Twelve Men | Page 5

not low but
simple, brilliant and varied in his tastes. America and its point of view,
religious and otherwise, was simply amusing to him, not to be taken
seriously. He loved to contemplate man at his mysteries, rituals, secret
schools. He loved better yet ancient history, medieval inanities and
atrocities--a most singular, curious and wonderful mind. Already at this
age he knew many historians and scientists (their work), a most
astonishing and illuminating list to me--Maspero, Froude, Huxley,
Darwin, Wallace, Rawlinson, Froissart, Hallam, Taine, Avebury! The
list of painters, sculptors and architects with whose work he was
familiar and books about whom or illustrated by whom he knew, is too
long to be given here. His chief interest, in so far as I could make out,
in these opening days, was Egyptology and the study of things natural
and primeval--all the wonders of a natural, groping, savage world.
"Dreiser," he exclaimed once with gusto, his bright beady eyes
gleaming with an immense human warmth, "you haven't the slightest
idea of the fascination of some of the old beliefs. Do you know the
significance of a scarab in Egyptian religious worship, for instance?"
"A scarab? What's a scarab? I never heard of one," I answered.
"A beetle, of course. An Egyptian beetle. You know what a beetle is,
don't you? Well, those things burrowed in the earth, the mud of the Nile,
at a certain period of their season to lay their eggs, and the next spring,
or whenever it was, the eggs would hatch and the beetles would come
up. Then the Egyptians imagined that the beetle hadn't died at all, or if

it had that it also had the power of restoring itself to life, possessed
immortality. So they thought it must be a god and began to worship it,"
and he would pause and survey me with those amazing eyes, bright as
glass beads, to see if I were properly impressed.
"You don't say!"
"Sure. That's where the worship came from," and then he might go on
and add a bit about monkey-worship, the Zoroastrians and the Parsees,
the sacred bull of Egypt, its sex power as a reason for its religious
elevation, and of sex worship in general; the fantastic orgies at Sidon
and Tyre, where enormous images of the male and female sex organs
were carried aloft before the multitude.
Being totally ignorant of these matters at the time, not a rumor of them
having reached me as yet in my meagre reading, I knew that it must be
so. It fired me with a keen desire to read--not the old orthodox
emasculated histories of the schools but those other books and
pamphlets to which I fancied he must have access. Eagerly I inquired of
him where, how. He told me that in some cases they were outlawed,
banned or not translated wholly or fully, owing to the puritanism and
religiosity of the day, but he gave me titles and authors to whom I
might have access, and the address of an old book-dealer or two who
could get them for me.
In addition he was interested in ethnology and geology, as well as
astronomy (the outstanding phases at least), and many, many phases of
applied art: pottery, rugs, pictures, engraving, wood-carving,
jewel-cutting and designing, and I know not what else, yet there was
always room even in his most serious studies for humor of the bizarre
and eccentric type, amounting to all but an obsession. He wanted to
laugh, and he found occasion for doing so under the most serious, or at
least semi-serious, circumstances. Thus I recall that one of the butts of
his extreme humor was this same Dick, whom he studied with the
greatest care for points worthy his humorous appreciation. Dick, in
addition to his genuinely lively mental interests, was a most romantic
person on one side, a most puling and complaining soul on the other.
As a newspaper artist I believe he was only a fairly respectable

craftsman, if so much, whereas Peter was much better, although he
deferred to Dick in the most persuasive manner and seemed to believe
at times, though I knew he did not, that Dick represented all there was
to know in matters artistic.
Among other things at this time, the latter was, or pretended to be,
immensely interested in all things pertaining to the Chinese and to
know not only something of their language, which he had studied a
little somewhere, but also their history--a vague matter, as we all
know--and the spirit and significance of their art and customs. He
sometimes condescended to take us about with him to one or two
Chinese restaurants of the most beggarly description, and--as he wished
to believe, because of the romantic titillation involved--the hang-outs of
crooks and thieves