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    The Decadent Being the Gospel of Inaction
    The Decadent Being the Gospel of Inaction
    The Decadent Being the Gospel of Inaction
    Ebook65 pages45 minutes

    The Decadent Being the Gospel of Inaction

    By Ralph Adams Cram

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    The Decadent Being the Gospel of Inaction
    Author

    Ralph Adams Cram

    Ralph Adams Cram (1863--1942) was a master builder and architect who is known for his dozens of Gothic revival churches, college outbuildings, and public civic houses as well as making his mark as a pioneer of the Art Deco movement with the Federal Building in Boston, MA. Born to a Unitarian minister, he lived most of his youth as an agnostic until he had a dramatic conversion experience during a mass in Rome on Christmas Eve, 1887 and thereafter became a devout Catholic. He also had a penchant for the magical arts, and had a somewhat secret life as a writer of occult fiction, and his stories reflect his attention to architectural details.

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      Book preview

      The Decadent Being the Gospel of Inaction - Ralph Adams Cram

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Decadent, by Ralph Adams Cram

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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

      Title: The Decadent

             Being the Gospel of Inaction

      Author: Ralph Adams Cram

      Release Date: November 26, 2012 [EBook #41490]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DECADENT ***

      Produced by Demian Katz and the Online Distributed

      Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Images courtesy

      of the Digital Library@Villanova University

      (http://digital.library.villanova.edu/))

      THE DECADENT: BEING THE GOSPEL OF INACTION: WHEREIN ARE SET FORTH IN ROMANCE FORM CERTAIN REFLECTIONS TOUCHING THE CURIOUS CHARACTERISTICS OF THESE ULTIMATE YEARS, AND THE DIVERS CAUSES THEREOF.

      PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR

      THE AUTHOR MDCCCXCIII

      TIBI · MEO · CARO · B · G · G ·

      CVIVS · LABORIBVS · PRETIVM · NON · PROPRIVM · EI · FIEBAT·

      OPERA · TVA · EXARCHO · FRATRIBVSQVE ·

      EIVS · ORDINIS · QVAE · SVMNIA · SIBI · FINGIT ·

      DENIQVE · OMNIBVS · DELECTIS · PER · ORBEM · TERRARVM ·

      HVNC · LIBRVM · GRATE · DICO ·

      THE DECADENT.

      CONTENTS

      I.

      II.

      III.

      Transcriber's Notes.

      I.

      HE 3.20 train from Boston slowed up as it drew into a way station, and Malcolm McCann, grim and sullen from his weary ride in the dirt and cinders, the coal-smoke and the fœtid air, the fretting babies and hot, worrying men, that characterise a railway journey in August, hurried out with a grunt of relief.

      It was not a pretty station where he found himself, and he glared ill-naturedly around with restless, aggressive eyes. The brick walls, the cheaply grained doors bearing their tarnished legends, Gents, Ladies, Refreshment Saloon, the rough raftered roof over the tracks,—everything was black and grimy with years of smoke, belching even now from the big locomotive, and gathering like an ill-conditioned thunder-cloud over the mob of scurrying, pushing men and women, a mob that swelled and scattered constantly in fretful confusion. A hustling business-man with a fat, pink face and long sandy whiskers, his silk hat cocked on one side in grotesque assumption of jauntiness, tripped over the clay-covered pick of a surly labourer, red of face and sweaty, blue of overalls and mud-coloured of shirt, and as he stumbled over the annoying implement scowled coarsely, and swore, with his cigar between his teeth.

      Ragged and grimy children, hardly old enough to walk, sprawled and scrambled on the dirty platform, and as McCann hurried by, a five-year old cursed shrilly a still more youthful little tough, who answered in kind. Vulgar theatre-bills in rank reds and yellows flaunted on the cindery walls; discarded newspapers, banana-skins, cigar-butts, and saliva were ground together vilely under foot by the scuffling mob. Dirt, meanness, ugliness everywhere,—in the unhappy people no less than in their surroundings.

      McCann strode scornfully to the rear of the station and looked vaguely around to see if Aurelian had sent any kind of a conveyance to take him to his home,—of the location of which, save that it was to be reached from this particular station, McCann knew nothing. The prospect was not much better outside than in. The air was thick with fine white dust, and dazzling with fierce sunlight. On one side was a wall of brick tenements, with liquor saloons, cheap groceries, and a fish-market below, all adding their mite to the virulence of the dead, stifling air. Above, men in dirty shirt-sleeves lolled out of the grimy windows, where long festoons of half-washed clothes drooped sordidly. On the other side, gangs of workmen were hurriedly repairing the ravages of a

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