Rose Hawthorne Lathrop - "Memories of Hawthorne"

Various - "The Harvard Classics Volume 38"

Ben Macomber - "The Jewel City"

Alfred de Vigny - "Cinq Mars, v6"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Merton of the Movies

H >> Harry Leon Wilson >> Merton of the Movies




But this soon palled upon the watching connoisseur. The actual shots
were few and separated by barren intervals of waiting for that
mysterious something which photoplays in production seemed to need.
Being no longer identified with this drama he had lost much of his
concern over the fate in store for the girl, though he knew she
would emerge from the ordeal as pure as she was beautiful--a bit
foolish at moments, perhaps, but good.

He found that he was especially interested in bedroom scenes. On
Stage Four a sumptuous bedroom, vacant for the moment, enchained him
for a long period of contemplation. The bed was of some rare wood
ornately carved, with a silken canopy, spread with finest linen and
quilts of down, its pillows opulent in their embroidered cases. The
hide of a polar bear, its head mounted with open jaws, spread over
the rich rug beside the bed. He wondered about this interestingly.
Probably the stage would be locked at night. Still, at a suitable
hour, he could descreetly find out. On another stage a bedroom
likewise intrigued him, though this was a squalid room in a tenement
and the bed was a cheap thing sparsely covered and in sad disorder.
People were working on this set, and he presently identified the
play, for Muriel Mercer in a neat black dress entered to bring
comfort to the tenement dwellers. But this play, too, had ceased to
interest him. He knew that Vera Vanderpool had escaped the blight of
Broadway to choose the worthwhile, the true, the vital things of
life, and that was about all he now cared to know of the actual
play. This tenement bed had become for him its outstanding dramatic
value. He saw himself in it for a good night's rest, waking
refreshed in plenty of time to be dressed and out before the
tenement people would need it. He must surely learn if the big
sliding doors to these stages were locked overnight.

He loitered about the stages until late afternoon, with especial
attention to sleeping apartments. In one gripping drama he felt
cheated. The set showed the elaborately fitted establishment of a
fashionable modiste. Mannequins in wondrous gowns came through
parted curtains to parade before the shop's clientele, mostly
composed of society butterflies. One man hovered attentive about the
most beautiful of these, and whispered entertainingly as she scanned
the gowns submitted to her choice. He was a dissolute--looking man,
although faultlessly arrayed. His hair was thin, his eyes were
cruel, and his face bespoke self-indulgence.

The expert Merton Gill at once detected that the beautiful young
woman he whispered to would be one of those light--headed wives who
care more for fashionable dress than for the good name of their
husbands. He foresaw that the creature would be trapped into the
power of this villain by her love of finery, though he was sure that
the end would find her still a good woman. The mannequins finished
their parade and the throng of patrons broke up. The cameras were
pushed to an adjoining room where the French proprietor of the place
figured at a desk. The dissolute pleasure-seeker came back to
question him. His errant fancy had been caught by one of the
mannequins--the most beautiful of them, a blonde with a flowerlike
face and a figure whose perfection had been boldly attested by the
gowns she had worn. The unprincipled proprietor at once demanded
from a severe-faced forewoman that this girl be sent for, after
which he discreetly withdrew. The waiting scoundrel sat and
complacently pinched the ends of his small dark mustache. It could
be seen that he was one of those who believe that money will buy
anything.

The fair girl entered and was leeringly entreated to go out to
dinner with him. It appeared that she never went out to dinner with
any one, but spent her evenings with her mother who was very, very
ill. Her unworthy admirer persisted. Then the telephone on the
manager's desk called her. Her mother was getting worse. The
beautiful face was now suffused with agony, but this did not deter
the man from his loathsome advances. There was another telephone
call. She must come at once if she were to see her mother alive. The
man seized her. They struggled. All seemed lost, even the choice
gown she still wore; but she broke away to be told over the
telephone that her mother had died. Even this sad news made no
impression upon the wretch. He seemed to be a man of one idea. Again
he seized her, and the maddened girl stabbed him with a pair of long
gleaming shears that had lain on the manager's desk. He fell
lifeless at her feet, while the girl stared in horror at the weapon
she still grasped.

Merton Gill would not have lingered for this. There were tedious
waits, and scenes must be rehearsed again and again. Even the agony
of the girl as she learned of her mother's passing must be done over
and over at the insistence of a director who seemed to know what a
young girl should feel at these moments. But Merton had watched from
his place back of the lights with fresh interest from the moment it
was known that the girl's poor old mother was an invalid, for he had
at first believed that the mother's bedroom would be near by. He
left promptly when it became apparent that the mother's bedroom
would not be seen in this drama. They would probably show the doctor
at the other telephone urging the girl to hurry home, and show him
again announcing that all was over, but the expense of mother and
her deathbed had been saved. He cared little for the ending of this
play. Already he was becoming a little callous to the plight of
beautiful young girls threatened with the loss of that which they
held most dear.

Purposely all day he had avoided the neighbourhood of his humble
miner's home. He thought it as well that he should not be seen much
around there. He ate again at four o'clock, heartily and rather
expensively, and loafed about the stages until six. Then he strolled
leisurely down the village street and out the lower end to where he
could view the cabin. Work for the day was plainly over. The
director and his assistant lingered before the open door in
consultation. A property man and an electrician were engaged inside,
but a glance as he passed showed that the blankets were still in the
bunks. He did not wait to see more, but passed on with all evidences
of disinterest in this lowly abode.

He ascertained that night that the fight must have been had. The
table was overturned, one of the chairs wrecked, and there were
other signs of disorder. Probably it had been an excellent fight;
probably these primitive men of the woods had battled desperately.
But he gave little consideration to the combat, and again slept
warmly under the blankets. Perhaps they would fight again to-morrow,
or perhaps there would be less violent bits of the drama that would
secure him another night of calm repose.

The following morning found him slightly disturbed by two unforeseen
needs arising from his novel situation. He looked carefully at his
collar, wondering how many days he would be able to keep it looking
like a fresh collar, and he regretted that he had not brought his
safety-razor to this new home. Still the collar was in excellent
shape as yet, and a scrutiny of his face in the cracked mirror
hanging on the log wall determined that he could go at least another
day without shaving. His beard was of a light growth, gentle in
texture, and he was yet far from the plight of Mr. Montague.
Eventually, to be sure, he would have to go to the barber shop on
the lot and pay money to be shaved, which seemed a pity, because an
actor could live indefinitely unshaven but could live without food
for the merest fragment of time.

He resolved to be on the lookout that day for a barber-shop set. He
believed they were not common in the photodrama, still one might be
found.

He limited himself to the lightest of breakfasts. He had timidly
refrained from counting his silver but he knew he must be frugal. He
rejoiced at this economy until late afternoon when, because of it,
he simply had to eat a heavier dinner than he had expected to need.
There was something so implacable about this demand for food. If you
skimped in the morning you must make amends at the next meal. He
passed the time as on the previous day, a somewhat blase actor
resting between pictures, and condescending to beguile the tedium by
overlooking the efforts of his professional brethren. He could find
no set that included a barber shop, although they were beds on every
hand. He hoped for another night in the cabin, but if that were not
to be, there was a bed easy of access on Stage Three. When he had
observed it, a ghastly old father was coughing out his life under
its blankets, nursed only by his daughter, a beautiful young
creature who sewed by his bedside, and who would doubtless be thrown
upon the world in the very next reel, though--Merton was glad to
note--probably not until the next day.

Yet there was no need for this couch of the tubercular father, for
action in the little cabin was still on. After making the unhappy
discovery in the cafeteria that his appetite could not be hoodwinked
by the clumsy subterfuge of calling coffee and rolls a breakfast
some six hours previously, he went boldly down to stand before his
home. Both miners were at work inside. The room had been placed in
order again, though the little mountain flower was gone. A letter,
he gathered, had been received from her, and one of the miners was
about to leave on a long journey.

Merton could not be sure, but he supposed that the letter from the
little girl told that she was unhappy in her new surroundings,
perhaps being ill-treated by the supercilious Eastern relatives. The
miner who was to remain helped the other to pack his belongings in a
quaint old carpet sack, and together they undid a bundle which
proved to contain a splendid new suit. Not only this, but now came a
scene of eloquent appeal to the watcher outside the door. The miner
who was to remain expressed stern disapproval of the departing
miner's beard. It would never do, he was seen to intimate, and when
the other miner portrayed helplessness a new package was unwrapped
and a safety razor revealed to his shocked gaze.

At this sight Merton Gill felt himself growing too emotional for a
mere careless bystander, and withdrew to a distance where he could
regain better control of himself. When he left the miner to be shorn
was betraying comic dismay while the other pantomimed the correct
use of the implement his thoughtfulness had provided. When he
returned after half--an-hour's rather nervous walk up another
street, the departing miner was clean shaven and one might note the
new razor glittering on the low bench beside the battered tin basin.

They worked late in his home that night; trifling scenes were taken
and retaken. The departing miner had to dress in his splendid but
ill-fitting new garments and to bid an affectionate farewell to his
partner, then had to dress in his old clothes again for some bit
that had been forgotten, only to don the new suit for close-ups. At
another time Merton Gill might have resented this tediously drawn-
out affair which was keeping him from his rest, for he had come to
look upon this structure as one having rights in it after a certain
hour, but a sight of the razor which had not been touched allayed
any possible feeling of irritation.

It was nine-thirty before the big lights jarred finally off and the
director said, "That's all, boys." Then he turned to call, "Jimmie!
Hey, Jimmie! Where's that prop-rustler gone to now?"

"Here, Mr. Burke, yes, sir."

"We've finished the shack stuff. Let's see--" He looked at the watch
on his wrist--"That'll be all for tonight. Strike this first thing
tomorrow morning."

"Yes, sir," said Jimmie. The door was closed and the men walked
away. Merton trailed them a bit, not remaining too pointedly near
the cabin. He circled around through Fifth Avenue to regain the
place.

Softly he let himself in and groped through the dark until his hand
closed upon the abandoned razor. Satisfying himself that fresh
blades had accompanied it, he made ready for bed. He knew it was to
be his last night in this shelter. The director had told Jimmie to
strike it first thing in the morning. The cabin would still be
there, but it would contain no homely furniture, no chairs, no
table, no wash-basin, no safety-razor and, most vital of lacks--it
would be devoid of blankets.

Yet this knowledge did not dismay him. He slept peacefully after
praying that something good would happen to him. He put it that way
very simply. He had placed himself, it seemed, where things could
only happen to him. He was, he felt, beyond bringing them about.



CHAPTER IX

MORE WAYS THAN ONE


Early he was up to bathe and shave. He shaved close to make it last
longer, until his tender face reddened under the scraping. Probably
he would not find another cabin in which a miner would part with his
beard for an Eastern trip. Probably he would have to go to the
barber the next time. He also succeeded, with soap and water, in
removing a stain from his collar. It was still a decent collar; not
immaculate, perhaps, but entirely possible.

This day he took eggs with his breakfast, intending to wheedle his
appetite with a lighter second meal than it had demanded the day
before. He must see if this would not average better on the day's
overhead.

After breakfast he was irresistibly drawn to view the moving picture
of his old home being dismantled. He knew now that he might stand
brazenly there without possible criticism. He found Jimmy and a
companion property-boy already busy. Much of the furniture was
outside to be carted away. Jimmy, as Merton lolled idly in the
doorway, emptied the blackened coffee pot into the ashes of the
fireplace and then proceeded to spoon into the same refuse heap half
a kettle of beans upon which the honest miners had once feasted. The
watcher deplored that he had not done more than taste the beans when
he had taken his final survey of the place this morning. They had
been good beans, but to do more than taste them would have been
stealing. Now he saw them thrown away and regretted that he could
not have known what their fate was to be. There had been enough of
them to save him a day's expenses.

He stood aside as the two boys brought out the cooking utensils, the
rifle, the miners' tools, to stow them in a waiting handcart. When
they had loaded this vehicle they trundled it on up the narrow
street of the Western town. Yet they went only a little way, halting
before one of the street's largest buildings. A sign above its
wooden porch flaunted the name Crystal Palace Hotel. They unlocked
its front door and took the things from the cart inside.

From the street the watcher could see them stowing these away. The
room appeared to contain a miscellaneous collection of articles
needed in the ruder sort of photodrama. Emptying their cart, they
returned with it to the cabin for another load. Merton Gill stepped
to the doorway and peered in from apparently idle curiosity. He
could see a row of saddles on wooden supports; there were kitchen
stoves, lamps, painted chairs, and heavy earthenware dishes on
shelves. His eyes wandered over these articles until they came to
rest upon a pile of blankets at one side of the room. They were
neatly folded, and they were many.

Down before the cabin he could see the handcart being reloaded by
Jimmie and his helper. Otherwise the street was empty. The young man
at the doorway stepped lightly in and regarded the windows on either
side of the door. He sauntered to the street and appeared to be
wondering what he would examine next in this curious world. He
passed Jimmie and the other boy returning with the last load from
the cabin. He noted at the top of the load the mattress on which he
had lain for three nights and the blankets that had warmed him. But
he was proved not to be so helpless as he had thought. Again he knew
where a good night's rest might be had by one using ordinary
discretion.

Again that day, the fourth of his double life, he went the mad pace,
a well-fed, carefree youth, sauntering idly from stage to stage,
regarding nonchalantly the joys and griefs, the twistings of human
destiny there variously unfolded. Not only was he this to the casual
public notice; to himself he was this, at least consciously. True,
in those nether regions of the mind so lately discovered and now
being so expertly probed by Science, in the mind's dark basement, so
to say, a certain unlovely fronted dragon of reality would issue
from the gloom where it seemed to have been lurking and force itself
upon his notice.

This would be at oddly contented moments when he least feared the
future, when he was most successfully being to himself all that he
must seem to others. At such times when he leisurely walked a world
of plenty and fruition, the dragon would half-emerge from its
subconscious lair to chill him with its head composed entirely of
repellent facts. Then a stout effort would be required to send the
thing back where it belonged, to those lower, decently hidden levels
of the mind--life.

And the dragon was cunning. From hour to hour, growing more restive,
it employed devices of craft and subtlety. As when Merton Gill,
carefree to the best of his knowledge, strolling lightly to another
point of interest, graciously receptive to the pleasant life about
him, would suddenly discover that a part of his mind without
superintendence had for some moments been composing a letter,
something that ran in effect:

"Mr. Gashwiler, dear sir, I have made certain changes in my plans
since I first came to sunny California and getting quite a little
homesick for good old Simsbury and I thought I would write you about
taking back my old job in the emporium, and now about the money for
the ticket back to Simsbury, the railroad fare is--"

He was truly amazed when he found this sort of thing going on in
that part of his mind he didn't watch. It was scandalous. He would
indignantly snatch the half-finished letter and tear it up each time
he found it unaccountably under way.

It was surely funny the way your mind would keep doing things you
didn't want it to do. As, again, this very morning when, with his
silver coin out in his hand, he had merely wished to regard it as a
great deal of silver coin, a store of plenty against famine, which
indeed it looked to be under a not-too-minute scrutiny. It looked
like as much as two dollars and fifty cents, and he would have
preferred to pocket it again with this impression. Yet that
rebellious other part of his mind had basely counted the coin even
while he eyed it approvingly, and it had persisted in shouting aloud
that it was not two dollars and fifty cents but one dollar and
eighty--five cents.

The counting part of the mind made no comment on this discrepancy;
it did not say that this discovery put things in a very different
light. It merely counted, registered the result, and ceased to
function, with an air of saying that it would ascertain the facts
without prejudice and you could do what you liked about them. It
didn't care.

That night a solitary guest enjoyed the quiet hospitality of the
Crystal Palace Hotel. He might have been seen--but was not--to
effect a late evening entrance to this snug inn by means of a front
window which had, it would seem, at some earlier hour of the day,
been unfastened from within. Here a not-too-luxurious but sufficing
bed was contrived on the floor of the lobby from a pile of neatly
folded blankets at hand, and a second night's repose was enjoyed by
the lonely patron, who again at an early hour of the morning, after
thoughtfully refolding the blankets that had protected him, was at
some pains to leave the place as he had entered it without
attracting public notice, perchance of unpleasant character.

On this day it would not have been possible for any part of the mind
whatsoever to misvalue the remaining treasure of silver coin. It had
become inconsiderable, and even if kept from view could be, and was,
counted again and again by mere blind fingertips. They contracted,
indeed, a senseless habit of confining themselves in a trouser's
pocket to count the half-dollar, the quarter, and the two dimes long
after the total was too well known to its owner.

Nor did this total, unimpressive at best, long retain even these
poor dimensions. A visit to the cafeteria, in response to the
imperious demands of a familiar organic process, resulted in less
labour, by two dimes, for the stubbornly reiterative fingertips.

An ensuing visit to the Holden lot barber, in obedience to social
demands construed to be equally imperious with the physical, reduced
all subsequent counting, whether by fingertips or a glance of the
eye, to barest mechanical routine. A single half-dollar is easy to
count. Still, on the following morning there were two coins to
count. True, both were dimes.

A diligent search among the miscellany of the Crystal Palace Hotel
had failed to reveal a single razor. The razor used by the miner
should in all reason have been found, but there was neither that nor
any other. The baffled seeker believed there must have been crooked
work somewhere. Without hesitation he found either Jimmie or his
companion to be guilty of malfeasance in office. But at least one
item of more or less worried debate was eliminated. He need no
longer weigh mere surface gentility against the stern demands of an
active metabolism. A shave cost a quarter. Twenty cents would not
buy a shave, but it would buy at the cafeteria something more
needful to any one but a fop.

He saw himself in the days to come--if there were very many days to
come, of which he was now not too certain--descending to the
unwholesome artistic level of the elder Montague. He would, in
short, be compelled to peddle the brush. And of course as yet it was
nothing like a brush--nothing to kindle the eye of a director
needing genuine brushes. In the early morning light he fingered a
somewhat gaunt chin and wondered how long "they" would require to
grow. Not yet could he be taken for one of those actors compelled by
the rigorous exactions of creative screen art to let Nature have its
course with his beard. At present he merely needed a shave.

And the collar had not improved with usage. Also, as the day wore
on, coffee with one egg proved to have been not long-enduring fare
for this private in the army of the unemployed. Still, his morale
was but slightly impaired. There were always ways, it seemed. And
the later hours of the hungry afternoon were rather pleasantly
occupied in dwelling upon one of them.

The sole guest of the Crystal Palace Hotel entered the hostelry that
night somewhat earlier than was usual; indeed at the very earliest
moment that foot traffic through the narrow street seemed to have
diminished to a point where the entry could be effected without
incurring the public notice which he at these moments so sincerely
shunned. After a brief interval inside the lobby he issued from his
window with certain objects in hand, one of which dropped as he
clambered out. The resulting clamour seemed to rouse far echoes
along the dead street, and he hastily withdrew, with a smothered
exclamation of dismay, about the nearest corner of the building
until it could be ascertained that echoes alone had been aroused.

After a little breathless waiting he slunk down the street, keeping
well within friendly shadows, stepping softly, until he reached the
humble cabin where so lately the honest miners had enacted their
heart-tragedy. He jerked the latch-string of the door and was
swiftly inside, groping a way to the fireplace. Here he lighted
matches, thoughtfully appropriated that morning from the cafeteria
counter. He shielded the blaze with one hand while with the other he
put to use the articles he had brought from his hotel.

Into a tin cooking pot with a long handle he now hastily ladled
well-cooked beans from the discarded heap in the fireplace, by means
of an iron spoon. He was not too careful. More or less ashes
accompanied the nutritious vegetables as the pot grew to be half
full. That was a thing to be corrected later, and at leisure. When
the last bean had been salvaged the flame of another match revealed
an unsuspected item--a half-loaf of bread nestled in the ashes at
the far corner of the fireplace. It lacked freshness; was, in truth,
withered and firm to the touch, but doubtless more wholesome than
bread freshly baked.

He was again on his humble cot in the seclusion of the Crystal
Palace Hotel. Half-reclining, he ate at leisure. It being
inadvisable to light matches here he ate chiefly by the touch
system. There was a marked alkaline flavour to the repast, not
unpleasantly counteracted by a growth of vegetable mould of delicate
lavender tints which Nature had been decently spreading over the
final reduction of this provender to its basic elements. But the
time was not one in which to cavil about minor infelicities. Ashes
wouldn't hurt any one if taken in moderation; you couldn't see the
mould in a perfectly dark hotel; and the bread was good.