Twelve Men. Theodore Dreiser
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patient. His boy, the petted F——, could not even recall his father, the girl not at all of course. And in the place were a few of his prints, two or three Chinese dishes, pottered by himself, his loom with the unfinished rug. I remained for dinner and dreamed old dreams, but I was uncomfortable and left early. And Mrs. Peter, accompanying me to the steps, looked after me as though I, alone, was all that was left of the old life.
A Doer of the Word
Noank is a little played-out fishing town on the southeastern coast of Connecticut, lying half-way between New London and Stonington. Once it was a profitable port for mackerel and cod fishing. Today its wharves are deserted of all save a few lobster smacks. There is a shipyard, employing three hundred and fifty men, a yacht-building establishment, with two or three hired hands; a sail-loft, and some dozen or so shops or sheds, where the odds and ends of fishing life are made and sold. Everything is peaceful. The sound of the shipyard axes and hammers can be heard for miles over the quiet waters of the bay. In the sunny lane which follows the line of the shore, and along which a few shops struggle in happy-go-lucky disorder, may be heard the voices and noises of the workers at their work. Water gurgling about the stanchions of the docks, the whistle of some fisherman as he dawdles over his nets, or puts his fish ashore, the whirr of the single high-power sewing machine in the sail-loft, often mingle in a pleasant harmony, and invite the mind to repose and speculation.
I was in a most examining and critical mood that summer, looking into the nature and significance of many things, and was sitting one day in the shed of the maker of sailboats, where a half-dozen characters of the village were gathered, when some turn in the conversation brought up the nature of man. He is queer, he is restless; life is not so very much when you come to look upon many phases of it.
"Did any of you ever know a contented man?" I inquired idly, merely for the sake of something to say.
There was silence for a moment, and one after another met my roving glance with a thoughtful, self-involved and retrospective eye.
Old Mr. Main was the first to answer.
"Yes, I did. One."
"So did I," put in the sailboat maker, as he stopped in his work to think about it.
"Yes, and I did," said a dark, squat, sunny, little old fisherman, who sold cunners for bait in a little hut next door.
"Maybe you and me are thinking of the same one, Jacob," said old Mr. Main, looking inquisitively at the boat-builder.
"I think we've all got the same man in mind, likely," returned the builder.
"Who is he?" I asked.
"Charlie Potter," said the builder.
"That's the man!" exclaimed Mr. Main.
"Yes, I reckon Charlie Potter is contented, if anybody be," said an old fisherman who had hitherto been silent.
Such unanimity of opinion struck me forcibly. Charlie Potter—what a humble name; not very remarkable, to say the least. And to hear him so spoken of in this restless, religious, quibbling community made it all the more interesting.
"So you really think he is contented, do you?" I asked.
"Yes, sir! Charlie Potter is a contented man," replied Mr. Main, with convincing emphasis.
"Well," I returned, "that's rather interesting. What sort of a man is he?"
"Oh, he's just an ordinary man, not much of anybody. Fishes and builds boats occasionally," put in the boat-builder.
"Is that all? Nothing else?"
"He preaches now and then—not regularly," said Mr. Main.
A-ha! I thought. A religionist!
"A preacher is expected to set a good example," I said.
"He ain't a regular preacher," said Mr. Main, rather quickly. "He's just kind of around in religious work."
"What do you mean?" I asked curiously, not quite catching the import of this "around."
"Well," answered the boat builder, "he don't take any money for what he does. He ain't got anything."
"What does he live on then?" I persisted, still wondering at the significance of "around in religious work."
"I don't know. He used to fish for a living. Fishes yet once in a while, I believe."
"He makes models of yachts," put in one of the bystanders. "He sold the New Haven Road one for two hundred dollars here not long ago."
A vision of a happy-go-lucky Jack-of-all-trades arose before me. A visionary—a theorist.
"What else?" I asked, hoping to draw them out. "What makes you all think he is contented? What does he do that makes him so contented?"
"Well," said Mr. Main, after a considerable pause and with much of sympathetic emphasis in his voice, "Charlie Potter is just a good man, that's all. That's why he's contented. He does as near as he can what he thinks he ought to by other people—poor people."
"You won't find anybody with a kinder heart than Charlie Potter," put in the boat-builder. "That's the trouble with him, really. He's too good. He don't look after himself right, I say. A fellow has to look out for himself some in this world. If he don't, no one else will."
"Right you are, Henry," echoed a truculent sea voice from somewhere.
I was becoming both amused and interested, intensely so.
"If he wasn't that way, he'd be a darned sight better off than he is," said a thirty-year-old helper, from a far corner of the room.
"What makes you say that?" I queried. "Isn't it better to be kind-hearted and generous than not?"
"It's all right to be kind-hearted and generous, but that ain't sayin' that you've got to give your last cent away and let your family go hungry."
"Is that what Charlie Potter does?"
"Well, no, maybe he don't, but he comes mighty near to it at times. He and his wife and his adopted children have been pretty close to it at times."
You see, this was the center, nearly, for all village gossip and philosophic speculation, and many of the most important local problems, morally and intellectually speaking, were here thrashed put.
"There's no doubt but that's where Charlie is wrong," put in old Mr. Main a little later. "He don't always stop to think of his family."
"What did he ever do that struck you as being over-generous?" I asked of the young man who had spoken from the corner.
"That's all right," he replied in a rather irritated and peevish tone; "I ain't going to go into details now, but there's people around here that hang on him, and that he's give to, that he hadn't orter."
"I believe in lookin' out for Number One, that's what I believe in," interrupted the boat-maker, laying down his rule and line. "This givin' up everything and goin' without yourself may be all right, but I don't believe it. A man's first duty is to his wife and children, that's what I say."
"That's the way it looks to me," put in Mr. Main.
"Well, does Potter give up everything and go without things?" I asked the boat-maker.
"Purty blamed near it at times," he returned definitely, then addressing the company in general he added, "Look at the time he worked over there on Fisher's Island, at the Ellersbie farm—the time they were packing the ice there. You remember that, Henry, don't you?"
Mr. Main nodded.
"What about it?"
"What about it! Why, he give his rubber boots away, like a darned fool, to old drunken Jimmy Harper, and him