Book II: Chapter VII

by Sherwood Anderson

　　In the year following the beginning of his acquaintanceship with EdithCarson McGregor continued to work hard and steadily in the warehouseand with his books at night. He was promoted to be foreman, replacingthe German, and he thought he had made progress with his studies. Whenhe did not go to the night school he went to Edith Carson's place andsat reading a book and smoking his pipe by a little table in the backroom.

　　About the room and in and out of her shop moved Edith, going softlyand quietly. A light began to come into her eyes and colour into hercheeks. She did not talk but new and daring thoughts visited her mindand a thrill of reawakened life ran through her body. With gentleinsistence she did not let her dreams express themselves in words andalmost hoped that she might be able to go on forever thus, having thisstrong man come into her presence and sit absorbed in his own affairswithin the walls of her house. Sometimes she wanted him to talk andwished that she had the power to lead him into the telling of littlefacts of his life. She wanted to be told of his mother and father, ofhis boyhood in the Pennsylvania town, of his dreams and his desiresbut for the most part she was content to wait and only hoped thatnothing would happen to bring an end to her waiting.

　　McGregor began to read books of history and became absorbed in thefigures of certain men, all soldiers and leaders of soldiers whostalked across the pages wherein was written the story of man's life.The figures of Sherman, Grant, Lee, Jackson, Alexander, Caesar,Napoleon, and Wellington seemed to him to stand starkly up among theother figures in the books and going to the Public Library at the noonhour he got books concerning these men and for a time lost interest inthe study of law and devoted himself to contemplation of the breakersof laws.

　　There was something beautiful about McGregor in those days. He was asvirginal and pure as a chunk of the hard black coal out of the hillsof his own state and like the coal ready to burn himself out intopower. Nature had been kind to him. He had the gift of silence and ofisolation. All about him were other men, perhaps as strong physicallyas himself and with better trained minds who were being destroyed andhe was not being destroyed. For the others life let itself run out inthe endless doing of little tasks, the thinking of little thoughts andthe saying of groups of words over and over endlessly like parrotsthat sit in cages and earn their bread by screaming two or threesentences to passers by.

　　It is a terrible thing to speculate on how man has been defeated byhis ability to say words. The brown bear in the forest has no suchpower and the lack of it has enabled him to retain a kind of nobilityof bearing sadly lacking in us. On and on through life we go,socialists, dreamers, makers of laws, sellers of goods and believersin suffrage for women and we continuously say words, worn-out words,crooked words, words without power or pregnancy in them.

　　The matter is one to be thought of seriously by youths and maidensinclined to garrulousness. Those who have the habit of it will neverchange. The gods who lean over the rim of the world to laugh at ushave marked them for their barrenness.

　　And yet the word must run on. McGregor, the silent, wanted his word.He wanted his true note as an individual to ring out above the hubbubof voices and then he wanted to use the strength and the virilitywithin himself to carry his word far. What he did not want was thathis mouth become foul and his brain become numb with the saying of thewords and the thinking of the thoughts of other men and that he in histurn become a mere toiling food-consuming chattering puppet to thegods.

　　For a long time the miner's son wondered what power lay in the menwhose figures stood up so boldly in the pages of the books he read. Hetried to think the matter out as he sat in Edith's room or walked byhimself through the streets. In the warehouse he looked with newcuriosity at the men who worked in the great rooms piling and unpilingapple barrels and the boxes of eggs and fruit When he came into one ofthe rooms the men who had been standing in groups idly talking oftheir own affairs began to run busily about. They no longer chatteredbut as long as he remained worked desperately, furtively watching ashe stood staring at them.

　　McGregor wondered. He tried to fathom the mystery of the power thatmade them willing to work until their bodies were bent and stooped,that made them unashamed to be afraid and that left them in the endmere slaves to words and formulas.

　　The perplexed young man who watched the men in the warehouse began tothink that the passion for reproduction might have something to dowith the matter. Perhaps his constant association with Edith awakenedthe thought. His own loins were heavy with the seeds of children andonly his absorption in the thought of finding himself kept him fromdevoting himself to the feeding of his lusts. One day he had a talkconcerning the matter with a at the warehouse. The talk came about inthis way.

　　In the warehouse the men came in at the door in the morning, driftingin like flies that wander in at the open windows on a summer day. Withdowncast eyes they shuffled across the long floor, white with lime.Morning after morning they came in at the door and went silently totheir places looking at the floor and scowling. A slender bright-eyedyoung man who acted as shipping clerk during the day sat in a littlecoop and to him the men as they passed called out their numbers. Fromtime to time the shipping clerk who was an Irishman tried to joke withone of them, tapping sharply upon his desk with a pencil as though tocompel attention. "They are no good," he said to himself, when inresponse to his sallies they only smiled vaguely. "Although they getbut a dollar and a half a day they are overpaid!" Like McGregor he hadnothing but contempt for the men whose numbers he put in the book.Their stupidity he took as a compliment to himself. "We are the kindwho get things done," he thought as he put the pencil back of his earand closed the book. In his mind the futile pride of the middle classman flamed up. In his contempt for the workers he forgot also to havecontempt for himself.

　　One morning McGregor and the shipping clerk stood upon a boardplatform facing the street and the shipping clerk talked of parentage."The wives of the workers here have children as cattle have calves,"said the Irishman. Moved by some hidden sentiment within himself headded heartily. "Oh well, what's a man for? It's nice to see kidsaround the house. I've got four kids myself. You should see them playabout in the garden at my place in Oak Park when I come home in theevening."

　　McGregor thought of Edith Carson and a faint hunger began to growwithin him. A desire that was later to come near to upsetting thepurpose of his life began to make itself felt. With a growl he foughtagainst the desire and confused the Irishman by making an attack uponhim. "Well how are you any better?" he asked bluntly. "Do you thinkyour children any more important than theirs? You may have a bettermind but their bodies are better and your mind hasn't made you a verystriking figure as far as I can see."

　　Turning away from the Irishman who had begun to sputter with wrathMcGregor went up an elevator to a distant part of the building tothink of the Irishman's words. From time to time he spoke sharply to aworkman who loitered in one of the passages between the piles of boxesand barrels. Under his hand the work in the warehouse had begun totake on order and the little grey-haired superintendent who hademployed him rubbed his hands with delight.

　　In a corner by a window stood McGregor wondering why he also did notwant to devote his life to being the father of children. In the dimlight across the face of the window a fat old spider crawled slowly.In the hideous body of the insect there was something that suggestedto the mind of the struggling thinker the sloth of the world. Vaguelyhis mind groped about trying to get hold of words and ideas to expresswhat was in his brain. "Ugly crawling things that look at the floor,"he muttered. "If they have children it is without order or orderlypurpose. It is an accident like the accident of the fly that fallsinto the net built by the insect here. The coming of the children islike the coming of the flies, it feeds a kind of cowardice in men. Inthe children men hope vainly to see done what they have not thecourage to try to do."

　　With an oath McGregor smashed with his heavy leather glove the fatthing wandering aimlessly across the light. "I must not be confused bylittle things. There is still going on the attempt to force me intothe hole in the ground. There is a hole here in which men live andwork just as there is in the mining town from which I came."

　　* * * * *Hurrying out of his room that evening McGregor went to see Edith. Hewanted to look at her and to think. In the little room at the back hesat for an hour trying to read a book and then for the first timeshared his thoughts with her. "I am trying to discover why men are ofso little importance," he said suddenly. "Are they mere tools forwomen? Tell me that. Tell me what women think and what they want?"

　　Without waiting for an answer he turned again to the reading of thebook. "Oh well," he added "it doesn't need to bother me. I won't letany women lead me into being a reproductive tool for her."

　　Edith was alarmed. She took McGregor's outburst as a declaration ofwar against herself and her influence and her hands began to tremble.Then a new thought came to her. "He needs money to get on in theworld," she told herself and a little thrill of joy ran through her asshe thought of her own carefully guarded hoard. She wondered how shecould offer it to him so that there would be no danger of a refusal.

　　"You're all right," said McGregor, preparing to depart. "You do notinterfere with a man's thoughts."

　　Edith blushed and like the workmen in the warehouse looked at thefloor. Something in his words startled her and when he was gone shewent to her desk and taking out her bankbook turned its pages with newpleasure. Without hesitation she who indulged herself in nothing wouldhave given all to McGregor.

　　And out into the street went the man, thinking of his own affairs. Hedismissed from his mind the thoughts of women and children and beganagain to think of the stirring figures of history that had made sostrong an appeal to him. As he passed over one of the bridges hestopped and stood leaning over the rail to look at the black waterbelow. "Why has thought never succeeded in replacing action?" he askedhimself. "Why are the men who write books in some way less full ofmeaning than the men who do things?"

　　McGregor was staggered by the thought that had come to him andwondered if he had started on a wrong trail by coming to the city andtrying to educate himself. For an hour he stood in the darkness andtried to think things out. It began to rain but he did not mind. Intohis brain began to creep a dream of a vast order coming out ofdisorder. He was like one standing in the presence of some giganticmachine with many intricate parts that had begun to run crazily, eachpart without regard to the purpose of the whole. "There is danger inthinking too," he muttered vaguely. "Everywhere there is danger, inlabour, in love and in thinking. What shall I do with myself?"

　　McGregor turned about and threw up his hands. A new thought swept likea broad path of light across the darkness of his mind. He began to seethat the soldiers who had led thousands of men into battle hadappealed to him because in the working out of their purposes they hadused human lives with the recklessness of gods. They had found thecourage to do that and their courage was magnificent. Away down deepin the hearts of men lay sleeping a love of order and they had takenhold of that love. If they had used it badly did that matter? Had theynot pointed the way?

　　Back into McGregor's mind came a night scene in his home town. Vividlyhe saw in fancy the poor unkempt little street facing the railroadtracks and the groups of striking miners huddled in the light beforethe door of a saloon while in the road a body of soldiers marchedpast, their uniforms looking grey and their faces grim in theuncertain light. "They marched," whispered McGregor. "That's what madethem seem so powerful. They were just ordinary men but they wentswinging along, all as one man. Something in that fact ennobled them.That's what Grant knew and what Caesar knew. That's what made Grantand Caesar seem so big. They knew and they were not afraid to usetheir knowledge. Perhaps they did not bother to think how it would allcome out. They hoped for another kind of man to do the thinking.Perhaps they did not think of anything at all but just went ahead andtried to do each his own part.

　　"I will do my part here," shouted McGregor. "I will find the way." Hisbody shook and his voice roared along the footpath of the bridge. Menstopped to look back at the big shouting figure. Two women walkingpast screamed and ran into the roadway. McGregor walked rapidly awaytoward his own room and his books. He did not know how he would beable to use the new impulse that had come to him but as he swung alongthrough dark streets and past rows of dark buildings he thought againof the great machine running crazily and without purpose and was gladhe was not a part of it. "I will keep myself to myself and be readyfor what happens," he said, burning with new courage.