Elbow-Room: A Novel Without a Plot, Page 3

  CHAPTER I.

  PROLOGUE.

  _THE ADVANTAGES OF ELBOW-ROOM_.

  The professors of sociology, in exploring the mysteries of the scienceof human living, have not agreed that elbow-room is one of the greatneeds of modern civilized society, but this may be because they havenot yet reached the bottom of things and discovered the truth. Incrowded communities men have chances of development in certaindirections, but in others their growth is surely checked. A man wholives in a large city is apt to experience a sharpening of his wits,for attrition of minds as well as of pebbles produces polish andbrilliancy; but perhaps this very process prevents the free unfoldingof parts of his character. If his individuality is not partially lostamid the crowd, it is likely that, first, his imitative faculty willinduce him to shape himself in accordance with another than his ownpattern, and that, second, the dread of the conspicuousness which isthe certain result of eccentricity will persuade him to avoid anytendency he may have to become strongly unlike his neighbors.

  The house that he lives in is tightly squeezed in a row of dwellingsbuilded upon a precisely similar plan, so that the influence broughtto bear upon him by the home resembles to some extent that whichoperates upon his fellows. There is a pressure upon both sides ofhim in the house; and when he plunges into business, there is a fargreater pressure there, in the shape of sharp competition, whichbrings him into constant collision with other men, and mayhap driveshim or compels him to drive his weaker rival to the wall.

  The city-man is likely to cover himself with a mantle of reserve anddissimulation. If he has a longing to wander in untrodden and deviouspaths, he is disposed resolutely to suppress his desire and to go inthe beaten track. If Smith, in a savage state, would certainly conducthimself in a wholly original manner, in a social condition he yieldsto an inevitable apprehension that Jones will think queer of hisbehavior, and he shapes his actions in accordance with the plan thatJones, with strong impulses to unusual and individual conduct, hasadopted because he is afraid he will be thought singular by Smith. Andin the mean time, Robinson, burning with a desire to go wantonly in adirection wholly diverse from that of his associates, realizes that toset at defiance the theories of which Smith and Jones are apparentlythe earnest advocates would be to expose himself to harsh criticism,sacrifices himself to his terror of their opinion and yields to theforce of their example.

  In smaller and less densely-populated communities the weight of publicopinion is not largely decreased, but the pressure is not so great.There is more elbow-room. A man who knows everybody about him gaugeswith a reasonable degree of accuracy the characters of those who areto judge him, and is able to form a pretty fair estimate of the valueof their opinions. When men can do this, they are apt to feel agreater degree of freedom in following their natural impulses. If mencould sound the depths of all knowledge and read with ease the secretsof the universe, they might lose much of their reverence. When theyknow the exact worth of the judgment of their fellow-men, they beginto regard it with comparative indifference. And so, if a dweller in asmall village desires to leave the beaten track, he can summon courageto do so with greater readiness than the man of the town. If he hasoccasionally that proneness to make a fool of himself which seizesevery man now and then, he may indulge in the perilous luxury withoutgreat carefulness of the consequences. Smith's ordinary conduct is theadmiration of Jones as a regular thing; but when Smith switches offinto some eccentricity for which Jones has no inclination, it isonly a matter of course that Jones should indulge in his own littleoddities without caring whether Smith smiles upon him or not.

  It is, therefore, in such communities that search can most profitablybe made for raw human nature that has had room to grow upon every sidewith little check or hindrance. The man who chooses to seek mayfind original characters, queer combinations of events, surprisingrevelations of individual and family experiences and an unlimited fundof amusement, especially if he is disposed, perhaps even while hesubmits to an overpowering conviction that all life is tragic, tosummon into prominence those humorous phases of social existencewhich, as in the best of artificial tragedies, are permitted to appearin real life as the foil of that which is truly sorrowful. To depictevents that are simply amusing may not be the highest and bestfunction of a writer; but if he has a strong impulse to undertakesuch a task in the intervals of more serious work, it may be that heperforms a duty which is more obvious because the common inclinationof those who tell the story of human life is to present that which issad and terrible, and to lead-the reader, whose soul has bitternessenough of its own, into contemplation of the true or fictitiousanguish of others.

  At any rate, an attempt to show men and their actions in a purelyhumorous aspect is justified by the facts of human life; and iffiction is, for the most part, tragedy, there is reason why much ofthe remainder should be devoted to fun. To laugh is to perform asdivine a function as to weep. Man, who was made only a little lowerthan the angels, is the only animal to whom laughter is permitted.He is the sole earthly heir of immortality, and he laughs. More thanthis, the process is healthful to both mind and body, for it is theman who laughs with reason and judgment who is the kindly, pure,cheerful and happy man.

  It is in a village wherein there is elbow-room for the physical andintellectual man that the characters in this book may be supposed tobe, to do and to suffer. It would be unfair to say that the reader canvisit the spot and meet face to face all these people who appear inthe incidents herein recorded, and it would be equally improper toassert that there is naught written of them but veritable history. Butit might perhaps be urged that the individuals exist in less decidedand grotesque forms, and that the words and deeds attributed to themare less than wholly improbable. And if any one shall consider itworth while to inquire further concerning the matter, let him discoverwhere may be found a community which exists in such a locality as thisthat I will now describe.

  A hamlet set upon a hillside. The top a breezy elevation crownedwith foliage and commanding a view of matchless beauty. To the west,beneath, a sea of verdure rolling away in mighty billows, which herebear upon their crests a tiny wood, a diminutive dwelling, a flock ofsheep or a drove of cattle, and there sweep apparently almost over ashadowy town which nestles between two of the emerald waves. Far, farbeyond the steeples which rise dimly from the distant town a range ofhills; beyond it still, a faint film of blue, the indistinct and mistysemblance of towering mountains.

  To the north a lovely plain that rises a few miles away into a longlow ridge which forms the sharp and clear horizon. To the south andeast a narrow valley that is little more than a deep ravine, the sidesof the precipitous hills covered with forest to the brink of thestream, which twists and turns at sharp angles like a wounded snake,shining as burnished silver when one catches glimpses of it throughthe trees, and playing an important part in a landscape which at briefdistance seems as wild and as unconscious of the presence of man as ifit were a part of the wilderness of Oregon rather than the adjunct ofa busy town which feels continually the stir and impulse of the hugecity only a dozen miles away.

  He who descends from the top of the village hill will pass prettymansions set apart from their neighbors in leafy and flowery solitudeswherein the most unsocial hermit might find elbow-room enough; he willsee little cottages which stand nearer to the roadside, as if theyshunned isolation and wished to share in the life that often fillsthe highway in front of them. Farther down the houses become morecompanionable; they cling together in groups with the barestpossibility of retaining their individuality, until at last thethoroughfare becomes a street wherein small shops do their traffic inquite a spirited sort of a way.

  Clear down at the foot of the hill, by the brink of the sweet andplacid river, there are iron mills and factories and furnaces, whosechimneys in the daytime pour out huge columns of black smoke, and fromwhich long tongues of crimson and bluish flame leap forth at nightagainst the pitchy darkness of the sky. Here, as one whirls by in thetrain after nightfall, he may catch h
urried glimpses of swarthy men,stripped to the waist, stirring the molten iron with their long leversor standing amid showers of sparks as the brilliant metal slips to andfro among the rollers that mould it into the forms of commerce. Ifupon a summer evening one shall rest amid the sweet air and therustling trees upon the hill-top, he may hear coming up from thisdusky, grimy blackness of the mills and the railway the soughing ofthe blowers of the blast-furnaces, the sharp crack of the explodinggases in the white-hot iron, the shriek of the locomotive whistleand all night long the roar and rattle of the passing trains, butso mellowed by the distance that the harsh sounds seem almostmusical--almost as pleasant and as easily endured as the voices ofnature. And in the early morning a look from the chamber windowperhaps may show a locomotive whirling down the valley around thesharp curves with its white streamer flung out upon the greenhillside, and seeming like a snowy ribbon cut from the huge mass ofvapor which lies low upon the surface of the stream.

  The name of this town among the hills is--well, it has a verycharming Indian name, to reveal which might be to point with too muchdistinctness to the worthy people who in some sort figure in thefollowing pages. It shall be called Millburg in those pages, and itsinhabitants shall tell their stories and play their parts under thecover of that unsuggestive title; so that the curious reader of littlefaith shall have difficulty if he resolves to discover the whereaboutsof the village and to inquire respecting the author's claim tocredibility as a historian.