The Cage: Salem Jail, Sunday, October 20, 1912

IN the middle of the great greenish room stood the green iron cage.

All was old and cold and mournful, ancient with the double antiquity of heart and brain in the great greenish room.

Old and hoary was the man who sat upon the faldstool, upon the fireless and godless altar.

Old were the tomes that mouldered behind him on the dusty shelves.

Old was the painting of an old man that hung above him.

Old the man upon his left, who awoke with his cracked voice the dead echoes of dead centuries; old the man upon his right who wielded a wand; and old all those who spoke to him and listened to him before and around the green iron cage.

Old were the words they spoke, and their faces were drawn and white and lifeless, without expression or solemnity; like the ikons of old cathedrals.

For of naught they knew, but of what was written in the old yellow books. And all the joys and pains and loves and hatreds and furies and labors and strifes of man, all the fierce and divine passions that battle and rage in the heart of man, never entered into the great greenish room but to sit in the green iron cage.

Senility, dullness and dissolution were all around the green iron cage, and nothing was new and young and alive in the great room, except the three men who were in the cage.

Throbbed and thundered and clamored and roared outside of the great greenish room the terrible whirl of life, and most pleasant was the hymn of its mighty polyphony to the listening ears of the gods.

Whirred the wheels of the puissant machines, rattled and clanked the chains of the giant cranes, crashed the falling rocks; the riveters crepitated; and glad and sonorous was the rhythm of the bouncing hammers upon the loudthroated anvils.

Like the chests of wrathfully toiling Titans, heaved and sniffed and panted the sweaty boilers, like the hissing of dragons sibilated the white jets of steam, and the sirens of the workshops shrieked like angry hawks, flapping above the crags of a dark and fathomless chasm.

The files screeched and the trains thundered, the wires hummed, the dynamos buzzed, the fires crackled; and like a thunderclap from the Cyclopean forge roared the blasts of the mines.

Wonderful and fierce was the mighty symphony of the world, as the terrible voices of metal and fire and water cried out into the listening ears of the gods the furious song of human toil.

Out of the chaos of sound, welded in the unison of one wIll to sing, rose clear and nimble the divine accord of the hymn: —

Out of the cañons of the mountains,
Out of the whirlpools of the lakes,
Out of the entrails of the earth,
Out of the yawning gorges of hell,
From the land and the sea and the sky,
From wherever comes bread and wealth and joy,

And from the peaceful abodes of men, rose majestic and fierce, louder than the roar of the volcano and the bellow of the typhoon, the anthem of human labor to the fatherly justice of the Sun.

But in the great greenish room there was nothing but the silence of dead centuries and of ears that listen no more; and none heard the mighty call of life that roared outside, save the three men who were in the cage.

All the good smells, the wholesome smells, the healthy smells of life and labor were outside the great room.

The smell of rain upon the grass and of the flowers consumed by their love for the stars.

The heavy smell of smoke that coiled out of myriads of chimneys of ships and factories and homes.

The dry smell of sawdust and the salty smell of the iron filings.

The odor of magazines and granaries and warehouses, the kingly smell of argosies and the rich scent of market-places, so dear to the women of the race.

The smell of new cloth and new linen, the smell of soap and water and the smell of newly printed paper.

The smell of grains and hay and the smell of stables, the warm smell of cattle and sheep that Virgil loved.

The smell of milk and wine and plants and metals,

And all the good odors of the earth and of the sea and of the sky, and the fragrance of fresh bread, sweetest aroma of the world, and the smell of human sweat, most holy incense to the divine nostrils of the gods, and all the olympian perfumes of the heart and the brain and the passions of men, were outside of the great greenish room.

But within the old room there was nothing but the smell of old books and the dust of things decayed, and the suffocated exhalation of old graves, and the ashen odor of dissolution and death.

Yet all the sweetness of all the wholesome odors of the world outside were redolent in the breath of the three men in the cage.

Like crippled eagles fallen were the three men in the cage, and like little children who look into a well to behold the sky were the men that looked down upon them.

No more would they rise to their lofty eyries, no more would they soar above the snow-capped mountains — yet, tho’ their pinions were broken, nothing could dim the fierce glow of their eyes, which knew all the altitudes of heaven.

Strange it was to behold the men in the cage while life clamored outside, and strange it seemed to them that they should be there because of what dead men had written in old books.

So of naught did they think but of the old books and the green cage.

Thought they: All things are born, grow, decay, and die and are forgotten.

Surely all that is in this great room will pass away. But what will endure the longer, the folly that was written into the old books or the madness that was beaten into the bands of this cage?

Which of these two powers has enthralled us, the thought of dead men who wrote the old books, or the labor of living men who have wrought this cage?

Long and intently they thought, but they found no answer.

But one of the three men in the cage, whose soul was tormented by the fiercest fire of hell, which is the yearning after the Supreme Truth, spoke and said unto his comrades: —

‘Aye, brothers, all things die and pass away, yet nothing is truly and forever dead until each one of the living has thrown a regretless handful of soil into its grave.

‘Many a book has been written since these old books were written, and many a proverb of the sage has become the jest of the fool, yet this cage still stands as it stood for numberless ages.

’What is it then that made it of metal more enduring than the printed word?

' Which is its power to hold us here?

’Brothers, it is the things we love that enslave us.

‘Brothers, it is the things we yearn for that subdue us.

’Brothers, it is not hatred for the things that are, but love for the things that are to be, that makes us slaves.

’And what man is more apt to become a thrall, brothers, and to be locked in a green iron cage, than he who yearns the most for the Supreme of the things that are to be — he who most craves for Freedom?

’And what subtle and malignant power save this love of loves could be in the metal of this cage that it is so mad to imprison us?’

So spoke one of the men to the other two, and then out of the silence of the æons spoke into his tormented soul the metallic soul of the cage.

‘Iron, the twin brother of fire, the first born out of the matrix of the earth, the witness everlasting to the glory of thy labor, am I, O Man!

’Not for this was I meant, (3 Man! Not to imprison thee, but to set thee free and sustain thee in thy strife and in thy toil.

’I was to lift the pillars of thy Temple higher than the mountains;

’I was to lower the foundations of thy house deeper than the abysmal sea;

’I was to break down and bore through all the barriers of the world to open the way to thy triumphal chariot.

‘All the treasures and all the bounties of the earth was I to give as an offering into thy hands, and all its forces and powers to bring chained like crouching dogs at thy feet.

‘Hadst thou not sinned against the nobility of my nature and my destiny, hadst thou not humiliated me, an almighty warrior, to become the lackey of gold, I would never have risen against thee and enthralled thee, (3 Man!

‘While I was hoe and ploughshare and sword and axe and scythe and hammer, I was the first artificer of thy happiness; but the day I was beaten into the first lock and the first key, I became fetters and chains to thy hands and thy feet, O Man!

’My curse is thy curse, O Man! and even if thou shouldst pass out of the wicket of this cage, never shalt thou be free until thou returnest me to the joy of labor.

’O Man! bring me back into the old smithy, purify me again with the holy fire of the forge, lay me again on the mother breast of the anvil, beat me again with the old honest hammer — O Man! remould me with thy wonderful hands into an instrument of thy toil,

‘Remake of me the sword of thy justice,
Remake of me the tripod of thy worship,
Remake of me the sickle for thy grain,
Remake of me the oven for thy bread,
And the andirons for thy peaceful hearth, O Man!
And the trestles for the bed of thy love, O Man!
And the frame of thy joyous lyre, O Man!’

Thus spake to one of the three men, out of the silence of centuries, the metallic soul of the cage.

And he listened unto its voice,and while it was still ringing in his soul, — which was tormented with the fiercest fire of hell, which is the yearning after the Supreme Truth (Is it Death? Is it Love?), — there arose one man in the silent assembly of old men that were around the iron cage.

And that man was the most hoary of all, and most bent and worn and crushed was he under the heavy weight of the great burden he bore without pride and without joy.

He arose, and addressing himself—I know not whether to the old man that sat on the black throne, or to the old books that were mouldering behind him, or to the picture that hung above him — he said (and dreary as a wind that moans through the crosses of an old graveyard was his voice): —

‘I will prove to you that these three men in the cage are criminals and murderers and that they ought to be put to death.'

Love, it, was then that I heard for the first time the creak of the moth that was eating the old painting and the old books, and the worm that was gnawing the old bench, and it was then that I saw that all the old men around the great greenish room were dead.

They were dead like the old man in the old painting, save that they still read the old books he could read no more, and still spoke and heard the old words he could speak and hear no more, and still passed the judgment of the dead, which he no more could pass, upon the mighty life of the world outside that throbbed and thundered and clamored and roared the wonderful anthem of Labor to the fatherly justice of the Sun.