GLR September-October 2023

participants in the drama are unnamed, except by a descriptive phrase. One, referred to only as “ the traveler for the hat firm in Ogallala, Neb., ” begins to chat up “ the youthful stranger with the blonde and innocent hair. ” They are observed by a third man, who is leaning against the bar, ruffling his whiskers thoughtfully. The traveling salesman suggests to the blond youth that they share a glass of mineral water and then go to a concert together. Before the youth can respond, the bearded man inter venes, challenging the salesman to a game of dice. The chal lenge is abrupt and unprovoked, and it seems almost as if the two men are gambling for the right to carry off the young man. After he loses fifty dollars to the salesman, the man with the ruffled beard beats a hasty retreat. Having vanquished his rival, the traveling salesman makes his move, offering to split his winnings — a substantial sum — with the youthful stranger he has just met. The young man de clines to accept the money. The salesman insists. “ You take half and I ’ ll take half, and we ’ ll go blow it. You ’ re as welcome as sunrise, my dear fellow. Take it along — it ’ s nothing. What are youkickin ’ about? ” “‘ No, ’ said the youthful stranger with the blonde and inno cent hair, to the traveler for the hat firm in Ogallala, Neb., ‘ Iguess I ’ ll stroll back up-town. I want to write a letter to my mother. ’” Crane, who gained a reputation as a superbly original prose writer, an author who employs startlingly odd images and un expected phrases, concludes his report on the bathhouses of Hot Springs with perhaps the most peculiar sentence he ever wrote: “ In the back room of the saloon, the man with the ruffled beard was silently picking hieroglyphics out of his whiskers. ”

Whatever can that mean? What coded signals had he been sending to the youth that had been intercepted and repulsed by the traveling salesman? What odd ciphers had blown back in the thwarted man ’ s face? The narrator never says so, but it is likely that from his place at the end of the bar, Crane sensed he had witnessed one of the arcane rituals of a shadowy clan. He intuited that unwanted propositions had been made — and re jected — in a cryptic language of words and glances that he him self was unable to decipher with any degree of certainty. At their dinner at the New York hotel, the Painted Angel of Union Square may have shared many secrets about the hermetic world of homosexuals, but he had evidently failed to pass along the necessary Rosetta Stone. We might have a clearer understanding of Stephen Crane ’ s meaning if the original manuscript for “ Seen at Hot Springs ” had survived — the article as Crane wrote it. The version pub lished by the Bacheller syndicate begins with that odd observa tion (above) ending with the words: “ he can conclude that he is a natural phenomenon and doomed to the curiosity of all peo ples. ” Surely “ unnatural ” would make more sense here, and if “ unnatural ” is what Crane actually wrote in the column he sub mitted to the newspaper, perhaps that censored “ un ” is all the Rosetta Stone we need to understand what he means. R EFERENCES Auster, Paul. Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane .Henry Holt, 2021. Crane, Stephen. Crane: Prose and Poetry . Library of America, 1984. Wertheim, Stanley and Paul Sorrentino. The Crane Log: A Documen tary Life of Stephen Crane, 1871-1900 . G. K. Hall, 1995.

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