Hey, Rub-a-Dub-Dub

by Theodore Dreiser

　　(Taken from the notes of the late John Paradiso)

　　I HAVE lived now to my fortieth year, and have seen a gooddeal of life. Just now, because of a stretch of poverty, Iam living across the river from New York, in New Jersey, insight of a splendid tower, the Woolworth Building on the lowerend of Manhattan, which lifts its defiant spear of clay intothe very maw of heaven. And although I am by no means asfar from it as is Fifth Avenue, still I am a dweller in one ofthe shabbiest, most forlorn neighborhoods which the great metropolis affords. About me dwell principally Poles and Hun-garians, who palaver in a lingo of which I know nothing andwho live as I would despise to live, poor as I am. For, afterall, in my hall-bedroom, which commands the river over thelumberyard, there is some attempt at intellectual adornment,whereas outside and around me there is little more than dulland to a certain extent aggrieved drudgery.

　　Not so very far from me is a church, a great yellow struc-ture which lifts its walls out of a ruck of cheap frame houses,and those muddy, unpaved streets which are the pride of Jersey City and Hoboken. Here, if I will, I can hear splendidmasses intoned, see bright altars and stained glass windows andpeople going to confession and burning votive candles beforeimages. And if I go of a Sunday, which I rarely do, I canhear regularly that there is a Christ who died for men, andthat He was the son of the living God who liveth and reignethworld without end.

　　I have no quarrel with this doctrine. I can hear it in ahundred thousand churches throughout the world. But I amone of those curious persons who cannot make up their mindsabout anything. I read and read, almost everything that Ican lay hands on history, politics, philosophy, art. But I findthat one history contradicts another, one philosopher drivesout another. Essayists, in the main, point out flaws and para-doxes in the current conception of things; novelists, dramatistsand biographers spread tales of endless disasters, or silly illusions concerning life, duty, love, opportunity and the like. AndI sit here and read and read, when I have time, wondering.

　　For friends, I am a scrivener by trade or try to be. Be-times, trying to make up my mind what to say about life, I ama motorman on a street-car at three dollars and twenty cents aday. I have been a handy man in a junk shop, and wagondriver, anything you will, so long as thereby I could keepbody and soul together. I am not handsome, and thereforenot attractive to women probably at any rate I appear notto be and in consequence am very much alone. Indeed, I ama great coward when it comes to women. Their least frownor mood of indifference frightens me and makes me turn inwardto myself, where dwell innumerable beautiful women whosmile and nod and hang on my arm and tell me they love me.Indeed, they whisper of scenes so beautiful and so comfortingthat I know they are not, and never could be, true. And so, inmy best moments, I sit at my table and try to write storieswhich no doubt equally necessitous editors find wholly unavail-able.

　　The things which keep me thinking and thinking are, first,my social and financial state; second, the difference betweenmy point of view and that of thousands of other respectablecitizens, who, being able to make up their minds, seem to findme queer, dull, recessive, or at any rate unsuited to their tastesand pleasures. I look at them, and while I say, "Well, thankheaven I am not like that," still I immediately ask myself,"Am I not all wrong? Should I not be happier if I, too, werelike John Spitovesky, or Jacob Feilchenfeld, or Vaclav Melka?"some of my present neighbors. For Spitovesky, to grow alittle personal, is a small dusty man who has a tobacco storearound the corner, and who would, I earnestly believe, run if hewere threatened with a bath. He smokes his own three-for-fives (Flor de Sissel Grass), and deposits much of the ashesbetween his waistcoat and his gray striped cotton shirt. Hishair, sticking bushily out over his ears, looks as though itwere heavily peppered with golden snuff.

　　"Mr. Spitovesky," I said to him one day not long since,"have you been reading anything about the Colorado miningtroubles?"

　　"I never read de papers," he said with a shrug of his shoulder.

　　"No? Not at all?" I pursued.

　　"Dere is nodding in dem lies mosdly. Somedimes I lookad de baseball news in sommer."

　　"Oh, I see," I said hopelessly. Then, apropos of nothing,or because I was curious as to my neighbors, "Are you aCatholic?"

　　"I doaned belong to no church. I doaned mix in no politics,neider. Some hof de men aboud here get excided aboud poli-tics; I got no time. I 'tend to mine store."

　　Seeing him stand for hours against his doorpost, or sittingout front smoking while his darksome little wife peels pota-toes or sews or fusses with the children, I could never under-stand his "I got no time."

　　In a related sense there are my friends Jacob Feichenfeldand Vaclav Melka, whom I sometimes envy because they areso different. The former, the butcher to whom I run for chopsand pigs' feet for my landlady, Mrs. Wscrinkuus; the latter thekeeper of a spirituous emporium whose windows read "Vynas,Scnapas." Jacob, like every other honest butcher worthy thename, is broad and beefy. He turns on me a friendly eye as heinquires, "About so thick?" or suggests that he has some nicefresh liver or beef tongue, things which he knows Mrs. Wscrin-kuus likes. I can sum up Mr. Feilchenf eld's philosophy of lifewhen I report that to every intellectual advance I make he ex-claims in a friendly enough way, "I dunno," or "I ain't neverheard about dot."

　　My pride in a sturdy, passive acceptance of things, how-ever, is nearly realized in Vaclav Melka, the happy dispenserof "Vynas, Scnapsas." He also is frequently to be found lean-ing in his doorway in summer, business being not too brisk during the daytime, surveying the world with a reflective eye. Heis dark, stocky, black-haired, black-eyed, a good Pole with ahead like a wooden peg, almost flat at the top, and drivenfirmly albeit not ungracefully into his shoulders. He has awife who is a slattern and nearly a slave, and three childrenwho seem to take no noticeable harm from this saloon life.Leaning in coatless ease against his sticky bar of an evening, hehas laid down the law concerning morals and ethics, thus:no lying or stealing among friends; no brawling or assaultsor murdering for any save tremendous reasons of passion; notruckling to priests or sisters who should mind their ownbusiness.

　　"Did you ever read a book, Melka?" I once asked him. Itwas apropos of a discussion as to a local brawl.

　　"Once. It was about a feller wot killed a woman. MostlyI ain't got no time to read. Once I was a bath-rubber, andI had time then, but that was long ago. Books ain't nutting forme."

　　Melka states, however, that he was a fool to come here."A feller wanted me to take dis saloon, and here I am. Imake a living. If my wife died I would go back to myold job, I think." He does not want his wife to die, I am sure.It does not make that much difference.

　　But over the river from all this is another picture whichdisturbs me even more than my present surroundings, because, as seen from here, it is seemingly beautiful and invit-ing. Its tall walls are those of a fabled city. I can almosthear the tinkle of endless wealth in banks, the honks of automobiles, the fanfare of a great constructive trade life. At nightall its myriad lights seem to wink at me and exclaim, "Why soincompetent? Why so idle, so poor? Why live in such awretched neighborhood? Why not cross over and join thegreat gay throng, make a successful way for yourself? Whysit aside from this great game of materiality and pretend toignore it or to feel superior?"

　　And as I sit and think, so it seems to me. But, alas, Ihaven't the least faculty for making money, not the least.Plainly beyond are all these wonderful things which are beingdone and made by men with that kind of ability which Iappear to lack. I have no material, constructive sense. I canonly think and write, in a way. I see these vast institutions(there are great warehouses on this side, too) filled to overflowing apparently with the financially interested and capable,but I I have not the least idea how to do anything likewise.Yet I am not lazy. I toil over my stories or bounce out of bedand hurry to my work of a morning. But I have never earnedmore than thirty-five dollars a week in my whole life. No, Iam not brilliant financially.

　　But the thing that troubles me most is the constant palavergoing on in the papers and everywhere concerning right, truth,duty, justice, mercy and the like, things which I do not findexpressed very clearly in my own motives nor in the motivesof those immediately about me; and also the apparently earn-est belief on the part of ever so many editors, authors, socialreformers, et cetera, that every person, however weak or dull-appearing externally, contains within himself the seed or themechanism for producing endless energy and ability, providinghe can only be made to realize that he has it. In other wordswe are all Napoleons, only we don't know it. We are lazyNapoleons, idle Hannibals, wasteful and indifferent John D.Rockefellers. Turn the pages of any magazine are there notadvertisements of and treatises on How To Be Successful,with the authors thereof offering to impart their knowledgeof how so to be for a comparative song?

　　Well, I am not one who can believe that. In my very humble estimation people are not so. They are, in the main, as I seeit, weak and limited, exceedingly so, like Vaclav Melka orMrs. Wscrinkuus, and to fill their humble brains with notions ofan impossible supremacy, if it could be done, would be to sendthem forth to breast the ocean in a cockleshell. And, yet, hereon my table, borrowed from the local library for purposes ofidle or critical examination, is a silly book entitled "Take It!""It" meaning "the world!" '; and another "It's Yours!" the"It" in this case meaning that same great world! All you haveto do is to decide so to do and to try! Am I a fool to smileat this very stout doctrine, to doubt whether you can getmore than four quarts out of any four-quart measure, if somuch?

　　But to return to this same matter of right, truth, justice,mercy, so freely advertised in these days and so clearly defined, apparently, in every one's mind as open paths by whichthey may proceed. In the main, it seems to me that peopl