U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [491]
"you must make them feel it. Every ripple of your muscles must make them feel passion .
. . you are stiff like a wooden dol . They al love her, a piece of fragile beau-tiful palpitant womanhood ready to give al for the man she loves. . . . Margo darling, you faint, you let your-self go in his arms. If his strong arms weren't there to catch you you would fal to the ground. Si, my dear fel-low, you are not an athletic instructor teaching a young lady to swim, you are a desperate lover facing death. . . . They al feel they are you, you are loving her for them, the mil ions who want love and beauty and excitement,
-425-but forget them, loosen up, my dear fel ow, forget that I'm here and the camera's here, you are alone together snatching a desperate moment, you are alone except for your two beating hearts, you and the most beautiful girl in the world, the nation's newest sweetheart. . . . Al right. . . . hold it. . . . Camera."
NEWSREEL LXIII
but a few minutes later this false land disappeared as quickly and as mysteriously as it had come and I found before me the long stretch of the silent sea with not a single sign of life in sight
Whippoorwills call
And evening is nigh
I hurry to . . . my blue heaven
LINDBERGH IN PERIL AS WAVE TRAPS HIM IN
CRUISER'S BOW
Down in the Tennessee mountains
Away from the sins of the world
Old Dan Kelly's son there he leaned on his gun
Athinkin' of Zeb Turney's girl
ACCLAIMED BY HUGE CROWDS IN THE
STREETS
Snaps Pictures From Dizzy Yardarm
Dan was a hotblooded youngster
His Dad raised him up sturdy an' right
ENTHRALLED BY DARING DEED CITY
CHEERS
FROM DEPTHS OF ITS HEART
FLYER SPORTS IN AIR
-426- His heart in a whirl with his love for the girl He loaded his doublebarreled gun LEADERS OF PUBLIC LIFE BREAK INTO
UPROAR AT SIGHT OF FLYER
CONFUSION IN HOTEL
Aviator Nearly Hurled From Auto as it Leaps Forward Through Gap in Crowd Over the mountains he wandered
This son of a Tennessee man
With fire in his eye and his gun by his side
Alooking for Zeb Turney's clan
SHRINERS PARADE IN DELUGE OF
RAIN
Paper Blizzard Chokes Broadway
Shots ringin' out through the mountain
Shots ringin' out through the breeze
LINDY TO HEAD BIG AIRLINE
The story of Dan Kelly's moonshine
Is spread far and wide o'er the world
How Dan killed the clan shot them down to a man And brought back old Zeb Turney's girl
a short, partly bald man, his face set in tense emotion, ran out from a mass of people where he had been concealed and climbed quickly into the plane as if afraid he might be stopped. He had on ordinary clothes and a leather vest instead of a coat He was bareheaded. He crowded down beside Chamberlin looking neither at the crowd nor at his own wife who stood a little in front of the plane and at one side, her eyes big with wonder. The motor roared and the plane started down the runway, stopped and came back again and then took off per-fectly
-427-ARCHITECT
A muggy day in late spring in eighteen eighty-seven a tal youngster of eighteen with fine eyes and a handsome arrogant way of carrying his head arrived in Chicago with seven dol ars left in his pocket from buy-ing his ticket from Madison with some cash he'd got by pawning Plutarch's Lives, a Gibbon Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and an old furcol ared coat. Before leaving home to make himself a career in
an architect's office (there was no architecture course at Wisconsin to clutter his mind with stale Beaux Arts drawings); the youngster had seen the dome of the new State Capitol in Madison col apse on account of bad rubblework in the piers, some thieving contractors'
skimping materials to save the politicians their rakeoff, and perhaps a trifling but deadly error in the archi-tect's plans; he never forgot the roar of burst masonry, the flying plaster, the soaring dustcloud, the mashed bodies of the dead and dying being carried out, set faces livid with plasterdust.
Walking round downtown Chicago, crossing and
recrossing the bridges over the Chicago River in the jingle and clatter of traffic, the rattle of vans and loaded wagons and the stamping of big drayhorses and the hooting of towboats with barges and the rumbling whistle of lakesteamers waiting for the draw, he thought of the great continent stretching a