MARIST COLLEGE
.
Poughkeepsie, New York
Spring 1964




EDITORIAL
A WORD ON OUR COVER
In historical Christianity, the great
-
est of the human figures God has chosen to build his Kingdom
among men have found themselves
c
onfronted by the problem of
integrating love of learning and love of God. Yet through the cen-
turies it has become apparent that only in the union of these two is
the fullness of man to be attained, emotionally, intellectually,
spiritually
.
Without this union, both learning and piety are sterile,
but such a union is indeed difficult to attain, it is a cross, a per-
petual contradiction, an inescapable paradox, abov
e
all, a mys-
tery.
The cross on our cover assumes a double perspective for its
viewers
.
For those who have never
,
or have not yet, resolv
ed
themselves to the perpetual journey which is the s-earch for truth,
it is a crumbling cross, the disintegration of their own vital ca-
pacity to love God who is the Truth. For those of us w
ho
have re-
solved to renounce the security of selfishness, the suppl
e
ness of
this cross becomes the symbol of that freedom by which the sons
of God seek to become more like him in both knowledge and love.
Editor:
Brother James Heaney fms
Assistant Editors:
Bro. William Cowie fms
Mr. Charles Cassidy
Bro. David Gentry fms
Bro. Brien 0' Callaghan fms
Faculty Advisor
:
George J. Sommer, Ph.D.





CONTENTS
BEFORE THE FALL
Roger Sullivan (1)
.
A STREAM RUN WILD
Bro. Rene Roy fms (3)
THE MYSTERY OF HAPPINESS
NOCTURN FOR A STEEL GUITAR
THE RELUCTANT SEER
A WORD ON EUGENIC STERILIZATION
A STORY
CHARLIE'S CHANCE
Bro. Brien (4)
O'Callaghan fms
Bro. James (7)
Heaney fms
C. A. Freer (8)
Bro
.
Paul (16)
Furlong fms
Adolph Allers (17)
Bro. James (21))
Heaney fms









4
BEFORE THE FALL
by Roger Sullivan
Fred checked his watch.
It
was 12: 15. He had another fifteen
minutes in which to decide the matter. Unable to concentrate on
the correspondence before him, he allowed his thoughts to drift
back over the past eight months.
Was it eight months? Yeah.
It
had been the night of the Win-
ston conference. Everyone had gone, and he had stayed behind to
locate the original draft of the plan he had proposed. Unable to
find it in any of his files, as a last resort he had thought of check-
ing his secretary's wastebasket. Sure enough, there it was.
Crumpled in with the plan had been a letter- -written in a crarrped
hand--addressed to his secretary. Curious, he read the personal
letter.
It
was brief and to the point. Apparently the author had
found Miss Connaly' s name in a Lonely Hearts listing and was at-
tempting to strike up a relationship. The autobiographical sketch
furnished by the author had revealed him as a lon0I:
-
pathetic fig-
ure.
"Christ," he thought, "at least the idiot should have had the
sense to try and make himself interesting." He didn't blame Miss
Connaly for pitching it into the wastebasket. Then the idea oc-
curred to him, at first more as a joke than anything else. If she
was desperate enough to have to look into that sort of thing for
love, he would bring a little joy into her life.
11
After all," he
thought, "it's good for the business too. If she gets a little love in
the mail she'll perk up and do a better job around here."
The next day he had written the first letter. It was a master-<
piece. He addressed it to her box number, and rented a box of his
own for a return address. Like
.
Walter Mitty, he had invented a
dashing character, perhaps a little overdone, but, nonetheless,
effective. Her reply had been surprisingly well-written, and, he
thought, she laid it on a little herself. Let's see, he mused, she
claimed she was 27. That's three years on the low side. That
business about being an actress working temporarily as a secre-
tary had been downright fantasy. Checking here personnel file he
discovered that she had been with the firm since she was nineteen.
As time progressed, the letters became more and more inti-
mate. He thought it would be over when she suggested that they
exchange photographs, but, luckily, he had found an old squadron
picture in the family album. His own face was indistinguishable
unless pointed out, so he had circled one of the other smiling faces








and sent it along,
eating that it was from his service in the Korean
War
.
God, would she have been surprised if she knew it was from
World War II
.
What about the time Emily had almost found one of the letters in
.
his pocket? That had been close! Sweat came to Fred's brow as he
recalled the incident
.
Usually he kept the letters locked in his desk,
with a carbon copy of the letters that he was sending. Somehow, he
had forgott
e
n and taken one of her letters home. Emily had been
emptying the pockets of his suit before she sent it out when he re-
covered it from her--Thank God--before she reached the inner poc-
ket. What would Emily have said? Could he have explained it as a
joke? Somehow he couldn't see Emily's frigid personality accepting
the matter. Her absolute lack of humor still appalled him, even
af-
t
e
r twenty years of marriage. It had been one of those hasty wo.r
marriages, and to this day Fred regarded it as an Axis victory.
That's the way to lower the boys' morale, have 'em marry frumps,
he thought.
And what about Miss Connaly- -Grace? The effect of the letters
had been incredible. Even some of the other fellows around the of-
fice had made comments. From a quiet, nondescript woman ap-
proaching spinsterhood, she had become a damned attractive per-
son. First it had been the new hairdo, then exciting perfumes, and
finally, a svelte wardrobe. Her personality, he decided, had blos-
somed out as well. And himself?
God, what irony! The Joke was on him. He had told so many
lies that it was impossible to level with her now. She had always
been, as far as he was concerned, just another piece of furniture
around the office. Lately, he couldn't get her out of his mind.
Whenever she was around, he was acutel
y
conscious of her. What
would she do if she knew that he was her correspondent lover? She
could never accept him. Fred knew it
.
He was twenty years older
than she was, and those twenty years had wrecked havoc. Balding,
decidedly a few steps beyond the portly stage, the only place that
he could function as a lover was in his thoughts. The first thing
that she was likely to do--if she ever found out--was to quit. That
would be a shame
,
for she had become an excellent secretary, in
face, a right arm to him. Why the hell had he ever agreed to meet
her for lunch anyway? Well, sooner or later things would have to
come to a
'
head. He had never been sure whether he would keep the
appointment or not, and although it had been two weeks ago, and
reason argued against it, he was still undecided. What time was
it?
12:30
.
What if he didn't keep the date? Perhaps he could explain it







6
and ease her off slowly. In any event, he knew that it was going
to be a helluva disappointment for her. She had been visibly ex
-
cited all morning. Perhaps he could sort of accidently drop into
Antonio's and discover her. No, dammit, he was caught in his
own trap. The only thing to do was to forget it. What about the
rebound? Maybe he could cushion the blow for her, act in a fath-
erly way, and gradually ease it into a personal relationship, No,
he ruefully sighed, he didn't have the nerve for it.
"Fred?"
He looked up, startled to see Grace still here. Then it
dawned on him - - she had called him Fred.
She smiled. "We're supposed to be having lunch today, re-
member?"
A STREAM RUN WILD
by Bro. Ren
e
Roy fms
What do I do to a stream run wild?
Do I tunnel it under the ground
And hide it from view while it erode&
And eats away the gut of my land?
Do I bury it with earth and rocks
Till it is covered by a mountain?
Do I stop its flow with a stone dam
That yearly must grow in height and breadth?
Do I pray the north wind to freeze it
Into a cold, hard, forbidding wall?
Do I blast a deep hole at its source
And dry up the spring that gives me life?
Do I run away to escape it
Only to find it right behind me?
Or do I build a sluice and lead it
Into my mill to turn its great wheels?
*
*







THE MYSTERY OF HAPPINESS
by Bro. Brien
0' Callaghan fms
There are many dissatisfi
e
d
people walking our streets, oc-
cupying
our
offic
e
s, hustling
along
our college corridors. Some
are indifferent to life--passive--some are
violently
much ado
about nothing
.
Some are confused, and their actions indecisive.
They all have
this
in
common
,
though-
-they have
no
sense of pur-
pose
or cognizance
of life's meaning. As Thoreau puts it, "The
mass
of men lead lives
of
quiet desperation." How, one wonders,
with
so many avenues
of thought, love,
exercise, perfection
avail-
abl
e
, can a man allow
such a condition to exist?
A partial answer
is
to
be
found
in the modern
man's,
the mod-
e
rn student's,
loss of that vital
sense
of personality and personal
r
e
lationship
which is the root of his happiness. When a person ex-
periences
that sense of emptir1ess, of unfulfillment, of dissatis-
faction
with himself and his life that few
can adequately
describe,
let
him
look inward
rather
than outward, let him search for a
meaning, an
explanation within himself, not in a new philosophy,
human situation, or job. The situations of modern living, the life
of study
for example, are no less satisfying, objectively
speaking,
than
the situations in which our
ancestors
lived. The answer lies
with us, and hopes to be uncovered and given recognition--that we
may truly live.
The act of communication, the interpersonal relationship with
our
neighbor, is
at
the heart
of
our happiness, regardless of
cir-
cumstances.
When a man projects himself outside of his own
self-centered,
isolated,
existence,
outside of
his
enclosed
am-
bitions, fears, and anxieties, when a man
tf
eaches
beyond
him-
self to touch the world of another man, and when that other man
responds with an
equally
disinterested reply, the act of communi-
cation
is consummated, the
personal
relationship is inaugurated.
This is what the modern Jewish mystic and philosopher, Martin
Buber, calls dialogue,
the "I-Thou"
relationship.
It
is at the
center
of our happiness.
It
is the act of fraternal love.
To make such a communication, to approach someone thought-
fully, sincerely, requires what Teilhard de Chardin calls "con-
sciousness." We must have sat down with ourselves and con-
sidered what we are, what we live for, what our goals are, and
how other people fit into our lives. Some people never do this,
and
a haphazard, sensually directed, unmotivated, and unhappy
life results. To live consciously, Chardin says, one has to look








8
at people and things and activities in their metaphysical perspec-
tive-
-in their meaning
in
terms of our nature and our goals in
life. To live consciously means to be aware of as much of life at
once as possible, to be aware of
the
integrated,
interrelated,
na-
ture of all of our
experience,
to be aware of the meaning, totally
speaking, of what I am doing now--this minute.
When we are truly conscious of ourselves and of our environ-
ment, we have a sense of personality, of uniqueness, of
individ-
uality, without which
a
real
relationship
with someone else is im-
possible. For how can
I
give
something of
myself
to someone
else (to someone
other
than myself), how
can
I receive something
from another, when
everyone else,
everything
e
lse, is only a
kind of protoplasmic
extension of myself-
-h
aving
no real identity
apart from my recognition of it? Isn't this the way most of us
live
?
Aren't most
of our
actions directed to the enthronement,
th
e
success, the pleasure, the recognition of what we
call
"Self''?
Aren't
th
e
words of
others,
the friendship of
others,
the very
persons of others, onl
y
given atten
tion
and consideration when
s
e
lf-aggrandizem
e
nt
is
involved? Even our
acts
of
charity,
if
analyzed, often betray some ulterior motivation. Dr.
Ha
lde, in
William Golding's latest book, Free Fall, tells
Samuel
Mountjoy,
a
representative enough modern
individual:
Yes, you
are
capable of a
certain degr
ee
of
friendship
and a certain
degree
of
love,
but
nothing
to mark
you
out from the
ants or
th
e
sparrows.
Mankind
is not
an
entity,
an
indiss
oluble
mass. It is
a
group
composed
of indi
viduals
,
unique and
approac
habl
e.
When wetreat
each
person indi
v
i
dually, when
we try to discover
the
warmth,
the
thrilling
myst
ery,
the illuminating
truth
within
eve
n the most
ob-
scure and
unattrac
tive
of our
fellows,
we are on
the road
to
satis-
fi
e
d living. When
we
s
top treatin
g
peop
le
as machines, and even
begin,
in our factory
-
orientated, mass-orientated
society, totreat
machines as
p
e
rsons,
we
shall
have
fo
und the long-coveted philos-
opher's
sto
ne.
E
rich
Fromm
,
th
e
noted p
sy
chologist,
sketches
modern un-
happiness,
alo
ng
the
lines of
alie
nation, of isolation, from one's
e
n
viro
nm
en
t,
from God,
from one
another
.
It
is in overcoming
this
alienation,
in an
achievement
of union with each other, with
God, in the
accomplishment
of a communication--of Buber's vital
"I-Thou"
d
ialogue--that happiness becomes visible on the horizon.
The thoughtful human touch, the almost physical warmth of a per-
son who cares, the exhilarating experience of really loving some-








one and of being loved; more abstractly, the joy of the inter-per-
sonal relationship: herein is meaning; herein is life.
Samuel Mountjoy, in Golding's Free Fall, realizes, after hav-
ing lived the modern' s "full,"
11
successfi:if,71"" "rewarding" life, that
he had been deceived. He decides that:
The subst
.
ance of these pillars (on which the world order
rests) is a kind of vital morality, not the relationship of
a man to remote posterity nor even to a social syste, but
the relationship of individual man to individual man--once
an irrelevance but now seen to be the forge in which all
change, all value, all life is beaten out into a good or a
bad shape.
The
effort involved in achieving consciousness, in striving for in-
telligent, loving inter-personal relationships, is not insignificant.
We have first to contend with what Thomas Merton calls, our
"false selves." This is the self that deceives us, the self that
presents reality out of context, the superficial self that shows us
the pretty cover without permitting a discriminating glance at the
contents, the self that portrays life as a succession of pleasures
and satisfactions and recognitions to be anxiously sought, revelled
in, and discarded, the irresponsible self that unfortunately guides
the lives of many of our status-seeking, r.elativist, sex-absorbed
human beings.
We have secondly to realize that loving, that meeting one an-
other and communicating with onf another in action, is in Erich
Fromm's words, an "art," not a
\
natural response. Loving, like
any art, requires discipline, concentration, practice, and patience.
Above all it demands a vibrant realization of the "brother-brother"
relationship which breathes forth Christ. It takes this discipline
to single out an individual from the amorphous, dizzying mob
stalking our modern college corridors, and to look into his eyes
for the truth, the love, that will set both free. "As I have loved
you, so you love one another."
9








10
NOCTURNE FOR
A
STEEL GUITAR
Once in a star-heavy night
that glittered with darnkess
and throbbed with quiet,
I arose from my bed with tremblings
of fear
at the cold that moaned in the stillness
and stood
qlone,
by Bro. James
Heaney fms
before the moon that shared my lot in the sky,
stood and felt it bathe the forest
with the spirit of light
that laughed beneath the pale moon.
I stood and breathed silently,
the pulses of my life within
beating rhythmically in
limbs distended in the ghostly light,
limbs distended by the touch of beauty
into quivering strings made to
echo and resound in the hollow
of the rounded earth below.
But the strings were not touched,
nor did they resound,
and
the pain of their tension
could only pitch a shrill thin
scream angrily
at
the serene
moon that
glistened above
on
the waves of the stars.
The si.lence
sang a melody
to the moon
for
it alone,
and no mortal
ear mi
g
ht hear
the dread harmony of lts
s
cc
cet
creat
ion
.
Disjointed
I stood,
painfully
entangled and unseeing
in dissonance with the smooth
harmony of the whirling orbs
that murmured liquid beauty
in full-mouthed flowing words.







THE RELUCTANT SEER
by C. A. Freer
There are those in our tim
e
who, although it comes as a shock
perhaps
to realize, are of
such
a
maturity
and have thought so
deeply that they might look on the writings of the philosophers who
are
being studied with difficulty
even
now as we generally look on
the philosophic writings
of
the ancient Greeks, recognizing the
authenticity of the
grains
of insight, buy viewing th
e
rest as rather
quaint
and naive
archaisms;
who have insights into
human
nature
that will
not
reach the mass of men for another one hundred years.
They h
ave
learned
to
recognize
that there is a cons
t
antly expand
-
in
g
dimension of
th
e
mind of man that makes him
essentially
the
same
and yet permits a flexibility of change and
maturation
of his
psyche almost
limitless, and this
is
why they are
rather retiring.
Th
e
change
seems to
come
through certain men whose greatest
urge
is
to think and to
explore
the possible. The results of
their
thought
gradually
leavens the mass of men whose
level
of exis
t
-
ence
is thereby raised without their
knowing
it. Herein is re-
counted
a
quiet account of not one but two people who perhaps
thought in this mann
e
r precisely because they
were
together
as
man and wife, and a third who thought because he was very much
al
one.
If
it weren't for this one friend of theirs, John, they would
probably have passed as plain peo
_E,,
le, but his friendship and
occasional
presence
at their home tipped the balance of public
no-
tice, and people, especially their close neighbo
rs
, began to
be
un-
easy
about them. Actually if the neighbors had really known th
e
couple well they would have b
e
en either extremely pleased or
ve
ry
angry
that they lived there at all. There were
no
un-thought-out
lacunae in their lives,
no
mediocre commonplaces.
They rose at five-thirty in silence broken only by a smile, sat
back to back in the morning stillness on comfortable cushions
where the sun would soon flood through the windows and meditated
in a simple oriental position for half an hour. Then they broke the
silence to dress for the day. He left for work shortly afterward,
attending Mass on his way. She sent
the
children off to school. He
worked as a master craftsman on a seven hour day, and she kept
house. It was as simple as that. But when he returned home they
began to live again on a different level. If they were to go out in
public they dressed down, but there was a certain dignity in their
11







12
bearing that set them off, and when home, their clothing fit the
harmony of the house. To be in their company was to feel as if
you were speaking to a single person of great wisdom, so well did
they complement one another and agree on essentials. To hear
them discuss an uncertainty or a detail on which they might have
slightly disagreed gave one the impression of being within the
mind of an erudite person weighing a question privately. After
one knew them long enough one became aware that there was a
difference between their contact with other people and the way
they lived by themselves. If guests came they used fine but not
ostentatious silver and china that resembled what almost every-
one else used. But when they were alone as a family they used a
service composed of various pieces of striking individual beauty
that they had deliberately chosen for their almost vision-pro-
ducing effect, so that one came to realize that even the simple
actions such as eating were
given
a transcendant touch through
the grace perhaps of an Italian glass pitcher setting off the rugged
elegance of a simple ceramic dish, or the translucent glaze of
Chinese tea cups.
The landscaping around their home appeared in good taste and
would equal the better property anywhere in the country area
where they lived, but the area secluded from general view had
been transformed with much ingenuity and little money into a
scene embodying the intellectual vigor of the European formal
garden yet with an even more pronounced oriental character.
To find one of them sitting lost to the world in the garden
might have made it disconcerting to realize that he or she knew
more about the mechanics of the process of mental absorption and
visionary experience than most people, and that they were both
still spiritually mature enough to enter into it subjectively even
though possessed of this much objective knowledge about it.
They read widely about a tremendous variety of subjects and
kept a fine library of modest size. They were both musicians and
loved to perform with their children.
It
was quite natural that John would be attracted to this couple
since he also had an interest in many different things, was quite
sensitive aesthetically, and loved fine music
.
They had met cas-
ually and he, being single and having more leisure, called on them
occasionally. Their conversations sometimes lasted well past
midnight, and gradually, as they came to know each other better,
came to center around the subject of the relationship between the
mind and the physical brain, recent research findings in the psy-









chosomatic and biochemical fields, and the use of drugs in psy-
c
hiatry and psychqlogy.
It
soon beci3-me apparent that John was,
to some extent, preoccupied with this field for a very personal
reason. He was in a very real sense an addict, and yet his aqdic-
tion was not to a drug, but to nicotinic acid,
.
a substance that h~
been found to counteract the effects of a psychodelic drug such as
mescalin, peyote, or the recently synthesized lysergic acid.
As a child, John had been of above average intelligence and
perfectly normal by all standards except that he se
e
med some-
what more enthralled by the color of bright objects such as his
toys, or sunsets, or Christmas trees, and especially flowers.
His teachers mistook his fascination with flowers as a leaning
toward the realm of botany, and the peculiarity went unnoticed.
He was well within the limits of conventional behavior, but the
tendency for the biochemical imbalance present in his system to
take him into visionary, trance-like, states, became stronger and
stronger as he matured. At sixteen his mother noticed it easily,
but mistook it for day-dreaming since he could, though with con-
siderable effort, recollect himself at this stage.
It
did not dis-
turb him particularly--partly because he had never been scolded
for it as a child--partly because he was actually not aware of
what was happening to him. But at eighteen he realized that the
pehnomena was g~tting out of hand and he was hesitatnt about dri-
ving a car because of the unpredictability of the onset of the dis-
tracting visionary experience that now produced visual sensations
of beautiful strong colors, breath-taking enhancement of natural
objects, and penetrat
,
ing insights into the nature of Being per se.
People began to notice his sudden distractions and, though he was
slightly apologetic at times, friends began to be distant and drift
away. His parents insisted he
)
see his family doctor who in turn,
puzzled, sent him to a neurologist. Fortunately the neurologist
was an alert man who was well versed in the latest devel
o
pments
in his field, and he tried large doses of nicotinic acid, e
x
plaining
that it was, although sounding harsh by name, an elemen
t'
of
the
vitamin B-complex which might help. The immediate results
were gratifying. The imbalance was corrected and the experi
-
ences stopped. But at twenty, John had an even more difficult
problem. The large doses of nicotinic acid he had been taking for
some time were beginning to produce undesirable side effect, and
yet he knew from experimenting that stopping the doses meant the
return of the visions which by now, regardless of how beautiful
and profound, were so strong as to completely hinder normal ac-
tivity while they lasted
.
He had managed to get through two years
of a good college with good marks, but the June eve of his sopho-
more finals marked a new turn of events. He had been studying
13







14
hard,
and as
he went to supper he
found
himself
worrying
that he
might be distracted by
an experience
during
the exam
the next
day.
Perhaps
it was the
heat
of the
abnormally hot day
draining more
than the usual amount of salt
from
his
system or
the anxiety of the
worry that he knew
objectively was largely
unfounded, but that
night,
although
he had taken his
prescribed
dose, he went into
a
visionary trance
as
he
was
dozing off,
and this time
it
was a
night-
marish hell
of brutally garish lights
and sensations of diabolical
consciousnesses attempting to
force entry
into
every
opening of
his body.
By
some
supreme effort
of will he
did
not scream or
cry out.
Two hours later he
rose
from the drenched bed
and
stag-
gered down the deserted hall clutching
a
blanket
around
him for
warmth
and
plunged into
a
hot shower. The
water
soothed him
somewhat
.
and
he
returned to bed
and slept
a pitiable, exhausted
sleep, rolled in the blankets.
It
was the next day after he
had struggled
through the
exam
that, ironically,
a
new
acquaintance
broke the heady news to
him
over coffee that he had been invited by
some
upper classmen to
join
in a group experimenting with mescalin. He told
John
that it
had been a religious-like, deeply
moving
though
difficult
to artic-
ulate, experience, and
that he was seriously considering joining
an
off-campus group which had become so
enthused
with the
visionary
drugs as
to
make them
a
sort of
ersatz
sacrament in a
quasi-religion,
claiming that
a person's
behavior,
and even
his
life,
could be changed
by their use. The friend was unaware of
John's condition
and
hinted that he might be able
to
get John in-
vited
to the hushed-up activities. He
minimized
the
faculty's
cool
reception of such things and the danger
of
unpleasant results. He
never knew why John slowly put his head in his
arms
and only
after
a long, painful silence raised his
face with
an
expression
that
could have accompanied tears or laughter.
It
was soon after this that John, after
a
chance meeting at a
Christmas
party,
gravitated back to their home. They had sensed
while
talking to him that he needed something that they might give
and spoke
almost
simultaneously of it on the way home from the
party.
He
spoke
earnestly
of half-formed ideas born of his own
struggle
seeking
knowledge and insight. They soon realized that
he did not need help in the form they first intuited for they recog-
nized immediately that the
experiences
he spoke of more and morE
freely were, at the same time that they were plaguing him, for-
cing him to think deeply about his mind and to read everything he
could lay his hands on about the visionary pehnomena. What was
lacking was the overall view of the matured mind. At their home
he was getting just that. Although one might assume that his









main preoccupation would be how to rid himself of the experiences,
it soon became apparent that he only. wanted to be rid of them to
the extent that they would not interfere with his normal activity,
·
and so that he could shake off
the
necessity he felt for the control-
ling drug, nicotinic acid.
They were sitting by the large circular stone fireplace that
filled the center of the living room talking over a glass of port
when he stated a fact that brought about a conversation that can
only be put into the category of rare because during it were stated
concepts
and facts that summed up and crystallized much of the
thinking of these three who had providentially come together.
"I was attending a class today on the Romantic poets," he
said,
"and it struck me that evidentally the thing that happens in-
side
my head is what must have happened to some of them, and
particularly to Wordsworth who had to wait almost agonizingly for
it,
to sort of work himself up to it for the conditions to be just
right. Not that he went about it like
a
yogi or dervish, but he did
seem to have a tendency to fall into it easily in a mild form, just
through stimulating adventure. Do you remember the time that
he
wrote of- -when he was hanging over a cliff's
edge
stealing
brids' eggs? Even then he got a glimpse of it as a child does. But
later on the transformation of natural objects and surroundings
must have occurred and his preoccupation with light gives him
away. I thought
·
at first that he never got them as strongly as I
do, but then I read the poem where he mentions the experience of
being so absorbed that he was oblivious to external things andfelt
a
not unpleasant lassitude about all
things,
and I realized that it
probably was no coincidence that he was the most emotionally un-
stable of the great romantics. He was enamored of the ecstatic
experience
and was disturbed unless the conditions obtained that
promoted
it. "
As he said this he looked hesitantly at his
,
friends
as if not quite sure that they would understand.
While he had been speaking the older man had been gazing in-
to the snow covered garden outside the window. When John
stopped speaking the alert eyes moved suddenly to a sharp focus
on him, and after a moment's hesitation he said, almost as if he
had been all through the same thing and was simply continuing
what John had begun "It seems quite obvious to me that there are
certain people who are physically more prone to ecstatic visionary
experiences than others. Your case is an extreme example. It
is evidently a biochemical factor that scientists know little about
yet, but the research of those working with psychodelic drugs
does show that it can be chemically induced at will and that the at-
15






16
mosphere, the surroundings, and
the mental
state of the subject
are very
important
for a
pleasant rather than
a
hellish manifesta-
tion of the
drugs
effects. Speaking of the Romantics: it would
seem no accident that Coleridge took
a
vision-producing narcotic
even though it was
habit forming
and led to his ruin. I think you
are
right about
Wordsworth
too. The
only thing
I
can
add is that
it would seem that the
ecstatic experience,
the
visionary
tendency,
is modified by the
incompleteness
of his psyche which,
one
might
say,
has to
grow as
his body does
.
This is
probably
why in the
child
it is
a
more heady,
emotional, thing, and
in the
more
ma-
ture,
a
more
abstract
,
intellectual phenomena. The modern re-
search
results
would
seem
to prove the fact revealed by
Freud's
investigation of the unconscious. The psyche
would show
itself to
be
not the
soul
and not the
brain,
but an intermediary ground be-
tween the two through
which
information
passes
from the
physical
brain to the spiritual soul, the intellect. This would seem to
open
up the possibility of a much more profound understanding
of marls
evolution. After all, we can see pretty
well
that, and
how,
his
body
evolved,
yet the th
e
ologian
finds it difficult to accept the
e
vo-
lution of the soul as such even though an intellectual gi
a
nt
such as
Chardin seemed to be theorizing in that direction. However, if
we consider that
along
with his body, it was
simply
the psyche
that was becoming more developed, was
evolving
in conjunction
with the purely physical part of man,
even
perhaps in
a
directly
dependent way, then the question seems resolved. If the pioneers
of psychoanalysis could
mistake
the psyche
for
the soul, it seems
reasonable to assume that the anthropologists could also. It
seems to me that it will not be too long before the language and
some of
the
concepts of
St.
Thomas Aquinas- -though not the basic
thought--are going to seem as antiquated
as
the words of Aristotle
or the Egyptians. I think too that our present concepts and termi-
nology
about
sanity and
even
sanctity
are
going to be outmoded in
short order
as
we come to realize that they
are
of a much more
fundamental unity than we would perhaps like to admit and that
even this unity is part of
a greater
whole that is man' s total make -
up
and
his relationship to the total universe. Man is realizing that
not
only
is he in a process of
evolution,
but also that he is aware
of it more
and
more and that the creative activity which is the
only worthy
activity
of his leisure is the
deliberate
furthering of
the evolution
of his psyche, individually and collectively. Man is
now quite
obviously
master of at least a part of the direction of
his own evolution and in most of the disputes of history in religion,
philosophy, and science, and now
especially
in the field of psy-
chology, the disagreement is over the direction to take, and we
see difficulties arising as the pattern begins to repeat itself. It
is regrettable that so much lack of contact and understanding are








always present."
Realizing that he had been speaking at some length, although
his young friend had been listening raptly, he stopped and glanced
at his wife as he rose to stir the glowing embers of the fire. His
wife was a graceful woman of great maturity and poise, whose
face was that of a person whose thinking gave her a look that was
almost a radiance. She smiled and added with a touch of sadness
in her voice: "What seems to cushion the series of shocks of new
knowledge and yet, at the same time, slow down the process the
most is the tendency we all have to compare ourselves with others..
When we reach a certain age we can easily be satisfied with the
degree of intellectual growth we have attained and just become so
pleased with ourselves that we don't have any desire left for the
growth that comes with new ideas and greater synthesis of knowl-
edge."
John sat silently for a moment lost in reflections that made
him smile slightly. "You know," he said, "the other day, a
friend of mine began telling me about some people who were so
enthused about psychodelic drugs and their effects that they were
beginning to make a sort of religion out of their use as ersatz
sacramentals. I certainly should feel as if predestined to heav-
en! I read up on it a little and I found out that there is no salva-
tion under their system for those who hav
~
a bad liver or heart!
Do you think there is anything to their use?"
"Well, it would seem that t~y have a limited use in psycho-
therapeutic work. The effects are too ambivalent to permit a
very free use of them. Perhaps they could be used by a person
after he had completed psychotherapy so that what he knew objec-
tively could be made subjective by the almost electronic change of
11
set" in the cortex that might give him a positive predilection for
constructive, psyche-expanding, experience
/
and ultimately, God.
I think that the experience is essentially, basically, the experi-
ence of the artist. It's not the experience of the saint in inf us ea
contemplation, for, after all, you can't force God to grant some-
thing of any sort. "
- - -
And so the conversations went on for one or two visits after-
ward. But on the occasion of his fifth visit for a casual chat, the
unfortunate occurred. John visited, and then left around ten
0
1
clock
.
As he walked down the street from their home, he was
suddenly overcome by a surprisingly swift attack, if one might
call it that, of vision, and it unluckily happened by the only house
between theirs and the main road back to school. He fought it
17







18
violently, but found himself irresistably drawn to the tiny, lighted
greenhouse at
the side
of
their neighbor's house,
entranced by
the
vivid
red blossoms of
a
large plant just inside the
moist pane.
The
neighbor's
wife
was
terrified
to see the figure looking intently
through the
glass as she went
to snap
off
the light
before
retiring.
He
was
still
entranced
with the profound
reality
of the beauty
of
the blossoms when
a
police
car slid
to the curb without
siren
or
flashing lights,
and
two officers
accosted
him. Fortunately, the
neighbor had
called
his friends to warn them of
a "prowler,
11
and
they had immediately
guessed
from the
fact of
the
greenhouse
who
it might
be. They offered
a
logical
explanation and the
strength
of
their
integrity
prevailed.
He was released,
although the officers
were a bit
incredulous.
The incident
gave them serious concern. About
two days
after-
ward
it
suddenly occurred
to
one of
them (it
always puzzled them
afterwards
which one
of
them
had
thought of it first)
that if
the un-
known
element
in the physical makeup that produced
ecstatic ex-
perience, whether effected by a
biochemical imbalance
due
to
one's physical makeup such
as John's,
or induced
artifically
through the
causing
of this imbalance by drugs,
or
caused by the
action of God directly in
the
soul, or
even
by
a stroboscopic
light
in
a
laboratory flashing before one's
closed eyes, could
be pin-
pointed and
defined, then
something
might be
done
for him. Rath-
er
methodically then, they began consulting
with friends
in the
academic and
scientific fields who
might
throw some light on the
problem. It was soon
apparent
that science had
gone
not quite
far
enough
to offer a solution. They were
abject. They
had known
John but
a relatively
short time,
and yet
they had
a
great regard
for him. They had not
spoken
of their
efforts
to John,
and
the
fu-
tility of their
search
made it seem well
they
hadn't. When he
came
unannounced
a
week later they
expected
the worst. What
they
encountered
was
something
they had not
expected
and which
was
a
tribute to their being what they
were.
Instead of the hollow-
eyed
dejection of a despairing
youth,
they met
a
man. John came
into their
home
that day with
a
look of
confidence and
peace. When
they
asked
what had happened, he grinned and said, "I began think-
ing
about your
describing the potential we have for determining, in
part, our own
evolutionary
direction. It became apparent that per-
haps the
existentialists
had perceived this
as
their basic insight,
yet
mistook the psyche for the soul just as Freud had, and, hav-
ing posited that "being precedes essence," they considered the
soul, religion,
and
God to be denied. They seem to extend the
principle to
all
levels of being, and perhaps this is true to some
extent in that it gives a better understanding of the workings of
consciousness on all levels. But that seems rather unrelated to








my feeling that I've found the solution to my problem.
It
simply
showed me, almost accidentally" thq.t what I had to do was prac-
tice a sort of Yoga, a system of mental self-discipline in reverse.
Up
until the other night when the police found me, I had tried to
push
the remembrance of the experiences out of my mind, and
struggled against them
only
when
they
came upon me.
It
was
somewhat like the person who resists temptation to
sin
only when
faced
with the immediate occasions, and doesn't bother helping
himself
at
other times, doesn't
practice
asceticism, or meditate.
So I
realized
that perhaps
a
systematic, quieting practice of daily
mental discipline
might help. For the last week I've been prac-
ticing
only
the restful Yoga
exercises
that I had learned some
time
ago
out of
mere curiosity.
Instead of practicing the concen-
tration
exercises
exactly in the prescribed fashion, I project my
attention
outward instead of inward, striving for a more alert
attention
to
everything.
So it worked, and I think I've
got
it licked.
I pray better
because
I'm not
always
plagued by the thought of
something happening. I can
study
normally. I even experimented
yesterday
with a little less medicine, and it works so far. You're
great
people.
A
WORD ON EUGENIC STERILIZATION
by Bro. Paul
Furlong fms
When we read the
account
of creation in Genesis, we are
struck by the simplicity of God's designs. In the beginning, Na-
ture's mechanism was
essentially
simple. Subsequent civiliza-
tions would take on the job of
filling
in the
complexities.
The
gropings of intellect and
spirit
would come to expand a social life.
But this very
expansion
would
go
beyond Nature's original struc-
ture.
Nature, says Bergson, intended th~t men should beget
men
in order to preserve the species. But intelligence, in "outwitting"
Nature,
found a way to divorce the sex act from its normal result.
In other words, it found
a
way to
"refrain
from reaping without
foregoing the pleasure of sowing.
11
In this we recognize the subtle
combination of another human faculty, the will, in producing an
act that affords man satisfaction. Bergson, again, tersely ana-
lyzed this tendency when he said, "there is a genius of the will as
there is a genius of the mind, and genius defies all anticipation.
11
My purpose in this brief article is to probe into the nature of
one of these acts of "genius" on the part of man, at the same time








20
asking certain questions regarding the situation in the future.
Eugenics, then, is the topic involved, and more specifically, the
efficacy of the practice of eugenic sterilization.
The study of eugenics
analyzes
those social factors which
im-
prove or impair the racial qualities of future
generations.
The
eugenicist is interested in
controlling
those hereditary factors
which determine the quality of the "stock" produced. Heredity, as
we know, has
a great
deal to do with the
characteristics and ethnic
qualities of various racial groups as well
as
those
elements
in our
personal
make-up
which distinguish us from others. Obviously,
this admits
a
wide
gamut
of variables in the human race. By con-
trolling the hereditary
factor at
its source
,
the
eugenicist claims
he
can
guarantee
a
certain perfection
and
unity in the human fam-
ily
at
large. Thus he would have
only
that superior
element
of the
community which bears the superior gene do the propagating. The
defectives, or bearers of inferior
gene,
would not propagate.
On the
surface,
this is a neat solution to the whole problem.
But,
viewed
realistically, it involves further complications,
and
at
bottom shatters the mirror or moral custom reflecting
generations
of culture. The practice of
eugenics
necessitates, first of
all,
the
practice
of sterilization- -a sterilization not motivated by thera-
peutic intentions, and thus unacceptable to Christian
ethics.
Also,
since society is merely
a
-
functional whole
existing
for the good of
its
members,
compulsory
eugenic
sterilization violates the natu-
ral law by invading the physical, integral, unity of the citizen's
body. Beyond this, the
eugenicist
has the problem of setting up
norms for distinguishing superior stock from inferior stock. And,
of course, he must contest the objections raised by society's
perennial traditions of matrimony.
The eugenicist thus seems to hold a rather untenable position.
Perhaps this is so.
At
least, the
Christian ethic
denies it room in
its system of values. In place of birth control, and sterilization
(whether
eugenic
or contraceptive), the Church advises conjugal
chastity, and
demands absolute continence in the unmarried as a
means of providing for the continuance of
a
pure race. Notice
that the end for both is the same- -the perfection and stability of
the human race. But, with St. Paul, the Church condemns those
who "do evil that
good
may come from it." (Romans 3: 8) How-
ever, the Church, as Father Conway says, "separates the chaff
from the wheat" in the matter of eugenics.
It
condones prevention
of "mental defectives of the lowest grade" from marrying, but
questions the justice of eliminating all "defectives" from the act
of propagation. And it sanctions vasectomy and salpingectomy










operations where there is sufficient therapeutic reason, In addit-
ion, the Church is quick to caution agains the materialistic
11
hap-
piness now" attitude inherent in any code of eugenic sterilization.
Positively, Holy Mother Church defends the sanctity and dig"'
nity of the married state as the accepted and appropriate means
of fulfilling God
1
s command to "increase and multiply.
11
In
his
encyclical letter Casti Connubii, Piux XI clearly and concisely
states the Catholic position in this matter. Speaking of the dig-
nity of matrimoney, the Pope reminds us that
... not by man were laws made to strengthen and con-
firm and elevate it, but by God, the Author of nature,
and by Christ Our Lord by whom nature was redeemed,
and hence these laws cannot be subject to any human de-
crees or to any contrary pact.
His Holiness further points up the benefits flowing from the indis-
solubility of marriage as being good both for the married couple,
and for the welfare of human society. Stability in matrimony, he
says, is a source for stability in the State of which it is a part.
Reading between the lines, this says a great deal about the indi-
vidual, how he should look upon his marital contract, and further,
how such a thing as eugenic sterilization can affect him personalzy-.
Continuing, the Pope warns of the error inherent in the assump-
tion that the generative power is grounded in nature itself and has
a wider range than matrimony, i.e. that it may be exercised both
outside as well as inside the confines of wedlock. Referring to
the use of compulsory eugenic sterilization, Piux XI remarks
that the state grants "to itself a power over a faculty which it nev-
er had and can never legitimately possess.
11
The mistake here,
the Pope says, is
in
placing the State above the autonomy of the
family.
Punitive sterilization is also disputable.
It
is generally ob-
served that the end intended by such a practice is ultimately frus-
trated. For, the one who is made sterile as punishment for his
crime is, in effect, enabled to seek inordinate pleasure without
worrying about the harmful effects that may follow. Obviously,
sterility will not banish the desire for sexual intercourse, but it
may remove any fear of inhibition resulting from the possibility
of conception.
Thus it is clear that the Christian ethic relies upon the de-
crees of Divine law, and upholds the principles of the natural law
"derived" from it. (cf. Summa Theologica, II-II, 64, 5; 65,
I)
It
21





22
allots to matrimony the legacy of perpetuating humankind,
and
dis-
favors man made attempts to thwart Nature's
designs.
But, science
enters
the scene,
and
inserts its own
code
of
values. In furthering the cause of
evolution,
as
Sir Francis
Galton
remarks, man "may use his intelligence
to discover
and expedite
the changes that are necessary to
adapt
circumstances to race,
and race to circumstances.
11
Thus, the
question arises,
''How far
may man intervene in Nature?
11
The whole history
of
drugs and
antibiotics, of new
advances
in medicine
and
science
have
record-
ed the results of man's
attempt
to
grapple
with
and
control the
forces of nature.
In a recent article in Catholic World, Father Owen Garrigan
remarks that we must
"distinguish
nature as it really is from na-
ture
as
it is known or discoverable by
man."
Man knows the
changeableness and
mutability
of things,
a
mutation compatible
with the immutable designs of God's plan. But rrthe nature of
things,
11
as
a sign of
God's
unchanging will, is
not an unchanging
sign.
Father
Garrigan notes the successful
experiments
of artificial
parthenogenesis with lower animals (e.g. Loeb's
experiment
with
sea urchin
eggs).
He
evidently
considers it within the realm of
possibility that parthenogenesis could be demonstrated in higher
organisms.
In
fact, Father
Garrigan remarks that "it would be
dangerous to deny
a
priori" such a possibility in the future. From
this has arisen speculation
concerning
the question of
ectogenesis-
-fetal growth outside the mother.
In 1932, Aldoux Huxley envisioned a
Brave
New World in which
"viviparous" reporduction would be
a
thing of the past. Eugenics
and
dysgenics would be practiced
systematically.
Superior sperm
would unite with superior ova in one
set
of bottles producing, or
"decanting,
11
Alphas
and Betas.
Another set of bottles would con-
tain inferior ova fertilized by inferior sperm. Such systematic
breeding, Huxley speculates, would resolve the chaotic and unreg-
ulated character of our present breeding.
Huxley
argues
from the
practical
point of view and desires that
which will
benefit
society as a whole. Yet, he is also conscious of
the moral problem involved: that the pursuit of
good ends
does not
justify the
employment
of illicit means. What, for
example,
would be the limitations on the formation
of
"sperm banks" as cur-
rently advocated by Professor H.J. Muller? Since man is
a
know-
ing creature, to what
extent
has he the right to make use of his







knowledge of nature to
further his
own ends? And, to what extent
may he experiment with nature in order to increase his knowledge?
Questions of this sort are being
asked
by scientists and churchmen
in the light of new discoveries. But, until more evidence is made
available, and weighed in the context of the Church's teaching, we
must agree with Mr. Huxley that
"we
are on the horns of an ethical
dilemma, and to find the middle way will require all our intelli-
gence and all our good will.
11
A
STORY
by Adolph Allers
George Baron shielded his eyes from the light, peered out of
the
station window, and watched the fine snow flakes dance in the
strong wind.
It
was dark outside. From the dim glow of the light
that lit the station overhand, George couldn't tell whether it was
still snowing or the wind was just whipping the fallen falkes
into
the air. Farther out near the tracks, the small goose neck lamps
over the platform were almost obscured. George walked to the
ticket window and looked out into the waiting room.
It
was
twenty
minutes after nine by the clock on the far wall. The room was
empty
except for Willie, who was fast asleep on the bench in the
far corner. His stained felt hat shielded his eyes from the lights
that
hung from the high ceiling, and his dark brown hands lay in
his lap. He still had on his old army shoes. He didn't usually
take
them off until
all
the evening trains were gone. George
turned and walked to the desk that stood against
the
dingy green
wall. He picked up one of the telephones. With the other hand, he
quickly
pulled a cord out of a switchboard hole and placed it in an -
other marked
11
dispatcher. " He waited for a moment to make sure
the line was quiet, then spoke.
"Hello Archie?"
There was silence for a second, and then a voice said, "Yeah
George?"
''How's nineteen tonight?''
"Well now," paused Archie, "She's right on time. How's the
weather up there?"
23






24
"It's blowin' pretty good. Quite a few roads will be drifted
shut by morning. Doesn't look like I'll h
a
ve to flag nin
e
te
e
n for
anybody tonight. ''
"No, probably not," drawled Archie.
"Okay then. Thanks, Archie."
When George hung up he looked at the clock again. It was nine
twenty-five. This time he picked up the city phone and started to
dial. It rang twice at the other end, and then a feeble woman's
voice spoke.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Sarah, do you feel any better?"
"Oh," she said slowly, "a little better. Do you think you'll be
home early tonight?"
"Well, I just called Archie at Plains Junction, and
he
says the
nine-thirty-nine wiHbe on time, so I oughta be able to get out of
here by ten o'clock.''
"You'll be careful drivin', won'tch~? They say the wind is
makin' it drift so
.
"
"Sure Sarah, I'll give you a call just b
e
fore I leave, okay?"
Not waiting fo:c an answ
e
r
,
he continued. "Now you r
e
lax, and
don't worry."
"All right," she said,
11
don't forget to call. rr
"Okay, I won't. By
e
.
11
He replac
e
d the receiver in the cradle.
He heard a sound at the tick
e
t window and turned to see a gray
haired wo
m
an opening her pu
r
s
e.
''Can I help you, ma'am?"
"Yes,
"
she replied in a quiet, slightly tired voice, "one way to
Milwauke
e
,
p
lease."
George rais
e
d his white eyebrows. "This is a bad night to be
makin' a trip like that.
11
"I
g
uess any night can't be too bad if you
1
re goin
1
home."










The woman wasn't alone. Standing at her side was a pleasant
looking lady with graying brown hair almost covered by a white
woolen hat. Next to her, holding a small suitcase, was a man of
swarthy complexion with a fading black mustache. "Is the nine-
thirty
-
nine on time," he asked.
"Yes,
it
is,
11
said George as he pushed the ticket out to the
woman. "That will be $41. 25." The gray haired woman laid
down a dollar bill beside the two twenties, and then began to
search her purse for change.
"I've got a quarter, Mama," said the woman standing beside
her.
The gray-haired woman adjusted her glasses as she said, "Do
you think the weather will make the train late getting into Chica•
go?''
George chucklfid as he picked up the money. "Well, it might,
but I guess the weather don't make much difference if you know,
where you're goin'."
The lady smiled back at him as she put the ticket in her purse.
"No, I guess not." She turned to the lady with the white hat, and
guided her to the nearest bench.
George glanced at the clock.
It
was nine thirty-four, and al-
most train time. The last few minutes had slipped by quickly.
Hurriedly, he stuffed his feet into his overshoes and grabbed his
coat off the back of the chair. At the office door, he paused just
long enough to lift his felt hat from the top of the filing cabinet and
pick up the green and white battery lanterns that stood in the cor-
ner. Closing the door behind him, he stepped out into the waiting
room. When the older woman saw him, she slowly got up, assis-
ted by the man with the mustache and the lady with the white hat.
Together they walked to the door that led to the tracks. At the
doorway, George pulled his hat down over his white hair and loored
off into the
-
distance. Only a few small, scattered house lights
pierced the darkness.
"Louis,
11
said the old lady, "perhaps you can bring the family
out to see us on your vacation."
The man smiled pleasantly as he said, "Well, Mom, we'll have
to see how things look in the spring. Now Mom, you be sure to
tell Papa not to work too hard, and stay off that bad leg when it
bothers him.
11
25








26
She
chuckled
slightly. "I' 11 tell
him,
but
you know your father.
"
George
glanced at
his pocket
watch.
It was nine-thirty-nine.
She should be coming
soon
if Archie
is right. Then
he
saw the
bright
light
off
in the
distance
that
could not be mistaken
for
any-
thing
else.
Far
away
like
that, George knew the train was going
pretty fast, yet
to
watch it pass along
th
e c
ountryside, it appeared
to be hardly
moving. When the train started
into
the
last
curve
before
reaching
the station, George opened the door and stepped
out
into the snow.
"Here comes the
nine-thirty-nine,"
he said.
The
cold sharp wind sprayed his face
with
snow. Behind him
the
man with the mustache h
e
ld the door open for the gray haired
lady.
The headlight becam
e
larger and brighter as the train
approached.
It
was
coming up on th
e
m rapidly now, and Geo
r
ge
turned on
the
two lanterns,
stepping a few
feet
closer
to
the
tracks.
The rumble
be
c
ame louder and louder. It was approach-
ing
rapidly,
too rapidly
.
"This tr
a
in
isn't
going to stop,"
thought
George out
loud.
The
ground
underneath
him
quivered
and
he
turned
fro
m
the
blinding
headlight.
Suddenly
he was lost
in a cloud of
swirling
snow
as
the diesel
burst
by. The
snow continu
e
d to whip
up
as
noisy freight cars
chased
the locomotive.
Geor
g
e watched
for an
instant,
and
then turned
and
walked past the
startled group
back
into
the
station.
Once in
the office,
he
quickly
grabbed
the tele-
phone, and
without
waiting, called into
it,
"
Hello,
Arch". The
phone remained
strangely
silent.
Not
even the familiar
hum was
evident.
Obviously, it
w
a
s dead. Slowly,
he put
it
down
and
left
the
office to
confront th
e
puzzled
passengers
who were coming
back
into the station.
"Well,"
George
said, "I guess we
lost the
nine-thirty-nine. The
phone
is
,
dead, so we'll
just have to wait un-
til it shows up.
"
The
lady
smiled again. "Well,
I hope
it's worth waiting for.
11
"
Would you
like to sit down,
Mama?"
"No,
I
don't
think so. Now that I'm up, I'll stand a while.
11
George re
t
urned
to
the
doorway and peered out the window.
The waiting room
became suddently quiet. The only noise came
from
the hissing
radiator.
A loud snore from Willie sleeping in
the
corner
broke the silence as well. The man and the two women
turned
to glance
at him, and looked at each other, smiling in
amusement. "He doesn't look like he's
going
anywhere," said the
gray haired lady.









"No," said George, "Willie's been waiting for a train for a
long
time." It was five minutes
to
ten l;ly the waiting room clock.
H
e
'd have to call Sarah and tell her he would be late after all.
A
train
whistle sounded, not too far away. George turned quickly to
look
down the track. The headlight of a train was coming into the
last
turn, blowing for
a
signal.
"Let's
hope this is the nine-thirty-
nine,
.
, said George as he hurried out with his lanterns. When the
e
ngineer saw the green and white lights, he responded with the
two short
blasts
of
the whistle,
and
began to slow down. The man
and
woman stood huddled on both
sides
of the gray haired lady as
the
big diesel
slowly
passed them and came to a halt on the other
side
of the station. The man and woman guided her to
the coach
doorway
as the brakeman stood by patiently. She kissed them be-
fore
boarding the train
.
Immediately, the brakeman swung his
stepping
box up into the
coach.
After giving the engine up ahead
a
signal with his lantern, he boarded himself. As the train
started
to move, the man with the mustache and the woman with
th
e
white hat strained for a glimpse of the gray haired lady.
It
was exactly
ten o'clock as George stepped back into the station.
Maybe
he wouldn't be late after all. Quickly, he gathered up the
money, placed it in the safe, and picked up the telephone.
"Hello,
11
said Sarah.
"I'm on my way," said George, "the nine-thirty-nine was late
and
I
didn't
think I'd get out of here on time, but it's all right now.
11
"You'll
drive carefully, won't you," Sarah pleaded.
"Sure will,
11
said George. "See you in a few minutes." George
hung up and turned toward the office door. He paused to see
if
everything
was in order, and, checking the door lock, he stepped
out into the waiting room. Willie was staring sleepily out of the
waiting room window. He was unshaven as usual, and George,
noting his old brown coat, was tempted to pat him on the back to
see
if
any dust would come out of it.
Pushing his dirty felt hat back on his he.ad he said, "Was that
the nine-thirty-nine that just left, George?"
"That's right Will. "
"Whooie, it sure does look mean out there. I wouldn't be out
there for nobody."
George smiled. "No, Willie, I guess you wouldn't. Well,
good night."
27








28
"Good night, George," Willie
continued
to
peer out
of the
win-
dow until
he saw the red tail lights
of
George's
car
disappear over
the hill.
Slowly,
he
made
his way back to the
corner
and
yawned
as
he unlaced his shoes.
By
ten fifteen,
Willie
was snoring loudly.
CHARLIE'S CHANCE
by
Bro. James
Heaney fms
The
express
howled demonically as it whirled through the sub-
way tunnel
towards
Times
Square. As
he sat there, rocking back
and
forth to the
heavy careening
of the train
around
the long turns,
the
stations
flashed by one
after another, empty,
brilliantly
lighted,
meaningless.
A
sense
of
separation gripped
him,
almost
as
tangible as the frightening speed
at
which h
e
hurtled beneath
the
lives of thousands of
people
he would never
know, sitting across
from
strangers who would
never
touch his life or
affect
it in
even
the least meaningful way. The stations
flashed
from
li
g
ht to dark-
ness and back
again
with
greater and
greater
frequen
cy
, and
no
one
spoke,
or made the least gesture of unity
across
the
empty
aisle.
The speed increased,
and
the howl of
the
imprisoned train
rose
another note in
protest.
The
great
steel
chassis
rocked
harder
and
harder, until all within became locked in the possibil-
ity
of a
mutual destiny, death in the fleeting
of an
instant. Though
any
one
of
them might
cringe
inwardly,
y
e
t his
eyes
might never
break the
empty
aisle between fear
and
friendship.
Balancing again to the movement of the train, he forced him-
self to remember that
subways
didn't have
accidents,
they just
kept
going
until they were no good
anymore
and someone junked
them. The brilliance
of
the fluorescent lights hurt his eyes when
he looked up at the adds above th
e
windows, vaguely wondering
about the polio victims who needed help
.
He had never seen one,
and
the
picture
of the
crippled
boy was a thing far off, a thing that
would
never come near him, or hold out mute hands for help. It
had just been shown him, no one ever bothered to explain it, or
tell him how to help it, or if it was worth the trouble. It might
even be
a
big fake anyway, with
some
guy raking in shekels on the
sympathy
of
nice ladies who saw the ad. If anybody really saw it.
The howling stopped, and the rocking motion lessened. He felt
the forward tug on his body of the train slowing. They all
stretched a bit, like they were going to
get
off, and he rubbed his
hand first on his knee, and then felt in his pocket again for the wal
let. He braced himself for the final jerk of the train stopping.
When the doors opened, he got up, walked across the aisle, and







out onto the platform towards the
stairs.
Behind him the doors
closed again and the lights of the train moved away into the tunnel
again,
further and further on until its noise died away into the
semi-silence of shuffling, waiting feet.
At street level the
day
was cloudy, damp, cold. A wind blew
down Broadway
past
the theatre facades, and the penny arcades
were just
great empty glittering
rooms full of machines staring,
helplessly idle.
A
thick sweet
aroma
hung
about the candy
shops,
and
inside the
automat
people walked back and forth beneath the
bright
light,s overhead
and
the blank
gaze
of Father Duffy's statue
outside.
He walked past
a
newstand without buying a
paper, and
past
an
empty
record store that
blared out
canned
music
into the
street.
Taxis
rolled by
on the
prowl
for
a fare while a clerk
stood at
the door
of
a clothiers looking
fixedly
into the sky. He
ke
pt
walking.
At
48th street he turned the
corner and
walked towards his
job,
Harry's Shoe Repair. Harry
always
had
him
come in late
like
this to save the
cost
of paying
him
for the
early
hours when
there was no business. He was lucky to have
the
job, since only
now
that Harry was getting old did he need
an assistant,
and soon-
er or
later he
would
inherit
the shop
for himself. The
customers
w
ere
mostly theatre people.
He walked up to the
door and
opened it.
Th
e
bell chimed
with
a clear
hard
sound as
he
w
e
nt in,
and
Harry's
v
oice squeaked
shrilly
from
the back room.
"That
you,
Charlie, I thought you
was
never
comin'
in." The
smell
of the
leather and machine oil
h
a
d the
same edge as
Harry's
voice;
it cut
th
e
air
like
a cobbl
er'
s
a
wl.
Harry
spoke impatiently. "I thought you was n
e
ver
c
o
mi
n'
in,
the lady
from the
Roseland
building was in for
the
danc
e
rs'
s
hoes, and
I had to
tell he
r
I'd have them for her
in
a h
a
lf h
o
ur.
I can't afford to do
that
too oft
e
n ya know, so as soon
a
s we fini
s
h
th
e
m you can
bring them
over to
her plac
e
. She'll b
e
waiting."
At the
machine
he
began
the
finishing
touches
on
the
shoes
Har-
ry
had
already block
e
d out
roughly,
and
the
minutes slipped by
rapidly. Afterwards
he began
to
shine them. When
the last
one
was
done, he looked them over beneath the
bright
lights
above
the
machine.
They fascinated him, brown wheels,
black
wheels, wire
brushes
of brass
and steel
whirring
gray and yellow
in the glare,
the soft purring noise of the machine pulsating in rapid rocking
rhythm. The light played over the
polish,
·
and as he
put his hand
into one
empty
shoe, he wondered who would wear it.
"Awright, they're all set to go now. The room number is
29








30
5-G, Sol Fender's place. Get goin
'
, hurry back, we got another
job comin' from Herbert's up
the
street,
and
he's supposed to be
here
at quarter
to!" Harry walked
around
from the other side of
the machine with the
other
three pairs
of
shoes grasped in his
grimy
hands, and
gave
them to him
brusquely. After
he had
wiped
his
hands
on
the
sides
of
his apron he looked up at
Charlie,
a rough awkwardness
making
him hesitant.
"And
tell that bum
across the street
to get
the hell
out of
here and
quit
pesterin' me,
tell him I
don't
know him,
I don't owe him
nothin',
and
he might
as well get drunk
on somebody
else's
cash,
I
ain't got
none to
spare
him.
Go
on, you
tell him that."
Charlie looked
out the window,
and
after a
taxi had passed, a
very
dirty
decrepit
man, leaning
dejectedly against
a brown lamp
post,
confronted him from across the
street. His hat
slouched
down
around
his
ears, and
his
suit
hung limply from his shoulders.
Perhaps
it had
once been new,
bright
stiff
blue,
but no
longer.
After
the taxi had
passed, he
looked across the
street
into the
shop,
eyes
staring,
glazed
in
a
paroxysm of
an effor
t t
o
see. The
pastiche of store
fronts,
barber
poles and pizzerias t
ha
t
some-
times shone with sunlight, sometimes
with fog and rain and
wet
cars, suddenly focused on them when their
eyes met.
Someday a
big bridge might
come
to be in
that
look, a
sudden
warm touch
might clothe him in a magic costume, and the
blankness
of the
olive drab life would dissolve before it. Maybe
getting
married
would do it, a better job, his own shop;
and with a
good girl, the
perpetual lonely riding through darkness would grow
a
light at the
open
end.
He fumbled at the
zipper of
his jacket after he had put the shces
down to free his hands. He picked them up again, and went to the
door. Harry might have helped him
open
the latch, but Harry was
busy, and he didn't want to be bothered. Finally he got some of
the shoes under his
arm
and got the door open with his left hand.
When it shut after him, he gathered himself together again, and
turned
to walk up the
street. He
remembered the bum's
eyes,
and remembered at the same time that he had to tell him to get
lost. He
crossed
over in the middle of the street and went up to
the lamp post, shoes filling his
arms.
He wondered why the bum didn't move when he got close, just
continued staring. The smell of liquor answered him. "Hey you,
what
a' ya doin' here?" There was no answer. "Ya got a name,
ya got a tongue, come on, talk!"
A
blank look replied, but it was
blank like a huge pleading, like an unfillable emptiness. His
mouth hung open, and the smell was stifling, even in the street.








Charlie wanted to shake him, to make him say something, to make
something come out of that stinking, stubble ringed mouth, but he
had an armful of shoes. They got in his way very badly, and at
last he had to bump the man with his shoulder to get through to
him. "Listen, if ya don't get out of here I'm gonna have to call a
copy and get ya hauled away
.
Come on now, ya don't want that,
huh?"
The man turned to him for the first time, and some of the
glaze slid off his staring eyes. The jaw muscles tightened, the
mouth closed, and he spoke. "Tell him help me mister, tell
Charlie help me."
Charlie bent towards him, and then leaned back quickly
when
the smell hit him. "Look buddy, I don't want to make no trouble
for ya, just leave like Harry says, and everything'll be all right,
no problems for nobody. See, it worries Harry's business, hav-
in' ya standin' here all day long. The customers start to wonder
about it." Suddenly he realized that the bum had said his own
name, not Harry's. He looked him over carefully for a moment,
and decided he didn't know him. "Look, I said, just get out of
here. So scram, and don't let me catch ya here again, or it's the
cops for sure."
As he turned to walk away up the street, he felt a hand on his
arm. The dull eyes were pleading. "You tell him, mister, tell
Charlie help me?"
He shrugged off the hand and started walking. Behind him he
heard the same words repeated slowly, quietly, as
.
if
the man
were talking to himself. He looked back and saw him rock back-
ward on his heels to lean against the lamp post again, vacant eyes
staring into the shoe shop no longer. He kept walking.
After stopping at the newstand to say hello to the bookie who
sold papers there, he turned down Broadway to go to the Roseland
building. As he crossed the street, he looked back again, and
saw the bum also walking in that direction slowly, his steps not
quite sure on the pavement. He turned his back and started down
towards Times Square.
The street was crowded now, and tourists walked a:lqng in
Bermuda shorts, cameras slung over their shoulders, looking in
the windows of the cheap souvenir stores at the shiny statues of
liberty painted in painful colors, inhaling the sweetish smell of
hot fat from the luncheonettes. Everybody needed their money,
and they gave it out by the handfull in the restaurants, movies,
31







32
and penny arcades. The automat was a novelty, the subway a
thrill. Where they lived, there were no Roseland buildings. As
Charlie walked downtown, they passed him, chattering and holding
hands. The neon lights of the theater marquees brightened the
pallor of his face, so as he went on it changed hues ever so slight-
ly each step he took.
He walked past a photo shop, looking at the pictures for the
thousandth time, mechanically, but suddenly realized that a girl in
a tight red sweater stood at the door. She smiled at him, and he
eyed her. Straightening up, she opened her mouth to speak, but
something in her eyes abruptly frightened him. He was
·
afraid he
would suddenly find himself unable to say anything to her in return,
and he would look foolish. She would take him so that he could not
be his own anymore. He turned and began walking more rapidly,
but he wondered
if
one of the empty shoes would fit her.
At the next corner he waited for the light since there was a cop
there directing traffic, and then almost got hit anyway when he
crossed after it changed. He swore and kept walking until he
reached the corner where the Roseland building hung its cheap
stone and worn out architecture out over the theater front and the
dwarfed, busy side street. As he went into the lobby, the stale
smell of interminable cigarettes added to the darkness of the al-
ready dimly lit interior. After he asked for five, the elevator op-
erator shut the gate, and they went up slowly past the floors that
lay sandwiched so tight on top of one another that the concrete be-
tween seemed to squash out in dirty blobs. The worn sleeve of the
uniform reached over to open the gate again, and he walked out in-
to a hallway with many doors inset into the faded peach pink walls.
The naked bulbs accentuated the fingermarks and stains every-
where, but he didn't get paid to notice these things. He saw a half
opened door marked G with Sol Pender' s name on it, so he walked
in.
It was a costume designer's place with a dressing room, and in
the corner of the one large room he walked into a coat rack which
was draped with spangled orange vests and pants that still looked
pretty new. In the opposite corner a big dressing table loaded
down with make-up jars exuded the smell of grease into the odor
of stale smoke and cloth that already hung heavy in the air. The
naked bulb in the ceiling made him feel like he was stillin the hall-
way. On either side of the room a door stood, out of one of which
abruptly came a large fat
'
man with a stomach stuck way out in front
of him. He paused on seeing Charlie, then wheezed across the
room, trailing behind him from the half-opened door a cloud of
smoke, and a sudden strange sweet odor. He stuck one of his pudgy










pink hands into his pocket, groping for what turned out to be a fair
sized wallet.
"You're the man from Harry's, huh?" He saw the shoes shin-
ing in the light, and took one from his arms. The polish clearly
impressed him. "Awright, how much?"
"Eight dollars, there were five pair.
11
11
A
wright, here ya are."
Charlie dodged the money and extended the
,
receipt pad. "Sign
here." The fat man walked over to the dressing table, shoved
aside some of the jars to make room, and signed it. Charlie
ripped off the top sheet and handed it to him, taking the money
with his other hand. The other grunted, fumbled in his wallet, and
pressed something into his palm with sweaty fingers.
"Here, go get yourself loaded."
"Thanks." He walked out the door and back through the peachy
hallway to the elevator. When a burst of giggling echoed through
the thin panelling of a door, he shied away from it, wa:lking up to
the elevator without stopping. He pushed the botton for service.
Onee out on the street, he realized that the weather had turned
brighter in the short time he had been inside. The sun shone
clearly down on the cold streets. He zipped his jacket all the way
up and put his hands in his pockets to keep warm while he walked,
this
-
time for a change up seventh avenue instead of Broadway. He
came to a corner where a man was standing on a box talking to
about ten people, trying to persuade them about something. He
stopped to listen for a second, since he had got throught with Sol
Pender pretty quickly, and Harry wouldn't need him for another
then minutes or so.
The man was skinny, and his thin arms waved almost fran-
tically about whatever it was he had to sell. He needed a haircut,
and his long forelock just seemed to constantly fall down in his
face and make him push it up, never quite well enough to keep it
there. His visage was oval and fresh shaven, but his gray eyes
and suit matched the color of the buildings and the hard cement of
the sidewalks.
It
didn't take Charlie long to realize he was some
kind of a preacher. He stuck around and listened. He didn't feel
like moving on, so he just stayed at the outer rim so no one he
knew would think he had anything to do with it. The guy was say-
ing something about Saint Paul, but it didn't make much sense.
33








34
Who cared for Paul
if he hadn't given this guy a better suit of
clothes, or made him a better speaker to keep the people from
drifting away, like they were now. He stayed on for another min-
ute, wondering what kept the man going, talking to people about
something they didn't want to hear about, with nothing more to
show for it than needing a haircut. When the people had gone, he
went over to where he had stepped down from his box. "Hi, you
do this all the time?"
He looked up more intently
.
"Sure, all the time. You inter-
ested?"
"No, just wonderin'. Who keeps you goin' with this
,
you got a
rich aunt or somethin'?"
"I just make what I can get, from what people give me."
Charlie looked away up the street. "Not much, huh?
11
The man spoke quickly, in a quiet, ea
r
nest voice
.
"But I live
for
it,
do you have anything like that?"
Charlie stood for a moment gazing into his face emptily, and
then shifted his feet, getting ready to move off. The closeness of
the man to him and the intensity of his eyes made him feel uncom-
fortable, like he wanted something of him that he wasn't prepared
to give. He looked away and began to move. "Well, I don't know,
I never thought much about it. I gotta go now. " The man tugged
at his sleeve and he turned around again.
"Do you?" The preacher had straightened up, and it seemed
as if someone had all of a sudden put a piece of steel in his back-
bone, his shoulders took on a kind of military squareness. Char-
lie shook him off and started moving again. He had never seen
gray eyes like that before, and they upset him. He didn't like be-
ing upset. When he felt the man grab his sleeve again, he kept
moving, ettting a little angry. "Look, I told ya, I don't worry
about it, so leggo and mind your own business, and nobody has to
get worked up or nothin' . "
When the man tried once more, he spun about quickly and
shouted in his face. "Look, ya got the message? I
do n 't
want any. Awright? Awright!" The other man's wincing
might have hurt him some other time, but right now he didn't feel
like being bothered over feelings. Even so, the thought of Harry
waiting for him broke off any apology he might have made
.
Turn-
i!:1,~ for the last time, he hurried away up Seventh avenue, leaving








the man standing there looking bleakly after him.
The gray pavement flew quickly under his feet, and the sun
shed a real brilliance on the late morning. The noon hour traffic
crept by, motors blending like a fit of coughing shaking the crowd
in a filled hall
.
All about him people walked, and their shuffling
feet could be heard when ever there was the least gap in the traf-
fic. The sounds tumbled together in the clear brightness of the
cold, smooth and unbroken along the street except when the lights
changed and a new way opened for the cars. Then the motors
coughed anew, warming up in the chill air. All the cars moved,
but some turned at the light, while others never bothered to turn,
but
j
ust kept going straight on into the great stone distance up
seventh avenue. For them the light was only a pause on the way.
As he reached the corner by Harry's, he
,
saw the bum standing
on the opposite corner up at the other end of the street. When he
saw Charlie he began to walk towards him, leaving the paper starid
where he had probably been talking to the proprietor. He made
for Charlie as fast as his wobbly legs could manage. The glaze
had left his eyes, and in its place stood a hope that had never
pierced into him before. He came on with shuffling, wandering
steps, not noticing the pavement, the parking meters, people look-
ing at him from the stores. He just saw Charlie, and ran for him.
He did not look behind him when suddenly his unsteady legs car-
ried him off the pavement to cross the street in the middle of the
block. His eyes were full of recognition.
Charlie stood, dumb, seeing and not understanding, as the cab
hit the man dead center and flung his arms and legs out into space,
like the blossoming of a blue flower
.
The cab threw him several
feet, but not enough to give the cabby room to stop before he was
under the whe
.
els.
Panic gripped Charlie for a moment when he saw the blue lump
beneath the car, and recognized where the face was by the blood
that began to trickle from the mouth. The cabby was getting out to
look for help, but Charlie stood for a long moment, poised hesi-
tantly on the curb. All at once the barrier could break down, and
life could come together there in the middle of the street. Panic
held him, and then there was
a:
man running, and then another, and
then there were many standing around
.
He heard a siren, and
realized that it no longer mattered that he did not know what to do.
The ability of the others shamed him, but he could not move.
When the ambula~ce had gone and nothing remained on the
street but a stain, Charlie looked up to the gray office buildings
.
35






towering far above him.
A
thousand lives ther
e
,
a
nd they n
e
ver
touched his. They
didn't exist. Th
e
sun refl
e
cting from windows
high up got in his eye, so he stepped over next to
a
car, and found
it standing between himself and the dark stain on th
e a
sphalt. The
world shifted back into perspective.
As he opened the door, the shop bell rang and Harry's voice
snapped out from the other side of the machine in a shrill treble.
"That you, Charlie, I thought ya was never comin' back." Harry
handed him a pair of men's shoes. They were large, and he
couldn't hold on to th
e
m and take off his jacket at the same time,
so he put them down and walked into the back room. He put his
apron on and went back to the machine and its flashing wheels and
soft purring rhythmic sound.






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