Jimmie Higgins | Page 6

the country. Were
you?"
"I was brought up everywhere," said the little machinist.
They got up, and paid each their ten cents to the proprietor of the
"Buffeteria." Jimmie could not resist the temptation to introduce his
hero, and show a pious Catholic that a Socialist Candidate had neither
hoofs nor horns. The Candidate was used to being introduced for that
purpose and had certain spontaneous and cordial words which he had
said not less than ten thousand times before; with the result that the
pious Catholic gave his promise to come to the meeting that night.
They went out; and because some member of the Committee might be
passing on Main Street, Jimmie took his hero by an alley into a back
street; and they walked past the glass-factory, which to the outsider was
a long board fence, and across the Atlantic Western railroad tracks, and
past the carpet-factory, a huge four-story box made of bricks; after
which the rows of wooden shacks began to thin out, and there were
vacant lots and ash-heaps, and at last the beginning of farms.

The Candidate's legs were long, and Jimmie's, alas, were short, so he
had almost to run. The sun blazed down on them, and sweat, starting
from the Candidate's bald head stole under the band of his straw hat
and down to his wilting collar; so he took off his coat and hung it over
his arm, and went on, faster than ever. Jimmie raced beside him, afraid
to speak, for he divined that the Candidate was brooding over the
world-calamity, the millions of young men marching out to slaughter.
On the placards which Jimmie had been distributing in Leesville, there
were two lines about the Candidate, written by America's favourite
poet:
As warm heart as ever beat Betwixt here and judgement seat.
So they went on for perhaps an hour, by which time they were really in
the country. They came to a bridge which crossed the river Lee, and
there the Candidate suddenly stopped, and stood looking at the water
sliding below him, and at the vista through which it wound, an avenue
of green trees with stretches of pasture and cattle grazing. "That looks
fine," he said. "Let's go down." So they climbed a fence, and made their
way along the river for a distance, until a turn of the stream took them
out of sight of the road.
There they sat on a shelving bank, and mopped the perspiration from
their foreheads and necks, and gazed into the rippling current. You
couldn't exactly say it was crystal clear, for when there is a town every
ten miles or so along a stream, with factories pouring various kinds of
chemicals into it, the job becomes too much for the restoring forces of
Mother Nature. But it would take a dirty stream indeed not to look
inviting in midsummer after a four-mile walk. So presently the
Candidate turned to Jimmie, with a mischievous look upon his face.
"Comrade Higgins, were you ever in a swimmin' hole?"
"Sure I was!" said Jimmie.
"Where?"
"Everywhere. I was on the road off an' on ten years--till I got married."

"Well," said the Candidate, still smiling, "what do you say?"
"I say sure!" replied Jimmie.
He was almost beside himself with awe, at this unbelieveable strange
fortune, this real comradeship with the hero of his dreams. To Jimmie
this man had been a disembodied intelligence, a dispenser of
proletarian inspiration, a supernatural being who went about the
country standing upon platforms and swaying the souls of multitudes. It
had never occurred to Jimmie that he might have a bare body, and
might enjoy splashing about in cool water like a boy playing "hookey"
from school. The saying is that familiarity breeds contempt, but for
Jimmie it bred rapture.

VI

They walked home again, more slowly. The Candidate asked Jimmie
about his life, and Jimmie told the story of a Socialist--not one of the
leaders, the "intellectuals", but of the "rank and file". Jimmie's father
was a working man out of a job, who had left his family before Jimmie
had joined it; Jimmie's mother had died three years later, so he did not
remember her, nor could he recall a word of the foreign language he
had spoken at home, nor did he even know what the language was. He
had been taken in charge by the city, and farmed out to a negro woman
who had eight miserable starvelings under her care, feeding them on
gruel and water, and not even giving them a blanket in winter. You
might not think that possible--
"I know America," put in the Candidate.
Jimmie went on. At nine he had been boarded with a woodsaw man,
who worked him sixteen hours a day