The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-11-23

Within the House of Mammon the
golden altar lifts
Where dragon-lamps are shrouded as
costly incense drifts
A dust of old ideals, now fragrant
from the Goals,
To tell of hopes long ended, to tell
the death of souls.
have told how my friend Mencken
asked me to write about Sterling
without mentioning alcohol. The first
time l visited George l was to be the
orator at dinner of the Ruskin Club
in Oakland, and George was to read
a poem. We met at the Bohemian
Club in San Francisco, and George
drank a couple of cocktails on an
empty stomach, and we set out. On
the ferry-boat / had difficulty in I'M
derstanding his conversation; and
finally the painful realization dawn
ed over me that the great poet was
drunk. My own father had been a
drinking man, and several of my
relatives in the South, so l was no
stranger to the spectacle; but this
was the first time l had ever seen
an intellectual man in that condition;
and the next day | wrote George a
note, saying it was too painful, and
1 was not going to stay at Carmel.
He came running over to my house,
and with tears in his eyes vowed that
he would never touch another drop
while was in California Sometimes
[ have wished l might have stayed
the rest of my life; it might be that
is the greatest service | could have
rendered to the future.
From that day on l never saw
George with any sign of drink on
him. He visited US at Croton, and
went over the huge manuscript of
"The Cry for Justice" and chopped
down some dead chestnut trees and
cut them up for our fireplace. He
was an athlete, and beautiful to look
at-a face like Dante's; grave and
yet tender, and tall, active body.
We have snapshot of him in bath
ing trunks, standing upon the rocks
of Point Lobos with an abalone hook
in his hand, and nothing more grace
full was ever planned by Greek
sculptor.
George went back to San Francisco
and lived at the Bohemian Club,
where some admirer had bequeathed
him room for life. 1t is a place of
satyrs, and the worst environment
that could have been imagined under
the circumstances. George had begun
his drinking with Jack London and
Ambrose Bierce, and then it was all
gaicty and youth, the chanting of
Georges "Abalone Song" and the
''grove play" and the Bohemian
links" But later on in life it be-
comes something different. Others
may sing the romance and the charm
Of San Francisco; to me it is a
plague-city, where all tie lovely
spirits drink poison-first Nora May
French, and then Carrie Sterling, and
then Jack London, and then my best
, of friends.
0~OA So iiob lllOIC JIldH
any other man l ever knew, and he
gave himself to them without limit.
When they were drinking, he could
not sit apart; so tragedy closed upon
MIN. He would come to visit us in
Pasadena, and always then he was
on the wagon" and never going to
drink again; but we could see his
loneliness and his despair-not about
himself, for he was too proud to voice
chat, but for mankind, and for the
universe. 1t may seem strange
statement, that poet could be killed
by the nebular hypothesis; but M. c..
$. declares that is what happened to
George Sterling. believe the leaders
OF science now reject the nebular
hypothesis, and have new one; but
meantime, they had fixed firmly in
Georges mind the idea that the uni
verse is running down like clock,
that in some millions of years the
earth will be cold, and in some hun