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The Cocked Hat

by Edgar Lee Masters

Would that someone would knock Mr. Bryan into a cocked hat. - WOODROW WILSON.

It ain't really a hat at all, Ed:

You know that, don't you?

When you bowl over six out of the nine pins,

And the three that are standing

Are the triangular three in front,

You've knocked the nine into a cocked hat.

If it was really a hat, he would be knocked in, too.

Which he hardly is. For a man with money,

And a man who can draw a crowd to listen

To what he says, ain't all-in yet....

Oh yes, defeated

And killed off a dozen times, but still

He's one of the three nine pins that's standing ...

Eh? Why, the other is Teddy, the other

Wilson, we'll say. We'll see, perhaps.

But six are down to make the cocked hat -

That's me and thousands of others like me,

And the first-rate men who were cuffed about

After the Civil War,

And most of the more than six million men

Who followed this fellow into the ditch,

While he walked down the ditch and stepped to the level -

Following an ideal!

* * * * *

Do you remember how slim he was,

And trim he was,

With black hair and pale brow,

And the hawk-like nose and flashing eyes,

Not turning slowly like an owl

But with a sudden eagle motion?...

One time, in '96, he came here

And we had just a dollar and sixty cents

In the treasury of the organization.

So I stuck his lithograph on a pole

And started out for the station.

By the time we got back here to Clark street

Four thousand men were marching in line,

And a band that was playing for an opening

Of a restaurant on Franklin street

Had left the job and was following his carriage.

Why, it took all the money Mark Hanna could raise

To beat me, with nothing but a pole

And a lithograph.

And it wasn't because he was one of the prophets

Come back to earth again.

It shows how human hearts are hungry

How wonderfully true they are -

And how they will rise and follow a man

Who seems to see the truth!

Well, these fellows who marched are the cocked hat,

And I am the cocked hat and the six millions,

And more are the cocked hat,

Who got themselves despised or suspected

Of ignorance or something for being with him.

But still, he's one of the pins that's standing.

He got the money that he went after,

And he has a place in history, perhaps -

Because we took the blow and fell down

When the ripping ball went wild on the alley.

* * * * *

For we were radicals,

And he wasn't a radical.

Eh? Why, a radical stands for freedom,

And for truth - which he never finds

But always looks for.

A radical is not a moralist.

A radical doesn't say:

"This is true and you must believe it;

This is good and you must accept it,

And if you don't believe it and accept it

We'll get a law and make you,

And if you don't obey the law, we'll kill you - "

Oh no! A radical stands for freedom.

* * * * *

Do you remember that banquet at the Tremont

In '97 on Jackson's day?

Bryan and Altgeld walked together

Out to the banquet room.

That's the time he said the bolters must

Bring fruits meet for repentance - ha! ha! Oh, Gawd! -

They never did it and they didn't have to,

For they had made friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,

Even as he did, a little later, in his own way.

Well, Darrow was there that night.

I thought it was terribly raw in him,

But he said to Bryan, there, in a group:

"You'd better go back to Lincoln and study

Science, history, philosophy,

And read Flaubert's Madam something-or-other,

And quit this village religious stuff.

You're head of the party before you are ready

And a leader should lead with thought."

And Bryan turned to the others and said:

"Darrow's the only man in the world

Who looks down on me for believing in God."

"Your kind of a God," snapped Darrow.

Honest, Ed, I didn't see this religious business

In Bryan in '96 or 1900.

Oh well, I knew he went to Church,

And talked as statesmen do of God -

But McKinley did it, and I used to laugh:

"We've got a man to match McKinley,

And it's good for us, in a squeeze like this,

We didn't nominate some fellow

Ethical culture or Unitarian."

You see, the newspapers and preachers then

Were raising such a hullabaloo

About irreligion and dishonesty,

And calling old Altgeld an anarchist,

And comparing us to Robespierre

And the guillotine boys in France.

And a little of this religion came in handy.

The same as if you saw a Mason button on me,

You'd know, you see - but Gee!

He was 24-carat religious,

A cover-to-cover man....

He was a trained collie,

And he looked like a lion,

There in the convention of '96 - What do you know about that?

* * * * *

But right here, I tell you he ain't a hypocrite,

This ain't a pose. But I'll tell you:

In '96 when they knocked him out,

I know what he said to himself as well

As if I heard him say it ...

I'll tell you in a minute.

But suppose you were giving a lecture on the constitution,

And you got mixed on your dates,

And the audience rotten-egged you,

And some one in the confusion

Stole the door receipts,

And there you were, disgraced and broke!

But suppose you could just change your clothes,

And lecture to the same audience

On the religious nature of Washington,

And be applauded and make money -

You'd do it, wouldn't you?

Well, this is what Bill said to himself:

"I'm naturally regular and religious.

I'm a moral man and I can prove it

By any one in Marion County,

Or Jacksonville or Lincoln, Nebraska.

I'm a radical, but a radical

Alone can be religious.

I belong to the church, if not to the bank,

Of the people who defeated me.

And I'll prove to religious people

That I'm a man to be trusted -

And just what a radical is.

And I'll make some money while winning the votes

Of the churches over the country."...

That's it - it ain't hypocrisy,

It's using what you are for ends,

When you find yourself in trouble.

And this accounts for "The Prince of Peace" -

Except no one but him could write it -

And "The Value of an Ideal" -

(Which is money in bank and several farms) ...

His place in history?

One time my grandfather, who was nearly blind,

Went out to sow some grass seed.

They had two sacks in the barn,

One with grass seed, one with fertilizer,

And he got the sack with fertilizer,

And scattered it over the ground,

Thinking he was sowing grass.

And as he was finishing up, a grandchild,

Dorothy, eight years old,

Followed him, dropping flower seeds.

Well, after a time

That was the greatest patch of weeds

You ever saw! And the old man sat,

Half blind, on the porch, and said:

"Good land, that grass is growing!"

And there was nothing but weeds except

A few nasturtiums here and there

That Dorothy had sown....

Well, I forgot.

There was a sunflower in one corner

That looked like a man with a golden beard

And a mass of tangled, curly hair -

And a pumpkin growing near it....

* * * * *

Say, Ed! lend me eighty dollars

To pay my life insurance.