FullReads

III

Something in his aspect as he leaned over the railing near me drew me on to speak to him. I don’t know just how to describe it except by saying that he had an understanding look. He gave me the impression of a man who had spent his life in thinking and would understand me, whatever I might say. He looked like the kind of man to whom one would find one’s self saying wise and thoughtful things. There are some people, you know, to whom it is impossible to speak wisdom even if you should wish to. No spirit of kindly philosophy speaks out of their eyes. You find yourself automatically saying peevish or futile things that you do not in the least believe.

The mood and the place were irresistible for communion. The sun was warm along the river front and my pipe was trailing a thin whiff of blue vapor out over the gently fluctuating water, which clucked and sagged along the slimy pilings. Behind us the crash and banging of heavy traffic died away into a dreamy undertone in the mild golden shimmer of the noon hour.

The old man was apparently lost in revery, looking out over the river toward Camden. He was plainly dressed in coat and trousers of some coarse weave. His shirt, partly unbuttoned under the great white sweep of his beard, was of gray flannel. His boots were those of a man much accustomed to walking. A weather-stained sombrero was on his head. Beneath it his thick white hair and whiskers wavered in the soft breeze. Just then a boy came out from the near-by ferry house carrying a big crate of daffodils, perhaps on their way from some Jersey farm to an uptown florist. We watched them shining and trembling across the street, where he loaded them onto a truck. The old gentleman’s eyes, which were a keen gray blue, caught mine as we both turned from admiring the flowers.

I don’t know just why I said it, but they were the first words that popped into my head. “And then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils,” I quoted.

He looked at me a little quizzically.

“You imported those words on a ship,” he said. “Why don’t you use some of your own instead?”

I was considerably taken aback. “Why, I don’t know,” I hesitated. “They just came into my head.”

“Well, I call that bad luck,” he said, “when some one else’s words come into a man’s head instead of words of his own.”

He looked about him, watching the scene with rich satisfaction. “It’s good to see all this again,” he said. “I haven’t loafed around here for going on thirty years.”

“You’ve been out of town?” I asked.

He looked at me with a steady blue eye in which there was something of humor and something of sadness.

“Yes, a long way out. I’ve just come back to see how the Great Idea is getting along. I thought maybe I could help a little.”

“The Great Idea?” I queried, puzzled.

“The value of the individual,” he said. “The necessity for every human being to be able to live, think, act, dream, pray for himself. Nowadays I believe you call it the League of Nations. It’s the same thing. Are men to be free to decide their fate for themselves or are they to be in the grasp of irresponsible tyrants, the hell of war, the cruelties of creeds, executive deeds just or unjust, the power of personality just or unjust? What are your poets, your young Libertads, doing to bring About the Great Idea of perfect and free individuals?”

I was rather at a loss, but happily he did not stay for an answer. Above us an American flag was fluttering on a staff, showing its bright ribs of scarlet clear and vivid against the sky.

“You see that flag of stars,” he said, “that thick-sprinkled bunting? I have seen that flag stagger in the agony of threatened dissolution, in years that trembled and reeled beneath us. You have only seen it in the days of its easy, sure triumphs. I tell you, now is the day for America to show herself, to prove her dreams for the race. But who is chanting the poem that comes from the soul of America, the carol of victory? Who strikes up the marches of Libertad that shall free this tortured ship of earth? Democracy is the destined conqueror, yet I see treacherous lip-smiles everywhere and death and infidelity at every step. I tell you, now is the time of battle, now the time of striving. I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations, crying, ‘Leap from your seats and contend for your lives!’ I tell you, produce great Persons; the rest follows.”