Twelve Men

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pressive. He was already the author of a cheap songbook, “The Paul Dresser Songster” (“All the Songs Sung in the Show”), and some copies of this he had with him, one of which he gave me. But we having no musical instrument of any kind, he taught me some of the melodies “by ear.” The home in which by force of poverty we were compelled to live was most unprepossessing and inconvenient, and the result of his coming could but be our request for, or at least the obvious need of, assistance. Still he was as much an enthusiastic part of it as though he belonged to it. He was happy in it, and the cause of his happiness was my mother, of whom he was intensely fond. I recall how he hung about her in the kitchen or wherever she happened to be, how enthusiastically he related all his plans for the future, his amusing difficulties in the past. He was very grand and youthfully self-important, or so we all thought, and still he patted her on the shoulder or put his arm about her and kissed her. Until she died years later she was truly his uppermost thought, crying with her at times over her troubles and his. He contributed regularly to her support and sent home all his cast-off clothing to be made over for the younger ones. (Bless her tired hands!)

As I look back now on my life, I realize quite clearly that of all the members of my family, subsequent to my mother’s death, the only one who truly understood me, or, better yet, sympathized with my intellectual and artistic point of view, was, strange as it may seem, this same Paul, my dearest brother. Not that he was in any way fitted intellectually or otherwise to enjoy high forms of art and learning and so guide me, or that he understood, even in later years (long after I had written “Sister Carrie,” for instance), what it was that I was attempting to

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do; he never did. His world was that of the popular song, the middle-class actor or comedian, the middle-class comedy, and such humorous æsthetes of the writing world as Bill Nye, Petroleum V. Nasby, the authors of the Spoopendyke Papers, and “Samantha at Saratoga.” As far as I could make out – and I say this in no lofty, condescending spirit, by any means – he was entirely full of simple, middle-class romance, middle-class humor, middle-class tenderness and middle-class grossness, all of which I am very free to say early disarmed and won me completely and kept me so much his debtor that I should hesitate to try to acknowledge or explain all that he did for or meant to me.

Imagine, if you can, a man weighing all of three hundred pounds, not more than five feet ten-and-one-half inches in height and yet of so lithesome a build that he gave not the least sense of either undue weight or lethargy. His temperament, always ebullient and radiant, presented him as a clever, eager, cheerful, emotional and always highly illusioned person with so collie-like a warmth that one found him compelling interest and even admiration. Easily cast down at times by the most trivial matters, at others, and for the most part, he was so spirited and bubbly and emotional and sentimental that your fiercest or most gloomy intellectual rages or moods could scarcely withstand his smile. This tenderness or sympathy of his, a very human appreciation of the weaknesses and errors as well as the toils and tribulations of most of us, was by far his outstanding and most engaging quality, and gave him a very definite force and charm. Admitting, as I freely do, that he was very sensuous (gross, some people might have called him), that he had an intense, possibly an undue fondness for

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women, a frivolous, childish, horse-playish sense of humor at times, still he had other qualities which were absolutely adorable. Life seemed positively to spring up fountain-like in him. One felt in him a capacity to do (in his possibly limited field); an ability to achieve, whether he was doing so at the moment or not, and a supreme willingness to share and radiate his success – qualities exceedingly rare, I believe. Some people are so successful, and yet you know their success is purely selfish – exclusive, not inclusive; they never permit you to share in their lives. Not so my good brother. He was generous to the point of self-destruction, and that is literally true. He was the mark if not the prey of all those who desired much or little for nothing, those who previously might not have rendered him a service of any kind. He was all life and color, and thousands (I use the word with care) noted and commented on it.

When I first came to New York he was easily the foremost popular song-writer of the day and was the cause of my coming, so soon at least, having established himself in the publishing field and being so comfortably settled as to offer me a kind of anchorage in so troubled a commercial sea. I was very much afraid of New York, but with him here it seemed not so bad. The firm of which he was a part had a floor or two in an old residence turned office building, as so many are in New York, in Twentieth Street very close to Broadway, and here, during the summer months (1894-7) when the various theatrical road-companies, one of which he was always a part, had returned for the closed season, he was to be found aiding his concern in the reception and care of possible applicants for songs and attracting by his personality such virtuosi of the

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vaudeville and comedy stage as were likely to make the instrumental publications of his firm a success.

I may as well say here that he had no more business skill than a fly. At the same time, he was in no wise sycophantic where either wealth, power or fame was concerned. He considered himself a personage of sorts, and was. The minister, the moralist, the religionist, the narrow, dogmatic and self-cen- tered in any field were likely to be the butt of his humor, and he could imitate so many phases of character so cleverly that he was the life of any idle pleasure-seeking party anywhere. To this day I recall his characterization of an old Irish washerwoman arguing; a stout, truculent German laying down the law; lean, gloomy, out-at-elbows actors of the Hamlet or classic school complaining of their fate; the stingy skinflint haggling over a dollar, and always with a skill for titillating the risibilities which is vivid to me even to this day. Other butts of his humor were the actor, the Irish day-laborer, the negro and the Hebrew. And how he could imitate them! It is useless to try to indicate such things in writing, the facial expression, the intonation, the gestures; these are not things of words. Perhaps I can best indicate the direction of his mind, if not his manner, by the following:

One night as we were on our way to a theater there stood on a nearby corner in the cold a blind man singing and at the same time holding out a little tin cup into which the coins of the charitably inclined were supposed to be dropped. At once my brother noticed him, for he had an eye for this sort of thing, the pathos of poverty as opposed to so gay a scene, the street with its hurrying theater crowds. At the same time, so inherently mischievous was his nature that although his sympathy

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for the suffering or the ill-used of fate was overwhelming, he could not resist combining his intended charity with a touch of the ridiculous.

“Got any pennies?” he demanded. “Three or four.”

Going over to an outdoor candystand he exchanged a quarter for pennies, then came back and waited until the singer, who had ceased singing, should begin a new melody. A custom of the singer’s, since the song was of no import save as a means of attracting attention to him, was to interpolate a “Thank you” after each coin dropped in his cup and between the words of the song, regardless. It was this little idiosyncrasy which evidently had attracted my brother’s attention, although it had not mine. Standing quite close, his pennies in his hand, he waited until the singer had resumed, then began dropping pennies, waiting each time for the “Thank you,” which caused the song to go about as follows:

“Da-a-’ling” (Clink! – “Thank you!”) “I am – “ (Clink! – “Thank you!”) “growing o-o-o-ld” (Clink! – “Thank you!”), “Silve-e-r – “ (Clink! – “Thank you!”) “threads among the – “ (Clink! – “Thank you!”) “go-o-o-ld – “ (Clink! “Thank you!”). “Shine upon my-y” (Clink! – “Thank you!”) “bro-o-ow toda-a-y” (Clink! – “Thank you!”), “Life is – “ (Clink! – “Thank you!”) “fading fast a-a-wa-a-ay” (Clink! – “Thank you!”) – and so on ad infinitum, until finally the beggar himself seemed to hesitate a little and waver, only so solemn was his rôle of want and despair that of course he dared not but had to go on until the last penny was in, and until he was saying more “Thank yous” than words of the song. A passer-by noticing it had begun to “Haw-haw!”, at which others joined in, myself included. The

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beggar himself, a rather sniveling specimen, finally realizing what a figure he was cutting with his song and thanks, emptied the coins into his hand and with an indescribably wry expression, half-uncertainty and half smile, exclaimed, “I’ll have to thank you as long as you keep putting pennies in, I suppose. God bless you!”

My brother came away smiling and content.

However, it is not as a humorist or song-writer or publisher that I wish to portray him, but as an odd, lovable personality, possessed of so many interesting and peculiar and almost indescribable traits. Of all characters in fiction he perhaps most suggests Jack Falstaff, with his love of women, his bravado and bluster and his innate good nature and sympathy. Sympathy was really his outstanding characteristic, even more than humor, although the latter was always present. One might recite a thousand incidents of his generosity and out-of-hand charity, which contained no least thought of return or reward. I recall that once there was a boy who had been reared in one of the towns in which we had once lived who had never had a chance in his youth, educationally or in any other way, and, having turned out “bad” and sunk to the level of a bank robber, had been detected in connection with three other men in the act of robbing a bank, the watchman of which was subsequently killed in the mêlée and escape. Of all four criminals only this one had been caught. Somewhere in prison he had heard sung one of my brother’s sentimental ballads, “The Convict and the Bird,” and recollecting that he had known Paul wrote him, setting forth his life history and that now he had no money or friends.

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At once my good brother was alive to the pathos of it. He showed the letter to me and wanted to know what could be done. I suggested a lawyer, of course, one of those brilliant legal friends of his – always he had enthusiastic admirers in all walks – who might take the case for little or nothing. There was the leader of Tammany Hall, Richard Croker, who could be reached, he being a friend of Paul’s. There was the Governor himself to whom a plain recitation of the boy’s unfortunate life might be addressed, and with some hope of profit.

All of these things he did, and more. He went to the prison (Sing Sing), saw the warden and told him the story of the boy’s life, then went to the boy, or man, himself and gave him some money. He was introduced to the Governor through influential friends and permitted to tell the tale. There was much delay, a reprieve, a commutation of the death penalty to life imprisonment – the best that could be done. But he was so grateful for that, so pleased. You would have thought at the time that it was his own life that had been spared.

“Good heavens!” I jested. “You’d think you’d done the man an inestimable service, getting him in the penitentiary for life!”

“That’s right,” he grinned – an unbelievably provoking smile. “He’d better be dead, wouldn’t he? Well, I’ll write and ask him which he’d rather have.”

I recall again taking him to task for going to the rescue of a “down and out” actor who had been highly successful and apparently not very sympathetic in his day, one of that more or less gaudy clan that wastes its substance, or so it seemed to me then, in riotous living. But now being old and entirely discarded and forgotten, he was in need of sympathy and aid.

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By some chance he knew Paul, or Paul had known him, and now because of the former’s obvious prosperity – he was much in the papers at the time – he had appealed to him. The man lived with a sister in a wretched little town far out on Long Island. On receiving his appeal Paul seemed to wish to investigate for himself, possibly to indulge in a little lofty romance or sentiment. At any rate he wanted me to go along for the sake of companionship, so one dreary November afternoon we went, saw the pantaloon, who did not impress me very much even in his age and misery for he still had a few of his theatrical manners and insincerities, and as we were coming away I said, “Paul, why should you be the goat in every case?” for I had noted ever since I had been in New York, which was several years then, that he was a victim of many such importunities. If it was not the widow of a deceased friend who needed a ton of coal or a sack of flour, or the reckless, headstrong boy of parents too poor to save him from a term in jail or the reformatory and who asked for fine-money or an appeal to higher powers for clemency, or a wastrel actor or actress “down and out” and unable to “get back to New York” and requiring his or her railroad fare wired prepaid, it was the dead wastrel actor or actress who needed a coffin and a decent form of burial.

“Well, you know how it is, Thee” (he nearly always addressed me thus), “when you’re old and sick. As long as you’re up and around and have money, everybody’s your friend. But once you’re down and out no one wants to see you any more – see?” Almost amusingly he was always sad over those who had once been prosperous but who were now old and forgotten. Some of his silliest tender songs conveyed as much.

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“Quite so,” I complained, rather brashly, I suppose, “but why didn’t he save a little money when he had it? He made as much as you’ll ever make.” The man had been a star. “He had plenty of it, didn’t he? Why should he come to you?”

“Well, you know how it is, Thee,” he explained in the kindliest and most apologetic way. “When you’re young and healthy like that you don’t think. I know how it is; I’m that way myself. We all have a little of it in us. I have; you have. And anyhow youth’s the time to spend money if you’re to get any good of it, isn’t it? Of course when you’re old you can’t expect much, but still I always feel as though I’d like to help some of these old people.” His eyes at such times always seemed more like those of a mother contemplating a sick or injured child than those of a man contemplating life.

“But, Paul,” I insisted on another occasion when he had just wired twenty-five dollars somewhere to help bury some one. (My spirit was not so niggardly as fearsome. I was constantly terrified in those days by the thought of a poverty-stricken old age for myself and him – why, I don’t know. I was by no means incompetent.) “Why don’t you save your money? Why should you give it to every Tom, Dick and Harry that asks you? You’re not a charity organization, and you’re not called upon to feed and clothe and bury all the wasters who happen to cross your path. If you were down and out how many do you suppose would help you?”

“Well, you know,” and his voice and manner were largely those of mother, the same wonder, the same wistfulness and sweetness, the same bubbling charity and tenderness of heart, “I can’t say I haven’t got it, can I?” He was at the height of his success at the time. “And anyhow, what’s the use being so

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hard on people? We’re all likely to get that way. You don’t know what pulls people down sometimes – not wasting always. It’s thoughtlessness, or trying to be happy. Remember how poor we were and how mamma and papa used to worry.” Often these references to mother or father or their difficulties would bring tears to his eyes. “I can’t stand to see people suffer, that’s all, not if I have anything,” and his eyes glowed sweetly. “And, after all,” he added apologetically, “the little I give isn’t much. They don’t get so much out of me. They don’t come to me every day.”

Another time – one Christmas Eve it was, when I was comparatively new to New York (my second or third year), I was a little uncertain what to do, having no connections outside of Paul and two sisters, one of whom was then out of the city. The other, owing to various difficulties of her own and a temporary estrangement from us – more our fault than hers – was therefore not available. The rather drab state into which she had allowed her marital affections to lead her was the main reason that kept us apart. At any rate I felt that I could not, or rather would not, go there. At the same time, owing to some difficulty or irritation with the publishing house of which my brother was then part owner (it was publishing the magazine which I was editing), we twain were also estranged, nothing very deep really – a temporary feeling of distance and indifference.

So I had no place to go except to my room, which was in a poor part of the town, or out to dine where best I might – some moderate-priced hotel, was my thought. I had not seen my brother in three or four days, but after I had strolled a block or two up Broadway I encountered him. I have always thought that he had kept an eye on me and had really followed me; was

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