LITMIR.BIZ

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      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, I thought, all must be in turmoil as unprecedented as the act that caused it: the game broken up, the party ruined, the hostess noisily indignant, everybody shouting to everybody else, “He sent Hattie his letter—and then he wasn’t there!” I was disgraced, notorious, a pariah; and I couldn’t go home to hide my shame. To leave a party before it was over was an action of itself unthinkable, and my hat was in the “gentlemen’s dressing room.” Nobody could go home without his best hat; he couldn’t.

      A Deflated Eight-Year-Old

      Furtive, despairing, I lurked in shadows that ominously grew longer. Sunset had come when at last I crept round that large house to slide in by the back door—for if I faced hell itself I had to get my hat. On the rear veranda three large ice-cream freezers stood exhausted; refreshments—insanely forfeited by me—were of the past, and the party must be near its shocked close. I slipped into the kitchen unnoticed, passed quiveringly through a rear hall, opened a door—and was at the party again. Boys and girls in paper caps were whooping, running, charging into one another, falling down, upsetting furniture, and banging all over the house in the liberated exhilaration that is the last stage of a successful children’s party.

      I’d expected a dreadful outcry; I’d thought to see dozens of accusing fingers pointed at me and to hear a cruel damning chorus, “There he is!” Clutching hands would be upon my shoulders while horrid voices screamed for the hostess to come and do her will upon me: “Mrs. Browning, hurry! We’ve caught Booth Tarkington! Here he is!”

      Nobody even looked at me; I might have been an invisible boy. The late Mr. Dillinger walking into a crowded police station only to find himself utterly ignored might have felt part of what emotion then possessed me.

      I caught a friend by the arm as he was dashing by me.

      “Page, wait!” I begged. “What did Hattie do?”

      “Let go me!” Page said. “What did Hattie do when?”

      I gulped. “When I—when I jumped out of the window.”

      “Did you?” Page said. “Let go me! Sam Miller’s after me and I got to run!””

      The truth came upon me strangely, strangely. Nobody knew that I’d jumped out of the window. Hattie didn’t know it—nobody in the world knew it. Nobody even knew that during most of that party I hadn’t been present. Where I was or what I did didn’t mean anything to anybody.

      I was freed of guilt, but plunged into a profound meditation.

      Through the early twilight I walked home alone, with my head down and my shiny shoes moving slowly. Something had departed out of me and I seemed to consist of a walking vacancy. It was then, at about eight and a half years of age, that I lost a great part of the puffed-uppedness devotedly blown into me for years by loved ones at home. For the first time I seemed to perceive that I was nobody at all. So, during that slow trudge homeward after the party, I ceased to be a little child and became a growing

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