The Harbor. Ernest Poole

at once out of my memory rose a picture of years ago, a picture from the harbor, of that fat drunken girl I had seen. She too had worn red garters—in fact, little else! With disgusting vividness up she came! And I jumped trembling to my feet.

      "I'm going home," I said roughly, and left my small companion.

      I kept away from her after that. And even the following winter, when she came over often to our house to spend the night with Sue, I did my best to avoid her. I avoided all Sue's friends. I did not keep girls quite out of my thoughts, I had spells now and then when I would read about them in novels, papers and magazines, anything I could lay hands on. I would read hungrily, at times almost wistfully. But all the stories that I read, however romantic, could never quite overbalance for me that giggling woman I had seen.

      "This is what love can be these days, foul as two pigs in a sty," said the harbor.

      The same thing happened again with war and the great idea of giving one's life for one's country.

      By countless eager questionings I had forced my mother to include among our heroes men like Napoleon, Nelson and Grant, and after I gave up hopes of the church these men for a time became greatest of all. You needed no mother to help you here. It was the easiest thing in the world to picture yourself leading charges or standing high up on a hill like Grant, quietly smoking a black cigar and sending your orderlies on the mad gallop out to all corners of the field. My hill grew very real to me. It had three wind-swept trees on top and I stood just in front of them.

      When the war with Spain broke out I was still in my 'teens, still rather thin and by no means tall, but I made up my mind to try to enlist. Even now I can shut my eyes and see again that long night on the docks when I watched two regiments embark on ships which were to sail at dawn. With the uniforms, the crash of bands, the flags, the cheers, the women laughing and crying, the harbor seemed all on my side that night.

      "This is certainly what I want!" I thought.

      But my father forbade my going. He was not only stern, he was savage. For once he came out of himself and talked. And his talk was not only against this war but against all wars. The Civil War was the worst of all. This was the more a surprise to me because I knew that he himself had been with the Boys of Sixty One, I had often boasted about it. But now I learned he had not fought at all, he had been a mere commissary clerk moving rations and blankets on freight trains!

      "The business side of war," he said. "And when you've seen that side of it you know how rotten a big war is! Men in the North made millions by sending such rotten meat to the front that we had to live on the people down South, we had to go into their farms and plantations and plunder defenseless women and children of all they had to eat! That's war! And war is filthy stinking camps where men die of fever and scurvy like flies—and war is field hospitals so rotten in their management that you see the wounded in long lines—packed together like bloody sardines—bleeding to death for the lack of care! When they're dead you dig big trenches and you pile 'em in like dogs! In time of war remember peace—and then you'll be ashamed you're there!"

      For a moment I was struck dumb with surprise. What was this strange fire deep down within my father's soul that could give out such a flash? Confusedly I wondered. A sudden idea crossed my mind.

      "But if that's how you feel," I retorted, "why are you always talking about the battleships we need? You want a big navy——"

      "Yes," he snapped, "to keep this country out of war! If you live long enough you'll see what I mean—remember then what I'm telling you! This country needs a navy so big she can trade wherever she likes and make other nations leave her alone! But she doesn't want war! Sixty One was enough! Some day when you get a man's eyes in your head you'll see what that did to this harbor!"

      I had it now, the cause of all his curious wrath! War had hurt his harbor! How or why I did not care. Could this harbor of his stand nothing heroic? Patriotism, religion, love—must they all be shoved aside to make way for his dull business?

      About a year later I was torn for months between two careers. Should I become a great musician or a famous writer? The idea of writing came to me first, I got it from "Pendennis," and for a time it took hold so hard I thought I was nicely settled for life. But then my mother read aloud "The Lives of Great Musicians," and within a few weeks the piano lessons which for years I had thought so dull became an absorbing passion. My mother bought me a photograph of one of the Beethoven portraits, and around it over my desk I tacked up pictures of famous pianists that I cut from magazines. I went to concerts in New York. Better still, my teacher secured me admittance to some orchestra rehearsals, where like a real professional, all mere amateurs shut out, I could sit in the dark and listen, and shut my eyes and hold my head between my hands. I was composing! After a month or two of this feverish life I remember the pride with which I wrote "Opus 38" over my last composition. My rapidity was astounding!

      But one day my teacher, a kind tactful German, told me that Beethoven, when he was composing, had not always shut himself up in a room and scowled with both hands to his head, as in the portrait of him I had, but had rather gone out into the world.

      "The Master found his music," he said, "by listening to the life close around him."

      "He did?" I became uneasy at once, for again I felt myself being pushed toward that eternal harbor.

      "If I were you," my relentless monitor went on, "and desired to become in music the great voice of my country"—I looked at him quickly but saw no smile—"I should watch the great ships down there below, I should listen to them with an artist's ears. They are here from all over the world, these ships, they are manned by men of all nations. I should listen to the songs of these men. I have heard," he added reflectively, "that some of their songs are centuries old. Beethoven gathered only the folk songs of his country. But you in your city of all nations might gather the folk songs of all the seas."

      I turned quickly. I had been walking the room.

      "I have heard the sailors sing," I said, "ever since I was a little kid out there in the garden." I scowled in the effort to search my soul, my artist's soul. "Yes," I added triumphantly, "and sometimes it brought a lump in my throat!"

      "Ah! Now you are a musician!"

      "I will see what I can do," I said.

      So again I tackled the harbor. By day it was quite impossible, all toots and blares, the most frightful discords—but at night its vulgar loudness was toned down sufficiently so that a fellow with artist's ears could really stand listening to its life, especially if I did not go too close but listened from my window. Here with uglier sounds subdued I could catch low voices, snatches of song and now and then a chorus. "The folk songs of the Seven Seas!" How that phrase took hold of me!

      I went for information to an old dock watchman who had been a sailor.

      "Songs? Why sure!" he answered. "It must be the chanties ye mean."

      "Chanties?"

      "That's it. I've been told the word's French."

      "Oh! Chanter!"

      "No—chanty. An' the man that sings the verses, he's called the chantyman. He sings while the crew heaves on the ropes an' they all come in on the chorus. If he's a real good chantyman he makes up new verses every time, a kind of a yarn he spins while he sings."

      Soon after this, toward the end of a warm, windy April night, I awoke and heard them singing. I jumped up and went to my window. From the dock next to my father's, over the line of warehouse roofs, I could see the immense white sails already slowly rising into the starlit night. Quickly I threw on some clothes and hurried down to the docks. The waterfront was empty, swept clean of all that I disliked. Only overhead a few billowy clouds, the soft rush of the wind, a slight flush in the east, it was almost dawn. Here and there gleamed a light, red, green or yellow, with a phantom tug or barge around it, moving over the black of the water. Not silence but something richer was here—the confused mysterious murmuring, the creaking and the breathing of the sleeping port. And out of this those voices singing.

      I drew nearer slowly. Hungrily I tried