Dust Tracks on a Road: Chapters 13–16

Who was stretched out on the divan, all draped in a gorgeous American Beauty rose housecoat, but Fanny Hurst!

While Fanny Hurst brings a very level head to her dressing, she exults in her new things like any debutante.

When she was implored to sing, she asked me first what I wanted to hear.

I have asked her to repeat something particularly pungent that she has said, and had her tell me, “I couldn’t say it now. My thoughts are different. Sometime when I am thinking that same way, I’ll tell it to you again.”

For the first time since I met him, I asked myself if I really were in love, or if this had been a habit. I had an uncomfortable feeling of unreality. The day and the occasion did not underscore any features of nature nor circumstance, and I wondered why.

He always said I reminded him of the Indian on the Skookum Apples, so I knew he meant me to understand that he wanted to be coming home to me, and with those words he endowed me with Radio City, the General Motors Corporation, the United States, Europe, Asia and some outlying continents. I had everything!

He was still smoldering from an incident a week old.

He said once with pathos in his voice, that at times he could not feel my presence. My real self had escaped him. I could tell from both his face and his voice that it hurt him terribly.

He had settled down to a plodding desk job and reconciled himself.

No woman wants a man all finished and perfect. You have to have something to work on and prod.

I may be thinking of turnip greens with dumplings, or more royalty checks, and here is a man who visualizes me on a divan sending the world up in smoke.

All I need to do is show my stricken face and dash away from him to hide my supposed heartbreak and renunciation.

All I need to do is show my stricken face and dash away from him to hide my supposed heartbreak and renunciation.

It is a good thing that some of them have sent roses as a poultice and stayed away.

Each moment has its own task and capacity, and doesn’t melt down like snow and form again. It keeps its character forever. So the great difficulty lies in trying to transpose last night’s moment to a day which has no knowledge of it.

When they got through with me, I knew better than to say that out loud again, but their shocked and angry tirades did nothing for my bewilderment.

Neither could I understand the passionate declarations of love for a being that nobody could see. Your family, your puppy and the new bull-calf, yes. But a spirit away off who found fault with everybody all the time, that was more than I could fathom.

People, solemn of face, crept off to the woods to “praying ground’’ to seek religion. Every church member worked on them hard, and there was great clamor and rejoicing when any of them “come through’’ religion.

The congregation would be right in there at the right moment bearing Papa up and heightening the effect of the fearsome picture a hundred-fold. The more susceptible would be swept away on the tide and “come through” shouting, and the most reluctant would begin to waver.

But it was part of the vision and the congregation shuddered and groaned at the picture in a fervent manner.

They then found themselves walking over Hell on a foot-log so narrow that they had to put one foot right in front of the other while the howling hell-hounds pursued them relentlessly.

Ecstatic cries, snatches of chants, old converts shouting in frenzy with the new. When the tumult finally died down, the pastor asks if the candidate is acceptable and there is unanimous consent.

We see the Emperor Constantine, as pagan as he could lay in his hide, having his famous vision of the cross with the injunction: "In Hoc Signo Vinces,” and arising next day not only to win a great battle, but to start out on his missionary journey with his sword.

I saw the same thing with different details, happen in all the other great religions, and seeing these things, I went to thinking and questing again. I have achieved a certain peace within myself, but perhaps the seeking after the inner heart of truth will never cease in me. All sorts of interesting speculations arise.

Celestial Bountiful Tribulations would be Sister Frances Perkins.

Celestial Bountiful Tribulations would be Sister Frances Perkins.

His Vocal Honor, La Guardia, would be known as Always Sounding Trumpet, and on his evident good works in his nursery, Harold Ickes would be bound to win the title of Fruitful Love Abounding.

The saints would not overeat, either; what with being forced to raise their hands and cry “Peace!” every time Father Divine spoke and “it’s truly wonderful” every time Sincere Determination uttered a sound, their eating would be negligible.

It would be a most holy conclave around that table.

Father Divine would confine himself to pontifical audiences and meditation.

It would be the privilege of our Angelic Admirals and generals, “Puissant Defenders of the Faith,” to demote all infidels and correct all typographical errors, emperor to impotent, and vice versa; according as a man worships, so is he, as the saying goes.

Feeling a weakness in the face of great forces, men seek an alliance with omnipotence to bolster up their feeling of weakness, even though the omnipotence they rely upon is a creature of their own minds.

Feeling a weakness in the face of great forces, men seek an alliance with omnipotence to bolster up their feeling of weakness, even though the omnipotence they rely upon is a creature of their own minds.

Somebody else may have my rapturous glance at the archangels.

The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men?

The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men?

To me, bitterness is the under-arm odor of wishful weakness. It is the graceless acknowledgment of defeat. I have no urge to make any concessions like that to the world as yet.

Therefore, I see nothing but futility in looking back over my shoulder in rebuke at the grave of some white man who has been dead too long to talk about.

Do you not realize that the power, prestige and prosperity of the greatest nations on earth rests on colonies and sources of raw materials? Why else are great wars waged? If you have not thought, then why waste up time with your vapid accusations?

When I get old, and my joints and bones tell me about it, I can sit around and write for myself, if for nobody else, and read slowly and carefully the mysticism of the East, and reread Spinoza with love and care.