given to squalor, rags and disorder. I nap and amble and yawn and look, Write fool-thoughts in my grubby book, Recite to the children, explore at my ease, Work when I work, beg when I please, Give crank-drawings, that make folks stare, To the half-grown boys in the sunset glare, And get me a place to sleep in the hay At the end of a live-and-lct-live day. All this while, on this vagabondish tramp, he was writing to his mother, in Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty, the most dear and affectionate letters. There is alwaysa,..wonderful sympathy between^ Mr. Lindsay and. his audience. This is due, to a certain extent, no doubt,, to his primitive creative power, which .appeals,strongly_.tQ..The..n all men. But there is atnagnetism about him, a light of prophecy in his eyes, which makes one turn and say to his seat- neighbor, "Is Saul also among the Prophets?" His gifts as a poet are now recognized as an important movement in modern art. To Poetry, a magazine published in Chicago and devoted to verse, belongs the credit of having first discovered the strange beauty of his compositions. In its pages, in 1912, first ap¬ peared his General William Booth Enters into Heaven. This poem alone, had his Muse forever after remained mute, would entitle him to a place in the Hall of Fame. To have had the good fortune, as did the writer of this eulogy, to hear Mr. Lindsay, himself, give this beautiful and reverential poem is, at one and the same time, to have had a great privilege and a benediction conferred. In a gathering of fashionables, all in A PEDDLER OF DREAMS 7i evening attire, I looked with pardonable curiosity at the rather odd looking individual, who was to entertain us with readings from some of his poems. My first thought was, "How odd looking he is!" my next, "Why, he looks inspired!" As he began to recite, in his wonderful voice, filled with heights and depths, quivering with rhythm, I saw General Booth entering the pearly gates; the great blind leader with his big bass drum. I heard the shouts of the throng, "Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?" And when Booth halted by the curb for prayer He saw his Master thro' the flag-filled air. Christ came gently with a robe and crown For Booth the soldier, while the throng knelt down. He saw King Jesus. They were face to face, And he knelt a-weeping in that holy place. Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? When I came to myself, there were tears on my face; I had been making the sign of the Cross, as if I were before God's holy altar; I had been given a vision of the Heavenly Hosts, and the "joys beyond compare." His Santa-Fe Trail has had great vogue. However, I think that most of his critics, as well as nearly all of his admirers, concede his poem The Congo, which is a study of the negro race, to be his greatest work. It is a study in psychology. He makes you see the "Fat black bucks in a wine barrel room;" he makes you hear their "Boom, Boom, Boom," and you feel with him their basic savagery. You see "The Congo creeping through the black," and hear the boom of the Blood-Lust Song. There are the Voodoos, with their horrid cries: Be careful what you do, Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, And all of the other Gods of the Congo, 72 THE KIT-KAT Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. This should be read aloud with heavy awesome warning accents. Then he brings before your actual vision the crap-shooters, with their irresistible high spirits: Wild crap-shooters with a whoop and a call Danced the juba in their gambling-hall And laughed fit to kill, and shook the town, And guyed the policemen and laughed them down With a boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom Then I saw the Congo, creeping through the black. This should be read aloud with rather shrill and high accents. Next he introduces the cake-walkers, in all their glee: Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes, Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats, Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine, And tall silk hats that were red as wine, And they pranced with their butterfly partners there, Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair, Knee-skirts trimmed with the jessamine sweet, And bells on their ankles and little black feet. The cake-walk royalty then began To walk for a cake that was tall as a man To the tune of "Boomlay, Boomlay, Boom." This should be read with a touch of the negro dialect, and as rapidly as possible. Lastly he introduces The Hope of their Religion, a real wild, but serious, camp meeting revival, in which Mumbo-Jumbo, and all the other wicked gods of the Congo, are dead in the jungle. "Then I saw the Congo creeping through the black." Mrs. Eudora Lindsay South, of Frankfort, Ken¬ tucky, is an aunt of Mr. Lindsay, and is also the head of a school for girls. It was she who had that sweet Uttle poem, The Secret of the Mistletoe, in the last A PEDDLER OF DREAMS 73 number of the Kit-Kat. She tells an incident, which occurred at commencement time, when Mr. Lindsay was visiting his Southern relatives. In the good old South, commencements are not merely occasions for the young people to parade their knowledge and accomplishments, but also a time for their elders to offer gracious and generous hospitality to all who present themselves.^ Mrs. South had the services of several negro men as well as her faithful old stand-by, Aunt Rose, to wait on her guests, attend their wants and to pass the refreshments. When Mr. Lindsay began to recite his Congo, the darkies simply forgot themselves; one groaned out loud and had an agonized look upon his face, as if Mumbo-Jumbo already had him in his clutches; another began an imaginary crap game, going through all the motions, and exclaiming, "Seven come eleven;" others cut "pigeon wings." Dignified old Aunt Rose cake-walked, balancing herself with the refreshment tray. Mrs. South, at first, thought all her "fourteenth amendments" had gone suddenly mad. Then, she realized they had only been carried away by Mr. Lindsay's Congo, and his manner of presenting it. The music and rhythm in the poem appealed full strongly to their negro souls. On their being "brought back to first principles," old Aunt Rose apologized, "Miss Dora, honey, please to 'scuse us niggers fer furgitten our manners; we aint got no larnin' and we doan unerstan, chile, but we feels it; all Mr. Vachel done bin sayin, we all feels it right hyar," and suiting the action to the word, placed her hand right over her poor old black heart, which was as good as gold, and as white as snow, even if it was black. Apropos of the European war, let me quote from 74 THE KIT-KAT A Curse for Kings, which for virility parallels Eve's curse upon Cain in By ron's Cain and Abel: A curse upon each King who leads his state, No matter what his plea, to this foul game, And may it end his wicked dynasty, And may he die in exile and black shame. If there is vengeance in the Heaven of Heavens, What punishment could Heaven devise for these, Who fill the rivers of the world with dead, And turn their murderers loose on all the seas! And upon the religious wars and persecutions of all times and ages let me quote from The Unpardonable Sin, which is as castigating as a Voltaire: This is the sin against the Holy Ghost; To speak of bloody power as right divine, And call on God to guard each vile chief's house, And for such chiefs turn men to wolves and swine. In any church's name to sack fair towns, And turn each home into a screaming sty, To make the little children fugitive, And have their mothers for a quick death cry. In sharp contrast with these is his vision of Im- manuel, singing in Heaven, after the final redemption of the world: I heard Immanuel singing Within his own good lands, I saw him bend above his harp. I watched his wandering hands, Lost amid the harp-strings; Sweet, sweet, I heard him play His wounds were altogether healed, Old things had passed away, All things were new, but music. The blood of David ran Within the Son of David, Our God, the Son of Man. He was ruddy like a shepherd, His bold young face, how fair. Apollo of the silver bow, Had not such flowing hair. Wizard of the Street, he has paid a beautiful his beloved Poe, and in many short poems In the tribute to A PEDDLER OF DREAMS 75 he has delightfully sailed into the realms of fantasy— Christmas tree poems, Moon poems and Fairy poems. And yet when I am extra good and say my prayers at night, And mind my ma, and do the chores, and speak to folks polite, My bottle spreads a rainbow-mist, and from the vapor fine Ten thousand troops from fairyland come riding in a line. Among all his creations, The Fireman's Ball must not be overlooked. It is not a dance nor a farce. It is a subtle study in life. His latest literary effort is quite a new departure—a book of prose, The Art of the Moving Picture. The book is as interesting as Mr. Lindsay himself; full of theories, innovations and suggestions for the advancement of the movie art. He advocates that the universities should maintain educational departments for the prospective producer of motion plays. Unless envious Death intervenes, Illinois is going to have the honor of having produced a sweet singer— not a Riley nor a Field, but one as original and as odd, and just as dear to the hearts of the people. His soul breathes the gospel of truth, beauty and love, marvelously expressed. True love is founded in rocks of remembrance, In stones of forbearance and mortar of pain. The workman lays wearily granite on granite, And bleeds for his castle 'mid sunshine and rain. Love is not velvet, not all of it velvet, Not all of it banners, not gold-leaf alone. 'Tis stern as the ages, and old as religion, With patience its watchword and law for its throne. 76 THE KIT-KAT REVELATION By William Lucius Graves A HAWK whirled down the wild March sky, ^ Like blown leaf from the beech woods bare; We heard the gusts of spring go by, And felt them on our cheeks and hair. Upon the grass beneath our feet No purple stain of violets lay; Only the wren's pipe, sudden-sweet, Blew fresh and shrill across our way. Under the ghostly-whispering beech We stood to hear its silver sigh, Forlorn and delicate, beseech Grace for a beauty long gone by. And O, her eyes were like the spring, The spring whose lagging makes me ache For boughs where foam-white blossoms cling And thrushes in the April brake. A sweet, soft fire my blood ran through; I touched her hand, she looked at me; The immemorial pang we knew, And silent, kissed there, tremblingly. THE CHAMPLIN PRESS COLUMBUS O H I O •*, r . 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