The rights of a man

Preface

I AM not unconscious of structural defects in this volume, as a work of fiction. But to forestall technical critics it might be said, I had a story to tell; not a fiction to create. Perhaps Brewerton was your town; Gardner may have been your neighbor; maybe Dolly played with your little girl, and Batty may have climbed to his attic from the alley in the rear of your home. Dr. Morrison may prove an old acquaintance with whom you may have sometimes grown impatient. But after all, though he may seem too prolix in conversation, I wish you to take him seriously, for his is the only remedy for the things in the book which may bring a wrench to the heart, or a tear to the eye.

I would be neither human nor truthful, were I to disclaim the wish that the little volume may become one of the “best sellers,” but I have a larger wish, and more earnest desire than that improbability. It is that the book may have an understanding reading by every member of every general assembly of every state in the Union. This desire is not primarily to influence legislators to ratify the Federal Amendment, which has so large a place in the theme; the business perceptions of these intelligent men, and their sense of justice to an on-coming posterity are, I am sure, sufficient to cause them to effectuate that, the most important national justice since the day of Lincoln’s Proclamation of Emancipation.

What I wish above all else, is to help them to visualize clearly, not only the rights of a man who is strong, but also the rights of a man, whom Government has permitted to become diseased and rduced to helplessness.

Perhaps, in the light of the evidence which is now being extracted from the brewers of the country by the Senatorial investigating committee, I am justified in suggesting that this story, completed six months ago, simply reveals scenes and presents acquaintances familiar to everyone who has felt or observed the debauching power of alcohol. It is as essentially true in every element of its human experience as this evidence proves true the program of propaganda so, as yet, incompletely uncovered.

The action of alcohol as stated, is scientifically accurate. If Americans could have been made to believe a century ago that alcoholism was a disease, millions of men would have lived their normal lives of usefulness, and this generation would have resisted the prevailing epidemic of Influenza, with but a small percentage of its fearful mortality. Scientific truth depends not on a man’s faith; it is mathematically accurate within itself, and it is inexorable. In this volume. Dr. Morrison is the exponent of scientific truth.

The language of some of the characters that live and move and speak in the book may be objectionable, even offensive to some. If such should be the case, the reader is asked to remember that the author is not responsible for the language of these people any more than he is responsible for their characters. But since he chose to record this chapter in their lives, he is responsible for the faithful portrayal of motive and of expression ; and that he has faithfully striven to attain.

The Author.

St. Petersburg, Florida.

December 6, 1918.

Chapter I David Courtney

e read the past by the light of the present, and the forms vary as the shadows fall, or as the point of vision alters/^

^^LTHOUGH a young man, David Courtney was / \ known among his friends and intimate acquaintances as the “Gentleman of the Old South.” His personal tastes were simple; a good tailor to fit his six-foot frame was indispensible, but a fortnightly fox chase was indulged in only because horse-racing was not sufficiently continuous. Scrupulously chaste in language, he swore only when other vocabulary seemed impotent to express his meaning; and his mint julep could be absolutely and perfectly mixed by none other than Sancho, the long-time family butler. His capital consisted of ability plus the energy for ten hours’ work each day.

Reared upon his father’s country estate, Mr. Courtney had imbibed a certain ruggedness of character usually considered a product of the soil, sometimes, perhaps, needing excusing, but never explaining. When, after graduating from the village high school, and completing a year of private tutorage, the time arrived for the selection of the college to which he should go, his father had inquired as to w’hat he desired.

“Bob Morrison,” David had replied, “is going to Princeton and we have planned to room together.”

“Where do you propose to make your home after you have finished college?” his father had asked.

Naming the city of his choice with a firmness of decision which met parental approval, his father had replied:

“Then choose your college among the people with whom you expect to labor and live.’*

“But you—”

“I know,” interrupted Colonel Courtney, “and I love Princeton, my Alma Mater; but, in my day, we of the South had no colleges of standing. If, after your graduation, circumstances are favorable and you wish it — and I trust you will — let your degree come from Princeton.”

But a month after David received his college diploma his father had passed into the great, mysterious unknown. Colonel Courtney was not a financier; on his native Mississippi River valley farm he had lived the life of what has long been known in the South as “the country gentleman,” which meant that his banker had been lenient. Having a different life purpose, David, unconscious, in his own hopes for the future, of the chords which were being torn in his mother’s heart, had persuaded her to dispose of the estate. After payment of his father’s accumulated liabilities, he found himself facing the responsibilities of the future with little but the heritage of character unimpeachable, and an unfaltering purpose.

Just ten years to the day before the beginning of the incidents recorded in this narrative, assisting his mother over the gangway of an upriver steamer, old Sancho, the family butler, with the hand luggage and his faithful wife, Cindy, bringing up the rear, David, with his mother, had landed in Brewerton, the city of his adoption. These had not been years of ease. The position which David Courtney, counsellor at law, had attained among his fellows was self-evident of battles fought and won.

This anniversary was, therefore, but a recurrence of others of its kind. To be exact, it was one of those days which occasionally slip into the calendar of every man to pester him with doubts of the future and regrets of the past. Today, having failed to observe the falling barometer, David himself could not have defined the cause of his mental distemper; but the day having worn itself away in plodding weariness, before delving into his final task of reviewing the legal papers laid upon his table by his assistant, he stretched his legs by several quick turns across the room.

Stopping at the window of his tenth story office, he noticed flecks of snow, the first harbingers of winter, fasten themselves upon the pane, then disappear, while over the hills to the north great slanting, swirling waves deepened the gloom. Pressing his face against the glass he felt, in spite of his petulant mood, just a touch of that buoyancy which the first flying snow had always brought in the years unburdened by cares. Then the lights began to twinkle out over the city and pressing the electric switch, the night was shut out and he seated himself again at his desk.

The title cover to the topmost document read:

SIMON JACOBI vs.

JAMES GARDNER.

“FORECLOSURE OF MORTGAGE.”

Simon Jacobi was known to Mr. Courtney as the genial proprietor of a chain of saloons throughout the city, and familiarly called by his friends, the “honest Dutchman.” He enjoyed the distinction of being “the friend of the boys,” well earned as many could testify who had received loans of five and ten dollar bills, as Jacobi put it: “Schust to puy der kiddies somedings goot to eat,” after the reckless fathers had spent and lost the last dime of their week’s earnings in the pleasant back parlors of his saloons. If his friends had. good collateral, he assured them, “It vas vun real bleasure” to make the loan as large as the security would justify.

And Jacobi was no usurer; if the wheel was running to his liking, he would advance full pay without interest on the assignment of next week’s salary check. But, naturally, in all his dealings there were derelicts, and regardless of the fact that he never permitted a foreclosure of mortgage as long as the interest was paid and the maker continued his customer, there were mortgages to be foreclosed. In all this Mr. Courtney was not concerned. The business of Jacobi coming to him through his client, the Dornham Trust and Banking Company, he was interested only in the accuracy of the work of his office. But in reviewing this particular document something familiar seemed to attract his attention.

Turning to the mortgage deed, he examined the signature and that of the attesting witnesses. The* property was located in a respectable residential section of the city, of which he had no personal knowledge and he could recall no acquaintance bearing the name of the mortgagor. So dismissing the thought as only another of the day s vagrant visitors, he laid the paper completing the evening’s work aside.

As he stepped from the office building, the attorney drew into his lungs deep draughts of the cool air. The streets and houses were fast being wrapped in their mantle of white, and the buoyancy of the flying snow filled the hurrying crowds. Ah, the gladness of the first snow! As he inhaled the oxygen in his lungs, it quickly dispelled the last remnants of his acquired grouch and the impulse of a saner mind returned. Throwing back his broad shoulders, he took on a swinging stride for his usual two-mile walk home.

Passing through that portion of the city where the borderland of business pushing out meets the home, on the corner in front of him he read the sign: “Last Chance,” and just as he was in the act of passing the door over which it hung, a man, hurled violently out of the saloon, fell motionless at his feet, a stream of blood from a cut on his forehead staining the snow.

It was no unusual thing in the city of Brewerton to see a drunken man prone upon the pavement; neither was it an uncommon occurrence for men to be ejected from saloons if their pockets were empty and the saloon-keeper believed their presence lent disrespectability to his place; and sometimes force was necessary. For such characters few people possessed as little patience as did Mr. Courtney; yet, as he stepped around the man to proceed upon his way, the widening scarlet in the white snow caused him to stop. Looking down at the figure for a moment half angrily, half pityingly, he lifted the unconscious stranger and carried him back into the saloon from which he had been so unceremoniously expelled.

“What’s the meaning of this inhuman treatment?” he demanded.

“Ayre yez his friend?” inquired Pat O'Connell from behind the bar.

“I don’t know the man, but — ”

“Then I’ll introjooze yez, I will,” said Pat, “and b’ me father’s sorrel wheeskers. I’ll tell yez th’ truth, repatin’ t’ yez the wurds I just told him. He’s th’ coontimptablist, ornerist, sheeftliest liar that ivver crooked a elboo over me mahogany. Mate the gintleman!” And Pat bowed low with a wave of the hand.

“But that is no excuse for this sort of treatment.”

“ ’Twas not for that that he got it, sor,” replied Pat; “it was for th’ answer he handed me, both about m’self and me boss.”

“Who is your employer?” inquired Mr. Courtney.

“ ’Tis Meester Simon Jacobi, sor,” replied Pat; “an’ the dead -bate o’ him can’t call me boss names if he is a Doochman.”

“But the man is in his cups; you should make allowance for his condition.”

“Aye sor, an’ that’s the trooble with th’ blarsted oopstart; he’s put his home in his cups, an’ becoose me boss wants his money he wants to be oogly about it.”

“Who is the man?” inquired Mr. Courtney.

“Gardner — ^Jeemes Gardner, sor.”

“James Gardner of Williams street?” inquired the lawyer.

“Th’ same sor; I see yez recoognizes him b’ me deescreeption.”

Perhaps Mr. Courtney could not have explained his act satisfactorily to himself, but the man having regained consciousness, he called a taxi and accompanied him to his home.

“Poor James!”

Perhaps those two words were not much for a wife to say at such a time, but their tone, the trembling hands that busied themselves to give relief, the gray hair that bent over the scarlet wound, and the smothered sob were all new revelations to David Courtney. It was a revelation of love and woe which he had had no occasion for knowing, and with it there was accentuated in his own mind a contempt for the man who would grieve that love by bestializing himself.

“He is not seriously injured. Madam,” he assured Mrs. Gardner.

“You are very kind, sir; I hope he is not,” faltered the wife, busying herself with tender ministrations.

For the first time he took a mental inventory of the room. The furnishings, while simple, gave evidence of refinement and better days, and inwardly Mr. Courtney railed at the debauched creature whose weakness had brought this grief.

“The wound is small,” said Mrs. Gardner, as she washed away the blood, “but I am afraid — ”

Divining the unspoken desire, Courtney wondered why he had not before thought of calling Dr. Morrison; and glad of the opportunity of imposing a ride this disagreeable night upon his altruistic friend, he hurried to say:

“I trust 5"ou will not consider me impertinent. Madam, but I have a friend who is a specialist in such cases, and if you will permit me I will call him.”

It had been many months since James Gardner had received kindness at the hands of his fellows, and Mrs. Gardner had not failed to see the contempt in w’hich he was held by former friends.

“Then you do consider him worthy of an effort to save?” she asked, as unbidden tears rolled down her furrowed cheeks.

“Whatever he may be. Madam,” said he, “your love pleads for him.”

Courtney was waiting at the curb when Dr. Morrison arrived.

“One of your alcoholics, Bob,” was his greeting. “Hurry and patch him up. He’s not worth it, but there’s a woman in there that is. I’ll wait for you; I v/ant you to drive me home.”

“Rather a bad hurt, I am afraid,” said the doctor as he came from the house.

“You don’t consider that small injury dangerous?” asked Courtney.

“Why no, not the wound of itself, but in his condition it is quite serious. Who is he, and how came you to get mixed into such a case?”

“The white-aproned artist in the saloon where I found him said his name was Gardner. As to my getting into the affair, I guess it’s my liver; that medicine you gave me, like your impractical notions about these rummies, was no good.”

“The trouble with you, Dave,” laughed the doctor, “is not your stomach, but your head. Let’s hear the circumstances which induced you to waste time on such a fellow.”

After listening to the incidents which caused Courtney to see the wounded man home. Dr. Morrison was silent for a moment.

“Courtney,” he finally said, “of all the national crimes in human experience, history records none more cruelly unjust than the legalized liquor traffic. If you’ll go back into the history of this drunkard you’ll find that he was once endowed with the attributes of success! I mean the power to serve his community and make a home happy. The wreck you carried home tonight is the result of disease infection through social environment enforced upon him by his government.”

“O, Morrison!” exclaimed the lawyer in impatient protest, “if you insist upon wasting your time with these worthless cusses, go to it; but for heaven’s sake cut out this ‘government enforced infection’ business. Why, men are laughing at you. This fellow is the result of his own choosing, nothing more and nothing less. The more ability he had, the more severely he should be condemned. I presume you specialists do have your sphere of usefulness, but if you’ll excuse me, old man, you do grow so narrow between the eyes. Why, you would deprive man of his highest attribute, his God-given free agency, reducing him to a government-made automaton.”

“No, Courtney, I would destroy the automatic power of government, restore the God-given free agency and give man an equal chance.”

“Well,” said David, slapping the doctor on the back, “here we are, and ‘so endeth the first lesson.’ Come in and take supper with us. Mother’s been wondering what’s become of you.”

“I’ve dined, thank you, you heathen materialist; but give my respects to your excellent mother and say, “If agreeable. I’ll dine with you tomorrow.”

“Good, you dreaming idealist,” laughed Courtney, “and I’ll have something to tempt your palate, though I warn you if you want to keep the good opinions of Sancho and Cindy, don’t call the evening meal ‘dinner.’ It is something they can’t forgive.”

Chapter II A Dangerous Theory

^^And say to mothers what a holy charge is theirs —

^THEN Dr. Morrison’s car drove up, Sancho’s listening ear caught the sound. His white woolly head

peered through the glass, and as David stepped upon

the porch, the door opened:

“I speck yo’ ain’t gwin’t like yo’ supper, Marse Dave; hit’s des er dryin’ up er waitin’ fo you’,” was the butler’s greeting.

“Well, Sancho, it’s all right, just so you’ve got enough of it; I’m ravenous.”

“Yas’r, Marse Dave, dey’s plenty of it sich as hit is, en I speck mebby hit’ll eat putty good whut dey is uv it — but la, Marse Dave, des look at yo’ shoes all kivered wid snow! Yo’ll des ketch yo’ def er cole. Set right down at dat big fire what

I done make fo’ you’; dar yo’ jacket an’ dar yo’ slippers what

been ’er warmin’ fer you’ dis long time.”

“Where is another such fortunate man?” said David, kissing his gray-haired mother.

“You may add for me, where is another such fortunate mother?”

“Well,” said he, taking her in his strong arms, “I think there are none happier than we.”

“I speck I mout make yu’ mint jewlip des er leetle stronger, Marse Dave,” whispered Sancho, “t’ keep yo’ frum takin’ yo’ def er cole.”

“No, Sancho, you know I never increase the dose. But, Sancho, say to Cindy, if she has nothing better, I would like very much to finish supper with a plate of hot cakes.”

“La, Marse Dave, Cindy, she des been er ticklin’ all day bout how yo’ gwin’t onrapture over dat plum pudd’n wid de brandy er blazin’ on hit when I fetches hit in to yo’.”

“Sancho, tell Cindy I say. Heaven bless her and cause her to live forever. And hurry up!”

“Tee, hee, hee. Yas’er, Marse Dave, Fse gone.”

“Rushing to the kitchen Sancho ordered:

“Cindy, hurry up! Marse Dave say he done starve.”

“Who yo’ talkin’ to, nigger? Ain’t I done starve m’self tell I ca’ speak? Don’ you tell me to hurry up no mo’; I buss yo’ open, nigger.”

“Dar now, what fur yo’ allers wants to ruptionate like dat fur?” and walking a little closer to his spouse, Sancho whispered, “Cindy, yo’ des ought’r seen Marse Dave when I tole him bout dat pud’n.”

“La, nigger, yo’ ca’ tell Cindy nuthin’; ain’t I done manage dat chile uver since he been borned?”

“I hope,” said Mrs. Courtney, “the accident which you ’phoned was delaying you was not serious?”

“Well,” replied David, “I trust it’s not as serious as Morrison seems to fear; it’s one of his specialties.”

“I suppose, if it is a police case The Dispatch will write it up again as treated by the new ‘booze doctor.’ I think the paper was quite unfair to Dr. Morrison in referring to him in such a way.”

“Serves him -right,” said David. “For a man of his ability to spend all these years in study and travel and then bury his splendid talents in an effort to make over a lot of drunken sots on the ground that their bestial habit is disease, is ridiculous. If it were not for my natural love for the man, and my respect for his otherwise intellectual ability, I should cut him.”

“I do not think you are quite fair to Dr. Morrison.”

“But, mother, he is so extreme. If he would lend his energy to an intelligent campaign for temperance. I’d join him; but I have no patience with his absurd notion of national prohibition of all alcoholic beverages on the ground that alcohol is a disease-forming drug. Its use is one of our oldest and most cherished social customs. Because some men make beasts of themselves is no reason why I and other gentlemen should be deprived of a harmless enjoyment. What should be done is to place a punishment upon every drunkard to force him to be temperate and decent.”

“Perhaps,” replied Mrs. Courtney, “as Dr. Morrison says, they can not be temperate.”

“That’s all bosh; any man can quit drinking or drink temperately if he wants to.”

“But,” urged his mother, “you know Dr. Morrison says alcoholism is a disease which makes it impossible for one to want to quit, at least his will and purpose are overcome by the disease.”

“Disease!” sneered David. “Why, mother, that is where he is so ridiculous. He says the saloon is a government incubator for disease germs; that every one who takes a drink is being infected; that even I, because I take three mint juleps a day, and something occasionally at the club, or at a dinner, am an alcoholic. He even goes so far as to say I can’t quit. Pure nonsense!”

“Why,” smilingly inquired his mother, “do you not give up your toddy just to prove his error?”

“First, because I would not so dignify his silly theory, and second, because I have never been intoxicated, and being in no manner injured by its use, I have no desire to quit.”

“Well,” replied the sweet motherly voice, “I don’t pretend to know theories and science, and all that, but my observation is that drink is a prolific source of crime and poverty and heartpain.”

“That can’t be denied, mother,” replied David, “but it all comes from the abuse of what is intended for the use of man.”

Until the recent coming of Dr. Morrison, alcoholic beverages had never been a subject of conversation in the Courtney home. Their use was a custom handed down from generation to generation and while less sacred, held of equal respectability with the Holy Sacrament. Their abuse was a vulgarism to be avoided.

Chapter III Philip Dornham^ Banker

"Do not think that years leave us and find us the same'"

L aying claim to the heritage of honest forbears, Philip Dornham had he wished, could also have boasted without fear of successful contradiction, that during his own sixty years no legal court had ever decreed him dishonest or unjust. His grandfather, a distiller by trade, counted among his friends and patrons the baker and the banker, the miller and the merchant, the planter and the preacher. In the age-yellowed records of Old Purity church, this entry may be read today:

“Elder Dan’l Dornham subscrybes Fiftie Galls of Rye Liquore for building of ye house of worshipe.”

And notwithstanding his disagreement with the changed attitude of the latter day church, that was a record of the doings of his grandsire distinctly cherished by Philip Dornham.

Philip Dornham’s father, while inheriting his father’s trade, lost the succeeding pastor of Old Purity as a patron and the church lost Dornham as an elder; but at the time there were not a few worthy communicants who believed that the one was a^ honest as the other.

Philip Dornham chose for himself the vocation of banker, and the only apparent mementoes of his forefather’s trade were the licenses of the year 1876 which decorated the walls of his private office. He had spent his years and his best endeavors to build the strongest financial institution of his state, and to attain correlative power. And he had succeeded.

The circle of Mr. Dornham ’s personal acquaintance was limited, apparently by preference. He was, therefore, considered cold, unsympathetic, and, by some, selfish. Political ambition never disturbed the cool, calculating brain of the financier, but it was whispered that he had named the governor of his state for ten successive years, while the mayor and legislative representatives were supposed to be amenable to his suggestions at all times.

Whether these rumors were true or the whisperings of green envy, to Mr. Dornham they were incidental. To sit in his office and touch the tendrils that went out to factory, to railroads, to mine; to have the conscious potentiality, like the switchman in his tower, of pulling the lever that would guide these industries on the main line, or shunt one of them or all of them into the siding until it was his will to give them motion; to ordain the financial existence or the passing of men and measures, and the sound of his voice remaining within his banking walls — that, to Philip Dornham, was life.

Mr. Dornham’s benevolences had a rather well-defined reputation of being of a negative character. There was, therefore, some excitement, even amid the heated presidential campaign when The Dispatch gave the exclusive announcment of the banker’s purpose to build and equip a million-dollar hospital for the free treatment of disease. While stone and tile and marble were fashioned into massive elegance there were those who inquired of his physician as to the builder’s health, but no one asked the reason for Mr. Dornham ’s plans; and Philip Dornham was not given to explanations.

During the progress of construction there was no undue heralding of the project; but when the great keystone bearing a beautifully carved American flag was set in the massive arch over the entrance. The Dispatch again exclusively announced that upon completion Mr. Dornham would transfer title as a deed of gift to the United States, and the government would accept and maintain the hospital for the free treatment of the “Great White Plague.”

Long years of recondite fellowship had well-nigh inured Mr. Dornham to seclusion from social demands. On the day of the formal opening of the Dornham hospital, his experience was probably undefinable to himself. In a large sense, he held the center of the stage. The distinction of being the financial power of the Middle West he had absorbed as by right of possession, but finding himself the center of interest in a company of professional and scientific men and women and social service workers of whose labors he was ignorant, and to whom he was a stranger, was an experience so unnatural as to cause the multi-millionaire to question the agreeableness of the occasion. At a banker’s convention he knew the measure of each man; but of these, their academic degrees meant nothing to him.

Perhaps it is safe to say Mr. Dornham was bored, until Dr. Samuel P. Simms, director general of the United States public health, in his speech of acceptance on the part of the government, eulogizing the power of wealth and the magnificence of this benevolence, brought the occasion to a close.

Editorially, The Dispatch introduced a new power in national finance. In heavy type, double column, it heralded the advent of a new leader in civic righteousness. Philip Dornham was pronounced the peer of all men in constructive thought and nobility of purpose for human welfare. And it rejoiced in citizenship in a government whose liberty incites personal achievement and whose co-operative benevolence regards the sick and destitute.

Chapter IV The Banker^s Son

^■Can wealth give happiness: Look round, and see what gay distress! what splendid misery!'^

P hilip DORNHAM had never craved notoriety. His great ambition had been to accomplish his purpose in his own way and rejoice in his achievement, while the crowd wondered how it happened. There was, however, no doubt that he was enjoying this new experience. Having risen early, he had read the front page lead several times and was again absorbed in the editorial, when his son, Philip, junior, late as usual, seated himself at the breakfast table.

“Well, Governor,” said Phil, “BlVe me, you are some preserver. If anything was lacking in your carved name over the Dornham hospital entrance. The Dispatch has finished the job for you.”

“Oh, Phil!” exclaimed Helen. “Why do you speak in such a way about the hospital ?”

“Why, Sis, Em not saying anything against the hospital — it’s all right; but last night as I entered the bar at the club, the whole blooming crowd of the fellow^s yelled, ‘Embalmed Meat!’”

“And I think they had little to do to make such a remark,” said Helen, stepping, to her father’s side and affectionately slipping her arm about his neck. “I was never so proud of Dad as I am over this splendid, unselfish act. You know Dad never had a thought of himself.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Phil, holding up the morning paper with a picture of the hospital and a large cut of Mr. Dornham. “I suppose The Dispatch, just out of pure love of the governor, mailed out a hundred thousand extra copies of this. That’s what Tom Brown of the circulation department told me last night.”