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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mince Pie, by Christopher Darlington Morley
+
+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: Mince Pie
+
+Author: Christopher Darlington Morley
+
+Release Date: October 10, 2004 [EBook #13694]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MINCE PIE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Gene Smethers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MINCE PIE
+
+CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
+
+TO
+
+F.M. AND L.J.M.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+INSTRUCTIONS
+
+This book is intended to be read in bed. Please do not attempt to read
+it anywhere else.
+
+In order to obtain the best results for all concerned do not read a
+borrowed copy, but buy one. If the bed is a double bed, buy two.
+
+Do not lend a copy under any circumstances, but refer your friends to
+the nearest bookshop, where they may expiate their curiosity.
+
+Most of these sketches were first printed in the Philadelphia _Evening
+Public Ledger_; others appeared in _The Bookman_, the Boston _Evening
+Transcript_, _Life_, and _The Smart Set_. To all these publications I am
+indebted for permission to reprint.
+
+If one asks what excuse there can be for prolonging the existence of
+these trifles, my answer is that there is no excuse. But a copy on the
+bedside shelf may possibly pave the way to easy slumber. Only a mind
+"debauched by learning" (in Doctor Johnson's phrase) will scrutinize
+them too anxiously.
+
+It seems to me, on reading the proofs, that the skit entitled "Trials of
+a President Travelling Abroad" is a faint and subconscious echo of a
+passage in a favorite of my early youth, _Happy Thoughts_, by the late
+F.C. Burnand. If this acknowledgment should move anyone to read that
+delicious classic of pleasantry, the innocent plunder may be pardonable.
+
+And now a word of obeisance. I take this opportunity of thanking several
+gentle overseers and magistrates who have been too generously friendly
+to these eccentric gestures. These are Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday,
+editor of _The Bookman_ and victim of the novelette herein entitled "Owd
+Bob"; Mr. Edwin F. Edgett, literary editor of The Boston _Transcript_,
+who has often permitted me to cut outrageous capers in his hospitable
+columns; and Mr. Thomas L. Masson, of _Life_, who allows me to reprint
+several of the shorter pieces. But most of all I thank Mr. David E.
+Smiley, editor of the Philadelphia _Evening Public Ledger_, for whom
+the majority of these sketches were written, and whose patience and
+kindness have been a frequent amazement to
+
+THE AUTHOR.
+
+PHILADELPHIA _September, 1919_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                         PAGE
+
+ON FILLING AN INK-WELL                    17
+
+OLD THOUGHTS FOR CHRISTMAS                24
+
+CHRISTMAS CARDS                           31
+
+ON UNANSWERING LETTERS                    35
+
+A LETTER TO FATHER TIME                   41
+
+WHAT MEN LIVE BY                          48
+
+THE UNNATURAL NATURALIST                  54
+
+SITTING IN THE BARBER'S CHAIR             60
+
+BROWN EYES AND EQUINOXES                  64
+
+163 INNOCENT OLD MEN                      69
+
+A TRAGIC SMELL IN MARATHON                75
+
+BULLIED BY THE BIRDS                      81
+
+A MESSAGE FOR BOONVILLE                   87
+
+MAKING MARATHON SAFE FOR THE URCHIN       92
+
+THE SMELL OF SMELLS                       98
+
+A JAPANESE BACHELOR                      102
+
+TWO DAYS WE CELEBRATE                    117
+
+THE URCHIN AT THE ZOO                    132
+
+FELLOW CRAFTSMEN                         139
+
+THE KEY RING                             144
+
+"OWD BOB"                                150
+
+THE APPLE THAT NO ONE ATE                167
+
+AS TO RUMORS                             174
+
+OUR MOTHERS                              181
+
+GREETING TO AMERICAN ANGLERS             186
+
+MRS. IZAAK WALTON WRITES A
+  LETTER TO HER MOTHER                   190
+
+TRUTH                                    193
+
+THE TRAGEDY OF WASHINGTON SQUARE         195
+
+IF MR. WILSON WERE THE WEATHER MAN       202
+
+SYNTAX FOR CYNICS                        205
+
+THE TRUTH AT LAST                        209
+
+FIXED IDEAS                              211
+
+TRIALS OF A PRESIDENT TRAVELLING ABROAD  215
+
+DIARY OF A PUBLISHER'S OFFICE BOY        217
+
+THE DOG'S COMMANDMENTS                   219
+
+THE VALUE OF CRITICISM                   221
+
+A MARRIAGE SERVICE FOR COMMUTERS         224
+
+THE SUNNY SIDE OF GRUB STREET            226
+
+BURIAL SERVICE FOR A NEWSPAPER JOKE      236
+
+ADVICE TO THOSE VISITING A BABY          238
+
+ABOU BEN WOODROW                         240
+
+MY MAGNIFICENT SYSTEM                    242
+
+LETTERS TO CYNTHIA
+
+  1 IN PRAISE OF BOOBS                   245
+
+  2 SIMPLIFICATION                       250
+
+TO AN UNKNOWN DAMSEL                     256
+
+THOUGHTS ON SETTING AN ALARM CLOCK       258
+
+SONGS IN A SHOWER BATH                   259
+
+ON DEDICATING A NEW TEAPOT               261
+
+THE UNFORGIVABLE SYNTAX                  263
+
+VISITING POETS                           264
+
+A GOOD HOME IN THE SUBURBS               270
+
+WALT WHITMAN MINIATURES                  272
+
+ON DOORS                                 292
+
+
+
+
+MINCE PIE
+
+
+ON FILLING AN INK-WELL
+
+
+Those who buy their ink in little stone jugs may prefer to do so because
+the pottle reminds them of cruiskeen lawn or ginger beer (with its
+wire-bound cork), but they miss a noble delight. Ink should be bought in
+the tall, blue glass, quart bottle (with the ingenious non-drip spout),
+and once every three weeks or so, when you fill your ink-well, it is
+your privilege to elevate the flask against the brightness of a window,
+and meditate (with a breath of sadness) on the joys and problems that
+sacred fluid holds in solution.
+
+How blue it shines toward the light! Blue as lupin or larkspur, or
+cornflower--aye, and even so blue art thou, my scriven, to think how far
+the written page falls short of the bright ecstasy of thy dream! In the
+bottle, what magnificence of unpenned stuff lies cool and liquid: what
+fluency of essay, what fonts of song. As the bottle glints, blue as a
+squill or a hyacinth, blue as the meadows of Elysium or the eyes of
+girls loved by young poets, meseems the racing pen might almost gain
+upon the thoughts that are turning the bend in the road. A jolly throng,
+those thoughts: I can see them talking and laughing together. But when
+pen reaches the road's turning, the thoughts are gone far ahead: their
+delicate figures are silhouettes against the sky.
+
+It is a sacramental matter, this filling the ink-well. Is there a
+writer, however humble, who has not poured into his writing pot, with
+the ink, some wistful hopes or prayers for what may emerge from that
+dark source? Is there not some particular reverence due the ink-well,
+some form of propitiation to humbug the powers of evil and constraint
+that devil the journalist? Satan hovers near the ink-pot. Luther solved
+the matter by throwing the well itself at the apparition. That savors to
+me too much of homeopathy. If Satan ever puts his face over my desk, I
+shall hurl a volume of Harold Bell Wright at him.
+
+But what becomes of the ink-pots of glory? The conduit from which
+Boswell drew, for Charles Dilly in The Poultry, the great river of his
+Johnson? The well (was it of blue china?) whence flowed _Dream Children:
+a Revery_? (It was written on folio ledger sheets from the East India
+House--I saw the manuscript only yesterday in a room at Daylesford,
+Pennsylvania, where much of the richest ink of the last two centuries is
+lovingly laid away.) The pot of chuckling fluid where Harry Fielding
+dipped his pen to tell the history of a certain foundling; the ink-wells
+of the Cafe de la Source on the Boul' Mich'--do they by any chance
+remember which it was that R.L.S. used? One of the happiest tremors of
+my life was when I went to that cafe and called for a bock and writing
+material, just because R.L.S. had once written letters there. And the
+ink-well Poe used at that boarding-house in Greenwich Street, New York
+(April, 1844), when he wrote to his dear Muddy (his mother-in-law) to
+describe how he and Virginia had reached a haven of square meals. That
+hopeful letter, so perfect now in pathos--
+
+    For breakfast we had excellent-flavored coffee, hot and strong--not
+    very clear and no great deal of cream--veal cutlets, elegant ham
+    and eggs and nice bread and butter. I never sat down to a more
+    plentiful or a nicer breakfast. I wish you could have seen the
+    eggs--and the great dishes of meat. Sis [his wife] is delighted, and
+    we are both in excellent spirits. She has coughed hardly any and had
+    no night sweat. She is now busy mending my pants, which I tore
+    against a nail. I went out last night and bought a skein of silk, a
+    skein of thread, two buttons, a pair of slippers, and a tin pan for
+    the stove. The fire kept in all night. We have now got four dollars
+    and a half left. To-morrow I am going to try and borrow three
+    dollars, so that I may have a fortnight to go upon. I feel in
+    excellent spirits, and haven't drank a drop--so that I hope soon to
+    get out of trouble.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Yes, let us clear the typewriter off the table: an ink-well is a sacred
+thing.
+
+Do you ever stop to think, when you see the grimy spattered desks of a
+public post-office, how many eager or puzzled human hearts have tried,
+in those dingy little ink-cups, to set themselves right with fortune?
+What blissful meetings have been appointed, what scribblings of pain and
+sorrow, out of those founts of common speech. And the ink-wells on hotel
+counters--does not the public dipping place of the Bellevue Hotel,
+Boston, win a new dignity in my memory when I know (as I learned lately)
+that Rupert Brooke registered there in the spring of 1914? I remember,
+too, a certain pleasant vibration when, signing my name one day in the
+Bellevue's book, I found Miss Agnes Repplier's autograph a little above
+on the same page.
+
+Among our younger friends, Vachel Lindsay comes to mind as one who has
+done honor to the ink-well. His _Apology for the Bottle Volcanic_ is in
+his best flow of secret smiling (save an unfortunate dilution of Riley):
+
+  Sometimes I dip my pen and find the bottle full of fire,
+  The salamanders flying forth I cannot but admire....
+  O sad deceiving ink, as bad as liquor in its way--
+  All demons of a bottle size have pranced from you to-day,
+  And seized my pen for hobby-horse as witches ride a broom,
+  And left a trail of brimstone words and blots and gobs of gloom.
+  And yet when I am extra good ... [_here I omit the transfusion
+    of Riley_]
+  My bottle spreads a rainbow mist, and from the vapor fine
+  Ten thousand troops from fairyland come riding in a line.
+
+I suppose it is the mark of a trifling mind, yet I like to hear of the
+little particulars that surrounded those whose pens struck sparks. It
+is Boswell that leads us into that habit of thought. I like to know what
+the author wore, how he sat, what the furniture of his desk and chamber,
+who cooked his meals for him, and with what appetite he approached them.
+"The mind soars by an effort to the grand and lofty" (so dipped Hazlitt
+in some favored ink-bottle)--"it is at home in the groveling, the
+disagreeable, and the little."
+
+I like to think, as I look along book shelves, that every one of these
+favorites was born out of an ink-well. I imagine the hopes and visions
+that thronged the author's mind as he filled his pot and sliced the
+quill. What various fruits have flowed from those ink-wells of the past:
+for some, comfort and honor, quiet homes and plenteousness; for others,
+bitterness and disappointment. I have seen a copy of Poe's poems,
+published in 1845 by Putnam, inscribed by the author. The volume had
+been bought for $2,500. Think what that would have meant to Poe himself.
+
+Some such thoughts as these twinkled in my head as I held up the Pierian
+bottle against the light, admired the deep blue of it, and filled my
+ink-well. And then I took up my pen, which wrote:
+
+A GRACE BEFORE WRITING
+
+On Filling an Ink-well
+
+  This is a sacrament, I think!
+    Holding the bottle toward the light,
+  As blue as lupin gleams the ink:
+    May Truth be with me as I write!
+
+  That small dark cistern may afford
+    Reunion with some vanished friend,--
+  And with this ink I have just poured
+    May none but honest words be penned!
+
+
+
+
+OLD THOUGHTS FOR CHRISTMAS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A new thought for Christmas? Who ever wanted a new thought for
+Christmas? That man should be shot who would try to brain one. It is an
+impertinence even to write about Christmas. Christmas is a matter that
+humanity has taken so deeply to heart that we will not have our festival
+meddled with by bungling hands. No efficiency expert would dare tell us
+that Christmas is inefficient; that the clockwork toys will soon be
+broken; that no one can eat a peppermint cane a yard long; that the
+curves on our chart of kindness should be ironed out so that the "peak
+load" of December would be evenly distributed through the year. No
+sourface dare tell us that we drive postmen and shopgirls into
+Bolshevism by overtaxing them with our frenzied purchasing or that it is
+absurd to send to a friend in a steam-heated apartment in a prohibition
+republic a bright little picture card of a gentleman in Georgian costume
+drinking ale by a roaring fire of logs. None in his senses, I say, would
+emit such sophistries, for Christmas is a law unto itself and is not
+conducted by card-index. Even the postmen and shopgirls, severe though
+their labors, would not have matters altered. There is none of us who does
+not enjoy hardship and bustle that contribute to the happiness of
+others.
+
+There is an efficiency of the heart that transcends and contradicts that
+of the head. Things of the spirit differ from things material in that
+the more you give the more you have. The comedian has an immensely
+better time than the audience. To modernize the adage, to give is more
+fun than to receive. Especially if you have wit enough to give to those
+who don't expect it. Surprise is the most primitive joy of humanity.
+Surprise is the first reason for a baby's laughter. And at Christmas
+time, when we are all a little childish I hope, surprise is the flavor
+of our keenest joys. We all remember the thrill with which we once
+heard, behind some closed door, the rustle and crackle of paper parcels
+being tied up. We knew that we were going to be surprised--a delicious
+refinement and luxuriant seasoning of the emotion!
+
+Christmas, then, conforms to this deeper efficiency of the heart. We are
+not methodical in kindness; we do not "fill orders" for consignments of
+affection. We let our kindness ramble and explore; old forgotten
+friendships pop up in our minds and we mail a card to Harry Hunt, of
+Minneapolis (from whom we have not heard for half a dozen years), "just
+to surprise him." A business man who shipped a carload of goods to a
+customer, just to surprise him, would soon perish of abuse. But no one
+ever refuses a shipment of kindness, because no one ever feels
+overstocked with it. It is coin of the realm, current everywhere. And we
+do not try to measure our kindnesses to the capacity of our friends.
+Friendship is not measurable in calories. How many times this year have
+you "turned" your stock of kindness?
+
+It is the gradual approach to the Great Surprise that lends full savor
+to the experience. It has been thought by some that Christmas would gain
+in excitement if no one knew when it was to be; if (keeping the festival
+within the winter months) some public functionary (say, Mr. Burleson)
+were to announce some unexpected morning, "A week from to-day will be
+Christmas!" Then what a scurrying and joyful frenzy--what a festooning
+of shops and mad purchasing of presents! But it would not be half the
+fun of the slow approach of the familiar date. All through November and
+December we watch it drawing nearer; we see the shop windows begin to
+glow with red and green and lively colors; we note the altered demeanor
+of bellboys and janitors as the Date flows quietly toward us; we pass
+through the haggard perplexity of "Only Four Days More" when we suddenly
+realize it is too late to make our shopping the display of lucid
+affectionate reasoning we had contemplated, and clutch wildly at
+grotesque tokens--and then (sweetest of all) comes the quiet calmness of
+Christmas Eve. Then, while we decorate the tree or carry parcels of
+tissue paper and red ribbon to a carefully prepared list of aunts and
+godmothers, or reckon up a little pile of bright quarters on the
+dining-room table in preparation for to-morrow's largesse--then it is
+that the brief, poignant and precious sweetness of the experience claims
+us at the full. Then we can see that all our careful wisdom and
+shrewdness were folly and stupidity; and we can understand the meaning
+of that Great Surprise--that where we planned wealth we found ourselves
+poor; that where we thought to be impoverished we were enriched. The
+world is built upon a lovely plan if we take time to study the
+blue-prints of the heart.
+
+Humanity must be forgiven much for having invented Christmas. What does
+it matter that a great poet and philosopher urges "the abandonment of
+the masculine pronoun in allusions to the First or Fundamental Energy"?
+Theology is not saddled upon pronouns; the best doctrine is but three
+words, God is Love. Love, or kindness, is fundamental energy enough to
+satisfy any brooder. And Christmas Day means the birth of a child; that
+is to say, the triumph of life and hope over suffering.
+
+Just for a few hours on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day the stupid,
+harsh mechanism of the world runs down and we permit ourselves to live
+according to untrammeled common sense, the unconquerable efficiency of
+good will. We grant ourselves the complete and selfish pleasure of
+loving others better than ourselves. How odd it seems, how unnaturally
+happy we are! We feel there must be some mistake, and rather yearn for
+the familiar frictions and distresses. Just for a few hours we "purge
+out of every heart the lurking grudge." We know then that hatred is a
+form of illness; that suspicion and pride are only fear; that the
+rascally acts of others are perhaps, in the queer webwork of human
+relations, due to some calousness of our own. Who knows? Some man may
+have robbed a bank in Nashville or fired a gun in Louvain because we
+looked so intolerably smug in Philadelphia!
+
+So at Christmas we tap that vast reservoir of wisdom and strength--call
+it efficiency or the fundamental energy if you will--Kindness. And our
+kindness, thank heaven, is not the placid kindness of angels; it is
+veined with human blood; it is full of absurdities, irritations,
+frustrations. A man 100 per cent. kind would be intolerable. As a wise
+teacher said, the milk of human kindness easily curdles into cheese. We
+like our friends' affections because we know the tincture of mortal acid
+is in them. We remember the satirist who remarked that to love one's
+self is the beginning of a lifelong romance. We know this lifelong
+romance will resume its sway; we shall lose our tempers, be obstinate,
+peevish and crank. We shall fidget and fume while waiting our turn in
+the barber's chair; we shall argue and muddle and mope. And yet, for a
+few hours, what a happy vision that was! And we turn, on Christmas Eve,
+to pages which those who speak our tongue immortally associate with the
+season--the pages of Charles Dickens. Love of humanity endures as long
+as the thing it loves, and those pages are packed as full of it as a
+pound cake is full of fruit. A pound cake will keep moist three years; a
+sponge cake is dry in three days.
+
+And now humanity has its most beautiful and most appropriate Christmas
+gift--Peace. The Magi of Versailles and Washington having unwound for us
+the tissue paper and red ribbon (or red tape) from this greatest of all
+gifts, let us in days to come measure up to what has been born through
+such anguish and horror. If war is illness and peace is health, let us
+remember also that health is not merely a blessing to be received intact
+once and for all. It is not a substance but a condition, to be
+maintained only by sound regime, self-discipline and simplicity. Let the
+Wise Men not be too wise; let them remember those other Wise Men who,
+after their long journey and their sage surmisings, found only a Child.
+On this evening it serves us nothing to pile up filing cases and rolltop
+desks toward the stars, for in our city square the Star itself has
+fallen, and shines upon the Tree.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS CARDS
+
+
+By a stroke of good luck we found a little shop where a large overstock
+of Christmas cards was selling at two for five. The original 5's and
+10's were still penciled on them, and while we were debating whether to
+rub them off a thought occurred to us. When will artists and printers
+design us some Christmas cards that will be honest and appropriate to
+the time we live in? Never was the Day of Peace and Good Will so full of
+meaning as this year; and never did the little cards, charming as they
+were, seem so formal, so merely pretty, so devoid of imagination, so
+inadequate to the festival.
+
+This is an age of strange and stirring beauty, of extraordinary romance
+and adventure, of new joys and pains. And yet our Christmas artists have
+nothing more to offer us than the old formalism of Yuletide convention.
+After a considerable amount of searching in the bazaars we have found
+not one Christmas card that showed even a glimmering of the true
+romance, which is to see the beauty or wonder or peril that lies around
+us. Most of the cards hark back to the stage-coach up to its hubs in
+snow, or the blue bird, with which Maeterlinck penalized us (what has a
+blue bird got to do with Christmas?), or the open fireplace and jug of
+mulled claret. Now these things are merry enough in their way, or they
+were once upon a time; but we plead for an honest romanticism in
+Christmas cards that will express something of the entrancing color and
+circumstance that surround us to-day. Is not a commuter's train, stalled
+in a drift, far more lively to our hearts than the mythical stage-coach?
+Or an inter-urban trolley winging its way through the dusk like a casket
+of golden light? Or even a country flivver, loaded down with parcels and
+holly and the Yuletide keg of root beer? Root beer may be but meager
+flaggonage compared to mulled claret, but at any rate 'tis honest, 'tis
+actual, 'tis tangible and potable. And where, among all the Christmas
+cards, is the airplane, that most marvelous and heart-seizing of all our
+triumphs? Where is the stately apartment house, looming like Gibraltar
+against a sunset sky? Must we, even at Christmas time, fool ourselves
+with a picturesqueness that is gone, seeing nothing of what is around
+us?
+
+It is said that man's material achievements have outrun his imagination;
+that poets and painters are too puny to grapple with the world as it
+is. Certainly a visitor from another sphere, looking on our fantastic
+and exciting civilization, would find little reflection of it in the
+Christmas card. He would find us clinging desperately to what we have
+been taught to believe was picturesque and jolly, and afraid to assert
+that the things of to-day are comely too. Even on the basis of
+discomfort (an acknowledged criterion of picturesqueness) surely a
+trolley car jammed with parcel-laden passengers is just as satisfying a
+spectacle as any stage coach? Surely the steam radiator, if not so
+lovely as a flame-gilded hearth, is more real to most of us? And instead
+of the customary picture of shivering subjects of George III held up by
+a highwayman on Hampstead Heath, why not a deftly delineated sketch of
+victims in a steam-heated lobby submitting to the plunder of the
+hat-check bandit? Come, let us be honest! The romance of to-day is as
+good as any!
+
+Many must have felt this same uneasiness in trying to find Christmas
+cards that would really say something of what is in their hearts. The
+sentiment behind the card is as lovely and as true as ever, but the
+cards themselves are outmoded bottles for the new wine. It seems a cruel
+thing to say, but we are impatient with the mottoes and pictures we see
+in the shops because they are a conventional echo of a beauty that is
+past. What could be more absurd than to send to a friend in a city
+apartment a rhyme such as this:
+
+  As round the Christmas fire you sit
+    And hear the bells with frosty chime,
+  Think, friendship that long love has knit
+    Grows sweeter still at Christmas time!
+
+If that is sent to the janitor or the elevator boy we have no cavil, for
+these gentlemen do actually see a fire and hear bells ring; but the
+apartment tenant hears naught but the hissing of the steam in the
+radiator, and counts himself lucky to hear that. Why not be honest and
+say to him:
+
+  I hope the janitor has shipped
+    You steam, to keep the cold away;
+  And if the hallboys have been tipped,
+    Then joy be thine on Christmas Day!
+
+We had not meant to introduce this jocular note into our meditation, for
+we are honestly aggrieved that so many of the Christmas cards hark back
+to an old tradition that is gone, and never attempt to express any of
+the romance of to-day. You may protest that Christmas is the oldest
+thing in the world, which is true; yet it is also new every year, and
+never newer than now.
+
+
+
+
+ON UNANSWERING LETTERS
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+There are a great many people who really believe in answering letters
+the day they are received, just as there are people who go to the movies
+at 9 o'clock in the morning; but these people are stunted and queer.
+
+It is a great mistake. Such crass and breathless promptness takes away a
+great deal of the pleasure of correspondence.
+
+The psychological didoes involved in receiving letters and making up
+one's mind to answer them are very complex. If the tangled process could
+be clearly analyzed and its component involutions isolated for
+inspection we might reach a clearer comprehension of that curious bag of
+tricks, the efficient Masculine Mind.
+
+Take Bill F., for instance, a man so delightful that even to
+contemplate his existence puts us in good humor and makes us think well
+of a world that can exhibit an individual equally comely in mind, body
+and estate. Every now and then we get a letter from Bill, and
+immediately we pass into a kind of trance, in which our mind rapidly
+enunciates the ideas, thoughts, surmises and contradictions that we
+would like to write to him in reply. We think what fun it would be to
+sit right down and churn the ink-well, spreading speculation and
+cynicism over a number of sheets of foolscap to be wafted Billward.
+
+Sternly we repress the impulse for we know that the shock to Bill of
+getting so immediate a retort would surely unhinge the well-fitted
+panels of his intellect.
+
+We add his letter to the large delta of unanswered mail on our desk,
+taking occasion to turn the mass over once or twice and run through it
+in a brisk, smiling mood, thinking of all the jolly letters we shall
+write some day.
+
+After Bill's letter has lain on the pile for a fortnight or so it has
+been gently silted over by about twenty other pleasantly postponed
+manuscripts. Coming upon it by chance, we reflect that any specific
+problems raised by Bill in that manifesto will by this time have settled
+themselves. And his random speculations upon household management and
+human destiny will probably have taken a new slant by now, so that to
+answer his letter in its own tune will not be congruent with his present
+fevers. We had better bide a wee until we really have something of
+circumstance to impart.
+
+We wait a week.
+
+By this time a certain sense of shame has begun to invade the privacy of
+our brain. We feel that to answer that letter now would be an
+indelicacy. Better to pretend that we never got it. By and by Bill will
+write again and then we will answer promptly. We put the letter back in
+the middle of the heap and think what a fine chap Bill is. But he knows
+we love him, so it doesn't really matter whether we write or not.
+
+Another week passes by, and no further communication from Bill. We
+wonder whether he does love us as much as we thought. Still--we are too
+proud to write and ask.
+
+A few days later a new thought strikes us. Perhaps Bill thinks we have
+died and he is annoyed because he wasn't invited to the funeral. Ought
+we to wire him? No, because after all we are not dead, and even if he
+thinks we are, his subsequent relief at hearing the good news of our
+survival will outweigh his bitterness during the interval. One of these
+days we will write him a letter that will really express our heart,
+filled with all the grindings and gear-work of our mind, rich in
+affection and fallacy. But we had better let it ripen and mellow for a
+while. Letters, like wines, accumulate bright fumes and bubblings if
+kept under cork.
+
+Presently we turn over that pile of letters again. We find in the lees
+of the heap two or three that have gone for six months and can safely be
+destroyed. Bill is still on our mind, but in a pleasant, dreamy kind of
+way. He does not ache or twinge us as he did a month ago. It is fine to
+have old friends like that and keep in touch with them. We wonder how he
+is and whether he has two children or three. Splendid old Bill!
+
+By this time we have written Bill several letters in imagination and
+enjoyed doing so, but the matter of sending him an actual letter has
+begun to pall. The thought no longer has the savor and vivid sparkle it
+had once. When one feels like that it is unwise to write. Letters should
+be spontaneous outpourings: they should never be undertaken merely from
+a sense of duty. We know that Bill wouldn't want to get a letter that
+was dictated by a feeling of obligation.
+
+Another fortnight or so elapsing, it occurs to us that we have entirely
+forgotten what Bill said to us in that letter. We take it out and con it
+over. Delightful fellow! It is full of his own felicitous kinks of whim,
+though some of it sounds a little old-fashioned by now. It seems a bit
+stale, has lost some of its freshness and surprise. Better not answer it
+just yet, for Christmas will soon be here and we shall have to write
+then anyway. We wonder, can Bill hold out until Christmas without a
+letter?
+
+We have been rereading some of those imaginary letters to Bill that have
+been dancing in our head. They are full of all sorts of fine stuff. If
+Bill ever gets them he will know how we love him. To use O. Henry's
+immortal joke, we have days of Damon and Knights of Pythias writing
+those uninked letters to Bill. A curious thought has come to us. Perhaps
+it would be better if we never saw Bill again. It is very difficult to
+talk to a man when you like him so much. It is much easier to write in
+the sweet fantastic strain. We are so inarticulate when face to face. If
+Bill comes to town we will leave word that we have gone away. Good old
+Bill! He will always be a precious memory.
+
+A few days later a sudden frenzy sweeps over us, and though we have many
+pressing matters on hand, we mobilize pen and paper and literary shock
+troops and prepare to hurl several battalions at Bill. But, strangely
+enough, our utterance seems stilted and stiff. We have nothing to say.
+_My dear Bill_, we begin, _it seems a long time since we heard from you.
+Why don't you write? We still love you, in spite of all your
+shortcomings_.
+
+That doesn't seem very cordial. We muse over the pen and nothing comes.
+Bursting with affection, we are unable to say a word.
+
+Just then the phone rings. "Hello?" we say.
+
+It is Bill, come to town unexpectedly.
+
+"Good old fish!" we cry, ecstatic. "Meet you at the corner of Tenth and
+Chestnut in five minutes."
+
+We tear up the unfinished letter. Bill will never know how much we love
+him. Perhaps it is just as well. It is very embarrassing to have your
+friends know how you feel about them. When we meet him we will be a
+little bit on our guard. It would not be well to be betrayed into any
+extravagance of cordiality.
+
+And perhaps a not altogether false little story could be written about a
+man who never visited those most dear to him, because it panged him so
+to say good-bye when he had to leave.
+
+
+
+
+A LETTER TO FATHER TIME
+
+
+(NEW YEAR'S EVE)
+
+Dear Father Time--This is your night of triumph, and it seems only fair
+to pay you a little tribute. Some people, in a noble mood of bravado,
+consider New Year's Eve an occasion of festivity. Long, long in advance
+they reserve a table at their favorite cafe; and becomingly habited in
+boiled shirts or gowns of the lowest visibility, and well armed with a
+commodity which is said to be synonymous with yourself--money--they seek
+to outwit you by crowding a month of merriment into half a dozen hours.
+Yet their victory is brief and fallacious, for if hours spin too fast by
+night they will move grindingly on the axle the next morning. None of us
+can beat you in the end. Even the hat-check boy grows old, becomes gray
+and dies at last babbling of greenbacks.
+
+To my own taste, old Time, it is more agreeable to make this evening a
+season of gruesome brooding. Morosely I survey the faults and follies
+of my last year. I am grown too canny to pour the new wine of good
+resolution into the old bottles of my imperfect humors. But I get a
+certain grim satisfaction in thinking how we all--every human being of
+us--share alike in bondage to your oppression. There is the only true
+and complete democracy, the only absolute brotherhood of man. The great
+ones of the earth--Charley Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, General
+Pershing and Miss Amy Lowell--all these are in service to the same
+tyranny. Day after day slips or jolts past, joins the Great Majority;
+suddenly we wake with a start to find that the best of it is gone by.
+Surely it seems but a day ago that Stevenson set out to write a little
+book that was to be called "Life at Twenty-five"--before he got it
+written he was long past the delectable age--and now we rub our eyes and
+see he has been dead longer than the span of life he then so
+delightfully contemplated. If there is one meditation common to every
+adult on this globe it is this, so variously phrased, "Well, bo, Time
+sure does hustle."
+
+Some of them have scurvily entreated you, old Time! The thief of youth,
+they have called you; a highwayman, a gipsy, a grim reaper. It seems a
+little unfair. For you have your kindly moods, too. Without your gentle
+passage where were Memory, the sweetest of lesser pleasures? You are
+the only medicine for many a woe, many a sore heart. And surely you have
+a right to reap where you alone have sown? Our strength, our wit, our
+comeliness, all those virtues and graces that you pilfer with such
+gentle hand, did you not give them to us in the first place? Give, do I
+say? Nay, we knew, even as we clutched them, they were but a loan. And
+the great immortality of the race endures, for every day that we see
+taken away from ourselves we see added to our children or our
+grandchildren. It was Shakespeare, who thought a great deal about you,
+who put it best:
+
+  Nativity, once in the main of light,
+    Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
+  Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight
+    And Time that gave doth now his gift confound--
+
+It is to be hoped, my dear Time, that you have read Shakespeare's
+sonnets, because they will teach you a deal about the dignity of your
+career, and also suggest to you the only way we have of keeping up with
+you. There is no way of outwitting Time, Shakespeare tells his young
+friend, "Save breed to brave him when he takes thee hence." Or, as a
+poor bungling parodist revamped it:
+
+  Pep is the stuff to put Old Time on skids--
+  Pep in your copy, yes, and lots of kids.
+
+It is true that Shakespeare hints another way of doing you in, which is
+to write sonnets as good as his. This way, needless to add, is open to
+few.
+
+Well, my dear Time, you are not going to fool me into making myself
+ridiculous this New Year's Eve with a lot of bonny but impossible
+resolutions. I know that you are playing with me just as a cat plays
+with a mouse; yet even the most piteous mousekin sometimes causes his
+tormentor surprise or disappointment by getting under a bureau or behind
+the stove, where, for the moment, she cannot paw him. Every now and
+then, with a little luck, I shall pull off just such a scurry into
+temporary immortality. It may come by reading Dickens or by seeing a
+sunset, or by lunching with friends, or by forgetting to wind the alarm
+clock, or by contemplating the rosy little pate of my daughter, who is
+still only a nine days' wonder--so young that she doesn't even know what
+you are doing to her. But you are not going to have the laugh on me by
+luring me into resolutions. I know my weaknesses. I know that I shall
+probably continue to annoy newsdealers by reading the magazines on the
+stalls instead of buying them; that I shall put off having my hair cut;
+drop tobacco cinders on my waistcoat; feel bored at the idea of having
+to shave and get dressed; be nervous when the gas burner pops when
+turned off; buy more Liberty Bonds than I can afford and have to hock
+them at a grievous loss. I shall continue to be pleasant to insurance
+agents, from sheer lack of manhood; and to keep library books out over
+the date and so incur a fine. My only hope, you see, is resolutely to
+determine to persist in these failings. Then, by sheer perversity, I may
+grow out of them.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+What avail, indeed, for any of us to make good resolutions when one
+contemplates the grand pageant of human frailty? Observe what I noticed
+the other day in the Lost and Found column of the New York _Times_:
+
+    LOST--Hotel Imperial lavatory, set of teeth. Call or communicate
+    Flint, 134 East 43d street. Reward.
+
+Surely, if Mr. Flint could not remember to keep his teeth in his mouth,
+or if any one else was so basely whimsical as to juggle them away from
+him, it may well teach us to be chary of extravagant hopes for the
+future. Even the League of Nations, when one contemplates the sad case
+of Mr. Flint, becomes a rather anemic safeguard. We had better keep Mr.
+Flint in mind through the New Year as a symbol of human error and
+disappointment. And the best of it is, my dear Time, that you, too, may
+be a little careless. Perhaps one of these days you may doze a little
+and we shall steal a few hours of timeless bliss. Shall we see a little
+ad in the papers:
+
+    LOST--Sixty valuable minutes, said to have been stolen by the
+    unworthy human race. If found, please return to Father Time, and no
+    questions asked.
+
+Well, my dear Time, we approach the Zero Hour. I hope you will have a
+Happy New Year, and conduct yourself with becoming restraint. So live,
+my dear fellow, that we may say, "A good Time was enjoyed by all." As
+the hands of the clock go over the top and into the No Man's Land of
+the New Year, good luck to you!
+
+Your obedient servant!
+
+
+
+
+WHAT MEN LIVE BY
+
+
+What a delicate and rare and gracious art is the art of conversation!
+With what a dexterity and skill the bubble of speech must be maneuvered
+if mind is to meet and mingle with mind.
+
+There is no sadder disappointment than to realize that a conversation
+has been a complete failure. By which we mean that it has failed in
+blending or isolating for contrast the ideas, opinions and surmises of
+two eager minds. So often a conversation is shipwrecked by the very
+eagerness of one member to contribute. There must be give and take,
+parry and thrust, patience to hear and judgment to utter. How uneasy is
+the qualm as one looks back on an hour's talk and sees that the
+opportunity was wasted; the precious instant of intercourse gone
+forever: the secrets of the heart still incommunicate! Perhaps we were
+too anxious to hurry the moment, to enforce our own theory, to adduce
+instance from our own experience. Perhaps we were not patient enough to
+wait until our friend could express himself with ease and happiness.
+Perhaps we squandered the dialogue in tangent topics, in a multitude of
+irrelevances.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+How few, how few are those gifted for real talk! There are fine merry
+fellows, full of mirth and shrewdly minted observation, who will not
+abide by one topic, who must always be lashing out upon some new byroad,
+snatching at every bush they pass. They are too excitable, too
+ungoverned for the joys of patient intercourse. Talk is so solemn a rite
+it should be approached with prayer and must be conducted with nicety
+and forbearance. What steadiness and sympathy are needed if the thread
+of thought is to be unwound without tangles or snapping! What
+forbearance, while each of the pair, after tentative gropings here and
+yonder, feels his way toward truth as he sees it. So often two in talk
+are like men standing back to back, each trying to describe to the other
+what he sees and disputing because their visions do not tally. It takes
+a little time for minds to turn face to face.
+
+Very often conversations are better among three than between two, for
+the reason that then one of the trio is always, unconsciously, acting as
+umpire, interposing fair play, recalling wandering wits to the nub of
+the argument, seeing that the aggressiveness of one does no foul to the
+reticence of another. Talk in twos may, alas! fall into speaker and
+listener: talk in threes rarely does so.
+
+It is little realized how slowly, how painfully, we approach the
+expression of truth. We are so variable, so anxious to be polite, and
+alternately swayed by caution or anger. Our mind oscillates like a
+pendulum: it takes some time for it to come to rest. And then, the
+proper allowance and correction has to be made for our individual
+vibrations that prevent accuracy. Even the compass needle doesn't point
+the true north, but only the magnetic north. Similarly our minds at best
+can but indicate magnetic truth, and are distorted by many things that
+act as iron filings do on the compass. The necessity of holding one's
+job: what an iron filing that is on the compass card of a man's brain!
+
+We are all afraid of truth: we keep a battalion of our pet prejudices
+and precautions ready to throw into the argument as shock troops,
+rather than let our fortress of Truth be stormed. We have smoke bombs
+and decoy ships and all manner of cunning colorizations by which we
+conceal our innards from our friends, and even from ourselves. How we
+fume and fidget, how we bustle and dodge rather than commit ourselves.
+
+In days of hurry and complication, in the incessant pressure of human
+problems that thrust our days behind us, does one never dream of a way
+of life in which talk would be honored and exalted to its proper place
+in the sun? What a zest there is in that intimate unreserved exchange of
+thought, in the pursuit of the magical blue bird of joy and human
+satisfaction that may be seen flitting distantly through the branches of
+life. It was a sad thing for the world when it grew so busy that men had
+no time to talk. There are such treasures of knowledge and compassion in
+the minds of our friends, could we only have time to talk them out of
+their shy quarries. If we had our way, we would set aside one day a week
+for talking. In fact, we would reorganize the week altogether. We would
+have one day for Worship (let each man devote it to worship of whatever
+he holds dearest); one day for Work; one day for Play (probably
+fishing); one day for Talking; one day for Reading, and one day for
+Smoking and Thinking. That would leave one day for Resting, and
+(incidentally) interviewing employers.
+
+The best week of our life was one in which we did nothing but talk. We
+spent it with a delightful gentleman who has a little bungalow on the
+shore of a lake in Pike County. He had a great many books and cigars,
+both of which are conversational stimulants. We used to lie out on the
+edge of the lake, in our oldest trousers, and talk. We discussed ever so
+many subjects; in all of them he knew immensely more than we did. We
+built up a complete philosophy of indolence and good will, according to
+Food and Sleep and Swimming their proper share of homage. We rose at 10
+in the morning and began talking; we talked all day and until 3 o'clock
+at night. Then we went to bed and regained strength and combativeness
+for the coming day. Never was a week better spent. We committed no
+crimes, planned no secret treaties, devised no annexations or
+indemnities. We envied no one. We examined the entire world and found it
+worth while. Meanwhile our wives, who were watching (perhaps with a
+little quiet indignation) from the veranda, kept on asking us, "What on
+earth do you talk about?"
+
+Bless their hearts, men don't have to have anything to talk _about_.
+They just talk.
+
+And there is only one rule for being a good talker: learn how to listen.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNNATURAL NATURALIST
+
+
+It gives us a great deal of pleasure to announce, officially, that
+spring has arrived.
+
+Our statement is not based on any irrelevant data as to equinoxes or
+bluebirds or bock-beer signs, but is derived from the deepest authority
+we know anything about, our subconscious self. We remember that some
+philosopher, perhaps it was Professor James, suggested that individuals
+are simply peaks of self-consciousness rising out of the vast ocean of
+collective human Mind in which we all swim, and are, at bottom, one.
+Whenever we have to decide any important matter, such as when to get our
+hair cut and whether to pay a bill or not, and whether to call for the
+check or let the other fellow do so, we don't attempt to harass our
+conscious volition with these decisions. We rely on our subconscious and
+instinctive person, and for better or worse we have to trust to its
+righteousness and good sense. We just find ourself doing something and
+we carry on and hope it is for the best.
+
+From this deep abyss of subconsciousness we learn that it is spring.
+The mottled goosebone of the Allentown prophet is no more
+meteorologically accurate than our subconscience. And this is how it
+works.
+
+Once a year, about the approach of the vernal equinox or the seedsman's
+catalogue, we wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning. This is an immediate
+warning and apprisement that something is adrift. Three hundred and
+sixty-four days in the year we wake, placidly enough, at seven-ten, ten
+minutes after the alarm clock has jangled. But on this particular day,
+whether it be the end of February or the middle of March, we wake with
+the old recognizable nostalgia. It is the last polyp or vestige of our
+anthropomorphic and primal self, trailing its pathetic little wisp of
+glory for the one day of the whole calendar. All the rest of the year we
+are the plodding percheron of commerce, patiently tugging our wain; but
+on that morning there wambles back, for the nonce, the pang of Eden. We
+wake at 6 o'clock; it is a blue and golden morning and we feel it
+imperative to get outdoors as quickly as possible. Not for an instant do
+we feel the customary respectable and sanctioned desire to kiss the
+sheets yet an hour or so. The traipsing, trolloping humor of spring is
+in our veins; we feel that we must be about felling an aurochs or a
+narwhal for breakfast. We leap into our clothes and hurry downstairs and
+out of the front door and skirmish round the house to see and smell and
+feel.
+
+It is spring. It is unmistakably spring, because the pewit bushes are
+budding and on yonder aspen we can hear a forsythia bursting into song.
+It is spring, when the feet of the floorwalker pain him and smoking-car
+windows have to be pried open with chisels. We skip lightheartedly round
+the house to see if those bobolink bulbs we planted are showing any
+signs yet, and discover the whisk brush that fell out of the window last
+November. And then the newsboy comes along the street and sees us
+prancing about and we feel sheepish and ashamed and hurry indoors again.
+
+There may still be blizzards and frozen plumbings and tumbles on icy
+pavements, but when that morning of annunciation has come to us we know
+that winter is truly dead, even though his ghost may walk and gibber
+once or twice. The sweet urge of the new season has rippled up through
+the oceanic depths of our subconsciousness, and we are aware of the
+rising tide. Like Mr. Wordsworth we feel that we are wiser than we know.
+(Perhaps we have misquoted that, but let it stand.)
+
+There are other troubles that spring brings us. We are pitifully
+ashamed of our ignorance Of nature, and though we try to hide it we keep
+getting tripped up. About this time of year inquisitive persons are
+always asking us: "Have you heard any song sparrows yet?" or "Are there
+any robins out your way?" or "When do the laburnums begin to nest out in
+Marathon?" Now we really can't tell these people our true feeling, which
+is that we do not believe in peeking in on the privacy of the laburnums
+or any other songsters. It seems to us really immodest to keep on spying
+on the birds in that way. And as for the bushes and trees, what we want
+to know is, How does one ever get to know them? How do you find out
+which is an alder and what is an elm? Or a narcissus and a hyacinth,
+does any one really know them apart? We think it's all a bluff. And
+jonquils. There was a nest of them on our porch, we are told, but we
+didn't think it any business of ours to bother them. Let nature alone
+and she'll let you alone.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But there is a pettifogging cult about that says you ought to know these
+things; moreover, children keep on asking one. We always answer at
+random and say it's a wagtail or a flowering shrike or a female
+magnolia. We were brought up in the country and learned that first
+principle of good manners, which is to let birds and flowers and animals
+go on about their own affairs without pestering them by asking them
+their names and addresses. Surely that's what Shakespeare meant by
+saying a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. We can enjoy a rose
+just as much as any one, even if we may think it's a hydrangea.
+
+And then we are much too busy to worry about robins and bluebirds and
+other poultry of that sort. Of course, if we see one hanging about the
+lawn and it looks hungry we have decency enough to throw out a bone or
+something for it, but after all we have a lot of troubles of our own to
+bother about. We are short-sighted, too, and if we try to get near
+enough to see if it is a robin or only a bandanna some one has dropped,
+why either it flies away before we get there or it does turn out to be a
+bandanna or a clothespin. One of our friends kept on talking about a
+Baltimore oriole she had seen near our house, and described it as a
+beautiful yellowish fowl. We felt quite ashamed to be so ignorant, and
+when one day we thought we saw one near the front porch we left what we
+were doing, which was writing a check for the coal man, and went out to
+stalk it. After much maneuvering we got near, made a dash--and it was a
+banana peel! The oriole had gone back to Baltimore the day before.
+
+We love to read about the birds and flowers and shrubs and insects in
+poetry, and it makes us very happy to know they are all round us,
+innocent little things like mice and centipedes and goldenrods (until
+hay fever time), but as for prying into their affairs we simply won't do
+it.
+
+
+
+
+SITTING IN THE BARBER'S CHAIR
+
+
+Once every ten weeks or so we get our hair cut.
+
+We are not generally parsimonious of our employer's time, but somehow we
+do hate to squander that thirty-three minutes, which is the exact
+chronicide involved in despoiling our skull of a ten weeks' garner. If
+we were to have our hair cut at the end of eight weeks the shearing
+would take only thirty-one minutes; but we can never bring ourselves to
+rob our employer of that much time until we reckon he is really losing
+prestige by our unkempt appearance. Of course, we believe in having our
+hair cut during office hours. That is the only device we know to make
+the hateful operation tolerable.
+
+To the times mentioned above should be added fifteen seconds, which is
+the slice of eternity needed to trim, prune and chasten our mustache,
+which is not a large group of foliage.
+
+We knew a traveling man who never got his hair cut except when he was on
+the road, which permitted him to include the transaction in his expense
+account; but somehow it seems to us more ethical to steal time than to
+steal money.
+
+We like to view this whole matter in a philosophical and ultra-pragmatic
+way. Some observers have hazarded that our postponement of haircuts is
+due to mere lethargy and inertia, but that is not so. Every time we get
+our locks shorn our wife tells us that we have got them too short. She
+says that our head has a very homely and bourgeois bullet shape, a sort
+of pithecanthropoid contour, which is revealed by a close trim. After
+five weeks' growth, however, we begin to look quite distinguished. The
+difficulty then is to ascertain just when the law of diminishing returns
+comes into play. When do we cease to look distinguished and begin to
+appear merely slovenly? Careful study has taught us that this begins to
+take place at the end of sixty-five days, in warm weather. Add five days
+or so for natural procrastination and devilment, and we have seventy
+days interval, which we have posited as the ideal orbit for our
+tonsorial ecstasies.
+
+When at last we have hounded ourself into robbing our employer of those
+thirty-three minutes, plus fifteen seconds for you know what, we find
+ourself in the barber's chair. Despairingly we gaze about at the little
+blue flasks with flowers enameled on them; at the piles of clean
+towels; at the bottles of mandrake essence which we shall presently
+have to affirm or deny. Under any other circumstances we should deeply
+enjoy a half hour spent in a comfortable chair, with nothing to do but
+do nothing. Our barber is a delightful fellow; he looks benign and does
+not prattle; he respects the lobes of our ears and other vulnerabilia.
+But for some inscrutable reason we feel strangely ill at ease in his
+chair. We can't think of anything to think about. Blankly we brood in
+the hope of catching the hem of some intimation of immortality. But no,
+there is nothing to do but sit there, useless as an incubator with no
+eggs in it. The processes of wasting and decay are hurrying us rapidly
+to a pauperish grave, every instant brings us closer to a notice in the
+obit column, and yet we sit and sit without two worthy thoughts to rub
+against each other.
+
+Oh, the poverty of mortal mind, the sad meagerness of the human soul!
+Here we are, a vital, breathing entity, transformed to a mere chemical
+carcass by the bleak magic of the barber's chair. In our anatomy of
+melancholy there are no such atrabiliar moments as those thirty-three
+(and a quarter) minutes once every ten weeks. Roughly speaking, we spend
+three hours of this living death every year.
+
+And yet, perhaps it is worth it, for what a jocund and pantheistic
+merriment possesses us when we escape from the shop! Bay-rummed,
+powdered, shorn, brisk and perfumed, we fare down the street exhaling
+the syrups of Cathay. Once more we can take our rightful place among
+aggressive and well-groomed men; we can look in the face without
+blenching those human leviathans who are ever creased, razored, and
+white-margined as to vest. We are a man among men and our untethered
+mind jostles the stars. We have had our hair cut, and no matter what
+gross contours our cropped skull may display to wives or ethnologists,
+we are a free man for ten dear weeks.
+
+
+
+
+BROWN EYES AND EQUINOXES
+
+
+"What is an equinox?" said Titania.
+
+I pretended not to hear her and prayed fervently that the inquiry would
+pass from her mind. Sometimes her questions, if ignored, are effaced by
+some other thought that possesses her active brain. I rattled my paper
+briskly and kept well behind it.
+
+"Yes," I murmured husbandly, "delicious, delicious! My dear, you
+certainly plan the most delightful meals." Meanwhile I was glancing
+feverishly at the daily Quiz column to see if that noble cascade of
+popular information might give any help. It did not.
+
+Clear brown eyes looked across the table gravely. I could feel them
+through the spring overcoat ads.
+
+"What is an equinox?"
+
+"I think I must have left my matches upstairs," I said, and went up to
+look for them. I stayed aloft ten minutes and hoped that by that time
+she would have passed on to some other topic. I did not waste my time,
+however; I looked everywhere for the "Children's Book of a Million
+Reasons," until I remembered it was under the dining-room table taking
+the place of a missing caster.
+
+When I slunk into the living room again I hastily suggested a game of
+double Canfield, but Titania's brow was still perplexed. Looking across
+at me with that direct brown gaze that would compel even a milliner to
+relent, she asked:
+
+"What is an equinox?"
+
+I tried to pass it off flippantly.
+
+"A kind of alarm clock," I said, "that lets the bulbs and bushes know
+it's time to get up."
+
+"No; but honestly, Bob," she said, "I want to know. It's something about
+an equal day and an equal night, isn't it?"
+
+"At the equinox," I said sternly, hoping to overawe her, "the day and
+the night are of equal duration. But only for one night. On the
+following day the sun, declining in perihelion, produces the customary
+inequality. The usual working day is much longer than the night of
+relaxation that follows it, as every toiler knows."
+
+"Yes," she said thoughtfully, "but how does it work? It says something
+in this article about the days getting longer in the Northern
+Hemisphere, while they are getting shorter in the Southern."
+
+"Of course," I agreed, "conditions are totally different south of Mason
+and Dixon's line. But as far as we are concerned here, the sun,
+revolving round the earth, casts a beneficent shadow, which is generally
+regarded as the time to quit work. This shadow--"
+
+"I thought the earth revolved round the sun," she said. "Wasn't that
+what Galileo proved?"
+
+"He was afterward discovered to be mistaken," I said. "That was what
+caused all the trouble."
+
+"What trouble?" she asked, much interested.
+
+"Why, he and Socrates had to take hemlock or they were drowned in a butt
+of malmsey, I really forget which."
+
+"Well, after the equinox," said Titania, "do the days get longer?"
+
+"They do," I said; "in order to permit the double-headers. And now that
+daylight saving is to go into effect, equinoxes won't be necessary any
+more. Very likely the pan-Russian Soviets, or President Wilson, or
+somebody, will abolish them."
+
+"June 21 is the longest day in the year, isn't it?"
+
+"The day before pay-day is always the longest day."
+
+"And the night the cook goes out is always the longest night," she
+retorted, catching the spirit of the game.
+
+"Some day," I threatened her, "the earth will stop rotating on its
+orbit, or its axis, or whatever it is, and then we will be like the
+moon, divided into two hostile hemispheres, one perpetual day and the
+other eternal night."
+
+She did not seem alarmed. "Yes, and I bet I know which one you'll
+emigrate to," she said. "But how about the equinoctial gales? Why should
+there be gales just then?"
+
+I had forgot about the equinoctial gales, and this caught me unawares.
+
+"That was an old tradition of the Phoenician mariners," I said, "but the
+invention of latitude and longitude made them unnecessary. They have
+fallen into disrepute. Dead reckoning killed them."
+
+"And the precession of the equinoxes?" she asked, turning back to her
+magazine.
+
+This was a poser, but I rallied stoutly. "Well," I said, "you see, there
+are two equinoxes a year, the vernal and the autumnal. They are well
+known by coal dealers. The first one is when he delivers the coal and
+the second is when he gets paid. Two of them a year, you see, in the
+course of a million years or so, makes quite a majestic series. That is
+why they call it a procession."
+
+Titania looked at me and gradually her face broke up into a charming
+aurora borealis of laughter.
+
+"I don't believe you know any more about the old things than I do," she
+said.
+
+And the worst of it is, I think she was right.
+
+
+
+
+163 INNOCENT OLD MEN
+
+
+I found Titania looking severely at her watch, which is a queer little
+gold disk about the size of a waistcoat button, swinging under her chin
+by a thin golden chain. Titania's methods of winding, setting and
+regulating that watch have always been a mystery to me. She frequently
+knows what the right time is, but how she deduces it from the data given
+by the hands of her timepiece I can't guess. It's something like this:
+She looks at the watch and notes what it says. Then she deducts ten
+minutes, because she remembers it is ten minutes fast. Then she performs
+some complicated calculation connected with when the baby had his bath,
+and how long ago she heard the church bells chime; to this result she
+adds five minutes to allow for leeway. Then she goes to the phone and
+asks Central the time.
+
+"Hullo," I said; "what's wrong?"
+
+"I'm wondering about this daylight-saving business," she said. "You
+know, I think it's all a piece of Bolshevik propaganda to get us
+confused and encourage anarchy. All the women in Marathon are talking
+about it and neglecting their knitting. Junior's bath was half an hour
+late today because Mrs. Benvenuto called me up to talk about daylight
+saving. She says her cook has threatened to leave if she has to get up
+an hour earlier in the morning. I was just wondering how to adjust my
+watch to the new conditions."
+
+"It's perfectly simple," I said. "Put your watch ahead one hour, and
+then go through the same logarithms you always do."
+
+"Put it ahead?" asked Titania. "Mrs. Borgia says we have to put the
+clock _back_ an hour. She is fearfully worried about it. She says
+suppose she has something in the oven when the clock is put back, it
+will be an hour overdone and burned to a crisp when the kitchen clock
+catches up again."
+
+"Mrs. Borgia is wrong," I said. "The clocks are to be put ahead one
+hour. At 2 o'clock on Easter morning they are to be turned on to 3
+o'clock. Mrs. Borgia certainly won't have anything in the oven at that
+time of night. You see, we are to pretend that 2 o'clock is really 3
+o'clock, and when we get up at 7 o'clock it will really be 6 o'clock. We
+are deliberately fooling ourselves in order to get an hour more of
+daylight."
+
+"I have an idea," she said, "that you won't get up at 7 that morning."
+
+"It is quite possible," I said, "because I intend to stay up until 2
+a.m. that morning in order to be exactly correct in changing our
+timepieces. No one shall accuse me of being a time slacker."
+
+Titania was wrinkling her brow. "But how about that lost hour?" she
+said. "What happens to it? I don't see how we can just throw an hour
+away like that. Time goes on just the same. How can we afford to shorten
+our lives so ruthlessly? It's murder, that's what it is! I told you it
+was a Bolshevik plot. Just think; there are a hundred million Americans.
+Moving on the clock that way brings each of us one hour nearer our
+graves. That is to say, we are throwing away 100,000,000 hours."
+
+She seized a pencil and a sheet of paper and went through some
+calculations.
+
+"There are 8,760 hours in a year," she said. "Reckoning seventy years a
+lifetime, there are 613,200 hours in each person's life. Now, will you
+please divide that into a hundred million for me? I'm not good at long
+division."
+
+With docility I did so, and reported the result.
+
+"About 163," I said.
+
+"There you are!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "Throwing away all that
+perfectly good time amounts simply to murdering 163 harmless old men of
+seventy, or 326 able-bodied men of thirty-five, or 1,630 innocent little
+children of seven. If that isn't atrocity, what is? I think Mr. Hoover
+or Admiral Grayson, or somebody, ought to be prosecuted."
+
+I was aghast at this awful result. Then an idea struck me, and I took
+the pencil and began to figure on my own account.
+
+"Look here, Titania," I said. "Not so fast. Moving the clock ahead
+doesn't really bring those people any nearer their graves. What it does
+do is bring the ratification of the Peace Treaty sooner, which is a fine
+thing. By deleting a hundred million hours we shorten Senator Borah's
+speeches against the League by 11,410 years. That's very encouraging."
+
+"According to that way of reckoning," she said with sarcasm, "Mr.
+Borah's term must have expired about 11,000 years ago."
+
+"My dear Titania," I said, "the ways of the Government may seem
+inscrutable, but we have got to follow them with faith. If Mr. Wilson
+tells us to murder 163 fine old men in elastic-sided boots we must
+simply do it, that's all. Peace is a dreadful thing. We have got to meet
+the Germans on their own ground. They adopted this daylight-saving
+measure years ago. They call it Sonnenuntergangverderbenpraxis, I
+believe. After all, it is only a temporary measure, because in the fall,
+when the daylight hours get shorter, we shall have to turn the clocks
+back a couple of hours in order to compensate the gas and electric light
+companies for all the money they will have lost. That will bring those
+163 old gentlemen to life again and double their remaining term of years
+to make up for their temporary effacement. They are patriotic hostages
+to Time for the summer only. You must remember that time is only a
+philosophical abstraction, with no real or tangible existence, and we
+have a right to do whatever we want with it."
+
+"I will remind you of that," she said, "at getting-up time on Sunday
+morning. I still think that if we are going to monkey with the clocks at
+all it would be better to turn them backward instead of forward.
+Certainly that would bring you home from the club a little earlier."
+
+"My dear," I said, "we are in the Government's hands. A little later we
+may be put on time rations, just as we are on food rations. We may have
+time cards to encourage thrift in saving time. Every time we save an
+hour we will get a little stamp to show for it. When we fill out a whole
+card we will be entitled to call ourselves a month younger than we are.
+Tell that to Mrs. Borgia; it will reconcile her."
+
+A lusty uproar made itself heard upstairs and Titania gave a little
+scream. "Heavens!" she cried. "Here I am talking with you and Junior's
+bottle is half an hour late. I don't care what Mr. Wilson does to the
+clocks; he won't be able to fool Junior. He knows when it's, time for
+meals. Won't you call up Central and find out the exact time?"
+
+
+
+
+A TRAGIC SMELL IN MARATHON
+
+
+Marathon, Pa., April 2.
+
+This is a very embarrassing time of year for us. Every morning when we
+get on the 8:13 train at Marathon Bill Stites or Fred Myers or Hank
+Harris or some other groundsel philosopher on the Cinder and Bloodshot
+begins to chivvy us about our garden. "Have you planted anything yet?"
+they say. "Have you put litmus paper in the soil to test it for lime,
+potash and phosphorus? Have you got a harrow?"
+
+That sort of thing bothers us, because our ideas of cultivation are very
+primitive. We did go to the newsstand at the Reading Terminal and try to
+buy a Litmus paper, but the agent didn't have any. He says he doesn't
+carry the Jersey papers. So we buried some old copies of the
+_Philistine_ in the garden, thinking that would strengthen up the soil a
+bit. This business of nourishing the soil seems grotesque. It's hard
+enough to feed the family, let alone throwing away good money on feeding
+the land. Our idea about soil is that it ought to feed itself.
+
+Our garden ought to be lusty enough to raise the few beans and beets
+and blisters we aspire to. We have been out looking at the soil. It
+looks fairly potent and certainly it goes a long way down. There are
+quite a lot of broken magnesia bottles and old shinbones scattered
+through it, and they ought to help along. The topsoil and the humus may
+be a little mixed, but we are not going to sort them out by hand.
+
+Our method is to go out at twilight the first Sunday in April, about the
+time the cutworms go to roost, and take a sharp-pointed stick. We draw
+lines in the ground with this stick, preferably in a pleasant
+geometrical pattern that will confuse the birds and other observers. It
+is important not to do this until twilight, so that no robins or insects
+can watch you. Then we go back in the house and put on our old trousers,
+the pair that has holes in each pocket. We fill the pockets with the
+seed, we want to plant and loiter slowly along the grooves we have made
+in the earth. The seed sifts down the trousers legs and spreads itself
+in the furrow far better than any mechanical drill could do it. The
+secret of gardening is to stick to nature's old appointed ways. Then we
+read a chapter of Bernard Shaw aloud, by candle light or lantern light.
+As soon as they hear the voice of Shaw all the vegetables dig
+themselves in. This saves going all along the rows with a shingle to
+pat down the topsoil or the humus or the magnesia bottles or whatever
+else is uppermost.
+
+Fred says that certain vegetables--kohl-rabi and colanders, we
+think--extract nitrogen from the air and give it back to the soil. It
+may be so, but what has that to do with us? If our soil can't keep
+itself supplied with nitrogen, that's its lookout. We don't need the
+nitrogen in the air. The baby isn't old enough to have warts yet.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Hank says it's no use watering the garden from above. He says that
+watering from above lures the roots toward the surface and next day the
+hot sun kills them. The answer to that is that the rain comes from
+above, doesn't it? Roots have learned certain habits in the past million
+years and we haven't time to teach them to duck when it rains. Hank has
+some irrigation plan which involves sinking tomato cans in the ground
+and filling them with water.
+
+Bill says it's dangerous to put arsenic on the plants, because it may
+kill the cook. He says nicotine or tobacco dust is far better. The
+answer to that is that we never put fertilizers on our garden, anyway.
+If we want to kill the cook there is a more direct method, and we
+reserve the tobacco for ourself. No cutworm shall get a blighty one from
+our cherished baccy pouch.
+
+Fred says we ought to have a wheel-barrow; Hank swears by a mulching
+iron; Bill is all for cold frames. All three say that hellebore is the
+best thing for sucking insects. We echo the expletive, with a different
+application.
+
+You see, we have no instinct for gardening. Some fellows, like Bill
+Stites, have a divinely implanted zest for the propagation of chard and
+rhubarb and self-blanching celery and kohl-rabi; they are kohl-rabid, we
+might say. They know, just what to do when they see a weed; they can
+assassinate a weevil by just looking at it. But weevils and cabbage
+worms are unterrified by us. We can't tell a weed from a young onion. We
+never mulched anything in our life; we wouldn't know how to begin.
+
+But the deuce of it is, public opinion says that we must raise a garden.
+It is no use to hire a man to do it for us. However badly we may do it,
+patriotism demands that we monkey around with a garden of our own. We
+may get bitten by a snapping bean or routed by a rutabaga or infected by
+a parsnip. But with Bill and those fellows at our heels we have just got
+to face it. Hellebore!
+
+What we want to know is, How do you ever find out all these things about
+vegetables? We bought an ounce of tomato seeds in desperation, and now
+Fred says "one ounce of tomato seeds will produce 3,000 plants. You
+should have bought two dozen plants instead of the seed." How does he
+know those things? Hank says beans are very delicate and must not be
+handled while they are wet or they may get rusty. Again we ask, how does
+he know? Where do they learn these matters? Bill says that stones draw
+out the moisture from the soil and every stone in the garden should be
+removed by hand before we plant. We offered him twenty cents an hour to
+do it.
+
+The most tragic odor in the world hangs over Marathon these days; the
+smell of freshly spaded earth. It is extolled by the poets and all
+those happy sons of the pavement who know nothing about it. But here are
+we, who hardly know a loam from a lentil, breaking our back over seed
+catalogues. Public opinion may compel us to raise vegetables, but we are
+going to go about it our own way. If the stones are going to act like
+werewolves and suck the moisture from our soil, let them do so. We don't
+believe in thwarting nature. Maybe it will be a very wet summer and we
+shall have the laugh on Bill, who has carted away all his stones.
+
+And we should just like to see Bill Stites write a poem. We bet it
+wouldn't look as much like a poem as our beans look like beans. And as
+for Hank and Fred, they wouldn't even know how to begin to plant a poem!
+
+
+
+
+BULLIED BY THE BIRDS
+
+
+Marathon, Pa., May 2.
+
+I insist that the place for birds is in the air or on the bushy tops of
+trees or on smooth-shaven lawns. Let them twitter and strut on the
+greens of golf courses and intimidate the tired business men. Let them
+peck cinders along the railroad track and keep the trains waiting. But
+really they have no right to take possession of a man's house as they
+have mine.
+
+The nesting season is a time of tyranny and oppression for those who
+live in Marathon. The birds are upon us like Hindenburg in Belgium. We
+go about on tiptoe, speaking in whispers, for fear of annoying them. It
+is all the fault of the Marathon Bird Club, which has offered all sorts
+of inducements to the fowls of the air to come and live in our suburb,
+quite forgetting that humble commuters have to live there, too. Birds
+have moved all the way from Wynnewood and Ambler and Chestnut Hill to
+enjoy the congenial air of Marathon and the informing little pamphlets
+of our club, telling them just what to eat and which houses offer the
+best hospitality. All our dwellings are girt about with little villas
+made of condensed milk boxes, but the feathered tyrants have grown too
+pernickety to inhabit these. They come closer still, and make our homes
+their own. They take the grossest liberties.
+
+I am fond of birds, but I think the line must be drawn somewhere. The
+clothes-line, for instance. The other day Titania sent me out to put up
+a new clothesline; I found that a shrike or a barn swallow or some other
+veery had built a nest in the clothespin basket. That means we won't be
+able to hang out our laundry in the fresh Monday air and equally fresh
+Monday sunshine until the nesting season is over.
+
+Then there is a gross, fat, indiscreet robin that has taken a home in an
+evergreen or mimosa or banyan tree just under our veranda railing. It is
+an absurdly exposed, almost indecently exposed position, for the
+confidential family business she intends to carry on. The iceman and the
+butcher and the boy who brings up the Sunday ice cream from the
+apothecary can't help seeing those three big blue eggs she has laid.
+But, because she has nested there for the last three springs, while the
+house was unoccupied, she thinks she has a perpetual lease on that
+bush. She hotly resents the iceman and the butcher and the apothecary's
+boy, to say nothing of me. So these worthy merchants have to trail round
+a circuitous route, violating the neutral ground of a neighbor, in order
+to reach the house from behind and deliver their wares through the
+cellar. We none of us dare use the veranda at all for fear of
+frightening her, and I have given up having the morning paper delivered
+at the house because she made such shrill protest.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Frightening her, do I say? Nay, it is _we_ who are frightened. I go
+round to the side of the house to prune my benzine bushes or to plant a
+mess of spinach and a profane starling or woodpecker bustles off her
+nest with shrewish outcry and lingers nearby to rail at me. Abashed, I
+stealthily scuffle back to get a spade out of the tool bin and again
+that shrill scream of anger and outraged motherhood. A throstle or a
+whippoorwill is raising a family in the gutter spout over the back
+kitchen. I go into the bathroom to shave and Titania whispers sharply,
+"You mustn't shave in there. There's a tomtit nesting in the shutter
+hinge and the light from your shaving mirror will make the poor little
+birds crosseyed when they're hatched." I try to shave in the dining-room
+and I find a sparrow's nest on the window sill. Finally I do my toilet
+in the coal bin, even though there is a young squeaking bat down there.
+A bat is half mouse anyway, so Titania has less compassion for its
+feelings. Even if that bat grows up bow-legged on account of premature
+excitement, I have to shave somewhere.
+
+We can't play croquet at this time of year, because the lawn must be
+kept clear for the robins to quarry out worms. The sound of mallet and
+ball frightens the worms and sends them underground, and then it's
+harder for the robins to find them. I suppose we really ought to keep a
+stringed orchestra playing in the garden to entice the worms to the
+surface. We have given up frying onions because the mother robins don't
+like the odor while they're raising a family. I love my toast crusts,
+but Titania takes them away from me for the blackbirds. "Now," she says,
+"they're raising a family. You must be generous."
+
+If my garden doesn't amount to anything this year the birds will be my
+alibi. Titania makes me do my gardening in rubber-soled shoes so as not
+to disturb the birds when they are going to bed. (They begin yelping at
+4 a.m. right outside the window and never think of my slumbers.) The
+other evening I put on my planting trousers and was about to sow a
+specially fine pea I had brought home from town when Titania made signs
+from the window. "You simply mustn't wear those trousers around the
+house in nesting season. Don't you know the birds are very sensitive
+just now?" And we have been paying board for our cat on Long Island for
+a whole year because the birds wouldn't like his society and plebeian
+ways.
+
+Marathon has come to a pretty pass, indeed, when the commuters are to be
+dispossessed in this way by a lot of birds, orioles and tomtits and
+yellow-bellied nuthatches. Some of these days a wren will take it into
+its head to build a nest on the railroad track and we'll all have to
+walk to town. Or a chicken hawk will settle in our icebox and we'll
+starve to death.
+
+As I have said before, I believe in keeping nature in its proper place.
+Birds belong in trees. I don't go twittering and fluffing about in oaks
+and chestnuts, perching on the birds' nest steps and getting in their
+way. And why should some swarthy robin, be she never so matronly, swear
+at me if I set foot on my own front porch?
+
+
+
+
+A MESSAGE FOR BOONVILLE
+
+
+When corncob pipes went up from a nickel to six cents, smoking
+traditions tottered. That was a year or more ago, but one can still
+recall the indignation written on the faces of nicotine-soaked gaffers
+who had been buying cobs at a jitney ever since Washington used one to
+keep warm at Valley Forge. It was the supreme test of our determination
+to win the war: the price of Missouri meerschaums went up 20 per cent
+and there was no insurrection.
+
+Yesterday we went out to buy our annual corncob, and were agreeably
+surprised to learn that the price is still six cents; but our friend the
+tobacconist said that it may go up again soon. We took the treasure,
+gleaming yellow with fresh varnish, back to our kennel, and we are
+smoking it as we set down these words. A corncob is sadly hot and raw
+until it is well sooted, but the ultimate flavor is worth persecution.
+
+The corncob pipes we always buy come from Boonville, Mo., and we don't
+see why we shouldn't blow a little whiff of affection and gratitude
+toward that excellent town. Moreover, Boonville celebrated its
+centennial recently: it was founded in 1818. If the map is to be
+believed, it is on the southern bank of the Missouri River, which is
+there spanned by a very fine bridge; it is reached by two railroads
+(Missouri Pacific and M., K. and T.) and stands on a bluff 100 feet
+above the water. According to the two works of reference nearest to our
+desk, its population is either 4252 or 4377. Perhaps the former census
+omits the 125 men of the town who are so benighted as to smoke briars or
+clays.
+
+Delightful town of Boonville, seat of Cooper County, you are well named.
+How great a boon you have conferred upon a troubled world! Long after
+more ambitious towns have faded in the memory of man your quiet and
+soothing gift to humanity will make your name blessed. I like to imagine
+your shady streets, drowsing in the summer sun, and the rural
+philosophers sitting on the verandas of your hotels or on the benches of
+Harley Park ("comprising fifteen acres"--New International
+Encyclopedia), looking out across the brown river and puffing clouds of
+sweet gray reek. Down by the livery stable on Main street (there must be
+a livery stable on Main street) I can see the old creaky, cane-bottomed
+chairs (with seats punctured by too much philosophy) tilted against the
+sycamore trees, ready for the afternoon gossip and shag tobacco. I can
+imagine the small boys of Boonville fishing for catfish from the piers
+of the bridge or bathing down by the steamboat dock (if there is one),
+and yearning for the day when they, too, will be grown up and old enough
+to smoke corncobs.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+What is the subtle magic of a corncob pipe? It is never as sweet or as
+mellow as a well-seasoned briar, and yet it has a fascination all its
+own. It is equally dear to those who work hard and those who loaf with
+intensity. When you put your nose to the blackened mouth of the hot cob
+its odor is quite different from that fragrance of the crusted wooden
+bowl. There is a faint bitterness in it, a sour, plaintive aroma. It is
+a pipe that seems to call aloud for the accompaniment of beer and
+earnest argument on factional political matters. It is also the pipe
+for solitary vigils of hard and concentrated work. It is the pipe that a
+man keeps in the drawer of his desk for savage hours of extra toil after
+the stenographer has powdered her nose and gone home.
+
+A corncob pipe is a humble badge of philosophy, an evidence of tolerance
+and even humor. It requires patience and good cheer, for it is slow to
+"break in." Those who meditate bestial and brutal designs against the
+weak and innocent do not smoke it. Probably Hindenburg never saw one.
+Missouri's reputation for incredulity may be due to the corncob habit.
+One who is accustomed to consider an argument over a burning nest of
+tobacco, with the smoke fuming upward in a placid haze, will not accept
+any dogma too immediately.
+
+There is a singular affinity among those who smoke corncobs. A Missouri
+meerschaum whose bowl is browned and whose fiber stem is frayed and
+stringy with biting betrays a meditative and reasonable owner. He will
+have pondered all aspects of life and be equally ready to denounce any
+of them, but without bitterness. If you see a man on a street corner
+smoking a cob it will be safe to ask him to watch the baby a minute
+while you slip around the corner. You would even be safe in asking him
+to lend you a five. He will be safe, too, because he won't have it.
+
+Think, therefore, of the charm of a town where corncob pipes are the
+chief industry. Think of them stacked up in bright yellow piles in the
+warehouse. Think of the warm sun and the wholesome sweetness of broad
+acres that have grown into the pith of the cob. Think of the bright-eyed
+Missouri maidens who have turned and scooped and varnished and packed
+them. Think of the airy streets and wide pavements of Boonville, and the
+corner drug stores with their shining soda fountains and grape-juice
+bottles. Think of sitting out on that bluff on a warm evening, watching
+the broad shimmer of the river slipping down from the sunset, and
+smoking a serene pipe while the local flappers walk in the coolness
+wearing crisp, swaying gingham dresses. That's the kind of town we like
+to think about.
+
+
+
+
+MAKING MARATHON SAFE FOR THE URCHIN
+
+
+The Urchin and I have been strolling about Marathon on Sunday mornings
+for more than a year, but not until the gasolineless Sabbaths supervened
+were we really able to examine the village and see what it is like.
+Previously we had been kept busy either dodging motors or admiring them
+as they sped by. Their rich dazzle of burnished enamel, the purring hum
+of their great tires, evokes applause from the Urchin. He is learning,
+as he watches those flashing chariots, that life truly is almost as
+vivid as the advertisements in the _Ladies' Home Journal_, where the
+shimmer of earthly pageant first was presented to him.
+
+Marathon is a village so genteel and comely that the Urchin and I would
+like to have some pictures of it for future generations, particularly as
+we see it on an autumn morning when, as I say, the motors are kenneled
+and the landscape has ceased to vibrate. In the douce benignance of
+equinoctial sunshine we gaze about us with eyes of inventory. Where my
+observation errs by too much sentiment the Urchin checks me by his
+cooler power of ratiocination.
+
+Marathon is a suburban Xanadu gently caressed by the train service of
+the Cinder and Bloodshot. It may be recognized as an aristocratic and
+patrician stronghold by the fact that while luxuries are readily
+obtainable (for instance, banana splits, or the latest novel by Enoch A.
+Bennett), necessaries are had only by prayer and advowson. The drug
+store will deliver ice cream to your very refrigerator, but it is
+impossible to get your garbage collected. The cook goes off for her
+Thursday evening in a taxi, but you will have to mend the roof, stanch
+the plumbing and curry the furnace with your own hands. There are ten
+trains to take you to town of an evening, but only two to bring you
+home. Yet going to town is a luxury, coming home is a necessity. The
+supply of grape juice seems almost unlimited, yet coal is to be had
+catch-as-catch-can.
+
+Another proof that Marathon is patrician at heart is that nothing is
+known by its right name! The drug store is a "pharmacy," Sunday is "the
+Sabbath," a house is a "residence," a debt is a "balance due on bill
+rendered." A girls' school is a "young ladies' seminary," A Marathon man
+is not drafted, he is "inducted into selective service." And the
+railway station has a porte cochere (with the correct accent) instead of
+a carriage entrance. A furnace is (how erroneously!) called a "heater."
+Marathon people do not die--they "pass away." Even the cobbler, good
+fellow, has caught the trick; he calls his shop the "Italo-American Shoe
+Hospital."
+
+This is an innocent masquerade! If Marathon prefers not to call a
+flivver a flivver, I shall not expostulate. And yet this quaint
+subterfuge should not be carried quite so far. Stone walls are made for
+sunny lounging; yet stone walls in Marathon are built with uneven
+vertical projections to discourage the sedentary. Nothing is more
+delightful than a dog; but there are no dogs in Marathon. They are all
+airedales or spaniels or mastiffs. If an ordinary dog should wag his
+tail up our street the airedales would cut him dead. Bless me, Nature
+herself has taken to the same insincerity. The landscape round Marathon
+is lovely, but it has itself well in hand. The hills all pretend to be
+gentle declivities. There is a beautiful little sheet of water,
+reflecting the trailery of willows, a green salute to the eye. In a
+robuster community it would be a swimming hole--but with us, an
+ornamental lake. Only in one spot has Nature forgotten herself and been
+so brusque and rough as to jut up a very sizable cliff. This is the
+loveliest thing in Marathon: sunlight and shadow break and angle in
+cubist magnificence among the oddly veined knobs and prisms of brown
+stone. Yet this cliff or quarry is by common consent taboo among us. It
+is our indelicacy, our indecency. Such "residences" as are near modestly
+turn their kitchens toward it. Only the blacksmith and the gas tanks are
+hardy enough to face this nakedness of Mother Earth--they, and excellent
+Pat Lemon, Marathon's humblest and blackest citizen, who contemplates
+that rugged and honest beauty as he tills his garden on the land
+abandoned by squeamish burghers. That is our Aceldama, our Potter's
+Field, only approached by the athletic, who keep their eyes from
+Nature's indiscretion by vigorous sets of tennis in the purple shadow of
+the cliff.
+
+Life is queerly inverted in Marathon. Nature has been so bullied and
+repressed that she fawns about us timidly. No well-conducted suburban
+shrubbery would think of assuming autumn tints before the ladies have
+got into their fall fashions. Indeed none of our chaste trees will even
+shed their leaves while any one is watching; and they crouch modestly in
+the shade of our massive garages. They have been taught their place. In
+Marathon it is a worse sin to have your lawn uncut than to have your
+books or your hair uncut. I have been aware of indignant eyes because I
+let my back garden run wild. And yet I flatter myself it was not mere
+sloth. No! I want the Urchin to see what this savage, tempestuous world
+is like. What preparation for life is a village where Nature comes to
+heel like a spaniel? When a thunderstorm disorganizes our electric
+lights for an hour or so we feel it a personal affront. Let my rearward
+plot be a deep-tangled wild-wood where the happy Urchin may imagine
+something more ferocious lurking than a posse of radishes. Indeed, I
+hardly know whether Marathon is a safe place to bring up a child. How
+can he learn the horrors of drink in a village where there is no saloon?
+Or the sadness of the seven deadly sins where there is no movie? Or
+deference to his betters where the chauffeurs, in their withered leather
+legs, drive limousines to the drug store to buy expensive cigars, while
+their employers walk to the station puffing briar pipes?
+
+I had been hoping that the war would knock some of this topsy-turvy
+nonsense out of us. Maybe it has. Sometimes I see on the faces of our
+commuters the unaccustomed agitation of thought. At least we still have
+the grace to call ourselves a suburb, and not (what we fancy ourselves)
+a superurb. But I don't like the pretense that runs like a jarring note
+through the music of our life. Why is it that those who are doing the
+work must pretend they are not doing it; and those not doing the work
+pretend that they are? I see that the motor messenger girls who drive
+high-powered cars wear Sam Browne belts and heavy-soled boots, whereas
+the stalwart colored wenches who labor along the tracks of the Cinder
+and Bloodshot console themselves with flimsy waists and light slippers.
+(A fact!) By and by the Urchin will notice these things. And I don't
+want him to grow up the kind of chap who, instead of running to catch a
+train, loiters gracefully to the station and waits to be caught.
+
+
+
+
+THE SMELL OF SMELLS
+
+
+I Smelt it this morning--I wonder if you know the smell I mean?
+
+It had rained hard during the night, and trees and bushes twinkled in
+the sharp early sunshine like ballroom chandeliers. As soon as I stepped
+out of doors I caught that faint but unmistakable musk in the air; that
+dim, warm sweetness. It was the smell of summer, so wholly different
+from the crisp tang of spring.
+
+It is a drowsy, magical waft of warmth and fragrance. It comes only when
+the leaves and vegetation have grown to a certain fullness and juice,
+and when the sun bends in his orbit near enough to draw out all the
+subtle vapors of field and woodland. It is a smell that rarely if ever
+can be discerned in the city. It needs the wider air of the unhampered
+earth for its circulation and play.
+
+I don't know just why, but I associate that peculiar aroma of summer
+with woodpiles and barnyards. Perhaps because in the area of a farmyard
+the sunlight is caught and focused and glows with its fullest heat and
+radiance. And it is in the grasp of the relentless sun that growing
+things yield up their innermost vitality and emanate their fragrant
+essence. I have seen fields of tobacco under a hot sun that smelt as
+blithe as a room thick with blue Havana smoke. I remember a pile of
+birch logs, heaped up behind a barn in Pike County, where that mellow
+richness of summer flowed and quivered like a visible exhalation in the
+air. It is the goodly soul of earth, rendering her health and sweetness
+to her master, the sun.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Every one, I suppose, who is a fancier of smells, knows this blithe
+perfume of the summer air that is so pleasant to the nostril almost any
+fine forenoon from mid-June until August. It steals pungently through
+the blue sparkle of the morning, fading away toward noon when the
+moistness is dried out. But when one first issues from the house at
+breakfast time it is at its highest savor. Irresistibly it suggests
+worms and a tin can with the lid jaggedly bent back and a pitchfork
+turning up the earth behind the cow stable. Fishing was first invented
+when Adam smelt that odor in the air.
+
+The first fishing morning--can't you imagine it! Has no one ever
+celebrated it in verse or oils? The world all young and full of
+unmitigated sweetness; the Garden of Eden bespangled with the early dew;
+Adam scrabbling up a fistful of worm's and hooking them on a bent thorn
+and a line of twisted pampas grass; hurrying down to the branch or the
+creek or the bayou or whatever it may have been; sitting down on a
+brand-new stump that the devil had put there to tempt him; throwing out
+his line; sitting there in the sun dreaming and brooding....
+
+And then a tug, a twitch, a flurry in the clear water of Eden, a pull, a
+splash, and the First Fish lay on the grass at Adam's foot. Can you
+imagine his sensations? How he yelled to Eve to come--look--see, and,
+how annoyed he was because she called out she was busy....
+
+Probably it was in that moment that all the bickerings and back-talk of
+husbands and wives originated; when Adam called to Eve to come and look
+at his First Fish while it was still silver and vivid in its living
+colors; and Eve answered she was busy. In that moment were born the
+men's clubs and the women's clubs and the pinochle parties and being
+detained at the office and Kelly pool and all the other devices and
+stratagems that keep men and women from taking their amusements
+together.
+
+Well, I didn't mean to go back to the Garden of Eden; I just wanted to
+say that summer is here again, even though the almanac doesn't vouch for
+it until the 21st. Those of you who are fond of smells, spread your
+nostrils about breakfast time tomorrow morning and see if you detect it.
+
+
+
+
+A JAPANESE BACHELOR
+
+
+The first obligation of one who lives by writing is to write what
+editors will buy. In so doing, how often one laments that one cannot
+write exactly what happens. Suppose I were to try it--for once!
+
+I have been lying on the bed--where the landlady has put a dark blue
+spread, instead of the white one, because I drop my tobacco
+ashes--smoking, and thinking about a new friend I met today. His name is
+Kenko, a Japanese bachelor of the fourteenth century, who wrote a little
+book of musings which has been translated under the title "The
+Miscellany of a Japanese Priest." His candid reflections are those of a
+shrewd, learned, humane and somewhat misogynist mind. I have been lying
+on the bed because his book, like all books that make one ponder deeply
+on human destiny, causes that feeling of mind-sickness, that swimming
+pain of the mental faculties--or is it caused by too much strong
+tobacco?
+
+My acquaintance with Kenko began only last night, when I sat in bed
+reading Mr. Raymond Weaver's very pleasant article about him in a
+recent _Bookman_. My last act before turning out the light was to lay
+the magazine on the table, open at Mr. Weaver's essay, to remind me to
+get a copy of Kenko the first thing this morning. Happily to-day was
+Saturday. I don't know what I should have done if it had been Sunday. I
+felt that I could not wait another day without owning that book. I
+suspected it was a good deal in the mood of another bachelor, an
+Anglo-American Caleb of to-day--Mr. Logan Pearsall Smith, whose
+whimsical "Trivia" belongs on the same shelf.
+
+This morning I tried to argue myself out of the decision. It may be a
+very expensive book, I thought; it may cost two or three dollars; I have
+been spending a lot of money lately, and I certainly ought to buy some
+new undershirts. Moreover, this has been a bad week; I have never
+written those paragraphs I promised a certain editor, and I haven't paid
+the rent yet. Why not try to find the book at a library? But I knew the
+only library where I would have any chance of finding Kenko would be the
+big pile at Fifth avenue and Forty-second street, and I could not bear
+the thought of having to read that book without smoking. I felt
+instinctively (from what Mr. Weaver had written) that it was the kind
+of book that requires a pipe.
+
+Well, I thought, I won't decide this too hastily; I'll walk down to the
+post office (four blocks) and make up my mind on the way. I knew
+already, however, that if I didn't go downtown for that book it would
+bother me all day and ruin my work.
+
+I walked down to the post office (to mail to an editor a sonnet I
+thought fairly well of) saying to myself: That book is imported from
+England, it may be a big book, it may even cost four dollars. How much
+better to exhibit the stoic tenacity of all great men, go back to my
+hall bedroom (which I was temporarily occupying) and concentrate on
+matters in hand. What right, I said, has a Buddhist recluse, born either
+in 1281 or 1283, to harass me so? But I knew in my heart that the matter
+was already decided. I walked back to the corner of Hallbedroom street,
+and stood vacillating at the newsstand, pretending to glance over the
+papers. But across six centuries the insistent ghost of Kenko had me in
+its grip. Annoyed, and with a sense of chagrin, I hurried to the subway.
+
+In the dimly lit vestibule of the subway car, a boy of sixteen or so sat
+on an up-ended suitcase, plunged in a book. I can never resist the
+temptation to try to see what books other people are reading. This
+innocent curiosity has led me into many rudenesses, for I am
+short-sighted and have to stare very close to make out the titles. And
+usually the people who read books on trolleys, subways and ferries are
+women. How often I have stalked them warily, trying to identify the
+volume without seeming too intrusive. That weakness deserves an essay in
+itself. It has led me into surprising adventures. But in this case my
+quarry was easy. The lad--I judged him a boarding school boy going back
+to school after the holidays--was so absorbed in his reading that it was
+easy to thrust my face over his shoulder and see the running head on the
+page--"The Light That Failed."
+
+I left the subway at Pennsylvania Station. Just to appease my
+conscience, I stopped in at the agreeable Cadmus bookshop on
+Thirty-third street to see if by any chance they might have a
+second-hand copy of Kenko. But I know they wouldn't; it is not the kind
+of book at all likely to be found second-hand. I tarried here long
+enough to smoke one cigarette and pay my devoirs to the noble profession
+of second-hand bookselling. I even thought, a little wildly, of buying a
+copy of "The Monk" by M.G. Lewis, which I saw there. So does the frenzy
+rage when once you unleash it. But I decided to be content with paying
+my devoirs to the proprietor, a friend of mine, and not go on (as the
+soldier does in Hood's lovely pun) to devour my pay. I hurried off to
+the office of the Oxford University Press, Kenko's publishers.
+
+It should be stated, however, that owing to some confusion of doors I
+got by mistake into the reception room of the Brunswick-Balke-Collender
+Billiard Table Company, which is on the same corridor as the salesroom
+of the Oxford Press. It was a pleasant reception room, not very bookish
+in aspect, but in my agitation I was too eager to feel surprised by the
+large billiard table in the offing. I somewhat startled a young man at
+an adding machine by demanding, in a husky voice, a copy of "The
+Miscellanies of a Japanese Priest." I was rather nervous by this time,
+lest for some reason I should not be able to buy a copy of Kenko. I
+feared the publishers might be angry with me for not having made a round
+of the bookstores first. The young man saw that I was chalking the wrong
+cue, and forwarded me.
+
+In the office of the Oxford Press I met a very genial reception. I had
+been, as I say, apprehensive lest they should refuse to sell me the
+book; or perhaps they might not have a copy. I wondered what credentials
+I could offer to override their scruples. I had made up my mind to tell
+them, if they demurred, that I had once published an essay to prove that
+the best book for reading in bed is the General Catalogue of the Oxford
+University Press. This is quite true. It is a delightful compilation of
+several thousand pages, on India paper. But to my pleasant surprise the
+Oxonians seemed not at all surprised at the sudden appearance of one
+asking, in a voice a little shaken with emotion, for a copy of the
+"Miscellanies." Mr. Campion and Mr. Krause, who greeted me, were
+kindness itself.
+
+"Oh, yes," they said, "we have a copy." And in a minute it lay before
+me. One of those little green and gold volumes in the Oxford Library of
+Prose and Poetry. "How much?" I said. "A dollar forty." I paid it
+joyfully. It is a good price for a book. Once I wrote a book myself that
+sells (when it does sell) at that figure. When I was at Oxford I used to
+buy the O.L.P.P. books for (I think) half a crown. In 1917 they were
+listed at a dollar. Now $1.40. But I fear Kenko's estate doesn't get the
+advantage of increased royalties.
+
+The first thing to do was to find a place to read the book. My club was
+fifteen blocks away. The smoking room of the Pennsylvania Station, where
+I have done much reading, was three long blocks. But I must dip into
+Kenko immediately. Down in the hallway I found a shoe-shining stand,
+with a bowl of indirect light above it. The artist was busy in the
+barber shop near-by. Admirable opportunity. I mounted the throne and
+fell to. The first thing I saw was a quaint Japanese woodcut of a buxom
+maiden washing garments in a rapidly purling stream. She was treading
+out a petticoat with her bare feet, presumably on a flat stone. In a
+black storm-cloud above a willow tree a bearded supernatural being, with
+hands spread in humorous deprecation, gazes down half pleased, half
+horrified. And the caption is, "Did not the fairy Kume lose his
+supernatural powers when he saw the white legs of a girl washing
+clothes?" Yet be not dismayed. Kenko is no George Moore.
+
+By and bye the shoeshiner came out and found me reading. He was
+apologetic. "I didn't know you were here," he said. "Sorry to keep you
+waiting." Fortunately my shoes needed shining, as they generally do. He
+shined them, and I still sat reading. He was puzzled, and tried to make
+out the title of the book. At that moment I was reading:
+
+One morning after a beautiful snowfall I sent a letter to a friend's
+house about something I wished to say, but said nothing at all about
+the snow. And in his reply he wrote: "How can I listen to a man so base
+that his pen in writing did not make the least reference to the snow!
+Your honorable way of expressing yourself I exceedingly regret." How
+amusing was this answer!
+
+The shoeshiner was now asking me whether anything was wrong with the
+polish he had put on my boots, so I thought it best to leave.
+
+In the earlier pages of Kenko's book there are a number of allusions to
+the agreeableness of intercourse with friends, so I went into a nearby
+restaurant to telephone to a man whom I wished to know better. He said
+that he would be happy to meet me at ten minutes after twelve. That left
+over half an hour. I felt an immediate necessity to tell some one about
+Kenko, so I made my way to Mr. Nichols's delightful bookshop (which has
+an open fire) on Thirty-third Street. I showed the book to Mr. Nichols,
+and we had a pleasant talk, in the course of which she showed me the
+five facsimile volumes of Dickens's Christmas books, which he had
+issued. In particular, he read aloud to me the magnificent description
+of the boiling kettle in the first "Chirp" of "The Cricket on the
+Hearth," and pointed out to me how Dickens fell into rhyme in describing
+the song of the kettle. This passage Mr. Nichols read to me, standing
+in front of his fire, in a very musical and sympathetic tone of voice
+which pleased me exceedingly. I was strongly tempted to buy the five
+little books, and wished I had known of them before Christmas. With a
+brutal effort at last I pulled out my watch, and found it was a quarter
+after twelve.
+
+I met my friend at his office, and we walked up Fourth Avenue in a flush
+of sunshine. From Twenty-fourth to Forty-second Street we discussed the
+habits of English poets visiting this country. At the club we got onto
+Bolshevism, and he told me how a bookseller on Lexington Avenue, whose
+shop is frequented by very outspoken radicals, had told him that one of
+these had said, "The time is coming, and not far away, when the gutters
+in front of your shop will run with blood as they did in Petrograd." I
+thought of some recent bomb outrages in Philadelphia and did not laugh.
+With such current problems before us, I felt a little embarrassed about
+turning the talk back to so many centuries to Kenko, but finally I got
+it there. My friend ate chicken hash and tea; I had kidneys and bacon,
+and cocoa with whipped cream. We both had a coffee eclair. We parted
+with mutual regret, and I went back to the Hallbedroom street, intending
+to do some work.
+
+Of course you know that I didn't do it. I lit the gas stove, and sat
+down to read Kenko. I wished I were a recluse, living somewhere near a
+plum tree and a clear running water, leisurely penning maxims for
+posterity. I read about his frugality, his love of the moon and a little
+music, his somewhat embittered complaints against the folly of men who
+spend their lives in rushing about swamped in petty affairs, and the sad
+story of the old priest who was attacked by a goblin-cat when he came
+home late at night from a pleasant evening spent in capping verses. I
+read with special pleasure his seven Self-Congratulations, in which he
+records seven occasions when he felt that he had really done himself
+justice. The first of these was when he watched a man riding horseback
+in a reckless fashion; he predicted that the man would come a cropper,
+and he did so. The next four self-congratulations refer to times when
+his knowledge of literary and artistic matters enabled him to place an
+unfamiliar quotation or assign a painted tablet to the right artist. One
+tells how he was able to find a man in a crowd when everyone else had
+failed. And the last and most amusing is an anecdote of a court lady who
+tried to inveigle him into a flirtation with her maid by sending the
+latter, richly dressed and perfumed, to sit very close to him when he
+was at the temple. Kenko congratulates himself on having been adamant.
+He was no Pepys.
+
+I thought of trying to set down a similar list of self-congratulations
+for myself. Alas, the only two I could think of were having remembered a
+telephone number, the memorandum of which I had lost; and having
+persuaded a publisher to issue a novel which was a great success. (Not
+written by me, let me add.)
+
+I found my friend Kenko a rather disturbing companion. His condemnation
+of our busy, racketing life is so damned conclusive! Having recently
+added to my family, I was distressed by his section "Against Leaving Any
+Descendants." He seems to be devoid of the sentiment of ancestor worship
+and sacredness of family continuity which we have been taught to
+associate with the Oriental. And yet there is always a current of
+suspicion in one's mind that he is not really revealing his inmost
+heart. When a bachelor in his late fifties tells us how glad he is never
+to have had a son, we begin to taste sour grapes.
+
+I went out about six o'clock, and was thrilled by a shaving of shining
+new moon in the cold blue winter sky--"the sky with its terribly cold
+clear moon, which none care to watch, is simply heart-breaking," says
+Kenko. As I walked up Broadway I turned back for another look at the
+moon, and found it hidden by the vast bulk of a hotel. Kenko would have
+had some caustic remark for that. I went into the Milwaukee Lunch for
+supper. They had just baked some of their delicious fresh bran muffins,
+still hot from the oven. I had two of them, sliced and buttered, with a
+pot of tea. Kenko lay on the table, and the red-headed philosopher who
+runs the lunchroom spotted him. I have always noticed that "plain men"
+are vastly curious about books. They seem to suspect that there is some
+occult power in them, some mystery that they would like to grasp. My
+friend, who has the bearing of a prizefighter, but the heart of an
+amiable child, came over and picked up the book. He sat down at the
+table with me and looked at it. I was a little doubtful how to explain
+matters, for I felt that it was the kind of book he would not be likely
+to care for. He began spelling it out loud, rather laboriously--
+
+    Section 1. Well! Being born into this world there are, I suppose,
+    many aims which we may strive to attain.
+
+To my surprise he showed the greatest enthusiasm. So much so that I
+ordered another pair of bran muffins, which I did not really want, so
+that he might have more time for reading Kenko.
+
+"Who was this fellow?" he asked.
+
+"He was a Jap," I said, "lived a long time ago. He was mighty thick with
+the Emperor, and after the Emperor died he went to live by himself in
+the country, and became a priest, and wrote down his thoughts."
+
+"I see," said my friend. "Just put down whatever came into his head,
+eh?"
+
+"That's it. All his ideas about the queer things a fellow runs into in
+life, you know, little bits of philosophy."
+
+I was a little afraid of using that word "philosophy," but I couldn't
+think of anything else to say. It struck my friend very pleasantly.
+
+"That's it," he said, "philosophy. Just as you say, now, he went off by
+himself and put things down the way they come to him. Philosophy. Sure.
+Say, that's a good kind of book. I like that kind of thing. I have a lot
+of books at home, you know. I get home about nine o'clock, and I most
+always read a bit before I go to bed."
+
+How I yearned to know what books they were, but it seemed rude to
+question him.
+
+He dipped into Kenko again, and I wondered whether courtesy demanded
+that I should order another pot of tea.
+
+"Say, would you like to do me a favor?"
+
+"Sure thing," I said.
+
+"When you get through with that book, pass it over, will you? That's the
+kind of thing I've been wanting. Just some little thoughts, you know,
+something short. I've got a lot of books at home."
+
+His big florid face gleamed with friendly earnestness.
+
+"Sure thing," I said. "Just as soon as I've finished it you shall have
+it." I wanted to ask whether he would reciprocate by lending me one of
+his own books, which would give me some clue to his tastes; but again I
+felt obscurely that he would not understand my curiosity.
+
+As I went out he called to me again from where he stood by the shining
+coffee boiler. "Don't forget, will you?" he said. "When you're through,
+just pass it over."
+
+I promised faithfully, and tomorrow evening I shall take the book in to
+him. I honestly hope he'll enjoy it. I walked up the bright wintry
+street, and wondered what Kenko would have said to the endless flow of
+taxicabs, the elevators and subways, the telephones, and telegraph
+offices, the newsstands and especially the plate-glass windows of
+florists. He would have had some urbane, cynical and delightfully
+disillusioning remarks to offer. And, as Mr. Weaver so shrewdly says,
+how he would enjoy "The Way of All Flesh!"
+
+I came back to Hallbedroom street, and set down these few meditations.
+There is much more I would like to say, but the partitions in hall
+bedrooms are thin, and the lady in the next room thumps on the wall if I
+keep the typewriter going after ten o'clock.
+
+
+
+
+TWO DAYS WE CELEBRATE
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+If we were asked (we have not been asked) to name a day the world ought
+to celebrate and does not, we would name the 16th of May. For on that
+day, in the year 1763, James Boswell first met Dr. Samuel Johnson.
+
+This great event, which enriched the world with one of the most vivid
+panoramas of human nature known to man, happened in Tom Davies's
+bookshop in Covent Garden. Mr. and Mrs. Davies were friends of the
+Doctor, who frequently visited their shop. Of them Boswell remarks
+quaintly that though they had been on the stage for many years, they
+"maintained an uniform decency of character." The shop seems to have
+been a charming place: one went there not merely to buy books, but also
+to have a cup of tea in the back parlor. It is sad to think that though
+we have been hanging round bookshops for a number of years, we have
+never yet met a bookseller who invited us into the private office for a
+quiet cup. Wait a moment, though, we are forgetting Dr. Rosenbach, the
+famous bookseller of Philadelphia. But his collations, held in amazed
+memory by many editioneers, rarely descend to anything so humble as tea.
+One recalls a confused glamor of ortolans, trussed guinea-hens,
+strawberries reclining in a bowl carved out of solid ice, and what used
+to be known as vintages. It is a pity that Dr. Johnson died too soon to
+take lunch with Dr. Rosenbach.
+
+"At last, on Monday, the 16th of May," says Boswell, "when I was sitting
+in Mr. Davies's back parlor, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs.
+Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies, having
+perceived him through the glass door, announced his awful approach to
+me. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him.
+I was much agitated." The volatile Boswell may be forgiven his
+agitation. We also would have trembled not a little. Boswell was only
+twenty-two, and probably felt that his whole life and career hung upon
+the great man's mood. But embarrassment is a comely emotion for a young
+man in the face of greatness; and the Doctor was speedily put in a good
+humor by an opportunity to utter his favorite pleasantry at the expense
+of the Scotch. "I do, indeed, come from Scotland," cried Boswell, after
+Davies had let the cat out of the bag; "but I cannot help it." "That,
+sir," said Doctor Johnson, "is what a great many of your countrymen
+cannot help."
+
+The great book that dated from that meeting in Davies's back parlor has
+become one of the most intimately cherished possessions of the race. One
+finds its admirers and students scattered over the globe. No man who
+loves human nature in all its quirks and pangs, seasoned with bluff
+honesty and the genuineness of a cliff or a tree, can afford to step
+into a hearse until he has made it his own. And it is a noteworthy
+illustration of the biblical saying that whosoever will rule, let him be
+a servant. Boswell made himself the servant of Johnson, and became one
+of the masters of English literature.
+
+It used to annoy us to hear Karl Rosner referred to as "the Kaiser's
+Boswell." For to _boswellize_ (which is a verb that has gone into our
+dictionaries) means not merely to transcribe faithfully the acts and
+moods and import of a man's life; it implies also that the man so
+delineated be a good man and a great. Horace Traubel was perhaps a
+Boswell; but Rosner never.
+
+It is pleasant to know that Boswell was not merely a kind of animated
+note-book. He was a droll, vain, erring, bibulous, warm-hearted
+creature, a good deal of a Pepys, in fact, with all the Pepysian vices
+and virtues. Mr. A. Edward Newton's "Amenities of Book Collecting" makes
+Boswell very human to us. How jolly it is to learn that Jamie (like many
+lesser fry since) wrote press notices about himself. Here is one of his
+own blurbs, which we quote from Mr. Newton's book:
+
+    Boswell, the author, is a most excellent man: he is of an ancient
+    family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a
+    little. At his nativity there appeared omens of his future
+    greatness. His parts are bright, and his education has been good. He
+    has traveled in post chaises miles without number. He is fond of
+    seeing much of the world. He eats of every good dish, especially
+    apple pie. He drinks Old Hock. He has a very fine temper. He is
+    somewhat of a humorist and a little tinctured with pride. He has a
+    good manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous. He has
+    infinite vivacity, yet is observed at times to have a melancholy
+    cast. He is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather
+    young than old. His shoes are neatly made, and he never wears
+    spectacles.
+
+This brings the excellent Boswell very close to us indeed: he might
+almost be a member of the Authors' League. "Especially apple pie, bless
+his heart!"
+
+When we said that Boswell was a kind of Pepys, we fell by chance into a
+happy comparison. Not only by his volatile errors was he of the tribe of
+Samuel, but in his outstanding character by which he becomes of
+importance to posterity--that of one of the great diarists. Now there is
+no human failing upon which we look with more affectionate lenience than
+that of keeping a diary. All of us, in our pilgrimage through the
+difficult thickets of this world, have moods and moments when we have to
+fall back on ourselves for the only complete understanding and
+absolution we will ever find. In such times, how pleasant it is to
+record our emotions and misgivings in the sure and secret pages of some
+privy notebook; and how entertaining to read them again in later years!
+Dr. Johnson himself advised Bozzy to keep a journal, though he little
+suspected to what use it would be put. The cynical will say that he did
+so in order that Bozzy would have less time to pester him, but we
+believe his advice was sincere. It must have been, for the Doctor kept
+one himself, of which more in a moment.
+
+"He recommended to me," Boswell says, "to keep a journal of my life,
+full and unreserved. He said it would be a very good exercise and would
+yield me great satisfaction when the particulars were faded from my
+remembrance. He counselled me to keep it private, and said I might
+surely have a friend who would burn it in case of my death."
+
+Happily it was not burned. The Great Doctor never seemed so near to me
+as the other day when I saw a little notebook, bound in soft brown
+leather and interleaved with blotting paper, in which Bozzy's busy pen
+had jotted down memoranda of his talks with his friend, while they were
+still echoing in his mind. From this notebook (which must have been one
+of many) the paragraphs were transferred practically unaltered into the
+Life. This superb treasure, now owned by Mr. Adam of Buffalo, almost
+makes one hear the Doctor's voice; and one imagines Boswell sitting up
+at night with his candle, methodically recording the remarks of the day.
+The first entry was dated September 22, 1777, so Bozzy must have carried
+it in his pocket when Dr. Johnson and he were visiting Dr. Taylor in
+Ashbourne. It was during this junket that Dr. Johnson tried to pole the
+large dead cat over Dr. Taylor's dam, an incident that Boswell recorded
+as part of his "Flemish picture of my friend." It was then also that
+Mrs. Killingley, mistress of Ashbourne's leading inn, The Green Man,
+begged Boswell "to name the house to his extensive acquaintance."
+Certainly Bozzy's acquaintance was to be far more extensive than good
+Mrs. Killingley ever dreamed. It was he who "named the house" to me, and
+for this reason The Green Man profited in fourpence worth of cider, 134
+years later.
+
+There is another day we have vowed to commemorate, by drinking great
+flaggonage of tea, and that is the 18th of September, Dr. Johnson's
+birthday. The Great Cham needs no champion; his speech and person have
+become part of our common heritage. Yet the extraordinary scenario in
+which Boswell filmed him for us has attained that curious estate of
+great literature the characteristic of which is that every man imagines
+he has read it, though he may never have opened its pages. It is like
+the historic landmark of one's home town, which foreigners from overseas
+come to study, but which the denizen has hardly entered. It is like
+Niagara Falls: we have a very fair mental picture of the spectacle and
+little zeal to visit the uproar itself. And so, though we all use
+Doctor Johnson's sharply stamped coinages, we generally are too lax
+about visiting the mint.
+
+But we will never cease to pray that every honest man should study
+Boswell. There are many who have topped the rise of human felicity in
+that book: when reading it they feel the tide of intellect brim the mind
+with a unique fullness of satisfaction. It is not a mere commentary on
+life: it _is_ life--it fills and floods every channel of the brain. It
+is a book that men make a hobby of, as golf or billiards. To know it is
+a liberal education. I could have understood Germany yearning to invade
+England in order to annex Boswell's Johnson. There would have been some
+sense in that.
+
+What is the average man's conception of Doctor Johnson? We think of a
+huge ungainly creature, slovenly of dress, addicted to tea, the author
+of a dictionary and the center of a tavern coterie. We think of him
+prefacing bluff and vehement remarks with "Sir," and having a knack for
+demolishing opponents in boisterous argument. All of which is passing
+true, just as is our picture of the Niagara we have never seen; but how
+it misses the inner tenderness and tormented virtue of the man!
+
+So it is refreshing sometimes to turn away from Boswell to those
+passages where the good old Doctor has revealed himself with his own
+hand. The letter to Chesterfield is too well known for comment. But no
+less noble, and not nearly so well known, is the preface to the
+Dictionary. How moving it is in its sturdy courage, its strong grasp of
+the tools of expression. In every line one feels the weight and push of
+a mind that had behind it the full reservoir of language, particularly
+the Latin. There is the same sense of urgent pressure that one feels in
+watching a strong stream backed up behind a dam:
+
+    I look with pleasure on my book, however defective, and deliver it
+    to the world with the spirit of a man that has endeavored well. That
+    it will immediately become popular I have not promised to myself: a
+    few wild blunders, and risible absurdities, from which no work of
+    such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with
+    laughter, and harden ignorance in contempt, but useful diligence
+    will at last prevail, and there never can be wanting some who
+    distinguish desert; who will consider that no dictionary of a living
+    tongue ever can be perfect, since while it is hastening to
+    publication, some words are budding, and some falling away; that a
+    whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even
+    a whole life would not be sufficient; that he, whose design includes
+    whatever language can express, must often speak of what he does not
+    understand; that a writer will sometimes be tarried by eagerness to
+    the end, and sometimes faint with weariness under a task, which
+    Scaliger compares to the labors of the anvil and the mine; that what
+    is obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always
+    present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance,
+    slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the
+    mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in vain
+    trace his memory at the moment of need, for that which yesterday he
+    knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come uncalled into his
+    thoughts to-morrow.
+
+I know no better way of celebrating Doctor Johnson's birthday than by
+quoting a few passages from his "Prayers and Meditations," jotted down
+during his life in small note-books and given shortly before his death
+to a friend. No one understands the dear old doctor unless he remembers
+that his spirit was greatly perplexed and harassed by sad and disordered
+broodings. The bodily twitchings and odd gestures which attracted so
+much attention as he rolled about the streets were symptoms of painful
+twitchings and gestures within. A great part of his intense delight in
+convivial gatherings, in conversation and the dinner table, was due to
+his eagerness to be taken out of himself. One fears that his solitary
+hours were very often tragic.
+
+There were certain dates which Doctor Johnson almost always commemorated
+in his private notebook--his birthday, the date of his wife's death,
+the Easter season and New Year's. In these pathetic little entries one
+sees the spirit that was dogmatic and proud among men abasing itself in
+humility and pouring out the generous tenderness of an affectionate
+nature. In these moments of contrition small peccadilloes took on tragic
+importance in his mind. Rising late in the morning and the untidy state
+of his papers seemed unforgivable sins. There is hardly any more moving
+picture in the history of mankind than that of the rugged old doctor
+pouring out his innocent petitions for greater strength in ordering his
+life and bewailing his faults of sluggishness, indulgence at table and
+disorderly thoughts. Let us begin with his entry on September 18, 1760,
+his fifty-second birthday:
+
+  RESOLVED, D.j.
+
+  To combat notions of obligation.
+
+  To apply to study.
+
+  To reclaim imaginations.
+
+  To consult the resolves on Tetty's [his wife's] coffin.
+
+  To rise early.
+
+  To study religion.
+
+  To go to church.
+
+  To drink less strong liquors.
+
+  To keep a journal.
+
+  To oppose laziness by doing what is to be done to-morrow.
+
+  Rise as early as I can.
+
+  Send for books for history of war.
+
+  Put books in order.
+
+  Scheme of life.
+
+The very human feature of these little notes is that the same good
+resolutions appear year after year. Thus, four years after the above, we
+find him writing:
+
+Sept. 18, 1764.
+
+This is my 56th birthday, the day on which I have concluded 55 years.
+
+I have outlived many friends, I have felt many sorrows. I have made few
+improvements. Since my resolution formed last Easter, I have made no
+advancement in knowledge or in goodness; nor do I recollect that I have
+endeavored it. I am dejected, but not hopeless.
+
+I resolve,
+
+To study the Scriptures; I hope, in the original languages. Six hundred
+and forty verses every Sunday will nearly comprise the Scriptures in a
+year.
+
+To read good books; to study theology.
+
+To treasure in my mind passages for recollection.
+
+To rise early; not later than six, if I can; I hope sooner, but as soon
+as I can.
+
+To keep a journal, both of employment and of expenses. To keep accounts.
+
+To take care of my health by such means as I have designed.
+
+To set down at night some plan for the morrow.
+
+To-morrow I purpose to regulate my room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Easter, 1765, he confesses sadly that he often lies abed until two in
+the afternoon; which, after all, was not so deplorable, for he usually
+went to bed very late. Boswell has spoken of "the unseasonable hour at
+which he had habituated himself to expect the oblivion of repose." On
+New Year's Day, 1767, he prays: "Enable me, O Lord, to use all
+enjoyments with due temperance, preserve me from unseasonable and
+immoderate sleep." Two years later than this he writes:
+
+"I am not yet in a state to form many resolutions; I purpose and hope to
+rise early in the morning at eight, and by degrees at six; eight being
+the latest hour to which bedtime can be properly extended; and six the
+earliest that the present system of life requires."
+
+One of the most pathetic of his entries is the following, on September
+18, 1768:
+
+"This day it came into my mind to write the history of my melancholy.
+On this I purpose to deliberate; I know not whether it may not too much
+disturb me."
+
+From time to time there have been stupid or malicious people who have
+said that Johnson's marriage with a homely woman twenty years older than
+himself was not a love match. For instance, Mr. E.W. Howe, of Atchison,
+Kan., in most respects an amiable and well-conducted philosopher,
+uttered in _Howe's Monthly_ (May, 1918) the following words, which (I
+hope) he will forever regret:
+
+"I have heard that when a young man he (Johnson) married an ugly and
+vulgar old woman for her money, and that his taste was so bad that he
+worshiped her."
+
+Against this let us set what Johnson wrote in his notebook on March 28,
+1770:
+
+    This is the day on which, in 1752, I was deprived of poor dear
+    Tetty. When I recollect the time in which we lived together, my
+    grief of her departure is not abated; and I have less pleasure in
+    any good that befalls me, because she does not partake it. On many
+    occasions, I think what she would have said or done. When I saw the
+    sea at Brighthelmstone, I wished for her to have seen it with me.
+    But with respect to her, no rational wish is now left but that we
+    may meet at last where the mercy of God shall make us happy, and
+    perhaps make us instrumental to the happiness of each other. It is
+    now 18 years.
+
+Let us end the memorandum with a less solemn note. On Good Friday, 1779,
+he and Boswell went to church together. When they returned the good old
+doctor sat down to read the Bible, and he says, "I gave Boswell Les
+Pensees de Pascal, that he might not interrupt me." Of this very copy
+Boswell says: "I preserve the book with reverence." I wonder who has it
+now?
+
+So let us wish Doctor Johnson many happy returns of the day, sure that
+as long as paper and ink and eyesight preserve their virtue he will bide
+among us, real and living and endlessly loved.
+
+
+
+
+THE URCHIN AT THE ZOO
+
+
+I don't know just what urchins think about; neither do they, perhaps;
+but presumably by the time they're twenty-eight months old they must
+have formed some ideas as to what is possible and what isn't. And
+therefore it seemed to the Urchin's curators sound and advisable to take
+him out to the Zoo one Sunday afternoon just to suggest to his
+delightful mind that nothing is impossible in this curious world.
+
+Of course, the amusing feature of such expeditions is that it is always
+the adult who is astounded, while the child takes things blandly for
+granted. You or I can watch a tiger for hours and not make head or tail
+of it--in a spiritual sense, that is--whereas an urchin simply smiles
+with rapture, isn't the least amazed, and wants to stroke the "nice
+pussy."
+
+It was a soft spring afternoon, the garden was thronged with visitors
+and all the indoor animals seemed to be wondering how soon they would be
+let out into their open-air inclosures. We filed through the wicket gate
+and the Urchin disdained the little green go-carts ranked for hire. He
+preferred to navigate the Zoo on his own white-gaitered legs. You might
+as well have expected Adam on his first tour of Eden to ride in a
+palanquin.
+
+The Urchin entered the Zoo much in the frame of mind that must have been
+Adam's on that original tour of inspection. He had been told he was
+going to the Zoo, but that meant nothing to him. He saw by the aspect of
+his curators that he was to have a good time, and loyally he was
+prepared to exult over whatever might come his way. The first thing he
+saw was a large boulder--it is set up as a memorial to a former curator
+of the garden. "Ah," thought the Urchin, "this is what I have been
+brought here to admire." With a shout of glee he ran to it. "See stone,"
+he cried. He is an enthusiast concerning stones. He has a small
+cardboard box of pebbles, gathered from the walks of a city square,
+which is very precious to him. And this magnificent big pebble, he
+evidently thought, was the marvelous thing he had come to examine. His
+custodians, far more anxious than he to feast their eyes upon lions and
+tigers, had hard work to lure him away. He crouched by the boulder,
+appraising its hugeness, and left it with the gratified air of one who
+has extracted the heart out of a surprising and significant experience.
+
+The next adventure was a robin, hopping on the lawn. Every child is
+familiar with robins which play a leading part in so much Mother Goose
+mythology, so the Urchin felt himself greeting an old friend. "See Robin
+Red-breast!" he exclaimed, and tried to climb the low wire fence that
+bordered the path. The robin hopped discreetly underneath a bush,
+uncertain of our motives.
+
+Now, as I have no motive but to attempt to record the truth, it is my
+duty to set down quite frankly that I believe the Urchin showed more
+enthusiasm over the stone and the robin than over any of the amazements
+that succeeded them. I suppose the reason for that is plain. These two
+objects had some understandable relation with his daily life. His small
+mind--we call a child's mind "small" simply by habit; perhaps it is
+larger than ours, for it can take in almost anything without
+effort--possessed well-known classifications into which the big stone
+and the robin fitted comfortably and naturally. But what can a child say
+to an ostrich or an elephant? It simply smiles and passes on. Thereby
+showing its superiority to some of our most eminent thinkers. They,
+confronted by something the like of which they have never seen
+before--shall we say a League of Nations or Bolshevism?--burst into
+shrill screams of panic abuse and flee the precinct! How much wiser the
+level-headed Urchin! Confronting the elephant, certainly an appalling
+sight to so small a mortal, he looked at the curator, who was carrying
+him on one shoulder, and said with an air of one seeking gently to
+reassure himself, "Elphunt won't come after Junior." Which is something
+of the mood to which the Senate is moving.
+
+It was delightful to see the Urchin endeavor to bring some sense of
+order into this amazing place by his classification of the strange
+sights that surrounded him. He would not confess himself staggered by
+anything. At his first glimpse of the emu he cried ecstatic, "Look,
+there's a--," and paused, not knowing what on earth to call it. Then
+rapidly to cover up his ignorance he pointed confidently to a somewhat
+similar fowl and said sagely, "And there's another!" The curious
+moth-eaten and shabby appearance that captive camels always exhibit was
+accurately recorded in his addressing one of them as "poor old horsie."
+And after watching the llamas in silence, when he saw them nibble at
+some grass he was satisfied. "Moo-cow," he stated positively, and turned
+away. The bears did not seem to interest him until he was reminded of
+Goldylocks. Then he remembered the pictures of the bears in that story
+and began to take stock of them.
+
+The Zoo is a pleasant place to wander on a Sunday afternoon. The willow
+trees, down by the brook where the otters were plunging, were a cloud of
+delicate green. Shrubs everywhere were bursting into bud. The Tasmanian
+devils those odd little swine that look like small pigs in a high fever,
+were lying sprawled out, belly to the sun-warmed earth, in the same
+whimsical posture that dogs adopt when trying to express how jolly they
+feel. The Urchin's curators were at a loss to know what the Tasmanian
+devils were and at first were led astray by a sign on a tree in the
+devils' inclosure. "Look, they're Norway maples," cried one curator. In
+the same way we thought at first that a llama was a Chinese ginkgo.
+These errors lead to a decent humility.
+
+There is something about a Zoo that always makes one hungry, so we sat
+on a bench in the sun, watched the stately swans ruffling like
+square-rigged ships on the sparkling pond, and ate biscuits, while the
+Urchin was given a mandate over some very small morsels. He was much
+entertained by the monkeys in the open-air cages. In the upper story of
+one cage a lady baboon was embracing an urchin of her own, while
+underneath her husband was turning over a pile of straw in a persistent
+search for small deer. It was a sad day for the monkeys at the Zoo when
+the rule was made that no peanuts can be brought into the park. I should
+have thought that peanuts were an inalienable right for captive monkeys.
+The order posted everywhere that one must not give the animals tobacco
+seems almost unnecessary nowadays, with the weed at present prices. The
+Urchin was greatly interested in the baboon rummaging in his straw.
+"Mokey kicking the grass away," he observed thoughtfully.
+
+Down in the grizzly-bear pit one of the bears squatted himself in the
+pool and sat there, grinning complacently at the crowd. We explained
+that the bear was taking a bath. This presented a familiar train of
+thought to the Urchin and he watched the grizzly climb out of his tank
+and scatter the water over the stone floor. As we walked away the Urchin
+observed thoughtfully, "He's dying." This somewhat shocked the curators,
+who did not know that their offspring had even heard of death. "What
+does he mean?" we asked ourselves. "He's dying," repeated the Urchin in
+a tone of happy conviction. Then the explanation struck us. "He's
+drying!" "Quite right," we said. "After his bath he has to dry himself."
+
+We went home on a crowded Girard Avenue car, thinking impatiently that
+it will be some time before we can read "The Jungle Book" to the Urchin.
+In the summer, when the elephants take their bath outdoors, we'll go
+again. And the last thing the Urchin said that night as he fell asleep
+was, "Mokey kicking the grass away."
+
+
+
+
+FELLOW CRAFTSMEN
+
+
+Robert Urwick, the author, was not yet so calloused by success that he
+was immune from flattery. And so when he received the following letter
+he was rather pleased:
+
+Mr. Robt. Urwick, dear sir I seen your story in this weeks Saturday Evn
+Cudgel, not that I can afford to buy journals of that stamp but I pick
+up the copy on a bench in the park. Now Mr. Urwick I am a poor man but I
+was brought up a patron of the arts and I am bound to say that story of
+yours called Brass Nuckles was a fine story and I am proud to compliment
+you upon it. Mr. Urwick that brings me to another matter upon which I
+have been intending to write you upon for a long time but did not like
+to risk an intrusion. I used to dable in literature to some little
+extent myself if that will lend a fellow feeling for a craftsman in
+distress. I am a poor man, out of work through no fault of mine but on
+account of the illness of my wife and my sitting up with her at nights
+for weeks and weeks I could not hold my job whch required mentle
+concentration of a vigorous sort. Now Mr. Urwick I have a sick wife and
+seven children to support, and the rent shortly due and the landlord
+threatens to eject us if I don't pay what I owe. As it happens my wife
+and I are hoping to be blessed again soon, with our eighth. Owing to my
+love and devotion for the fine arts we have named all the earlier
+children for noted authors or writers Rudyard Kipling, W.J. Bryan, Mark
+Twain, Debs, Irvin Cobb, Walt Mason and Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Now Mr.
+Urwick I thought that I would name the next one after you, seeing you
+have done so much for literature Robert if a boy or Roberta if a girl
+with Urwick for a middle name thus making you a godfather in a manner of
+speaking. I was wondering whether you would not feel like making a
+little godfathers gift for this innocent babe now about to come into the
+world and to bare your name. Say twenty dollars, but not a check if it
+can be avoided as owing to tempry ambarrassment I am not holding any
+bank account, and currency would be easier for me to convert into the
+necesity of life.
+
+I wrote this letter once before but tore it up fearing to intrude, but
+now my need compels me to be frank. I hope you will adorn our
+literature with many more beautiful compositions similiar to Brass
+Nuckles.
+
+Yours truly
+
+Mr Henry Phillips 454 East 34 St.
+
+Mr. Urwick, after reading this remarkable tribute twice, laughed
+heartily and looked in his bill-folder. Finding there a crisp ten-dollar
+note, he folded it into an envelope and mailed it to his admirer,
+inclosing with it a friendly letter wishing success to the coming infant
+who was to carry his name.
+
+A fortnight later he found on his breakfast table a very soiled postal
+card with this message:
+
+Dear and kind friend, the babe arrived and to the joy of all is a boy
+and has been cristened Robert Urwick Phillips. Unfortunately he is a
+sicly infant and the doctor says he must have port wine at once or he
+may not survive. His mother and I were overjoyed at your munificant gift
+and hope some day to tell the boy of his beanefactor, Mr. Kipling only
+sent five spot to his namesake. Do you think you could spare five
+dollars to help pay for port wine Yours gratefully
+
+Henry Phillips?
+
+Mr. Urwick was a little surprised at the thought of port wine for one so
+young, but happening to be bound down town that morning he thought it
+might be interesting to look in at Mr. Phillips' residence and find out
+how his godchild was faring. If the child were really in distress he
+might perhaps contribute a small sum to insure proper medical care.
+
+The address proved to be a shabby tenement house hedged by saloons. A
+ragged little girl (he wondered whether she were Ella Wheeler Wilcox
+Phillips) pointed him to Mr. Phillips's door. Meeting no answer, he
+entered.
+
+The room was empty--a single room, with a cot bed, an oil stove and a
+table littered with stationery and stamps. Of Mrs. Phillips, his
+namesake or the other seven he saw no signs. He advanced to the table.
+
+Evidently Mr. Phillips was not a ready writer and his letters cost him
+some pains. Several lay open on the table in different stages of
+composition. They were all exactly the same in wording as the first one
+Urwick had received. They were addressed to Booth Tarkington, Don
+Marquis, Ellen Glasgow, Edna Ferber, Agnes Repplier, Holworthy Hall and
+Fannie Hurst. Each letter offered to name some coming child after these
+Parnassians. Near by lay a pile of old magazines from which the
+industrious Mr. Phillips evidently culled the names of his literary
+favorites.
+
+Urwick smiled grimly and tiptoed from the room. On the stairs he met a
+fat charwoman. He asked her if Mr. Phillips were married. "Whisky is his
+wife and child," she replied.
+
+A month later Urwick put Phillips into a story which he sold to the
+_Saturday Evening Cudgel_ for $500. When it was published he sent a
+marked copy of the magazine to the father of Robert Urwick Phillips with
+the following note:
+
+"Dear Mr. Phillips--I owe you about $490. Come around some day and I'll
+blow you to lunch."
+
+
+
+
+THE KEY RING
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I know a man who carries in his left-leg trouser pocket a large heavy
+key ring, on which there are a dozen or more keys of all shapes and
+sizes. There is a latchkey, and the key of his private office, and the
+key of his roll-top desk, and the key of his safe deposit box, and a key
+to the little mail box at the front door of his flat (he lives in what
+is known as a pushbutton apartment house), and a key that does something
+to his motor car (not being an automobilist, I don't know just what),
+and a key to his locker at the golf club, and keys of various traveling
+bags and trunks and filing cases, and all the other keys with which a
+busy man burdens himself. They make a noble clanking against his thigh
+when he walks (he is usually in a hurry), and he draws them out of his
+pocket with something of an imposing gesture when he approaches the
+ground glass door of his office at ten past nine every morning. Yet
+sometimes he takes them out and looks at them sadly. They are a mark and
+symbol of servitude, just as surely as if they had been heated red-hot
+and branded on his skin.
+
+Not necessarily an unhappy servitude, I hasten to remark, for servitude
+is not always an unhappy condition. It may be the happiest of
+conditions, and each of those little metal strips may be regarded as a
+medal of honor. In fact, my friend does so regard them. He does not
+think of the key of his roll-top desk as a reminder of hateful tasks
+that must be done willy-nilly, but rather as an emblem of hard work that
+he enjoys and that is worth doing. He does not think of the latchkey as
+a mandate that he must be home by seven o'clock, rain or shine; nor does
+he think of it as a souvenir of the landlord who must be infallibly paid
+on the first of the month next ensuing. No, he thinks of the latchkey as
+a magic wand that admits him to a realm of kindness "whose service is
+perfect freedom," as say the fine old words in the prayer book. And he
+does not think of his safe deposit box as a hateful little casket of
+leases and life insurance policies and contracts and wills, but rather
+as the place where he has put some of his own past life into voluntary
+bondage--into Liberty Bondage--at four and a quarter per cent. Yet,
+however blithely he may psychologize these matters, he is wise enough to
+know that he is not a free man. However content in servitude, he does
+not blink the fact that it is servitude.
+
+"Upon his will he binds a radiant chain," said Joyce Kilmer in a fine
+sonnet. However radiant, it is still a chain.
+
+So it is that sometimes, in the lulls of telephoning and signing
+contracts and talking to salesmen and preparing estimates and dictating
+letters "that must get off to-night" and trying to wriggle out of
+serving on the golf club's house committee, my friend flings away his
+cigar, gets a corncob pipe out of his desk drawer, and contemplates his
+key ring a trifle wistfully. This nubby little tyrant that he carries
+about with him always makes him think of a river in the far Canadian
+north, a river that he visited once, long ago, before he had built up
+all the barbed wire of life about his spirit. It was a green lucid river
+that ran in a purposeful way between long fringes of pine trees. There
+were sandy shelves where he and a fellow canoeist with the good gift of
+silence built campfires and fried bacon, or fish of their own wooing.
+The name of that little river (his voice is grave as he recalls it), was
+the Peace; and it was not necessary to paddle if you didn't feel like
+it. "The current ran" (it is pathetic to hear him say it) "from four to
+seven miles an hour."
+
+The tobacco smoke sifts and eddies into the carefully labeled
+pigeonholes of his desk, and his stenographer wonders whether she dare
+interrupt him to ask whether that word was "priority" or "minority" in
+the second paragraph of the memo to Mr. Ebbsmith. He smells that bacon
+again; he remembers stretching out on the cool sand to watch the dusk
+seep up from the valley and flood the great clear arch of green-blue
+sky. He remembers that there were no key rings in his pocket then, no
+papers, no letters, no engagements to meet Mr. Fonseca at a luncheon of
+the Rotary Club to discuss demurrage. He remembers the clear sparkle of
+the Peace water in the sunshine, its downward swell and slant over many
+a boulder, its milky vexation where it slid among stones. He remembers
+what he had said to himself then, but had since forgotten, that no
+matter what wounds and perplexities the world offers, it also offers a
+cure for each one if we know where to seek it. Suddenly he gets a vision
+of the whole race of men, campers out on a swinging ball, brothers in
+the common motherhood of earth. Born out of the same inexplicable soil
+bred to the same problems of star and wind and sun, what absurdity of
+civilization is it that has robbed men of this sense of kinship? Why he
+himself, he feels, could enter a Bedouin tent or an Eskimo snow-hut and
+find some bond of union with the inmates. The other night, he reflects,
+he saw moving pictures of some Fiji natives, and could read in their
+genial grinning faces the same human impulses he knew in himself. What
+have men done to cheat themselves of the enjoyment of this amazing
+world? "We've been cheated!" he cries, to the stenographer's horror.
+
+He thinks of his friends, his partners, his employees, of conductors on
+trains and waiters in lunchrooms and drivers of taxicabs. He thinks, in
+one amazing flash of realization, of all the men and women he has ever
+seen or heard of--how each one nourishes secretly some little rebellion,
+some dream of a wider, freer life, a life less hampered, less mean, less
+material. He thinks how all men yearn to cross salt water, to scale
+peaks, to tramp until weary under a hot sun. He hears the Peace, in its
+far northern valley, brawling among stones, and his heart is very low.
+
+"Mr. Edwards to see you," says the stenographer.
+
+"I'm sorry, sir," says Edwards, "but I've had the offer of another job
+and I think I shall accept it. It's a good thing for a chap to get a
+chance----"
+
+My friend slips the key ring back in his pocket.
+
+"What's this?" he says. "Nonsense! When you've got a good job, the thing
+to do is to keep it. Stick to it, my boy. There's a great future for you
+here. Don't get any of those fool ideas about changing around from one
+thing to another."
+
+
+
+
+"OWD BOB"
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+(INTRODUCES OUR HERO)
+
+
+Loitering perchance on the western pavement of Madison avenue, between
+the streets numbered 38 and 39, and gazing with an observant eye upon
+the pedestrians passing southward, you would be likely to see, about
+8:40 o'clock of the morning, a gentleman of remarkable presence
+approaching with no bird-like tread. This creature, clad in a suit of
+subfuse respectable weave, bearing in his hand a cane of stout timber
+with a right-angled hornblende grip, and upon his head a hat of rich
+texture, would probably also carry in one hand (the left) a leather case
+filled with valuable papers, and in the other hand (the right, which
+also held the cane) a cigarette, lit upon leaving the Grand Central
+subway station. This cigarette the person of our tale would
+frequentatively apply to his lips, and then withdraw with a quick,
+swooping motion. With a rapid, somewhat sidelong gait (at first somehow
+clumsy, yet upon closer observation a mode of motion seen to embrace
+certain elements of harmony) this gentleman would converge upon the
+southwest corner of Madison avenue and 38th street; and the intent
+observer, noting the menacing contours of the face, would conclude that
+he was going to work.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+This gentleman, beneath his sober but excellently haberdashered surtout,
+was plainly a man of large frame, of a Sam Johnsonian mould, but, to the
+surprise of the calculating observer, it would be noted that his volume
+(or mass) was not what his bony structure implied. Spiritually, in deed,
+this interesting individual conveyed to the world a sensation of
+stoutness, of bulk and solidity, which (upon scrutiny) was not (or would
+not be) verified by measurement. Evidently, you will conclude, a stout
+man grown thin; or, at any rate, grown less stout. His molded depth,
+one might assess at 20 inches between the eaves; his longitude, say,
+five feet eleven; his registered tonnage, 170; his cargo, literary; and
+his destination, the editorial sancta of a well-known publishing house.
+
+This gentleman, in brief, is Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday (but not the
+"stout Cortes" of the poet), the editor of _The Bookman_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+(OUR HERO BEGINS A CAREER)
+
+
+"It would seem that whenever Nature had a man of letters up her sleeve,
+the first gift with which she has felt necessary to dower him has been a
+preacher sire."
+
+R.C.H. of N.B. Tarkington.
+
+Mr. Holliday was born in Indianapolis on July 18, 1880. It is evident
+that ink, piety and copious speech circulated in the veins of his clan,
+for at least two of his grandfathers were parsons, and one of them, Dr.
+Ferdinand Cortez Holliday, was the author of a volume called "Indiana
+Methodism" in which he was the biographer of the Rev. Joseph Tarkington,
+the grandfather of Newton B. Tarkington, sometimes heard of as Booth
+Tarkington, a novelist. Thus the hand of Robert C. Holliday was linked
+by the manacle of destiny to the hand of Newton B. Tarkington, and it is
+a quaint satisfaction to note that Mr. Holliday's first book was that
+volume "Booth Tarkington," one of the liveliest and soundest critical
+memoirs it has been our fortune to enjoy.
+
+Like all denizens of Indianapolis--"Tarkingtonapolis," Mr. Holliday
+calls it--our subject will discourse at considerable volume of his youth
+in that high-spirited city. His recollections, both sacred and profane,
+are, however, not in our present channel. After a reputable schooling
+young Robert proceeded to New York in 1899 to study art at the Art
+Students' League, and later became a pupil of Twachtman. The present
+commentator is not in a position to say how severely either art or Mr.
+Holliday suffered in the mutual embrace. I have seen some of his black
+and white posters which seemed to me robust and considerably lively. At
+any rate, Mr. Holliday exhibited drawings on Fifth avenue and had
+illustrative work published by _Scribner's Magazine_. He did commercial
+designs and comic pictures for juvenile readers. At this time he lived
+in a rural community of artists in Connecticut, and did his own cooking.
+Also, he is proud of having lived in a garret on Broome street. This
+phase of his career is not to be slurred over, for it is a clue to much
+of his later work. His writing often displays the keen eye of the
+painter, and his familiarity with the technique of pencil and brush has
+much enriched his capacity to see and to make his reader see with him.
+Such essays as "Going to Art Exhibitions," and the one-third dedication
+of "Walking-Stick Papers" to Royal Cortissoz are due to his interest in
+the world as pictures.
+
+While we think of it, then, let us put down our first memorandum upon
+the art of Mr. Holliday:
+
+First Memo--Mr. Holliday's stuff is distilled from life!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+(IN WHICH OUR HERO DARTS OFF AT A TANGENT)
+
+
+It is not said why our hero abandoned bristol board and india ink, and
+it is no duty of this inquirendo to offer surmise. The fact is that he
+disappeared from Broome street, and after the appropriate interval might
+have been observed (odd as it seems) on the campus of the University of
+Kansas. This vault into the petals of the sunflower seems so quaint that
+I once attempted to find out from Mr. Holliday just when it was that he
+attended courses at that institution. He frankly said that he could not
+remember. Now he has no memory at all for dates, I will vouch; yet it
+seems odd (I say) that he did not even remember the numerals of the
+class in which he was enrolled. A "queer feller," indeed, as Mr.
+Tarkington has called him. So I cannot attest, with hand on Book, that
+he really was at Kansas University. He may have been a footpad during
+that period. I have often thought to write to the dean of the university
+and check the matter up. It may be that entertaining anecdotes of our
+hero's college career could be spaded up.
+
+Just why this remote atheneum was sconce for Mr. Holliday's candle I do
+not hazard. It seems I have heard him say that his cousin, Professor
+Wilbur Cortez Abbott (of Yale) was then teaching at the Kansas college,
+and this was the reason. It doesn't matter now; fifty years hence it may
+be of considerable importance.
+
+However, we must press on a little faster. From Kansas he returned to
+New York and became a salesman in the book store of Charles Scribner's
+Sons, then on Fifth avenue below Twenty-third street. Here he was
+employed for about five years. From this experience may he traced three
+of the most delightful of the "Walking-Stick Papers." It was while at
+Scribner's that he met Joyce Kilmer, who also served as a Scribner
+book-clerk for two weeks in 1909. This friendship meant more to Bob
+Holliday than any other. The two men were united by intimate adhesions
+of temperament and worldly situation. Those who know what friendship
+means among men who have stood on the bottom rung together will ask no
+further comment. Kilmer was Holliday's best man in 1913; Holliday stood
+godfather to Kilmer's daughter Rose. On Aug. 22, 1918, Mrs. Kilmer
+appointed Mr. Holliday her husband's literary executor. His memoir of
+Joyce Kilmer is a fitting token of the manly affection that sweetens
+life and enriches him who even sees it from a distance.
+
+Just when Holliday's connection with the Scribner store ceased I do not
+know. My guess is, about 1911. He did some work for the New York Public
+Library (tucking away in his files the material for the essay "Human
+Municipal Documents") and also dabbled in eleemosynary science for the
+Russell Sage Foundation; though the details of the latter enterprise I
+cannot even conjecture. Somehow or other he fell into the most richly
+amusing post that a belletristic journalist ever adorned, as general
+factotum of _The Fishing Gazette_, a trade journal. This is laid bare
+for the world in "The Fish Reporter."
+
+About 1911 he began to contribute humorous sketches to the Saturday
+Magazine of the New York _Evening Post_. In 1912-13 he was writing
+signed reviews for the New York _Times_ Review of Books. 1913-14 he was
+assistant literary editor of the New York _Tribune_. His meditations on
+the reviewing job are embalmed in "That Reviewer Cuss." In 1914 the wear
+and tear of continual hard work on Grub Street rather got the better of
+him: he packed a bag and spent the summer in England. Four charming
+essays record his adventures there, where we may leave him for the
+moment while we warm up to another aspect of the problem. Let us just
+set down our second memorandum:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Second Memo--Mr. Holliday knows the Literary Game from All Angles!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+(OUR HERO'S BOOK AND HEART SHALL NEVER PART)
+
+
+Perhaps I should apologize for treating Mr. Holliday's "Walking-Stick
+Papers" in this biographical fashion. And yet I cannot resist it for
+this book is Mr. Holliday himself. It is mellow, odd, aromatic and
+tender, just as he is. It is (as he said of something else) "saturated
+with a distinguished, humane tradition of letters."
+
+The book is exciting reading because you can trace in it the growth and
+felicitous toughening of a very remarkable talent. Mr. Holliday has been
+through a lively and gruelling mill. Like every sensitive journalist, he
+has been mangled at Ephesus. Slight and debonair as some of his pieces
+are, there is not one that is not an authentic fiber from life. That is
+the beauty of this sort of writing--the personal essay--it admits us to
+the very pulse of the machine. We see this man: selling books at
+Scribner's, pacing New York streets at night gloating on the yellow
+windows and the random ring of words, fattening his spirit on hundreds
+of books, concocting his own theory of the niceties of prose. We see
+that volatile humor which is native in him flickering like burning
+brandy round the rich plum pudding of his theme. With all his
+playfulness, when he sets out to achieve a certain effect he builds
+cunningly, with sure and skillful art. See (for instance) in his "As to
+People," his superbly satisfying picture (how careless it seems!) of his
+scrubwoman, closing with the precis of Billy Henderson's wife, which
+drives the nail through and turns it on the under side--
+
+    Billy Henderson's wife is handsome; she is rich; she is an excellent
+    cook; she loves Billy Henderson.
+
+See "My friend the Policeman," or "On Going a Journey," or "The
+Deceased"--this last is perhaps the high-water mark of the book. To vary
+the figure, this essay dips its Plimsoll-mark full under. It is
+freighted with far more than a dozen pages might be expected to carry
+safely. So quietly, so quaintly told, what a wealth of humanity is in
+it! Am I wrong in thinking that those fellow-artists who know the thrill
+of a great thing greatly done will catch breath when they read this, of
+the minor obits in the press--
+
+    We go into the feature headed "Died," a department similar to that
+    on the literary page headed "Books Received." ... We are set in
+    small type, with lines following the name line indented. It is
+    difficult for me to tell with certainty from the printed page, but I
+    think we are set without leads.
+
+In such passages, where the easy sporting-tweed fabric of Mr. Holliday's
+merry and liberal style fits his theme as snugly as the burr its nut,
+one feels tempted to cry joyously (as he says in some other connection),
+"it seems as if it were a book you had written yourself in a dream."
+And follow him, for sheer fun, in the "Going a Journey" essay. Granted
+that it would never have been written but for Hazlitt and Stevenson and
+Belloc. Yet it is fresh distilled, it has its own sparkle. Beginning
+with an even pace, how it falls into a swinging stride, drugs you with
+hilltops and blue air! Crisp, metrical, with a steady drum of feet, it
+lifts, purges and sustains. "This is the religious side" of reading an
+essay!
+
+Mr. Holliday, then, gives us in generous measure the "certain jolly
+humors" which R.L.S. says we voyage to find. He throws off flashes of
+imaginative felicity--as where he says of canes, "They are the light to
+blind men." Where he describes Mr. Oliver Herford "listing to starboard,
+like a postman." Where he says of the English who use colloquially
+phrases known to us only in great literature--"There are primroses in
+their speech." And where he begins his "Memoirs of a Manuscript," "I was
+born in Indiana."
+
+We are now ready to let fall our third memorandum:
+
+Third Memo--Behind his colloquial, easygoing (apparently careless)
+utterance, Mr. Holliday conceals a high quality of literary art.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+(FURTHER OSCILLATIONS OF OUR HERO)
+
+
+Mr. Holliday was driven home from England and Police Constable
+Buckington by the war, which broke out while he was living in Chelsea.
+My chronology is a bit mixed here; just what he was doing from autumn,
+1914, to February, 1916, I don't know. Was it then that he held the fish
+reporter job? Come to think of it, I believe it was. Anyway, in
+February, 1916, he turned up in Garden City, Long Island, where I first
+had the excitement of clapping eyes on him. Some of the adventures of
+that spring and summer may be inferred from "Memories of a Manuscript."
+Others took place in the austere lunch cathedral known at the press of
+Doubleday, Page & Company as the "garage," or on walks that summer
+between the Country Life Press and the neighboring champaigns of
+Hempstead. The full story of the Porrier's Corner Club, of which Mr.
+Holliday and myself are the only members, is yet to be told. As far as I
+was concerned it was love at first sight. This burly soul, rumbling
+Johnsonianly upon lettered topics, puffing unending Virginia cigarettes,
+gazing with shy humor through thick-paned spectacles--well, on Friday,
+June 23, 1916, Bob and I decided to collaborate in writing a farcical
+novel. It is still unwritten, save the first few chapters. I only
+instance this to show how fast passion proceeded.
+
+It would not surprise me if at some future time Mrs. Bedell's boarding
+house, on Jackson Street in Hempstead, becomes a place of pilgrimage for
+lovers of the essay. They will want to see the dark little front room on
+the ground floor where Owd Bob used to scatter the sheets of his essays
+as he was retyping them from a huge scrapbook and grooming them for a
+canter among publishers' sanhedrim. They will want to see (but will not,
+I fear) the cool barrel-room at the back of George D. Smith's tavern, an
+ale-house that was blithe to our fancy because the publican bore the
+same name as that of a very famous dealer in rare books. Along that
+pleasant bar, with its shining brass scuppers, Bob and I consumed many
+beakers of well-chilled amber during that warm summer. His urbanolatrous
+soul pined for the city, and he used in those days to expound the
+doctrine that the suburbanite really has to go to town in order to get
+fresh air.
+
+In September, 1916, Holliday's health broke down. He had been feeling
+poorly most of the summer, and continuous hard work induced a spell of
+nervous depression. Very wisely he went back to Indianapolis to rest.
+After a good lay-off he tackled the Tarkington book, which was written
+in Indianapolis the following winter and spring. And "Walking-Stick
+Papers" began to go the rounds.
+
+I have alluded more than once to Mr. Holliday's book on Tarkington. This
+original, mellow, convivial, informal and yet soundly argued critique
+has been overlooked by many who have delighted to honor Holliday as an
+essayist. But it is vastly worth reading. It is a brilliant study, full
+of "onion atoms" as Sydney Smith's famous salad, and we flaunt it
+merrily in the face of those who are frequently crapehanging and dirging
+that we have no sparkling young Chestertons and Rebecca Wests and J.C.
+Squires this side of Queenstown harbor. Rarely have creator and critic
+been joined in so felicitous a marriage. And indeed the union was
+appointed in heaven and smiles in the blood, for (as I have noted) Mr.
+Holliday's grandfather was the biographer of Tarkington's grandsire,
+also a pioneer preacher of the metaphysical commonwealth of Indiana. Mr.
+Holliday traces with a good deal of humor and circumstance the various
+ways in which the gods gave Mr. Tarkington just the right kind of
+ancestry, upbringing, boyhood and college career to produce a talented
+writer. But the fates that catered to Tarkington with such generous hand
+never dealt him a better run of cards than when Holliday wrote this
+book.
+
+The study is one of surpassing interest, not merely as a service to
+native criticism but as a revelation of Holliday's ability to follow
+through a sustained intellectual task with the same grasp and grace that
+he afterward showed in the memoir of Kilmer in which his heart was so
+deeply engaged. Of a truth, Mr. Holliday's success in putting himself
+within Tarkington's dashing checked kuppenheimers is a fine achievement
+of projected psychology. He knows Tarkington so well that if the latter
+were unhappily deleted by some "wilful convulsion of brute nature" I
+think it undoubtable that his biographer could reconstruct a very
+plausible automaton, and would know just what ingredients to blend. A
+dash of Miss Austen, Joseph Conrad, Henry James and Daudet; flavored
+perhaps with coal smoke from Indianapolis, spindrift from the Maine
+coast and a few twanging chords from the Princeton Glee Club.
+
+Fourth Memo--Mr. Holliday is critic as well as essayist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+(OUR HERO FINDS A STEADY JOB)
+
+
+It was the summer of 1917 when Owd Bob came back to New York. Just at
+that juncture I happened to hear that a certain publisher needed an
+editorial man, and when Bob and I were at Browne's discussing the fate
+of "Walking-Stick Papers" over a jug of shandygaff, I told him this
+news. He hurried to the office in question through a drenching
+rain-gust, and has been there ever since. The publisher performed an act
+of perspicuity rare indeed. He not only accepted the manuscript, but its
+author as well.
+
+So that is the story of "Walking-Stick Papers," and it does not cause me
+to droop if you say I talk of matters of not such great moment. What a
+joy it would have been if some friend had jotted down memoranda of this
+sort concerning some of Elia's doings. The book is a garner of some of
+the most racy, vigorous and genuinely flavored essays that this country
+has produced for some time. Dear to me, every one of them, as clean-cut
+blazes by a sincere workman along a trail full of perplexity and
+struggle, as Grub Street always will be for the man who dips an honest
+pen that will not stoop to conquer. And if you should require an
+accurate portrait of their author I cannot do better than quote what
+Grote said of Socrates:
+
+    Nothing could be more public, perpetual, and indiscriminate as to
+    persons than his conversation. But as it was engaging, curious, and
+    instructive to hear, certain persons made it their habit to attend
+    him as companions and listeners.
+
+Owd Bob has long been the object of extreme attachment and high spirits
+among his intimates. The earlier books have been followed by "Broome
+Street Straws" and "Peeps at People," vividly personal collections that
+will arouse immediate affection and amusement among his readers. And of
+these books will be said (once more in Grote's words about Socrates):
+
+    Not only his conversation reached the minds of a much wider circle,
+    but he became more abundantly known as a person.
+
+Let us add, then, our final memorandum:
+
+Fifth Memo--These essays are the sort of thing you cannot afford to
+miss. In them you sit down to warm your wits at the glow of a droll,
+delightful, unique mind.
+
+So much (at the moment) for Bob Holliday.
+
+
+
+
+THE APPLE THAT NO ONE ATE
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The other evening we went to dinner with a gentleman whom it pleases our
+fancy to call the Caliph.
+
+Now a Caliph, according to our notion, is a Haroun-al-Raschid kind of
+person; one who governs a large empire of hearts with a genial and
+whimsical sway; circulating secretly among his fellow-men, doing
+kindnesses often not even suspected by their beneficiaries. He is the
+sort of person of whom the trained observer may think, when he hears an
+unexpected kindness-grenade exploding somewhere down the line, "I'll bet
+that came from the Caliph's dugout!" A Caliph's heart is not surrounded
+by barbed wire entanglements or a strip of No Man's Land. Also, and
+rightly, he is stern to malefactors and fakers of all sorts.
+
+It would have been sad if any one so un-Caliphlike as William
+Hohenzollern had got his eisenbahn through to Bagdad, the city sacred to
+the memory of a genial despot who spent his cabarabian nights in an
+excellent fashion. That, however, has nothing to do with the story.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Caliph are people so delightful that they leave in one's
+mind a warm afterglow of benevolent sociability. They have an infinite
+interest and curiosity in the hubbub of human moods and crotchets that
+surrounds us all. And when one leaves their doorsill one has a genial
+momentum of the spirit that carries one on rapidly and cheerfully. One
+has an irresistible impulse to give something away, to stroke the noses
+of horses, to write a kind letter to the fuel administrator or do almost
+anything gentle and gratuitous. The Caliphs of the world don't know it,
+but that is the effect they produce on their subjects.
+
+As we left, Mr. and Mrs. Caliph pressed upon us an apple. One of those
+gorgeous apples that seem to grow wrapped up in tissue paper, and are
+displayed behind plate glass windows. A huge apple, tinted with gold and
+crimson and pale yellow shading off to pink. The kind of apple whose
+colors are overlaid with a curious mist until you polish it on your
+coat, when it gleams like a decanter of claret. An apple so large and
+weighty that if it had dropped on Sir Isaac Newton it would have
+fractured his skull. The kind of apple that would have made the garden
+of Eden safe for democracy, because it is so beautiful no one would have
+thought of eating it.
+
+That was the kind of apple the Caliph gave us.
+
+It was a cold night, and we walked down Chestnut street dangling that
+apple, rubbing it on our sleeve, throwing it up and down and catching it
+again. We stopped at a cigar store to buy some pipe tobacco. Still
+running on Caliph, by which we mean still beguiled by his geniality, we
+fell into talk with the tobacconist. "That's a fine apple you have
+there," said he. For an instant we thought of giving it to him, but then
+we reflected that a man whose days are spent surrounded by rich cigars
+and smokables is dangerously felicitous already, and a sudden joy might
+blast his blood vessels.
+
+The shining of the street lamps was reflected on the polished skin of
+our fruit as we went our way. As we held it in our arms it glowed like a
+huge ruby. We passed a blind man selling pencils, and thought of giving
+it to him. Then we reflected that a blind man would lose half the
+pleasure of the adventure because he couldn't see the colors. We bought
+a pencil instead. Still running on Caliph, you see.
+
+In our excitement we did what we always do in moments of stress--went
+into a restaurant and ordered a piece of hot mince pie. Then we
+remembered that we had just dined. Never mind, we sat there and
+contemplated the apple as it lay ruddily on the white porcelain
+tabletop. Should we give it to the waitress? No, because apples were a
+commonplace to her. The window of the restaurant held a great pyramid of
+beauties. To her, an apple was merely something to be eaten, instead of
+the symbol of a grand escapade. Instead, we gave her a little medallion
+of a buffalo that happened to be in our pocket.
+
+Already the best possible destination for that apple had come to our
+mind. Hastening zealously up a long flight of stairs in a certain large
+building we went to a corner where sits a friend of ours, a night
+watchman. Under a drop light he sits through long and tedious hours,
+beguiling his vigil with a book. He is a great reader. He eats books
+alive. Lately he has become much absorbed in Saint Francis of Assisi,
+and was deep in the "Little Flowers" when we found him.
+
+"We've brought you something," we said, and held the apple where the
+electric light brought out all its brilliance.
+
+He was delighted and his gentle elderly face shone with awe at the
+amazing vividness of the fruit.
+
+"I tell you what I'll do," he said. "That apple's much too fine for me.
+I'll take it home to the wife."
+
+Of course his wife will say the same thing. She will be embarrassed by
+the surpassing splendor of that apple and will give it to some friend of
+hers whom she thinks more worthy than herself. And that friend will give
+it to some one else, and so it will go rolling on down the ages, passing
+from hand to hand, conferring delight, and never getting eaten.
+Ultimately some one, trying to think of a recipient really worthy of its
+deliciousness, will give it to Mr. and Mrs. Caliph. And they, blessed
+innocents, will innocently exclaim, "Why we never saw such a magnificent
+apple in all our lives."
+
+And it will be true, for by that time the apple will gleam with an
+unearthly brightness, enhanced and burnished by all the kind thoughts
+that have surrounded it for so long.
+
+As we walked homeward under a frosty sparkle of sky we mused upon all
+the different kinds of apples we have encountered. There are big glossy
+green apples and bright red apples and yellow apples and also that
+particularly delicious kind (whose name we forget) that is the palest
+possible cream color--almost white. We have seen apples of strange
+shapes, something like a pear (sheepnoses, they call them), and the
+Maiden Blush apples with their delicate shading of yellow and debutante
+pink. And what a poetry in the names--Winesap, Pippin, Northern Spy,
+Baldwin, Ben Davis, York Imperial, Wolf River, Jonathan, Smokehouse,
+Summer Rambo, Rome Beauty, Golden Grimes, Shenango Strawberry, Benoni!
+
+We suppose there is hardly a man who has not an apple orchard tucked
+away in his heart somewhere. There must be some deep reason for the old
+suspicion that the Garden of Eden was an apple orchard. Why is it that a
+man can sleep and smoke better under an apple tree than in any other
+kind of shade? Sir Isaac Newton was a wise man, and he chose an apple
+tree to sit beneath. (We have often wondered, by the way, how it is that
+no one has ever named an apple the Woolsthorpe after Newton's home in
+Lincolnshire, where the famous apple incident occurred.)
+
+An apple orchard, if it is to fill the heart of man to the full with
+affectionate satisfaction, should straggle down a hillside toward a lake
+and a white road where the sun shines hotly. Some of its branches should
+trail over an old, lichened and weather-stained stone wall, dropping
+their fruit into the highway for thirsty pedestrians. There should be a
+little path running athwart it, down toward the lake and the old
+flat-bottomed boat, whose bilge is scattered with the black and
+shriveled remains of angleworms used for bait. In warm August afternoons
+the sweet savor of ripening drifts warmly on the air, and there rises
+the drowsy hum of wasps exploring the windfalls that are already rotting
+on the grass. There you may lie watching the sky through the chinks of
+the leaves, and imagining the cool, golden tang of this autumn's cider
+vats.
+
+You see what it is to have Caliphs in the world.
+
+
+
+
+AS TO RUMORS
+
+MADRID, Jan. 17.--Nikolai Lenine was among the Russians who landed at
+Barcelona recently, according to newspapers here.--News item.
+
+
+It is rather important to understand the technique of rumors. The wise
+man does not scoff at them, for while they are often absurd, they are
+rarely baseless. People do not go about inventing rumors, except for
+purposes of hoax; and even a practical joke is never (to parody the
+proverb) hoax et praeterea nihil. There is always a reason for wanting to
+perpetrate the hoax, or a reason for believing it will be believed.
+
+Rumors are a kind of exhalation or intellectual perfume thrown off by
+the news of the day. Some events are more aromatic than others; they can
+be detected by the trained pointer long before they happen. When things
+are going on that have a strong vibration--what foreign correspondents
+love to call a "repercussion"--they cause a good deal of mind-quaking.
+An event getting ready to happen is one of the most interesting things
+to watch. By a sort of mental radiation it fills men's minds with
+surmises and conjectures. Curiously enough, due perhaps to the innate
+perversity of man, most of the rumors suggest the exact opposite of what
+is going to happen. Yet a rumor, while it may be wholly misleading as to
+fact, is always a proof that something is going to happen. For instance,
+last summer when the news was full of repeated reports of Hindenburg's
+death, any sane man could foresee that what these reports really meant
+was not necessarily Hindenburg's death at all, but Germany's approaching
+military collapse. Some German prisoners had probably said "Hindenburg
+ist kaput," meaning "Hindenburg is done for," i.e., "The great offensive
+has failed." This was taken to mean that he was literally dead.
+
+In the same way, while probably no one seriously believes that Lenine is
+in Barcelona, the mere fact that Madrid thinks it possible shows very
+plainly that something is going on. It shows either that the Bolshevik
+experiment in Petrograd has been such a gorgeous success that Lenine can
+turn his attention to foreign campaigning, or that it has been such a
+gorgeous failure that he has had to skip. It does not prove, since the
+rumor is "unconfirmed," that Lenine has gone anywhere yet; but it
+certainly does prove that he is going somewhere soon, even if only to
+the fortress of Peter and Paul. There may be some very simple
+explanation of the rumor. "You go to Barcelona!" may be a jocular
+Muscovite catchword, similar to our old saying about going to Halifax,
+and Trotzky may have said it to Lenine. At any rate it shows that the
+gold dust twins are not inseparable. It shows that Bolshevism in Russia
+is either very strong or very near downfall.
+
+When we were told not long ago that Berlin was strangely gay for the
+capital of a prostrate nation and that all the cafes were crowded with
+dancers at night, many readers were amazed and tried to console their
+sense of probability by remarking that the Germans are crazy anyway. And
+yet this rumor of the dancing mania was an authentic premonition of the
+bloodier dance of death led by the Spartacus group. If Berlin did dance
+it was a cotillon of despair, caused by infinite war weariness, infinite
+hunger to forget humiliation for a few moments, and foreboding of
+troubles to come. Whether true or not, no one read the news without
+thinking it an ominous whisper.
+
+Coming events cast their rumors before. From a careful study of rumors
+the discerning may learn a good deal, providing always that they never
+take them at face value but try to read beneath the surface. People
+sometimes criticize the newspapers for printing rumors, but it is an
+essential part of their function to do so, provided they plainly mark
+them as such. Shakespeare speaks of rumors as "stuffing the ears of men
+with false reports," yet if so this is not the fault of the rumor
+itself, but of the too credible listener. The prosperity of a rumor is
+in the ear that hears it. The sagacious listener will take the trouble
+to sift and winnow his rumors, set them in perspective with what he
+knows of the facts and from them he will then deduce exceedingly
+valuable considerations. Rumor is the living atmosphere of men's minds,
+the most fascinating and significant problem with which we have to deal.
+The Fact, the Truth, may shine like the sun, but after all it is the
+clouds that make the sunset beautiful. Keep your eye on the rumors, for
+a sufficient number of rumors can compel an event to happen, even
+against its will.
+
+No one can set down any hard and fast rules for reading the rumors. The
+process is partly instinctive and partly the result of trained
+observation. It is as complicated as the calculation by which a woman
+tells time by her watch which she knows to be wrong--she adds seventeen
+minutes, subtracts three, divides by two and then looks at the church
+steeple. It is as exhilarating as trying to deduce what there is going
+to be for supper by the pervasive fragrance of onions in the front hall.
+And sometimes a very small event, like a very small onion, can cast its
+rumors a long way. Destiny is unlike the hen in that she cackles before
+she lays the egg.
+
+The first rule to observe about rumors is that they are often exactly
+opposite in tendency to the coming fact. For instance, the rumors of
+secrecy at the Peace Conference were the one thing necessary to
+guarantee complete publicity. Just before any important event occurs it
+seems to discharge both positive and negative currents, just as a magnet
+is polarized by an electric coil. Some people by mental habit catch the
+negative vibrations, others the positive. Every one can remember the
+military critics last March who were so certain that there would be no
+German offensive. Their very certainty was to many others a proof that
+the offensive was likely. They were full of the negative vibrations.
+
+An interesting case of positive vibrations was the repeated rumor of the
+Kaiser's abdication. The fact that those rumors were premature was
+insignificant compared with the fact that they were current at all. The
+fact that there were such rumors showed that it was only a matter of
+time.
+
+It is entertaining, if disconcerting, to watch a rumor on its travels.
+A classic example of this during the recent war is exhibited by the
+following clippings which were collected, I believe, by Norman Hapgood:
+
+From the _Koelnische-Zeitung_:
+
+"When the fall of Antwerp became known the church bells were rung."
+(Meaning in Germany.)
+
+[Illustration]
+
+From the Paris _Matin_:
+
+"According to the _Koelnische-Zeitung_, the clergy of Antwerp were
+compelled to ring the church bells when the fortress was taken."
+
+From the London _Times_:
+
+"According to what the _Matin_ has heard from Cologne, the Belgian
+priests, who refused to ring the church bells when Antwerp was taken,
+have been driven away from their places."
+
+From the _Corriere Della Sera_, of Milan:
+
+"According to what the _Times_ has heard from Cologne, via Paris, the
+unfortunate Belgian priests, who refused to ring the church bells when
+Antwerp was taken, have been sentenced to hard labor."
+
+From the _Matin_ again:
+
+"According to information received by the _Corriere Della Sera_, from
+Cologne, via London, it is confirmed that the barbaric conquerors of
+Antwerp punished the unfortunate Belgian priests for their heroic
+refusal to ring the church bells by hanging them as living clappers to
+the bells with their heads down."
+
+Be hospitable to rumors, for however grotesque they are, they always
+have some reason for existence. The Sixth Sense is the sense of news,
+the sense that something is going to happen. And just as every orchestra
+utters queer and discordant sounds while it is tuning up its
+instruments, so does the great orchestra of Human Events (in other
+words, The News) offer shrill and perhaps misleading notes before the
+conductor waves his baton and leads off the concerted crash of Truth.
+Keep your senses alert to examine the odd scraps of hearsay that you
+will often see in the news, for it is in just those eavesdroppings at
+the heart of humanity that the press often fulfills its highest
+function.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MOTHERS
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+When one becomes a father, then first one becomes a son. Standing by the
+crib of one's own baby, with that world-old pang of compassion and
+protectiveness toward this so little creature that has all its course to
+run, the heart flies back in yearning and gratitude to those who felt
+just so toward one's self. Then for the first time one understands the
+homely succession of sacrifices and pains by which life is transmitted
+and fostered down the stumbling generations of men.
+
+Every man is privileged to believe all his life that his own mother is
+the best and dearest that a child ever had. By some strange racial
+instinct of taciturnity and repression most of us lack utterance to say
+our thoughts in this close matter. A man's mother is so tissued and
+woven into his life and brain that he can no more describe her than
+describe the air and sunlight that bless his days. It is only when some
+Barrie comes along that he can say for all of us what fills the eye with
+instant tears of gentleness. Is there a mother, is there a son, who has
+not read Barrie's "Margaret Ogilvy?" Turn to that first chapter, "How My
+Mother Got Her Soft Face," and draw aside the veils that years and
+perplexity weave over the inner sanctuaries of our hearts.
+
+Our mothers understand us so well! Speech and companionship with them
+are so easy, so unobstructed by the thousand teasing barriers that bar
+soul from eager soul! To walk and talk with them is like slipping on an
+old coat. To hear their voices is like the shake of music in a sober
+evening hush.
+
+There is a harmony and beauty in the life of mother and son that brims
+the mind's cup of satisfaction. So well we remember when she was all in
+all; strength, tenderness, law and life itself. Her arms were the world:
+her soft cheek our sun and stars. And now it is we who are strong and
+self-sufficing; it is she who leans on us. Is there anything so
+precious, so complete, so that return of life's pendulum?
+
+And it is as grandmothers that our mothers come into the fullness of
+their grace. When a man's mother holds his child in her gladdened arms
+he is aware (with some instinctive sense of propriety) of the roundness
+of life's cycle; of the mystic harmony of life's ways. There speaks
+humanity in its chord of three notes: its little capture of completeness
+and joy, sounding for a moment against the silent flux of time. Then the
+perfect span is shredded away and is but a holy memory.
+
+The world, as we tread its puzzling paths, shows many profiles and
+glimpses of wonder and loveliness; many shapes and symbols to entrance
+and astound. Yet it will offer us nothing more beautiful than our
+mother's face; no memory more dear than her encircling tenderness. The
+mountain tops of her love rise as high in ether as any sun-stained alp.
+Lakes are no deeper and no purer blue than her bottomless charity. We
+need not fare further than her immortal eyes to know that life is good.
+
+How strangely fragmentary our memories of her are, and yet (when we
+piece them together) how they erect a comfortable background for all we
+are and dream. She built the earth about us and arched us over with sky.
+She created our world, taught us to dwell therein. The passion of her
+love compelled the rude laws of life to stand back while we were soft
+and helpless. She defied gravity that we might not fall. She set aside
+hunger, sleep and fear that we might have plenty. She tamed her own
+spirit and crushed her own weakness that we might be strong. And when we
+passed down the laughing street of childhood and turned that corner that
+all must pass, it was her hand that waved good-bye. Then, smothering the
+ache, with one look into the secret corner where the old keepsakes lie
+hid, she set about waiting the day when the long-lost baby would come
+back anew. The grandchild--is he not her own boy returned to her arms?
+
+Who can lean over a crib at night, marveling upon that infinite
+innocence and candor swathed in the silk cocoon of childish sleep,
+without guessing the throb of fierce gentleness that runs in maternal
+blood? The earth is none too rich in compassion these days: let us be
+grateful to the mothers for what remains. It was not they who filled the
+world with spies and quakings. It was not a cabal of mothers that met to
+decree blood and anguish for the races of men. They know that life is
+built at too dear a price to be so lathered in corruption and woe. Those
+who create life, who know its humility, its tender fabric and its
+infinite price, who have cherished and warmed and fed it, do not lightly
+cast it into the pit.
+
+Mothers are great in the eyes of their sons because they are knit in
+our minds with all the littlenesses of life, the unspeakably dear
+trifles and odds of existence. The other day I found in my desk a little
+strip of tape on which my name was marked a dozen times in drawing ink,
+in my mother's familiar script. My mind ran back to the time when that
+little band of humble linen was a kind of passport into manhood. It was
+when I went away from home and she could no longer mark my garments with
+my name, for the confusion of rapacious laundries. I was to cut off the
+autographed sections of this tape and sew them on such new vestments as
+came my way. Of course I did not do so; what boy would be faithful to so
+feminine a trust? But now the little tape, soiled by a dozen years of
+wandering, lies in my desk drawer as a symbol and souvenir of that
+endless forethought and loving kindness.
+
+They love us not wisely but too well, it is sometimes said. Ah, in a
+world where so many love us not well but too wisely, how tremulously our
+hearts turn back to bathe in that running river of their love and
+ceaseless charm!
+
+
+
+
+GREETING TO AMERICAN ANGLERS
+
+_From Master Isaak Walton_
+
+
+My Good Friends--As I have said afore time, sitting by a river's side is
+the quietest and fittest place for contemplation, and being out and
+along the bank of Styx with my tackle this sweet April morning, it came
+into my humor to send a word of greeting to you American anglers. Some
+of your fellows, who have come by this way these past years, tell me
+notable tales of the sport that may he had in your bright streams,
+whereof the name of Pocono lingers in my memory. Sad it is to me to
+recall that when writing my little book on the recreation of a
+contemplative man I had made no mention of your rivers as delightsome
+places where our noble art might be carried to a brave perfection, but
+indeed in that day when I wrote--more years ago than I like to think
+on--your far country was esteemed a wild and wanton land. Some worthy
+Pennsylvania anglers with whom I have fished this water of Styx have
+even told me of thirty and forty-inch trouts they have brought to
+basket in that same Pocono stream, from the which fables I know that the
+manners of our ancient sport have altered not a whit. I myself could
+tell you of a notable catch I had the other morning, when I took some
+half dozen brace of trouts before breakfast, not one less than
+twenty-two inches, with bellies as yellow as marigold and as white as a
+lily in parts. That I account quite excellent taking for these times,
+when this stream hath been so roiled and troubled by the passage of
+Master Charon's barges, he having been so pressed with traffic that he
+hath discarded his ancient vessel as incommodious and hasteneth to and
+fro with a fleet of ferryboats.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+My Good Friends, I wish you all the comely sport that may be found along
+those crystal rivers whereof your fellows have told me, and a good
+honest alehouse wherein to take your civil cup of barley wine when there
+ariseth too violent a shower of rain. I have ever believed that a pipe
+of tobacco sweeteneth sport, and I was never above hiding a bottle of
+somewhat in the hollow root of a sycamore against chilly seizures. But
+come, what is this I hear that you honest anglers shall no longer pledge
+fortune in a cup of mild beverage? Meseemeth this is an odd thing and
+contrary to our tradition. I look for some explanation of the matter.
+Mayhap I have been misled by some waggishness. In my days along my
+beloved little river Dove, where my friend Mr. Cotton erected his
+fishing house, we were wont to take our pleasure on the bowling green of
+an evening, with a cup of ale handy. And our sheets used to smell
+passing sweet of lavender, which is a pleasant fragrance, indeed.
+
+One matter lies somewhat heavy on my heart and damps my mirth, that in
+my little book I said of our noble fish the trout that his name was of a
+German offspring. I am happy to confess to you that I was at fault, for
+my good friend Master Charon (who doth sometimes lighten his labors with
+a little casting and trolling from the poop of his vessel) hath
+explained to me that the name trout deriveth from the antique Latin word
+_tructa_, signifying a gnawer. This is a gladsome thing for me to know,
+and moreover I am bounden to tell you that the house committee of our
+little angling club along Styx hath blackballed all German members
+henceforward. These riparian pleasures are justly to be reserved for
+gentles of the true sportsman blood, and not such as have defiled the
+fair rivers of France.
+
+And so, good friends, my love and blessing upon all such as love
+quietness and go angling.
+
+IZAAK WALTON.
+
+
+
+
+MRS. IZAAK WALTON WRITES A LETTER TO HER MOTHER
+
+
+CHANCERY LANE, LONDON, April 28, 1639.
+
+My Dearest Mother: Matters indeed pass from badd to worse, and I fear
+mee that with Izaak spending all hys tyme angling along riversydes and
+neglecting the millinery shoppe (wych is our onlie supporte, for can
+bodye and soule be keppt in one by a few paltrie brace of trouts a
+weeke?) wee shall soone come to a sorrye ende. How many tymes, deare
+Mother, have I bewailed my follye in wedding this creature who seemeth
+to mee more a fysh than a man, not mearly by reason of hys madnesse for
+the gracelesse practice of water-dabbling, but eke for hys passion for
+swimming in barley wine, ale, malmsey and other infuriatyng liquours.
+What manner of companye doth this dotard keepe on his fyshing pastimes,
+God wot! Lo he is wonte to come home at some grievous houre of ye
+nyghte, bearing but a smalle catche but plentyful aroma of drinke, and
+ofttimes alsoe hys rybalde freinds do accompany hym. Nothing will serve
+but they must arouse our kytchen-maide and have some paltry chubb or
+gudgeon fryed in greese, filling ye house wyth nauseous odoures, and
+wyth their ill prattle of fyshing tackle, not to say the comely
+milke-maides they have seen along some wanton meadowside, soe that I am
+moste distraught. You knowe, my deare, I never colde abyde fyssche being
+colde clammy cretures, and loe onlye last nyghte this Monster dyd come
+to my beddside where I laye asleepyng and wake me fromm a sweet drowse
+by dangling a string of loathsome queasy trouts, still dryppinge,
+against my nose. Lo, says he, are these not beuties? And his reek of
+barley wine did fille the chamber. Worste of alle, deare Mother, this
+all-advised wretche doth spend alle his vacant houres in compiling a
+booke on the art (as he calleth it) of angling, surely a trifling petty
+wanton taske that will
+
+[Illustration]
+
+make hym the laughing-stocke of all sober men. God forbidd that oure
+littel son sholde be brought uppe in this nastye squanderinge of tyme,
+wych doth breede nought (meseems) but ale-bibbing and ye disregarde of
+truth. Oure house, wych is but small as thou knowest, is all cluttered
+wyth his slimye tackle, and loe but yesterdaye I loste a customer fromm
+ye millinery shoppe, shee averring (and I trow ryghtly) that ye shoppe
+dyd stinke of fysshe. Ande soe if thys thyng do continue longer I shall
+ripp uppe and leave, for I thoght to wed a man and not a paddler of
+dytches. O howe I longe for those happy dayes with thee, before I ever
+knew such a thyng as a fysshe existed! Sad too it is that he doth
+justifye his vain idle wanton pasttyme by misquoting scriptures. Saint
+Peter, and soe on. Three kytchen maides have lefte us latelye for
+barbyng themselves upon hydden hookes that doe scatter our shelves and
+drawers.
+
+Thy persecuted daughter, ANNE WALTON.
+
+
+
+
+TRUTH
+
+
+Our mind is dreadfully active sometimes, and the other day we began to
+speculate on Truth.
+
+Our friends are still avoiding us.
+
+Every man knows what Truth is, but it is impossible to utter it. The
+face of your listener, his eyes mirthful or sorry, his eager expectance
+or his churlish disdain insensibly distort your message. You find
+yourself saying what you know he expects you to say, or (more often)
+what he expects you not to say. You may not be aware of this, but that
+is what happens. In order that the world may go on and human beings
+thrive, nature has contrived that the Truth may not often be uttered.
+
+And how is one to know what is Truth? He thinks one thing before lunch;
+after a stirring bout with corned beef and onions the shining vision is
+strangely altered. Which is Truth?
+
+Truth can only be attained by those whose systems are untainted by
+secret influences, such as love, envy, ambition, food, college education
+and moonlight in spring.
+
+If a man lived in a desert for six months without food, drink or
+companionship he would be reasonably free from prejudice and would be in
+a condition to enunciate great truths.
+
+But even then his vision of reality would have been warped by so much
+sand and so many sunsets.
+
+Even if he survived and brought us his Truth with all the gravity and
+long night-gown of a Hindu faker, as soon as any one listened to him his
+message would no longer be Truth. The complexion of his audience, the
+very shape of their noses, would subtly undermine his magnificent
+aloofness.
+
+Women have learned the secret. Truth must never be uttered, and never be
+listened to.
+
+Truth is the ricochet of a prejudice bouncing off a fact.
+
+Truth is what every man sees lurking at the bottom of his own soul, like
+the oyster shell housewives put in the kitchen kettle to collect the
+lime from the water. By and by each man's iridescent oyster shell of
+Truth becomes coated with the lime of prejudice and hearsay.
+
+All the above is probably untrue.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRAGEDY OF WASHINGTON SQUARE
+
+
+One of our favorite amusements at lunch-time is to walk down to Henry
+Rosa's pastry shop, and buy a slab of cinnamon bun. Then we walk round
+Washington Square, musing, and gradually walking round and engulfing the
+cinnamon bun at the same time. It is surprising what a large
+circumference those buns of Henry's have. By the time we have gnashed
+our way through one of those warm and mystic phenomena we don't want to
+eat again for a month.
+
+The real reason for the cinnamon bun is to fortify us for the
+contemplation and onslaught upon a tragic problem that Washington Square
+presents to our pondering soul.
+
+Washington Square is a delightful place. There are trees there, and
+publishing houses and warm green grass and a fire engine station. There
+are children playing about on the broad pavements that criss-cross the
+sward; there is a fine roof of blue sky, kept from falling down by the
+enormous building at the north side of the Square. But these things
+present no problems. To our simple philosophy a tree is a vegetable, a
+child is an animal, a building is a mineral and this classification
+needs no further scrutiny or analysis. But there is one thing in
+Washington Square that embodies an intellectual problem, a grappling of
+the soul, a matter for continual anguish and decision.
+
+On the west side of the Square is the Swiss consulate, and, it is this
+that weighs upon our brooding spirit. How many times we have paused
+before that quiet little house and gazed upon the little red cross, a
+Maltese Cross, or a Cross of St. Hieronymus; or whatever the heraldic
+term is, that represents and symbolizes the diplomatic and spiritual
+presence of the Swiss republic. We have stood there and thought about
+William Tell and the Berne Convention and the St. Gothard Tunnel and St.
+Bernard dogs and winter sports and alpenstocks and edelweiss and the
+Jungfrau and all the other trappings and trappists that make Switzerland
+notable. We have mused upon the Swiss military system, which is so
+perfect that it has never had to be tested by war; and we have wondered
+what is the name of the President of Switzerland and how he keeps it out
+of the papers so successfully. One day we lugged an encyclopedia and the
+Statesman's Year Book out to the Square with us and sat down on a bench
+facing the consulate and read up about the Swiss cabinet and the
+national bank of Switzerland and her child labor problems. Accidentally
+we discovered the name of the Swiss President, but as he has kept it so
+dark we are not going to give away his secret.
+
+Our dilemma is quite simple. Where there is a consulate there must be a
+consul, and it seems to us a dreadful thing that inside that building
+there lurks a Swiss envoy who does not know that we, here, we who are
+walking round the Square with our mouth full of Henry Rosa's bun, once
+spent a night in Switzerland. We want him to know that; we think he
+ought to know it; we think it is part of his diplomatic duty to know it.
+And yet how can we burst in on him and tell him that apparently
+irrelevant piece of information?
+
+We have thought of various ways of breaking it to him, or should we say
+breaking him to it?
+
+Should we rush in and say the Swiss national debt is $----, or ----
+kopecks, and then lead on to other topics such as the comparative
+heights of mountain peaks, letting the consul gradually grasp the fact
+that we have been in Switzerland? Or should we call him up on the
+telephone and make a mysterious appointment with him, when we could
+blurt it out brutally?
+
+We are a modest and diffident man, and this little problem, which would
+be so trifling to many, presents inscrutable hardships to us.
+
+Another aspect of the matter is this. We think the consul ought to know
+that we spent one night in Switzerland once; we think he ought to know
+what we were doing that night; but we also think he ought to know just
+why it was that we spent only one night in his beautiful country. We
+don't want him to think we hurried away because we were annoyed by
+anything, or because the national debt was so many rupees or piasters,
+or because child labor in Switzerland is----. It is the thought that the
+consul and all his staff are in total ignorance of our existence that
+galls us. Here we are, walking round and round the Square, bursting with
+information and enthusiasm about Swiss republicanism, and the consul
+never heard of us. How can we summon up courage enough to tell him the
+truth? That is the tragedy of Washington Square.
+
+It was a dark, rainy night when we bicycled into Basel. We hid been
+riding all day long, coming down from the dark clefts of the Black
+Forest, and we and our knapsack were wet through. We had been bicycling
+for six weeks with no more luggage than a rucksack could hold. We never
+saw such rain as fell that day we slithered and sloshed on the rugged
+slopes that tumble down to the Rhine at Basel. (The annual rainfall in
+Switzerland is----.) When we got to the little hotel at Basel we sat in
+the dining room with water running off us in trickles, until the head
+waiter glared. And so all we saw of Switzerland was the interior of the
+tobacconist's where we tried, unsuccessfully, to get some English baccy.
+Then he went to bed while our garments were dried. We stayed in bed for
+ten hours, reading, fairy tales and smoking and answering modestly
+through the transom when any one asked us questions.
+
+The next morning we overhauled our wardrobe. We will not particularize,
+but we decided that one change of duds, after six weeks' bicycling, was
+not enough of a wardrobe to face the Jungfrau and the national debt and
+the child-labor problenm, not to speak of the anonymous President and
+the other sights that matter (such as the Matterhorn). Also, our stock
+of tobacco had run out, and German or French tobacco we simply cannot
+smoke. Even if we could get along on substitute fumigants the issue of
+garments was imperative. The nearest place where we could get any
+clothes of the kind that we are accustomed to, the kind of clothes that
+are familiarly symbolized by three well-known initials, was London. And
+the only way we had to get to London was on our bicycle. We thought we
+had better get busy. It's a long bike ride from Basel to London. So we
+just went as far as the Basel Cathedral, so as not to seem too
+unappreciative of all the treasures that Switzerland had been saving for
+us for countless centuries; then we got on board our patient steed and
+trundled off through Alsace.
+
+That was in August, 1912, and we firmly intended to go back to
+Switzerland the next year to have another look at, the rainfall and the
+rest of the statistics and status quos. But the opportunity has not
+come.
+
+So that is why we wander disconsolately about Washington Square, trying
+to make up our mind to unburden our bosom to the Swiss consul and tell
+him the worst. But how can one go and interrupt a consul to tell him
+that sort of thing? Perhaps he wouldn't understand it at all; he would
+misunderstand our pathetic little story and be angry that we took up his
+time. He wouldn't think that a shortage of tobacco and clothing was a
+sufficient excuse for slighting William Tell and the Jungfrau. He
+wouldn't appreciate the frustrated emotion and longing with which we
+watch the little red cross at his front door, and think of all it means
+to us and all it might have meant.
+
+We took another turn around Washington Square, trying to embolden
+ourself enough to go in and tell the consul all this. And then our heart
+failed us. We decided to write a piece for the paper about it, and if
+the consul ever sees it he will be generous and understand. He will know
+why, behind the humble facade of his consulate on Washington Square, we
+see the heaven-piercing summits of Switzerland rising like a dream, blue
+and silvery and tantalizing.
+
+P.S. Since the above we have definitely decided not to go to call on the
+Swiss consul. Suppose he were only a vice-consul, a Philadelphia Swiss,
+who had never been to Switzerland in his life!
+
+
+
+
+IF MR. WILSON WERE THE WEATHER MAN
+
+
+My Fellow Citizens: It is very delightful to be here, if I may be
+permitted to say so, and I consider it a distinguished privilege to open
+the discussion as to the probable weather to-morrow not only, but during
+the days to come. I can easily conceive that many of our forecasts will
+need subsequent reconsideration, for if I may judge by my own study of
+these matters, the climate is not susceptible of confident judgments at
+present.
+
+An overwhelming majority of the American people is in favor of fine
+weather. This underlying community of purpose warms my heart. If we do
+not guarantee them fine weather, cannot you see the picture of what
+would come to pass? Your hearts have instructed you where the rain
+falls. It falls upon senators and congressmen not only--and for that we
+need not feel so much chagrin--it falls upon humble homes everywhere,
+upon plain men, and women, and children. If I were to disappoint the
+united expectation of my fellow citizens for fine weather to-morrow I
+would incur their merited scorn.
+
+I suppose no more delicate task is given any man than to interpret the
+feelings and purposes of a great climate. It is not a task in which any
+man can find much exhilaration, and I confess I have been puzzled by
+some of the criticisms leveled at my office. But they do not make any
+impression on me, because I know that the sentiment of the country at
+large will be more generous. I call my fellow countrymen to witness that
+at no stage of the recent period of low barometric pressure have I
+judged the purposes of the climate intemperately. I should be ashamed to
+use the weak language of vindictive protest.
+
+I have tried once and again, my fellow citizens, to say to you in all
+frankness what seems to be the prospect of fine weather. There is a
+compulsion upon one in my position to exercise every effort to see that
+as little as possible of the hope of mankind is disappointed. Yet this
+is a hope which cannot, in the very nature of things, be realized in its
+perfection. The utmost that can be done by way of accommodation and
+compromise has been performed without stint or limit. I am sure it will
+not be necessary to remind you that you cannot throw off the habits of
+the climate immediately, any more than you can throw off the habits of
+the individual immediately. But however unpromising the immediate
+outlook may be, I am the more happy to offer my observations on the
+state of the weather for to-morrow because this is not a party issue.
+What a delightful thought that is! Whatever the condition of sunshine or
+precipitation vouchsafed to us, may I not hope that we shall all meet it
+with quickened temper and purpose, happy in the thought that it is our
+common fortune?
+
+For to-morrow there is every prospect of heavy and continuous rain.
+
+
+
+
+SYNTAX FOR CYNICS
+
+A GRAMMAR OF THE FEMININE LANGUAGE
+
+
+The feminine language consists of words placed one after another with
+extreme rapidity, with intervals for matinees. The purpose of this
+language is (1) to conceal, and (2) to induce, thought. Very often,
+after the use of a deal of language, a thought will appear in the
+speaker's mind. This, while desirable, is by no means necessary.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+THOUGHT cannot be defined, but it is instinctively recognized even by
+those unaccustomed to it.
+
+PARTS OF SPEECH: There are five parts of feminine speech--noun,
+pronoun, adjective, verb and interjection.
+
+THE NOUN is the name of something to wear, or somebody who furnishes
+something to wear, or a place where something is to be worn. E.g., _hat,
+husband, opera_. Feminine nouns are always singular.
+
+THE PRONOUN is _I_.
+
+ADJECTIVES: There are only four feminine adjectives--_adorable, cute,
+sweet, horrid_. These are all modified on occasion by the adverb
+_perfectly_.
+
+THE VERBS are of two kinds--active and passive. Active verbs express
+action; passive verbs express passion. All feminine verbs are irregular
+and imperative.
+
+INTERJECTIONS: There are two interjections--_Heavens_! and _Gracious_!
+The masculine language is much richer in interjections.
+
+DECLENSION: There are three ways of feminine declining, (1) to say No;
+(2) to say Yes and mean No; (3) to say nothing.
+
+CONJUGATION: This is what happens to a verb in the course of
+conversation or shopping. A verb begins the day quite innocently, as the
+verb _go_ in the phrase _to go to town_. When it gets to the city this
+verb becomes _look_, as, for instance, to _look at the shop windows._
+Thereafter its descent is rapid into the form _purchase_ or _charge_.
+This conjugation is often assisted by the auxiliary expression _a
+bargain_. About the first of the following month the verb reappears in
+the masculine vocabulary in a parallel or perverted form, modified by an
+interjection.
+
+CONVERSATION in the feminine language consists of language rapidly
+vibrating or oscillating between two persons. The object of any
+conversation is always accusative, e.g., "_Mrs. Edwards has no taste in
+hats_." Most conversations consist of an indeterminate number of
+sentences, but sometimes it is difficult to tell where one sentence ends
+and the next begins. It is even possible for two sentences to overlap.
+When this occurs the conversation is known as a dialogue. A sentence may
+be of any length, and is concluded only by the physiological necessity
+of taking breath.
+
+SENTENCES: A sentence may be defined as a group of words, uttered in
+sequence, but without logical connection, to express an opinion or an
+emotion. A number of sentences if emitted without interruption becomes a
+conversation. A conversation prolonged over an hour or more becomes a
+gossip. A gossip, when shared by several persons, is known as a secret.
+A secret is anything known by a large and constantly increasing number
+of persons.
+
+LETTERS: The feminine language, when committed to paper, with a stub pen
+and backhanded chirography, is known as a letter. A letter should if
+possible, be written on rose or lemon colored paper of a rough and
+flannely texture, with scalloped edges and initials embossed in gilt. It
+should be written with great rapidity, containing not less than ten
+exclamation points per page and three underlined adjectives per
+paragraph. The verb may be reserved until the postscript.
+
+Generally speaking, students of the feminine language are agreed that
+rules of grammar and syntax are subject to individual caprice and whim,
+and it is very difficult to lay down fixed canons. The extreme rapidity
+with which the language is used and the charm and personal magnetism of
+its users have disconcerted even the most careful and scientific
+observers. A glossary of technical terms and idioms in the feminine
+language would be a work of great value to the whole husband world, but
+it is doubtful if any such volume will ever be published.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRUTH AT LAST
+
+AN EXTRACT FROM MARTHA WASHINGTON'S DIARY
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Feb. 22, 1772. A grate Company of Guests assembled at Mt Vernon to
+celebrate Gen'l Washington's Birthdaye. In the Morning the Gentlemenn
+went a Fox hunting, but their Sport was marred by the Pertinacity of
+some Motion Picture menn who persewd them to take Fillums and catchd the
+General falling off his Horse at a Ditch. In the Evening some of the
+Companye tooke Occasion to rally the General upon the old Fable of the
+Cherrye Tree, w'ch hath ever been imputed an Evidence of hys exceeding
+Veracity, though to saye sooth I never did believe the legend my self.
+"Well," sayes the General with a Twinkle, "it wolde not be Politick to
+denye a Romance w'ch is soe profitable to my Reputation, but to be
+Candid, Gentlemenn, I have no certain recollection of the Affaire. My
+Brother Lawrence was wont to say that the Tree or Shrubb in question was
+no Cherrye but a Bitter Persimmon; moreover he told me that I stoutly
+denyed any Attacke upon it; but being caught with the Goods (as Tully
+saith) I was soundly Flogged, and walked stiffly for three dayes."
+
+I was glad to heare the Truth in this matter as I have never seen any
+Corroboration of this surpassing Virtue in George's private Life. The
+evening broke up in some Disorder as Col Fairfax and others hadd Drunk
+too freely of the Cock's Taile as they dub the new and very biting Toddy
+introduced by the military. Wee hadd to call a chirurgeon to lett Blood
+for some of the Guests before they coulde be gott to Bedd, whither they
+were conveyed on stretchers.
+
+
+
+
+FIXED IDEAS
+
+
+It is said that a Fixed Idea is the beginning of madness.
+
+Yet we are often worried because we have so few Fixed Ideas. We do not
+seem to have any really definite Theory about Life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We find, on the other hand, that a great many of those we know have some
+Guiding Principle that excuses and explains all their conduct.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If you have some Theory about Life, and are thoroughly devoted to it,
+you may come to a bad end, but you will enjoy yourself heartily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These theories may be of many different kinds. One of our friends rests
+his career and hope of salvation on the doctrine that eating plenty of
+fish and going without an overcoat whenever possible constitute supreme
+happiness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another prides himself on not being able to roll a cigarette. If he were
+forced, at the point of the bayonet, to roll a fag, it would wreck his
+life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another is convinced that the Lost and Found ads in the papers all
+contain anarchist code messages, and sits up late at night trying to
+unriddle them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How delightful it must be to be possessed by one of these Theories! All
+the experiences of the theorist's life tend to confirm his Theory. This
+is always so. Did you ever hear of a Theory being confuted?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Facts are quite helpless in the face of Theories. For after all, most
+Facts are insufficiently encouraged with applause. When a Fact comes
+along, the people in charge are generally looking the other way. This is
+what is meant by Not Facing the Facts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Therefore all argument is quite useless, for it only results in
+stiffening your friend's belief in his (presumably wrong) Theory.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When any one tries to argue with you, say, "You are nothing if not
+accurate, and you are not accurate." Then escape from the room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When we hear our friends diligently expounding the ideas which Explain
+Everything, we are wistful. We go off and say to ourself, We really must
+dig up some kind of Theory about Life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We read once of a great man that he never said, "Well, possibly so."
+This gave us an uneasy pang.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is a mistake to be Open to Conviction on so many topics, because all
+one's friends try to convince one. This is very painful.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And it is embarrassing if, for the sake of a quiet life, one pretends to
+be convinced. At the corner of Tenth and Chestnut we allowed ourself to
+agree with A.B., who said that the German colonies should be
+internationalized. Then we had to turn down Ninth Street because we saw
+C.D. coming, with whom we had previously agreed that Great Britain
+should have German Africa. And in a moment we had to dodge into Sansom
+Street to avoid E.F., having already assented to his proposition that
+the German colonies should have self-determination. This kind of thing
+makes it impossible to see one's friends more than one at a time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Perhaps our Fixed Idea is that we have no Fixed Ideas.
+
+Well, possibly so.
+
+
+
+
+TRIALS OF A PRESIDENT TRAVELING ABROAD
+
+
+10 a.m.--Arrive at railway station. Welcomed by King and Queen. Hat on
+head. Umbrella left hand. Gloves on.
+
+10:01--Right glove off (hastily) into left hand. Hat off (right hand).
+Umbrella hanging on left arm.
+
+10:02--Right glove into left pocket. Hat to left hand. Shake hands with
+King.
+
+10:03--Shake hands with Queen. Left glove off to receive flowers.
+Umbrella to right hand.
+
+10:04--Shake hands with Prime Minister. Left glove in left hand.
+Umbrella back to left hand. Flowers in left hand. Hat in left hand.
+
+10:05--Enter King's carriage. Try to drop flowers under carriage
+unobserved. Foreign Minister picks them up with gallant remark.
+
+10:06--Shake hands with Foreign Minister. In his emotional foreign
+manner he insists on taking both hands. Quick work: Umbrella to right
+elbow, gloves left pocket, hat under right arm, flowers to right pocket.
+
+10:08--Received by Lord Mayor, who offers freedom of the city in golden
+casket. Casket in left hand, Lord Mayor in right hand Queen on left arm,
+umbrella on right arm flowers and gloves bursting from pockets hat
+(momentarily) on head.
+
+10:10--Delegation of statesmen. Statesmen in right hand. Hat, umbrella,
+gloves, King, flowers, casket in left hand. Situation getting
+complicated.
+
+10:15--Ceremonial reception by Queen Mother. Getting confused. Queen
+Mother in left pocket, umbrella on head, gloves on right hand, hat in
+left hand, King on head, flowers in trousers pocket. Casket under left
+arm.
+
+10:17--Complete collapse. Failure of the League of Nations.
+
+
+
+
+DIARY OF A PUBLISHER'S OFFICE BOY
+
+
+Jan. 7, 1600. Thys daye ye Bosse bade mee remaine in ye Outer Office to
+keepe Callers from Hinderyng Hym in Hys affaires. There came an olde
+Bumme (ye same wch hath beene heare before) wth ye Scrypte of a Playe,
+dubbed Roumio ande Julia. Hys name was Shake a Speare or somethynge lyke
+thatt. Ye Bosse bade mee reade ye maunuscripp myselfe, as hee was Bussy.
+I dyd. Ande of alle foulishnesse, thys playe dyd beare away ye prize.
+Conceive ye Absuerditye of laying ye Sceane in Italy, it ys welle knowne
+that Awdiences will not abear nothyng that is not sett neare at Home.
+Butt woarse stille, thys fellowe presumes to kille offe Boath Heroe ande
+Heroine in ye Laste Acte, wch is Intolerabble toe ye Publicke. Suerley
+noe chaunce of Success in thys. Ye awthour dyd reappeare in ye
+aufternoone, and dyd seeke to borrowe a crowne from mee, but I sente hym
+packing. Ye Bosse hath heartilye given me Styx forr admitting such
+Vagabones to ye Office. I tolde maister Shake a Speare that unlesse hee
+colde learne to wryte Beste Sellers such as Master Spenser's Faerye
+Quene (wch wee have put through six editions) there was suerly noe Hope
+for hym. Hee tooke thys advyse in goode parte, and wente. Hys jerkin
+wolde have beene ye better for a patchinge.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOG'S COMMANDMENTS
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+From a witless puppy I brought thee up: gave thee fire and food, and
+taught thee the self-respect of an honest dog. Hear, then, my
+commandments:
+
+I am thy master: thou shalt have no other masters before me. Where I go,
+shalt thou follow; where I abide, tarry thou also.
+
+My house is thy castle; thou shalt honor it; guard it with thy life if
+need be.
+
+By daylight, suffer all that approach peaceably to enter without
+protest. But after nightfall thou shalt give tongue when men draw near.
+
+Use not thy teeth on any man without good cause and intolerable
+provocation; and never on women or children.
+
+Honor thy master and thy mistress, that thy days may be long in the
+land.
+
+Thou shalt not consort with mongrels, nor with dogs that are common or
+unclean.
+
+Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not feed upon refuse or stray bits: thy
+meat waits thee regularly in the kitchen.
+
+Thou shalt not bury bones in the flower beds.
+
+Cats are to be chased, but in sport only; seek not to devour them: their
+teeth and claws are deadly.
+
+Thou shalt not snap at my neighbor, nor at his wife, nor his child, nor
+his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor do
+harm to aught that is his.
+
+The drawing-room rug is not for thee, nor the sofa, nor the best
+armchair. Thou hast the porch and thy own kennel. But for the love I
+bear thee, there is always a corner for thee by the winter fire.
+
+Meditate on these commandments day and night; so shalt thou be a dog of
+good breeding and an honor to thy master.
+
+
+
+
+THE VALUE OF CRITICISM
+
+
+Our friend Dove Dulcet, the well-known sub-caliber poet, has recently
+issued a slender volume of verses called _Peanut Butter_. He thinks we
+may be interested to see the comment of the press on his book. We don't
+know why he should think so, but anyway here are some of the reviews:
+
+Buffalo _Lens_: Mr. Dulcet is a sweet singer, and we could only wish
+there were twice as many of these delicately rhymed fancies. There is
+not a poem in the book that does not exhibit a tender grasp of the
+beautiful homely emotions. Perhaps the least successful, however, is
+that entitled "On Losing a Latchkey."
+
+Syracuse _Hammer and Tongs_: This little book of savage satires will
+rather dismay the simple-minded reader. Into the acid vials of his song
+Mr. Dulcet has poured a bitter cynicism. He seems to us to be an
+irremediable pessimist, a man of brutal and embittered life. In one
+poem, however, he does soar to a very fine imaginative height. This is
+the ode "On Losing a Latchkey," which is worth all the rest of the
+pieces put together.
+
+New York _Reaping Hook_: It is odd that Mr. Dove Dulcet, of Philadelphia
+we believe should have been able to find a publisher for this volume.
+These queer little doggerels have an instinctive affinity for oblivion,
+and they will soon coalesce with the driftwood of the literary Sargasso
+Sea. Among many bad things we can hardly remember ever to have seen
+anything worse than "On Losing a Latchkey."
+
+Philadelphia _Prism_: Our gifted fellow townsman, Mr. Dove Dulcet, has
+once more demonstrated his ability to set humble themes in entrancing
+measures. He calls his book _Peanut Butter_. A title chosen with rare
+discernment, for the little volume has all the savor and nourishing
+properties of that palatable delicacy. We wish there were space to quote
+"On Losing a Latchkey," for it expresses a common human experience in
+language of haunting melody and witty brevity. How rare it is to find a
+poet with such metrical skill who is content to handle the minor themes
+of life in this mood of delicious pleasantry. The only failure in the
+book is the banal sonnet entitled "On Raiding the Ice Box." This we
+would be content to forego.
+
+Pittsburgh _Cylinder_: It is a relief to meet one poet who deals with
+really exalted themes. We are profoundly weary of the myriad versifiers
+who strum the so-called lowly and domestic themes. Mr. Dulcet, however,
+in his superb free verse, has scaled olympian heights, disdaining the
+customary twaddling topics of the rhymesters. Such an amazing allegory
+as "On Raiding the Ice Box," which deals, of course, with the experience
+of a man who attempts to explore the mind of an elderly Boston spinster,
+marks this powerful poet as a man of unusual satirical and philosophical
+depth.
+
+Boston _Penseroso_: We find Mr. Dove Dulcet's new book rather baffling.
+We take his poem "On Raiding the Ice Box" to be a paean in honor of the
+discovery of the North Pole; but such a poem as "On Losing a Latchkey,"
+is quite inscrutable. Our guess is that it is an intricate
+psycho-analysis of a pathological case of amnesia. Our own taste is more
+for the verse that deals with the gentler emotions of every day, but
+there can be no doubt that Mr. Dulcet is an artist to be reckoned with.
+
+
+
+
+A MARRIAGE SERVICE FOR COMMUTERS
+
+(_Fill in railroad as required_)
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Wilt thou, Jack, have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together
+in so far as the ---- Railroad will allow? Wilt thou love her, comfort
+her, honor and keep her, take her to the movies, prevent the furnace
+from going out, and come home regularly on the 5:42 train?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"Wilt thou, Jill, have this commuter to thy wedded husband, bearing in
+mind snowdrifts, washouts, lack of servants and all other penalties of
+suburban life? Wilt thou obey him and serve him, love, honor and keep
+him, and let him smoke a corncob pipe in the house?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"I, Jack, take thee, Jill, to my wedded wife, from 6 P.M. until 8 A.M.,
+as far as permitted by the ---- Railroad, schedule subject to change
+without notice, for better, for worse, for later, for earlier, to love
+and to cherish, and I promise to telephone you when I miss the train."
+
+"I, Jill, take thee, Jack, to my wedded husband, subject to the
+mutability of the suburban service, changing trains at----, to have and
+to hold, save when the card club meets on Wednesday evenings, and
+thereto I give thee my troth."
+
+
+
+
+THE SUNNY SIDE OF GRUB STREET
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I often wonder how many present-day writers keep diaries. I wish _The
+Bookman_ would conduct a questionnaire on the subject. I have a
+suspicion that Charley Towne keeps one--probably a grim, tragic
+parchment wherein that waggish soul sets down its secret musings. I dare
+say Louis Untermeyer has one (morocco, tooled and goffered, with gilt
+edges), and looks over its nipping paragraphs now and then with a
+certain relish. It undoubtedly has a large portmanteau pocket with it,
+to contain clippings of Mr. Untermeyer's letters to the papers taking
+issue with the reviews of his books. There is no way for the reviewer to
+escape that backfire. I knew one critic who was determined to review
+one of Louis's books in such a way that the author would have no excuse
+for writing to the _Times_ about it. He was overwhelmingly
+complimentary. But along came the usual letter by return of post. Mr.
+Untermeyer asked for enough space to "diverge from the critique at one
+point." He said the review was too fulsome.
+
+I wish Don Marquis kept a diary, but I am quite sure he doesn't. Don is
+too--well, I was going to say he is too--but after all he has a perfect
+right to be that way.
+
+It's rather an important thing. Every one knows the fascination exerted
+by personal details of authors' lives. Every one has hustled to the Cafe
+de la Source in Paris because R.L.S. once frequented it, or to Allaire's
+in New York because O. Henry wrote it up in one of his tales, and that
+sort of thing. People like to know all the minutiae concerning their
+favorite author. It is not sufficient to know (let us say) that Murray
+Hill or some one of that sort, once belonged to the Porrier's Corner
+Club. One wants to know where the Porrier's Corner Club was, and who
+were the members, and how he got there, and what he got there, and so
+forth. One wants to know where Murray Hill (I take his name only as a
+symbol) buys his cigars, and where he eats lunch, and what he eats,
+whether pigeon potpie with iced tea or hamburg steak and "coffee with
+plenty." It is all these intimate details that the public has thirst
+for.
+
+Now the point I want to make is this. Here, all around us, is fine
+doings (as Murray Hill would put it), the jolliest literary hullabaloo
+going. Some of the writers round about--Arthur Guiterman or Tom Masson
+or Witter Bynner or Tom Daly, or some of these chaps now sitting down to
+combination-plate luncheons and getting off all manner of merry quips
+and confidential matters--some of these chaps may be famous some day
+(posterity is so undiscriminating) and all that savory personal stuff
+will have evaporated from our memories. The world of bookmen is in great
+need of a new crop of intimists, or whatever you call them. Barbellion
+chaps. Henry Ryecrofts. We need a chiel taking notes somewhere.
+
+Now if you really jot down the merry gossip, and make bright little pen
+portraits, and tell just what happens, it will not only afford you a
+deal of discreet amusement, but the diary you keep will reciprocate. In
+your older years it will keep you. _Harper's Magazine_ will undoubtedly
+want to publish it, forty years from now. If that is too late to keep
+you, it will help to keep your descendants. So I wish some of the
+authors would confess and let us know which of them are doing it. It
+would be jolly to know to whom we might confide the genial little items
+of what-not and don't-let-this-go-farther that come the rounds. The
+inside story of the literature of any epoch is best told in the diaries.
+I'll bet Brander Matthews kept one, and James Huneker. It's a pity
+Professor Matthews's was a bit tedious. Crabb Robinson was the man for
+my money.
+
+The diarists I would choose for the present generation on Grub Street
+would be Heywood Broun, Franklin Adams, Bob Holliday, William McFee, and
+maybe Ben De Casseres (if he would promise not to mention Don Marquis
+and Walt Whitman more than once per page). McFee might be let off the
+job by reason of his ambrosial letters. But it just occurs to me that of
+course one must not know who is keeping the diary. If it were known, he
+would be deluged with letters from people wanting to get their names
+into it. And the really worthwhile folks would be on their guard.
+
+But if all the writers wait until they are eighty years old and can
+write their memoirs with the beautifully gnarled and chalky old hands
+Joyce Kilmer loved to contemplate, they will have forgotten the comical
+pith of a lot of it. If you want to reproduce the colors and collisions
+along the sunny side of Grub Street, you've got to jot down your data
+before they fade. I wish I had time to be diarist of such matters. How
+candid I'd be! I'd put down all about the two young novelists who used
+to meet every day in City Hall Park to compare notes while they were
+hunting for jobs, and make wagers as to whose pair of trousers would
+last longer. (Quite a desirable essay could he written, by the way, on
+the influence of trousers on the fortunes of Grub Street, with the three
+stages of the Grub Street trouser, viz.: 1, baggy; 2, shiny; 3, trousers
+that must not be stooped in on any account.) There is an uproarious tale
+about a pair of trousers and a very well-known writer and a lecture at
+Vassar College, but these things have to be reserved for posterity, the
+legatee of all really amusing matters.
+
+But then there are other topics, too, such as the question whether
+Ibanez always wears a polo shirt, as the photos lead one to believe. The
+secret Philip Gibbs told me about the kind of typewriter he used on the
+western front. I would be enormously candid (if I were a diarist). I'd
+put down that I never can remember whether Vida Scudder is a man or a
+woman. I'd tell what A. Edward Newton said when he came rushing into the
+office to show me the Severn death-bed portrait of Keats, which he had
+just bought from Rosenbach. I'd tell the story of the unpublished letter
+of R.L.S. which a young man sold to buy a wedding present, which has
+since vanished (the R.L.S. letter). I'd tell the amazing story of how a
+piece of Walt Whitman manuscript was lost in Philadelphia on the
+memorable night of June 30, 1919. I'd tell just how Vachel Lindsay
+behaves when he's off duty. I'd even forsake everything to travel over
+to England with Vachel on his forthcoming lecture tour, as I'm convinced
+that England's comments on Vachel will be worth listening to.
+
+The ideal man to keep the sort of diary I have in mind would be Hilaire
+Belloc. It was an ancestor of Mr. Belloc, Dr. Joseph Priestley (who died
+in Pennsylvania, by the way) who discovered oxygen; and it is Mr. Belloc
+himself who has discovered how to put oxygen into the modern English
+essay. The gift, together with his love of good eating, probably came to
+him from his mother, Bessie Rayner Parkes, who once partook of Samuel
+Rogers's famous literary breakfasts. And this brings us back to our old
+friend Crabb Robinson, another of the Rogers breakfast clan. Robinson is
+never wildly exciting, but he gives a perfect panorama of his day. It is
+not often that one finds a man who associated with such figures as
+Goethe, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, and Lamb. He had the true gift
+for diarizing. What could be better, for instance, than this little
+miniature picture of the rise and fall of teetotalism in one well-loved
+person?--
+
+    Mary Lamb, I am glad to say, is just now very comfortable. She has
+    put herself under Doctor Tuthill, who has prescribed water. Charles,
+    in consequence, resolved to accommodate himself to her, and since
+    Lord-Mayor's day has abstained from all other liquor, as well as
+    from smoking. We shall all rejoice if this experiment succeeds....
+    His change of habit, though it, on the whole, improves his health,
+    yet when he is low-spirited, leaves him without a remedy or relief.
+
+    --LETTER OF HENRY CRABB ROBINSON To Miss WORDSWORTH, December 23,
+    1810.
+
+
+    Spent part of the evening with Charles Lamb (unwell) and his sister.
+
+    --ROBINSON'S DIARY, January 8, 1811.
+
+
+    Late in the evening Lamb called, to sit with me while he smoked his
+    pipe.
+
+    --ROBINSON'S DIARY, December 20, 1814.
+
+
+    Lamb was in a happy frame, and I can still recall to my mind the
+    look and tone with which he addressed Moore, when he could not
+    articulate very distinctly: "Mister Moore, will you drink a glass of
+    wine with me?"--suiting the action to the word, and hobnobbing.
+
+    --ROBINSON'S DIARY, April 4, 1823.
+
+Now that, I maintain, is just the kind of stuff we need in a diary of
+today. How fascinating that old book Peyrat's "Pastors of the Desert"
+became when we learned that R.L.S. had a copy of the second volume of it
+in his sleeping sack when he camped out with Modestine. Even so it may
+be a matter of delicious interest to our grandsons to know what book Joe
+Hergesheimer was reading when he came in town on the local from West
+Chester recently, and who taught him to shoot craps. It is interesting
+to know what Will and Stephen Benet (those skiey fraternals) eat when
+they visit a Hartford Lunch; to know whether Gilbert Chesterton is
+really fond of dogs (as "The Flying Inn" implies, if you remember
+Quoodle), and whether Edwin Meade Robinson and Edwin Arlington Robinson,
+_arcades ambo_, ever write to each other. It would be
+interesting--indeed it would be highly entertaining--to compile a list
+of the free meals Vachel Lindsay has received, and to ascertain the
+number of times Harry Kemp has been "discovered." It would be
+interesting to know how many people shudder with faint nausea (as I do)
+when they pick up a Dowson playlet and find it beginning with a list of
+characters including "A Moon Maiden" and "Pierrot," scene set in "a
+glade in the Parc du Petit Trianon--a statue of Cupid--Pierrot enters
+with his hands full of lilies." It would be interesting to resume the
+number of brazen imitations of McCrae's "In Flanders Fields"--here is
+the most striking, put out on a highly illuminated card by a New York
+publishing firm:
+
+  Rest in peace, ye Flanders's dead,
+  The poppies still blow overhead,
+    The larks ye heard, still singing fly.
+    They sing of the cause which made thee die.
+
+  And they are heard far down below,
+  Our fight is ended with the foe.
+    The fight for right, which ye begun
+    And which ye died for, we have won.
+      Rest in peace.
+
+The man who wrote that ought to be the first man mobilized for the next
+war.
+
+All such matters, with a plentiful bastinado for stupidity and swank,
+are the privilege of the diarist. He may indulge himself in the
+delightful luxury of making post-mortem enemies. He may wonder what the
+average reviewer thinks he means by always referring to single
+publishers in the plural. A note which we often see in the papers runs
+like this: "Soon to be issued by the Dorans (or Knopfs or Huebsches),"
+etc., etc. This is an echo of the old custom when there really were two
+or more Harpers. But as long as there is only one Doran, one Huebsch,
+one Knopf, it is simply idiotic.
+
+Well, as we go sauntering along the sunny side of Grub Street,
+meditating an essay on the Mustache in Literature (we have shaved off
+our own since that man Murray Hill referred to it in the public prints
+as "a young hay-wagon"), we are wondering whether any of the writing men
+are keeping the kind of diary we should like our son to read, say in
+1950. Perhaps Miss Daisy Ashford is keeping one. She has the seeing eye.
+Alas that Miss Daisy at nine years old was a _puella unius libri_.
+
+
+
+
+BURIAL SERVICE FOR A NEWSPAPER JOKE
+
+
+_After the remains have been decently interred, the following remarks
+shall be uttered by the presiding humorist:_
+
+This joke has been our refuge from one generation to another:
+
+Before the mountains were brought forth this joke was lusty and of good
+repute:
+
+In the life of this joke a thousand years are but as yesterday.
+
+Blessed, therefore, is this joke, which now resteth from its labors.
+
+But most of our jokes are of little continuance: though there be some so
+strong that they come to fourscore years, yet is their humor then but
+labor and sorrow:
+
+For a joke that is born of a humorist hath but a short time to live and
+is full of misery. It cometh up and is cut down like a flower. It fleeth
+as if it were a shadow and abideth but one edition.
+
+It is sown in quotation, it is raised in misquotation: We therefore
+commit this joke to the files of the country newspapers, where it shall
+circulate forever, world without end.
+
+
+
+
+ADVICE TO THOSE VISITING A BABY
+
+
+Interview the baby alone if possible. If, however, both parents are
+present, say, "It looks like its mother." And, as an afterthought, "I
+think it has its father's elbows."
+
+If uncertain as to the infant's sex, try some such formula as, "He looks
+like her grandparents," or "She has his aunt's sweet disposition."
+
+When the mother only is present, your situation is critical. Sigh deeply
+and admiringly, to imply that you wish _you_ had a child like that.
+Don't commit yourself at all until she gives a lead.
+
+When the father only is present, you may be a little reckless. Give the
+father a cigar and venture, "Good luck, old man; it looks like your
+mother-in-law."
+
+If possible, find out beforehand how old the child is. Call up the
+Bureau of Vital Statistics. If it is two months old, say to the mother,
+"Rather large for six months, isn't he?"
+
+If the worst has happened and the child really does look like its
+father, the most tactful thing is to say, "Children change as they grow
+older." Or you may suggest that some mistake has been made at the
+hospital and they have brought home the wrong baby.
+
+If left alone in the room with the baby, throw a sound-proof rug over it
+and escape.
+
+
+
+
+ABOU BEN WOODROW
+
+(IN PARIS)
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  Abou Ben Woodrow (may his tribe increase!)
+  Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
+  And saw, among the gifts piled on the floor
+  (Making the room look like a department store),
+  An Angel writing in a book of gold.
+  Now much applause had made Ben Woodrow bold
+  And to the Presence in the room said he,
+  "_Qu'est-ce que c'est que ca que tu ecris?"_
+  Or, in plain English, "May I not inquire
+  What writest thou?" The Angel did not tire
+  But kept on scribing. Then it turned its head
+  (All Europe could not turn Ben Woodrow's head!)
+  And with a voice almost as sweet as Creel's
+  Answered: "The names of those who grease the wheels
+  Of progress and have never, never blundered."
+  Ben Woodrow lay quite still, and sadly wondered.
+  "And is mine one?" he queried. "Nay, not so,"
+  Replied the Angel. Woodrow spoke more low
+  But cheerly still, and in his May I notting
+  Fashion he said: "Of course you may be rotting,
+  But even if you are, may I not then
+  Be writ as one that loves his fellow men?
+  Do that for me, old chap; just that; that merely
+  And I am yours, cordially and sincerely."
+  The Angel wrote, and vanished like a mouse.
+  Next night returned (accompanied by House)
+  And showed the names whom love of Peace had blest.
+  And lo! Ben Woodrow's name led all the rest!
+
+
+
+
+MY MAGNIFICENT SYSTEM
+
+
+In these days when the streets are so perilous, every man who goes about
+the city ought to be sure that his pockets are in good order, so that
+when he is run down by a roaring motor-truck the police will have no
+trouble in identifying him and communicating with his creditors.
+
+I have always been very proud of my pocket system. As others may wish to
+install it, I will describe it briefly. If I am found prostrate and
+lifeless on the paving, I can quickly be identified by the following
+arrangement of my private affairs:
+
+In my right-hand trouser leg is a large hole, partially surrounded by
+pocket.
+
+In my left-hand trouser pocket is a complicated bunch of keys. I am not
+quite sure what they all belong to, as I rarely lock anything. They are
+very useful, however, as when I walk rapidly they evolve a shrill
+jingling which often conveys the impression of minted coinage. One of
+them, I think, unlocks the coffer where I secretly preserve the pair of
+spats I bought when I became engaged.
+
+My right-hand hip pocket is used, in summer, for the handkerchief
+reserves (hayfever sufferers, please notice); and, in winter, for
+stamps. It is tapestried with a sheet of three-cent engravings that got
+in there by mistake last July, and adhered.
+
+My left-hand hip pocket holds my memorandum book, which contains only
+one entry: _Remember not to forget anything_.
+
+The left-hand upper waistcoat pocket holds a pencil, a commutation
+ticket and a pipe cleaner.
+
+The left-hand lower waistcoat pocket contains what the ignorant will
+esteem scraps of paper. This, however, is the hub and nerve center of my
+mnemonic system. When I want to remember anything I write it down on a
+small slip of paper and stick it in that pocket. Before going to bed I
+clean out the pocket and see how many things I have forgotten during the
+day. This promotes tranquil rest.
+
+The right-hand upper waistcoat pocket is used for wall-paper samples.
+Here I keep clippings of all the wallpapers at home, so that when buying
+shirts, ties, socks or books I can be sure to get something that will
+harmonize. My taste in these matters has sometimes been aspersed, so I
+am playing safe.
+
+The right-hand lower waistcoat pocket is used for small change. This is
+a one-way pocket; exit only.
+
+The inner pocket of my coat is used for railroad timetables, most of
+which have since been changed. Also a selected assortment of unanswered
+letters and slips of paper saying, "Call Mr. So-and-so before noon." The
+first thing to be done by my heirs after collecting the remains must be
+to communicate with the writers of those letters, to assure them that I
+was struck down in the fullness of my powers while on the way to the
+post office to mail an answer.
+
+My right-hand coat pocket is for pipes.
+
+Left-hand coat pocket for tobacco and matches.
+
+The little tin cup strapped in my left armpit is for Swedish matches
+that failed to ignite. It is an invention of my own.
+
+I once intended to allocate a pocket especially for greenbacks, but
+found it unnecessary.
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS TO CYNTHIA
+
+
+I. IN PRAISE OF BOOBS
+
+    _Dear Sir--What is a Boob? Will you please discuss the subject a
+    little? Perhaps I'm a boob for asking--but I'd like to know_.
+
+    CYNTHIA.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BE FRIENDLY WITH BOOBS
+
+The Boob, my dear Cynthia, is Nature's device for mitigating the
+quaintly blended infelicities of existence. Never be too bitter about
+the Boob. The Boob is you and me and the man in the elevator.
+
+THE BOOB IS HUMANITY'S HOPE
+
+As long as the Boob ratio remains high, humanity is safe. The Boob is
+the last repository of the stalwart virtues. The Boob is faith, hope and
+charity. The Boob is the hope of conservatives, the terror of radicals
+and the meal check of cynics. If you are run over on Market Street and
+left groaning under the mailed fist of a flivver, the Bolsheviki and
+I.W.W. will be watching the shop windows. It will be the Boob who will
+come to your aid, even before the cop gets there.
+
+1653 BOOBS
+
+If you were to dig a deep and terrible pit in the middle of Chestnut
+Street, and illuminate it with signs and red lights and placards
+reading, _DO NOT WALK INTO THIS PIT_, 1653 Boobs would tumble into it
+during the course of the day. Boobs have faith. They are eager to plunge
+in where an angel wouldn't even show his periscope.
+
+THE BOOB RATIO
+
+But that does not prove anything creditable to human nature. For though
+1653 people would fall into our pit (which any Rapid Transit Company
+will dig for us free of charge) 26,448 would cautiously and
+suspiciously and contemptuously avoid it. The Boob ratio is just about 1
+to 16.
+
+HE LOOKS FOR ANGELS
+
+It does not pay to make fun of the Boob. There is no malice in him, no
+insolence, no passion to thrive at the expense of his fellows. If he
+sees some one on a street corner gazing open-mouthed at the sky, he will
+do likewise, and stand there for half hour with his apple of Adam
+expectantly vibrating. But is that a shameful trait? May not a Boob
+expect to see angels in the shimmering blue of heaven? Is he more
+disreputable than the knave who frisks his watch meanwhile? And suppose
+he does see an angel, or even only a blue acre of sky--is that not worth
+as much as the dial in his poke?
+
+HE SEES THEM
+
+It is the Boob who is always willing to look hopefully for angels who
+will see them ultimately. And the man who is only looking for the Boob's
+timepiece will do time of his own by and by.
+
+HE BEARS NO MALICE
+
+The Boob is convinced that the world is conducted on genteel and
+friendly principles. He feels in his heart that even the law of gravity
+will do him no harm. That is why he steps unabashed into our pit on
+Chestnut Street; and finding himself sprawling in the bottom of it, he
+bears no ill will to Sir Isaac Newton. He simply knows that the law of
+gravity took him for some one else--a street-cleaning contractor,
+perhaps.
+
+A DEFINITION
+
+A small boy once defined a Boob as one who always treats other people
+better than he does himself.
+
+HE IS UNSUSPICIOUS
+
+The Boob is hopeful, cheery, more concerned over other people's troubles
+than his own. He goes serenely unsuspicious of the brick under the silk
+hat, even when the silk hat is on the head of a Mayor or City
+Councilman. He will pull every trigger he meets, regardless that the
+whole world is loaded and aimed at him. He will keep on running for the
+5:42 train, even though the timetable was changed the day before
+yesterday. He goes through the revolving doors the wrong way. He forgets
+that the banks close at noon on Saturdays. He asks for oysters on the
+first of June. He will wait for hours at the Chestnut Street door, even
+though his wife told him to meet her at the ribbon counter.
+
+HIS WIFE
+
+Yes, he has a wife. But if he was not a Boob before marriage he will
+never become so after. Women are the natural antidotes of Boobs.
+
+RECEPTIVE
+
+The Boob is not quarrelsome. He is willing to believe that you know more
+about it than he does. He is always at home for ideas.
+
+HE IS HAPPY
+
+Of course, what bothers other people is that the Boob is so happy. He
+enjoys himself. He falls into that Rapid Transit pit of ours and has
+more fun out of the tumble than the sneering 26,448 who stand above
+untumbled. The happy simp prefers a 4 per cent that pays to a 15 per
+cent investment that returns only engraved prospectuses. He stands on
+that street corner looking for an imaginary angel parachuting down, and
+enjoys himself more than the Mephistopheles who is laughing up his
+sleeve.
+
+NATURE'S DARLING
+
+Nature must love the Boob, because she is a good deal of a Boob herself.
+How she has squandered herself upon mountain peaks that are useless
+except for the Alpenstock Trust; upon violets that can't be eaten; upon
+giraffes whose backs slope too steeply to carry a pack! Can it be that
+the Boob is Nature's darling, that she intends him to outlive all the
+rest?
+
+A BRIEF MAXIM
+
+Be sure you're a Boob, and then go ahead.
+
+IN CONCLUSION
+
+But never, dear Cynthia, confuse the Boob with the Poor Fish. The Poor
+Fish, as an Emersonian thinker has observed, is the Boob gone wrong. The
+Poor Fish is the cynical, sneering simpleton who, if he did see an
+angel, would think it was only some one dressed up for the movies. The
+Poor Fish is Why Boobs Leave Home.
+
+
+II. SIMPLIFICATION
+
+    _Dear Sir--How can life be simplified? In the office where I work
+    the pressure of affairs is very exacting. Often I do not have a
+    moment to think over my own affairs before 4 p.m. There are a great
+    many matters that puzzle me, and I am afraid that if I go on working
+    so hard the sweetest hours of my youth may pass before I have given
+    them proper consideration. It is very irassible. Can you help me?_
+
+    CYNTHIA.
+
+SALUTATION TO CYNTHIA
+
+Cynthia, my child: How are you? It is very delightful to hear from you
+again. During the recent months I have been very lonely indeed without
+your comradeship and counsel with regard to the great matters which were
+under consideration.
+
+THINKING IT OVER
+
+Well, Cynthia, when your inquiry reached me I propped my feet on the
+desk, got out the corncob pipe and thought things over. How to simplify
+life? How, indeed! It is a subject that interests me strangely. Of
+course, the easiest method is to let one's ancestors do it for one. If
+you have been lucky enough to choose a simple-minded, quiet-natured
+quartet of grandparents, frugal, thrifty and foresighted, who had the
+good sense to buy property in an improving neighborhood and keep their
+money compounding at a fair rate of interest, the problem is greatly
+clarified. If they have hung on to the old farmstead, with its
+huckleberry pasture and cowbells tankling homeward at sunset and a
+bright brown brook cascading down over ledges of rock into a swimming
+hole, then again your problem has possible solutions. Just go out to the
+farm, with a copy of Matthew Arnold's "Scholar Gipsy" (you remember the
+poem, in which he praises the guy who had sense enough to leave town and
+live in the suburbs where the Bolsheviki wouldn't bother him), and don't
+leave any forwarding address with the postoffice. But if, as I fear from
+an examination of your pink-scalloped notepaper with its exhalation of
+lilac essence, the vortex of modern jazz life has swept you in, the
+crisis is far more intricate.
+
+TAKE THE MATTER IN YOUR OWN HANDS
+
+Of course, my dear Cynthia, it is better to simplify your own life than
+to have some one else do it for you. The Kaiser, for instance, has had
+his career greatly simplified, but hardly in a way he himself would have
+chosen. The first thing to do is to come to a clear understanding of
+(and to let your employer know you understand) the two principles that
+underlie modern business. There are only two kinds of affairs that are
+attended to in an office. First, things that absolutely must be done.
+These are often numerous; but remember, that since they _have_ to be
+done, if you don't do them some one else will. Second, things that don't
+have to be done. And since they don't have to be done, why do them? This
+will simplify matters a great deal.
+
+FURTHER SUGGESTIONS
+
+The next thing to do is to stop answering letters. Even the firm's most
+persistent customers will cease troubling you by and bye if you persist.
+Then, stop answering the telephone. A pair of office shears can sever a
+telephone wire much faster than any mechanician can keep it repaired. If
+the matter is really urgent, let the other people telegraph. While you
+are perfecting this scheme look about, in a dignified way, for another
+job. Don't take the first thing that offers itself, but wait until
+something really congenial appears. It is a good thing to choose some
+occupation that will keep you a great deal in the open air, preferably
+something that involves looking at shop windows and frequent visits to
+the receiving teller at the bank. It is nice to have a job in a tall
+building overlooking the sea, with office hours from 3 to 5 p.m.
+
+HOW EASY, AFTER ALL!
+
+Many people, dear Cynthia, are harassed because they do not realize how
+easy it is to get out of a job which involves severe and concentrated
+effort. My child, you must not allow yourself to become discouraged.
+Almost any job can be shaken off in time and with perseverance. Looking
+out of the window is a great help. There are very few businesses where
+what goes on in the office is half as interesting as what is happening
+on the street outside. If your desk does not happen to be near a window,
+so much the better. You can watch the sunset admirably from the window
+of the advertising manager's office. Call his attention to the rosy
+tints in the afterglow or the glorious pallor of the clouds. Advertising
+managers are apt to be insufficiently appreciative of these things.
+Sometimes, when they are closeted with the Boss in conference, open the
+ground-glass door and say, "I think it is going to rain shortly." Carry
+your love of the beautiful into your office life. This will inevitably
+pave the way to simplification.
+
+ENVELOPES WITH LOOP HOLES
+
+And never open envelopes with little transparent panes of isinglass in
+their fronts. Never keep copies of your correspondence. For, if your
+letters are correct, no copy will be necessary. And, if incorrect, it is
+far better not to have a copy. If you were to tell me the exact nature
+of your work I could offer many more specific hints.
+
+YOUR INQUIRY, CHILD, TOUCHES MY HEART
+
+I am intimately interested in your problem, my child, for I am a great
+believer in simplification. It is hard to follow out one's own precepts;
+but the root of happiness is never to contradict any one and never agree
+with any one. For if you contradict people, they will try to convince
+you; and if you agree with them, they will enlarge upon their views
+until they say something you will feel bound to contradict. Let me hear
+from you again.
+
+
+
+
+TO AN UNKNOWN DAMSEL
+
+
+  On Fifth Street, in a small cafe,
+    Upstairs (our tables were adjacent),
+  I saw you lunching yesterday,
+    And felt a secret thrill complacent.
+
+  You sat, and, waiting for your meal,
+    You read a book. As I was eating,
+  Dear me, how keen you made me feel
+    To give you just a word of greeting!
+
+  And as your hand the pages turned,
+    I watched you, dumbly contemplating--
+  O how exceedingly I yearned
+    To ask the girl to keep you waiting.
+
+  I wished that I could be the maid
+    To serve your meal or crumb your cloth, or
+  Beguile some hazard to my aid
+    To know your verdict on that author!
+
+  And still you read. You dropped your purse,
+    And yet, adorably unheeding,
+  You turned the pages, verse by verse,--
+    I watched, and worshiped you for reading!
+
+  You know not what restraint it took
+    To mind my etiquette, nor flout it
+  By telling you I know that book,
+    And asking what you thought about it.
+
+  I cursed myself for being shy--
+    I longed to make polite advances;
+  Alas! I let the time go by,
+    And Fortune gives no second chances.
+
+  You read, but still your face was calm--
+    (I scanned it closely, wretched sinner!)
+  You showed no sign---I felt a qualm--
+    And then the waitress brought your dinner.
+
+  Those modest rhymes, you thought them fair?
+    And will you sometimes praise or quote them?
+  And do you ask why I should care?
+    Oh, Lady, it was I who wrote them!
+
+
+
+
+THOUGHTS ON SETTING AN ALARM CLOCK
+
+
+  Mark the monitory dial,
+    Set the gong for six a.m.--
+  Then, until the hour of trial,
+    Clock a little sleep, pro tem.
+
+  As I crank the dread alarum
+    Stern resolve I try to fix:
+  My ideals, shall I mar 'em
+    When the awful moment ticks?
+
+  Heaven strengthen my intention,
+    Grant me grace my vow to keep:
+  Would the law enforced Prevention
+    Of such Cruelty to Sleep!
+
+
+
+
+SONGS IN A SHOWER BATH
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+HOT WATER
+
+  Gently, while the drenching dribble
+    Courses down my sweltered form,
+  I am basking like a sybil,
+    Lazy, languorous and warm.
+  I am unambitious, flaccid,
+    Well content to drowse and dream:
+  How I hate life's bitter acid--
+    Leave me here to stew and steam.
+  Underneath this jet so torrid
+    I forget the world's sad wrath:
+  O activity is horrid!
+    Leave me in my shower-bath!
+
+COLD WATER
+
+  But when I turn the crank
+  O Zeus!
+  A silver ecstasy thrills me!
+  I caper and slap my chilled thighs,
+  I plan to make a card index of all my ideas
+  And feel like an efficiency expert.
+  I tweak Fate by the nose
+  And know I could succeed in _anything_.
+  I throw up my head
+  And glut myself with icy splatter...
+  To-day I will really
+  Begin my career!
+
+ON DEDICATING A NEW TEAPOT
+
+  Boiling water now is poured,
+    Pouches filled with fresh tobacco,
+  Round the hospitable board
+    Fragrant steams Ceylon or Pekoe.
+
+  Bread and butter is cut thin,
+    Cream and sugar, yes, bring them on;
+  Ginger cookies in their tin,
+    And the dainty slice of lemon.
+
+  Let the marmalade be brought,
+    Buns of cinnamon adhesive;
+  And, to catch the leaves, you ought
+    To be sure to have the tea-sieve.
+
+  But, before the cups be filled--
+    Cups that cause no ebriation--
+  Let a genial wish be willed
+    Just by way of dedication.
+
+  Here's your fortune, gentle pot:
+    To our thirst you offer slakeage;
+  Bright blue china, may I not
+    Hope no maid will cause you breakage.
+
+  Kindest ministrant to man,
+    Long be jocund years before you,
+  And no meaner fortune than
+    Helen's gracious hand to pour you!
+
+THE UNFORGIVABLE SYNTAX
+
+  A certain young man never knew
+  Just when to say _whom_ and when _who_;
+    "The question of choosing,"
+    He said, "is confusing;
+  I wonder if _which_ wouldn't do?"
+
+  Nothing is so illegitimate
+  As a noun when his verbs do not fit him; it
+    Makes him disturbed
+    If not properly verbed--
+  If he asks for the plural, why git him it!
+
+  _Lie_ and _lay_ offer slips to the pen
+  That have bothered most excellent men:
+    You can say that you lay
+    In bed--yesterday;
+  If you do it to-day, you're a hen!
+
+  A person we met at a play
+  Was cruel to pronouns all day:
+    She would frequently cry
+    "Between you and I,
+  If only us girls had our way--!"
+
+
+
+
+VISITING POETS
+
+
+We were giving a young English poet a taste of Philadelphia, trying to
+show him one or two of the simple beauties that make life agreeable to
+us. Having just been photographed, he was in high good humor.
+
+"What a pity," he said, "that you in America have no literature that
+reflects the amazing energy, the humor, the raciness of your life! I
+woke up last night at the hotel and heard a motor fire engine thunder
+by. There's a symbol of the extraordinary vitality of America! My, if I
+could only live over here a couple of years, how I'd like to try my hand
+at it. It's a pity that no one over here is putting down the humor of
+your life."
+
+"Have you read O. Henry?" we suggested.
+
+"Extraordinary country," he went on. "Somebody turned me loose on Mr.
+Morgan's library in New York. There was a librarian there, but I didn't
+let her bother me. I wanted to see that manuscript of 'Endymion' they
+have there. I supposed they would take me up to a glass case and let me
+gaze at it. Not at all. They put it right in my hands and I spent three
+quarters of an hour over it. Wonderful stuff. You know, the first
+edition of my book is selling at a double premium in London. It's been
+out only eighteen months."
+
+"How do you fellows get away with it?" we asked humbly.
+
+"I hope Pond isn't going to book me up for too many lectures," he said.
+"I've got to get back to England in the spring. There's a painter over
+there waiting to do my portrait. But there are so many places I've got
+to lecture--everybody seems to want to hear about the young English
+poets."
+
+"I hear Philip Gibbs is just arriving in New York," we said.
+
+"Is that so? Dear me, he'll quite take the wind out of my sails, won't
+he? Nice chap, Gibbs. He sent me an awfully cheery note when I went out
+to the front as a war correspondent. Said he liked my stuff about the
+sodgers. He'll make a pot of money over here, won't he?"
+
+We skipped across City Hall Square abreast of some trolley cars.
+
+"I say, these trams keep one moving, don't they?" he said. "You know, I
+was tremendously bucked by that department store you took me to see.
+That's the sort of place one has to go to see the real art of America.
+Those paintings in there, by the elevators, they were done by a young
+English girl. Friend of mine--in fact, she did the pictures for my first
+book. Pity you have so few poets over here. You mustn't make me lose my
+train; I've got a date with Vachel Lindsay and Edgar Lee Masters in New
+York to-night. Vachel's an amusing bird. I must get him over to England
+and get him started. I've written to Edmund Gosse about him, and I'm
+going to write again. What a pity Irvin Cobb doesn't write poetry! He's
+a great writer. What vivacity, what a rich vocabulary!"
+
+"Have you read Mark Twain?" we quavered.
+
+"Oh, Mark's grand when he's serious; but when he tries to be funny, you
+know, it's too obvious. I can always see him feeling for the joke. No,
+it doesn't come off. You know an artist simply doesn't exist for me
+unless he has something to say. That's what makes me so annoyed with
+R.L.S. In 'Weir of Hermiston' and the 'New Arabian Nights' he really had
+something to say; the rest of the time he was playing the fool on some
+one else's instrument. You know style isn't something you can borrow
+from some one else; it's the unconscious revelation of a man's own
+personality."
+
+We agreed.
+
+
+"I wonder if there aren't some clubs around here that would like to hear
+me talk?" he said. "You know, I'd like to come back to Philadelphia if I
+could get some dates of that sort. Just put me wise, old man, if you
+hear of anything. I was telling some of your poets in New York about the
+lectures I've been giving. Those chaps are fearfully rough with one. You
+know, they'll just ride over one roughshod if you give them a chance.
+They hate to see a fellow a success. Awful tripe some of them are
+writing. They don't seem to be expressing the spirit, the fine
+exhilaration, of American life at all. If I had my way, I'd make every
+one in America read Rabelais and Madame Bovary. Then they ought to study
+some of the old English poets, like Marvell, to give them precision.
+It's lots of fun telling them these things. They respond famously. Now
+over in my country we poets are all so reserved, so shy, so taciturn.
+
+
+"You know Pond, the lecture man in New York, was telling me a quaint
+story about Masefield. Great friend of mine, old Jan Masefield. He
+turned up in New York to talk at some show Pond was running. Had on some
+horrible old trench boots. There was only about twenty minutes before
+the show began. 'Well,' says Pond, hoping Jan was going to change his
+clothes, 'are you all ready?' 'Oh, yes,' says Jan. Pond was graveled;
+didn't know just what to do. So he says, hoping to give Jan a hint,
+'Well, I've just got to get my boots polished.' Of course, they didn't
+need it--Americans' boots never do--but Pond sits down on a
+boot-polishing stand and the boy begins to polish for dear life. Jan
+sits down by him, deep in some little book or other, paying no
+attention. Pond whispers to the boy, 'Quick, polish his boots while he's
+reading.' Jan was deep in his book, never knew what was going on. Then
+they went off to the lecture, Jan in his jolly old sack suit."
+
+
+We went up to a private gallery on Walnut Street, where some of the most
+remarkable literary treasures in the world are stored, such as the
+original copy of Elia given by Charles Lamb to the lady he wanted to
+marry, Fanny Kelly. There we also saw some remarkable first editions of
+Shelley.
+
+"You know," he said, "Mrs. L---- in New York--I had an introduction to
+her from Jan--wanted to give me a first edition of Shelley, but I
+wouldn't let her."
+
+"How do you fellows get away with it?" we said again humbly.
+
+"Well, old man," he said, "I must be going. Mustn't keep Vachel waiting.
+Is this where I train? What a ripping station! Some day I must write a
+poem about all this. What a pity you have so few poets ..."
+
+
+
+
+A GOOD HOME IN THE SUBURBS
+
+
+There are a number of empty apartments in the suburbs of our mind that
+we shall be glad to rent to any well-behaved ideas.
+
+These apartments (unfurnished) all have southern exposure and are
+reasonably well lighted. They have emergency exits.
+
+We prefer middle-aged, reasonable ideas that have outgrown the diseases
+of infancy. No ideas need apply that will lie awake at night and disturb
+the neighbors, or will come home very late and wake the other tenants.
+This is an orderly mind, and no gambling, loud laughter and carnival or
+Pomeranian dogs will be admitted.
+
+If necessary, the premises can be improved to suit high-class tenants.
+
+No lease longer than six months can be given to any one idea, unless it
+can furnish positive guarantees of good conduct, no bolshevik
+affiliations and no children.
+
+We have an orphanage annex where homeless juvenile ideas may be
+accommodated until they grow up.
+
+The southwestern section of our mind, where these apartments are
+available, is some distance from the bustle and traffic, but all the
+central points can be reached without difficulty. Middle-aged,
+unsophisticated ideas of domestic tastes will find the surroundings
+almost ideal.
+
+For terms and blue prints apply janitor on the premises.
+
+
+
+
+WALT WHITMAN MINIATURES
+
+
+I
+
+A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that one should
+have some excuse for being away from the office on a working afternoon.
+September sunshine and trembling blue air are not sufficient reasons, it
+seems. Therefore, if any one should brutally ask what I was doing the
+other day dangling down Chestnut Street toward the river, I should have
+to reply, "Looking for the _Wenonah_." The _Wenonah_, you will
+immediately conclude, is a moving picture theater. But be patient a
+moment.
+
+Lower Chestnut Street is a delightful place for one who does not get
+down there very often. The face of wholesale trade, dingier than the
+glitter of uptown shops, is far more exciting and romantic. Pavements
+are cumbered with vast packing cases; whiffs of tea and spice well up
+from cool cellars. Below Second Street I found a row of enormous sacks
+across the curb, with bright red and green wool pushing through holes
+in the burlap. Such signs as WOOL, NOILS AND WASTE are frequent. I
+wonder what noils are? A big sign on Front Street proclaims TEA CADDIES,
+which has a pleasant grandmotherly flavor. A little brass plate,
+gleamingly polished, says HONORARY CONSULATE OF JAPAN. Beside immense
+motor trucks stood a shabby little horse and buggy, restored to service,
+perhaps, by the war-time shortage of gasoline. It was a typical
+one-horse shay of thirty years ago.
+
+I crossed over to Camden on the ferryboat _Wildwood_, observing in the
+course of the voyage her sisters, _Bridgeton, Camden, Salem_ and
+_Hammonton_. It is curious that no matter where one goes, one will
+always meet people who are traveling there for the first time. A small
+boy next to me was gazing in awe at the stalwart tower of the Victor
+Company, and snuffing with pleasure the fragrance of cooking tomatoes
+that makes Camden savory at this time of year. Wagonloads of ripe Jersey
+tomatoes making their way to the soup factory are a jocund sight across
+the river just now.
+
+Every ferry passenger is familiar with the rapid tinkling of the ratchet
+wheel that warps the landing stage up to the level of the boat's deck. I
+asked the man who was running the wheel where I would find the
+_Wenonah_. "She lays over in the old Market Street slip," he replied,
+and cheerfully showed me just where to find her. "Is she still used?" I
+asked. "Mostly on Saturday nights and holidays," he said, "when there's
+a big crowd going across."
+
+The _Wenonah_, as all Camden seafarers know, is a ferryboat, one of the
+old-timers, and I was interested in her because she and her sister, the
+_Beverly_, were Walt Whitman's favorite ferries. He crossed back and
+forth on them hundreds of times and has celebrated them in several
+paragraphs in _Specimen Days_. Perhaps this is the place to quote his
+memorandum dated January 12, 1882, which ought to interest all lovers of
+the Camden ferry:
+
+"Such a show as the Delaware presented an hour before sundown yesterday
+evening, all along between Philadelphia and Camden, is worth weaving
+into an item. It was full tide, a fair breeze from the southwest, the
+water of a pale tawny color, and just enough motion to make things
+frolicsome and lively. Add to these an approaching sunset of unusual
+splendor, a broad tumble of clouds, with much golden haze and profusion
+of beaming shaft and dazzle. In the midst of all, in the clear drab of
+the afternoon light, there steamed up the river the large new boat, the
+_Wenonah_, as pretty an object as you could wish to see, lightly and
+swiftly skimming along, all trim and white, covered with flags,
+transparent red and blue streaming out in the breeze. Only a new
+ferryboat, and yet in its fitness comparable with the prettiest product
+of Nature's cunning, and rivaling it. High up in the transparent ether
+gracefully balanced and circled four or five great sea hawks, while here
+below, mid the pomp and picturesqueness of sky and river, swam this
+creature of artificial beauty and motion and power, in its way no less
+perfect."
+
+You will notice that Walt Whitman describes the _Wenonah_ as being
+white. The Pennsylvania ferryboats, as we know them, are all the
+brick-red color that is familiar to the present generation. Perhaps
+older navigators of the Camden crossing can tell us whether the boats
+were all painted white in a less smoky era?
+
+The _Wenonah_ and the _Beverly_ were lying in the now unused ferry slip
+at the foot of Market Street, alongside the great Victor Talking Machine
+works. Picking my way through an empty yard where some carpentering was
+going on, I found a deserted pier that overlooked the two old vessels
+and gave a fair prospect on to the river and the profile of
+Philadelphia. Sitting there on a pile of pebbles, I lit a pipe and
+watched the busy panorama of the river. I made no effort to disturb the
+normal and congenial lassitude that is the highest function of the human
+being: no Hindoo philosopher could have been more pleasantly at ease.
+(O. Henry, one remembers, used to insist that what some of his friends
+called laziness was really "dignified repose.") Two elderly colored men
+were loading gravel onto a cart not far away. I was a little worried as
+to what I could say if they asked what I was doing. In these days casual
+loungers along docksides may be suspected of depth bombs and high
+treason. The only truthful reply to any question would have been that I
+was thinking about Walt Whitman. Such a remark, if uttered in
+Philadelphia, would undoubtedly have been answered by a direction to the
+chocolate factory on Race Street. But in Camden every one knows about
+Walt. Still, the colored men said nothing beyond returning my greeting.
+Their race, wise in simplicity, knows that loafing needs no explanation
+and is its own excuse.
+
+If Walt could revisit the ferries he loved so well, in New York and
+Philadelphia, he would find the former strangely altered in aspect. The
+New York skyline wears a very different silhouette against the sky,
+with its marvelous peaks and summits drawing the eye aloft. But
+Philadelphia's profile is (I imagine) not much changed. I do not know
+just when the City Hall tower was finished: Walt speaks of it as
+"three-fifths built" in 1879. That, of course, is the dominant unit in
+the view from Camden. Otherwise there are few outstanding elements. The
+gradual rise in height of the buildings, from Front Street gently
+ascending up to Broad, gives no startling contrast of elevation to catch
+the gaze. The spires of the older churches stand up like soft blue
+pencils, and the massive cornices of the Curtis and Drexel buildings
+catch the sunlight. Otherwise the outline is even and well-massed in a
+smooth ascending curve.
+
+It is curious how a man can stamp his personality upon earthly things.
+There will always be pilgrims to whom Camden and the Delaware ferries
+are full of excitement and meaning because of Walt Whitman. Just as
+Stratford is Shakespeare, so is Camden Whitman. Some supercilious
+observers, flashing through on the way to Atlantic City, may only see a
+town in which there is no delirious and seizing beauty. Let us remind
+them of Walt's own words:
+
+  A great city is that which has the greatest men and women,
+  If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole
+  world.
+
+And as I came back across the river, and an airplane hovered over us at
+a great height, I thought how much we need a Whitman to-day, a poet who
+can catch the heart and meaning of these grievous bitter years, who can
+make plain the surging hopes that throb in the breasts of men. The world
+has not flung itself into agony without some unexpressed vision that
+lights the sacrifice. If Walt Whitman were here he would look on this
+new world of moving pictures and gasoline engines and U-boats and tell
+us what it means. His great heart, which with all its garrulous fumbling
+had caught the deep music of human service and fellowship, would have
+had true and fine words for us. And yet he would have found it a hard
+world for one of his strolling meditative observancy. A speeding motor
+truck would have run him down long ago!
+
+As I left the ferry at Market Street I saw that the Norwegian steamer
+_Taunton_ was unloading bananas at the Ericsson pier. Less than a month
+ago she picked up the survivors of the schooner _Madrugada_, torpedoed
+by a U-boat off Winter Bottom Shoal. On the _Madrugada_ was a young
+friend of mine, a Dutch sailor, who told me of the disaster after he was
+landed in New York. To come unexpectedly on the ship that had rescued
+him seemed a great adventure. What a poem Walt Whitman could have made
+of it!
+
+
+II
+
+It is a weakness of mine--not a sinful one, I hope--that whenever I see
+any one reading a book in public I am agog to find out what it is.
+Crossing over to Camden this morning a young woman on the ferry was
+absorbed in a volume, and I couldn't resist peeping over her shoulder.
+It was "Hans Brinker." On the same boat were several schoolboys carrying
+copies of Myers' "History of Greece." Quaint, isn't it, how our schools
+keep up the same old bunk! What earthly use will a smattering of Greek
+history be to those boys? Surely to our citizens of the coming
+generation the battles of the Marne will be more important than the
+scuffle at Salamis.
+
+My errand in Camden was to visit the house on Mickle Street where Walt
+Whitman lived his last years. It is now occupied by Mrs. Thomas Skymer,
+a friendly Italian woman, and her family. Mrs. Skymer graciously
+allowed me to go through the downstairs rooms.
+
+I don't suppose any literary shrine on earth is of more humble and
+disregarded aspect than Mickle Street. It is a little cobbled byway,
+grimed with drifting smoke from the railway yards, littered with
+wind-blown papers and lined with small wooden and brick houses sooted
+almost to blackness. It is curious to think, as one walks along that
+bumpy brick pavement, that many pilgrims from afar have looked forward
+to visiting Mickle Street as one of the world's most significant altars.
+As Chesterton wrote once, "We have not yet begun to get to the beginning
+of Whitman." But the wayfarer of to-day will find Mickle Street far from
+impressive.
+
+The little house, a two-story frame cottage, painted dark brown, is
+numbered 330. (In Whitman's day it was 328.) On the pavement in front
+stands a white marble stepping-block with the carved initials
+W.W.--given to the poet, I dare say, by the same friends who bought him
+a horse and carriage. A small sign, in English and Italian, says:
+_Thomas A. Skymer, Automobiles to Hire on Occasions_. It was with
+something of a thrill that I entered the little front parlor where Walt
+used to sit, surrounded by his litter of papers and holding forth to
+faithful listeners. One may safely say that his was a happy old age,
+for there were those who never jibbed at protracted audience.
+
+A description of that room as it was in the last days of Whitman's life
+may not be uninteresting. I quote from the article published by the
+Philadelphia _Press_ of March 27, 1892, the day after the poet's death:
+
+    Below the windowsill a four-inch pine shelf is swung, on which rests
+    a bottle of ink, two or three pens and a much-rubbed spectacle case.
+
+(The shelf, I am sorry to say, is no longer there.)
+
+    The table--between which and the wall is the poet's rocker covered
+    with a worsted afghan, presented to him one Christmas by a bevy of
+    college girls who admired his work--is so thickly piled with books
+    and magazines, letters and the raffle of a literary desk that there
+    is scarcely an inch of room upon which he may rest his paper as he
+    writes. A volume of Shakespeare lies on top of a heaping full waste
+    basket that was once used to bring peaches to market, and an ancient
+    copy of Worcester's Dictionary shares places in an adjacent chair
+    with the poet's old and familiar soft gray hat, a newly darned blue
+    woolen sock and a shoe-blacking brush. There is a paste bottle and
+    brush on the table and a pair of scissors, much used by the poet,
+    who writes, for the most part, on small bits of paper and parts of
+    old envelopes and pastes them together in patchwork fashion.
+
+In spite of a careful examination, I could find nothing in the parlor at
+all reminiscent of Whitman's tenancy, except the hole for the stovepipe
+under the mantel. One of Mrs. Skymer's small boys told me that "He" died
+in that room. Evidently small Louis Skymer didn't in the least know who
+"He" was, but realized that his home was in some vague way connected
+with a mysterious person whose memory occasionally attracts inquirers to
+the house.
+
+Behind the parlor is a dark little bedroom, and then the kitchen. In a
+corner of the back yard is a curious thing: a large stone or terra cotta
+bust of a bearded man, very much like Whitman himself, but the face is
+battered and the nose broken so it would be hard to assert this
+definitely. One of the boys told me that it was in the yard when they
+moved in a year or so ago. The house is a little dark, standing between
+two taller brick neighbors. At the head of the stairs I noticed a window
+with colored panes, which lets in spots of red, blue and yellow light. I
+imagine that this patch of vivid color was a keen satisfaction to Walt's
+acute senses. Such is the simple cottage that one associates with
+America's literary declaration of independence.
+
+The other Whitman shrine in Camden is the tomb in Harleigh Cemetery,
+reached by the Haddonfield trolley. Doctor Oberholtzer, in his "Literary
+History of Philadelphia," calls it "tawdry," to which I fear I must
+demur. Built into a quiet hillside in that beautiful cemetery, of
+enormous slabs of rough-hewn granite with a vast stone door standing
+symbolically ajar, it seemed to me grotesque, but greatly impressive. It
+is a weird pagan cromlech, with a huge triangular boulder above the door
+bearing only the words WALT WHITMAN. Palms and rubber plants grow in
+pots on the little curved path leading up to the tomb; above it is an
+uncombed hillside and trees flickering in the air. At this tomb,
+designed (it is said) by Whitman himself, was held that remarkable
+funeral ceremony on March 30, 1892, when a circus tent was not large
+enough to roof the crowd, and peanut venders did business on the
+outskirts of the gathering. Perhaps it is not amiss to recall what Bob
+Ingersoll said on that occasion:
+
+"He walked among verbal varnishers and veneerers, among literary
+milliners and tailors, with the unconscious dignity of an antique god.
+He was the poet of that divine democracy that gives equal rights to all
+the sons and daughters of men. He uttered the great American voice."
+
+And though one finds in the words of the naive Ingersoll the squeaking
+timber of the soapbox, yet even a soapbox does lift a man a few inches
+above the level of the clay.
+
+Well, the Whitman battle is not over yet, nor ever will be. Though
+neither Philadelphia nor Camden has recognized 330 Mickle Street as one
+of the authentic shrines of our history (Lord, how trimly dight it would
+be if it were in New England!), Camden has made a certain amend in
+putting Walt into the gay mosaic that adorns the portico of the new
+public library in Cooper Park. There, absurdly represented in an austere
+black cassock, he stands in the following frieze of great figures:
+Dante, Whitman, Moliere, Gutenberg, Tyndale, Washington, Penn, Columbus,
+Moses, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Longfellow and Palestrina.
+I believe that there was some rumpus as to whether Walt should be
+included; but, anyway, there he is.
+
+You will make a great mistake if you don't ramble over to Camden some
+day and fleet the golden hours in an observant stroll. Himself the
+prince of loafers, Walt taught the town to loaf. When they built the new
+postoffice over there they put round it a ledge for philosophic
+lounging, one of the most delightful architectural features I have ever
+seen. And on Third Street, just around the corner from 330 Mickle
+Street, is the oddest plumber's shop in the world. Mr. George F.
+Hammond, a Civil War veteran, who knew Whitman and also Lincoln, came to
+Camden in '69. In 1888 he determined to build a shop that would be
+different from anything on earth, and well he succeeded. Perhaps it is
+symbolic of the shy and harassed soul of the plumber, fleeing from the
+unreasonable demands of his customers, for it is a kind of Gothic
+fortress. Leaded windows, gargoyles, masculine medusa heads, a
+sallyport, loopholes and a little spire. I stopped in to talk to Mr.
+Hammond, and he greeted me graciously. He says that people have come all
+the way from California to see his shop, and I can believe it. It is the
+work of a delightful and original spirit who does not care to live in a
+demure hutch like all the rest of us, and has really had some fun out of
+his whimsical little castle. He says he would rather live in Camden than
+in Philadelphia, and I daresay he's right.
+
+
+III
+
+Something in his aspect as he leaned over the railing near me drew me on
+to speak to him. I don't know just how to describe it except by saying
+that he had an understanding look. He gave me the impression of a man
+who had spent his life in thinking and would understand me, whatever I
+might say. He looked like the kind of man to whom one would find one's
+self saying wise and thoughtful things. There are some people, you know,
+to whom it is impossible to speak wisdom even if you should wish to. No
+spirit of kindly philosophy speaks out of their eyes. You find yourself
+automatically saying peevish or futile things that you do not in the
+least believe.
+
+The mood and the place were irresistible for communion. The sun was warm
+along the river front and my pipe was trailing a thin whiff of blue
+vapor out over the gently fluctuating water, which clucked and sagged
+along the slimy pilings. Behind us the crash and banging of heavy
+traffic died away into a dreamy undertone in the mild golden shimmer of
+the noon hour.
+
+The old man was apparently lost in revery, looking out over the river
+toward Camden. He was plainly dressed in coat and trousers of some
+coarse weave. His shirt, partly unbuttoned under the great white sweep
+of his beard, was of gray flannel. His boots were those of a man much
+accustomed to walking. A weather-stained sombrero was on his head.
+Beneath it his thick white hair and whiskers wavered in the soft breeze.
+Just then a boy came out from the near-by ferry house carrying a big
+crate of daffodils, perhaps on their way from some Jersey farm to an
+uptown florist. We watched them shining and trembling across the street,
+where he loaded them onto a truck. The old gentleman's eyes, which were
+a keen gray blue, caught mine as we both turned from admiring the
+flowers.
+
+I don't know just why I said it, but they were the first words that
+popped into my head. "And then my heart with pleasure fills and dances
+with the daffodils," I quoted.
+
+He looked at me a little quizzically.
+
+"You imported those words on a ship," he said. "Why don't you use some
+of your own instead?"
+
+I was considerably taken aback. "Why, I don't know," I hesitated. "They
+just came into my head."
+
+"Well, I call that bad luck," he said, "when some one else's words come
+into a man's head instead of words of his own."
+
+He looked about him, watching the scene with rich satisfaction. "It's
+good to see all this again," he said. "I haven't loafed around here for
+going on thirty years."
+
+"You've been out of town?" I asked.
+
+He looked at me with a steady blue eye in which there was something of
+humor and something of sadness.
+
+"Yes, a long way out. I've just come back to see how the Great Idea is
+getting along. I thought maybe I could help a little."
+
+"The Great Idea?" I queried, puzzled.
+
+"The value of the individual," he said. "The necessity for every human
+being to be able to live, think, act, dream, pray for himself. Nowadays
+I believe you call it the League of Nations. It's the same thing. Are
+men to be free to decide their fate for themselves or are they to be in
+the grasp of irresponsible tyrants, the hell of war, the cruelties of
+creeds, executive deeds just or unjust, the power of personality just or
+unjust? What are your poets, your young Libertads, doing to bring About
+the Great Idea of perfect and free individuals?"
+
+I was rather at a loss, but happily he did not stay for an answer. Above
+us an American flag was fluttering on a staff, showing its bright ribs
+of scarlet clear and vivid against the sky.
+
+"You see that flag of stars," he said, "that thick-sprinkled bunting? I
+have seen that flag stagger in the agony of threatened dissolution, in
+years that trembled and reeled beneath us. You have only seen it in the
+days of its easy, sure triumphs. I tell you, now is the day for America
+to show herself, to prove her dreams for the race. But who is chanting
+the poem that comes from the soul of America, the carol of victory? Who
+strikes up the marches of Libertad that shall free this tortured ship of
+earth? Democracy is the destined conqueror, yet I see treacherous
+lip-smiles everywhere and death and infidelity at every step. I tell
+you, now is the time of battle, now the time of striving. I am he who
+tauntingly compels men, women, nations, crying, 'Leap from your seats
+and contend for your lives!' I tell you, produce great Persons; the rest
+follows."
+
+"What do you think about the covenant of the League of Nations?" I
+asked. He looked out over the river for some moments before replying and
+then spoke slowly, with halting utterance that seemed to suffer anguish
+in putting itself into words.
+
+"America will be great only if she builds for all mankind," he said.
+"This plan of the great Libertad leads the present with friendly hand
+toward the future. But to hold men together by paper and seal or by
+compulsion is no account. That only holds men together which aggregates
+all in a living principle, as the hold of the limbs of the body or the
+fibers of plants. Does this plan answer universal needs? Can it face the
+open fields and the seaside? Will it absorb into me as I absorb food,
+air, to appear again in my strength, gait, face? Have real employments
+contributed to it--original makers, not mere amanuenses? I think so,
+and therefore I say to you, now is the day to fight for it."
+
+"Well," he said, checking himself, "there's the ferry coming in. I'm
+going over to Camden to have a look around on my way back to Harleigh."
+
+"I'm afraid you'll find Mickle street somewhat changed," I said, for by
+this time I knew him.
+
+"I love changes," he said.
+
+"Your centennial comes on May 31," I said, "I hope you won't be annoyed
+if Philadelphia doesn't pay much attention to it. You know how things
+are around here."
+
+"My dear boy," he said, "I am patient. The proof of a poet shall be
+sternly deferred till his country absorbs him as affectionately as he
+has absorbed it. I have sung the songs of the Great Idea and that is
+reward in itself. I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised
+riches, I have given alms to every one that asked, stood up for the
+stupid and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others, hated tyrants,
+argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence toward the
+people, taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown, gone freely with
+powerful uneducated persons and I swear I begin to see the meaning of
+these things--"
+
+"All aboard!" cried the man at the gate of the ferry house.
+
+He waved his hand with a benign patriarchal gesture and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+ON DOORS
+
+
+The opening and closing of doors are the most significant actions of
+man's life. What a mystery lies in doors!
+
+No man knows what awaits him when he opens a door. Even the most
+familiar room, where the clock ticks and the hearth glows red at dusk,
+may harbor surprises. The plumber may actually have called (while you
+were out) and fixed that leaking faucet. The cook may have had a fit of
+the vapors and demanded her passports. The wise man opens his front door
+with humility and a spirit of acceptance.
+
+Which one of us has not sat in some ante-room and watched the
+inscrutable panels of a door that was full of meaning? Perhaps you were
+waiting to apply for a job; perhaps you had some "deal" you were
+ambitious to put over. You watched the confidential stenographer flit in
+and out, carelessly turning that mystic portal which, to you, revolved
+on hinges of fate. And then the young woman said, "Mr. Cranberry will
+see you now." As you grasped the knob the thought flashed, "When I open
+this door again, what will have happened?"
+
+There are many kinds of doors. Revolving doors for hotels, shops and
+public buildings. These are typical of the brisk, bustling ways of
+modern life. Can you imagine John Milton or William Penn skipping
+through a revolving door? Then there are the curious little slatted
+doors that still swing outside denatured bar-rooms and extend only from
+shoulder to knee. There are trapdoors, sliding doors, double doors,
+stage doors, prison doors, glass doors. But the symbol and mystery of a
+door resides in its quality of concealment. A glass door is not a door
+at all, but a window. The meaning of a door is to hide what lies inside;
+to keep the heart in suspense.
+
+Also, there are many ways of opening doors. There is the cheery push of
+elbow with which the waiter shoves open the kitchen door when he bears
+in your tray of supper. There is the suspicious and tentative withdrawal
+of a door before the unhappy book agent or peddler. There is the genteel
+and carefully modulated recession with which footmen swing wide the
+oaken barriers of the great. There is the sympathetic and awful silence
+of the dentist's maid who opens the door into the operating room and,
+without speaking, implies that the doctor is ready for you. There is the
+brisk cataclysmic opening of a door when the nurse comes in, very early
+in the morning--"It's a boy!"
+
+Doors are the symbol of privacy, of retreat, of the mind's escape into
+blissful quietude or sad secret struggle. A room without doors is not a
+room, but a hallway. No matter where he is, a man can make himself at
+home behind a closed door. The mind works best behind closed doors. Men
+are not horses to be herded together. Dogs know the meaning and anguish
+of doors. Have you ever noticed a puppy yearning at a shut portal? It is
+a symbol of human life.
+
+The opening of doors is a mystic act: it has in it some flavor of the
+unknown, some sense of moving into a new moment, a new pattern of the
+human rigmarole. It includes the highest glimpses of mortal gladness:
+reunions, reconciliations, the bliss of lovers long parted. Even in
+sadness, the opening of a door may bring relief: it changes and
+redistributes human forces. But the closing of doors is far more
+terrible. It is a confession of finality. Every door closed brings
+something to an end. And there are degrees of sadness in the closing of
+doors. A door slammed is a confession of weakness. A door gently shut
+is often the most tragic gesture in life. Every one knows the seizure of
+anguish that comes just after the closing of a door, when the loved one
+is still near, within sound of voice, and yet already far away.
+
+The opening and closing of doors is a part of the stern fluency of life.
+Life will not stay still and let us alone. We are continually opening
+doors with hope, closing them with despair. Life lasts not much longer
+than a pipe of tobacco, and destiny knocks us out like the ashes.
+
+The closing of a door is irrevocable. It snaps the packthread of the
+heart. It is no avail to reopen, to go back. Pinero spoke nonsense when
+he made Paula Tanqueray say, "The future is only the past entered
+through another gate." Alas, there is no other gate. When the door is
+shut, it is shut forever. There is no other entrance to that vanished
+pulse of time. "The moving finger writes, and having writ"--
+
+There is a certain kind of door-shutting that will come to us all. The
+kind of door-shutting that is done very quietly, with the sharp click of
+the latch to break the stillness. They will think then, one hopes, of
+our unfulfilled decencies rather than of our pluperfected misdemeanors.
+Then they will go out and close the door.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Mince Pie, by Christopher Darlington Morley
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