Андерсон Шервуд. Триумф яйца(engl)

not sleep and as the fancies that kept crowding in upon him only made
him more excited, he got out of bed and tried to think.

As would be natural under such circumstances, he tried to control his
thoughts, but when he sat by the window and was wide awake a most
unexpected and humiliating thing happened. The night was clear and
fine. There was a moon. He wanted to dream of the woman who was to be
his wife, to think out lines for noble poems or make plans that would
affect his career. Much to his surprise his mind refused to do anything
of the sort.

At a corner of the street where he lived there was a small cigar store
and newspaper stand run by a fat man of forty and his wife, a small
active woman with bright grey eyes. In the morning he stopped there to
buy a paper before going down to the city. Sometimes he saw only the
fat man, but often the man had disappeared and the woman waited on him.
She was, as he assured me at least twenty times in telling me his tale,
a very ordinary person with nothing special or notable about her, but
for some reason he could not explain, being in her presence stirred him
profoundly. During that week in the midst of his distraction she was
the only person he knew who stood out clear and distinct in his mind.
When he wanted so much to think noble thoughts he could think only of
her. Before he knew what was happening his imagination had taken hold
of the notion of having a love affair with the woman.

"I could not understand myself," he declared, in telling me the story.
"At night, when the city was quiet and when I should have been asleep,
I thought about her all the time. After two or three days of that sort
of thing the consciousness of her got into my daytime thoughts. I was
terribly muddled. When I went to see the woman who is now my wife I
found that my love for her was in no way affected by my vagrant
thoughts. There was but one woman in the world I wanted to live with
and to be my comrade in undertaking to improve my own character and my
position in the world, but for the moment, you see, I wanted this other
woman to be in my arms. She had worked her way into my being. On all
sides people were saying I was a big man who would do big things, and
there I was. That evening when I went to the theatre I walked home
because I knew I would be unable to sleep, and to satisfy the annoying
impulse in myself I went and stood on the sidewalk before the tobacco
shop. It was a two story building, and I knew the woman lived upstairs
with her husband. For a long time I stood in the darkness with my body
pressed against the wall of the building, and then I thought of the two
of them up there and no doubt in bed together. That made me furious.

"Then I grew more furious with myself. I went home and got into bed,
shaken with anger. There are certain books of verse and some prose
writings that have always moved me deeply, and so I put several books
on a table by my bed.

"The voices in the books were like the voices of the dead. I did not
hear them. The printed words would not penetrate into my consciousness.
I tried to think of the woman I loved, but her figure had also become
something far away, something with which I for the moment seemed to
have nothing to do. I rolled and tumbled about in the bed. It was a
miserable experience.

"On Thursday morning I went into the store. There stood the woman
alone. I think she knew how I felt. Perhaps she had been thinking of me
as I had been thinking of her. A doubtful hesitating smile played about
the corners of her mouth. She had on a dress made of cheap cloth and
there was a tear on the shoulder. She must have been ten years older
than myself. When I tried to put my pennies on the glass counter,
behind which she stood, my hand trembled so that the pennies made a
sharp rattling noise. When I spoke the voice that came out of my throat
did not sound like anything that had ever belonged to me. It barely
arose above a thick whisper. 'I want you,' I said. 'I want you very
much. Can't you run away from your husband? Come to me at my apartment
at seven tonight.'

"The woman did come to my apartment at seven. That morning she didn't
say anything at all. For a minute perhaps we stood looking at each
other. I had forgotten everything in the world but just her. Then she
nodded her head and I went away. Now that I think of it I cannot
remember a word I ever heard her say. She came to my apartment at seven
and it was dark. You must understand this was in the month of October.
I had not lighted a light and I had sent my servant away.

"During that day I was no good at all. Several men came to see me at my
office, but I got all muddled up in trying to talk with them. They
attributed my rattle-headedness to my approaching marriage and went
away laughing.

"It was on that morning, just the day before my marriage, that I got a
long and very beautiful letter from my fiancee. During the night before
she also had been unable to sleep and had got out of bed to write the
letter. Everything she said in it was very sharp and real, but she
herself, as a living thing, seemed to have receded into the distance.
It seemed to me that she was like a bird, flying far away in distant
skies, and that I was like a perplexed bare-footed boy standing in the
dusty road before a farm house and looking at her receding figure. I
wonder if you will understand what I mean?

"In regard to the letter. In it she, the awakening woman, poured out
her heart. She of course knew nothing of life, but she was a woman. She
lay, I suppose, in her bed feeling nervous and wrought up as I had been
doing. She realized that a great change was about to take place in her
life and was glad and afraid too. There she lay thinking of it all.
Then she got out of bed and began talking to me on the bit of paper.
She told me how afraid she was and how glad too. Like most young women
she had heard things whispered. In the letter she was very sweet and
fine. 'For a long time, after we are married, we will forget we are a
man and woman,' she wrote. 'We will be human beings. You must remember
that I am ignorant and often I will be very stupid. You must love me
and be very patient and kind. When I know more, when after a long time
you have taught me the way of life, I will try to repay you. I will
love you tenderly and passionately. The possibility of that is in me or
I would not want to marry at all. I am afraid but I am also happy. O, I
am so glad our marriage time is near at hand!'

"Now you see clearly enough what a mess I was in. In my office, after I
had read my fiancee's letter, I became at once very resolute and
strong. I remember that I got out of my chair and walked about, proud
of the fact that I was to be the husband of so noble a woman. Right
away I felt concerning her as I had been feeling about myself before I
found out what a weak thing I was. To be sure I took a strong
resolution that I would not be weak. At nine that evening I had planned
to run in to see my fiancee. 'I'm all right now,' I said to myself.
'The beauty of her character has saved me from myself. I will go home
now and send the other woman away.' In the morning I had telephoned to
my servant and told him that I did not want him to be at the apartment
that evening and I now picked up the telephone to tell him to stay at
home.

"Then a thought came to me. 'I will not want him there in any event,' I
told myself. 'What will he think when he sees a woman coming in my
place on the evening before the day I am to be married?' I put the
telephone down and prepared to go home. 'If I want my servant out of
the apartment it is because I do not want him to hear me talk with the
woman. I cannot be rude to her. I will have to make some kind of an
explanation,' I said to myself.

"The woman came at seven o'clock, and, as you may have guessed, I let
her in and forgot the resolution I had made. It is likely I never had
any intention of doing anything else. There was a bell on my door, but
she did not ring, but knocked very softly. It seems to me that
everything she did that evening was soft and quiet, but very determined
and quick. Do I make myself clear? When she came I was standing just
within the door where I had been standing and waiting for a half hour.
My hands were trembling as they had trembled in the morning when her
eyes looked at me and when I tried to put the pennies on the counter in
the store. When I opened the door she stepped quickly in and I took her
into my arms. We stood together in the darkness. My hands no longer
trembled. I felt very happy and strong.

"Although I have tried to make everything clear I have not told you
what the woman I married is like. I have emphasized, you see, the other
woman. I make the blind statement that I love my wife, and to a man of
your shrewdness that means nothing at all. To tell the truth, had I not
started to speak of this matter I would feel more comfortable. It is
inevitable that I give you the impression that I am in love with the
tobacconist's wife. That's not true. To be sure I was very conscious of
her all during the week before my marriage, but after she had come to
me at my apartment she went entirely out of my mind.

"Am I telling the truth? I am trying very hard to tell what happened to
me. I am saying that I have not since that evening thought of the woman
who came to my apartment. Now, to tell the facts of the case, that is
not true. On that evening I went to my fiancee at nine, as she had
asked me to do in her letter. In a kind of way I cannot explain the
other woman went with me. This is what I mean--you see I had been
thinking that if anything happened between me and the tobacconist's
wife I would not be able to go through with my marriage. 'It is one
thing or the other with me,' I had said to myself.

"As a matter of fact I went to see my beloved on that evening filled
with a new faith in the outcome of our life together. I am afraid I
muddle this matter in trying to tell it. A moment ago I said the other
woman, the tobacconist's wife, went with me. I do not mean she went in
fact. What I am trying to say is that something of her faith in her own
desires and her courage in seeing things through went with me. Is that
clear to you? When I got to my fiancee's house there was a crowd of
people standing about. Some were relatives from distant places I had
not seen before. She looked up quickly when I came into the room. My
face must have been radiant. I never saw her so moved. She thought her
letter had affected me deeply, and of course it had. Up she jumped and
ran to meet me. She was like a glad child. Right before the people who
turned and looked inquiringly at us, she said the thing that was in her
mind. 'O, I am so happy,' she cried. 'You have understood. We will be
two human beings. We will not have to be husband and wife.'

"As you may suppose everyone laughed, but I did not laugh. The tears
came into my eyes. I was so happy I wanted to shout. Perhaps you
understand what I mean. In the office that day when I read the letter
my fiancee had written I had said to myself, 'I will take care of the
dear little woman.' There was something smug, you see, about that. In
her house when she cried out in that way, and when everyone laughed,
what I said to myself was something like this: 'We will take care of
ourselves.' I whispered something of the sort into her ears. To tell
you the truth I had come down off my perch. The spirit of the other
woman did that to me. Before all the people gathered about I held my
fiancee close and we kissed. They thought it very sweet of us to be so
affected at the sight of each other. What they would have thought had
they known the truth about me God only knows!

"Twice now I have said that after that evening I never thought of the
other woman at all. That is partially true but, sometimes in the
evening when I am walking alone in the street or in the park as we are
walking now, and when evening comes softly and quickly as it has come
to-night, the feeling of her comes sharply into my body and mind. After
that one meeting I never saw her again. On the next day I was married
and I have never gone back into her street. Often however as I am
walking along as I am doing now, a quick sharp earthy feeling takes
possession of me. It is as though I were a seed in the ground and the
warm rains of the spring had come. It is as though I were not a man but
a tree.

"And now you see I am married and everything is all right. My marriage
is to me a very beautiful fact. If you were to say that my marriage is
not a happy one I could call you a liar and be speaking the absolute
truth. I have tried to tell you about this other woman. There is a kind
of relief in speaking of her. I have never done it before. I wonder why
I was so silly as to be afraid that I would give you the impression I
am not in love with my wife. If I did not instinctively trust your
understanding I would not have spoken. As the matter stands I have a
little stirred myself up. To-night I shall think of the other woman.
That sometimes occurs. It will happen after I have gone to bed. My wife
sleeps in the next room to mine and the door is always left open. There
will be a moon to-night, and when there is a moon long streaks of light
fall on her bed. I shall awake at midnight to-night. She will be lying
asleep with one arm thrown over her head.

"What is it that I am now talking about? A man does not speak of his
wife lying in bed. What I am trying to say is that, because of this
talk, I shall think of the other woman to-night. My thoughts will not
take the form they did during the week before I was married. I will
wonder what has become of the woman. For a moment I will again feel
myself holding her close. I will think that for an hour I was closer to
her than I have ever been to anyone else. Then I will think of the time
when I will be as close as that to my wife. She is still, you see, an
awakening woman. For a moment I will close my eyes and the quick,
shrewd, determined eyes of that other woman will look into mine. My
head will swim and then I will quickly open my eyes and see again the
dear woman with whom I have undertaken to live out my life. Then I will
sleep and when I awake in the morning it will be as it was that evening
when I walked out of my dark apartment after having had the most
notable experience of my life. What I mean to say, you understand is
that, for me, when I awake, the other woman will be utterly gone."

THE EGG

My father was, I am sure, intended by nature to be a cheerful, kindly
man. Until he was thirty-four years old he worked as a farm-hand for a
man named Thomas Butterworth whose place lay near the town of Bidwell,
Ohio. He had then a horse of his own and on Saturday evenings drove
into town to spend a few hours in social intercourse with other farm-
hands. In town he drank several glasses of beer and stood about in Ben
Head's saloon--crowded on Saturday evenings with visiting farm-hands.
Songs were sung and glasses thumped on the bar. At ten o'clock father
drove home along a lonely country road, made his horse comfortable for
the night and himself went to bed, quite happy in his position in life.
He had at that time no notion of trying to rise in the world.

It was in the spring of his thirty-fifth year that father married my
mother, then a country school-teacher, and in the following spring I
came wriggling and crying into the world. Something happened to the two
people. They became ambitious. The American passion for getting up in
the world took possession of them.

It may have been that mother was responsible. Being a school-teacher
she had no doubt read books and magazines. She had, I presume, read of
how Garfield, Lincoln, and other Americans rose from poverty to fame
and greatness and as I lay beside her--in the days of her lying-in--she
may have dreamed that I would some day rule men and cities. At any rate
she induced father to give up his place as a farm-hand, sell his horse
and embark on an independent enterprise of his own. She was a tall
silent woman with a long nose and troubled grey eyes. For herself she
wanted nothing. For father and myself she was incurably ambitious.

The first venture into which the two people went turned out badly. They
rented ten acres of poor stony land on Griggs's Road, eight miles from
Bidwell, and launched into chicken raising. I grew into boyhood on the
place and got my first impressions of life there. From the beginning
they were impressions of disaster and if, in my turn, I am a gloomy man
inclined to see the darker side of life, I attribute it to the fact
that what should have been for me the happy joyous days of childhood
were spent on a chicken farm.

One unversed in such matters can have no notion of the many and tragic
things that can happen to a chicken. It is born out of an egg, lives
for a few weeks as a tiny fluffy thing such as you will see pictured on
Easter cards, then becomes hideously naked, eats quantities of corn and
meal bought by the sweat of your father's brow, gets diseases called
pip, cholera, and other names, stands looking with stupid eyes at the
sun, becomes sick and dies. A few hens, and now and then a rooster,
intended to serve God's mysterious ends, struggle through to maturity.
The hens lay eggs out of which come other chickens and the dreadful
cycle is thus made complete. It is all unbelievably complex. Most
philosophers must have been raised on chicken farms. One hopes for so
much from a chicken and is so dreadfully disillusioned. Small chickens,
just setting out on the journey of life, look so bright and alert and
they are in fact so dreadfully stupid. They are so much like people
they mix one up in one's judgments of life. If disease does not kill
them they wait until your expectations are thoroughly aroused and then
walk under the wheels of a wagon--to go squashed and dead back to their
maker. Vermin infest their youth, and fortunes must be spent for
curative powders. In later life I have seen how a literature has been
built up on the subject of fortunes to be made out of the raising of
chickens. It is intended to be read by the gods who have just eaten of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is a hopeful literature
and declares that much may be done by simple ambitious people who own a
few hens. Do not be led astray by it. It was not written for you. Go
hunt for gold on the frozen hills of Alaska, put your faith in the
honesty of a politician, believe if you will that the world is daily
growing better and that good will triumph over evil, but do not read
and believe the literature that is written concerning the hen. It was
not written for you.

I, however, digress. My tale does not primarily concern itself with the
hen. If correctly told it will centre on the egg. For ten years my
father and mother struggled to make our chicken farm pay and then they
gave up that struggle and began another. They moved into the town of
Bidwell, Ohio and embarked in the restaurant business. After ten years
of worry with incubators that did not hatch, and with tiny--and in
their own way lovely--balls of fluff that passed on into semi-naked
pullethood and from that into dead hen-hood, we threw all aside and
packing our belongings on a wagon drove down Griggs's Road toward
Bidwell, a tiny caravan of hope looking for a new place from which to
start on our upward journey through life.

We must have been a sad looking lot, not, I fancy, unlike refugees
fleeing from a battlefield. Mother and I walked in the road. The wagon
that contained our goods had been borrowed for the day from Mr. Albert
Griggs, a neighbor. Out of its sides stuck the legs of cheap chairs and
at the back of the pile of beds, tables, and boxes filled with kitchen
utensils was a crate of live chickens, and on top of that the baby
carriage in which I had been wheeled about in my infancy. Why we stuck
to the baby carriage I don't know. It was unlikely other children would
be born and the wheels were broken. People who have few possessions
cling tightly to those they have. That is one of the facts that make
life so discouraging.

Father rode on top of the wagon. He was then a bald-headed man of
forty-five, a little fat and from long association with mother and the
chickens he had become habitually silent and discouraged. All during
our ten years on the chicken farm he had worked as a laborer on
neighboring farms and most of the money he had earned had been spent
for remedies to cure chicken diseases, on Wilmer's White Wonder Cholera
Cure or Professor Bidlow's Egg Producer or some other preparations that
mother found advertised in the poultry papers. There were two little
patches of hair on father's head just above his ears. I remember that
as a child I used to sit looking at him when he had gone to sleep in a
chair before the stove on Sunday afternoons in the winter. I had at
that time already begun to read books and have notions of my own and
the bald path that led over the top of his head was, I fancied,
something like a broad road, such a road as Caesar might have made on
which to lead his legions out of Rome and into the wonders of an
unknown world. The tufts of hair that grew above father's ears were, I
thought, like forests. I fell into a half-sleeping, half-waking state
and dreamed I was a tiny thing going along the road into a far
beautiful place where there were no chicken farms and where life was a
happy eggless affair.

One might write a book concerning our flight from the chicken farm into
town. Mother and I walked the entire eight miles--she to be sure that
nothing fell from the wagon and I to see the wonders of the world. On
the seat of the wagon beside father was his greatest treasure. I will
tell you of that.

On a chicken farm where hundreds and even thousands of chickens come
out of eggs surprising things sometimes happen. Grotesques are born out
of eggs as out of people. The accident does not often occur--perhaps
once in a thousand births. A chicken is, you see, born that has four
legs, two pairs of wings, two heads or what not. The things do not
live. They go quickly back to the hand of their maker that has for a
moment trembled. The fact that the poor little things could not live
was one of the tragedies of life to father. He had some sort of notion
that if he could but bring into henhood or roosterhood a five-legged
hen or a two-headed rooster his fortune would be made. He dreamed of
taking the wonder about to county fairs and of growing rich by
exhibiting it to other farm-hands.

At any rate he saved all the little monstrous things that had been born
on our chicken farm. They were preserved in alcohol and put each in its
own glass bottle. These he had carefully put into a box and on our
journey into town it was carried on the wagon seat beside him. He drove
the horses with one hand and with the other clung to the box. When we
got to our destination the box was taken down at once and the bottles
removed. All during our days as keepers of a restaurant in the town of
Bidwell, Ohio, the grotesques in their little glass bottles sat on a
shelf back of the counter. Mother sometimes protested but father was a
rock on the subject of his treasure. The grotesques were, he declared,
valuable. People, he said, liked to look at strange and wonderful
things.

Did I say that we embarked in the restaurant business in the town of
Bidwell, Ohio? I exaggerated a little. The town itself lay at the foot
of a low hill and on the shore of a small river. The railroad did not
run through the town and the station was a mile away to the north at a
place called Pickleville. There had been a cider mill and pickle
factory at the station, but before the time of our coming they had both
gone out of business. In the morning and in the evening busses came
down to the station along a road called Turner's Pike from the hotel on
the main street of Bidwell. Our going to the out of the way place to
embark in the restaurant business was mother's idea. She talked of it
for a year and then one day went off and rented an empty store building
opposite the railroad station. It was her idea that the restaurant
would be profitable. Travelling men, she said, would be always waiting
around to take trains out of town and town people would come to the
station to await incoming trains. They would come to the restaurant to
buy pieces of pie and drink coffee. Now that I am older I know that she
had another motive in going. She was ambitious for me. She wanted me to
rise in the world, to get into a town school and become a man of the
towns.

At Pickleville father and mother worked hard as they always had done.
At first there was the necessity of putting our place into shape to be
a restaurant. That took a month. Father built a shelf on which he put
tins of vegetables. He painted a sign on which he put his name in large
red letters. Below his name was the sharp command--"EAT HERE"--that was
so seldom obeyed. A show case was bought and filled with cigars and
tobacco. Mother scrubbed the floor and the walls of the room. I went to
school in the town and was glad to be away from the farm and from the
presence of the discouraged, sad-looking chickens. Still I was not very
joyous. In the evening I walked home from school along Turner's Pike
and remembered the children I had seen playing in the town school yard.
A troop of little girls had gone hopping about and singing. I tried
that. Down along the frozen road I went hopping solemnly on one leg.
"Hippity Hop To The Barber Shop," I sang shrilly. Then I stopped and
looked doubtfully about. I was afraid of being seen in my gay mood. It
must have seemed to me that I was doing a thing that should not be done
by one who, like myself, had been raised on a chicken farm where death
was a daily visitor.

Mother decided that our restaurant should remain open at night. At ten
in the evening a passenger train went north past our door followed by a
local freight. The freight crew had switching to do in Pickleville and
when the work was done they came to our restaurant for hot coffee and
food. Sometimes one of them ordered a fried egg. In the morning at four
they returned north-bound and again visited us. A little trade began to
grow up. Mother slept at night and during the day tended the restaurant
and fed our boarders while father slept. He slept in the same bed
mother had occupied during the night and I went off to the town of
Bidwell and to school. During the long nights, while mother and I
slept, father cooked meats that were to go into sandwiches for the
lunch baskets of our boarders. Then an idea in regard to getting up in
the world came into his head. The American spirit took hold of him. He
also became ambitious.

In the long nights when there was little to do father had time to
think. That was his undoing. He decided that he had in the past been an
unsuccessful man because he had not been cheerful enough and that in
the future he would adopt a cheerful outlook on life. In the early
morning he came upstairs and got into bed with mother. She woke and the
two talked. From my bed in the corner I listened.

It was father's idea that both he and mother should try to entertain
the people who came to eat at our restaurant. I cannot now remember his
words, but he gave the impression of one about to become in some
obscure way a kind of public entertainer. When people, particularly
young people from the town of Bidwell, came into our place, as on very
rare occasions they did, bright entertaining conversation was to be
made. From father's words I gathered that something of the jolly inn-
keeper effect was to be sought. Mother must have been doubtful from the
first, but she said nothing discouraging. It was father's notion that a
passion for the company of himself and mother would spring up in the
breasts of the younger people of the town of Bidwell. In the evening
bright happy groups would come singing down Turner's Pike. They would
troop shouting with joy and laughter into our place. There would be
song and festivity. I do not mean to give the impression that father
spoke so elaborately of the matter. He was as I have said an
uncommunicative man. "They want some place to go. I tell you they want
some place to go," he said over and over. That was as far as he got. My
own imagination has filled in the blanks.

For two or three weeks this notion of father's invaded our house. We
did not talk much, but in our daily lives tried earnestly to make
smiles take the place of glum looks. Mother smiled at the boarders and
I, catching the infection, smiled at our cat. Father became a little
feverish in his anxiety to please. There was no doubt, lurking
somewhere in him, a touch of the spirit of the showman. He did not
waste much of his ammunition on the railroad men he served at night but
seemed to be waiting for a young man or woman from Bidwell to come in
to show what he could do. On the counter in the restaurant there was a
wire basket kept always filled with eggs, and it must have been before
his eyes when the idea of being entertaining was born in his brain.
There was something pre-natal about the way eggs kept themselves
connected with the development of his idea. At any rate an egg ruined
his new impulse in life. Late one night I was awakened by a roar of
anger coming from father's throat. Both mother and I sat upright in our
beds. With trembling hands she lighted a lamp that stood on a table by
her head. Downstairs the front door of our restaurant went shut with a
bang and in a few minutes father tramped up the stairs. He held an egg
in his hand and his hand trembled as though he were having a chill.
There was a half insane light in his eyes. As he stood glaring at us I
was sure he intended throwing the egg at either mother or me. Then he
laid it gently on the table beside the lamp and dropped on his knees
beside mother's bed. He began to cry like a boy and I, carried away by
his grief, cried with him. The two of us filled the little upstairs
room with our wailing voices. It is ridiculous, but of the picture we
made I can remember only the fact that mother's hand continually
stroked the bald path that ran across the top of his head. I have
forgotten what mother said to him and how she induced him to tell her
of what had happened downstairs. His explanation also has gone out of
my mind. I remember only my own grief and fright and the shiny path
over father's head glowing in the lamp light as he knelt by the bed.

As to what happened downstairs. For some unexplainable reason I know
the story as well as though I had been a witness to my father's
discomfiture. One in time gets to know many unexplainable things. On
that evening young Joe Kane, son of a merchant of Bidwell, came to
Pickleville to meet his father, who was expected on the ten o'clock
evening train from the South. The train was three hours late and Joe
came into our place to loaf about and to wait for its arrival. The
local freight train came in and the freight crew were fed. Joe was left
alone in the restaurant with father.

From the moment he came into our place the Bidwell young man must have
been puzzled by my father's actions. It was his notion that father was
angry at him for hanging around. He noticed that the restaurant keeper
was apparently disturbed by his presence and he thought of going out.
However, it began to rain and he did not fancy the long walk to town
and back. He bought a five-cent cigar and ordered a cup of coffee. He
had a newspaper in his pocket and took it out and began to read. "I'm
waiting for the evening train. It's late," he said apologetically.

For a long time father, whom Joe Kane had never seen before, remained
silently gazing at his visitor. He was no doubt suffering from an
attack of stage fright. As so often happens in life he had thought so
much and so often of the situation that now confronted him that he was
somewhat nervous in its presence.

For one thing, he did not know what to do with his hands. He thrust one
of them nervously over the counter and shook hands with Joe Kane. "How-
de-do," he said. Joe Kane put his newspaper down and stared at him.
Father's eye lighted on the basket of eggs that sat on the counter and
he began to talk. "Well," he began hesitatingly, "well, you have heard
of Christopher Columbus, eh?" He seemed to be angry. "That Christopher
Columbus was a cheat," he declared emphatically. "He talked of making
an egg stand on its end. He talked, he did, and then he went and broke
the end of the egg."

My father seemed to his visitor to be beside himself at the duplicity
of Christopher Columbus. He muttered and swore. He declared it was
wrong to teach children that Christopher Columbus was a great man when,
after all, he cheated at the critical moment. He had declared he would
make an egg stand on end and then when his bluff had been called he had
done a trick. Still grumbling at Columbus, father took an egg from the
basket on the counter and began to walk up and down. He rolled the egg
between the palms of his hands. He smiled genially. He began to mumble
words regarding the effect to be produced on an egg by the electricity
that comes out of the human body. He declared that without breaking its
shell and by virtue of rolling it back and forth in his hands he could
stand the egg on its end. He explained that the warmth of his hands and
the gentle rolling movement he gave the egg created a new centre of
gravity, and Joe Kane was mildly interested. "I have handled thousands
of eggs," father said. "No one knows more about eggs than I do."

He stood the egg on the counter and it fell on its side. He tried the
trick again and again, each time rolling the egg between the palms of
his hands and saying the words regarding the wonders of electricity and
the laws of gravity. When after a half hour's effort he did succeed in
making the egg stand for a moment he looked up to find that his visitor
was no longer watching. By the time he had succeeded in calling Joe
Kane's attention to the success of his effort the egg had again rolled
over and lay on its side.

Afire with the showman's passion and at the same time a good deal
disconcerted by the failure of his first effort, father now took the
bottles containing the poultry monstrosities down from their place on
the shelf and began to show them to his visitor. "How would you like to
have seven legs and two heads like this fellow?" he asked, exhibiting
the most remarkable of his treasures. A cheerful smile played over his
face. He reached over the counter and tried to slap Joe Kane on the
shoulder as he had seen men do in Ben Head's saloon when he was a young
farm-hand and drove to town on Saturday evenings. His visitor was made
a little ill by the sight of the body of the terribly deformed bird
floating in the alcohol in the bottle and got up to go. Coming from
behind the counter father took hold of the young man's arm and led him
back to his seat. He grew a little angry and for a moment had to turn
his face away and force himself to smile. Then he put the bottles back
on the shelf. In an outburst of generosity he fairly compelled Joe Kane
to have a fresh cup of coffee and another cigar at his expense. Then he
took a pan and filling it with vinegar, taken from a jug that sat
beneath the counter, he declared himself about to do a new trick. "I
will heat this egg in this pan of vinegar," he said. "Then I will put
it through the neck of a bottle without breaking the shell. When the
egg is inside the bottle it will resume its normal shape and the shell
will become hard again. Then I will give the bottle with the egg in it
to you. You can take it about with you wherever you go. People will
want to know how you got the egg in the bottle. Don't tell them. Keep
them guessing. That is the way to have fun with this trick."

Father grinned and winked at his visitor. Joe Kane decided that the man
who confronted him was mildly insane but harmless. He drank the cup of
coffee that had been given him and began to read his paper again. When
the egg had been heated in vinegar father carried it on a spoon to the
counter and going into a back room got an empty bottle. He was angry
because his visitor did not watch him as he began to do his trick, but
nevertheless went cheerfully to work. For a long time he struggled,
trying to get the egg to go through the neck of the bottle. He put the
pan of vinegar back on the stove, intending to reheat the egg, then
picked it up and burned his fingers. After a second bath in the hot
vinegar the shell of the egg had been softened a little but not enough
for his purpose. He worked and worked and a spirit of desperate
determination took possession of him. When he thought that at last the
trick was about to be consummated the delayed train came in at the
station and Joe Kane started to go nonchalantly out at the door. Father
made a last desperate effort to conquer the egg and make it do the
thing that would establish his reputation as one who knew how to
entertain guests who came into his restaurant. He worried the egg. He
attempted to be somewhat rough with it. He swore and the sweat stood
out on his forehead. The egg broke under his hand. When the contents
spurted over his clothes, Joe Kane, who had stopped at the door, turned
and laughed.

A roar of anger rose from my father's throat. He danced and shouted a
string of inarticulate words. Grabbing another egg from the basket on
the counter, he threw it, just missing the head of the young man as he
dodged through the door and escaped.

Father came upstairs to mother and me with an egg in his hand. I do not
know what he intended to do. I imagine he had some idea of destroying
it, of destroying all eggs, and that he intended to let mother and me
see him begin. When, however, he got into the presence of mother
something happened to him. He laid the egg gently on the table and
dropped on his knees by the bed as I have already explained. He later
decided to close the restaurant for the night and to come upstairs and
get into bed. When he did so he blew out the light and after much
muttered conversation both he and mother went to sleep. I suppose I
went to sleep also, but my sleep was troubled.

I awoke at dawn and for a long time looked at the egg that lay on the
table. I wondered why eggs had to be and why from the egg came the hen
who again laid the egg. The question got into my blood. It has stayed
there, I imagine, because I am the son of my father. At any rate, the
problem remains unsolved in my mind. And that, I conclude, is but
another evidence of the complete and final triumph of the egg--at
least as far as my family is concerned.

UNLIGHTED LAMPS

Mary Cochran went out of the rooms where she lived with her father,
Doctor Lester Cochran, at seven o'clock on a Sunday evening. It was
June of the year nineteen hundred and eight and Mary was eighteen years
old. She walked along Tremont to Main Street and across the railroad
tracks to Upper Main, lined with small shops and shoddy houses, a
rather quiet cheerless place on Sundays when there were few people
about. She had told her father she was going to church but did not
intend doing anything of the kind. She did not know what she wanted to
do. "I'll get off by myself and think," she told herself as she walked
slowly along. The night she thought promised to be too fine to be spent
sitting in a stuffy church and hearing a man talk of things that had
apparently nothing to do with her own problem. Her own affairs were
approaching a crisis and it was time for her to begin thinking
seriously of her future.

The thoughtful serious state of mind in which Mary found herself had
been induced in her by a conversation had with her father on the
evening before. Without any preliminary talk and quite suddenly and
abruptly he had told her that he was a victim of heart disease and
might die at any moment. He had made the announcement as they stood
together in the Doctor's office, back of which were the rooms in which
the father and daughter lived.

It was growing dark outside when she came into the office and found him
sitting alone. The office and living rooms were on the second floor of
an old frame building in the town of Huntersburg, Illinois, and as the
Doctor talked he stood beside his daughter near one of the windows that
looked down into Tremont Street. The hushed murmur of the town's
Saturday night life went on in Main Street just around a corner, and
the evening train, bound to Chicago fifty miles to the east, had just
passed. The hotel bus came rattling out of Lincoln Street and went
through Tremont toward the hotel on Lower Main. A cloud of dust kicked
up by the horses' hoofs floated on the quiet air. A straggling group of
people followed the bus and the row of hitching posts on Tremont Street
was already lined with buggies in which farmers and their wives had
driven into town for the evening of shopping and gossip.

After the station bus had passed three or four more buggies were driven
into the street. From one of them a young man helped his sweetheart to
alight. He took hold of her arm with a certain air of tenderness, and a
hunger to be touched thus tenderly by a man's hand, that had come to
Mary many times before, returned at almost the same moment her father
made the announcement of his approaching death.

As the Doctor began to speak Barney Smithfield, who owned a livery barn
that opened into Tremont Street directly opposite the building in which
the Cochrans lived, came back to his place of business from his evening
meal. He stopped to tell a story to a group of men gathered before the
barn door and a shout of laughter arose. One of the loungers in the
street, a strongly built young man in a checkered suit, stepped away
from the others and stood before the liveryman. Having seen Mary he was
trying to attract her attention. He also began to tell a story and as
he talked he gesticulated, waved his arms and from time to time looked
over his shoulder to see if the girl still stood by the window and if
she were watching.

Doctor Cochran had told his daughter of his approaching death in a cold
quiet voice. To the girl it had seemed that everything concerning her
father must be cold and quiet. "I have a disease of the heart," he said
flatly, "have long suspected there was something of the sort the matter
with me and on Thursday when I went into Chicago I had myself examined.
The truth is I may die at any moment. I would not tell you but for one
reason--I will leave little money and you must be making plans for the
future."

The Doctor stepped nearer the window where his daughter stood with her
hand on the frame. The announcement had made her a little pale and her
hand trembled. In spite of his apparent coldness he was touched and
wanted to reassure her. "There now," he said hesitatingly, "it'll
likely be all right after all. Don't worry. I haven't been a doctor for
thirty years without knowing there's a great deal of nonsense about
these pronouncements on the part of experts. In a matter like this,
that is to say when a man has a disease of the heart, he may putter
about for years." He laughed uncomfortably. "I've even heard it said
that the best way to insure a long life is to contract a disease of the
heart."

With these words the Doctor had turned and walked out of his office,
going down a wooden stairway to the street. He had wanted to put his
arm about his daughter's shoulder as he talked to her, but never having
shown any feeling in his relations with her could not sufficiently
release some tight thing in himself.

Mary had stood for a long time looking down into the street. The young
man in the checkered suit, whose name was Duke Yetter, had finished
telling his tale and a shout of laughter arose. She turned to look
toward the door through which her father had passed and dread took
possession of her. In all her life there had never been anything warm
and close. She shivered although the night was warm and with a quick
girlish gesture passed her hand over her eyes.

The gesture was but an expression of a desire to brush away the cloud
of fear that had settled down upon her but it was misinterpreted by
Duke Yetter who now stood a little apart from the other men before the
livery barn. When he saw Mary's hand go up he smiled and turning
quickly to be sure he was unobserved began jerking his head and making
motions with his hand as a sign that he wished her to come down into
the street where he would have an opportunity to join her.

* * * * *

On the Sunday evening Mary, having walked through Upper Main, turned
into Wilmott, a street of workmens' houses. During that year the first
sign of the march of factories westward from Chicago into the prairie
towns had come to Huntersburg. A Chicago manufacturer of furniture had
built a plant in the sleepy little farming town, hoping thus to escape
the labor organizations that had begun to give him trouble in the city.
At the upper end of town, in Wilmott, Swift, Harrison and Chestnut
Streets and in cheap, badly-constructed frame houses, most of the
factory workers lived. On the warm summer evening they were gathered on
the porches at the front of the houses and a mob of children played in
the dusty streets. Red-faced men in white shirts and without collars
and coats slept in chairs or lay sprawled on strips of grass or on the
hard earth before the doors of the houses. The laborers' wives had
gathered in groups and stood gossiping by the fences that separated the
yards. Occasionally the voice of one of the women arose sharp and
distinct above the steady flow of voices that ran like a murmuring
river through the hot little streets.

In the roadway two children had got into a fight. A thick-shouldered
red-haired boy struck another boy who had a pale sharp-featured face, a
blow on the shoulder. Other children came running. The mother of the