Down Among
Men
BY
WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT
AUTHOR OF “ROUTLEDGE RIDES ALONE,”
“FATE KNOCKS AT THE DOOR,” ETC.
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1913
By George H. Doran Company
TO THE MEN OF THE UPPER ROOM
... And this is the story I told you through theseveral nights: of the man who came up throughthe dark and the fighting (often in such a ruckof fighting that he couldn’t hear voices); howhe was punished by men, broken by self, and healedby a woman; indeed, but for her, he might havechosen the long way of the brute to put on hispowers and attain the certain royalty of thehuman adult in this year of our Lord. She paidthe price; she was the man-maker; she saw theWorld-Man shining ahead.... It is a story ofthe path at our feet, of the Compassionates whodraw near to speak, when we are brave enough tolisten, of the women who walk beside us. A taleof the road as we go—many are ahead, many behind—butwe do not travel this stretch again.
—W. L. C.
KAO LIANG
No one thought of kao liang.
Morning did not mention it in his great story; evenDuke Fallows did not think of it.
Kao liang, the millet of China. Inland seas of it arethere, green in the beginning of its flow, dull gold in itshigh tide.
A ruffianly scouring grain. Rice is its little white sister.Millet is the strength of the beast, the mash of theworld’s poor. A hundred millions of acres of Asia arein yield or waiting for kao liang to-day. Remember thepoor.
In Manchuria kao liang grows strong and high. Itsfox-tails brush the brows of the tall Chinese of the northcountry. It brushed the caps of the Russian soldiersone certain Fall.
The Censurer came with the planting in that year. Kaoliang was like a soft green mould upon the hills and valleyswhen he came to his battle-fields. He was watchingfor a browner harvest and a ruddier planting. Fallplowing and red planting—for that, he came to Liaoyang.
His soldiers trampled it, devastated the young grain withtheir formations, foraged their beasts upon it. Yet themillet grew, hardened and covered the earth—for thepoor must be served. Out of flood and gale and burning,it waxed great, filling the hills and the hollows, closingin on the city, climbing thinly to the Passes.
Its protest to the invasion was mute as China’s, but itdid not run. Before the Japanese, it closed in. It wasripe when the brown flanker crossed the Taitse. Itwas ripe when two Slav chiefs took their thousands forthto form the anvil upon which the flanker was to bebroken. The Cossacks had been feeding their beastsupon it for many days, and they drank in the deep hollowswhere the roots of kao liang held the rain. It wasripe for the world’s poor, when the Sentimentalist strodeforth at last—the hammer that was to break the spineof the flanker.
CONTENTS