A Man's World

Albert Edwards

Albert Edwards

A Man's World

BOOK I

I

All books should have a preface, to tell what they are about and why they were written.

This one is about myself – Arnold Whitman.

I have sought in vain for a title which would be truly descriptive of the subject and form of my book. It is not a "Journal" nor a "Diary" for these words signify a daily noting down of events. Neither "Memoirs" nor "Recollections" meet the case, for much which I have written might better be called "Meditations." It certainly is not a "Novel," for that term implies a traditional "literary form," a beginning, development and end. I am quite sure that my beginning goes back to the primordial day when dead matter first organized itself – or was organized – into a living cell. And whether or not I will ever "end" is an open question. There is no "unity" in the form of my narrative except the frame of mind which led me to write it, which has held me to task till now.

It is the story of how I, born at the close of The Great War, lived and of the things – common-place and unusual – which happened to me, how they felt at the time and how I feel about them now.

"Autobiography" is the term which most truly describes what I have tried to do. But that word is associated with the idea of great men. The fact that I am not "great" has been my main incentive in writing. We have text books a plenty on how to become Emperor, at least they tell how a man named Napoleon did it. There are endless volumes to which you may refer if you wish to become President of these United States – or rival the career of Captain Kidd. But such ambitions are rare among boys over eighteen.

Even before that age I began to wish for a book like the one I have tried to write. I wanted to know how ordinary people lived. It was no help in those days to read how this Cæsar or that came and saw and conquered. I shared the ambitions of the boys about me. To be sure there were day-dreaming moments when we planned to explore Central Africa or found dynasties. But this was pure make-believe. We knew that not one man in thousands wins fame. For each moment we dreamed of greatness there were days on end when we looked out questioningly on the real world. We got no answers from our teachers. Most of the boys who were in school with me are today running a store, practicing law or medicine. They were prepared for it by reading Plutarch in class and Nick Carter on the sly.

As a youth I wanted of course to gain a comfortable living. I wanted mildly to win some measure of distinction, but all this was subordinate to a more definite desire to be a man, and not to be ashamed. A book about the ordinary life I was to enter, would have been a God-send to me.

This then is to be the story of my life as it appears to me now, and how, in the face of the things which happened to me, I tried to be decent.

I have only two apologies to offer. All the rest of my writing has been scientific – on the subject of criminology. I am unpracticed in narration. And I have been enough in courts to realize the difference between "evidence" and "truth." At best I can only give "evidence." Others who knew me would tell of my life differently, perhaps more truly. But it will be as near truth as I can make it.

And now to my story.

II

My earliest distinct memory is of an undeserved flogging. But from this grew my conception of Justice. It was, I think, my first abstract idea.

My parents died long before I can remember and I was brought up in the home of the Rev. Josiah Drake, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister of the Tennessee Mountains. He was my uncle, but I always called him "the Father." He was the big fact of my childhood and my memory holds a more vivid picture of him than of any person I have known since.

He was very tall, but stooped heavily. If he had shaved he would have resembled Lincoln, and this, I suppose, is why he wore so long and full a beard. For he was a Southerner and hated the Northern leader with all the bitterness of the defeated. And yet he was a Christian.