He told me that in almost the same words the first day we met.
Then I tagged that idea as a pipe dream picked up on an empty stomach.
I saw his machine only as a path to luxurious and personal Nirvana, and I thought he’d soon be going my way.
I was wrong.
You can’t live, or work, with a likable person without admiring some of the qualities that make that person likable.
Another thing; it’s a lot easier to worry about the woes of the world when you haven’t any yourself.
It’s a lot easier to have a conscience when you can afford it.
When I donned the rose-colored glasses half my battle was won; when I realized how grand a world this could be, the battle was over.
That was about the time of “Flame Over France,” I think.
The actual time isn’t important.
What is important is that, from that time on, we became the tightest team possible.
Since then the only thing we’ve differed on would be the time to knock off for a sandwich.
Most of our leisure time, what we had of it, has been spent in locking up for the night, rolling out the portable bar, opening just enough beer to feel good, and relaxing.
Maybe, after one or two, we might diddle the dials of the machine, and go rambling.
Together we’ve been everywhere and seen anything.
It might be a good night to check up on Francois Villon, the faker, or maybe we might chase around with Haroun-el-Rashid. (If there was ever a man born a few hundred years too soon, it was that careless caliph.) Or if we were in a bad or discouraged mood we might follow the Thirty Years’ War for a while, or if we were real raffish we might inspect the dressing rooms at Radio City.
For Mike the crackup of Atlantis has always had an odd fascination, probably because he’s afraid that man will do it again, now that he’s rediscovered nuclear energy.
And if I doze off he’s quite apt to go back to the very Beginning, back to the start of the world as we know it now. (It wouldn’t do any good to tell you what went before that.)
When I stop to think, it’s probably just as well that neither of us married.
We, of course, have hopes for the future, but at present we’re both tired of the whole human race; tired of greedy faces and hands.
With a world that puts a premium on wealth and power and strength, it’s no wonder what decency there is stems from fear of what’s here now, or fear of what’s hereafter.
We’ve seen so much of the hidden actions of the world—call it snooping, if you like—that we’ve learned to disregard the surface indications of kindness and good.
Only once did Mike and I ever look into the private life of someone we knew and liked and respected.
Once was enough.
From that day on we made it a point to take people as they seemed. Let’s get away from that.
The next two pictures we released in rapid succession; the first, “Freedom for Americans,” the American Revolution, and “The Brothers and the Guns,” the American Civil War.
Bang!
Every third politician, a lot of so-called “educators,” and all the professional patriots started after our scalps.
Every single chapter of the DAR, the Sons of Union Veterans, and the Daughters of the Confederacy pounded their collective heads against the wall.
The South went frantic; every state in the Deep South and one state on the border flatly banned both pictures, the second because it was truthful, and the first because censorship is a contagious disease.
They stayed banned until the professional politicians got wise.
The bans were revoked, and the choke-collar and string-tie brigade pointed to both pictures as horrible examples of what some people actually believed and thought, and felt pleased that someone had given them an opportunity to roll out the barrel and beat the drums that sound sectional and racial hatred.
New England was tempted to stand on its dignity, but couldn’t stand the strain.
North of New York both pictures were banned.
In New York state the rural representatives voted en bloc, and the ban was clamped on statewide.
Special trains ran to Delaware, where the corporations were too busy to pass another law.
Libel suits flew like spaghetti, and although the extras blared the filing of each new suit, very few knew that we lost not one.
Although we had to appeal almost every suit to higher courts, and in some cases request a change of venue which was seldom granted, the documentary proof furnished by the record cleared us once we got to a judge, or series of judges, with no fences to mend.
It was a mighty rasp we drew over wounded ancestral pride.
We had shown that not all the mighty had haloes of purest gold, that not all the Redcoats were strutting bullies—nor angels, and the British Empire, except South Africa, refused entry to both pictures and made violent passes at the State Department.
The spectacle of Southern and New England congressmen approving the efforts of a foreign ambassador to suppress free speech drew hilarious hosannas from certain quarters.
H. L.
Mencken gloated in the clover, doing loud nip-ups, and the newspapers hung on the triple-horned dilemma of anti-foreign, pro-patriotic, and quasi-logical criticism.
In Detroit the Ku Klux Klan fired an anemic cross on our doorstep, and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, the NAACP, and the WCTU passed flattering resolutions.
We forwarded the most vicious and obscene letters—together with a few names and addresses that hadn’t been originally signed—to our lawyers and the Post Office Department.
There were no convictions south of Illinois.
Johnson and his boys made hay.
Johnson had pyramided his bets into an international distributing organization, and pushed Marrs into hiring every top press agent either side of the Rockies.
What a job they did!
In no time at all there were two definite schools of thought that overflowed into the public letter boxes.