~ DEDICATION ~
For Damon and Judy. Thanks for wonderful time in Manhattan!
CHAPTER ONE
Ruth Hadley had always hated her name. Ever since she’d been old enough to know what a Baby Ruth candy bar was, she’d loathed being called Ruth. There’d even been two other girls at her grade school with the name Ruth when she’d been growing up in eastern Oklahoma, but at least in Muskogee, no one had blinked at the name. Here in ritzy and sophisticated New York City, Ruth was about as strange a name as Cleopatra. In fact, she’d much rather have the name Cleopatra. No one heard the name Ruth and thought to themselves, “Now there’s someone who sounds sexy and elegant.”
Oh well, maybe she was being unreasonably hard on herself tonight. As usual. Better to focus on her job than on whether or not her mama would whup her with a dishtowel if Ruth legally changed her given name. Besides, Ruth had enough on her plate without worrying about something she couldn’t change at the moment. She was driving a black stretch Mercedes-Benz S-Class limousine with all the latest bells and whistles for Mirage Confidential Limo Service. Tonight she had a very important client to drive around the city that never slept. The New York city lights flooded the inside of the car, so even though it was technically nighttime, she felt as if she were in some kind of brilliant world filled with colorful, warm illumination. She glanced at her GPS instructions again and then at the service order on the computer terminal mounted on the dash.
The dispatch order had her picking up a high profile VIP from Third Avenue in the Bronx. At first she’d thought it must be a mistake, because that area was a little rough, and it seemed strange that an extremely rich client would be wandering around a place so far from the glitz and glitter of Broadway. But the onboard computer refused to admit ever being wrong, and dispatch had been adamant. So here she was.
She guided the luxury limo down the two-lane street, glancing from side to side as she went, searching for a sign that said Triago Mixed Martial Arts Gym and Academy. Mostly she spotted lots of liquor stores with security bars on the windows, a handful
of check-into-cash places, and small convenience stores with Bud Light neon signs and promises of cheap cigarettes. There were tenement houses and Laundromats. Steam seeped from the gutters and from vents in the manhole covers. Some unsavory types were hanging out on corners or lounging against storefronts. They turned their heads to watch her as she drove past, unnerving her. The limo was wildly out of place in a neighborhood like this.
Definitely not the best part of town. Again, really not a place she’d expect to find the client a billionaire werewolf tech mogul by the name of Brian Barrington—cavorting around. She snorted at the word. The last client she’d driven had been a bear shifter from Moscow, and he had definitely loved to cavort through the clubs and wild parties of New York’s nightlife.
The pleasant GPS voice informed her she was in the area and assured her she should be seeing the gym at any moment, but she had yet to spot it. Maybe the pickup instructions were wrong. That was rare, especially with how careful Mirage Confidential Limo Service was, dealing with high-end, superrich, paranormal figures in business and entertainment and politics, but occasionally mistakes happened. She continued to scan the street numbers on the buildings as she drove, not fully trusting the GPS computer. She was close now…
Finally she found it just as the GPS ecstatically told her she was arriving at her destination. Triago Mixed Martial Arts Gym and Academy was a medium-
size building of gray brick, marked here and there by graffiti, and with black iron bars on the windows. She got lucky and the gods of New York traffic blessed her, having saved an empty swath of street at the curb big enough for her to park in front of the place. She guided the limo to the curb without touching the rims against the cement. She could see men inside the gym working at heavy bags, sparring, or shadowboxing. In the far back there were even a couple of full-size fighting rings.
God, there were few things she enjoyed more than watching a bunch of half naked men pound the ever-loving crap out of a heavy bag. It was so raw, so primal. The force. The intensity. The brute power of it. She stared at their sweaty, muscular bodies and had to remind herself not to drool. Reminder or no, she was helpless to stop her body’s reaction to all the muscles and brute energy. That inner heat, that secret ache between her legs, grew more intense, hazing her brain with its need. Well, this would all be perfect fodder for a marathon session with her favorite vibrator later on. Sad to say, right now her love life was about as neglected as the buildings on this street. There was no sign of the client waiting outside for his pickup, which was fortunate. It meant she wasn’t late. Usually she arrived at least fifteen minutes early, just to be safe and per company policy, but she always worried that someday New York traffic would ensnare her and she’d keep a VIP client waiting. That would be exceedingly bad. Human or paranormals, VIPs didn’t always have a lot of
patience. But the alphas were especially demanding, and those made up the majority of the clientele.
She lifted her limo’s radio receiver and called Mandy, who was on dispatch tonight. “Hey, Mandy. This is Ruth. I’m at the location. No sign of the client. Are you sure this is the right place?” She would never dream of using a client’s name over the radio. Their company’s frequency was encrypted, but they were also known for utmost discretion. At that meant radio discipline at all times. No name-dropping. No taking selfies with the client and posting it on social media, and so on.
“Ruth, I’m looking at my screen right now and you’re at the right place. We have a note here from the client. It says if you’re early or they are running late, you should feel free to go inside.”
“I don’t know… This looks like a bad neighborhood to leave the limo unattended.”
“Girl, you are parked in front of a MMA gym. Who in their right mind is gonna mess with those guys?”
Ruth laughed. “I guess that makes some sense.”
“You know me, I got so much sense it’s leaking out everywhere. Now I suggest you head on inside and watch all those beefy men punch things and get yourself a little testosterone contact high, you hear me?”
She couldn’t help her grin. “I hear you. Heading inside now.”
Ruth had a publicity photo of the client on computer file, so she’d be able to identify him on sight. He was a very special VIP indeed. The billionaire Brian Barrington. The tech mogul was both one of the world’s foremost philanthropists and a lead spokesperson for the Society of American Shifters. He was also the alpha wolf for the Empire City Pack right here in New York.
She turned on the overhead light and glanced at the photo again. Brian Barrington was a gorgeous piece of man meat, that was for sure. Chiseled jaw. Intense blue eyes. Hair so blond it might have been white. The broad shoulders filling a suit that probably cost more than most cars also hinted at a very muscular build. Yum. Yum. Yummy. In fact, she might just have to drop him into the starring role of her next late-night sex fantasy.
Still…what was a guy as handsome, rich, and sophisticated as Mr. Barrington doing at a rundown fight club like this? She could imagine him in a highend workout center with all the latest training gadgets and personal coaches to guide his training, but this place? Maybe he owned the gym…as a tax write-off or something. Or perhaps this was more philanthropy. A community outreach.
Not that it really mattered. It wasn’t her place to ask questions. Or be curious. She certainly couldn’t afford to lose this job either. Not if she had any hope of every attending NYU business school again… This paid far more than waitressing, and the late night hours meant that when she started taking classes
again, she could go during the day. So she couldn’t chance screwing this up. Even a little. She got out of the limo, locked it, and set the alarm. Before heading into the gym, she checked her uniform in the tinted limo glass and adjusted her black driver cap, then she flicked a piece of lint from her uniform coat. Perfect. She might not be as slim as those models traipsing along the fashion runways, but she did have curves enough that filled out her uniform. Yes, she was curvy what was it they said these days? A big, beautiful woman. She had long ago stopped torturing herself into believing a woman had to look stick-thin to be beautiful. Her mama had always told her that beauty came through the eyes, shining through like a lighthouse beam. Ruth didn’t know if that was true or not, but she did know that her curvy body and generous bust still attracted many a male’s gaze. In fact, as sharp as her uniform happened to be, the uniform shirt was a little tight across the chest…although she didn’t suppose any of the men here would mind.
Since she’d been invited to come inside and wait, she took Mr. Barrington up on the offer. She pushed through the glass front door and a little bell jangled. A few heads turned as men glanced her way. Ruth focused on keeping her calm, professional demeanor as she glanced from man to man, searching for Mr. Brian Barrington. She resisted the urge to pull at her collar. It was a little hot and stuffy in here, even though the fans were running full blast. So many men putting off so much heat. She actually felt a bit
lightheaded. The grunts and smacks and heavy breathing all around her certainly raised her internal temperature more than a little.
At first she couldn’t spot the client as she moved deeper into the gym, passing men wo rking the heavy bags or sparring or landing kicks and punches on pads held by a partner. But as she looked toward the far end of the gym, she finally saw him. And her knees went weak.
Mr. Brian Barrington was wearing nothing but black silk boxer shorts, black protective headgear, and a pair of black fighter gloves. His body was even more impressive than she’d imagined. Every ridge of hard muscle stood out in clear definition. His perfectly sculpted shoulders trailed down to bulging biceps. His stomach was the poster child for the concept of washboard abdominals. His legs were ripped with heavy muscle that flexed as he moved about the ring. His body was covered in sweat and glistening in the gym’s overhead lighting.
Lord help her now.
The man he was sparring with was just as impressive though. He had short, dark hair and dark eyes, looking Mediterranean—maybe Italian. He was clean-shaven, but sported a bit of five o’clock shadow at this time of night. His sparring gear was bright red. He was shorter than Brian but a little stockier, again with plenty of well-defined muscle on his frame. And he had the sexiest patch of dark hair on his chest. She had a fleeting thought, wishing this were ancient Greece where the men fought completely
naked. She didn’t think she could handle that though. She might just spontaneously combust at the sight.
When she reached the ring, she stopped short, not wanting to distract the two men as they battled. But she also wanted to be close enough to see make that drool over them.
Mr. Brian Barrington was not only gorgeous but really agile. The darker man moved with confidence and power as well. Brian she was going to think of him in her mind as Brian now, enjoying the intimacy of his first name traded some punches with him, then darted back out of range before his opponent could close. Then Brian launched a kick that connected with his opponent’s chest and sent him back into the ropes.
She gasped at the force of the move, hoping the other man wasn’t hurt. He didn’t seem to be, because even though Brian closed in to take advantage of his strike, the other man came out of the ropes with a series of hooks and punches that forced Brian to defend. They circled each other again. Then came a flurry of blows and strikes that flashed by almost too fast to see.
They were so graceful, yet so powerful. She could see the fierce determination in their eyes. That fighter stare, totally focused. She wondered what it would be like to have one of these two stunning men look at her that way, with that heat, that intensity, that one hundred percent focus as if nothing else in the world mattered but her. Not dangerous to her physically of course, but dangerous to her willpower
to deny them what they wanted of her…wild, passionate sex that would last until she begged for mercy… She had to shake herself out of that fantasy fast.
It was really hot in here after all.
Yet she moved closer to the ring, mesmerized by the furious combat. Drops of sweat poured off the two men. They exchanged a series of blows that had her holding her breath. She was a little surprised by her body’s enthusiastic reaction to this primal show of force between them. Her pussy was so wet she suspected her panties would be sopping by the time this was over.
Brian landed a fast cross-punch to the other man’s head, rocking him back on his heels. Ruth drew in a sharp breath of air at how magnificent his body looked. She had moved close enough to the ring so that when a drop of his sweat landed on her hand, a low groan of pleasure escaped her lips. She didn’t even question her body’s reaction. Her mind was swimming, and her thoughts grew fuzzy.
But her groan apparently caught Mr. Brian Barrington’s attention, because he glanced away from the fight and looked straight into her eyes. That searing gaze, those clear blue eyes, sent a thrill of utter lust raging through her body like a tidal wave. A smile curved his lips and then his opponent clocked him on the jaw with a massive right hook. The punch sent Brian to the mat. He hit with a resounding thud.
Oh crap! She’d distracted him at the wrong time, and he’d been knocked out! Because of her! This was a disaster. She was in so much trouble.
But Brian shook off the blow and rolled to a sitting position. His opponent was laughing as he reached down with a gloved hand and helped Brian back to his feet.
“Got you good,” the other man said. “Teach you to pay attention.” He crouched down and slapped Brian on the back and laughed again. She couldn’t help but like his laugh. It was a deep, fullbodied sound, full of unapologetic enjoyment.
“You got lucky, Dominic,” Brian said, rubbing his jaw as he pushed himself back to his feet with amazing recovery time. “I was distracted by a beautiful woman in uniform.”
He glanced at her again, and the glint in his eye made her stomach all fluttery. When he gave her a brilliant smile, her heart truly skipped a beat. He walked over to the ropes and leaned on them, staring down at her.
“Hello,” he said. His voice was smooth and deep and absolute music to her ears. “You must be our chauffer. I apologize for keeping you waiting.”
“It’s no problem, sir,” she squeaked. Then she blushed. Right then her voice had sounded the least professional it had ever sounded in her entire life. So much for all those hours practicing in front of the mirror.
But his smile only widened. “Please excuse us as we go shower. Then we can begin our evening.”
Dominic came over and slung an arm around Brian’s shoulders. He grinned at her. She also liked Dominic’s grin the openness of it, a kind of simple warmth. These two guys and their incredible smiles were going to kill her dead.
“Listen to you,” Dominic said to Brian. “Trying to sound all sophisticated and impressive. And you just got knocked on your ass.”
Brian elbowed him in the ribs, earning a surprised grunt from Dominic. “And you owe me for taking advantage of a distracted man. But we’ll talk about that later.” He turned those stunning blue eyes back to her. He gestured toward some metal bleachers intended for people to sit and watch the action. “Please have a seat if you’d like. We shouldn’t be long.”
Brian Barrington and Dominic climbed out of the ring and headed for the locker rooms. She watched them go, her mind reeling, flustered, and still admiring both men’s broad, muscular backs and those asses…as her friend Cindy always said: “Dayumn.”
She took a seat on the bleachers before she fell over. This was going to be a long, crazy night. She just had to survive it in one piece. But she had a feeling that dealing with the gorgeous Mr. Barrington was going to be more of a challenge then she wanted to admit.
Five minutes later, Ruth was squirming as she sat on the hard bench. She was still sopping wet, but the needy ache in her pussy had only deepened. She had never been this level of turned-on by men battling each other before, but watching these two go at it had jacked her internal temperatures into full boil. She squeezed her legs together, trying not to gently rub herself against the metal seat to ease some of the erotic tension that had her wound tight.
On top of the fact that they were gorgeous, the two men seemed fun enough, down to earth. She drove a lot of VIP people around the city. Many of them simply ignored her for the night, except to give her instructions, and that was perfectly fine. She was being paid to make their time in the New York City nightlife as easy and enjoyable as possible. It was her job, and she was good at it. But these two had interacted with her with such ease, so offhand it was as if the three of them had known each other for years. And it didn’t even matter that they were jawdroppingly sexy. All the worry she’d felt earlier while searching for the gym in this rough part of town had vanished. That didn’t mean she was resting easy though. She was still so turned on it was as if her blood was ten degrees hotter than normal and she was ready to do anything to satiate that lust-heavy ache in her core.
She glanced at the locker room door again. It was easy to imagine the two of them in there. In the showers. All that water spraying down on their hard bodies…
A different man came out of the locker room and glanced around the gym. He met her gaze and smiled and started toward her. He was dressed in sweats and a muscle shirt, brown hair, athletic build, handsome, but nothing to compare to those two male gods she’d just watched battle it out. She stood when he approached her and smoothed her uniform, waiting for him to speak since he was clearly coming over to tell her something.
“Brian and Dominic wanted me to give you a message,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
“Yes?” She felt her heart rate speed up. What was it with her tonight? Why was her body on such a sexual hair-trigger?
“They want to head out the back door to avoid any press or whatever.”
She hesitated. She certainly hadn’t noticed any press or paparazzi hanging around on that rundown street. “The back door is through the locker room?”
“Yeah. Brian had an exit made. Weird, right? You know, the lifestyle of the filthy famous and absolutely rich. He doesn’t want any paparazzi filming him with his hair sweaty.” He shrugged. “And since he owns this gym…”
Ruth nodded. She had plenty of experience avoiding paparazzi. In fact, dispatch would often give her a heads up on routes or entrances to avoid so the client didn’t have to deal with the photographers or media hounds. And Brian Barrington owning this gym certainly explained why she was picking him up here.
“Okay,” she said carefully. “Thank you for letting me know. I’ll bring the car around…”
He grinned wider. “Brian wants you to go on through into the locker room. No one else is in there, so you don’t have to worry. He has his own private changing area in the back. Exclusive, you know.” The man winked. “But like I said, don’t worry, they’re both decent. He said to head on back because it would be easier that way.”
Ruth hesitated. But VIP clients often asked her to do all kinds of things. Once she’d had to haul a horse costume up an elevator in the Bryant Park Hotel for a client—and to this day, she wasn’t sure about the reason why. So she headed to the locker room door…and paused again with her hand resting on the knob. She glanced over her shoulder uncertainly. The man who’d given her the message wasn’t even looking her way anymore. He was working out on one of the heavy bags with his back to her. That convinced her. If he was playing a prank or yanking her chain, he’d be watching for her reaction.
She should wait, at least until Mr. Barrington appeared to give her the instructions himself. And yet…what if she accidentally caught a glimpse of either of those two men naked? The possibility sent a lightning bolt thrill through her. Well, they had asked to head back there. And she needed to know if they wanted her to bring the limo around to the rear of the gym. There had to be an alley access if he had a back door out there, right?
Squaring her shoulders, she turned the knob and entered the men’s locker room. Her heart was beating so hard that she thought it might just shake her body apart. Steady, girl. She forced herself to take slow breaths. The locker room smelled of cement and sweat. The air inside was humid. There was an Lshaped, tiled entry to give privacy to the rest of the locker room. She poked her head around the corner, her mouth suddenly dry.
The inner area was filled with blue lockers and long wooden benches. There were duffel bags shoved into some of the lockers. Stray shirts. Some random weights. Trash cans. Deodorant. But no sign of her client or his sparring partner. She tentatively called out, “Mr. Barrington?”
There was no answer.
She swallowed and walked even farther into the gym. As she rounded the end of the lockers, she spotted the door she thought might be the one the man had spoken about. It was a swinging door, but had the word PRIVATE on the outside. Ruth hesitated again, listening for any sounds from behind the door and failing to hear anything. Maybe she was all worked up about nothing. After all, the guy they’d sent had told her to head inside and meet them here. She settled her hand on the smooth wooden door and gently pushed. The door swung open and she leaned inside the room.
The first thing she heard was a deep groan of pleasure. The sound was so intense it seemed to echo in her marrow and caused her slick pussy to flood
with new wetness. She licked her lips and turned toward the erotic sound, only able the think about how she should’ve waited and listened for ten more seconds before barging in and now…
And now she sucked in breath.
Mr. Brian Barrington was completely naked. He sat on the wooden bench in what looked to be a steam room or sauna area at the far end of the room, leaning his muscular frame against the white tile walls, his head thrown back, and his eyes closed in pleasure. Kneeling in front of him, settled between his legs, was a very naked Dominic, turned slightly in her direction so she could see his broad back, perfect, tight ass, and part of the side profile of his face.
In addition to both men being stunningly beautiful without clothes, Dominic had his perfect mouth wrapped around Brian’s long, hard cock. As she watched, unable to breathe, he slowly worked his mouth up and down Brian’s shaft. His hand gripped Brian’s cock at the base as he bobbed down on him. Every so often, at the top of his stroke, he would pause and flick his tongue across the cockhead and the slit before taking the shaft back into his mouth and deep into his throat.
She was so staggered she almost fell over. Had they expected her to find them like this? No, because clearly they were completely lost in each other, given over to their pleasure, and in another world entirely. The man who’d told her to come inside might have played a trick on her, but if she kept quiet and backed
away slowly, they never needed to know she had seen them.
Except her legs wouldn’t move.
Except she was so turned on that her panties were soaking wet with her own juices.
Except this was one of the most erotic things she had ever witnessed in her entire life.
Her hand moved of its own accord and slipped open the top button of her slacks, edging the zipper down. Her naughty hand slipped past her waistband, pushing aside her panties, and her fingers dipped into her slick folds. She shuddered at the incredible sensations. She traced her fingers up her pussy lips and circled her clit and then slid them lower again to find her wet warmth. Her knees were weak, and she leaned against the door frame, barely daring to breathe as her body came alive with pleasure and lust.
Neither man noticed her. They were too lost in their lovemaking. She locked her eyes on Dominic’s mouth as it stretched around Brian’s cock, as he left the man’s shaft glistening wet with his saliva, and she timed her own strokes to match the movement of Dominic’s head.
She had no idea how much time passed. Dominic began to work his mouth faster and faster on Brian’s cock. Her fingers stroked faster and faster to keep time with him as her pleasure built, and as that orgasm wave crested. Brian Barrington was groaning with one hand buried in Dominic’s dark hair,
clenched there, and his head back, eyes closed, mouth open. Moaning softly.
She came first. Her orgasm ambushed her. Exploded through her. Her knees buckled, and she sagged against the door and had to catch herself from falling into the room. A second later, Brian cried out and thrashed as he came. Dominic kept working his mouth on him, swallowing down the other man’s hot cum as Brian lost himself in his orgasm. A helpless moan escaped her lips at the sight of them at the most intimate of moments.
Her client, billionaire Brian Barrington, opened his eyes and looked right at her.
She jerked backward, dodging away from the door, which swung shut on her. She was stumbling back into the main locker room area when she realized she still had her hand in her pants. She yanked her hand free but nearly fell over when her pants slid down her thighs. The scent of her own arousal filled her nose. Her fingers were soaked. Her panties were soaked. And here she was staggering through the men’s locker room while trying to yank her black slacks back into place.
Could anything else go wrong?
Ruth staggered her way to the door just as she succeeded in getting her pants back up and buttoned.
Behind her, she thought she heard men’s voices talking low, but she didn’t stop. She shoved her way back out into the main gym, breathing hard, feeling like she’d just escaped the lion’s den.
That asshole who had tricked her into going inside the locker room was watching her, as were a handful of other guys. They were all doubled over with laughter. She felt her face go bright red. She knew how badly and easily she blushed, and besides that, her skin felt about a thousand degrees hot. She kept her chin high and walked slowly, with all the dignity she could muster, to the front door and left. The door swooshed shut on the men’s laughter, but she didn’t give them the satisfaction of either curses or her attention.
Her hands were shaking badly though, and her thigh muscles were trembling, as if she’d run eight miles on her treadmill. Her stomach clenched and twisted with dread inside her. She managed to unlock the limo and practically fell into the driver’s seat. Oh god, she was in so much trouble.
She was a peeping tom. She had been caught spying on a client in flagrante delicto. She might as well drive the limo into the harbor now, because it was all over.
If Brian if Mr. Barrington complained, she would lose her job for sure. And she desperately needed this job just to pay the rent on her crappy little apartment in the Bronx, much less to save up for NYU tuition. If she lost this job, she might as well kiss her dreams of a degree at NYU and a future in business good-bye forever. All because she had been too horny to keep herself from intruding. All because she’d turned out to be some pervert voyeur. What was wrong with her?
Ah, but those two men had been beautiful together. First, competing against each other in that raw struggle, that no-holds-barred combat. Then, loving one another, touching each other, the unabashed eroticism of a fellatio, with one man kneeling before the other as if offering a gift of pleasure…
She shook her head and slammed her hand down on the steering wheel.
She needed to get a grip. Right. Now.
There had to be some way out of this… Right?
CHAPTER TWO
Brian finished lathering himself up with soap and took a moment to let the hot water spray cover him. He stood on his tiptoes and stretched, working out some of the stiffness in his muscles. The hot water helped. Dominic’s mouth on his cock and teasing an orgasm from him had also helped fill him with a warm, sated feeling.
He smiled, keeping his eyes closed as the water sprayed his face, vividly remembering the sight he’d been treated to when he’d opened his eyes only a few minutes ago. That beautiful, curvy chauffer looking so crisp and classy in her uniform had captured his
attention from the moment he’d seen her ringside. At that moan she’d made… Damn. Her moan, so sexy, so full of bliss, had finally made him open his eyes to watch the pleasure of her orgasm still reflected in her blue eyes. He’d known all along that she was there, of course. He was a werewolf. He’d scented her right away, especially the heady musk of her arousal. He’d heard her rapid breathing, the fast beat of her heart. He’d known. His best friend and lover Dominic Carrara had known she was there as well. They hadn’t cared. He was a bit of an exhibitionist, admittedly. But there was nothing wrong with the act of love. He was never ashamed. If what that pretty limo driver had seen had turned her on, then more power to her. She was more than welcome to share in their pleasure.
The world needed more pleasure.
“You fall asleep in there?” Dominic said from beside him and slapped him on the ass. His hand made a meaty smack when it impacted his butt cheek.
“Careful,” Brian said, wiping the water out of his face and smirking. “You might break your hand on my glutes of steel.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Meanwhile, you should hurry the hell up. Our ride is waiting.”
He nodded and turned off the water. His feet slapped on the cold tile as he made his way back to his locker and dried off. Dominic wore a towel around his waist and leaned against the lockers with his arms folded across his chest, his muscles bulging. He looked Brian up and down and grinned.
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Civilization in the United States: An inquiry by thirty Americans
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Civilization in the United States: An inquiry by thirty Americans
Editor: Harold Stearns
Release date: June 23, 2022 [eBook #68385]
Most recently updated: October 14, 2022
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922
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PREFACE
T book has been an adventure in intellectual co-operation. If it were a mere collection of haphazard essays, gathered together to make the conventional symposium, it would have only slight significance. But it has been the deliberate and organized outgrowth of the common efforts of like-minded men and women to see the problem of modern American civilization as a whole, and to illuminate by careful criticism the special aspect of that civilization with which the individual is most familiar. Personal contact has served to correct overemphasis, and slow and careful selection of the members of a group which has now grown to some thirty-odd has given to this work a unity of approach and attack which it otherwise could not possibly have had.
The nucleus of this group was brought together by common work, common interests, and more or less common assumptions. As long ago as the autumn of last year Mr. Van Wyck Brooks and I discussed the possibility of several of us, who were engaged in much the same kind of critical examination of our civilization, coming together to exchange ideas, to clarify our individual fields, and to discover wherein they coincided, overlapped, or diverged. The original desire was the modest one of making it possible for us to avoid working at cross-purposes. I suggested that we meet at my home, which a few of us did, and since that time until the delivery of this volume to the publishers we have met every fortnight. Even at our first meeting we discovered our points of view to have so much in common that our desire for informal and pleasant discussions became the more serious wish to contribute a definite and tangible piece of work towards the advance of intellectual life in America. We wished to speak the truth about American civilization as we saw it, in order to do our share in making a real civilization possible—for I think with all of us there was a common assumption that a field
cannot be ploughed until it has first been cleared of rocks, and that constructive criticism can hardly exist until there is something on which to construct.
Naturally the first problem to arise was the one of ways and means. If the spirit and temper of the French encyclopædists of the 18th century appealed strongly to us, certainly their method for the advancement of knowledge was inapplicable in our own century. The cultural phenomena we proposed to survey were too complicated and extensive; besides, we wished to make a definite contribution of some kind or another while, so to speak, there was yet time. For the cohesiveness of the group, the good-humoured tolerance and cheerful sacrifice of time, were to some extent the consequence of the intellectual collapse that came with the hysterical post-armistice days, when it was easier than in normal times to get together intelligent and civilized men and women in common defence against the common enemy of reaction. We wished to take advantage of this strategic situation for the furtherance of our co-operative enterprise, and decided, finally, that the simplest plan would be the best. Each of us was to write a single short essay on the special topic we knew most thoroughly; we were to continue our meetings in order to keep informed of the progress of our work and to see that there was no duplication; we were to extend the list of subjects to whatever legitimately bore upon our cultural life and to select the authors by common agreement; we were to keep in touch with each other so that the volume might have that inner consistency which could come only from direct acquaintance with what each of us was planning.
There were a few other simple rules which we laid down in the beginning. Desirous of avoiding merely irrelevant criticism and of keeping attention upon our actual treatment of our subjects rather than upon our personalities, we provided that all contributors to the volume must be American citizens. For the same reason, we likewise provided that in the list there should be no professional propagandists—except as one is a propagandist for one’s own ideas —no martyrs, and no one who was merely disgruntled. Since our object was to give an uncompromising, and consequently at some points necessarily harsh, analysis, we desired the tone to be good-
natured and the temper urbane. At first, these larger points of policy were decided by common agreement or, on occasion, by majority vote, and to the end I settled no important question without consultation with as many members of the group as I could approach within the limited time we had agreed to have this volume in the hands of the publisher. But with the extension of the scope of the book, the negotiations with the publisher, and the mass of complexities and details that are inevitable in so difficult an enterprise, the authority to decide specific questions and the usual editorial powers were delegated as a matter of convenience to me, aided by a committee of three. Hence I was in a position constantly to see the book as a whole, and to make suggestions for differentiation, where repetition appeared to impend, or for unity, where the divergence was sharp enough to be construed by some as contradictory. In view both of the fact that every contributor has full liberty of opinion and that the personalities and points of view finding expression in the essays are all highly individualistic, the underlying unity which binds the volume together is really surprising. It may seem strange that a volume on civilization in the United States does not include a specific article on religion, and the omission is worth a paragraph of explanation. Outside the bigger cities, certainly no one can understand the social structure of contemporary American life without careful study of the organization and power of the church. Speaking generally, we are a church-going people, and at least on the surface the multiplicity of sects and creeds, the sheer immensity of the physical apparatus by which the religious impulse is articulated, would seem to prove that our interest in and emotional craving for religious experience are enormous. But the omission has not been due to any superciliousness on our part towards the subject itself; on the contrary, I suppose I have put more thought and energy into this essay, which has not been written, than into any other problem connected with the book. The bald truth is, it has been next to impossible to get any one to write on the subject; most of the people I approached shied off—it was really difficult to get them to talk about it at all. Almost unanimously, when I did manage to procure an opinion from them, they said that real religious feeling in America had disappeared, that the church had become a
purely social and political institution, that the country is in the grip of what Anatole France has aptly called Protestant clericalism, and that, finally, they weren’t interested in the topic. The accuracy of these observations (except the last) I cannot, of course, vouch for, but it is rather striking that they were identical. In any event, the topic as a topic has had to be omitted; but it is not neglected, for in several essays directly—in particular, “Philosophy” and “Nerves”—and in many by implication the subject is discussed. At one time Mr. James Harvey Robinson consented to write the article—and it would have been an illuminating piece of work—but unfortunately ill health and the pressure of official duties made the task impossible for him within the most generous time limit that might be arranged.
I have spoken already of the unity which underlies the volume. When I remember all these essays, and try to summon together the chief themes that run through them, either by explicit statement or as a kind of underlying rhythm to all, in order to justify the strong impression of unity, I find three major contentions that may be said to be basic—contentions all the more significant inasmuch as they were unpremeditated and were arrived at, as it were, by accident rather than design. They are:
First, That in almost every branch of American life there is a sharp dichotomy between preaching and practice; we let not our right hand know what our left hand doeth. Curiously enough, no one regards this, and in fact no one consciously feels this as hypocrisy— there are certain abstractions and dogmas which are sacred to us, and if we fall short of these external standards in our private life, that is no reason for submitting them to a fresh examination; rather are we to worship them the more vociferously to show our sense of sin. Regardless, then, of the theoretical excellence or stupidity of these standards, in actual practice the moral code resolves itself into the one cardinal heresy of being found out, with the chief sanction enforcing it, the fear of what people will say.
Second, That whatever else American civilization is, it is not Anglo-Saxon, and that we shall never achieve any genuine nationalistic self-consciousness as long as we allow certain financial and social minorities to persuade us that we are still an English
Colony Until we begin seriously to appraise and warmly to cherish the heterogeneous elements which make up our life, and to see the common element running through all of them, we shall make not even a step towards true unity; we shall remain, in Roosevelt’s classconscious and bitter but illuminating phrase, a polyglot boardinghouse. It is curious how a book on American civilization actually leads one back to the conviction that we are, after all, Americans.
Third, That the most moving and pathetic fact in the social life of America to-day is emotional and æsthetic starvation, of which the mania for petty regulation, the driving, regimentating, and drilling, the secret society and its grotesque regalia, the firm grasp on the unessentials of material organization of our pleasures and gaieties are all eloquent stigmata. We have no heritages or traditions to which to cling except those that have already withered in our hands and turned to dust. One can feel the whole industrial and economic situation as so maladjusted to the primary and simple needs of men and women that the futility of a rationalistic attack on these infantilisms of compensation becomes obvious. There must be an entirely new deal of the cards in one sense; we must change our hearts. For only so, unless through the humbling of calamity or scourge, can true art and true religion and true personality, with their native warmth and caprice and gaiety, grow up in America to exorcise these painted devils we have created to frighten us away from the acknowledgment of our spiritual poverty.
If these main contentions seem severe or pessimistic, the answer must be: we do not write to please; we strive only to understand and to state as clearly as we can. For American civilization is still in the embryonic stage, with rich and with disastrous possibilities of growth. But the first step in growing up is self-conscious and deliberately critical examination of ourselves, without sentimentality and without fear. We cannot even devise, much less control, the principles which are to guide our future development until that preliminary understanding has come home with telling force to the consciousness of the ordinary man. To this self-understanding, this book is, in our belief, a genuine and valuable contribution. We may not always have been wise; we have tried
always to be honest. And if our attempt will help to embolden others to an equally frank expression of their beliefs, perhaps in time wisdom will come.
I am glad that, however serious, we are never solemn in these essays. Often, in fact, we are quite gay, and it would be a humourless person indeed who could not read many of them, even when the thrusts are at himself, with that laughter which Rabelais tells us is proper to the man. For whatever our defects, we Americans, we have one virtue and perhaps a saving virtue—we still know how to laugh at ourselves.
H. E. S.
New York City, July Fourth, 1921.
THE CITY
AROUND us, in the city, each epoch in America has been concentrated and crystallized. In building our cities we deflowered a wilderness. To-day more than one-half the population of the United States lives in an environment which the jerry-builder, the real estate speculator, the paving contractor, and the industrialist have largely created. Have we begotten a civilization? That is a question which a survey of the American city will help us to answer.
If American history is viewed from the standpoint of the student of cities, it divides itself roughly into three parts. The first was a provincial period, which lasted from the foundation of Manhattan down to the opening up of ocean commerce after the War of 1812. This was followed by a commercial period, which began with the cutting of canals and ended with the extension of the railroad system across the continent, and an industrial period, that gathered force on the Atlantic seaboard in the ’thirties and is still the dominant economic phase of our civilization. These periods must not be looked upon as strictly successive or exclusive: the names merely express in a crude way the main aspect of each era. It is possible to telescope the story of America’s colonial expansion and industrial exploitation by following the material growth and the cultural impoverishment of the American city during its transformations.
The momentum of the provincial city lasted well on to the Civil War. The economic basis of this period was agriculture and petty trade: its civic expression was, typically, the small New England town, with a central common around which were grouped a church—appropriately called a meeting-house—a school, and perhaps a town hall. Its main street would be lined with tall suave elms and bordered by reticent white houses of much the same design as those that dotted the countryside. In the growing towns of the seaboard this culture was overthrown, before it had a chance to express itself adequately in either institutions or men, and it bloomed rather tardily, therefore, in the little
towns of Concord and Cambridge, between 1820 and the Civil War. We know it to-day through a largely anonymous architecture, and through a literature created by the school of writers that bears the name of the chief city. Unfortunately for the further development of what we might call the Concord culture, the agricultural basis of this civilization shifted to the wheat-growing West; and therewith channels of trade were diverted from Boston to ports that tapped a richer, more imperial hinterland. What remained of the provincial town in New England was a mummy-case.
The civilization of the New England town spent itself in the settlement of the Ohio Valley and the great tracts beyond. None of the new centres had, qua provincial towns, any fresh contribution to make. It had taken the culture of New England more than three centuries before it had borne its Concord fruit, and the story of the Western movement is somehow summed up in the legend of Johnny Appleseed, who planted dry apple seeds, instead of slips from the living tree, and hedged the roads he travelled with wild apples, harsh and puny and inedible. Cincinnati and Pittsburgh jumped from a frustrate provincialism into the midst of the machine era; and so for a long time they remained destitute of the institutions that are necessary to carry on the processes of civilization.
West of the Alleghanies, the common, with its church and school, was not destined to dominate the urban landscape: the railroad station and the commercial hotel had come to take their place. This was indeed the universal mark of the new industrialism, as obvious in 19thcentury Oxford as in Hoboken. The pioneer American city, however, had none of the cultural institutions that had been accumulated in Europe during the great outbursts of the Middle Age and the Renaissance, and as a result its destitution was naked and apparent. It is true that every town which was developed mainly during the 19th century—Manchester as well as Milwaukee—suffered from the absence of civic institutes. The peculiarity of the New World was that the facilities for borrowing from the older centres were considerably more limited. London could export Madox Brown to Manchester to do the murals in the Town Hall: New York had still to create its schools of art before it had any Madox Browns that could be exported.
With the beginning of the 19th century, market centres which had at first tapped only their immediate region began to reach further back into the hinterland, and to stretch outward, not merely for freight but for immigrants, across the ocean. The silly game of counting heads became the fashion, and in the literature of the ’thirties one discovers that every commercial city had its statistical lawyer who was bold enough to predict its leadership in “population and wealth” before the century was out. The chief boast of the American city was its prospective size.
Now the New England town was a genuine community. In so far as the New England community had a common social and political and religious life, the town expressed it. The city which was representative of the second period, on the other hand, was in origin a trading fort, and the supreme occupation of its founders was with the goods life rather than the good life. New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and St. Louis have this common basis. They were not composed of corporate organizations on the march, as it were, towards a New Jerusalem: they were simply a rabble of individuals “on the make.” With such a tradition to give it momentum it is small wonder that the adventurousness of the commercial period was exhausted on the fortuities and temptations of trade. A state of intellectual anæsthesia prevailed. One has only to compare Cist’s Cincinnati Miscellany with Emerson’s Dial to see at what a low level the towns of the Middle West were carrying on.
Since there was neither fellowship nor social stability nor security in the scramble of the inchoate commercial city, it remained for a particular institution to devote itself to the gospel of the “glad hand.” Thus an historian of Pittsburgh records the foundation of a Masonic lodge as early as 1785, shortly after the building of the church, and in every American city, small or big, Odd Fellows, Mystic Shriners, Woodmen, Elks, Knights of Columbus, and other orders without number in the course of time found for themselves a prominent place. (Their feminine counterparts were the D.A.R. and the W.C.T.U., their juniors, the college Greek letter fraternities.) Whereas one will search American cities in vain for the labour temples one discovers to-day in Europe from Belgium to Italy, one finds that the fraternal lodge generally occupies a site of dignity and importance. There were doubtless many excellent reasons for the strange proliferation of professional fraternity in the American city, but perhaps the strongest
reason was the absence of any other kind of fraternity. The social centre and the community centre, which in a singularly hard and consciously beatific way have sought to organize fellowship and mutual aid on different terms, are products of the last decade.
Perhaps the only other civic institution of importance that the commercial towns fostered was the lyceum: forerunner of the elephantine Chautauqua. The lyceum lecture, however, was taken as a soporific rather than a stimulant, and if it aroused any appetite for art, philosophy, or science there was nothing in the environment of the commercial city that could satisfy it. Just as church-going became a substitute for religion, so automatic lyceum attendance became a substitute for thought. These were the prayer wheels of a preoccupied commercialism.
The contrast between the provincial and the commercial city in America was well summed up in their plans. Consider the differences between Cambridge and New York. Up to the beginning of the 19th century New York, at the tip of Manhattan Island, had the same diffident, rambling town plan that characterizes Cambridge. In this old type of city layout the streets lead nowhere, except to the buildings that give onto them: outside the main roads the provisions for traffic are so inadequate as to seem almost a provision against traffic. Quiet streets, a pleasant aspect, ample domestic facilities were the desiderata of the provincial town; traffic, realty speculation, and expansion were those of the newer era. This became evident as soon as the Empire City started to realize its “manifest destiny” by laying down, in 1808, a plan for its future development.
New York’s city plan commissioners went about their work with a scarcely concealed purpose to increase traffic and raise realty values. The amenities of city life counted for little in their scheme of things: debating “whether they should confine themselves to rectilinear and rectangular streets, or whether they should adopt some of those supposed improvements, by circles, ovals, and stars,” they decided, on grounds of economy, against any departure from the gridiron design. It was under the same stimulus that these admirable philistines had the complacency to plan the city’s development up to 155th Street. Here we are concerned, however, with the results of the rectangular plan
