John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

Cook still pins faith on esquimaux says interior of the Island of Luzon most beautiful place on earth

QUIZZES WARM UP POLE TALK

Oh bury me not on the lone prairie

Where the wild kiyotes will howl over me

Where the rattlesnakes hiss and the wind blows free

GYPSY’S MARCHERS STORM SIN’S FORT

Nation’s Big Men Await River Trip Englewood Clubwomen Move To Uplift Drama Evangelist’s Host Thousands Strong Pierces Heart of Crowded Hushed Levee Has $3,018 and Is Arrested

GIVES MILLION IN HOOKWORM WAR

Gypsy Smith’s Spectral Parade Through South Side Red Light Region

with a bravery that brought tears to the eyes of the squad of twelve men who were detailed to shoot him Francisco Ferrer marched this morning to the trench that had been prepared to receive his body after the fatal volley

PLUNGE BY AUTO; DEATH IN RIVER

the Pennypackers went to the Presbyterian church and the Pennypacker girls sang chilly shrill soprano in the choir and everybody was greeted when they went into church and outside the summer leaves on the trees wigwagged greenblueyellow through the windows and we all filed into the pew and I’d asked Mr. Pennypacker he was a deacon in the church who were the Molly Maguires?

a squirrel was scolding in the whiteoak but the Pennypacker girls all the young ladies in their best hats singing the anthem who were the Molly Maguires? thoughts, bulletholes in an old barn abandoned mine pits black skeleton tipples weedgrown dumps who were the Molly Maguires? but it was too late you couldn’t talk in church and all the young ladies best hats and pretty pink green blue yellow dresses and the squirrel scolding who were the Molly Maguires?

and before I knew it it was communion and I wanted to say I hadn’t been baptized but all eyes looked shut up when I started to whisper to Con

communion was grape juice in little glasses and little squares of stale bread and you had to gulp the bread and put your handkerchief over your mouth and look holy and the little glasses made a funny sucking noise and all the quiet church in the middle of the sunny brightblue sunday in the middle of whiteoaks wigwagging and the smell of fries from the white house and the blue quiet sunday smoke of chimneys from stoves where fried chicken sizzled and fritters and brown gravy set back to keep hot

in the middle of squirrels and minetipples in the middle of the blue Pennsylvania summer sunday the little glasses sucking to get the last drop of communion

and I felt itchy in the back of my neck would I be struck by lightning eating the bread drinking the communion me not believing or baptized or Presbyterian and who were the Molly Maguires? masked men riding at night shooting bullets into barns at night what were they after in the oldtime night?

church was over and everybody was filing out and being greeted as they went out and everybody had a good appetite after communion but I couldn’t eat much itchy in the back of the neck scary with masked men riding Molly Maguires

FORFEIT STARS BY DRINKING

“Oh bury me not

on the lone prairie”

They heeded not his dying prayer

They buried him there on the lone prairie

COLLEGE HEAD DENIES KISSES

then our courage returned for we knew that rescue was near at hand, we shouted and yelled again but did not know whether we were heard. Then came the unsealing and I lost consciousness. All the days and nights fell back and I dropped into a sleep

VOTE AT MIDNIGHT ON ALTMAN’S FATE

This is the fourth day we have been down here. That is what I think but our watches stopped. I have been waiting in the dark because we have been eating the wax from our safety lamps. I have also eaten a plug of tobacco, some bark and some of my shoe. I could only chew it. I hope you can read this. I am not afraid to die. O holy Virgin have mercy on me. I think my time has come. You know what my property is. We worked for it together and it is all yours. This is my will and you must keep it. You have been a good wife. May the holy virgin guard you. I hope this reaches you sometime and you can read it. It has been very quiet down here and I wonder what has become of our comrades. Goodby until heaven shall bring us together.

Girls Annoyer Lashed in Public

COVETS OSTRICHES

In a little box just six by three

And his bones now rot on the lone prairie

Mac went down to the watertank beyond the yards to wait for a chance to hop a freight. The old man’s hat and his ruptured shoes were ashen gray with dust; he was sitting all hunched up with his head between his knees and didn’t make a move until Mac was right up to him. Mac sat down beside him. A rank smell of feverish sweat came from the old man. “What’s the trouble, daddy?”

“I’m through, that’s all… I been a lunger all my life an’ I guess it’s got me now.” His mouth twisted in a spasm of pain. He let his head droop between his knees. After a minute he raised his head again, making little feeble gasps with his mouth like a dying fish. When he got his breath he said, “It’s a razor a’ slicin’ off my lungs every time. Stand by, will you, kid?” “Sure I will,” said Mac.

“Listen, kid, I wanna go West to where there’s trees an’ stuff… You got to help me into one o’ them cars. I’m too weak for the rods… Don’t let me lay down… I’ll start bleedin’ if I lay down, see.” He choked again.

“I got a coupla bucks. I’ll square it with the brakeman maybe.”

“You don’t talk like no vag.”

“I’m a printer. I wanta make San Francisco soon as I can.”

“A workin’ man; I’ll be a son of a bitch. Listen here, kid… I ain’t worked in seventeen years.”

The train came in and the engine stood hissing by the watertank.

Mac helped the old man to his feet and got him propped in the corner of a flatcar that was loaded with machine parts covered with a tarpaulin. He saw the fireman and the engineer looking at them out of the cab, but they didn’t say anything.

When the train started the wind was cold. Mac took off his coat and put it behind the old man’s head to keep it from jiggling with the rattling of the car. The old man sat with his eyes closed and his head thrown back. Mac didn’t know whether he was dead or not. It got to be night. Mac was terribly cold and huddled shivering in a fold of tarpaulin in the other end of the car.

In the gray of dawn Mac woke up from a doze with his teeth chattering. The train had stopped on a siding. His legs were so numb it was some time before he could stand on them. He went to look at the old man, but he couldn’t tell whether he was dead or not. It got a little lighter and the east began to glow like the edge of a piece of iron in a forge. Mac jumped to the ground and walked back along the train to the caboose.

The brakeman was drowsing beside his lantern. Mac told him that an old tramp was dying in one of the flatcars. The brakeman had a small flask of whisky in his good coat that hung on a nail in the caboose. They walked together up the track again. When they got to the flatcar it was almost day. The old man had flopped over on his side. His face looked white and grave like the face of a statue of a Civil War general. Mac opened his coat and the filthy torn shirts and underclothes and put his hand on the old man’s chest. It was cold and lifeless as a board. When he took his hand away there was sticky blood on it.

“Hemorrhage,” said the brakeman, making a perfunctory clucking noise in his mouth.

The brakeman said they’d have to get the body off the train. They laid him down flat in the ditch beside the ballast with his hat over his face. Mac asked the brakeman if he had a spade so that they could bury him, so that the buzzards wouldn’t get him, but he said no, the gandywalkers would find him and bury him. He took Mac back to the caboose and gave him a drink and asked him all about how the old man had died.