John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

All the time G. H. Barrow was in New York he took Janey out to dinner and the theater. Janey had a good time and she could always kid him about Queenie if he tried to get too friendly going home in a taxi. He couldn’t make out where she’d found out about Queenie and he told her the whole story and how the woman kept hounding him for money, but he said that now he was divorced from his wife and there was nothing she could do. After making Janey swear she’d never tell a soul, he explained that through a legal technicality he’d been married to two women at the same time and that Queenie was one of them and that now he’d divorced them both, and there was nothing on earth Queenie could do but the newspapers were always looking for dirt and particularly liked to get something on a liberal like himself devoted to the cause of labor. Then he talked about the art of life and said American women didn’t understand the art of life; at least women like Queenie didn’t. Janey felt very sorry for him but when he asked her to marry him she laughed and said she really would have to consult counsel before replying. He told her all about his life and how poor he’d been as a boy and then about jobs as stationagent and freightagent and conductor and the enthusiasm with which he’d gone into work for the Brotherhood and how his muckraking articles on conditions in the railroads had made him a name and money so that all his old associates felt he’d sold out, but that, so help me, it wasn’t true. Janey went home and told the Tingleys all about the proposal, only she was careful not to say anything about Queenie or bigamy, and they all laughed and joked about it and it made Janey feel good to have been proposed to by such an important man and she wondered why it was such interesting men always fell for her and regretted they always had that dissipated look, but she didn’t know whether she wanted to marry G. H. Barrow or not.

At the office next morning, she looked him up in Who’s Who and there he was, Barrow, George Henry, publicist … but she didn’t think she could ever love him. At the office that day J. Ward looked very worried and sick and Janey felt so sorry for him and quite forgot about G. H. Barrow. She was called into a private conference J. Ward was having with Mr. Robbins and an Irish lawyer named O’Grady, and they said did she mind if they rented a safe deposit box in her name to keep certain securities in and started a private account for her at the Bankers Trust. They were forming a new corporation. There were business reasons why something of the sort might become imperative. Mr. Robbins and J. Ward would own more than half the stock of a new concern and would work for it on a salary basis. Mr. Robbins looked very worried and a little drunk and kept lighting cigarettes and forgetting them on the edge of the desk and kept saying, “You know very well, J.W., that anything you do is O.K. by me.” J. Ward explained to Janey that she’d be an officer of the new corporation but of course would in no way be personally liable. It came out that old Mrs. Staple was suing J. Ward to recover a large sum of money and that his wife had started divorce proceedings in Pennsylvania and that she was refusing to let him go home to see the children and that he was living at the McAlpin.

“Gertrude’s lost her mind,” said Mr. Robbins genially. Then he slapped J. Ward on the back. “Looks like the fat was in the fire now,” he roared. “Well, I’m goin’ out to lunch; a man must eat… and drink… even if he’s a putative bankrupt.” J. Ward scowled and said nothing and Janey thought it was in very bad taste to talk like that and so loud too.

When she went home that evening she told the Tingleys that she was going to be a director of the new corporation and they thought it was wonderful that she was getting ahead so fast and that she really ought to ask for a raise even if business was in a depressed state. Janey smiled, and said, “All in good time.” On the way home she had stopped in the telegraph office on Twentythird Street and wired G. H. Barrow, who had gone up to Washington: let’s just be friends.

Eddy Tingley brought out a bottle of sherry and at dinner he and Eliza drank a toast, “To the new executive,” and Janey blushed crimson and was very pleased. Afterwards they played a rubber of dummy bridge.

the garden was crowded and outside Madison Square was full of cops that made everybody move on and the bombsquad all turned out

we couldn’t get a seat so we ran up the stairs to the top gallery and looked down through the blue air at the faces thick as gravel and above them on the speakers’ stand tiny black figures and a man was speaking and whenever he said war there were hisses and whenever he said Russia there was clapping on account of the revolution I didn’t know who was speaking somebody said Max Eastman and somebody said another guy but we clapped and yelled for the revolution and hissed for Morgan and the capitalist war and there was a dick looking into our faces as if he was trying to remember them

then we went to hear Emma Goldman at the Bronx Casino but the meeting was forbidden and the streets around were very crowded and there were moving vans moving through the crowd and they said the moving vans were full of cops with machineguns and there were little policedepartment Fords with searchlights and they charged the crowd with the Fords and the searchlights everybody talked machineguns revolution civil liberty freedom of speech but occasionally somebody got into the way of a cop and was beaten up and shoved into a patrol wagon and the cops were scared and they said they were calling out the fire department to disperse the crowd and everybody said it was an outrage and what about Washington and Jefferson and Patrick Henry?

afterwards we went to the Brevoort it was much nicer everybody who was anybody was there and there was Emma Goldman eating frankfurters and sauerkraut and everybody looked at Emma Goldman and at everybody else that was anybody and everybody was for peace and the coöperative commonwealth and the Russian revolution and we talked about red flags and barricades and suitable posts for machineguns

and we had several drinks and welsh rabbits and paid our bill and went home, and opened the door with a latchkey and put on pajamas and went to bed and it was comfortable in bed

Goodby Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square

It’s a long long way to Tipperary

WOMAN TRAPS HUSBAND WITH GIRL IN HOTEL

to such a task we can dedicate our lives

and our fortunes, everything that we are,

and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know

that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her

blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth

and happiness and the peace that she has treasured. God

helping her she can do no other

It’s a long way to Tipperary

It’s a long way to go

It’s a long way to Tipperary

And the sweetest girl I know

TRAITORS BEWARE

four men in Evanston fined for killing birds

WILSON WILL FORCE DRAFT

food gamblers raise price of canned foods move for dry U S in war files charges when men ignore national air

JOFFRE ASKS TROOPS NOW

Mooney case incentive

Goodby Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square

It’s a long long way to Tipperary

But my heart’s right there.

HOUSE REFUSES TO ALLOW T R TO RAISE TROOPS

the American Embassy was threatened today with an attack by a mob of radical socialists led by Nicolai Lenin an exile who recently returned from Switzerland via Germany