The Ivory Tower
Bussard, Paul
June 12, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 157 From Farm From City Net Loss Year to City to Farm to Farm 1924 .......... 2,075,000 1,396,0o0 679,000 I925 .......... 1,9OO,OOO I,O66,ooo ...
...And this I do more because I cannot tell you why I manage to continue the performance...
...There are misfits, failures and bankruptcies in agriculture, and always will be, just as there are everywhere, but there is really a smaller chance for failure in agriculture than in other lines of industry...
...He is too much with himself in the ivory tower...
...You play the fool about the curtained throne of that sombre queen who rules, and metes out sadness with her right hand and with her left...
...158 THE COMMONWEAL June 12, 1929 Columbine looked in the eyes of the poet...
...After the fashion of the one who sold his rights for a bowl of porridge, he would walk out of the ivory palace, hung with tapestries, windowed with jewels, to lay down in any swine house he might chance upon along the way...
...THE IVORY TOWER By PAUL BUSSARD T HE qualities of creatures are sufficiently difficult to account for in any case...
...Then you might have seen those men in solitary places...
...Nextly, there is he who makes his threnody sometimes with appropriate rhythm...
...The facts are that approximately the same number of farmers now as in 191o are producing food so efficiently and successfully that they are supplying the needs of 20,000,000 more consumers with far less human labor...
...But everyone admitted some strangeness in the process which had made this man a person whose fame went somewhat further than the water's edge...
...Said Columbine: " 'But I cannot put aside the thought that I, who for the while exist in this mortgaged body, cannot ever get out to you...
...They have been at it complainingly these hundreds of years...
...And I would rather decline the privilege of any rustic keeper of swine to trample the flowers in the soul of Columbine...
...But, Pierrot, see the anguish of the thing...
...Her dream of heaven: A fat, congenial part...
...L• BARON COOKE...
...in 192o, 3,366,51o operated their own farms...
...Such was their foresight they plainly per- ceived that their success in passing into the house of another's soul could, in the end, be but a meagre exploration...
...I per-ceive that man is a fool...
...In the east the moon was rising like a golden bubble in a beaker of wine...
...During the past ten years 1,5oo,ooo workers have been dropped from the payrolls of factories, railroads and other types of industrial employment because of mechanization and changes in the consumers' demands...
...June 12, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 157 From Farm From City Net Loss Year to City to Farm to Farm 1924...
...The net loss of 3,000,000 in farm popu- lation during the years 1924-1927 probably indicate a net loss of 600,000 workers...
...Here is one who loves a woman, who is quite prodigal in the expression of the eternity of his attraction...
...There is no way in which two persons may meet in this world of men: we can but exchange, from afar, friendly despairing signals in the sure knowledge they will be mis-interpreted...
...During the same time, 1,25o,ooo workers have found a new kind of employment in the automotive industry, in garages, service stations and so on...
...because, while you say it, I myself writhe in my own isola-tion like the witch's eel enclosed in a bottle...
...Their living thus was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives proof of their crafty judgment...
...And it is said they spent not a small amount of their abundant leisure in contriving fitting ways of thanking God for having made them lonely...
...The marked mechanization of the farm, as in industry, during the past few years has released a large amount of human labor which has sought employment elsewhere...
...Having looked at the stars for a brief space, he poured out the water on the ground...
...His eyes wandered across the sky in search for the first star of the evening...
...The "flight from the factory" is therefore greater than from the farm...
...When it appeared shining clear in the west Pierrot said : "Yours is a common sickness, well known and well lamented by many of your fellows...
...Other some have essayed a cure of the sickness by a laying on of hands...
...said the poet, "It is even as you say...
...Souls are not communicable...
...The poet rose to his feet...
...And having amused himself for a while, he finds its brilliance hurtful to his shallow eyes...
...And, if you permit the observation, I dare say the mergement of you and me would make but a hasty pudding...
...There is primely the one who medi- tates it and sheds his tears with some decorum...
...He took the lute from Columbine and held it in the brook until its quaintly shaped body was quite filled with water...
...one cut his throat, one went to war and one choked the baker's daughter...
...The poet selected a pebble from his left hand and flicked it neatly into the brook, on whose bank sat Columbine tinker- ing with a lute...
...Being engaged at the moment with a new sheaf of poems in which he was lamenting the loneliness and isolation of the human soul, the young poet had been almost goaded into rhetoric by Pierrot's remark that such isolation might well engage his power of praise rather than stimulate his weakness for sadness...
...Indeed, there is no word for my foiled huge desire to love and to be loved, just as there is no word for the big, the not quite comprehended thought which is moving in me at this moment...
...And withal, what does he love beyond eyes and a mouth, and a manner of making words with it...
...So they made a paradox--a man is less lonely alone...
...a cave, a sheltering rock on the moun- tain, a wretched hut in the valley, became for them the tiring- room of heaven...
...Oh God," he said, "Who made me with such subtle wis- dom that I am tricked into complaining of my greatness, this libation of water to the earth which I have hitherto despised, upon which I will, in coming days, walk with more wary feet...
...2,155,ooo 1,135,000 1,020,000 1927...
...and in such brevity of phrase you may find much agony and tears and the cause of countless monstrosi- ties since the race of the world began...
...According to the census of the United States there were 6,361,5o2 farmers in 191o, 6,448,343 in 192o and 6,371,64o in 1925 . What the number of farmers is now no one knows or will know until the I93 ~ census is taken...
...Furthermore, this movement of popu- lation includes men, women and children, and does not necessarily mean farmers...
...His figure was soon gone behind a double row of trees whose branches were dripping with the golden light of the moon, whose massive trunks were slightly curved in her horizontal beams--an effect which architects have often ob- served and used to great advantage in designing pillars...
...Said Pierrot: "Columbine, my dear, leave off fingering the neck of that unlovely instrument for the moment, and say for us the paragraph I once read you from a book...
...And as for a laying on of hands, even their shallowest saw that it could accomplish but nothing...
...She remains as unknown to him as the next one, and he to her...
...Then he said : "At another and wiser time on the earth there were men desiring to circumvent the devil of loneliness within them, but in a different wise...
...And bowing hastily to Pierrot and handing the lute to Columbine without smiling, the poet hurried away toward the east...
...Neither has there been any marked increase in tenancy during the period...
...CpitapA of an Actress Here lies one Who gave her life to art...
...So he sets about contriving sounding epithets and curious speeches in which he commands the Author, 'if there be an Author,' to re~dit His published works...
...Could souls go forth, there would undoubtedly be doughty deeds in the countryside...
...The number of farmers in the United States has changed but little in the past twenty-five years...
...But that thought also is a grief.' " "It is not to be discounted that the rhythm of prose is cer- tainly more subtle, and comes more soundingly from a woman's lips than the stricted rhymes of the poets," said Pierrot will- ing to remove the embarrassment of the eyes of Columbine from their guest...
...and Pierrot and Columbine, even they, admitted some strangeness in the process which had made this young man a poet, whose fame went somewhat further than the edge of the water, into which flowed the brook on whose bank they sat at vesper time...
...2,075,000 1,396,0o0 679,000 I925...
...insisting that in the proposed edition He picture the plot on the cover, evidently to obviate the need of burdensome reading...
...Pierrot raised himself to brace his back against the tree...
...of the indestructible loneliness that surrounds, envelops, clothes every human soul from the cradle to the grave, and, perhaps beyond.'" Columbine's voice trailed softly away and mingled with the murmur of the brook as she uttered the last words, for, truth to say, Columbine was not quite certain about the beyond...
...Her voice was vibrant and tremulous as the strings she had the moment before been softly stroking...
...Then there were those in olden time who evaded the issue by various sorts of curious mangle-ments...
...Indisputably man is a curious creature...
...When the guest had shifted the pebbles into his other hand, raising his head, Pierrot, who thought he was about to speak, said quickly to Columbine, "And the other one, my dear, which goes, 'her hands slipping.' " " 'Her hands slipped slowly off Lingard's shoulders and her arms fell by her side listless, discouraged, as if to her-- to her, the savage, violent and ignorant creatureuhad been revealed in that moment the tremendous fact of our isolation, of the loneliness impenetrable and transparent, elusive and everlasting...
...1,978,ooo 1,374,ooo 6o4,ooo 8,1o8,ooo 4,971,ooo 3,137,ooo The implication that the farm has been losing popu- lation at the rate of 2,000,000 per year is entirely mis- leading...
...Said Pierrot smiling, "Ho, I would assuredly fancy the spectacle of you and your merchant of plumber's tools meet- ing upon the bridge...
...Clearly he was a man taken with the necessity of gesture...
...In the soft light he held his hand before his face and peered questioningly at his finger nails...
...So forthwith he betakes himself to the nearest pigsty and busies himself with casting it in the slime, where by chance it may suffer allurement to the admir- ing snout of some vagrant swine...
...Again facts are stubborn things...
...1,9OO,OOO I,O66,ooo 834,000 1926...
...No soul may travel upon a bridge of words...
...During the four-year period analyzed above there were over eight million people who left the farm, but nearly five million returned, which is quite a dif-ferent matter...
...Mehercle...
...By Venus...
...Farm families are usually very large...
...Only to those who have knees to bend is it given to realize the wonderment and unde- served grandeur that comes with the ability to pronounce the syllable 'I.' Your man is a child who has been given a most wondrous jewel from Him Who gave him everything "else...
...Among more serious things, he taught them the thing that makes a person a person is just his incom- municability, no more, no less...
...Pierrot," the poet continued, "it may be that I respect your wisdom, but here in the presence of the beauty of Colum- bine, on which it is absurdly facile to meditate, I cannot per- mit the observation that incarceration is in any way a boon...
...said Pierrot, "Your man has funny customs...
...in 1925 the number was 3,313,49 ~ . Facts are stubborn things...
...As he sat at vesper time flicking pebbles into the brook, Pier- rot and Columbine regarded his face of cameo clearness, the strong cleanness of his fingers...
...The census of 191o indicates that 3,354,897 farmers oper-ated their own farms...
...And build what bridges he may---does he make words till his mouth is dry, or music till the stars are troubled, or pictures till Dame Nature herself is disturbed with his rivalry--he may not pass over...
...These numbers refer to actual workers, and do not include dependents, as do the numbers dealing with the movement of the population from the farm...
...And if, as you desire, souls might journey forth, against or with their will, they must needs be made mightily poor in soul stuff...
...That age was superstitious," said the poet, avoiding the glance of Columbine's eyes, "and it was but a short time then since men had left off playing with cocoanuts...
...Pierrot raised the other knee, and after scratching his left eyebrow with the nail of his little finger, he turned him side- wise to look at Columbine...
...They do not indicate any widespread distress in the agricultural industry, and certainly do not imply that agriculture is rapidly approaching a state of penury...
...Lifting his tiny hands to Him Who made also the stars, he cries the Artist to turn his figures to a dump of clay...
...It goes, let me seem'and that too is a grief' and then something about Perion...
...Many individual farmers are highly successful, and the recorded facts indicate that the industry as a whole is on the highway to success...
...Heel" said the poet, but before the words came out of his mouth, Pierrot continued, wondering the while at the increas- ing number of stars: "There was in another time a man who busied himself in teaching people of such density they called their teacher dunce...
...Pierrot lay at full length on his back with his hands clasped behind his head and one knee upraised...
...And yet," said the poet, "you jest at this which is the essence of sorrow...
Vol. 10 • June 1929 • No. 6
