Volume 148

January 4, 1928

HE impulses that led me to be

T

come the editor and publisher of two small-town weeklies in a Virginia country town are somewhat complex. In the first place, I think almost every man in the country has the belief, buried away in him somewhere, that he would make a successful editor. Formerly, when I lived in Chicago and New York, I knew a good many newspaper men. They all dreamed of getting away from the hectic rush of city newspaper work and owning a smalltown weekly. Every writer has in him a love of the ink-pots, and all of the old trade words of the printer's craft are dear to him. There is, you see, a strong call in all the vast brotherhood of the ink-slingers in just the direction I am now going.

In my own case, I had the impulse, as suggested above, but I did not become a publisher for that reason. I am doing it primarily to make a living. I would back of that a little.

like

to

go

Just making a living is hardly the problem. Almost any one can do that in America now.

It is important, though, how you make a living. The way you make your living has so much to do with what you get out of life. Even in America, making a living takes a good many hours.

AM, as people interested in the tendencies of writing in America may know, the kind of writer whose work is a good deal more discussed than read. Perhaps a good many people who know my books do not know that. Well, it's true. My books have never sold well. I began writing when I was well past thirty and after the adventures that commonly come to any man who has been laborer, soldier, wanderer, and factory employee. At the time I began writing I had got, temporarily at least, out of the ranks of laborers and had be

come a copy man in an advertising

By SHERWOOD ANDERSON

agency in Chicago. At that job I was fairly successful, and I went on with it until about three years ago.

I was employed in a large advertising agency, and my employers were very patient. Sometimes I went on for months without the impulse toward writing coming to me at all; and during those times was, I presume, a fairly good copy man. Then the impulse did come. To be sure, it caught me many times unprepared. There might have been a rush of advertising copy in the agency just then. I had to stall. Many of my short stories were written at my desk in an advertising agency and while I was presumed to be writing advertising copy. A story of mine that has been often reproduced, called "I'm a Fool," was written while I was supposed to be writing automobile copy.

The agency employing me used to send me out to various towns, where I was to spend my time writing advertisements for manufacturers. I did write the advertisements, of course, but never took as much time doing it as I pretended to be taking. The spare time gained by thus cheating was often spent writing short stories or novels in some country-hotel room or on the bank of some stream near a small manufacturing town. My people were pretty patient with me.

My employers were naturally aware of what was going on. Sometimes I used to quit work altogether for months and wander away somewhere to devote myself to my fiction writing. The president of the agency once called me into his mahogany-furnished office and said: "Sherwood, I will stand for you, but I hope it isn't catching. I never would stand for another one like you."

I think it is true that almost every newspaper man and advertising man in the country has in him something of the writer. He is inclined to be sympathetic with such fellows as myself—and don't

Number I

we take advantage of it! We are the unscrupulous ones. My employers were always kind. When I came back from a long period of vagabondage, they always gave me my job back. I have reason to know that they did it many times when they might have employed some other fellow more useful to them, at a much smaller wage. It was, I take it, their tribute to the brotherhood. To justify themselves to themselves, they pretended I was a fine copy writer.

I had always intended to hang on to some kind of a job outside of my writing. In spite of the fact that I got early recognition, my books did not sell. At last they did begin to sell a little, both in America and abroad. There was less and less need of my hanging on to my job as an advertising copy writer.

I

GAVE it up. I did what every writer dreams of doing-became a man of leisure. One of my books, a novel, had sold very well indeed, and I had money with which to buy me a house and a small farm.

I thought of myself as settling down on the farm and leading the simple life. I would consort with nature, read, and loaf. Already I had published some ten or twelve books.

Whatever happens, I thought, the books I have already published, with what writing I will naturally do, will provide me a living as long as I am content to live in this simple fashion. During my first year in the country I was quite happy. For one thing, I was building a house. This kept me busy.

It was during the second year that I began to pay heavily for my indiscretion. For an American, who had gone through the American grind, what I was trying to do is perhaps impossible. We all talk of wanting leisure. I doubt if any of us want it. No writer can write more than two or three hours a day. Often he cannot write at all. What was

I to do with the long hours? I wandered over the fields; went fishing; tramped around from house to house, visiting my neighbors. Often I longed for my advertising agency.

My country neighbors all had work to do. They were farmers. Theirs was a busy life. I was the only idler in the neighborhood. They began to speak of me as "the millionaire." Americans think of any man who can get through life without working as either a crook or a millionaire. If my country. heighbors ever suspected me of being a crook, they did not say so to my face.

Some of them, read books and had seen my name in the newspapers and in the literary magazines. All Americans think.any one must be a millionaire who frequently gets his name in the newspapers.

The two or three years I put in trying to be a man of leisure, a sort of gentleman writer on the European plan, let us say, were the most miserable I have ever spent. In desperation I went over and spent some months wandering in Europe. Nothing interested me much. I was associating altogether too much with one Sherwood Anderson. I never grew so tired of a man in my life.

I had come down into Virginia to settle, liking the country here and the people. In Virginia there is a touch of the South without too much of it. It suited me. I had no quarrel with my surroundings or my friends. My quarrel was with myself.

THE

HERE were two newspapers published in a neighboring county seat town in the middle of a fat agricultural region, one Democratic and the other Republican. One day, on an impulse, I went to the town and purchased the papers. I have been running them now for a month, and it has been the most normal and happy month I have had since I threw up my job in the advertising agency in Chicago.

As to my policy in running these papers, I think I can say definitely that I have no policy beyond amusing myself, making them pay, keeping busy, and turning out live little newspapers. Of course, I expect to do other writing. Now that I am busy again I shall find time for that.

In reality, the small-town weekly is not a newspaper in the city newspaper sense. We do not handle any National

news, pay no attention to sensational murders or divorce cases-unless they happen in our own town-and there is no rush. Such a thing as fear of a "beat" is unknown. The papers are filled almost altogether with news regarding the comings and goings of the people of this community. Death seems to be an important factor in our lives. Long obituary notices are written and sent in to my papers.

And then there are the churches and the lodges. They also fill much space. The churches are the social centers of our towns. Since the saloons have gone they are about the only social centers we have. Except perhaps the local newspaper office.

Most of the editorial work and reporting on the papers I have taken over I am doing myself. I have, however, found a young Virginia mountain man who promises to develop into something special. He has been up and down the world a good deal and has a sense of humor. He is writing for me under the name of "Buck Fever," and he has been a help. I am giving you here a sample of his method. It is making a hit in our

town. He called this thing "The Lonesome Water Meter."

The Virginia Table Company has a water meter. It is the only one in town. A sad thing has happened to it. At first, when it was newly brought to town, it worked fine. Now it has begun to behave badly. For a long time now it has not been able to digest its water.

The matter was brought up at a Mr. meeting of the town council. Gordon, being nearer the lonesome meter than any one else, spoke very feelingly of its condition. He said he almost hated to go home at night, leaving the poor water meter there alone in the big, dark building.

It would be all right, he thought, if there were other water meters in town so that it could have an occasional evening of companionship. On several evenings, he said, he took the water meter home with him and invited in some of his friends.

There was song and wassail. Some of the guests danced, but the poor water meter would not dance. It sat in a corner and moped.

The council decided, and we think (Continued on page 27).

E

ARLY one morning I got out of my bed, dressed, rushed out into the back garden, rubbing sleep out of my eyes as I ran. Under pine boughs and along the skirt of bamboo groves the twilight was still dreaming. And I saw I had actually beat the sun to the back yard.

When a little boy of not quite ten years of age does this sort of thing, there is bound to be something quite worthy to be put into a sutra. And there was, on this particular morning. I stole swiftly but cautiously to where my heart was that is to say, where my treasure lay. And at the sight of it I felt a sudden tightening about my chest and the rush of blood to my head. It was whimpering and circling about the little house I had built for it the day before, my little treasure. I picked up the snowy ball of fur, and had no trouble at all to find that the little pup had cut one of its fore paws somehow.

By ADACHI KINNOSUKE

hour of devotion. All this, doubtless, was the reason why her action made quite an impression on me.

She did not call for a servant to attend to the little pup. She, with her own hands, washed the wound and dressed it with a piece of white cloth. Then she took it out on to a large flagstone before the veranda. Instantly the puppy jumped about and played with her kimono skirt; it didn't even limp. "There, now," said mother, "happy again."

I stretched out both of my arms to her. I don't remember feeling quite as grateful in my boyish days as at that moment. And that's strange, for she had dressed my own wounds before that hundreds of times.

"Mother-madam," breathed I out of the depth of my grateful heart, "I'll get you the biggest persimmon you ever saw. And-and I will be a good boy, I will."

I didn't waste a single second in look-W

ing at it or thinking about it. Quick as instinct, I made a bee line to the one person to whom I always ran whenever I got hurt my mother.

I found her in front of the Buddha shelf as a family shrine is called over there, where the mortuary tablets of our ancestors were kept. Mother had in her hand a lacquered tray on which were the bowls of freshly cooked, steaming rice. They were the usual morning offerings to the august ghosts.

"Honorably deign to look at this, mother-madam," said I. "The puppy cut its paw, look-"

Mother took a look at the bleeding paw I held out. Without a single word, she laid down the tray and took the pup from my arms. And then she turned her back squarely upon the Buddha shelf. I was about as thoughtless as any boy of my age at that time. I didn't notice anything particularly. But this action of mother's was something of a shock. I had never seen her permit anything to come between her and this first rite of the day of offering the first bowls of rice and paying her respects to the sainted spirits of the august ancestors—not until that day. In fact, I remember I felt guilty. I was a very bad boy to so forget myself in my moment of excitement over the hurt pup to intrude on her

HAT I had in my mind's eyeclearly and vividly-was a huge persimmon tree which grew over a garden wall I used to pass almost every day on my way to school. The ancient tree did not belong to me. It belonged to an old family who owned the garden behind the wall. And every time we boys climbed up the wall and into the tree after the golden gift of autumn, all of us knew we were risking something a good deal more corporeal than a mere qualm of conscience, if any. Every time I Every time I passed under the tree I had my eyes on a dozen fruits high up in the air. I had marked them as my own when they were quite green, and watched them grow bigger and more and more golden in the autumn sun. It was one of these I promised mother.

presences of august ancestors in those ihai [mortuary tablets] on the Buddha shelf. When I serve Buddha in a puppy, the august spirits of ancestors would be pleased quite pleased to wait for their morning offerings. So do not pain your little heart over that."

I

DID not know what mother was talking about at the time. Years and years later, when I delved into the speculative philosophy of India, the above remark of mother came back into my mind as the first pronouncement I had heard of the cardinal tenet of Buddhism -the Buddahood of all things.

Speaking in terms of the absolute and the infinite, there is nothing in the whole universe but Buddha-not alone a pup, but a piece of rock as well is Buddha. Not a mere presence of Buddha in all things but the very Buddha-nature or Buddha-essence of all things. For there is but one entity in the universe. "I alone am supreme," said Gotama.

Mother went on: "There is something else, too, in the puppy. There lies in that hurt paw the path to the Pure Land of Extreme Bliss-did you know it? There are many, many trails to the top of Mount Fuji, as you may have heard. And there are many, many ways to the Pure Land of Extreme Bliss. One of them lies through wherever pain and suffering are. And I don't know of any better short cut to the Jodo, the Pure Land, than doing something to ease or take away the pain in anything. So, you see, that hurt paw of your little puppy is a sort of mile-post to paradise-do you think you will remember that?".

Suns and moons of some forty years have passed over these words of mother. But they have not been able to erase them from my memory.

"Why, mother-madam, you have forgotten august hotoke [sainted spirits]. Made them wait honorable offering of rice cooling."

Mother smiled faintly. "You don't seem to see I have been serving august Buddha. Didn't you know there is Buddha in a puppy?"

I said, "No."

"There is. Just as there are the spirit

one of the outstanding human miracles in the world-the Japanese woman. Rotten eggs, horse-laughs, humorous contempt, and other marks of "American chivalry" marked the paths of the early leaders of woman's rights in the United States. But, compared with the trials and tribulations and unspeakable persecutions which the Japanese males have visited on the defenseless heads of our women, the experiences of American

suffragettes look like flowery beds of

ease.

Lafcadio Hearn could not understand how in the name of all that is sacred the monstrous crimes, cruelties, abuses, heaped upon the gentle heads of Japanese women for centuries and centuries on end have actually produced such perfection of human devotion as seen among the upper-class women of Japan. "How sweet," he wrote to Professor Chamberlain once, "Japanese woman is! All the possibilities for goodness seem to be concentrated in her. It shakes one's faith in some Occidental doctrines. If this be the result of suppression and oppression, then these are not altogether bad. On the other hand, how diamondhard the character of the American woman becomes under the idolatry of which she is the object."

It was not the crude male "suppression and oppression" that wrought the gentle miracle, of course. That short cut to the Pure Land of Extreme Bliss mother mentioned that is the real answer. That flaming aspiration of the Nippon woman to walk into the kingdom. of grace by battling against and taking away pain and suffering wherever found is the real explanation. It made her forget such petty emotions as anger and thirst for revenge. It made her quite absent-minded about the very wrongs she was suffering. She was too busy thinking of pain and suffering she should be removing to bother much about her own wrongs.

I

CAME home one day with my chest sticking out-not more than a couple of feet, but every inch immodest with impressive emphasis. I had learned that day from my ju-jutsu master a new hold and a new throw. The passion to show it off possessed me as a demon is said to possess a man.

The first person I met at home was my grandmother; so I rushed up to her: "Grandmother-madam, I've learned a new hand in ju-jutsu. May I hang it on your honorable eyes?"

"Really," said grandmother, and smiled.

"This way, grandmother-madam." So saying, I seized her left arm.

She was standing on the edge of the veranda, outside of her room. Mother had told me often that grandmother was quite an expert in the art of ju-jutsu. The aspiration of showing her something which would command her attention must have worked on my small soul like a flaming fever.

Just what happened I never knew. Only I heard a sound as of a bone cracking. And the next instant I saw grandmother fall from the edge of the veranda. All that the popping eyes of mine could see was the pale face of my grandmother on the sanded ground.

Thoroughly frightened-as no son of a Samurai should have been frightenedI leaped off the veranda and tried to lift grandmother. I found I wasn't strong enough to do it. So, in that hour of need, I tried the only thing which rarely failed to bring some result-I yelled at the top of my voice, calling for help.

Mother and a couple of maids were sewing in the adjoining room. They rushed out. A glance was quite enough for mother. She leaped off the veranda. Gathering grandmother in both of her arms, she asked:

"Donasai mashita?" [Your honorable person is it safe and well?]

Then mother's eyes wandered to my face. Guilty conscience must have been painting on it as on a billboard:

"What have you done?" mother asked

me.

For

But grandmother stopped her with a gentle gesture of her uninjured arm. And mother, with the help of the maids, carried grandmother into her room. the rest of the day, until I was ordered away, I hung about in front of the closed shoji of the room. But I did not see grandmother. I saw father enter the room. I heard a flow of whispered conversation within. I saw father come out. He looked at me, and I cringed as under a cutting lash of rebuke. But he didn't say a word to me. I tried to say something to him--I wished to ask him about grandmother. But I couldn't. Words simply stuck in my throat and would not come out, somehow. He passed on. Mother came out. She, too, did not say a single word to me.

I

NEVER felt quite so friendless, quite so abandoned, as I did then-and so deathly sick at heart. A vivid sense of having done something terrible got me by the throat like a pair of skeleton hands of an avenging ghost. I could hardly breathe. And within me I felt my heart soggy and heavy, like a dead something left out in the rain all night.

How I managed to swallow my evening meal without choking myself to death I do not know; but I did. I crawled into my bed as in a trance. The night wore on, and sleep must have come to me, for even to this day I remember how I jerked myself up in bed

-a horrible dream had wakened me. And I saw that dawn was pressing its pale, sickly cheek against the outer shoji of my room. Another day came. Everybody seemed to have lost his or her voice. All in the house spoke in whispers.

But why was I not called into father's room? I expected the call all through the waking hours of the night before. I dreaded it, but I confidently expected it. I knew full well I was guilty if ever I was in all my ill-omened young life. I was in for a terrible licking. Yet it did not come. I was perfectly willing and ready to be whipped-cut into bits-fed to sharks ready to go through almost anything. But it did not come. It didn't that day at all. The more I dreaded its coming-strange but true, this the more impatient I seemed to become. Why didn't it come? Another day came and went, but the call didn't

come.

T

HEN early in the morning of the day following a couple of stout kago bearers came with a stretcher. They brought out grandmother on it, and father, with the help of the bearers, placed her comfortably in that oldfashioned Japanese conveyance, swung on a pole and borne on the shoulders of two carriers—one in front and the other behind and which is usually known as a palanquin in Europe. And I saw then that I had hurt my grandmother more seriously than I had dreamed.. She was injured, not only in her arm, but elsewhere, perhaps even more vital.

I just took one look at grandmotherthe first I had had since the terrible event. A power I had no idea of pushed me to where she lay. Something within me was driving me to speak out to her. But mother caught me just then and pulled me back. Tears filled my eyes and flowed down both of my cheeks, openly and without shame. Then great sobs which I could not control came up from somewhere away down my throat. I knew I was crying, but I did not care.

Just then I caught grandmother's eyes. She was smiling at me. And that was the one and the only smile I had got from anybody since I hurt grandmother. It went to my heart like a thrill. And that was a bit too much. I gave it up. Mother, she did not smile at me, but I felt her arm tighten about my body, shaking itself to pieces in a fit of sobbing.

After that I saw nothing of my grandmother for days, weeks, months. She