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Chapter 36 Come on, Ill show you the real dirt, Brissenden said to him, one evening in January. They had dined together in San Francisco, and were at the Ferry Building, returning to Oakland, when the whim came to him to show Martin the real dirt. He turned and fled across the water-front, a meagre shadow in a flapping overcoat, with Martin straining to keep up with him. At a wholesale liquor store he bought two gallon-demijohns of old port, and with one in each hand boarded a Mission Street car, Martin at his heels burdened with several quart-bottles of whiskey. If Ruth could see me now, was his thought, while he wondered as to what constituted the real dirt. Maybe nobody will be there, Brissenden said, when they dismounted and plunged off to the right into the heart of the working-class ghetto, south of Market Street. In which case youll miss what youve been looking for so long. And what the deuce is that? Martin asked. Men, intelligent men, and not the gibbering nonentities I found you consorting with in that traders den. You read the books and you found yourself all alone. Well, Im going to show you to-night some other men whove read the books, so that you wont be lonely any more. Not that I bother my head about their everlasting discussions, he said at the end of a block. Im not interested in book philosophy. But youll find these fellows intelligences and not bourgeois swine. But watch out, theyll talk an arm off of you on any subject under the sun. Hope Nortons there, he panted a little later, resisting Martins effort to relieve him of the two demijohns. Nortons an idealist a Harvard man. Prodigious memory. Idealism led him to philosophic anarchy, and his family threw him off. Fathers a railroad president and many times millionnaire, but the sons starving in Frisco, editing an anarchist sheet for twenty-five a month. Martin was little acquainted in San Francisco, and not at all south of Market; so he had no idea of where he was being led. Go ahead, he said; tell me about them beforehand. What do they do for a living? How do they happen to be here? Hope Hamiltons there. Brissenden paused and rested his hands. Strawn-Hamiltons his name hyphenated, you know comes of old Southern stock. Hes a tramp laziest man I ever knew, though hes clerking, or trying to, in a socialist cooperative store for six dollars a week. But hes a confirmed hobo. Tramped into town. Ive seen him sit all day on a bench and never a bite pass his lips, and in the evening, when I invited him to dinner restaurant two blocks away have him say, Too much trouble, old man. Buy me a package of cigarettes instead. He was a Spencerian like you till Kreis turned him to materialistic monism. Ill start him on monism if I can. Nortons another monist only he affirms naught but spirit. He can give Kreis and Hamilton all they want, too. Who is Kreis? Martin asked. His rooms were going to. One time professor fired from university usual story. A mind like a steel trap. Makes his living any old way. I know hes been a street fakir when he was down. Unscrupulous. Rob a corpse of a shroud anything. Difference between him and the bourgeoisie is that he robs without illusion. Hell talk Nietzsche, or Schopenhauer, or Kant, or anything, but the only thing in this world, not excepting Mary, that he really cares for, is his monism. Haeckel is his little tin god. The only way to insult him is to take a slap at Haeckel. |
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