xt7xd21rg94t https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7xd21rg94t/data/mets.xml Allen, James Lane, 1849-1925. 1916  books b92-170-30117241 English Century, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. De Ivanowski, Sigismund. Cathedral singer  / by James Lane Allen ; with frontispiece by Sigismond de Ivanowski. text Cathedral singer  / by James Lane Allen ; with frontispiece by Sigismond de Ivanowski. 1916 2002 true xt7xd21rg94t section xt7xd21rg94t 













A Cathedral Singer

 This page in the original text is blank.

 This page in the original text is blank.

-->  


               A

Cathedral Singer


                BY
    JAMES LANE ALLEN
  Author of "The Sword of Youth," "The Bride
    of the Mistletoe," "The Kentucky Car-
      dinal," "The Choir Invisible," etc.



WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
SIGISMOND DE IVANOWSKI



   NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
       1916

 





















Copyright, 1914, i916, by
  THE CENTURY CO.


Published, March, 7916

 



















       TO
PITY AND TO FAITH

 This page in the original text is blank.

 












A Cathedral Singer

 This page in the original text is blank.


 







    A Cathedral Singer

                  I

SLOWLY on AIorningside Heights
S rises the Cathedral of St. John the
Divine: standing on a high rock under
the Northern sky above the long wash
of the untroubled sea, above the wash of
the troubled waves of men.
  It has fit neighbors. Across the
street to the north looms the many-
towered gray-walled Hospital of St.
Luke-cathedral of our ruins, of our
sufferings and our dust, near the cathe-
dral of our souls.
  Across the block to the south is situ-
ated a shed-like two-story building with
dormer-windows and a crumpled three-
                 3

 

     A CATHEDRAL SINGER
sided roof, the studios of the National
Academy of Design; and under that low
brittle skylight youth toils over the
shapes and colors of the visible vanish-
ing paradise of the earth in the shadow
of the cathedral which promises an un-
seen, an eternal one.
  At the rear of the cathedral, across
the roadway, stands a low stone wall.
Just over the wall the earth sinks like a
precipice to a green valley bottom far
below. Out here is a rugged slope of
rock and verdure and forest growth
which brings into the city an ancient
presence, nature-nature, the Elysian
Fields of the art school, the potter's field
of the hospital, the harvest field of the
church.
  This strip of nature fronts the dawn
and is called Morningside Park. Past
the foot of it a thoroughfare stretches
northward and southward, level and
                  4

 

     A CATHEDRAL SINGER
wide and smooth. Over this thorough-
fare the two opposite-moving streams of
the city's traffic and travel rush head-
long. Beyond the thoroughfare an em-
bankment of houses shoves its mass be-
fore the eyes, and beyond the embank-
ment the city spreads out over flats
where human beings are as thick as
river reeds.
  Thus within small compass humanity
is here: the cathedral, the hospital, the
art school, and a strip of nature, and a
broad highway along which, with their
hearth-fires flickering fitfully under
their tents of stone, are encamped life's
restless, light-hearted, heavy-hearted
Gipsies.

  It was Monday morning and it was
nine o'clock. Over at the National
Academy of Design, in an upper room,
the members of one of the women's por-
                 5

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



trait classes were assembled, ready to
begin work. Easels had been drawn
into position; a clear light from the blue
sky of the last of April fell through the
opened roof upon new canvases fas-
tened to the frames. And it poured
down bountifully upon intelligent young
faces. The scene was a beautiful one,
and it was complete except in one par-
ticular: the teacher of the class was
missing-the teacher and a model.
  Minutes passed without his coming,
and when at last he did enter the room,
he advanced two or three steps and
paused as though he meant presently to
go out again. After his usual quiet
good-morning with his sober smile, he
gave his alert listeners the clue to an
unusual situation:
  "I told the class that to-day we should
begin a fresh study. I had not myself
decided what this should be. Several
                  6

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



models were in reserve, any one of
whom could have been used to advan-
tage at this closing stage of the year's
course. Then the unexpected hap-
pened: on Saturday a stranger, a
woman, came to see me and asked to be
engaged. It is this model that I have
been waiting for down-stairs."
  Their thoughts instantly passed to the
model: his impressive manner, his re-
spectful words, invested her with mys-
tery, with fascination. His counte-
nance lighted up with wonderful inter-
est as he went on:
  "She is not a professional; she has
never posed. In asking me to engage
her she proffered barely the explanation
which she seemed to feel due herself. I
turn this explanation over to you be-
cause she wished, I think, that you also
should not misunderstand her. It is the
fee, then, that is needed, the model's
                 7

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



wage; she has felt the common lash of
the poor. Plainly here is some one who
has stepped down from her place in life,
who has descended far below her incli-
nations, to raise a small sum of money.
Why she does so is of course her own
sacred and delicate affair. But the
spirit in which she does this becomes
our affair, because it becomes a matter
of expression with her. This self-sac-
rifice, this ordeal which she voluntarily
undergoes to gain her end, shows in her
face; and if while she poses, you should
be fortunate enough to see this look
along with other fine things, great
things, it will be your aim to trans-
fer them all to your canvases-if you
can."
  He smiled at them with a kind of fos-
tering challenge to their over-confident
impulses and immature art. But he
had not yet fully brought out what he
                 8

 


A CATHEDRAL SINGER



had in mind about the mysterious
stranger and he continued:
  "We teachers of art schools in engag-
ing models have to take from human
material as we find it. The best we
find is seldom or never what we would
prefer. If I, for instance, could have
my choice, my students would never be
allowed to work from a model who re-
pelled the student or left the student in-
different. No students of mine, if I
could have my way, should ever paint
from a model that failed to call forth
the finest feelings. Otherwise, how can
your best emotions have full play in
your work; and unless your best emo-
tions enter into your work, what will
your work be worth For if you have
never before understood the truth, try
to realize it now: that you will succeed
in painting only through the best that
is in you; just as only the best in you
                 9

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



will ever carry you triumphantly to the
end of any practical human road that is
worth the travel; just as you will reach
all life's best goals only through your
best. And in painting remember that
the best is never in the eye, for the eye
can only perceive, the eye can only di-
rect; and the best is never in the hand,
for the hand can only measure, the hand
can only move. In painting the best
comes from emotion. A human being
may lack eyes and be none the poorer
in character; a human being may lack
hands and be none the poorer in char-
acter; but whenever in life a person
lacks any great emotion, that person is
the poorer in everything. And so in
painting you can fail after the eye has
gained all necessary knowledge, you can
fail after your hand has received all
necessary training, either because na-
ture has denied you the foundations of
                 I0

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



great feeling, or because, having these
foundations, you have failed to make
them the foundations of your work.
  "But among a hundred models there
might not be one to arouse such emo-
tion. Actually in the world, among the
thousands of people we know, how few
stir in us our best, force us to our best!
It is the rarest experience of our life-
times that we meet a man or a woman
who literally drives us to the realization
of what we really are and can really do
when we do our best. What we all
most need in our careers is the one who
can liberate within us that lifelong pris-
oner whose doom it is to remain a cap-
tive until another sets it free-our best.
For we can never set our best free by
our own hands; that must always be
done by another."
  They were listening to him with a
startled recognition of their inmost
                 I I

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



selves. He went on to drive home his
point about the stranger:
  "I am going to introduce to you, then,
a model who beyond all the others you
have worked with will liberate in you
your finer selves. It is a rare oppor-
tunity. Do not thank me. I did not
find her. Life's storms have blown her
violently against the walls of the art
school; we must see to it at least that she
be not further bruised while it becomes
her shelter, her refuge. Who she is,
what her life has been, where she comes
from, how she happens to arrive here-
these are privacies into which of course
we do not intrude. Immediately behind
herself she drops a curtain of silence
which shuts away every such sign of her
past. But there are other signs of that
past which she cannot hide and which it
is our privilege, our duty, the province
of our art, to read. They are written
                 12

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



on her face, on her hands, on her bear-
ing; they are written all over her-the
bruises of life's rudenesses, the lingering
shadows of dark days, the unwounded
pride once and the wounded pride now,
the unconquerable will, a soaring spirit
whose wings were meant for the upper
air but which are broken and beat the
dust. All these are sublime things to
paint in any human countenance; they
are the footprints of destiny on our
faces. The greatest masters of the
brush that the world has ever known
could not have asked for anything
greater. When you behold her, per-
haps some of you may think of certain
brief but eternal words of Pascal:
'Man is a reed that bends but does not
break.' Such is your model, then, a
woman with a great countenance; the
fighting face of a woman at peace.
Now out upon the darkened battle-field
                13

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



of this woman's face shines one serene
sun, and it is that sun that brings out
upon it its marvelous human radiance,
its supreme expression: the love of the
mother. Your model is the beauty of
motherhood, the sacredness of mother-
hood, the glory of motherhood: that is
to be the portrait of her that you are to
paint."
  He stopped. Their faces glowed;
their eyes disclosed depths in their na-
tures never stirred before; from out
those depths youthful, tender creative
forces came forth, eager to serve,
to obey. He added a few particu-
lars:
  "For a while after she is posed you
will no doubt see many different expres-
sions pass rapidly over her face. This
will be a new and painful experience to
which she will not be able to adapt her-
self at once. She will be uncomfort-
                 I4

 


A CATHEDRAL SINGER



able, she will be awkward, she will be
embarrassed, she will be without her
full value. But I think from what I
discovered while talking with her that
she will soon grow oblivious to her sur-
roundings. They will not overwhelm
her; she will finally overwhelm them.
She will soon forget you and me and
the studio; the one ruling passion of her
life will sweep back into consciousness;
and then out upon her features will
come again that marvelous look which
has almost remodeled them to itself
alone."
  He added, "I will go for her. By
this time she must be waiting doxvn-
stairs."
  As he turned he glanced at the
screens placed at that end of the room;
behind these the models made their
preparations to pose.
  "I have arranged," he said signifi-
                 '5

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



cantly, "that she shall leave her things
down-stairs."
  It seemed long before they heard him
on the way back. He came slowly, as
though concerned not to hurry his
model, as though to save her from the
disrespect of urgency. Even the natu-
ral noise of his feet on the bare hallway
was restrained. They listened for the
sounds of her footsteps. In the tense
silence of the studio a pin-drop might
have been noticeable, a breath 'would
have been audible; but they could not
hear her footsteps. He might have
been followed by a spirit. Those feet
of hers must be very light feet, very
quiet feet, the feet of the well-bred.
  He entered and advanced a few paces
and turned as though to make way for
some one of far more importance than
himself; and there walked forward and
stopped at a delicate distance from them
                 i6

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



all a woman, bareheaded, ungloved,
slender, straight, of middle height, and
in life's middle years-Rachel Trues-
dale.
  She did not look at him or at them;
she did not look at anything. It was
not her role to notice. She merely
waited, perfectly composed, to be told
what to do. Her thoughts and emo-
tions did not enter into the scene at all;
she was there solely as having been
hired for work.
  One privilege she had exercised un-
sparingly-not to offer herself for this
employment as becomingly dressed for
it. She submitted herself to be painted
in austerest fidelity to nature, plainly
dressed, her hair parted and brushed
severely  back. Women,    sometimes
great women, have in history, at the
hour of their supreme tragedies, thus
demeaned themselves-for the hospital,
                 I7

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



for baptism, for the guillotine, for the
stake, for the cross.
  But because she made herself poor
in apparel, she became most rich in
her humanity. There was nothing for
the eye to rest upon but her bare self.
And thus the contours of the head, the
beauty of the hair, the line of it along
the forehead and temples, the curvature
of the brows, the chiseling of the proud
nostrils and the high bridge of the nose,
the molding of the mouth, the modeling
of the throat, the shaping of the shoul-
ders, the grace of the arms and the
hands-all became conspicuous, absorb-
ing. The slightest elements of phy-
sique and of personality came into view
powerful, unforgetable.
  She stood, not noticing anything,
waiting for instructions. With the
courtesy which was the soul of him and
the secret of his genius for inspiring
                 i8

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



others to do their utmost, the master of
the class glanced at her and glanced at
the members of the class, and tried to
draw them together with a mere smile
of sympathetic introduction. It was an
attempt to break the ice. For them it
did break the ice; all responded with a
smile for her or with other play of the
features that meant gracious recogni-
tion. With her the ice remained un-
broken; she withheld all response to
their courteous overtures. Either she
may not have trusted herself to respond;
or waiting there merely as a model, she
declined to establish any other under-
standing with them whatsoever. So
that he went further in the kindness of
his intention and said:
  "Madam, this is my class of eager,
warm, generous young natures who are
to have the opportunity of trying to
paint you. They are mere beginners;
                 '9

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



their art is still unformed. But you
may believe that they will put their best
into what they are about to undertake;
the loyalty of the hand, the respect of
the eye, the tenderness of their mem-
ories, consecration to their art, their
dreams and hopes of future success.
Now if you will be good enough to sit
here, I will pose you."
  He stepped toward a circular revolv-
ing-platform placed at the focus of the
massed easels: it was the model's rack
of patience, the mount of humiliation,
the scaffold of exposure.
  She had perhaps not understood that
this would be required of her, this in-
dignity, that she must climb upon a
block like an old-time slave at an auc-
tion. For one instant her fighting look
came back and her eyes, though they
rested on vacancy, blazed on vacancy
and an ugly red rushed over her face
                 20

 


A CATHEDRAL SINGER



which had been whiter than colorless.
Then as though she had become disci-
plined through years of necessity to
do the unworthy things that must be
done, she stepped resolutely though
unsteadily  upon  the  platform. A
long procession of men and women
had climbed thither from many a
motive on life's upward or downward
road.
  He had specially chosen a chair for
a three-quarter portrait, stately, richly
carved; about it hung an atmosphere of
Ihigh-born things.
  Now, the body has definite memories
as the mind has definite memories, and
scarcely had she seated herself before
the recollections of former years re-
vived in her and she yielded herself to
the chair as though she had risen from
it a moment before. He did not have
to pose her; she had posed herself by
                 21

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



grace of bygone luxurious ways. A
few changes in the arrangement of the
hands he did make. There was re-
quired some separation of the fingers;
excitement caused her to hold them too
closely together. And he drew the en-
tire hands into notice; he specially
wished them to be appreciated in the
portrait. They were wonderful hands:
they looked eloquent with the histories
of  generations; their  youthfulness
seemed centuries old. Yet all over
them, barely to be seen, were the marks
of life's experience, the delicate but
dread sculpture of adversity.
  For a while it was as he had foreseen.
She was aware only of the brutality of
her position; and her face, by its con-
fused expressions and quick changes of
color, showed what painful thoughts
surged. Afterward a change came
gradually. As though she could en-
                 ,22

 


     A CATHEDRAL SINGER
dure the ordeal only by forgetting it
and could forget it only by looking
ahead into the happiness for which it
was endured, slowly there began to
shine out upon her face its ruling pas-
sion-the acceptance of life and the love
of the mother glinting as from a cloud-
hidden sun across the world's storm.
WVhen this expression had come out, it
stayed there. She had forgotten her
surroundings, she had forgotten herself.
Poor indeed must have been the soul
that would not have been touched by the
spectacle of her, thrilled by her as by a
great vision.
  There was silence in the room of
young workers. Before them, on the
face of the unknown, was the only look
that the whole world knows-the love
and self-sacrifice of the mother; perhaps
the only element of our better humanity
that never once in the history of man-
                 23

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



kind has been misunderstood and ridi-
culed or envied and reviled.
  Some of them worked with faces
brightened by thoughts of devoted
mothers at home; the eyes of a few
were shadowed by memories of mothers
alienated or dead.



24


 







II



T     HAT morning on the ledge of rock
     at the rear of the cathedral Na-
ture hinted to passers what they would
more abundantly see if fortunate enough
to be with her where she was entirely at
home-out in the country.
  The young grass along the foot of
this slope was thick and green; imag-
ination missed from the picture rural
sheep, their fleeces wet with April rain.
Along the summit of the slope trees of
oak and ash and maple and chestnut and
poplar lifted against the sky their united
forest strength. Between the trees
above and the grass below, the embank-
ment spread before the eye the enchant-
ment of a spring landscape, with late
                  25

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



bare boughs and early green boughs and
other boughs in blossom.
  The earliest blossoms on our part of
the earth's surface are nearly always
white. They have forced their way to
the sun along a frozen path and look
akin to the perils of their road: the
snow-threatened lily of the valley, the
chill snowdrop, the frosty snowball, the
bleak hawtree, the wintry wild cherry,
the wintry dogwood. As the eye swept
the park expanse this morning, here and
there some of these were as the last
tokens of winter's mantle instead of the
first tokens of summer's.
  There were flushes of color also, as
where in deep soil, on a projection of
rock, a pink hawthorn stood studded to
the tips of its branches with leaf and
flower. But such flushes of color were
as false notes of the earth, as harmonies
of summer thrust into the wrong places
                 26

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



and become discords. The time for
them was not yet. The hour called for
hardy adventurous things, awakened
out of their cold sleep on the rocks.
The blue of the firmament was not dark
summer blue but seemed the sky's first
pale response to the sun. The sun was
not rich summer gold but flashed silver
rays. The ground scattered no odors;
all was the budding youth of Nature on
the rocks.
  Paths wind hither and thither over
this park hillside. Benches are placed
at different levels along the way. If
you are going up, you may rest; if you
are coming down, you may linger; if
neither going up nor coming down, you
may with a book seek out some retreat
of shade and coolness and keep at a dis-
tance the millions that rush and crush
around the park as waters roar against
some lone mid-ocean island.
                 27

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



  About eleven o'clock that morning,
on one of these benches placed where
rock is steepest and forest trees stand
close together and vines are rank with
shade, a sociable-looking little fellow of
some ten hardy well-buffeted years had
sat down for the moment without a com-
panion. He had thrown upon the bench
beside him his sun-faded, rain-faded,
shapeless cap, uncovering much bronzed
hair; and as though by this simple act he
had cleared the way for business, lhe
thrust one capable-looking hand deep
into one of his pockets. The fingers
closed upon what they found there, like
the meshes of a deep-sea net filled with
its catch, and were slowly drawn to the
surface. The catch consisted of one-
cent and five-cent pieces, representing
the sales of his morning papers. He
counted the coins one by one over into
the palm of the other hand, which then
                 28

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



closed upon the total like another net,
and dropped the treasure back into the
deep sea of the other pocket.
  His absorption in this process had
been intense; his satisfaction with the
result was complete. Perhaps after
every act of successful banking there
takes place in the mind of man, spend-
thrift and miser, a momentary lull of
energy, a kind of brief Pax vzobisciun,
o my soul and stomach, my twin mas-
ters of need and greed! And possibly,
as the lad deposited his earnings, he was
old enough to enter a little way into this
adult and despicable joy. Be this as it
may, he was not the next instant up
again and busy. He caught up his cap,
dropped it not on his head but on one
of his ragged knees; planted a sturdy
hand on it and the other sturdy hand on
the other knee; and with his sturdy legs
swinging under the bench, toe kicking
                 29

 

     A CATHEDRAL SINGER
heel and heel kicking toe, he rested
briefly from life's battle.
  The signs of battle were thick on him,
unmistakable. The palpable sign, the
conqueror's sign, was the profits won in
the struggle of the streets. The other
signs may be set down as loss-dirt and
raggedness and disorder. His hair
might never have been straightened out
with a comb; his hands were not politely
mentionable; his coarse shoes, which
seemed to have been bought with the
agreement that they were never to wear
out, were ill-conditioned with general
dust and the special grime of melted
pitch from the typical contractor's
cheapened asphalt; one of his stockings
had a fresh rent and old rents enlarged
their grievances.
  A single sign of victory was better
even than the money in the pocket-the
whole lad himself. He was strongly
                 30

 

     A CATHEDRAL SINGER
built, frankly fashioned, with happy
grayish eyes, which had in them some
of the cold warrior blue of the sky
that day; and they were set wide apart
in a compact round head, which some-
how suggested a bronze sphere on a
column of triumph. Altogether he be-
longed to that hillside of nature, him-
self a human growth budding out of
wintry fortunes into life's April, open-
ing on the rocks hardy and all white.
  But to sit there swinging his legs-
this did not suffice to satisfy his heart,
did not enable him to celebrate his in-
stincts; and suddenly from his thicket of
forest trees and greening bushes he be-
gan to pour forth a thrilling little tide
of song, with the native sweetness of
some human linnet unaware of its tran-
scendent gift.
  Up the steep hill a man not yet of mid-
dle age had mounted from the flats. He
                 3I

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



was on his way toward the parapet
above. He came on slowly, hat in hand,
perspiration on his forehead; that climb
from base to summit stretches a healthy
walker and does him good. At a turn
of the road under the forest trees with
shrubbery alongside he stopped sud-
denly, as a naturalist might pause with
half-lifted foot beside a dense copse in
which some unknown species of bird
sang-a young bird just finding its
Ilotes.
  It was his vocation to discover and
to train voices. His definite work in
music was to help perpetually to rebuild
for the world that ever-sinking bridge
of sound over which Faith aids itself in
walking toward the eternal. This
bridge of falling notes is as Nature's
bridge of falling drops: individual drops
appear for an instant in the rainbow,
then disappear, but century after cen-
                 32

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



tury the great arch stands there on the
sky unshaken. So throughout the ages
the bridge of sacred music, in which in-
dividual voices are heard a little while
and then are heard no longer, remains
for man as one same structure of rock
by which he passes over from the mor-
tal to the immortal.
  Such was his life-work. As he now
paused and listened, you might have in-
terpreted his demeanor as that of a pro-
fessional musician whose ears brought
tidings that greatly astonished him.
The thought had at once come to him of
hoxv the New York papers once in a
while print a story of the accidental find-
ing in it of a wonderful voice-in New
York, where you can find everything
that is human. He recalled throughout
the history of music instances in which
some one of the world's famous singers
had been picked up on life's road where
                 33

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



it was roughest. Was anything like
this now to become his own experience.
Falling on his ear was an unmistakable
gift of song, a wandering, haunting,
unidentified note under that early April
blue. He had never heard anything
like it. It was a singing soul.
  Voice alone did not suffice for his pur-
pose; the singer's face, personality,
manners, some unfortunate strain in the
blood, might debar the voice, block its
acceptance, ruin everything. He almost
dreaded to walk on, to explore what was
ahead. But his road led that way, and
three steps brought him around the
woody bend of it.
  There he stopped again. In an em-
brasure of rock on which vines were
turning green, a little fellow, seasoned
by wind and sun, with a countenance
open and friendly, like the sky, was
pouring out his full heart.
                 34

 


A CATHEDRAL SINGER



  The instant the man came into view,
the song was broken off. The sturdy
figure started up and sprang forward
with the instinct of business. WNhen
any one paused and looked question-
ingly at him, as this man now did, it
meant papers and pennies. His inquiry
was quite breathless:
  "Do you want a paper, Mister
What paper do you want I can
get you one on the avenue in a min-
ute."
  He stood looking up at the man,
alert, capable, fearless, ingratiating.
The man had instantly taken note of the
speaking voice, which is often a safer
first criterion to go by than the singing
voice itself. He pronounced it sincere,
robust, true, sweet, victorious. And
very quickly also he made up his mind
that conditions must have been rare and
fortunate with the lad at his birth:
                 35

 

    A CATHEDRAL SINGER
blood will tell, and blood told now even
in this dirt and in these rags.
  His reply bore testimony to how ap-
preciative he felt of all that faced him
there so humanly on the rock.
  "Thank you," he said, "I have read
the papers."
  Having thus disposed of some of the
lad's words, he addressed a pointed
question to the rest:
  "But how did you happen to call me
mister I thought boss was what you
little New-Yorkers generally said."
  "I'm not a New-Yorker," announced
the lad, with ready courtesy and good
nature. "I don't say boss. We are
Southerners. I say mister."
  He gave the man an unfavorable look
as though of a mind to take his true
measure; also as being of a mind to let
the man know that he had not taken the
boy's measure.
                 36

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



   The man smiled at being corrected to
such good purpose; but before he could
speak again, the lad went on to clinch
his correction:
  "And I only say mister when I am
selling papers and am not at home."
  "What do you say when not selling
papers and when you are at home"
asked the man, forced to a smile.
  "I say 'sir,' if I say anything," re-
torted the lad, flaring up, but still polite.
  The man looked at him with increas-
ing interest. Another word in the lad's
speech had caught his attention-South-
erner.
  That word had been with him a good
deal in recent years; he had not quite
seemed able to get away from it.
Nearly all classes of people in New
York who were not Southerners had
been increasingly reminded that the
Southerners were upon them. He had
                 37

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



satirically worked it out in his own mind
that if he were ever pushed out of his
own position, it would be some South-
erner who pushed him. He sometimes
thought of the whole New York profes-
sional situation as a public wonderful
awful dinner at which almost nothing
was served that did not have a Southern
flavor as from a kind of pepper. The
guests were bound to have administered
to them their shares of this pepper;
there was no getting away from the
table and no getting the pepper out of
the dinner. There was the intrusion
of the South into every delicacy.
  "We are Southerners," the lad had
announced decisively; and there the
flavor was again, though this time as
from a mere pepper-box in a school
basket. Thus his next remark was ad-
dressed to his own thoughts as well as
to the lad:
                 38

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



   "And so you are a Southerner!" he
 reflected audibly, looking down at the
 Southern plague in small form.
   "Why, yes, Mister, we are Southern-
ers," replied the lad, with a gay and
careless patriotism; and as giving the
handy pepper-box a shake, he began to
dust the air with its contents: "I was
born on an old Southern battle-field.
When Granny was born there, it had
hardly stopped smoking; it was still piled
with wounded and dead Northerners.
Why, one of the worst batteries was
planted in our front porch."
  This enthusiasm as to the front porch
was assumed to be acceptable to the lis-
tener. The battery might have been
a Cherokee rose.
  The man had listened with a quizzi-
cal light in his eyes.
  "In what direction did you say that
battery was pointed"
                 39

 

     A CATHEDRAL SINGER
  "I did n't say; but it was pointed up
this way, of course."
  The man laughed outright.
  "And so you followed in the direction
of the deadly Southern shell and came
north-as a small grape-shot !"
  "But, Mister, that was long ago.
They had their quarrel out long ago.
That's the way we boys do: fight it out
and make friends again. Don't you do
that way "
  "It 's a very good way to do," said the
man. "And so you sell papers"
  "I sell papers to people in the park,
Mister, and back up on the avenue.
Granny is particular. I 'm not a regu-
lar newsboy."
  "I heard you singing. Does anybody
teach you"
  "Granny."
  "And so your grandmother is your
music teacher "
                40

 

A CATHEDRAL SINGER



   It was the lad's turn to laugh.
   "Granny is n't my grandmother;
Granny is my mother."
  Toppling over in the dust of imagina-
tion went a gaunt granny image; in its
place a much more vital being appeared
just behind the form of the lad, guard-
ing hi