My Monks of Vagabondia

In the group eccentricities are quickly discouraged. The grouch, the crank, the bully, if he would remain and live in harmony must learn his lesson in democracy – the individualist is given short shift.

Of course the dull of wit should be given immunity at all times, and in theory he is, but in real practice even the most gentle hearted man will have his little joke at the expense of the man less alert mentally. The members of the Colony are no exception to this rule.

“Tell us more,” the boys asked of the Moon-Struck-One, one evening after the day’s work was done, “about the inhabitants of Mars, which you see in your trances.”

And then he – the Moon-Struck-One – would explain in detail the strange people he had seen in his dreams.

“These planets,” he told them, “are all being made ready for the coming race of Man… After Cycles and Cycles, we move on to newer and better worlds… Each of the mystic Seven Planets are at the service of the human race. Time and time again a new world has borne the burden of the evolving man’s hope and his despair… The cosmic scheme is worthy of the Wondrous God, who holds not only the Seven Planets in control, but rules the Seven Universes with their Seven Suns – you laugh, most men laugh, the churchmen laugh, they do not know, they have not seen – but I know and have seen.”

“How interesting,” said one boy, winking slyly to his fellows. “I know something of astronomy myself; my brother was a Princeton graduate.”

It was a summer’s evening when this conversation took place and the boys were sitting out on the lawn enjoying the night air, for the day had been hot and oppressive.

“What do any of you know of the Stars?” said the Moon-Struck-Sage.

“Very little, but tell us,” said one of the boys, “for I believe in your visions. I dreamed one night myself about a big fire – a bad sign as you very well know – and the next day I got ‘pinched.’”

“Yes, you are deeply learned in the Stars,” he said with smiling skepticism, “that is, I suppose you can tell the difference between a star and a lantern.”

“Look out,” said a boy who had not spoken before, “he is joking you.”

“No, seriously,” said the Witless One, "when I said ‘lantern’ I had reference to the light that Edison hangs out each night when the weather is clear – you have no doubt read of it. He plans to construct a light that will illuminate this country at night almost as brightly as the sun lights it by day… Do you see that light just above the trees in the East. You can tell it as it is larger than any stars around it. It has the appearance of a star only much brighter. Do you see it?"

“Yes,” said the boys who were all attention, although one or two were skeptical until one of the group remembered that he had read about Edison’s powerful light in the Sunday magazine supplement of a New York paper.

“He is a wonderful man,” said another.

At last all were convinced and the Moon-Struck-One, satisfied, arose rather abruptly, and went into the house.

A few days later he left the Colony to go to his relatives in a distant city, and so the boys had no one to play tricks upon, no one who was not their equal in wit.

It was some weeks afterwards that one of the young men said to me as we were talking out of doors in the evening:

“There is that light of Edison’s hanging over the trees.”

“Where?” I asked.

“That bright light over there that looks like a big star. The Witless One told us about it. In some ways he was really wiser than we gave him credit for.”

“That’s the Evening Star,” I said.

“It is what?” asked another boy.

“It is Venus, the Evening Star.”

“He told us it was put up there by Edison.”

“So it really isn’t an illuminated balloon?”

The boys looked from one to the other, then every one laughed loudly and long.

“Doesn’t the Bible say, ‘Answer a fool according to his folly?’” asked a boy.

“Yes, and it also says, ‘Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.’”

IN THE WORLD OF WANDERLUST

“To stand in true relations with men in a false age, is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?”

– Emerson.In the World of Wanderlust

The Spirit of the Wanderlust seizes all the World in the early days of Spring – the so-called hobo takes to the open road, the millionaire to his country home, each rejoices that the long imprisonment of winter is passed, for all men are akin in their love of freedom. It is a search for the ideal. With De Soto we would say, “Somewhere, if ye seek untiringly, ye shall discover and drinke of ye Fountaine of Youth and Happiness.”

“Men have said they do not understand my restless wanderings,” remarked Lakewood Tom. "Can it be they have never watched the coming of the first robin, and do not know that he ushers in the new regime of promise and prosperity?

"Other men may linger in the failing twilight of the tired day. I go to greet the rising sun. Even the very birds – little hoboes of the air, break camp cheerfully in early May. Like them I, too, take to the open road and walk by faith.

"But you, my lords, with your worldly goods, are vagabonds no less than I. Out of the inexhaustible larder of the Divine, God gives you – as it were – a crust of bread, and men call you mighty in riches. Take a vagabond’s advice, and put your mark upon the house where you found favor, lest after many years, disheartened, you pass that way again and need another ‘handout’ – maybe not a crust of bread, but, a more lasting gift – an ideal perchance, that may not fail so soon. Sometimes methinks it sad, there is given to man only the thing for which he asks.

“Adieu,” said Lakewood Tom, taking up his staff, “when the snow falls next year I may visit your Monastery again with your permission, if by happy chance I am on this earth. If not, I’ll meet you some Christmas day on the planet Mars, for I never forget a friend. Good cheer! Adieu.”

“Much privation has crazed the old man,” said a comrade who, with me, watched the old vagabond walking slowly down the drive.

“I do not know,” I said.

THE TWO JEANS

“To every man there come noble thoughts that pass across his heart like great white birds.”

– Maeterlinck.The Two Jeans

“It is always hard times on the Bowery,” my diminutive informant told me. He was a new comer to our Colony. He, in company with another young man, had made his appearance an hour or two before, but I had not been able to talk with him, except to assure him that he and his friend might remain with us one night, at least. “Yes, sir,” he continued, “without money a man is a dead one; even in this strange haunt of stranger men money is a daily need. Of course, some men who know the hidden ways can get along on as little as twenty cents a day, or less, but for myself I could not exist on less than thirty-five cents.”

The figures he mentioned seemed modest enough to me. “Couldn’t you earn that much?” I asked him.

“I am so small no one would hire me,” he replied. "I could get errands to do now and then. Of course, while my mother lived she kept a home for me, but after she died I did not know what to do. I only sat in the house day after day and looked out of the window. I could not make any plans for myself. You see when I was a baby I fell and injured my back. I didn’t grow much more after that accident. The doctors called it a curvature."

He laughed easily as he asked me, "You know the poem of James Whitcomb Riley,

‘I’m th’ust a little cripple boyAn’ never going to grow,An’ git a great big man at all,‘Cause auntie told me so.’

“I rather think I’m that boy. One time I chanced to find that poem and read it to my mother. She took the book from me in the gentle way she had, and then putting her arms around me, told me to be a good boy and everything would come out all right. But they never did come all right. Maybe I was not good enough; but this can’t interest you. You hear enough hard luck stories without mine.”

“If you wish to tell me,” I said, “I shall be quite glad to listen.”

“Well, it’s only this,” he continued. "Left to myself, I wasn’t smart enough to make a living. I can’t get my room rent and my lunch money all at the same time. If I have my lunches I have no room, and if I have a room I have nothing to eat."

He grew very serious. He could laugh at his misshapen back, make a jest at his deformity, but hunger – even at the thought of hunger – the smile left his face, the color fled from his lips.

“Are you faint?” I asked him quickly.

“No, I am a coward,” he said, “just a plain coward. You see, I am beaten and I know it.”

“You will be all right in a few days,” I said, “and be able to criticise the food as cheerfully as any other member of my Family.” I laughed gayly enough, but he did not laugh with me. “Have you and this boy been friends a long time? Where did you meet him?” I inquired.

“In the park, some weeks ago. He has no home either. He was sleeping out and so was I. He gave me part of a newspaper to put under me, as the ground was damp. So I tried to talk to him… He is good looking, isn’t he?”

I admitted it.

“Well, he’s a Russian dummy,” said the boy.

“He is what?” I asked.

“He just landed from Russia three months ago, and he knows very little about the English language. He doesn’t have the slightest idea what I have been talking to you about all this time. Night after night, not having any bed to sleep in, he has ‘flopped’ in the park or ‘carried the banner’ until morning.”

“So you brought him out with you?”

“Yes; I didn’t know whether you would take us in or not. I thought I would take him along on the theory that the ground in Jersey is no harder to sleep on than it is in New York State. If you have to turn us away we will not be any worse off than we have been.”

“We will make room somehow for you and your friend,” I told him.

So Jean – Little Jean, the boys called him – went through a pantomime for the enlightenment of the Russian youth whose name was also Jean. Finally the larger boy understood that I had given them permission to remain, for he turned to me and said simply: “Nice,” and then he bowed gracefully. Little Jean was right – Big Jean was good looking.

“I wish I was big and strong like him,” said Little Jean, admiringly…

… The weeks pass quickly when one has his work to do, and the two Jeans grew to know the Colony. Big Jean spent his spare hours studying English and talking with the other boys. Little Jean made friends with the chickens, the pigs, the cow and the horse, while Boozer – the Colony dog – and he were inseparable chums.

“Boozer,” Little Jean told me, “knows the heart of outcast boys and men. He meets the new arrivals at the gate and escorts them to the house. He may challenge the lawless approach of the rich man in his auto, and warn the household of possible danger impending, but the most unkempt ‘knight of the road’ will find Boozer quick to make friends with him.”

Big Jean – with his pleasing bow – looked after the guests who visited the Tea Room, for he learned to speak English rapidly. The report of his courteous service came to the ears of a wide awake Jap who needed him to help him in his hotel. So one day he sent for the Russian lad.

At the start the pay was to be twenty dollars a month, with room, board and extra tips.

“You need me in your Tea Room, Mr. Floyd,” he said, “I am willing to stay.”

“No, Jean, you must take the position and prove to me and to yourself that you can make good.”

That night he wrote to his aged mother in Russia that there were wonderful opportunities for young men in America.

When he had gone I hunted to find Little Jean. I found him out on the lawn with his chum, Boozer. He did not see me as I approached, but as I looked at him the thought came to me that he had suddenly grown old, and there was the anxious look upon his face – the same that I had seen when he had talked to me the first time.

“Boozer,” I heard him say, “it’s all right; I am a coward, I’m beaten and I know it, but I’m glad Big Jean got the job – honestly, Boozer, I am – you see it isn’t all my fault – he’s so damned good looking.”

Boozer put his face close to that of Little Jean and held out his paw to the discouraged boy. You see when you live your life at the Self Masters you sense the inner thought of broken men. Boozer – who knows no other life – understands the heart of the discouraged. I did not interrupt the two friends, but turned back to the house.

“What can you ever do to help poor Little Jean?” a visitor asked me. “There seems to be no position in the world for him. What can you do for him?”

“I don’t see much chance,” I replied, distrusting for the moment that Divine Guidance that never fails.

It was only two days after Big Jean had left us that a kindly old lady called at the Colony. She wanted a boy who would take good care of her horses, and drive her and her husband back and forth from her home to the railway station. “I want a boy who loves animals,” she said.

So Little Jean has his place in the world – like you and I if we can only find it…

… Xmas Day Big Jean brought four big pies which he had cooked especially for the Self Masters’ dinner.

And Little Jean brought his Xmas present – all neatly tied up in a box bedecked with pink ribbons – a pound of meat for Boozer.