U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [255]
A HOOSIER QUIXOTE
Hibben, Paxton, journalist, Indiandpolis, Ind., Dec. 5, 1880, s. Thomas Entrekin and Jeannie Merrill (Ketcham) H.; A.B. Princeton 1903, A.M. Harvard 1904
Thinking men were worried in the middle west in
the years Hibben was growing up there, something was wrong with the American Republic, was it the Gold
Standard, Privilege, The Interests, Wal Street?
The rich were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer, smal farmers were being squeezed out, work-ingmen were working twelve hours a day for a bare living; profits were for the rich, the law was for the rich, the cops were for the rich; was it for that the pilgrims had bent their heads
-178-into the storm, fil ed the fleeing Indians with slugs out of their blunderbusses and worked the stony farms of New England;
was it for that the pioneers had crossed the Appa-lachians, long squirrelauns slung across lean backs,
a fistful of corn in the pocket of the buckskin vest, was it for that the Indiana farmboys had turned out to shoot down Johnny Reb and make the black man
free?
Paxton Hibben was a smal cantankerous boy, son
of one of the best families (the Hibbens had a whole-sale dry goods business in Indianapolis); in school the rich kids didn't like him because he went around with the poor kids and the poor kids didn't like him because his folks were rich,
but he was the star pupil of Short Ridge High
ran the paper,
won al the debates.
At Princeton he was the young col egian, editor
of the Tiger, drank a lot, didn't deny that he ran around after girls, made a bril iant scholastic record and was a thorn in the flesh of the godly. The natural course for a bright young man of his class and position was to study law, but Hibben wanted travel and romance á la Byron and de Musset,
wel groomed adventures in foreign lands,
so
as his family was one of the best in Indiana and
friendly with Senator Beveridge he was gotten a post in the diplomatic service: 3rd see and 2nd see American Embassy St. Peters- burg and Mexico City 1905-6, see Legation and Chargé
d'affaires, Bogotá, Colombia, 1908-9; Then Hague and
-179- Luxemburg 1909-12, Santiago de Chile 1912 (re- tired). Pushkin for de Musset; St. Petersburg was a young
dude's romance:
goldencrusted spires under a platinum sky,
the icegrey Neva flowing swift and deep under
bridges that jingled with sleighbel s;
riding home from the Islands with the Grand
Duke's mistress, the most beautiful most amorous singer of Neapolitan streetsongs; staking a pile of rubles in a tal room glittering
with chandeliers, monocles, diamonds dripped on white shoulders;
white snow, white tableclothes, white sheets,
Kakhetian wine, vodka fresh as newmown hay,
Astrakhan caviar, sturgeon, Finnish salmon, Lapland ptarmigan, and the most beautiful women in the world; but it was 1905, Hibben left the embassy one night and saw a flare of red against the trampled snow of the Nevsky
and red flags,
blood frozen in the ruts, blood trickling down the
cartracks;
he saw the machineguns on the balconies of the
Winter Palace, the cossacks charging the unarmed
crowds that wanted peace and food and a little freedom, heard the throaty roar of the Russian Marseil aise; some stubborn streak in the old American blood
flared in revolt, he walked the streets al night with the revolutionists, got in wrong at the embassy
and was transferred to Mexico City where there
was no revolution yet, only peons and priests and the stil ness of the great volcanos. The Cientificos made him a member of the jockey
Club
-180-where in the magnificent building of blue Puebla tile he lost al his money at roulette and helped them drink up the last few cases of champagne left over from the plunder of Cortez.
Chargé d'Affaires in Colombia (he never forgot
he owed his career to Beveridge; he believed passion-ately in Roosevelt, and righteousness and reform, and the antitrust laws, the Big Stick that was going to scare away the grafters and malefactors of great wealth and get the common man his due) he helped wangle the
revolution that stole the