American Tragedy 美国悲剧 chapter 2

That such a family, thus cursorily presented, might have a different and somewhat peculiar history could well beanticipated, and it would be true. Indeed, this one presented one of those anomalies of psychic and social reflexand motivation such as would tax the skill of not only the psychologist but the chemist and physicist as well, tounravel. To begin with, Asa Griffiths, the father, was one of those poorly integrated and correlated organisms,the product of an environment and a religious theory, but with no guiding or mental insight of his own, yetsensitive and therefore highly emotional and without any practical sense whatsoever. Indeed it would be hard tomake clear just how life appealed to him, or what the true hue of his emotional responses was. On the other hand,as has been indicated, his wife was of a firmer texture but with scarcely any truer or more practical insight intoanything.

The history of this man and his wife is of no particular interest here save as it affected their boy of twelve, ClydeGriffiths. This youth, aside from a certain emotionalism and exotic sense of romance which characterized him,and which he took more from his father than from his mother, brought a more vivid and intelligent imaginationto things, and was constantly thinking of how he might better himself, if he had a chance; places to which hemight go, things he might see, and how differently he might live, if only this, that and the other things were true.

The principal thing that troubled Clyde up to his fifteenth year, and for long after in retrospect, was that thecalling or profession of his parents was the shabby thing that it appeared to be in the eyes of others. For so oftenthroughout his youth in different cities in which his parents had conducted a mission or spoken on the streets-GrandRapids, Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, lastly Kansas City -- it had been obvious that people, at least theboys and girls he encountered, looked down upon him and his brothers and sisters for being the children of suchparents. On several occasions, and much against the mood of his parents, who never countenanced suchexhibitions of temper, he had stopped to fight with one or another of these boys. But always, beaten orvictorious, he had been conscious of the fact that the work his parents did was not satisfactory to others, -- shabby,trivial. And always he was thinking of what he would do, once he reached the place where he could get away.

For Clyde's parents had proved impractical in the matter of the future of their children. They did not understandthe importance or the essential necessity for some form of practical or professional training for each and everyone of their young ones. Instead, being wrapped up in the notion of evangelizing the world, they had neglected to keep their children in school in any one place. They had moved here and there, sometimes in the very midst of anadvantageous school season, because of a larger and better religious field in which to work. And there weretimes, when, the work proving highly unprofitable and Asa being unable to make much money at the two thingshe most understood -- gardening and canvassing for one invention or another -- they were quite without sufficientfood or decent clothes, and the children could not go to school. In the face of such situations as these, whateverthe children might think, Asa and his wife remained as optimistic as ever, or they insisted to themselves that theywere, and had unwavering faith in the Lord and His intention to provide.

The combination home and mission which this family occupied was dreary enough in most of its phases todiscourage the average youth or girl of any spirit. It consisted in its entirety of one long store floor in an old anddecidedly colorless and inartistic wooden building which was situated in that part of Kansas City which liesnorth of Independence Boulevard and west of Troost Avenue, the exact street or place being called Bickel, a veryshort thoroughfare opening off Missouri Avenue, a somewhat more lengthy but no less nondescript highway.

And the entire neighborhood in which it stood was very faintly and yet not agreeably redolent of a commerciallife which had long since moved farther south, if not west. It was some five blocks from the spot on which twicea week the open air meetings of these religious enthusiasts and proselytizers were held.

And it was the ground floor of this building, looking out into Bickel Street at the front and some dreary backyards of equally dreary frame houses, which was divided at the front into a hall forty by twenty-five feet in size,in which had been placed some sixty collapsible wood chairs, a lectern, a map of Palestine or the Holy Land, andfor wall decorations some twenty-five printed but unframed mottoes which read in part:

"WINE IS A MOCKER, STRONG DRINK IS RAGING AND WHOSOEVER IS DECEIVED THEREBY ISNOT WISE." "TAKE HOLD OF SHIELD AND BUCKLER, AND STAND UP FOR MINE HELP." PSALMS 35:2.#p#分页标题#e#

"AND YE, MY FLOCK, THE FLOCK OF MY PASTURE, are men, AND I AM YOUR GOD, SAITH THELORD GOD." EZEKIEL 34:31.

"O GOD, THOU KNOWEST MY FOOLISHNESS, AND MY SINS ARE NOT HID FROM THEE." PSALMS69:5.

"IF YE HAVE FAITH AS A GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED, YE SHALL SAY UNTO THIS MOUNTAIN,REMOVE HENCE TO YONDER PLACE; AND IT SHALL MOVE; AND NOTHING SHALL BEIMPOSSIBLE TO YOU." MATTHEW 17:20.

"FOR THE DAY OF THE LORD IS NEAR." OBADIAH 15.

"FOR THERE SHALL BE NO REWARD TO THE EVIL MAN." PROVERBS 24:20.

"LOOK, THEN, NOT UPON THE WINE WHEN IT IS RED: IT BITETH LIKE A SERPENT, ANDSTINGETH LIKE AN ADDER." PROVERBS 23:31,32.

These mighty adjurations were as silver and gold plates set in a wall of dross.

The rear forty feet of this very commonplace floor was intricately and yet neatly divided into three smallbedrooms, a living room which overlooked the backyard and wooden fences of yards no better than those at theback; also, a combination kitchen and dining room exactly ten feet square, and a store room for mission tracts,hymnals, boxes, trunks and whatever else of non-immediate use, but of assumed value, which the family owned.

This particular small room lay immediately to the rear of the mission hall itself, and into it before or afterspeaking or at such times as a conference seemed important, both Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths were wont to retire-alsoat times to meditate or pray.

How often had Clyde and his sisters and younger brother seen his mother or father, or both, in conference withsome derelict or semi-repentant soul who had come for advice or aid, most usually for aid. And here at times,when his mother's and father's financial difficulties were greatest, they were to be found thinking, or as AsaGriffiths was wont helplessly to say at times, "praying their way out," a rather ineffectual way, as Clyde began tothink later.

And the whole neighborhood was so dreary and run-down that he hated the thought of living in it, let alone beingpart of a work that required constant appeals for aid, as well as constant prayer and thanksgiving to sustain it.

Mrs. Elvira Griffiths before she had married Asa had been nothing but an ignorant farm girl, brought up withoutmuch thought of religion of any kind. But having fallen in love with him, she had become inoculated with thevirus of Evangelism and proselytizing which dominated him, and had followed him gladly and enthusiastically inall of his ventures and through all of his vagaries. Being rather flattered by the knowledge that she could speakand sing, her ability to sway and persuade and control people with the "word of God," as she saw it, she hadbecome more or less pleased with herself on this account and so persuaded to continue.

Occasionally a small band of people followed the preachers to their mission, or learning of its existence throughtheir street work, appeared there later -- those odd and mentally disturbed or distrait souls who are to be found inevery place. And it had been Clyde's compulsory duty throughout the years when he could not act for himself tobe in attendance at these various meetings. And always he had been more irritated than favorably influenced bythe types of men and women who came here -- mostly men -- down-and-out laborers, loafers, drunkards, wastrels,the botched and helpless who seemed to drift in, because they had no other place to go. And they were alwaystestifying as to how God or Christ or Divine Grace had rescued them from this or that predicament -- never howthey had rescued any one else. And always his father and mother were saying "Amen" and "Glory to God," andsinging hymns and afterward taking up a collection for the legitimate expenses of the hall -- collections which, ashe surmised, were little enough -- barely enough to keep the various missions they had conducted in existence.

The one thing that really interested him in connection with his parents was the existence somewhere in the east-ina small city called Lycurgus, near Utica he understood -- of an uncle, a brother of his father's, who was plainlydifferent from all this. That uncle -- Samuel Griffiths by name -- was rich. In one way and another, from casualremarks dropped by his parents, Clyde had heard references to certain things this particular uncle might do for aperson, if he but would; references to the fact that he was a shrewd, hard business man; that he had a great houseand a large factory in Lycurgus for the manufacture of collars and shirts, which employed not less than threehundred people; that he had a son who must be about Clyde's age, and several daughters, two at least, all of whom must be, as Clyde imagined, living in luxury in Lycurgus. News of all this had apparently been broughtwest in some way by people who knew Asa and his father and brother. As Clyde pictured this uncle, he must bea kind of Croesus, living in ease and luxury there in the east, while here in the west -- Kansas City -- he and hisparents and his brother and sisters were living in the same wretched and hum-drum, hand-to-mouth state that hadalways characterized their lives.#p#分页标题#e#

But for this -- apart from anything he might do for himself, as he early began to see -- there was no remedy. For atfifteen, and even a little earlier, Clyde began to understand that his education, as well as his sisters' and brother's,had been sadly neglected. And it would be rather hard for him to overcome this handicap, seeing that other boysand girls with more money and better homes were being trained for special kinds of work. How was one to get astart under such circumstances? Already when, at the age of thirteen, fourteen and fifteen, he began looking inthe papers, which, being too worldly, had never been admitted to his home, he found that mostly skilled help waswanted, or boys to learn trades in which at the moment he was not very much interested. For true to the standardof the American youth, or the general American attitude toward life, he felt himself above the type of laborwhich was purely manual. What! Run a machine, lay bricks, learn to be a carpenter, or a plasterer, or plumber,when boys no better than himself were clerks and druggists' assistants and bookkeepers and assistants in banksand real estate offices and such! Wasn't it menial, as miserable as the life he had thus far been leading, to wearold clothes and get up so early in the morning and do all the commonplace things such people had to do?

For Clyde was as vain and proud as he was poor. He was one of those interesting individuals who looked uponhimself as a thing apart -- never quite wholly and indissolubly merged with the family of which he was a member,and never with any profound obligations to those who had been responsible for his coming into the world. On thecontrary, he was inclined to study his parents, not too sharply or bitterly, but with a very fair grasp of theirqualities and capabilities. And yet, with so much judgment in that direction, he was never quite able -- at least notuntil he had reached his sixteenth year -- to formulate any policy in regard to himself, and then only in a ratherfumbling and tentative way.

Incidentally by that time the sex lure or appeal had begun to manifest itself and he was already intenselyinterested and troubled by the beauty of the opposite sex, its attractions for him and his attraction for it. And,naturally and coincidentally, the matter of his clothes and his physical appearance had begun to trouble him not alittle -- how he looked and how other boys looked. It was painful to him now to think that his clothes were notright; that he was not as handsome as he might be, not as interesting. What a wretched thing it was to be bornpoor and not to have any one to do anything for you and not to be able to do so very much for yourself!

Casual examination of himself in mirrors whenever he found them tended rather to assure him that he was not sobad-looking -- a straight, well-cut nose, high white forehead, wavy, glossy, black hair, eyes that were black andrather melancholy at times. And yet the fact that his family was the unhappy thing that it was, that he had neverhad any real friends, and could not have any, as he saw it, because of the work and connection of his parents, wasnow tending more and more to induce a kind of mental depression or melancholia which promised not so wellfor his future. It served to make him rebellious and hence lethargic at times. Because of his parents, and in spiteof his looks, which were really agreeable and more appealing than most, he was inclined to misinterpret theinterested looks which were cast at him occasionally by young girls in very different walks of life from him -- thecontemptuous and yet rather inviting way in which they looked to see if he were interested or disinterested, braveor cowardly.

And yet, before he had ever earned any money at all, he had always told himself that if only he had a bettercollar, a nicer shirt, finer shoes, a good suit, a swell overcoat like some boys had! Oh, the fine clothes, thehandsome homes, the watches, rings, pins that some boys sported; the dandies many youths of his years alreadywere! Some parents of boys of his years actually gave them cars of their own to ride in. They were to be seenupon the principal streets of Kansas City flitting to and fro like flies. And pretty girls with them. And he hadnothing. And he never had had.

And yet the world was so full of so many things to do -- so many people were so happy and so successful. Whatwas he to do? Which way to turn? What one thing to take up and master -- something that would get himsomewhere. He could not say. He did not know exactly. And these peculiar parents were in no way sufficientlyequipped to advise him.