The Turmoil, Booth Tarkington [best english novels for beginners .txt] 📗

that can write a good ad,” he said, emphatically. “The best writin’ talent in this country is right spang in the ad business today. You buy a magazine for good writin’⁠—look on the back of it! Let me tell you I pay money for that kind o’ writin’. Maybe you think it’s easy. Just try it! I’ve tried it, and I can’t do it. I tell you an ad’s got to be written so it makes people do the hardest thing in this world to get ’em to do: it’s got to make ’em give up their money! You talk about ‘poems and essays.’ I tell you when it comes to the actual skill o’ puttin’ words together so as to make things happen, R. T. Bloss, right here in this city, knows more in a minute than George Waldo Emerson ever knew in his whole life!”

“You⁠—you may be⁠—” Bibbs said, indistinctly, the last word smothered in a cough.

“Of course I’m right! And if it ain’t just like you to want to take up with the most out-o’-date kind o’ writin’ there is! ‘Poems and essays’! My Lord, Bibbs, that’s women’s work! You can’t pick up a newspaper without havin’ to see where Mrs. Rumskididle read a paper on Jane Eyre, or East Lynne, at the God-Knows-What Club. And ‘poetry’! Why, look at Edith! I expect that poem o’ hers would set a pretty high-water mark for you, young man, and it’s the only one she’s ever managed to write in her whole life! When I wanted her to go on and write some more she said it took too much time. Said it took months and months. And Edith’s a smart girl; she’s got more energy in her little finger than you ever give me a chance to see in your whole body, Bibbs. Now look at the facts: say she could turn out four or five poems a year and you could turn out maybe two. That medal she got was worth about fifteen dollars, so there’s your income⁠—thirty dollars a year! That’s a fine success to make of your life! I’m not sayin’ a word against poetry. I wouldn’t take ten thousand dollars right now for that poem of Edith’s; and poetry’s all right enough in its place⁠—but you leave it to the girls. A man’s got to do a man’s work in this world!”

He seated himself in a chair at his son’s side and, leaning over, tapped Bibbs confidentially on the knee. “This city’s got the greatest future in America, and if my sons behave right by me and by themselves they’re goin’ to have a mighty fair share of it⁠—a mighty fair share. I love this town. It’s God’s own footstool, and it’s made money for me every day right along, I don’t know how many years. I love it like I do my own business, and I’d fight for it as quick as I’d fight for my own family. It’s a beautiful town. Look at our wholesale district; look at any district you want to; look at the park system we’re puttin’ through, and the boulevards and the public statuary. And she grows. God! how she grows!” He had become intensely grave; he spoke with solemnity. “Now, Bibbs, I can’t take any of it⁠—nor any gold or silver nor buildings nor bonds⁠—away with me in my shroud when I have to go. But I want to leave my share in it to my boys. I’ve worked for it; I’ve been a builder and a maker; and two blades of grass have grown where one grew before, whenever I laid my hand on the ground and willed ’em to grow. I’ve built big, and I want the buildin’ to go on. And when my last hour comes I want to know that my boys are ready to take charge; that they’re fit to take charge and go on with it. Bibbs, when that hour comes I want to know that my boys are big men, ready and fit to hold of big things. Bibbs, when I’m up above I want to know that the big share I’ve made mine, here below, is growin’ bigger and bigger in the charge of my boys.”

He leaned back, deeply moved. “There!” he said, huskily. “I’ve never spoken more what was in my heart in my life. I do it because I want you to understand⁠—and not think me a mean father. I never had to talk that way to Jim and Roscoe. They understood without any talk, Bibbs.”

“I see,” said Bibbs. “At least I think I do. But⁠—”

“Wait a minute!” Sheridan raised his hand. “If you see the least bit in the world, then you understand how it feels to me to have my son set here and talk about ‘poems and essays’ and suchlike fooleries. And you must understand, too, what it meant to start one o’ my boys and have him come back on me the way you did, and have to be sent to a sanitarium because he couldn’t stand work. Now, let’s get right down to it, Bibbs. I’ve had a whole lot o’ talk with ole Doc Gurney about you, one time another, and I reckon I understand your case just about as well as he does, anyway! Now here, I’ll be frank with you. I started you in harder than what I did the other boys, and that was for your own good, because I saw you needed to be shook up more’n they did. You were always kind of moody and mopish⁠—and you needed work that’d keep you on the jump. Now, why did it make you sick instead of brace you up and make a man of you the way it ought of done? I pinned ole Gurney down to it. I says, ‘Look here, ain’t it really because he just plain hated it?’ ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘that’s it. If he’d enjoyed it, it wouldn’t ’a’ hurt him. He