days.
A Place in the Sun
Moreover, without embarrassment or any other symptoms of modesty, I made a public appearance—no novelty to me, as I was already accustomed to confront seas—or at least ponds—of upturned faces. I must here offer the confession that I was a child declaimer. At the Christmas celebration of our Sunday school, when I was four, my father had lifted me to the platform, where I stood before the lighted tree and recited I know not what so loudly and rapidly that I was defined as sensational. Every now and then I was taken to recite somewhere, even to a reunion of Civil War soldiers to whom I shouted Barbara Frietchie in supposedly German dialect—heaven forgive me and my proud and loving parents!
I recited at home, before callers; even without callers I recited at home; there was never a family party when the loyalty of uncles, aunts, and cousins wasn’t strained by my gift. In my hearing no one called me a dreaded little show-off; people said, with a benignity I didn’t perceive to be the mask of pain, “It’s so nice he never needs to be urged.”
In 1876 there prevailed a patriotic effort at entertainment called, I think, Martha Washington’s Tea Party. Every city, town, and village contained an inhabitant who was believed, at least by himself, to look like George Washington—a little, anyhow. For Martha Washington’s Tea Party he got himself insecurely into what was called Revolutionary costume, but wasn’t; and he and a lady thought to resemble Martha walked out before audiences in the local theater, or Odd Fellows’ Hall, or perhaps in a tent on the lawn of the courthouse yard. Except Benedict Arnold, all the great Revolutionary personages, also in Revolutionary costume, had their names shouted, came in, and bowed to George and Martha. Then music sounded, George and Martha led a grand march, and the marchers performed a minuet. That was all. The audience was then supposed to go home, patriotic and satisfied that it had seen something.
In Indianapolis we had not only this spectacle enacted by grown people but also a children’s Martha Washington’s Tea Party, coached by my sister, not quite eighteen and just out of the convent school at Georgetown. In curly white wig, black velvet tailed coat, satin waistcoat, and little black velvet breeches—with lace frills at the knee in the fashion of Louis XIII—I was thought remarkable in the role of Aaron Burr. I thought so myself and so did the nearest of my relatives. After the performance the prettiest little girl in town, in Revolutionary costume, and I, as Aaron Burr, were taken by our mothers to the photographer’s—and after that I always listened attentively when our family album was brought forth and somebody’d say, “This is Boothie as Aaron Burr.”
I didn’t care much for the visitors when they just responded, “Is it?”
My superintended evening prayer had changed in a detail because that part of my earlier petition had met a favorable response from Above. The great California uncle had been elected to the United States Senate, and here and there over the country he was “spoken of for higher office.” I now said nightly, by my bedside, “Please bless papa and mamma and Hautie and Boothie, and make Uncle Newton President and papa county clerk.”
Our hero came from California, that summer of 1876, to make speeches up and down his native state of Indiana for Hayes and Wheeler, and there were grand nights when shouting and glittering long processions tramped down the street with bands blaring, and, through the flare and smoke of torches, we saw Uncle Newton exalted but tranquil as he was borne by in an open carriage on his way to stir the multitude. For all of his relatives he brought splendid presents as usual, and his gift to my mother was so magnificent that now she and my father saw their way to build a house, one that should surpass the lamented edifice in which I had been born.
Pride Before a Fall
The new house was a year in building, and to us the ponderous stone foundations seemed cathedral-like; we were sure that never would there rise a nobler house. Such a one today there could not be for a dozen times the cost. A foreman said to my father, “I’m getting a dollar a day and glad to grab it. Why, after the war and up to the panic, I used to make as high as five dollars a day sometimes and could afford to wear a silk hat! Do you think times are ever going to get any better?”
Times did get better. Thrift and endurance made them better. Men toiled at jobs they didn’t like, did anything until the day should come when they’d once more have the kind of work they desired. They worked for any pay they could get, lived on the little they made, and so won their way back to silk hats again. It wasn’t until the present depression had burdened us for a decade that I began to understand what, in less than half the time, “We the People” then accomplished unaided and undeterred by our agents, the Government in Washington. When our house was finished and my mother kept open house on New Year’s Day, the bright new rooms were crowded with jolly and optimistic people dressed in their newest best.
An orchestra played, gentlemen flourished skin-tight lemon-colored gloves; and ladies in close satin basques and long-trained skirts laughed and sang to the music. They were all coming out on top of the Panic of ’73.
I was in school now, a good little pupil near the top of my class and sometimes appointed—as an honor—to wet the slate-cleaning sponges that dangled from the desks. During my second school year there were moments of sheer smugness when in the schoolyard I heard jealous murmurs of “Teacher’s pet!” Something was awaiting me, though—an event that was to reduce—at least for long—the vanity so fondly built up within me by my tenderhearted parents and my ever gallantly devoted sister.
It happened at a children’s party. The sunshine of that ancient afternoon is warm and strong in my mind’s eye now; I see myself setting forth, newly polished shoes glistening, wide collar white about my slender throat, and in my head and heart nothing but eagerness to take the coming joy. It was a large and, at first, a decorous party. Among the throng of sleeked boys moved exquisite maidens with golden curls, pink or white or pale blue fluffy dresses, and gleaming little slippers—but for me the shiniest pink satin sash was that of little Hattie. In my tremulous perception of her she hadn’t any last name and didn’t need any; she was just a beautiful pinky blond glow called Hattie.
Children played kissing games in those days. At that party we played post office. All of the little girls withdrew to the hall outside the large room where the boys remained; we stood in a circle, every one of us behind a vacant chair. The grown-up hostess, by the closed door, asked the boy nearest to her to mention the name of one of the little girls. That boy then spoke the name of her who was his heart’s first choice; whereupon the lady opened the door and called out: “A lovely letter for little Olive!” Little Olive entered from the hall and the door was closed.
With solemn silence all about her, she looked over the vacant chairs and conscientiously seated herself in one of them. If it was the chair behind which stood the boy who had sent her the letter, he now publicly kissed her; then she demurely returned to the hall. If she took the wrong chair, the boys all clapped their hands derisively, upon which she would rush back to the hall, not so demurely.
My turn came, and, from a quivering throat, I contrived to utter the revered name. Our hostess opened the door and called, “A lovely letter for little Hattie!”
I realized that in a moment a sacred being would appear in the doorway; a terrible agitation shook me. “Shook” is the right word. I trembled excessively, comprehending too late that if Hattie should seat herself in the right chair—mine—I couldn’t kiss her. I didn’t know how; and I looked upon her as unapproachable, a rosy ethereality rather than a fellow mortal. Stage fright took me; and four feet behind me there was an open window. As the ineffable form of little Hattie appeared in the doorway, with all eyes upon her, I found myself to be descending toward green grass. I was falling through fresh air and late-afternoon sunshine, having uncontrollably jumped out of the window.
I crawled away and sat with my back against a brick wall. Indoors,
