The Washington times., 1905-01-01
copyright. 1904, by the Press Publishing
Company, New York NorId.)

~ ESIDES many other things, Rag
* giles was poet He was called
tramp; but that was only an
elliptical way of saying that he
was philosopher, an artist, a traveller
naturalist, and a discoverer But
most Of all, he was poet In all his
life he never wrote a line of verse; he
lived his poetry. His Odyssey would
have been Limerick had it been writ
ten But, to linger with the primary
proposition, Raggles was a poet
Raggues' speciality, had he been driven
to Ink and paper, would have been SON
nets to the cities. He studies cities as
women study their reflections in mir
rors; as children study the glue and
sawdust of a dislocated doll; as men
who write about wild animals study the
cages in the zoo. A city to Raggles was
not merely q pile of bricks and morta-.
peopled by certain number of fnhab-
itants; it was thing with a soul char
acteristic and distinct; an individual
conglomeration of life, with Its own pe-
culfar essence, flavor, and feeling. Two
thousand miles to the north and south.
east and west, Raggles wandered in po-
etc fervor. taking the cities to his
breast He footed it on dusty roads or
sped magniflcently in freight cars
counting time as of no account And
when he had found the heart of a city
and listened to its secret confession. he
strayed on, restless, to another FickIe
Ragglesl-but perhaps he had not met
the civic corporation that could engage
and hold his critical fancy. . -
Through the ancient poets we have
learned that the cities are fe,ninine. so
they were to poet. RagglesS and his mind
carried a concrete and clear conception
OF the figure that symboiized and typi-
fed each one that he had wooed
Chicago seemed to swoop down upon
, him with breezy suggestion OF Mrs
harrington, plumes and patchouli, and
TO disturb his rest with a soaring and
, beautiful stag of future promise But
Raggles would awake to a sense of
. shiyering cold and a haunting impress
sion Of ideals lost in depressing aura
OF potato salad and fish
Thus Chicago affected him. Perhaps
there is a vagueness and inaccuracv in
the description; but that Is Raggie's S
fault. He should have recorded his sen
sations In magazine poems.
Pittsburg impressed him as the play
OF t.Othelloi performed in the Russian
language In a railroad station by Dock
: stader's mfnstrels, with Mrs Black
Is Black" for a curtain raiser A royal
and generous lady this Pittsburg,
thougn-homely, hearty, with flushed
face, washing the dishes in silk dress
and white kid slippers. and bidding Rag
giles sit before the roaring fireplace and
drink champagne with her pigs feet and
fried potatoes.
New Orleans had simply gazed down
upon him from balcony He could see
her pensive, starry eyes and catch the
hutter of her fan, and that was all. Only
once he came face to face with her. II
was at dawn, when she was flushing the
red bricks at the banquette with a pail
OF water. She laughed and hurnned a
chansonette and filed Raggles' shoes
with ice-cold water. Allonsi
Boston constructed herself to the
poetic Raggles in an erratic and shgu.
lar way. 1t seemed to him that he had
drunk cold tea and that the city was
q white, cold cloth that had been bound
tightly around his brow to spur him tc
some unknown but tremendous menta
effort And. after all. he came TO shoyeI
snow for livelihood; and the cloth be.
coming wet. frightened its knots and
could not be removed.
Indefinite and unintelligible ideas, you
VIII Say, Dul your dlSappFODatlOn Sfoulc
be tempered with gratitude. for these
are poets fancies-and suppose you had
come upon them in verse
One day Raggles came and laid siege
to the heart of the great city of Man
haitian. She was the greatest of all,
and he wanted TO learn her note in the
scale; to taste and appraise and ciassif,
and solve and label her and arrange hel
with the other cities that had giyer
him up the secret of their individuality
And here We cease to be RaggIes' trans
lator. and become his chronicler
Raggles landed from a .ferryboat one
morning and walked into the core o.
the town with the bIase air of a cos
nopolitan. He was dressed with car.
to play the role of an "upidentIfe,
man" No country. race. class. clique
union. party. clan. or bowling associa,
ton could have claimed him. He hat
shaved himself clean early that day ii
Newark with an edge of 4 fragment OF
glass broken from the bottom of ar
empty wine bottle. His clothing, which
had been donated to him piecemeal BY
citizens Of different height. but same