An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

do such things, and besides, somehow it seemed shabby

and even degrading. On more than one occasion, before he

had been taken on the street in this fashion, other boys had

called to him and made fun of his father, because he was

always publicly emphasizing his religious beliefs or

convictions. Thus in one neighborhood in which they had

lived, when he was but a child of seven, his father, having

always preluded every conversation with “Praise the Lord,”

he heard boys call “Here comes old Praise-the-Lord

Griffiths.” Or they would call out after him “Hey, you’re the

fellow whose sister plays the organ. Is there anything else

she can play?”

“What does he always want to go around saying, ‘Praise

the Lord’ for? Other people don’t do it.”

It was that old mass yearning for a likeness in all things that

troubled them, and him. Neither his father nor his mother

was like other people, because they were always making

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so much of religion, and now at last they were making a

business of it.

On this night in this great street with its cars and crowds

and tall buildings, he felt ashamed, dragged out of normal

life, to be made a show and jest of. The handsome

automobiles that sped by, the loitering pedestrians moving

off to what interests and comforts he could only surmise;

the gay pairs of young people, laughing and jesting and the

“kids” staring, all troubled him with a sense of something

different, better, more beautiful than his, or rather their life.

And now units of this vagrom and unstable street throng,

which was forever shifting and changing about them,

seemed to sense the psychologic error of all this in so far

as these children were concerned, for they would nudge

one another, the more sophisticated and indifferent lifting

an eyebrow and smiling contemptuously, the more

sympathetic or experienced commenting on the useless

presence of these children.

“I see these people around here nearly every night now—

two or three times a week, anyhow,” this from a young clerk

who had just met his girl and was escorting her toward a

restaurant. “They’re just working some religious dodge or

other, I guess.”

“That oldest boy don’t wanta be here. He feels outa place, I

can see that. It ain’t right to make a kid like that come out

unless he wants to. He can’t understand all this stuff,

anyhow.” This from an idler and loafer of about forty, one of

those odd hangers-on about the commercial heart of a city,

addressing a pausing and seemingly amiable stranger.

“Yeh, I guess that’s so,” the other assented, taking in the

peculiar cast of the boy’s head and face. In view of the

uneasy and self-conscious expression upon the face

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whenever it was lifted, one might have intelligently

suggested that it was a little unkind as well as idle to thus

publicly force upon a temperament as yet unfitted to absorb

their import, religious and psychic services best suited to

reflective temperaments of maturer years.

Yet so it was.

As for the remainder of the family, both the youngest girl

and boy were too small to really understand much of what it

was all about or to care. The eldest girl at the organ

appeared not so much to mind, as to enjoy the attention

and comment her presence and singing evoked, for more

than once, not only strangers, but her mother and father,

had assured her that she had an appealing and compelling

voice, which was only partially true. It was not a good voice.

They did not really understand music. Physically, she was

of a pale, emasculate and unimportant structure, with no

real mental force or depth, and was easily made to feel that

this was an excellent field in which to distinguish herself

and attract a little attention. As for the parents, they were

determined upon spiritualizing the world as much as

possible, and, once the hymn was concluded, the father

launched into one of those hackneyed descriptions of the

delights of a release, via self-realization of the mercy of

God and the love of Christ and the will of God toward

sinners, from the burdensome cares of an evil conscience.

“All men are sinners in the light of the Lord,” he declared.

“Unless they repent, unless they accept Christ, His love and

forgiveness of them, they can never know the happiness of

being spiritually whole and clean. Oh, my friends! If you

could but know the peace and content that comes with the

knowledge, the inward understanding, that Christ lived and

died for you and that He walks with you every day and hour,

by light and by dark, at dawn and at dusk, to keep and

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strengthen you for the tasks and cares of the world that are

ever before you. Oh, the

“Amen!” asseverated his wife, and the daughter, Hester, or

Esta, as she was called by the family, moved by the need

of as much public support as possible for all of them—

echoed it after her.

Clyde, the eldest boy, and the two younger children merely

gazed at the ground, or occasionally at their father, with a

feeling that possibly it was all true and important, yet

somehow not as significant or inviting as some of the other

things which life held. They heard so much of this, and to

their young and eager minds life was made for something

more than street and mission hall protestations of this sort.

Finally, after a second hymn and an address by Mrs.

Griffiths, during which she took occasion to refer to the

mission work jointly conducted by them in a near-by street,

and their services to the cause of Christ in general, a third

hymn was indulged in, and then some tracts describing the

mission rescue work being distributed, such voluntary gifts

as were forthcoming were taken up by Asa—the father. The

small organ was closed, the camp chair folded up and

given to Clyde, the Bible and hymn books picked up by Mrs.

Griffiths, and with the organ supported by a leather strap

passed over the shoulder of Griffiths, senior, the

missionward march was taken up.

During all this time Clyde was saying to himself that he did

not wish to do this any more, that he and his parents looked

foolish and less than normal—“cheap” was the word he

would have used if he could have brought himself to

express his full measure of resentment at being compelled

to participate in this way—and that he would not do it any

more if he could help. What good did it do them to have

him along? His life should not be like this. Other boys did

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not have to do as he did. He meditated now more

determinedly than ever a rebellion by which he would rid

himself of the need of going out in this way. Let his elder

sister go if she chose; she liked it. His younger sister and

brother might be too young to care. But he——

“They seemed a little more attentive than usual to-night, I

thought,” commented Griffiths to his wife as they walked

along, the seductive quality of the summer evening air

softening him into a more generous interpretation of the

customary indifferent spirit of the passer-by.

“Yes; twenty-seven took tracts to-night as against eighteen

on Thursday.”

“The love of Christ must eventually prevail,” comforted the

father, as much to hearten himself as his wife. “The

pleasures and cares of the world hold a very great many,

but when sorrow overtakes them, then some of these

seeds will take root.”

“I am sure of it. That is the thought which always keeps me

up. Sorrow and the weight of sin eventually bring some of

them to see the error of their way.”

They now entered into the narrow side street from which

they had emerged and walking as many as a dozen doors

from the corner, entered the door of a yellow single-story

wooden building, the large window and the two glass panes

in the central door of which had been painted a gray-white.

Across both windows and the smaller panels in the double

door had been painted: “The Door of Hope. Bethel

Independent Mission. Meetings Every Wednesday and

Saturday night, 8 to 10. Sundays at 11, 3 and 8. Everybody

Welcome.” Under this legend on each window were printed

the words: “God is Love,” and below this again, in smaller

type: “How Long Since You Wrote to Mother?”

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The small company entered the yellow unprepossessing

door and disappeared.

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Chapter 2

THAT such a family, thus cursorily presented, might have a

different and somewhat peculiar history could well be

anticipated, and it would be true. Indeed, this one

presented one of those anomalies of psychic and social

reflex and motivation such as would tax the skill of not only