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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Pipefuls, by Christopher 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: Pipefuls
+
+
+Author: Christopher Morley
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 21, 2007  [eBook #22699]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIPEFULS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Marcia Brooks, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
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+
+
+
+
+
+PIPEFULS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Other Books by the Author_
+
+   PARNASSUS ON WHEELS
+
+   THE HAUNTED BOOKSHOP
+
+   SHANDYGAFF
+
+   MINCE PIE
+
+   KATHLEEN
+
+   SONGS FOR A LITTLE HOUSE
+
+   THE ROCKING HORSE
+
+   HIDE AND SEEK
+
+   TRAVELS IN PHILADELPHIA
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+PIPEFULS
+
+by
+
+CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Illustrated by Walter Jack Duncan
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Garden City      New York
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+1920
+
+Copyright, 1920, by
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation
+into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian
+
+
+
+
+THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
+TO
+THREE MEN
+
+HULBERT FOOTNER
+EUGENE SAXTON
+WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT
+
+BECAUSE, IF I MENTIONED ONLY ONE
+OF THEM, I WOULD HAVE TO
+WRITE BOOKS
+TO INSCRIBE TO THE OTHER TWO
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Sir Thomas Browne said that Eve was "edified out of the rib of
+Adam." This little book was edified (for the most part) out of
+the ribs of two friendly newspapers, The New York _Evening Post_
+and The Philadelphia _Evening Public Ledger_. To them, and to
+_The Bookman_, _Everybody's_, and _The Publishers' Weekly_, I am
+grateful for permission to reprint.
+
+Tristram Shandy said, "When a man is hemm'd in by two indecorums,
+and must commit one of 'em let him chuse which he will, the world
+will blame him." Now it is one indecorum to let this collection
+of small sketches go out (as they do) unrevised and just as they
+assaulted the defenceless reader of the daily prints; and the
+other indecorum would be to take fragments of this kind too
+gravely, and attempt by more careful disposition of their pallid
+members to arrange them into some appearance of painless decease.
+As Gilbert Chesterton said (I wish I could say, on a similar
+occasion): "Their vices are too vital to be improved with a blue
+pencil, or with anything I can think of, except dynamite."
+
+These sketches gave me pain to write; they will give the
+judicious patron pain to read; therefore we are quits. I think,
+as I look over their slattern paragraphs, of that most tragic
+hour--it falls about 4 P. M. in the office of an evening
+newspaper--when the unhappy compiler tries to round up the
+broodings of the day and still get home in time for supper. And
+yet perhaps the will-to-live is in them, for are they not a naked
+exhibit of the antics a man will commit in order to earn a
+living? In extenuation it may be pleaded that none of them are so
+long that they may not be mitigated by an accompanying pipe of
+tobacco.
+
+THE AUTHOR.
+
+Roslyn, Long Island,
+July, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                             PAGE
+
+Preface                                       vii
+
+On Making Friends                               3
+
+Thoughts on Cider                              10
+
+One-Night Stands                               18
+
+The Owl Train                                  25
+
+Safety Pins                                    29
+
+Confessions of a "Colyumist"                   34
+
+Moving                                         42
+
+Surf Fishing                                   48
+
+"Idolatry"                                     52
+
+The First Commencement Address                 60
+
+The Downfall of George Snipe                   63
+
+Meditations of a Bookseller                    66
+
+If Buying a Meal Were Like Buying a House      71
+
+Adventures in High Finance                     74
+
+On Visiting Bookshops                          78
+
+A Discovery                                    83
+
+Silas Orrin Howes                              91
+
+Joyce Kilmer                                   97
+
+Tales of Two Cities                           109
+
+  I. _Philadelphia_:
+     An Early Train
+     Ridge Avenue
+     The University and the Urchin
+     Pine Street
+     Pershing in Philadelphia
+     Fall Fever
+     Two Days Before Christmas
+     In West Philadelphia
+     Horace Traubel
+
+  II. _New York_:
+     The Anatomy of Manhattan
+     Vesey Street
+     Brooklyn Bridge
+     Three Hours for Lunch
+     Passage from Some Memoirs
+     First Lessons in Clowning
+     House Hunting
+     Long Island Revisited
+     On Being in a Hurry
+     Confessions of a Human Globule
+     Notes on a Fifth Avenue Bus
+     Sunday Morning
+     Venison Pasty
+     Grand Avenue, Brooklyn
+
+On Waiting for the Curtain to Go Up           236
+
+Musings of John Mistletoe                     240
+
+The World's Most Famous Oration               242
+
+On Laziness                                   244
+
+Teaching the Prince to Take Notes             249
+
+A City Notebook                               253
+
+On Going to Bed                               270
+
+
+
+
+PIPEFULS
+
+
+
+
+ON MAKING FRIENDS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Considering that most friendships are made by mere hazard, how is it
+that men find themselves equipped and fortified with just the friends
+they need? We have heard of men who asserted that they would like to
+have more money, or more books, or more pairs of pyjamas; but we have
+never heard of a man saying that he did not have enough friends. For,
+while one can never have too many friends, yet those one has are always
+enough. They satisfy us completely. One has never met a man who would
+say, "I wish I had a friend who would combine the good humour of A, the
+mystical enthusiasm of B, the love of doughnuts which is such an
+endearing quality in C, and who would also have the habit of giving
+Sunday evening suppers like D, and the well-stocked cellar which is so
+deplorably lacking in E." No; the curious thing is that at any time and
+in any settled way of life a man is generally provided with friends far
+in excess of his desert, and also in excess of his capacity to absorb
+their wisdom and affectionate attentions.
+
+There is some pleasant secret behind this, a secret that none is wise
+enough to fathom. The infinite fund of disinterested humane kindliness
+that is adrift in the world is part of the riddle, the insoluble riddle
+of life that is born in our blood and tissue. It is agreeable to think
+that no man, save by his own gross fault, ever went through life
+unfriended, without companions to whom he could stammer his momentary
+impulses of sagacity, to whom he could turn in hours of loneliness. It
+is not even necessary to know a man to be his friend. One can sit at a
+lunch counter, observing the moods and whims of the white-coated
+pie-passer, and by the time you have juggled a couple of fried eggs you
+will have caught some grasp of his philosophy of life, seen the quick
+edge and tang of his humour, memorized the shrewdness of his worldly
+insight and been as truly stimulated as if you had spent an evening with
+your favourite parson.
+
+If there were no such thing as friendship existing to-day, it would
+perhaps be difficult to understand what it is like from those who have
+written about it. We have tried, from time to time, to read Emerson's
+enigmatic and rather frigid essay. It seems that Emerson must have put
+his cronies to a severe test before admitting them to the high-vaulted
+and rather draughty halls of his intellect. There are fine passages in
+his essay, but it is intellectualized, bloodless, heedless of the
+trifling oddities of human intercourse that make friendship so
+satisfying. He seems to insist upon a sterile ceremony of mutual
+self-improvement, a kind of religious ritual, a profound interchange of
+doctrines between soul and soul. His friends (one gathers) are to be
+antisepticated, all the poisons and pestilence of their faulty humours
+are to be drained away before they may approach the white and icy
+operating table of his heart. "Why insist," he says, "on rash personal
+relations with your friend? Why go to his house, or know his wife and
+family?" And yet does not the botanist like to study the flower in the
+soil where it grows?
+
+Polonius, too, is another ancient supposed to be an authority on
+friendship. The Polonius family must have been a thoroughly dreary one
+to live with; we have often thought that poor Ophelia would have gone
+mad anyway, even if there had been no Hamlet. Laertes preaches to
+Ophelia; Polonius preaches to Laertes. Laertes escaped by going abroad,
+but the girl had to stay at home. Hamlet saw that pithy old Polonius was
+a preposterous and orotund ass. Polonius's doctrine of friendship--"The
+friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul
+with hoops of steel"--was, we trow, a necessary one in his case. It
+would need a hoop of steel to keep them near such a dismal old
+sawmonger.
+
+Friendships, we think, do not grow up in any such carefully tended and
+contemplated fashion as Messrs. Emerson and Polonius suggest. They begin
+haphazard. As we look back on the first time we saw our friends we find
+that generally our original impression was curiously astray. We have
+worked along beside them, have consorted with them drunk or sober, have
+grown to cherish their delicious absurdities, have outrageously imposed
+on each other's patience--and suddenly we awoke to realize what had
+happened. We had, without knowing it, gained a new friend. In some
+curious way the unseen border line had been passed. We had reached the
+final culmination of Anglo-Saxon regard when two men rarely look each
+other straight in the eyes because they are ashamed to show each other
+how fond they are. We had reached the fine flower and the ultimate test
+of comradeship--that is, when you get a letter from one of your "best
+friends," you know you don't need to answer it until you get ready to.
+
+Emerson is right in saying that friendship can't be hurried. It takes
+time to ripen. It needs a background of humorous, wearisome, or even
+tragic events shared together, a certain tract of memories shared in
+common, so that you know that your own life and your companion's have
+really moved for some time in the same channel. It needs interchange of
+books, meals together, discussion of one another's whims with mutual
+friends, to gain a proper perspective. It is set in a rich haze of
+half-remembered occasions, sudden glimpses, ludicrous pranks,
+unsuspected observations, midnight confidences when heart spoke to
+candid heart.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The soul preaches humility to itself when it realizes, startled, that
+it has won a new friend. Knowing what a posset of contradictions we all
+are, it feels a symptom of shame at the thought that our friend knows
+all our frailties and yet thinks us worth affection. We all have cause
+to be shamefast indeed; for whereas we love ourselves in spite of our
+faults, our friends often love us even on account of our faults, the
+highest level to which attachment can go. And what an infinite appeal
+there is in their faces! How we grow to cherish those curious little
+fleshy cages--so oddly sculptured--which inclose the spirit within. To
+see those faces, bent unconsciously over their tasks--each different,
+each unique, each so richly and queerly expressive of the lively and
+perverse enigma of man, is a full education in human tolerance.
+Privately, one studies his own ill-modeled visnomy to see if by any
+chance it bespeaks the emotions he inwardly feels. We know--as Hamlet
+did--the vicious mole of nature in us, the o'ergrowth of some complexion
+that mars the purity of our secret resolutions. Yet--our friends have
+passed it over, have shown their willingness to take us as we are. Can
+we do less than hope to deserve their generous tenderness, granted
+before it was earned?
+
+The problem of education, said R. L. S., is two-fold--"first to know,
+then to utter." Every man knows what friendship means, but few can utter
+that complete frankness of communion, based upon full comprehension of
+mutual weakness, enlivened by a happy understanding of honourable
+intentions generously shared. When we first met our friends we met with
+bandaged eyes. We did not know what journeys they had been on, what
+winding roads their spirits had travelled, what ingenious shifts they
+had devised to circumvent the walls and barriers of the world. We know
+these now, for some of them they have told us; others we have guessed.
+We have watched them when they little dreamed it; just as they (we
+suppose) have done with us. Every gesture and method of their daily
+movement have become part of our enjoyment of life. Not until a time
+comes for saying good-bye will we ever know how much we would like to
+have said. At those times one has to fall back on shrewder tongues. You
+remember Hilaire Belloc:
+
+    From quiet homes and first beginning
+      Out to the undiscovered ends,
+    There's nothing worth the wear of winning
+      But laughter, and the love of friends.
+
+
+
+
+THOUGHTS ON CIDER
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Our friend Dove Dulcet, the poet, came into our kennel and found
+us arm in arm with a deep demijohn of Chester County cider. We
+poured him out a beaker of the cloudy amber juice. It was just in
+prime condition, sharpened with a blithe tingle, beaded with a
+pleasing bubble of froth. Dove looked upon it with a kindled eye.
+His arm raised the tumbler in a manner that showed this gesture
+to be one that he had compassed before. The orchard nectar began
+to sluice down his throat.
+
+Dove is one who has faced many and grievous woes. His Celtic
+soul peers from behind cloudy curtains of alarm. Old unhappy
+far-off things and battles long ago fume in the smoke of his
+pipe. His girded spirit sees agrarian unrest in the daffodil and
+industrial riot in a tin of preserved prunes. He sees the world
+moving on the brink of horror and despair. Sweet dalliance with a
+baked bloater on a restaurant platter moves him to grief over the
+hard lot of the Newfoundland fishing fleet. Six cups of tea warm
+him to anguish over the peonage of Sir Thomas Lipton's coolies in
+Ceylon. Souls in perplexity cluster round him like Canadian dimes
+in a cash register in Plattsburgh, N. Y. He is a human sympathy
+trust. When we are on our deathbed we shall send for him. The
+perfection of his gentle sorrow will send us roaring out into the
+dark, and will set a valuable example to the members of our
+family.
+
+But it is the rack of clouds that makes the sunset lovely. The
+bosomy vapours of Dove's soul are the palette upon which the
+decumbent sun of his spirit casts its vivid orange and scarlet
+colours. His joy is the more perfect to behold because it bursts
+goldenly through the pangs of his tender heart. His soul is like
+the infant Moses, cradled among dark and prickly bullrushes; but
+anon it floats out upon the river and drifts merrily downward on
+a sparkling spate.
+
+It has nothing to do with Dove, but we will here interject the
+remark that a pessimist overtaken by liquor is the cheeriest
+sight in the world. Who is so extravagantly, gloriously, and
+irresponsibly gay?
+
+Dove's eyes beaconed as the cider went its way. The sweet
+lingering tang filled the arch of his palate with a soft mellow
+cheer. His gaze fell upon us as his head tilted gently backward.
+We wish there had been a painter there--someone like F. Walter
+Taylor--to rush onto canvas the gorgeous benignity of his aspect.
+It would have been a portrait of the rich Flemish school. Dove's
+eyes were full of a tender emotion, mingled with a charmed and
+wistful surprise. It was as though the poet was saying he had not
+realized there was anything so good left on earth. His bearing
+was devout, religious, mystical. In one moment of revelation (so
+it appeared to us as we watched) Dove looked upon all the
+profiles and aspects of life, and found them of noble outline.
+Not since the grandest of Grand Old Parties went out of power has
+Dove looked less as though he felt the world were on the verge of
+an abyss. For several moments revolution and anarchy receded,
+profiteers were tamed, capital and labour purred together on a
+mattress of catnip, and the cosmos became a free verse poem. He
+did not even utter the customary and ungracious remark of those
+to whom cider potations are given: "That'll be at its best in
+about a week." We apologized for the cider being a little warmish
+from standing (discreetly hidden) under our desk. Douce man, he
+said: "I think cider, like ale, ought not to be drunk too cold.
+I like it just this way." He stood for a moment, filled with
+theology and metaphysics. "By gracious," he said, "it makes all
+the other stuff taste like poison." Still he stood for a brief
+instant, transfixed with complete bliss. It was apparent to us
+that his mind was busy with apple orchards and autumn sunshine.
+Perhaps he was wondering whether he could make a poem out of it.
+Then he turned softly and went back to his job in a life
+insurance office.
+
+As for ourself, we then poured out another tumbler, lit a corncob
+pipe, and meditated. Falstaff once said that he had forgotten
+what the inside of a church looked like. There will come a time
+when many of us will perhaps have forgotten what the inside of a
+saloon looked like, but there will still be the consolation of
+the cider jug. Like the smell of roasting chestnuts and the
+comfortable equatorial warmth of an oyster stew, it is a
+consolation hard to put into words. It calls irresistibly for
+tobacco; in fact the true cider toper always pulls a long puff at
+his pipe before each drink, and blows some of the smoke into the
+glass so that he gulps down some of the blue reek with his
+draught. Just why this should be, we know not. Also some
+enthusiasts insist on having small sugared cookies with their
+cider; others cry loudly for Reading pretzels. Some have
+ingenious theories about letting the jug stand, either tightly
+stoppered or else unstoppered, until it becomes "hard." In our
+experience hard cider is distressingly like drinking vinegar. We
+prefer it soft, with all its sweetness and the transfusing savour
+of the fruit animating it. At the peak of its deliciousness it
+has a small, airy sparkle against the roof of the mouth, a
+delicate tactile sensation like the feet of dancing flies. This,
+we presume, is the 4-1/2 to 7 per cent of sin with which
+fermented cider is credited by works of reference. There are
+pedants and bigots who insist that the jug must be stoppered with
+a corncob. For our own part, the stopper does not stay in the
+neck long enough after the demijohn reaches us to make it worth
+while worrying about this matter. Yet a nice attention to detail
+may prove that the cob has some secret affinity with cider, for a
+Missouri meerschaum never tastes so well as after three glasses
+of this rustic elixir.
+
+That ingenious student of social niceties, John Mistletoe, in his
+famous Dictionary of Deplorable Facts--a book which we heartily
+commend to the curious, for he includes a long and most informing
+article on cider, tracing its etymology from the old Hebrew word
+_shaker_ meaning "to quaff deeply"--maintains that cider should
+only be drunk beside an open fire of applewood logs:
+
+     And preferably on an evening of storm and wetness, when the swish
+     and sudden pattering of rain against the panes lend an added
+     agreeable snugness to the cheerful scene within, where master and
+     dame sit by the rosy hearth frying sausages in a pan laid on the
+     embers.
+
+This reminds one of the anecdote related by ex-Senator Beveridge in his
+Life of John Marshall. Justice Story told his wife that the justices of
+the Supreme Court were of a self-denying habit, never taking wine except
+in wet weather. "But it does sometimes happen that the Chief Justice
+will say to me, when the cloth is removed, 'Brother Story, step to the
+window and see if it does not look like rain.' And if I tell him that
+the sun is shining brightly, Judge Marshall will sometimes reply, 'All
+the better, for our jurisdiction extends over so large a territory that
+the doctrine of chances makes it certain that it must be raining
+somewhere.'"
+
+Our own theory about cider is that the time to drink it is when it
+reaches you; and if it hails from Chester County, so much the better.
+
+We remember with gusto a little soliloquy on cider delivered by another
+friend of ours, as we both stood in a decent ordinary on Fulton Street,
+going through all the motions of jocularity and cheer. Cider (he said)
+is our refuge and strength. Cider, he insisted, drawing from his pocket
+a clipping much tarnished with age, is a drink for men of reason and
+genteel nurture; a drink for such as desire to drink pleasantly,
+amiably, healthily, and with perseverance and yet retain the command and
+superintendence of their faculties. I have here (he continued) a
+clipping sent me by an eminent architect in the great city of
+Philadelphia (a city which it is a pleasure for me to contemplate by
+reason of the beauty and virtue of its women, the infinite vivacity and
+good temper of its men, the rectitudinal disposition of its highways)--I
+have here (he exclaimed) a clipping sent me by an architect of fame,
+charming parts, and infinite cellarage, explaining the virtues of cider.
+Cider, this clipping asserts, produces a clearness of the complexion. It
+brightens the eye, particularly in women, conducing to the composition
+of generous compliment and all the social suavity that endears the
+intercourse of the sexes. Longevity, this extract maintains, is the
+result of application to good cider. The Rev. Martin Johnson, vicar of
+Dilwyn, in Herefordshire, from 1651 to 1698 (he read from his clipping),
+wrote:
+
+     _This parish, wherein sider is plentiful, hath many people that
+     do enjoy this blessing of long life; neither are the aged
+     bedridden or decrepit as elsewhere; next to God, wee ascribe it
+     to our flourishing orchards, first that the bloomed trees in
+     spring do not only sweeten but purify the ambient air; next, that
+     they yield us plenty of rich and winy liquors, which do conduce
+     very much to the constant health of our inhabitants. Their
+     ordinary course is to breakfast and sup with toast and sider
+     through the whole Lent; which heightens their appetites and
+     creates in them durable strength to labour._
+
+There was a pause, and our friend (he is a man of girth and with a brow
+bearing all the candor of a life of intense thought) leaned against the
+mahogany counter.
+
+That is very fine, we said, draining our chalice, and feeling brightness
+of eye, length of years, and durable strength to labour added to our
+person. In the meantime (we said) why do you not drink the rich and winy
+liquor which your vessel contains?
+
+He folded up his clipping and put it away with a sigh.
+
+I always have to read that first, he said, to make the damned stuff
+palatable. It will be ten years, he said, before the friend who sent me
+that clipping will have to drink any cider.
+
+
+
+
+ONE-NIGHT STANDS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+To those looking for an exhilarating vacation let us commend a
+week of "trouping" on one-night stands with a theatrical company,
+which mirthful experience has just been ours. We went along in
+the very lowly capacity of co-author, which placed us somewhat
+beneath the stage hands as far as dignity was concerned; and we
+flatter ourself that we have learned our station and observe it
+with due humility. The first task of the director who stages a
+play is to let the author know where he gets off. This was
+accomplished in our case by an argument concerning a speech in
+the play where one of the characters remarks, "I propose to send
+a mental message to Eliza." This sounds (we contend) quite a
+harmless sentiment, but the director insisted that the person
+speaking, being an Englishman of studious disposition, would not
+say anything so inaccurate. "He would use much more correct
+language," said the director. "He ought to say 'I _purpose_ to
+send.'" We balked mildly at this. "All right," said our mentor.
+"The trouble with you is you don't know any English. I'll send
+you a copy of the Century dictionary."
+
+This gentleman carried purism to almost extravagant lengths. He
+objected to the customary pronunciation of "jew's-harp,"
+insisting that the word should be "juice-harp," and instructing
+the actor who mentioned this innocent instrument of melody to
+write it down so in his script. When the dress rehearsal came
+round, he was surveying the "set" for the first act with
+considerable complacence. This scenery was intended to represent
+a very ancient English inn at Stratford-on-Avon, and one of the
+authors was heard to remark softly that it looked more like a
+broker's office on Wall Street. But the director was unshaken.
+"There's an old English inn up at Larchmont," said he, "and this
+looks a good deal like it, so I guess we're all right."
+
+Let any one who imagines the actor's life is one of bevo and
+skittles sally along with a new play on its try-out in the
+one-night circuit. When one sees the delightful humour,
+fortitude, and high spirits with which the players face their
+task he gains a new respect for the profession. It is with a
+sense of shame that the wincing author hears his lines repeated
+night after night--lines that seem to him to have grown so stale
+and disreputably stupid, and which the ingenuity of the players
+contrives to instill with life. With a sense of shame indeed does
+he reflect that because one day long ago he was struck with a
+preposterous idea, here are honest folk depending on it to earn
+daily bread and travelling on a rainy day on a local train on the
+Central New England Railway; here are 800 people in Saratoga
+Springs filing into a theatre with naïve expectation on their
+faces. Amusing things happen faster than he can stay to count
+them. A fire breaks out in a cigar store a few minutes before
+theatre time. It is extinguished immediately, but half the town
+has rushed down to see the excitement. The cigar store is almost
+next door to the theatre, and the crowd sees the lighted sign and
+drops in to give the show the once-over, thus giving one a
+capacity house. Then there are the amusing accidents that happen
+on the stage, due to the inevitable confusion of one-night stands
+with long jumps each day, when scenery and props arrive at the
+theatre barely in time to be set up. In the third act one of the
+characters has to take his trousers out of a handbag. He opens
+the bag, but by some error no garments are within. Heavens! has
+the stage manager mixed up the bags? He has only one hope. The
+girlish heroine's luggage is also on the stage, and our comedian
+dashes over and finds his trousers in her bag. This casts a most
+sinister imputation on the adorable heroine, but our friend
+(blessings on him) contrives it so delicately that the audience
+doesn't get wise. Then doors that are supposed to be locked have
+a habit of swinging open, and the luckless heroine, ready to say
+furiously to the hero, "_Will_ you unlock the door?" finds
+herself facing an open doorway and has to invent a line to get
+herself off the stage.
+
+Going on the road is a very humanizing experience and one gathers
+a considerable respect for the small towns one visits. They are
+so brisk, so proud in their local achievements, so prosperous and
+so full of attractive shop-windows. When one finds in Johnstown,
+N. Y., for instance, a bookshop with almost as well-assorted a
+stock as one would see here in Philadelphia; or in Gloversville
+and Newburgh public libraries that would be a credit to any large
+city, one realizes the great tide of public intelligence that has
+risen perceptibly in recent years. At the hotel in Gloversville
+the proprietress assured us that "an English duke" had just left
+who told her that he preferred her hotel to the Biltmore in New
+York. We rather wondered about this English duke, but we looked
+him up on the register and found that he was Sir H. Urnick of
+Fownes Brothers, the glove manufacturers, who have a factory in
+Gloversville. But then, being a glove manufacturer, he may have
+been kidding her, as the low comedian of our troupe observed. But
+the local pride of the small town is a genial thing. It may
+always be noted in the barber shops. The small-town barber knows
+his customers and when a strange face appears to be shaved on the
+afternoon when the bills are announcing a play, he puts two and
+two together. "Are you with that show?" he asks; and being
+answered in the affirmative (one naturally would not admit that
+one is merely there in the frugal capacity of co-author, and
+hopes that he will imagine that such a face might conceivably
+belong to the low comedian) he proceeds to expound the favourite
+doctrine that this is a wise burg. "Yes," he says, "folks here
+are pretty cagy. If your show can get by here you needn't worry
+about New York. Believe me, if you get a hand here you can go
+right down to Broadway. I always take in the shows, and I've
+heard lots of actors say this town is harder to please than any
+place they ever played."
+
+One gets a new viewpoint on many matters by a week of one-night
+stands. Theatrical billboards, for instance. We had always
+thought, in a vague kind of way, that they were a defacement to a
+town and cluttered up blank spaces in an unseemly way. But when
+you are trouping, the first thing you do, after registering at
+the hotel, is to go out and scout round the town yearning for
+billboards and complaining because there aren't enough of them.
+You meet another member of the company on the same errand and
+say, "I don't see much paper out," this being the technical
+phrase. You both agree that the advance agent must be loafing.
+Then you set out to see what opposition you are playing against,
+and emit groans on learning that "The Million Dollar Doll in
+Paris" is also in town, or "Harry Bulger's Girly Show" will be
+there the following evening, or Mack Sennett's Bathing Beauties
+in Person. "That's the kind of stuff they fall for," said the
+other author mournfully, and you hustle around to the box office
+to see whether the ticket rack is still full of unsold pasteboard.
+
+At this time of year, when all the metropolitan theatres are
+crowded and there are some thirty plays cruising round in the
+offing waiting for a chance to get into New York and praying that
+some show now there will "flop," one crosses the trail of many
+other wandering troupes that are battering about from town to
+town. In remote Johnstown, N. Y., which can only be reached by
+trolley and where there is no hotel (but a very fine large
+theatre) one finds that Miss Grace George is to be the next
+attraction. On the train to Saratoga one rides on the same train
+with the Million Dollar Doll, and those who have seen her "paper"
+on the billboards in Newburgh or Poughkeepsie keep an attentive
+optic open for the lady herself to see how nearly she lives up to
+her lithographs. And if the passerby should see a lighted window
+in the hotel glimmering at two in the morning, he will probably
+aver that there are some of those light-hearted "show people"
+carousing over a flagon of Virginia Dare. Little does he suspect
+that long after the tranquil thespians have gone to their
+well-earned hay, the miserable authors of the trying-out piece
+may be vigiling together, trying to dope out a new scene for the
+third act. The saying is not new, but it comes frequently to the
+lips of the one-night stander--It's a great life if you don't
+weaken.
+
+
+
+
+THE OWL TRAIN
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Across the cold moonlit landscapes, while good folk are at home curling
+their toes in the warm bottom of the bed, the Owl trains rumble with a
+gentle drone, neither fast nor slow.
+
+There are several Owl trains with which we have been familiar. One,
+rather aristocratic of its kind, is the caravan of sleeping cars that
+leaves New York at midnight and deposits hustling business men of the
+most aggressive type at the South Station, Boston. After a dissolute
+progress full of incredible jerks and jolts these pilgrims reach this
+dampest, darkest, and most Arctic of all terminals about the time the
+morning codfish begins to warm his bosom on the gridirons of the sacred
+city. Another, a terrible nocturnal prowler, slips darkly away from
+Albany about 1 A. M., and rambles disconsolately and with shrill
+wailings along the West Shore line. Below the grim Palisades of the
+Hudson it wakes painful echoes. Its first six units, as far as one can
+see in the dark, are blind express cars, containing milk cans and
+coffins. We once boarded it at Kingston, and after uneasy slumber across
+two facing seats found ourself impaled upon Weehawken three hours later.
+There one treads dubiously upon a ferryboat in the fog and brume of
+dawn, ungluing eyelids in the bleak dividing pressure of the river
+breeze.
+
+But the Owl train we propose to celebrate is the vehicle that departs
+modestly from the crypt of the Pennsylvania Station in New York at
+half-past midnight and emits blood-shot wanderers at West Philadelphia
+at 3:16 in the morning. The railroad company, which thinks these
+problems out with nice care, lulls the passengers into unconsciousness
+of their woes not only by a gentle and even gait, a progress almost
+tender in its carefully modulated repression of speed, but also by
+keeping the cars at such an amazing heat that the victims promptly fade
+into a swoon. Nowhere will you see a more complete abandonment to the
+wild postures of fatigue and despair than in the pathetic sprawl of
+these human forms upon the simmering plush settees. A hot eddy of some
+varnish-tinctured vapour--certainly not air--rises from under the seats
+and wraps the traveller in a nightmarish trance. Occasionally he starts
+wildly from his dream and glares frightfully through the misted pane. It
+is the custom of the trainmen, who tiptoe softly through the cars,
+never to disturb their clients by calling out the names of stations.
+When New Brunswick is reached many think that they have arrived at West
+Philadelphia, or (worse still) have been carried on to Wilmington. They
+rush desperately to the bracing chill of the platform to learn where
+they are. There is a mood of mystery about this Owl of ours. The
+trainmen take a quaint delight in keeping the actual whereabouts of the
+caravan a merciful secret.
+
+Oddly assorted people appear on this train. Occasional haughty
+revellers, in evening dress and opera capes, appear among the humbler
+voyagers. For a time they stay on their dignity: sit bravely upright and
+talk with apparent intelligence. Then the drowsy poison of that stifled
+atmosphere overcomes them, too, and they fall into the weakness of their
+brethren. They turn over the opposing seat, elevate their nobler shins,
+and droop languid heads over the ticklish plush chair-back. Strange
+aliens lie spread over the seats. Nowhere will you see so many faces of
+curious foreign carving. It seems as though many desperate exiles, who
+never travel by day, use the Owl for moving obscurely from city to city.
+This particular train is bound south to Washington, and at least half
+its tenants are citizens of colour. Even the endless gayety of our dusky
+brother is not proof against the venomous exhaustion of that boxed-in
+suffocation. The ladies of his race are comfortably prepared for the
+hardships of the route. They wrap themselves in huge fur coats and all
+have sofa cushions to recline on. Even in an all-night session of
+Congress you will hardly note so complete an abandonment of disillusion,
+weariness, and cynical despair as is written upon the blank faces all
+down the aisle. Even the will-power of a George Creel or a Will H. Hays
+would droop before this three-hour ordeal. Professor Einstein, who talks
+so delightfully of discarding Time and Space, might here reconsider his
+theories if he brooded, baking gradually upward, on the hot green plush.
+
+This genial Owl is not supposed to stop at North Philadelphia, but it
+always does. By this time Philadelphia passengers are awake and gathered
+in the cold vestibules, panting for escape. Some of them, against the
+rules of the train, manage to escape on the North Philadelphia platform.
+The rest, standing huddled over the swaying couplings, find the
+leisurely transit to West Philadelphia as long as the other segments of
+the ride put together. Stoically, and beyond the power of words, they
+lean on one another. At last the train slides down a grade. In the dark
+and picturesque tunnel of the West Philadelphia station, through thick
+mists of steam where the glow of the fire box paints the fog a golden
+rose, they grope and find the ancient stairs. Then they stagger off to
+seek a lonely car or a night-hawk taxi.
+
+
+
+
+SAFETY PINS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Ligature of infancy, healing engine of emergency, base and
+mainstay of our civilization--we celebrate the safety pin.
+
+What would we do without safety pins? Is it not odd to think,
+looking about us on our fellowmen (bearded realtors, ejaculating
+poets, plump and ruddy policemen, even the cheerful dusky
+creature who runs the elevator and whistles "Oh, What a Pal Was
+Mary" as the clock draws near 6 P. M.)--all these were first
+housed and swaddled and made seemly with a paper of safety pins.
+How is it that the inventor who first conferred this great gift
+on the world is not known by name for the admiration and applause
+of posterity? Was it not the safety pin that made the world safe
+for infancy?
+
+There will be some, mayhap, to set up the button as rival to the
+safety pin in service to humanity. But our homage bends toward
+the former. Not only was it our shield and buckler when we were
+too puny and impish to help ourselves, but it is also (now we are
+parent) symbol of many a hard-fought field, where we have
+campaigned all over the white counterpane of a large bed to
+establish an urchin in his proper gear, while he kicked and
+scrambled, witless of our dismay. It is fortunate, pardee, that
+human memory does not extend backward to the safety pin
+era--happily the recording carbon sheet of the mind is not
+inserted on the roller of experience until after the singular
+humiliations of earliest childhood have passed. Otherwise our
+first recollection would doubtless be of the grimly flushed large
+face of a resolute parent, bending hotly downward in effort to
+make both ends meet while we wambled and waggled in innocent,
+maddening sport. In those days when life was (as George Herbert
+puts it) "assorted sorrows, anguish of all sizes," the safety pin
+was the only thing that raised us above the bandar-log. No wonder
+the antique schoolmen used to enjoy computing the number of
+angels that might dance on the point of a pin. But only
+archangels would be worthy to pirouette on a safety pin, which is
+indeed mightier than the sword. When Adam delved and Eve did
+spin, what did they do for a safety pin?
+
+Great is the stride when an infant passes from the safety pin
+period to the age of buttons. There are three ages of human
+beings in this matter: (1) Safety pins, (2) Buttons, (3) Studs,
+or (for females) Hooks and Eyes. Now there is an interim in the
+life of man when he passes away from safety pins, and, for a
+season, knows them not--save as mere convenience in case of
+breakdown. He thinks of them, in his antic bachelor years, as
+merely the wrecking train of the sartorial system, a casual
+conjunction for pyjamas, or an impromptu hoist for small clothes.
+Ah! with humility and gratitude he greets them again later,
+seeing them at their true worth, the symbol of integration for
+the whole social fabric. Women, with their intuitive wisdom, are
+more subtle in this subject. They never wholly outgrow safety
+pins, and though they love to ornament them with jewellery,
+precious metal, and enamels, they are naught but safety pins
+after all. Some ingenious philosopher could write a full tractate
+on woman in her relation to pins--hairpins, clothes pins, rolling
+pins, hatpins.
+
+Only a bachelor, as we have implied, scoffs at pins. Hamlet
+remarked, after seeing the ghost, and not having any Sir Oliver
+Lodge handy to reassure him, that he did not value his life at a
+pin's fee. Pope, we believe, coined the contemptuous phrase, "I
+care not a pin." The pin has never been done justice in the
+world of poetry. As one might say, the pin has had no Pindar. Of
+course there is the old saw about see a pin and pick it up, all
+the day you'll have good luck. This couplet, barbarous as it is
+in its false rhyme, points (as Mother Goose generally does) to a
+profound truth. When you see a pin, you must pick it up. In other
+words, it is on the floor, where pins generally are. Their
+instinctive affinity for terra firma makes one wonder why they,
+rather than the apple, did not suggest the law of gravitation to
+someone long before Newton.
+
+Incidentally, of course, the reason why Adam and Eve were
+forbidden to pick the apple was that it was supposed to stay on
+the tree until it fell, and Adam would then have had the credit
+of spotting the principle of gravitation.
+
+Much more might be said about pins, touching upon their curious
+capacity for disappearing, superstitions concerning them,
+usefulness of hatpins or hairpins as pipe-cleaners, usefulness of
+pins to schoolboys, both when bent for fishing and when filed to
+an extra point for use on the boy in the seat in front (honouring
+him in the breech, as Hamlet would have said) and their curious
+habits of turning up in unexpected places, undoubtedly caught by
+pins in their long association with the lovelier sex. But of
+these useful hyphens of raiment we will merely conclude by saying
+that those interested in the pin industry will probably emigrate
+to England, for we learn from the Encyclopædia Britannica that in
+that happy island pins are cleaned by being boiled in weak beer.
+Let it not be forgotten, however, that of all kinds, the safety
+is the King Pin.
+
+
+
+
+CONFESSIONS OF A "COLYUMIST"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+I can not imagine any pleasant job so full of pangs, or any painful job
+so full of pleasures, as the task of conducting a newspaper column.
+
+The colyumist, when he begins his job, is disheartened because nobody
+notices it. He soon outgrows this, and is disheartened because too many
+people notice it, and he imagines that all see the paltriness of it as
+plainly as he does. There is nothing so amazing to him as to find that
+any one really enjoys his "stuff." Poor soul, he remembers how he
+groaned over it at his desk. He remembers the hours he sat with
+lack-lustre eye and addled brain, brooding at the sluttish typewriter.
+He remembers the flush of shame that tingled him as he walked sadly
+homeward, thinking of some atrocious inanity he had sent upstairs to the
+composing-room. It is a job that engenders a healthy humility.
+
+I had always wanted to have a try at writing a column. Heaven help me, I
+think I had an idea that I was born for the job. I may as well be
+candid. There was a time when I seriously thought of inserting the
+following ad in a Philadelphia newspaper. I find a memorandum of it in
+my scrap-book:
+
+     HUMORIST: Young and untamed, lineal descendent of Eugene Field,
+     Frank Stockton, and François Rabelais, desires to run a column in
+     a Philadelphia newspaper. A guaranteed circulation-getter.
+
+     Said Humorist can also supply excellent veins of philosophy,
+     poetry, satire, uplift, glad material and indiscriminate musings.
+     Remarkable opportunity for any newspaper desiring a really
+     unusual editorial feature. Address HUMORIST, etc.
+
+So besotted was I, I would have paid to have this printed if I had not
+been counselled by an older and wiser head.
+
+I instance this to show that the colyumist is likely to begin his job
+with the conception that it is to be a perpetual uproar of mirth and
+high spirits. This lasts about a week. He then learns, in secret, to
+take it rather seriously. He has to deal with the most elusive and
+grotesque material he knows--his own mind; and the unhappy creature,
+everlastingly probing himself in the hope of discovering what is so rare
+in minds (a thought), is likely to end in a ferment of bitterness. The
+happiest times in life are when one can just live along and enjoy things
+as they happen. If you have to be endlessly speculating, watching, and
+making mental notes, your brain-gears soon get a hot box. The original
+of all paragraphers--Ecclesiastes--came very near ending as a complete
+cynic; though in what F. P. A. would call his "lastline," he managed to
+wriggle into a more hopeful mood.
+
+The first valuable discovery that the colyumist is likely to make is
+that all minds are very much the same. The doctors tell us that all
+patent medicines are built on a stock formula--a sedative, a purge, and
+a bitter. If you are to make steady column-topers out of your readers,
+your daily dose must, as far as possible, average up to that same
+prescription. If you employ the purge all the time, or the sedative, or
+the acid, your clients will soon ask for something with another label.
+
+Don Marquis once wrote an admirable little poem called "A Colyumist's
+Prayer." Mr. Marquis, who is the king of all colyumists, realizes that
+there is what one may call a religious side in colyumizing. It is hard
+to get the colyumist to admit this, for he fears spoofing worse than the
+devil; but it is eminently true. If I were the owner of a newspaper, I
+think I would have painted up on the wall of the local room the
+following words from Isaiah, the best of all watchwords for all who
+write:
+
+     Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put
+     darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for
+     sweet, and sweet for bitter!
+
+The most painful privilege of the colyumist's job is the number of
+people who drop in to see him, usually when he is imprecating his way
+toward the hour of going to press. This is all a part of the great and
+salutary human instinct against work. When people see a man toiling,
+they have an irresistible impulse to crowd round and stop him. They seem
+to imagine that he has been put there on purpose to help them solve
+their problems, to find a job for their friend from Harrisburg, or to
+tell them how to find a publisher for their poems. Unhappily, their
+victim being merely human, is likely to grow a bit snappish under
+infliction. Yet now and then he gets a glimpse into a human vexation so
+sincere, so honest, and so moving that he turns away from the typewriter
+with a sigh. He wonders how one dare approach the chronicling of this
+muddled panorama with anything but humility and despair. Frank Harris
+once said of Oscar Wilde: "If England insists on treating her criminals
+like this, she doesn't deserve to have any." Similarly, if the public
+insists on bringing its woes to its colyumists, it doesn't deserve to
+have any colyumists. Then the battered jester turns again to his machine
+and ticks off something like this:
+
+     _We have heard of ladies who have been tempted beyond their
+     strength. We have also seen some who have been strengthened
+     beyond their temptation._
+
+Of course there are good days, too. (This is not one of them.) Days when
+the whole course of the news seems planned for the benefit of the
+chaffish and irreverent commentator. When Governor Hobby of Texas issues
+a call for the state cavalry. When one of your clients drops in, in the
+goodness of his heart, to give you his own definition of a pessimist--a
+pessimist, he says, is a man who wears both belt and suspenders. When a
+big jewellery firm in the city puts out a large ad--
+
+    Bailey, Banks & Biddle Company
+          Watches for Women
+    Of Superior Design and Perfection
+              of Movement
+
+all that one needs to do to that is to write over it the caption
+
+SO DO WE ALL
+
+and pass on to the next paragraph.
+
+The more a colyumist is out on the streets, making himself the reporter
+of the moods and oddities of men, the better his stuff will be. It seems
+to me that his job ought to be good training for a novelist, as it
+teaches him a habit of human sensitiveness. He becomes filled with an
+extraordinary curiosity about the motives and purposes of the people he
+sees. The other afternoon I was very much struck by the unconscious
+pathos of a little, gentle-eyed old man who was standing on Chestnut
+Street studying a pocket notebook. His umbrella leaned against a
+shop-window, on the sill of which he had laid a carefully rolled-up
+newspaper. By his feet was a neat leather brief-case, plumply filled
+with contents not discernible. There he stood (a sort of unsuccessful
+Cyrus Curtis), very diminutive, his gray hair rather long abaft his
+neck, his yellowish straw hat (with curly brim) tilted backward as
+though in perplexity, his timid and absorbed blue eyes poring over his
+memorandum-book which was full of pencilled notes. He had a slightly
+unkempt, brief beard and whiskers, his cheek-bones pinkish, his linen a
+little frayed. There was something strangely pathetic about him, and I
+would have given much to have been able to speak to him. I halted at a
+window farther down the street and studied him; then returned to pass
+him again, and watched him patiently. He stood quite absorbed, and was
+still there when I went on.
+
+That is just one of the thousands of vivid little pictures one sees on
+the city streets day by day. To catch some hint of the meaning of all
+this, to present a few scrawled notes of the amazing interest and colour
+of the city's life, this is the colyumist's task as I see it. It is a
+task not a whit less worthy, less painful, or less baffling than that of
+the most conscientious novelist. And it is carried on in surroundings of
+extraordinary stimulation and difficulty. It is heart-racking to
+struggle day by day, amid incessant interruption and melee, to snatch
+out of the hurly-burly some shreds of humour or pathos or (dare one
+say?) beauty, and phrase them intelligibly.
+
+But it is fun. One never buys a package of tobacco, crosses a city
+square, enters a trolley car or studies a shop-window without trying, in
+a baffled, hopeless way, to peer through the frontage of the experience,
+to find some glimmer of the thoughts, emotions, and meanings behind. And
+in the long run such a habit of inquiry must bear fruit in understanding
+and sympathy. Joseph Conrad (who seems, by the way, to be more read by
+newspaper men than any other writer) put very nobly the pinnacle of all
+scribblers' dreams when he said that human affairs deserve the tribute
+of "a sigh which is not a sob, a smile which is not a grin."
+
+So much, with apology, for the ideals of the colyumist, if he be
+permitted to speak truth without fear of mockery. Of course in the
+actual process and travail of his job you will find him far different.
+You may know him by a sunken, brooding eye; clothing marred by much
+tobacco, and a chafed and tetchy humour toward the hour of five P. M.
+Having bitterly schooled himself to see men as paragraphs walking, he
+finds that his most august musings have a habit of stewing themselves
+down to some ferocious or jocular three-line comment. He may yearn
+desperately to compose a really thrilling poem that will speak his
+passionate soul; to churn up from the typewriter some lyric that will
+rock with blue seas and frantic hearts; he finds himself allaying the
+frenzy with some jovial sneer at Henry Ford or a yell about the High
+Cost of Living. Poor soul, he is like one condemned to harangue the
+vast, idiotic world through a keyhole, whence his anguish issues thin
+and faint. Yet who will say that all his labour is wholly vain? Perhaps
+some day the government will crown a Colyumist Laureate, some majestic
+sage with ancient patient blue eyes and a snowy beard nobly stained with
+nicotine, whose utterances will be heeded with shuddering respect. All
+minor colyumists will wear robes and sandals; they will be an order of
+scoffing friars; people will run to them on crowded streets to lay
+before them the sorrows and absurdities of men. And in that day
+
+    The meanest paragraph that blows will give
+    Thoughts that do often lie too deep for sneers.
+
+
+
+
+MOVING
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Man, we suspect, is the only animal capable of persuading himself
+that his hardships are medicine to the soul, of flattering
+himself into a conviction that some mortal spasm was a fortifying
+discipline.
+
+Having just moved our household goods for the fourth time in four
+years, we now find ourself in the singular state of trying to
+believe that the horrors of the event have added to our supply of
+spiritual resignation. Well, let us see.
+
+The brutal task of taking one's home on trek is (we can argue) a
+stirring tonic, a kind of private rehearsal of the Last Judgment,
+when the sheep shall be divided from the shoats. What could be a
+more convincing reminder of the instability of man's affairs than
+the harrowing upheaval of our cherished properties? Those dark
+angels, the moving men, how heartless they seem in their brisk
+and resolute dispassion--yet how exactly they prefigure the
+implacable sternness of the ultimate shepherds. A strange life is
+theirs, taking them day after day into the bosom of homes
+prostrated by the emigrating throe. Does this matter-of-fact
+bearing conceal an infinite tenderness, a pity that dare not show
+itself for fear of unmanly collapse? Are they secretly broken by
+the sight of the desolate nursery, the dismantled crib, the
+forgotten clockwork monkey lying in a corner of the cupboard
+where the helpless Urchin laid it with care before he and his
+smaller sister were deported, to be out of the way in the final
+storm? Does the o'ermastering pathos of a modest household turned
+inside out, its tender vitals displayed to the passing world,
+wring their breasts? Stoic men, if so, they well conceal their
+pangs.
+
+They have one hopelessly at a disadvantage. In the interval that
+always elapses before the arrival of the second van, there is a
+little social chat and utterance of reminiscences. There is a
+lively snapping of matchheads on thumbnails, and seated at ease
+in the débris of the dismantled living room our friends will
+tell of the splendour of some households they have moved before.
+The thirty-eight barrels of gilt porcelain, the twenty cases of
+oil paintings, the satin-wood grand piano that their spines
+twinge to recall. Once our furnitures were moved by a crew of
+lusty athletes who had previously done the same for Mr. Ivy Lee,
+and while we sat in shamed silence we heard the tale of Mr. Lee's
+noble possessions. Of what avail would it have been for us to
+protest that we love our stuff as much as Mr. Lee did his? No, we
+had a horrid impulse to cry apology, and beg them to hurl the
+things into the van anyhow, just to end the agony.
+
+This interval of social chat being prolonged by the blizzard, the
+talk is likely to take a more ominous turn. We are told how, only
+last week, a sister van was hit by a train at a crossing and
+carried a hundred yards on the engine pilot. Two of the men were
+killed, though one of these lived from eleven o'clock Saturday
+morning until eleven o'clock Monday night. How, after hearing
+this, can one ask what happened to the furniture, even if one is
+indecent enough to think of it? Then one learns of another of the
+fleet, stalled in a drift on the way to Harrisburg, and hasn't
+been heard from for forty-eight hours. Sitting in subdued
+silence, one remembers something about "moving accidents by flood
+and field," and thanks fortune that these pitiful oddments are
+only going to a storage warehouse, not to be transported thence
+until the kindly season of spring.
+
+But packing for storage instead of for moving implies subtler and
+more painful anguishes. Here indeed we have a tonic for the soul,
+for election must be made among one's belongings: which are to be
+stored, and which to accompany? Take the subject of books for
+instance. Horrid hesitation: can we subsist for four or five
+months on nothing but the "Oxford Book of English Verse" and
+Boswell's Johnson? Suppose we want to look up a quotation, in
+those late hours of the night when all really worthwhile reading
+is done? Our memory is knitted with a wide mesh. Suppose we want
+to be sure just what it was that Shakespeare said happened to him
+in his "sessions of sweet silent thought," what are we going to
+do? We will have to fall back on the customary recourse of the
+minor poet--if you can't remember one of Shakespeare's sonnets,
+at least you can write one of your own instead. Speaking of
+literature, it is a curious thing that the essayists have so
+neglected this topic of moving. It would be pleasant to know how
+the good and the great have faced this peculiarly terrible crisis
+of domestic affairs. When the Bard himself moved back to
+Stratford after his years in London, what did he think about it?
+How did he get all his papers packed up, and did he, in mere
+weariness, destroy the half-done manuscripts of plays? Charles
+Lamb moved round London a good deal; did he never write of his
+experience? We like to think of Emerson: did he ever move, and if
+so, how did he behave when the fatal day came? Did he sit on a
+packing case and utter sepulchral aphorisms? Think of Lord Bacon
+and how he would have crystallized the matter in a phrase.
+
+Of course in bachelor days moving may be a huge lark, a humorous
+escapade. We remember some high-spirited young men, three of
+them, who were moving their chattels from rooms on Twenty-first
+Street to a flat on Irving Place. Frugality was their necessary
+watchword, and they hired a pushcart in which to transport the
+dunnage. It was necessary to do this on Sunday, and one of the
+trio, more sensitive than the others, begged that they should
+rise and accomplish the public shame early in the morning, before
+the streets were alive. In particular, he begged, let the route
+be chosen to avoid a certain club on Gramercy Park where he had
+many friends, and where he was loath to be seen pushing his
+humble intimacies. The others, scenting sport, and brazenly hardy
+of spirit, contrived to delay the start on one pretext or another
+until the middle of the forenoon. Then, by main force, ignoring
+his bitter protest, they impelled the staggering vehicle, grossly
+overloaded, past the very door of the club my friend had wished
+to avoid. Here, by malicious inspiration, they tilted the wain to
+one side and strewed the paving with their property. They skipped
+nimbly round the corner, and with highly satisfactory laughter
+watched their blushing partner labouring dismally to collect the
+fragments. Some of his friends issuing from the club lent a hand,
+and the joy of the conspirators was complete.
+
+But to the family man, moving is no such airy picnic. Sadly he
+goes through the last dismal rites and sees the modest fragments
+of his dominion hustled toward the cold sepulture of a motor van.
+Before the toughened bearing of the hirelings he doubts what
+manner to assume. Shall he stand at the front door and exhort
+them to particular care with each sentimental item, crying "Be
+careful with that little chair; that's the one the Urchin uses
+when he eats his evening prunes!" Or shall he adopt a gruesome
+sarcasm, hoping to awe them by conveying the impression that even
+if the whole van should be splintered in collision, he can get
+more at the nearest department store? Whatever policy he adopts,
+they will not be much impressed. For, when we handed our
+gratuity, not an ungenerous one, to the driver, asking him to
+divide it among the gang, we were startled to hear them burst
+into loud screams of mirth. We asked, grimly, the cause. It
+appeared that during the work one of our friends, apparently
+despairing of any pourboire appropriate to his own conceptions of
+reward, had sold his share of the tip to the driver for fifteen
+cents. We are not going to say how much he lost by so doing. But
+this gamble put the driver in such a good humour that we believe
+he will keep away from railroad crossings.
+
+
+
+
+SURF FISHING
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+All day long you see them stand thigh-deep in the surf, fishing.
+Up on the beach each one has a large basket containing clams for
+bait, extra hooks and leaders, a little can of oil for the reel,
+and any particular doo-dads dear to the heart of the individual
+fisherman. And an old newspaper, all ready to protect the
+anticipated catch from the rays of the sun.
+
+Some of them wear bathing suits; others rubber hip-boots, or
+simply old clothes that won't mind getting wet. If they are very
+full of swank they will have a leather belt with a socket to hold
+the butt of the rod. Every now and then you will see them pacing
+backward up the beach, reeling in the line. They will mutter
+something about a big strike that time, and he got away with the
+bait. With zealous care they spear some more clam on the hook,
+twisting it over and over the barb so as to be firmly impaled.
+Then, with careful precision, they fling the line with its heavy
+pyramid sinker far out beyond the line of breakers.
+
+There they stand. What do they think about, one wonders? But what
+does any one think about when fishing? That is one of the happy
+pastimes that don't require much thinking. The long ridges of
+surf crumble about their knees and the sun and keen vital air
+lull them into a cheerful drowse of the faculties. Do they
+speculate on the never-ending fascination of the leaning walls of
+water, the rhythmical melody of the rasp and hiss of the water?
+Do they watch that indescribable beauty of the breaking wave, a
+sight as old as humankind and yet never so described that one who
+has not seen it could picture it?
+
+The wave gathers height and speed as it moves toward the sand. It
+seems to pull itself together for the last plunge. The first wave
+that ever rolled up to a beach probably didn't break. It just
+slid. It was only the second wave that broke--curled over in that
+curious way. For our theory--which may be entirely wrong--is that
+the breaking is due to the undertow of previous waves. After a
+wave sprawls up on the beach, it runs swiftly back. This
+receding undercurrent--you can feel it very strongly if you are
+swimming just in front of a large wave about to break--digs in
+beneath the advancing hill of water. It cuts away the foundations
+of that hill, which naturally topples over at the crest.
+
+The wave of water leans and hangs for a delaying instant. The
+actual cascade may begin at one end and run along the length of
+the ridge; it may begin at both ends and twirl inward, meeting in
+the middle; it may (but very rarely) begin in the middle and work
+outward. As the billow is at its height, before it combs over,
+the fisherman sees the sunlight gleaming through it--an ecstasy
+of perfect lucid green, with the glimmer of yellow sand behind.
+Then, for a brief moment--so brief that the details can never be
+memorized--he sees a clear crystal screen of water falling
+forward. Another instant, and it is all a boil of snowy suds
+seething about his legs. He may watch it a thousand times, a
+million times; it will never be old, never wholly familiar.
+Colour varies from hour to hour, from day to day. Sometimes blue
+or violet, sometimes green-olive or gray. The backwash tugs at
+his boots, hollowing out little channels under his feet. The sun
+wraps him round like a mantle; the salt crusts and thickens in
+his hair. And then, when he has forgotten everything save the
+rhythm of the falling waves, there comes a sudden tug----
+
+He reels in, and a few curious bathers stand still in the surf
+to see what he has got. They are inclined to be scornful. It is
+such a little fish! One would think that such a vast body of
+water would be ashamed to yield only so small a prize. Never
+mind. He has compensations they wot not of. Moreover--although he
+would hardly admit it himself--the fishing business is only a
+pretext. How else could a grown man with grizzled hair have an
+excuse to stand all day paddling in the surf?
+
+
+
+
+"IDOLATRY"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Once in a while, when the name of R. L. S. is mentioned in
+conversation, someone says to us: "Ah well, you're one of the
+Stevenson idolators, aren't you?" And this is said with a curious
+air of cynical superiority, as of one who has experienced all
+these things and is superbly tolerant of the shallow mind that
+can still admire Tusitala. His work (such people will generally
+tell you) was brilliant but "artificial" ... and for the true
+certificated milk of the word one must come along to such modern
+giants as Dreiser and Hergesheimer and Cabell. For these artists,
+each in his due place, we have only the most genial respect. But
+when the passion of our youth is impugned as "idolatry" we feel
+in our spirit an intense weariness. We feel the pacifism of the
+wise and secretive mind that remains tacit when its most perfect
+inward certainties are assailed. One does not argue, for there
+are certain things not arguable. One shrugs. After all, what
+human gesture more eloquent (or more satisfying to the performer)
+than the shrug?
+
+There is a little village on the skirts of the Forest of
+Fontainebleau (heavenly region of springtime and romance!) where
+the crystal-green eddies of the Loing slip under an old gray
+bridge with sharp angled piers of stone. Near the bridge is a
+quiet little inn, one of the many happy places in that country
+long frequented by artists for painting and "_villégiature_."
+Behind the inn is a garden beside the river-bank. The _salle à
+manger_, as in so many of those inns at Barbizon, Moret, and the
+other Fontainebleau villages, is panelled and frescoed with
+humorous and high-spirited impromptus done by visiting painters.
+
+In the summer of 1876 an anxious rumour passed among the artist
+colonies. It was said that an American lady and her two children
+had arrived at Grez, and the young bohemians who regarded this
+region as their own sacred retreat were startled and alarmed.
+Were their chosen haunts to be invaded by tourists--and tourists
+of the disturbing sex? Among three happy irresponsibles this
+humorous anxiety was particularly acute. One of the trio was sent
+over to Grez as a scout, to spy out the situation and report. The
+emissary went, and failed to return. A second explorer was
+dispatched to study the problem. He, too, was swallowed up in
+silence. The third, impatiently waiting tidings from his
+faithless friends, set out to make an end of this mystery. He
+reached the inn at dusk: it was a gentle summer evening; the
+windows were open to the tender air; lamps were lit within, and a
+merry party sat at dinner. Through the open window the suspicious
+venturer saw the recreant ambassadors, gay with laughter. And
+there, sitting in the lamplight, was the American lady--a
+slender, thoughtful enchantress with eyes as dark and glowing as
+the wine. Thus it was that Robert Louis Stevenson first saw Fanny
+Osbourne.
+
+A few days later Mrs. Osbourne's eighteen-year-old daughter
+Isobel wrote in a letter: "There is a young Scotchman here, a Mr.
+Stevenson. He is such a nice-looking ugly man, and I would rather
+listen to him talk than read the most interesting book.... Mama
+is ever so much better and is getting prettier every day."
+
+"The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson," written by her sister
+Mrs. Sanchez (the mother of "little Louis Sanchez on the beach at
+Monterey" remembered by lovers of "A Child's Garden of Verses")
+is a book that none of the so-called idolaters will want to
+overlook. The romantic excitements of R. L. S.'s youth were tame
+indeed compared to those of Fanny Van de Grift. R. L. S. had
+been thrilled enough by a few nights spent in the dark with the
+docile ass of the Cevennes; but here was one, sprung from sober
+Philadelphia blood, born in Indianapolis and baptized by Henry
+Ward Beecher, who had pioneered across the fabled Isthmus, lived
+in the roaring mining camps of Nevada, worked for a dressmaker in
+Frisco, and venturously taken her young children to Belgium and
+France to study art. She had been married at seventeen, had
+already once thought herself to be a widow in fact by the
+temporary disappearance of her first husband; and was now, after
+enduring repeated infidelities, prepared to make herself a widow
+in law. Daring horse woman, a good shot, a supreme cook, artist,
+writer, and a very Gene Stratton Porter among flowers, fearless,
+beautiful, and of unique charm--where could another woman have
+been found so marvellously gifted to be the wife of a romancer?
+It seems odd that Philadelphia and Edinburgh, the two most
+conservatively minded cities of the Anglo-Saxon earth, should
+have combined to produce this, the most radiant pair of
+adventurers in our recent annals.
+
+The reading of this delightful book has taken us back into the
+very pang and felicity of our first great passion--our idolatry,
+if you will--which we are proud here and now to re-avow. When was
+there ever a happier or more wholesome worship for a boy than the
+Stevenson mania on which so many of this generation grew up? We
+were the luckier in that our zeal was shared in all its gusto and
+particularity by a lean, long-legged, sallow-faced, brown-eyed
+eccentric (himself incredibly Stevensonian in appearance) with
+whom we lay afield in our later teens, reading R. L. S. aloud by
+the banks of a small stream which we vowed should become famous
+in the world of letters. And so it has, though not by our
+efforts, which was what we had designed; for at the crystal
+headwater of that same creek was penned "The Amenities of Book
+Collecting," that enchanting volume of bookish essays which has
+swelled the correspondence of a Philadelphia business man to
+insane proportions, and even brought him offers from three
+newspapers to conduct a book page. It seems appropriate to the
+present chronicler that in a quiet library overlooking the clear
+fount and origin of dear Darby Creek there are several of the
+most cherished association volumes of R. L. S.--we think
+particularly of the "Child's Garden of Verses" which he gave to
+Cummy, and the manuscript of little "Smoutie's" very first book,
+the "History of Moses."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Was there ever a more joyous covenant of affection than that of
+Mifflin McGill and ourself in our boyish madness for Tusitala? It
+is a happy circumstance, we say, for a youth, before the
+multiplying responsibilities of maturity press upon him, to pour
+out his enthusiasm in an obsession such as that; and when this
+passion can be shared and doubled and knitted in partnership with
+an equally freakish, insane, and innocent idiot (such as our
+generously mad friend Mifflin) admirable adventures are sure to
+follow. The quest begun on Darby Creek took us later on an
+all-summer progress among places in England and Scotland hallowed
+to us by association with R. L. S. Never, in any young lives past
+or to come, could there be an instant of purer excitement and
+glory than when, after bicycling hotly all day with the blue
+outline of Arthur's Seat apparently always receding before us, we
+trundled grimly into Auld Reekie and set out for the old
+Stevenson home at 17 Heriot Row, halting only to bestow our
+pneumatic steeds in the nearest and humblest available hostelry.
+There (for we found the house empty and "To Let") we sat on the
+doorstep evening by evening, smoking in the long northern
+twilight and spinning our youthful dreams. This lust for hunting
+out our favourite author's footsteps even led one of the pair to
+a place perhaps never visited by any other Stevensonian
+pilgrim--old Cockfield Rectory, in Suffolk, where Mrs. Sitwell
+and Sidney Colvin first met the bright-eyed Scotch boy in 1873.
+The tracker of footprints remembers how kind were the then
+occupants of the old rectory, and how, in a daze of awe, he trod
+the green and tranquil lawn and hastened to visit a cottage near
+by where there was an ancient rustic who had been coachman at
+the rectory when R. L. S. stayed there, fabled to retain some
+pithy recollection. Alas, the Suffolk ancient, eager enough to
+share tobacco and speech, would only mull over his memories of a
+previous rector, describing how it had fallen to him to prepare
+the good man for burial; how he smiled in death and his cheeks
+were as rosy as a babe's.
+
+It would take many pages to narrate all the bypaths and happy
+excursions trod by these simple youths in their quest of the
+immortal Louis. The memories come bustling, and one knows not
+where to stop. The supreme adventure, for one of the pair, lay in
+the kindness of Sir Sidney Colvin. To this prince of gentlemen
+and scholars one of these lads wrote, sending his letter (with
+subtle cunning) from a village in Suffolk only a few miles from
+Sir Sidney's boyhood home. He calculated that this might arouse
+the interest of Sir Sidney, whom he knew to be cruelly badgered
+with letters from enthusiasts; and fortune turned in his favour,
+granting him numerous ecstatic visits to Sir Sidney and Lady
+Colvin and much unwarranted generosity. But, since our mind has
+been turned in this direction by Mrs. Sanchez's book, it might be
+appropriate to add that one of the most thrilling moments in the
+crusade was a season of April days spent beside the green and
+stripling Loing, in the forest of Fontainebleau region, visiting
+those lovely French villages where R. L. S. roamed as a young
+man, crowned by an afternoon at Grez. One remembers the old gray
+bridge across the eddying water, and the door of the inn where
+the young pilgrim lingered, trying to visualize scenes of
+thirty-five years before.
+
+It is not mere idolatry when the hearts of the young are haunted
+by such spells. There was some real divinity behind the
+enchantment, some marvellous essence that made all roads Tusitala
+trod the Road of Loving Hearts. In these matters we would trust
+the simple Samoans to come nearer the truth than our cynic friend
+in Greenwich Village. The magic of that great name abides
+unimpaired.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
+
+(_Delivered to Cain and Abel, the first graduating class of the
+Garden of Eden Normal School._)
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+My young friends--It is a privilege to be permitted to address you this
+morning, for I am convinced that never in the world's history did the
+age beckon with so eager a gesture to the young men on the threshold of
+active life. Never indeed in the past, and certainly never in the
+future, was there or will there be a time more deeply fraught with
+significance. And as I gaze upon your keen faces it seems almost as
+though the world had amassed all the problems that now confront us
+merely in order to give you tasks worthy of your prowess.
+
+The world, I think I may safely say, is smaller now than ever before.
+The recent invention of young women, something quite new in the way of
+a social problem, has introduced a hitherto undreamed-of complexity into
+human affairs. The extreme rapidity with which ideas and thoughts now
+circulate, due to the new invention of speech, makes it probable that
+what is said in Eden to-day will be known in the land of Nod within a
+year. The greatest need is plainly for big-visioned and purposeful men,
+efficient men, men with forward-looking minds. I hope you will pattern
+after your admirable father in this respect; he truly was a
+forward-looking man, for he had nothing to look back on.
+
+You are aware, however, that your father has had serious problems to
+deal with, and it is well that you should consider those problems in the
+light of the experiences you are about to face. One of his most
+perplexing difficulties would never have come upon him if he had not
+fallen into a deep sleep. I counsel you, therefore, be wary not to
+overslumber. The prizes of life always come to those who press
+resolutely on, undaunted by fatigue and discouragement. Another of your
+father's failings was probably due to the fact that he was never a small
+boy and thus had no chance to work the deviltry out of his system. You
+yourselves have been abundantly blessed in this regard. I think I may
+say that here, in our Normal Academy, you have had an almost ideal
+playground to work off those boyish high spirits, to perpetrate those
+mischievous pranks that the world expects of its young. Remember that
+you are now going out into the mature work of life, where you will
+encounter serious problems.
+
+As you wend your way from these accustomed shades into the full glare of
+public life you will do so, I hope, with the consciousness that the eyes
+of the world are upon you. The sphere of activity in which you may find
+yourselves called upon to perform may be restricted, but you will
+remember that not failure but low aim is base. You will hold a just
+balance between the conflicting tendencies of radicalism and
+conservatism. You will endeavour to secure for labour its due share in
+the profits of labour. You will not be forgetful that all government
+depends in the last resort on the consent of the governed. These catch
+words in the full flush of your youth you may be inclined to dismiss as
+truisms, but I assure you that 10,000 years from now men will be
+uttering them with the same air of discovery.
+
+It is my great pleasure to confer upon you both the degree of bachelor
+of arts and to pray that you may never bring discredit upon your alma
+mater.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOWNFALL OF GEORGE SNIPE
+
+
+George Snipe was an ardent book-lover, and sat in the smoking car
+in a state of suspended ecstasy. He had been invited out to
+Mandrake Park to visit the library of Mr. Genial Girth, the
+well-known collector of rare autographed books. Devoted amateur
+of literature as he was, George's humble career rarely brought
+him into contact with bookish treasures, and a tremulous
+excitement swam through his brain as he thought of the glories he
+was about to see. In his devout meditation the train carried him
+a station beyond his alighting place, and he ran frantically back
+through the well-groomed suburban countryside in order to reach
+Mr. Girth's home on time.
+
+They went through the library together. Mr. Girth displayed all
+his fascinating prizes with generous good nature, and George grew
+excited. The palms of his hands were clammy with agitation. All
+round the room, encased in scarlet slip-covers of tooled morocco,
+on fireproof shelves, were the priceless booty of the collector.
+Here was Charles Lamb's "Essays of Elia," inscribed by the author
+to the woman he loved. Here was a copy of "Paradise Lost,"
+signed by John Milton. Here was a "Hamlet" given by Shakespeare
+to Bacon with the inscription, "Dear Frank, don't you wish you
+could have written something like this?" Here was the unpublished
+manuscript of a story by Robert Louis Stevenson. Here was a note
+written by Doctor Johnson to the landlord of the Cheshire Cheese,
+refusing to pay a bill and accusing the tavern-keeper of
+profiteering. Here were volumes autographed by Goldsmith, Keats,
+Shelley, Poe, Byron, DeFoe, Swift, Dickens, Thackeray, and all
+the other great figures of modern literature.
+
+Poor George's agitation became painful. His head buzzed as he
+surveyed the faded signatures of all these men who had become the
+living figures of his day-dreams. His eye rolled wildly in its
+orbit. Just then Mr. Girth was called out of the room, and left
+George alone among the treasures.
+
+Just at what instant the mania seized him we shall never know.
+There were a pen and an inkpot on the table, and the frenzied
+lover of books dipped the quill deep in the dark blue fluid. He
+ran eagerly to the shelves. The first volume he saw was a copy of
+"Lorna Doone." In it he wrote "Affectionately yours, R. D.
+Blackmore." Then came Longfellow's poems. He scrawled "With deep
+esteem, Henry W. Longfellow" on the flyleaf. Then three volumes
+of Macaulay's "History of England." In the first he jotted "I
+have always wanted you to have these admirable books, T. B. M."
+In "The Mill on the Floss" he wrote "This comes to you still warm
+from the press, George Eliot." The next book happened to be a
+copy of Edgar Guest's poems. In this he inscribed "You are the
+host I love the best, This is my boast, Yours, Edgar Guest." In a
+copy of Browning's Poems he wrote "To my dear and only wife,
+Elizabeth, from her devoted Robert." In a pamphlet reprint of the
+Gettysburg Speech he penned "This is straight stuff, A. Lincoln."
+But perhaps his most triumphant exploit was signing a copy of the
+Rubaiyat thus: "This book is given to the Anti-Saloon League of
+Naishapur by that thorn in their side, O. Khayyam."
+
+By the time the ambulance reached Mr. Girth's home George was
+completely beyond control. He was taken away screaming because he
+had not had a chance to autograph a copy of the "Songs of
+Solomon."
+
+
+
+
+MEDITATIONS OF A BOOKSELLER
+
+(Roger Mifflin _loquitur_)
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+I had a pleasant adventure to-day. A free verse poet came in to see me,
+wanted me to buy some copies of "The Pagan Anthology." I looked over the
+book, to which he himself had contributed some pieces. I advised him to
+read Tennyson. I wish you could have seen his face.
+
+If you want to see a really good anthology (I said) have a look at
+Pearsall Smith's "Treasury of English Prose," just out. The only thing
+that surprises me is that Mr. Smith didn't include some free verse in
+it. The best thing about free verse is that it is often awfully good
+prose.
+
+It's a superb clear night: a milky pallor washed in the blue: a white
+moon overhead: stars rare but brilliant, one in the south twinkles and
+flutters like a tiny flower stirred by faint air. The wind is "a cordial
+of incredible virtue" (Emerson)--sharp and chill, but with a milder
+tincture. To-day, though brisk and snell on the streets, the sunshine
+had a lively vigour, a generous quality, a promissory note of the
+equinox. I felt it from first rising this morning--the old demiurge at
+work! As I sat in the bathtub (when a man is fifty he may be pardoned
+for taking a warm bath on winter mornings) my mind fell upon the desire
+of wandering: it occurred to me that a spread of legs in the vital air
+would be richly repaid. The windows called me: as soon as shirt and
+trousers were on, I was at the sill peering out over Gissing Street.
+Later, even through closed panes, the chink of milk bottles on the
+pavement below seemed to rise with a clearer, merrier note. Setting out
+for some tobacco about 8:30, I stopped to study the ice-man's great
+blocks of silvery translucence, lying along the curb by a big apartment
+house. "Artificial" ice, I suppose: it was interesting to see, in the
+meridian of each cake, a kind of silvery fracture or membrane, with the
+grain of air-bubbles tending outward therefrom--showing, no doubt, if
+one knew the mechanics of refrigeration, just how the freezing
+proceeded. Even in so humble a thing as a block of ice are these
+harmonic and lovely patterns, the seal of Nature's craft, inscrutable,
+inimitable. I might have made a point of this in talking to that free
+verse poet. I'm glad I didn't, however: he would have had some tedious
+reply, convincing to himself. That's the trouble with replies: they are
+always convincing to the replier. As a friend of mine used to say, one
+good taciturn deserves another.
+
+I was thinking, as I took a parcel of laundry up to the Chinaman on
+McFee Street just now, it would be interesting to write a book dealing
+solely, candidly, exactly, and fully with the events, emotions, and
+thoughts of just one day in a man's life. If one could do that, in a way
+to carry conviction, assent, and reality, to convey to the reader's
+senses a recognition of genuine actual human _being_, one might claim to
+be a true artist.
+
+I have found an admirable book for reading in bed--this little anthology
+of prose, collected by Pearsall Smith. He knows what good prose is,
+having written some of the daintiest bits of our time in his "Trivia," a
+book with which I occasionally delight a truly discerning customer. What
+a fascination there is in good prose--"the cool element of prose" as
+Milton calls it--a sort of fluid happiness of the mind, unshaken by the
+violent pangs of great poetry. I am not subtle enough to describe it,
+but in the steadily cumulating satisfaction of first-class prose there
+seems to be something that speaks direct to the brain, unmarred by the
+claims of the senses, the emotions. I meditate much, ignorantly and
+fumblingly, on the modes and purposes of writing. It is so
+simple--"Fool!" said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write!"--all
+that is needful is to tell what happens; and yet how hard it is to
+summon up that necessary candor. Every time I read great work I see the
+confirmation of what I grope for. How vivid, straight, and cleanly it
+seems when done: merely the outward utterance of "what the mind at home,
+in the spacious circuits of her musing, hath liberty to propose to
+herself." Let a man's mind depart from his audience; let him have no
+concern whether to shock or to please. Let him carry no consideration
+save to utter, with unsparing fidelity, what passes in his own spirit.
+One can trust the brain to do its part. All that is needed is honourable
+frankness: not to be ashamed to open our hearts, to speak our privy
+weakness, our inward exulting. Then the pain and perplexity, or the
+childish satisfactions, of our daily life are the true material of the
+writer's art, and that which is sown in weakness may be raised in power.
+Curious indeed that in this life, brief and precariously enjoyed, men
+should so set their hearts on building a permanence in words: something
+to stand, in the lovely stability of ink and leaden types, as our speech
+out of silence to those who follow on. Indefensible absurdity, and yet
+the secret and impassioned dream of those who write!
+
+I was about to say that, for the writing of anything truly durable, the
+first requisite is plenty of silence. Then I recall Dr. Johnson's
+preface to his Dictionary--"written not in the soft obscurities of
+retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amid
+inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow."
+
+
+
+
+IF BUYING A MEAL WERE LIKE BUYING A HOUSE
+
+
+This Indenture
+
+between A. B., an innkeeper, organized and existing under the
+laws of good cooking, party of the first part, and C. D., party
+of the second part, witnesseth:
+
+That the said party of the first part, for and in consideration
+of the sum of $1.50, lawful money of the United States, paid by
+the said party of the second part, does hereby grant and release
+unto the said C. D., and his heirs, administrators, and assigns
+forever,
+
+All that certain group, parcels, or allotments of food, viands,
+or victuals, situate or to be spread, served, and garnished upon
+the premises of said A. B., shown and known and commonly designed
+as one square meal, table d'hôte, together with the drinking
+water, napkin, ash tray, finger-bowl and hat-and-coat-hanging
+privileges or easements appurtenant thereto,
+
+And Together With the rights, privileges, and opportunities (as
+an easement additionally appurtenant to the meal above nominated)
+to partake, eat, enjoy, and be nourished upon said victuals, and
+to call for extra pats, parcels, or portions of butter.
+
+Subject to the following restrictions, to wit: That neither the
+party of the second part, nor his heirs, executors, or assigns,
+will feast immoderately upon onions, to the confusion of his
+neighbours; nor will the said C. D. or his guests smoke any form
+of tobacco other than cigars and cigarettes, the instrument
+commonly known as a pipe being offensive to the head waiter (a
+man of delicate nurture); nor will said party of the second part
+covet, retain, nor seek to remove any knives, forks, spoons, or
+other tableware whatsoever; nor is anything said or implied or
+otherwise intimated in this covenant to be construed as
+permitting the party of the second part to carry on loud
+laughter, song, carnival, nor social uproar; nor unnecessarily,
+further than is tactful for the procurement of expeditious
+attention, to endear himself to or otherwise cajole, compliment,
+and ingratiate the waitress.
+
+And Furthermore, that title to said Meal does not pass until the
+party of the second part has conveyed, of his mansuetude and
+proper charity, a gratuity, fee, honorarium, lagniappe,
+pourboire, easement or tip of not less than 15 per cent of the
+price of said Meal; which easement, while customarily spoken of
+as a free-will grant or gratuity, is to be constructively
+regarded as an entail and a necessary encumbrance upon said Meal.
+
+And the said party of the first part covenants with the said
+party of the second part as follows: That the said C. D. is
+seized of the said Meal in fee simple, and shall quietly enjoy
+said Meal subject to the covenants and restrictions and
+encumbrances hereinbefore set out, subject to the good pleasure
+of the Head Waiter.
+
+In Witness Whereof these presents are signed,
+
+(LOC. SIG.)
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURES IN HIGH FINANCE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+There is no way in which one can so surely arouse the suspicions of
+bankers as by trying to put some money in their hands. We went round to a
+near-by bank hoping to open an account. As we had formerly dealt with an
+uptown branch of the same institution, and as the cheque we wanted to
+deposit bore the name of a quite well-known firm, we thought all would be
+easy. But no; it seemed that there was no convincing way to identify
+ourself. Hopefully we pulled out a stack of letters, but these were
+waved aside. We began to feel more and more as though we had come with
+some sinister intent. We started to light our pipe, and then it occurred
+to us that perhaps that would be regarded as the gesture of a hardened
+cracksman, seeking to appear at his ease. We wondered if, in all our
+motions, we were betraying the suspicious conduct of the professional
+embezzler. Perhaps the courteous banker was putting us through some
+Freudian third degree ... in these days when the workings of the
+unconscious are so shrewdly canvassed, was there anything abominable in
+the cellar of our soul which we were giving away without realizing ...
+had we not thought to ourself, as we entered the door, well, this is a
+fairly decent cheque to start an account with, but we won't keep our
+balance anywhere near that figure ... perhaps our Freudian banker had
+spotted that thought and was sending for a psychological patrol wagon ...
+well, how _could_ we identify ourself? Did we know any one who had an
+account in that branch? No.
+
+We thought of a friend of ours who banked at another branch of this
+bank, not far away. The banker called him up and whispered strangely
+over the phone. We were asked to take off our hat. Apparently our friend
+was describing us. We hoped that he was saying "stout" rather than
+"fat." But it seemed that the corroboration of our friend only
+increased our host's precaution. Perhaps he thought it was a carefully
+worked-out con game, in which our friend was a confederate. We signed
+our name several times, on little cards, with a desperate attempt to
+appear unconcerned. In spite of our best efforts, we could not help
+thinking that each time we wrote it we must be looking as though we were
+trying to remember how we had written it the last time. Still the banker
+hesitated. Then he called up our friend again. He asked him if he would
+know our voice over the phone. Our friend said he would. We spoke to our
+friend, with whom we had eaten lunch a few minutes before. He asked, to
+identify us, what we had had for lunch. Horrible instant! For a moment
+we could not remember. The eyes of the banker and his assistant were
+glittering upon us. Then we spoke glibly enough. "An oyster patty," we
+said; "two cups of tea, and a rice pudding which we asked for cold, but
+which was given us hot."
+
+Our friend asserted, to the banker, that we were undeniably us, and
+indeed the homely particularity of the luncheon items had already made
+incision in his hardened bosom. He smiled radiantly at us and gave us a
+cheque book. Then he told us we couldn't draw against our account until
+the original cheque had passed through the Clearing House, and sent a
+youth back to the office with us so that we could be unmistakably
+identified.
+
+As we left the banker's office someone else was ushered in. "Here's
+another gentleman to open an account," said the assistant. "We hope he
+knows what he had for lunch," we said to the banker.
+
+
+
+
+ON VISITING BOOKSHOPS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+It Is a curious thing that so many people only go into a bookshop when
+they happen to need some particular book. Do they never drop in for a
+little innocent carouse and refreshment? There are some knightly souls
+who even go so far as to make their visits to bookshops a kind of
+chivalrous errantry at large. They go in not because they need any
+certain volume, but because they feel that there may be some book that
+needs them. Some wistful, little forgotten sheaf of loveliness, long
+pining away on an upper shelf--why not ride up, fling her across your
+charger (or your charge account), and gallop away. Be a little knightly,
+you book-lovers!
+
+The lack of intelligence with which people use bookshops is, one
+supposes, no more flagrant than the lack of intelligence with which we
+use all the rest of the machinery of civilization. In this age, and
+particularly in this city, we haven't time to be intelligent.
+
+A queer thing about books, if you open your heart to them, is the
+instant and irresistible way they follow you with their appeal. You know
+at once, if you are clairvoyant in these matters (libre-voyant, one
+might say), when you have met your book. You may dally and evade, you
+may go on about your affairs, but the paragraph of prose your eye fell
+upon, or the snatch of verses, or perhaps only the spirit and flavour of
+the volume, more divined than reasonably noted, will follow you. A few
+lines glimpsed on a page may alter your whole trend of thought for the
+day, reverse the currents of the mind, change the profile of the city.
+The other evening, on a subway car, we were reading Walter de la Mare's
+interesting little essay about Rupert Brooke. His discussion of
+children, their dreaming ways, their exalted simplicity and absorption,
+changed the whole tenor of our voyage by some magical chemistry of
+thought. It was no longer a wild, barbaric struggle with our fellowmen,
+but a venture of faith and recompense, taking us home to the bedtime of
+a child.
+
+The moment when one meets a book and knows, beyond shadow of doubt, that
+that book must be his--not necessarily now, but some time--is among the
+happiest excitements of the spirit. An indescribable virtue effuses from
+some books. One can feel the radiations of an honest book long before
+one sees it, if one has a sensitive pulse for such affairs. Its honour
+and truth will speak through the advertising. Its mind and heart will
+cry out even underneath the extravagance of jacket-blurbings. Some
+shrewd soul, who understands books, remarked some time ago on the
+editorial page of the _Sun's_ book review that no superlative on a
+jacket had ever done the book an atom of good. He was right, as far as
+the true bookster is concerned. We choose our dinner not by the
+wrappers, but by the veining and gristle of the meat within. The other
+day, prowling about a bookshop, we came upon two paper-bound copies of a
+little book of poems by Alice Meynell. They had been there for at least
+two years. We had seen them before, a year or more ago, but had not
+looked into them fearing to be tempted. This time we ventured. We came
+upon two poems--"To O, Of Her Dark Eyes," and "A Wind of Clear Weather
+in England." The book was ours--or rather, we were its, though we did
+not yield at once. We came back the next day and got it. We are still
+wondering how a book like that could stay in the shop so long. Once we
+had it, the day was different. The sky was sluiced with a clearer blue,
+air and sunlight blended for a keener intake of the lungs, faces seen
+along the street moved us with a livelier shock of interest and
+surprise. The wind that moved over Sussex and blew Mrs. Meynell's heart
+into her lines was still flowing across the ribs and ledges of our
+distant scene.
+
+There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling
+in love, and like that colossal adventure it is an experience of great
+social import. Even as the tranced swain, the book-lover yearns to tell
+others of his bliss. He writes letters about it, adds it to the
+postscript of all manner of communications, intrudes it into telephone
+messages, and insists on his friends writing down the title of the find.
+Like the simple-hearted betrothed, once certain of his conquest, "I want
+you to love her, too!" It is a jealous passion also. He feels a little
+indignant if he finds that any one else has discovered the book, too. He
+sees an enthusiastic review--very likely in _The New Republic_--and
+says, with great scorn, "I read the book three months ago." There are
+even some perversions of passion by which a book-lover loses much of his
+affection for his pet if he sees it too highly commended by some rival
+critic.
+
+This sharp ecstasy of discovering books for one's self is not always
+widespread. There are many who, for one reason or another, prefer to
+have their books found out for them. But for the complete zealot nothing
+transcends the zest of pioneering for himself. And therefore working for
+a publisher is, to a certain type of mind, a never-failing fascination.
+As H. M. Tomlinson says in "Old Junk," that fascinating collection of
+sensitive and beautifully poised sketches which came to us recently with
+a shock of thrilling delight:
+
+     To come upon a craft rigged so, though at her moorings and with
+     sails furled, her slender poles upspringing from the bright plane
+     of a brimming harbour, is to me as rare and sensational a delight
+     as the rediscovery, when idling with a book, of a favourite
+     lyric.
+
+To read just that passage, and the phrase _the bright plane of a
+brimming harbour_, is one of those "rare and sensational
+delights" that set the mind moving on lovely journeys of its own,
+and mark off visits to a bookshop not as casual errands of
+reason, but as necessary acts of devotion. We visit bookshops not
+so often to buy any one special book, but rather to rediscover,
+in the happier and more expressive words of others, our own
+encumbered soul.
+
+
+
+
+A DISCOVERY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+We are going to tell the truth. It has been on our mind for some
+time. We are going to tell it exactly, without any balancing or
+trimming or crimped edges. We are weary of talking about
+trivialities and are going to come plump and plain to the
+adventures of our own mind. These are real adventures, just as
+real as the things we see. The green frog that took refuge on our
+porch last night was no more real. Perhaps frogs don't care so
+much for wet as they are supposed to, for when that excellent
+thunderstorm came along and the ceiling of the night was sheeted
+with lilac brightness, through which ran quivering threads of
+naked fire (not just the soft, tame, flabby fire of the domestic
+hearth, but the real core and marrow of flame, its hungry,
+terrible, destroying self), our friend the frog came hopping up
+on the porch where we stood, apparently to take shelter. How
+brilliant was his black and silver eye when we picked him up! His
+direct and honourable regard somehow made us feel ashamed, we
+know not why. And yet we have plenty to be ashamed about--but how
+did he know? He was still on the porch this morning. Equally real
+was the catbird on the hedge as we came down toward the station.
+She--we call her so, for there was unmistakable ladyhood in her
+delicately tailored trimness--she bickered at us in a cheerful
+way, on top of those bushes which were so loaded with the night's
+rainfall that they shone a blurred cobweb gray in the lifting
+light. Her eye was also dark and polished and lucid, like a bead
+of ink. It also had the same effect of tribulation on our spirit.
+Neither the catbird nor the frog, we said to ourself, would have
+tormented their souls trying to "invent" something to write
+about. They would have told what happened to them, and let it go
+at that. So, as we walked along under an arcade of maple trees,
+admiring the little green seed-biplanes brought down by the
+thrash of the rain--they look rather as though they would make
+good coathangers for fairies--we asked ourself why we could not
+be as straightforward as the bird and the frog, and talk about
+what was in our mind.
+
+The most exciting thing that happened to us when we got to New
+York last February was finding a book in a yellow wrapper. Its
+title was "Old Junk," which appealed to us. The name of the
+author was H. M. Tomlinson, which immediately became to us a name
+of honour and great meaning. All day and every day intelligent
+men find themselves surrounded by oceans of what is quaintly
+called "reading matter." Most of it is turgid, lumpy, fuzzy in
+texture, squalid in intellect. The rewards of the literary
+world--that is, the tangible, potable, spendable rewards--go
+mostly to the cheapjack and the mountebank. And yet here was a
+man who in every paragraph spoke to the keenest intellectual
+sense--who, ten times a page, enchanted the reader with the
+surprising and delicious pang given by the critically chosen
+word. We sat up late at night reading that book, marvelling at
+our good fortune. We wanted to cry aloud (to such as cared to
+understand), "Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for here is born a
+man who knows how to write!" In our exuberance we seized a pen
+and wrote in the stern of our copy: "Here speaks the Lord God of
+prose; here is the clear eye, the ironic mind, the compassionate
+heart; the thrilling honesty and (apparent) simplicity of great
+work." Then we set about making the book known to our friends. We
+propelled them into bookshops and made them buy it. We took our
+own copy down to William McFee on S.S. _Turrialba_ and a glad
+heart was ours when he, too, said it was "the real thing." This
+is a small matter, you say? When the discovery of an honest pen
+becomes a small matter life will lose something of its savour.
+Those who understand will understand; let the others spend their
+time in the smoker playing pinochle. Those who care about these
+things can get the book for themselves.
+
+Of Mr. Tomlinson in person: he is a London newspaperman, we
+understand, and now on the staff of the London _Nation_. (Trust
+Mr. Massingham, the editor of that journal, to know an honest
+writer when he sees him.) Mr. Tomlinson says of himself:
+
+     My life is like my portrait. It won't bear investigation. I am
+     not conscious of having done anything that would interest either
+     a policeman or the young lady of the kind who dotes on Daddy Long
+     Legs; worse luck. It's about time I got down to business and did
+     something interesting either to one or the other. That is why it
+     won't bear investigation, this record of mine. I am about as
+     entertaining as one of the crowd coming out of the factory gates
+     with his full dinner pail. All my adventures have been no more
+     than keeping that pail moderately full. I've been doing that
+     since I was twelve, in all sorts of ways. I was an office boy and
+     a clerk among London's ships, in the last days of the clippers.
+     And I am forced to recall some of the things--such as bookkeeping
+     in a jam factory and stoking on a tramp steamer--I can understand
+     why I and my fellows, without wanting to, drifted about in
+     indecision till we drifted into war and drifted into peace. And
+     of course, I've been a journalist. I am still; and so have seen
+     much of Africa, America, and Europe, without knowing exactly why.
+     I was in France in 1914--the August, too, of that year, and woke
+     up from that nightmare in 1917, after the Vimy Ridge attack, when
+     I returned to England to sit with my wife and children in a
+     cellar whenever it was a fine night and listened to the guns and
+     bombs. God, who knows all, might make something of this sort of
+     inconsequential drift of one day into the next, but I give it up.
+
+But now we pass to the phase of the matter that puzzles us. How
+is it that there are some books which can never have abiding life
+until they perish and are born again? We have noticed it so
+often. There is a book of a certain sort to which this process
+seems inevitable. One need only mention Leonard Merrick or Samuel
+Butler as examples. The book, we will suppose, has some peculiar
+subtlety or flavour of appeal. (We are thinking at the moment of
+William McFee's "Letters From an Ocean Tramp.") It is published
+and falls dead. Later on--usually about ten years later--it is
+taken up with vigour by some other publisher, the stone is rolled
+away from the sepulchre, and it begins to move among its destined
+lovers.
+
+This remark is caused by our delighted discovery of a previous
+book by the author of "Old Junk." "The Sea and the Jungle" is the
+title of it, the tale of a voyage on the tramp steamer _Capella_,
+from Swansea to Para in the Brazils, and thence 2,000 miles along
+the forests of the Amazon and Madeira rivers. It is the kind of
+book whose readers will never forget it; the kind of book that
+happens to some happy writers once in a lifetime (and to many
+never at all) when the moving hand seems gloriously in gear with
+the tremulous and busy mind, and all the spinning earth stands
+hearkeningly still waiting for the perfect expression of the
+thought. It is the work of a hand trained in laborious task-work
+and then set magnificently free, for a few blessed months, under
+no burden save that of putting its captaining spirit truthfully
+on paper. And this book--in which there is a sea passage that not
+even Mr. Conrad has ever bettered--this book, which makes the
+utmost self-satisfied heroics of the Prominent Writers of our
+market place shrivel uncomfortably in remembrance--this book, we
+repeat, though published in this country in 1913, has been long
+out of print; and the copy which we were lucky enough to lay hand
+on through the courtesy of the State Librarian of Pennsylvania
+had not previously been borrowed since November 18, 1913. Someone
+asks us if this man can really write. Let us choose a paragraph
+for example. This deals with the first day at sea of the tramp
+steamer _Capella_:
+
+     It was December, but by luck we found a halcyon morning which had
+     got lost in the year's procession. It was a Sunday morning, and
+     it had not been ashore. It was still virgin, bearing a vestal
+     light. It had not been soiled yet by any suspicion of this
+     trampled planet, this muddy star, which its innocent and tenuous
+     rays had discovered in the region of night. I thought it still
+     was regarding us as a lucky find there. Its light was tremulous,
+     as if with joy and eagerness. I met this discovering morning as
+     your ambassador while you still slept, and betrayed not, I hope,
+     any grayness and bleared satiety of ours to its pure, frail, and
+     lucid regard. That was the last good service I did before leaving
+     you quite. I was glad to see how well your old earth did meet
+     such a light, as though it had no difficulty in looking day in
+     the face. The world was miraculously renewed. It rose, and
+     received the newborn of Aurora in its arms. There were clouds of
+     pearl above hills of chrysoprase. The sea ran in volatile flames.
+     The shadows on the bright deck shot to and fro as we rolled. The
+     breakfast bell rang not too soon. This was a right beginning.
+
+The above is a paragraph that we have chosen from Mr. Tomlinson's
+book almost at random. We could spend the whole afternoon (and a
+happy afternoon it would be for us) copying out for you passages
+from "The Sea and the Jungle" that would give you the extremity
+of pleasure, O high-spirited reader! It is an odd thing, it is a
+quaint thing, it is a thing that would seem inconceivable (were
+we not tolerably acquainted with the vagaries of the reading
+public) that a book of this sort should lie perdu on the shelves
+of a few libraries. Yet one must not leap too heartily to the
+wrong conclusion. The reading public is avid of good books, but
+it does not hear about them. Now we would venture to say that we
+know fifty people--nay, two hundred and fifty--who would never
+have done thanking us if we could lay a copy of a book of this
+sort in their hand. They would think it the greatest favour we
+could do them if we could tell them where they could go and lay
+down honest money and buy it. And we have to retort that it is
+out of print, not procurable.[1] Is it the fault of publishers?
+We do not think so--or not very often. For every publisher has
+experience of this sort of thing--books that he knows to be of
+extraordinary quality and fascination which simply lie like lead
+in his stockroom, and people will not listen to what he says
+about them. Whose fault is it, then? Heaven knows.
+
+[1] Since this was written, a new edition has been published by
+E. P. Dutton & Co.
+
+
+
+
+SILAS ORRIN HOWES
+
+
+There died in New York, on February 11, 1918, one who perhaps as
+worthily as any man in any age represented the peculiar traits and
+charms of the book-lover, a man whose personal loveliness was only
+equalled by his unassuming modesty, a man who was an honour to the fine
+old profession of bookselling.
+
+There will be some who frequent Brentano's bookstore in New York who
+will long remember the quiet little gentleman who held the post nearest
+the front door, whose face lit with such a gentle and gracious smile
+when he saw a friend approach, who endured with patience and courtesy
+the thousand small annoyances that every salesman knows. There were
+encounters with the bourgeois customer, there were the exhausting
+fatigues of the rush season, there were the day-long calls on the
+slender and none too robust frame. But through it all he kept the
+perfect and unassuming grace of the high-born gentleman he was. An
+old-fashioned courtesy and gallantry moved in his blood.
+
+It was an honour to know Silas Orrin Howes, and some have been fortunate
+to have disclosed to them the richness and simple bravery of that lover
+of truth and beauty. The present writer was one of the least and latest
+of these. Twice, during the last months of his life, it was my very good
+fortune to spend an evening with him at his room on Lexington Avenue, to
+drink the delicious coffee he brewed in his percolator given him by
+William Marion Reedy, to mull with him over the remarkable scrap-books
+he had compiled out of the richness of his varied reading, and to hear
+him talk about books and life.
+
+Silas Orrin Howes was born in Macon, Georgia, October 15, 1867. He
+attended school in Macon and Atlanta, and then in Franklin, Indiana. He
+never went to college.
+
+When he was born, a passion for books was born with him. His niece tells
+me that by the time he was twenty-one he had collected a considerable
+library. He began life as a newspaper man, on the Macon _Telegraph_.
+About the age of twenty-four he went to Galveston where he was first a
+copy-reader, and then for seven years telegraph editor of the Galveston
+_News_.
+
+I do not know all the details of his life in Galveston, where he lived
+for about twenty years. He told me that at the time of the disastrous
+storm and flood he was working in a drug store near the Gulf front. He
+gave me a thrilling description of the night he spent standing on the
+prescription counter with the water swirling about his waist. He slept
+in a little room at the back of the store, where he had a shelf of books
+which were particularly dear to him. Among them was a volume of Henley's
+poems. When the flood subsided all the books were gone, but the next day
+as he was looking over the wreckage of neighbouring houses he found his
+Henley washed up on a doorstep--covered with slime and filth but still
+intact. He sent it to Brentano's in New York to be rebound in vellum,
+instructing them not to clean it in any way. He wrote to Henley about
+the incident, who sent him a very friendly autographed card which he
+pasted in the volume. That was one of the books which he held most dear,
+and rightly.
+
+I do not know just when he came to New York; about 1910, I believe. He
+took a position as salesman at Brentano's. After a couple of years there
+he became anxious to try the book business on his own account. He and
+his nephew opened a shop in San Antonio. Neither of them had much real
+business experience. Certainly Howes himself was far too devoted a
+book-lover to be a good business man! After a few months the venture
+ended in failure, and all the personal library which he had collected
+through patient years was swallowed up in the disaster. After this he
+returned to Brentano's, where he remained until his death. About a year
+before his death he was run over by a taxicab, which shook his nerves a
+great deal.
+
+At some time during his career he came into intimate friendly contact
+with Ambrose Bierce, and used to tell many entertaining anecdotes about
+that erratic venturer in letters. He edited one of Bierce's volumes,
+adding a pleasant and scholarly little introduction. He was an
+occasional contributor to _Reedy's Mirror_, where he enjoyed indulging
+in his original vein of satire and shrewd comment. He was a great lover
+of quaint and exotic restaurants, and was particularly fond of the
+Turkish café, the Constantinople, just off Madison Square. It was a
+treat to go there with him, see him summon the waiter by clapping his
+hands (in the eastern fashion), and enjoy the strangely compounded
+dishes of that queer menu. He had sampled every Bulgar, Turkish, Balkan,
+French, and Scandinavian restaurant on Lexington Avenue. His taste in
+unusual and savoury dishes was as characteristic as his love for the
+finer flavours of literature. I remember last November I elicited from
+him that he had never tasted gooseberry jam, and had a jolly time
+hunting for a jar, which I found at last at Park and Tilford's, although
+the sales-girl protested there was no such thing. I took it to him and
+made him promise to eat it at his breakfasts.
+
+He had the true passions of the book-lover, which are not allotted to
+many. He had read hungrily, enjoying chiefly those magical draughts of
+prose which linger in the mind: Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Pater,
+Thoreau, Conrad. He was much of a recluse, a little saddened and
+sharpened perhaps by some of his experiences; and he loved, above all,
+those writers who can present truth with a faint tang of acid flavour,
+the gooseberry jam of literature as it were. One of my last
+satisfactions was to convert him (in some measure) to an enthusiasm for
+Pearsall Smith's "Trivia."
+
+As one looks back at that quiet, honourable life, one is aware of a
+high, noble spirit shining through it: a spirit that sought but little
+for itself, welcomed love and comradeship that came its way, and was
+content with a modest round of routine duty because it afforded inner
+contact with what was beautiful and true. One remembers an innate
+gentleness, and a loyalty to a high and chivalrous ideal.
+
+Such a life might be a lesson, if anything could, to the bumptious and
+"efficient" and smug. Time after time I have watched him serving some
+furred and jewelled customer who was not fit to exchange words with him;
+I have seen him jostled in a crowded aisle by some parvenu ignoramus who
+knew not that this quiet little man was one of the immortal spirits of
+gentleness and breeding who associate in quiet hours with the unburied
+dead of English letters. That corner of the store, near the front door,
+can never be the same.
+
+Such a life could only fittingly be described by the gentle, inseeing
+pen of an E. V. Lucas.
+
+My greatest regret and disappointment, when I heard of his sudden
+death, was that he would never know of a little tribute I had paid him
+in a forthcoming book. I had been saving it as a surprise for him, for I
+knew it would please him. And now he will never know.
+
+February, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+JOYCE KILMER
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I
+
+
+I wonder if there is any other country where the death of a young
+poet is double-column front-page news?
+
+And if poets were able to proofread their own obits, I wonder if
+any two lines would have given Joyce Kilmer more honest pride
+than these:
+
+JOYCE KILMER, POET,
+IS KILLED IN ACTION
+
+which gave many hearts a pang when they picked up the newspaper
+last Sunday morning.
+
+Joyce Kilmer died as he lived--"in action." He found life
+intensely amusing, unspeakably interesting; his energy was
+unlimited, his courage stout. He attacked life at all points,
+rapidly gathered its complexities about him, and the more
+intricate it became the more zestful he found it. Nothing
+bewildered him, nothing terrified. By the time he was thirty he
+had attained an almost unique position in literary circles. He
+lectured on poetry, he interviewed famous men of letters, he was
+poet, editor, essayist, critic, anthologist. He was endlessly
+active, full of delightful mirth and a thousand schemes for
+outwitting the devil of necessity that hunts all brainworkers.
+Nothing could quench him. He was ready to turn out a poem, an
+essay, a critical article, a lecture, at a few minutes' notice.
+He had been along all the pavements of Grub Street, perhaps the
+most exciting place of breadwinning known to the civilized man.
+From his beginning as a sales clerk in a New York bookstore
+(where, so the tale goes, by misreading the price cipher he sold
+a $150 volume for $1.50) down to the time when he was run over by
+an Erie train and dictated his weekly article for the New York
+_Times_ in hospital with three broken ribs, no difficulties or
+perplexities daunted him.
+
+But beneath this whirling activity which amused and amazed his
+friends there lay a deeper and quieter vein which was rich in its
+own passion. It is not becoming to prate of what lies in other
+men's souls; we all have our secrecies and sanctuaries, rarely
+acknowledged even to ourselves. But no one can read Joyce
+Kilmer's poems without grasping his vigorous idealism, his keen
+sense of beauty, his devout and simple religion, his clutch on
+the preciousness of common things. He loved the precarious
+bustle on Grub Street; he was of that adventurous, buoyant stuff
+that rejects hum-drum security and a pelfed and padded life. He
+always insisted that America is the very shrine and fountain of
+poetry, and this country (which is indeed pathetically eager to
+take poets to its bosom) stirred his vivid imagination. The
+romance of the commuter's train and the suburban street, of the
+delicatessen shop and the circus and the snowman in the
+yard--these were the familiar themes where he was rich and
+felicitous. Many a commuter will remember his beautiful poem "The
+12:45," bespeaking the thrill we have all felt in the shabby
+midnight train that takes us home, yearning and weary, to the
+well-beloved hearth:
+
+    What love commands, the train fulfills
+    And beautiful upon the hills
+    Are these our feet of burnished steel.
+    Subtly and certainly, I feel
+    That Glen Rock welcomes us to her.
+    And silent Ridgewood seems to stir
+    And smile, because she knows the train
+    Has brought her children back again.
+    We carry people home--and so
+    God speeds us, wheresoe'er we go.
+    The midnight train is slow and old,
+    But of it let this thing be told,
+    To its high honour be it said,
+    It carries weary folk to bed.
+
+To a man such as this, whose whole fervent and busy adventure was lit
+within by the lamplight and firelight of domestic passion, the war, with
+its broken homes and defiled sanctities, came as a personal affront.
+Both to his craving for the glamour of such a colossal drama, and to his
+sense of what was most worshipful in human life, the call was
+irresistible. Counsels of prudence and comfort were as nothing; the
+heart-shaking poetry of this nation's entry into an utterly unselfish
+war burned away all barriers. His life had been a fury of writing, but
+those who thought he had entered the war merely to make journalism about
+it were mistaken. Only a few weeks before his death he wrote:
+
+     To tell the truth, I am not interested in writing nowadays,
+     except in so far as writing is the expression of something
+     beautiful. And I see daily and nightly the expression of beauty
+     in action instead of words, and I find it more satisfactory. I am
+     a sergeant in the regimental intelligence section--the most
+     fascinating work possible--more thrills in it than in any other
+     branch, except, possibly, aviation. Wonderful life! But I don't
+     know what I'll be able to do in civilian life--unless I become a
+     fireman!
+
+As journalist and lecturer Kilmer was copious and enthusiastic rather
+than deep. He found--a good deal to his own secret mirth--women's clubs
+and poetry societies sitting earnestly at his feet, expectant to hear
+ultimate truth on deep matters. His humour prompted him to give them
+the ultimate truth they craved. If his critical judgments were not
+always heavily documented or long pondered, they were entertaining and
+pleasantly put. The earnest world of literary societies and blue-hosed
+salons lay about his feet; he flashed in it merrily, chuckling inwardly
+as he found hundreds of worthy people hanging breathless on his words. A
+kind of Kilmer cult grew apace; he had his followers and his devotees. I
+mention these things because he would have been the first to chuckle
+over them. I do not think he would want to be remembered as having taken
+all that sort of thing too seriously. It was all a delicious game--part
+of the grand joke of living. Sometimes, among his friends, he would
+begin to pontificate in his platform manner. Then he would recall
+himself, and his characteristic grin would flood his face.
+
+As a journalist, I say, he was copious; but as a poet his song was
+always prompted by a genuine gush of emotion. "A poet is only a
+glorified reporter," he used to say; he took as his favourite assignment
+the happier precincts of the human heart. As he said of Belloc, a true
+poet will never write to order--not even to his own order. He sang
+because he heard life singing all about him. His three little books of
+poems have always been dear to lovers of honest simplicity. And now
+their words will be lit henceforward by an inner and tender
+brightness--the memory of a gallant boy who flung himself finely
+against the walls of life. Where they breached he broke through and
+waved his sword laughing. Where they hurled him back he turned away,
+laughing still.
+
+
+II
+
+Kilmer wrote from France, in answer to an inquiry as to his ideas about
+poetry, "All that poetry can be expected to do is to give pleasure of a
+noble sort to its readers." He might have said "pleasure or pain of a
+noble sort."
+
+It is both pleasure and pain, of a very noble sort, that the reader will
+find in Robert Cortes Holliday's memoir, which introduces the two
+volumes of Kilmer's poems, essays, and letters. The ultimate and
+eloquent tribute to Kilmer's rich, brave, and jocund personality is that
+it has raised up so moving a testament of friendship. Mr. Holliday's
+lively and tender essay is worthy to stand among the great memorials of
+brotherly affection that have enriched our speech. To say that Kilmer
+was not a Keats is not to say that the friendship that irradiates Mr.
+Holliday's memoir was less lovely than that of Keats and Severn, for
+instance. The beauty of any human intercourse is not measured by the
+plane on which it moves.
+
+Pleasure and pain of a noble sort are woven in every fibre of this
+sparkling casting-up of the blithe years. Pleasure indeed of the
+fullest, for the chronicle abounds in the surcharged hilarity and
+affectionate humour that we have grown to expect in any matters
+connected with Joyce Kilmer. The biographer dwells with loving and
+smiling particularity on the elvish phases of the young knight-errant.
+It is by the very likeness of his tender and glowing portrait that we
+find pleasure overflowing into pain--into a wincing recognition of
+destiny's unriddled ways with men. This memory was written out of a full
+heart, with the poignance that lies in every backward human gaze. It is
+only in the backward look that the landscape's contours lie revealed in
+their true form and perspective. It is only when we have lost what was
+most dear that we know fully what it meant. That is Fate's way with us:
+it cannot be amended.
+
+There will be no need for the most querulous appraiser to find fault
+with Mr. Holliday on the score of over-eulogy. He does not try to push
+sound carpentry or ready wit into genius. Fortune and his own impetuous
+onslaught upon life cast Kilmer into the rôle of hack journalist: he
+would have claimed no other title. Yet he adorned Grub Street (that most
+fascinating of all thorny ways) with gestures and music of his own. Out
+of his glowing and busy brain he drew matter that was never dull, never
+bitter or petty or slovenly. In the fervent attack and counter-attack,
+shock and counter-shock of his strenuous days he never forgot his
+secret loyalty to fine craftsmanship. He kept half a dozen brightly
+coloured balls spinning in air at all times--verses, essays, reviews,
+lectures, introductions, interviews, anthologies, and what-not; yet each
+of these was deftly done. When he went to France and his days of hack
+work were over, when the necessities of life no longer threatened him,
+the journalistic habit fell away. It was never more than a garment, worn
+gracefully, but still only what the tailors call a business suit.
+
+In France, Kilmer wrote but a handful of pieces intended for
+publication, but at least one of them--the prose sketch "Holy
+Ireland"--showed his essential fibre. The comparative silence of his pen
+when he found himself face to face with war was a true expression. It
+bespoke the decent idealism that underlay the combats of a journalist
+wringing a living out of the tissues of a busy brain. The tender humour
+and quaint austerity of his homeward letters exhibit the man at his
+inmost. What could better the imaginative genius of the phrase in which
+he speaks of friendship developed by common dangers and hardships as "a
+fine, hearty, roaring, mirthful sort of thing, like an open fire of
+whole pine trees in a giant's castle?"
+
+The memoir and Kilmer's own letters admit us to see something of the
+spiritual phases of this man's life, whose soul found "happiness and
+quiet kind" in the Roman Catholic faith. The most secret strengths and
+weaknesses that govern men's lives are strangely unknown to many of
+their intimates: one wonders how many of Kilmer's associates on the
+_Times_ staff knew of his habit of stopping daily at the Church of the
+Holy Innocents, near the newspaper office, to pray. It was the sorrow of
+personal affliction that brought Kilmer to the Catholic Church. Shortly
+after being received into that communion he wrote:
+
+     Just off Broadway on the way from the Hudson Tube Station to the
+     Times Building, there is a church called the Church of the Holy
+     Innocents. Since it is in the heart of the Tenderloin, this name
+     is strangely appropriate--for there surely is need of youth and
+     innocence. Well, every morning for months I stopped on my way to
+     the office and prayed in this church for faith. When faith did
+     come, it came, I think, by way of my little paralyzed daughter.
+     Her lifeless hands led me; I think her tiny feet still know
+     beautiful paths.
+
+Mr. Holliday does well to point out that Kilmer was almost unique in
+this country as a representative of the Bellocian School of Catholic
+journalism, in which piety and mirth dwell so comfortably together;
+though he might have mentioned T. A. Daly as an older and subtler master
+of devout merriment, dipping in his own inkwell rather than in any
+imported bottles. It is to Belloc, of course, and to Gilbert
+Chesterton, that one must go to learn the secret of Kilmer's literary
+manner. Yet, as Holliday affirms, the similarity is due as much to an
+affinity of mind with these Englishmen as to any eagerness to imitate.
+Kilmer was like them in being essentially a humorist. One glance at his
+face, with its glowing red-brown eyes (the colour of port wine), and the
+twitching in-drawn corners of the mouth, gave the observer an impression
+of benignant drollery. Mr. Holliday well says: "People have made very
+creditable reputations as humorists who never wrote anything like as
+humorous essays as those of Joyce Kilmer. They fairly reek with the joy
+of life."
+
+"He that lives by the pen shall perish by the pen," the biographer tells
+us, quoting James Huneker. "For a sapling poet, within a few short years
+and by the hard business of words, to attain to a secretary and a butler
+and a family of, at length, four children, is a modern Arabian Nights
+Tale." Aye, indeed! But Joyce Kilmer will have as genuine a claim on
+remembrance by reason of his friends' love as in anything his own hand
+penned. And what an encircling, almost paternal, gentleness there is in
+the picture of the young poet as a salesman at Scribner's bookstore:
+
+     His smile, never far away, when it came was winning, charming. It
+     broke like spring sunshine, it was so fresh and warm and clear.
+     And there was noticeable then in his eyes a light, a quiet glow,
+     which marked him as a spirit not to be forgotten. So tenderly
+     boyish was he in effect that his confrères among the book clerks
+     accepted with difficulty the story that he was married. When it
+     was told that he had a son they gasped their incredulity. And
+     when one day this extraordinary elfin sprite remarked that at the
+     time of his honeymoon he had had a beard they felt (I remember)
+     that the world was without power to astonish them further.
+
+And even more striking is what is implied in the narrative: that when
+this "elfin sprite," this gently nurtured young man of bookish pursuits,
+took up the art of war, he gloried in his association with a rip-roaring
+regiment recruited mainly from hard-handed fellows of the type we may
+call (with no atom of disrespect) roughnecks. Hardships and exertions
+familiar to them were new to him, but he set himself to win their love
+and respect, and did so. He was not content until he had found his way
+into the most exhausting and hazardous branch of the whole job. He said,
+again and again, that he would rather be a sergeant with the 69th than a
+lieutenant with any other outfit. There was a heart of heroism in the
+"elfin sprite." The same dashing insouciance that dictated the weekly
+article for his paper when in hospital with three broken ribs after
+being run down by a train was hardened and steeled in the sergeant who
+nightly tore his uniform into ribbons by crawling out through the barbed
+wire.
+
+Laughter and comradeship and hearty meals clustered about Kilmer:
+wherever he touched the grindstone of life there flew up a merry shower
+of sparks. There is convincing testimony to the courage and beauty that
+lay quiet at the heart of this singer who said that the poet is only a
+glorified reporter, and wished he had written "Casey at the Bat."
+
+Let us spare his memory the glib and customary dishonesty that says "He
+died as he would have wished to." No man wishes to die--at least, no
+poet does. To part with the exhilarating bustle and tumult, the blueness
+of the sky, the sunlight that tingles on well-known street corners, the
+plumber's bills and the editor's checks, the mirths of fellowship and
+the joys of homecoming when lamps are lit--all this is too close a fibre
+to be stripped easily from the naked heart. But the poet must go where
+the greatest songs are singing. Perhaps he finds, after all, that life
+and death are part of the same rhyme.
+
+
+
+
+TALES OF TWO CITIES
+
+I. PHILADELPHIA
+
+
+
+
+AN EARLY TRAIN
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The course of events has compelled me for several months to catch an
+early train at Broad Street three times a week. I call it an "early"
+train, but, of course, these matters are merely relative; 7:45 are the
+figures illuminated over the gateway--not so very precocious, perhaps;
+but quite rathe enough for one of Haroun-al-Raschid temper, who seldom
+seeks the "oblivion of repose" (Boswell's phrase) before 1 A. M.
+
+Nothing is more pathetic in human nature than its faculty of
+self-deception. Winding up the alarm clock (the night before) I meditate
+as to the exact time to elect for its disturbing buzz. If I set it at
+6:30 that will give me plenty of time to shave and reach the station
+with leisure for a pleasurable cup of coffee. But (so frail is the human
+will) when I wake at 6:30 I will think to myself, "There is plenty of
+time," and probably turn over for "another five minutes." This will mean
+a hideous spasm of awakening conscience about 7:10--an unbathed and
+unshaven tumult of preparation, malisons on the shoe manufacturers who
+invented boots with eyelets all the way up, a frantic sprint to
+Sixteenth Street and one of those horrid intervals that shake the very
+citadel of human reason when I ponder whether it is safer to wait for a
+possible car or must start hotfoot for the station at once. All this is
+generally decided by setting the clock for 6:50. Then, if I am spry, I
+can be under way by 7:20 and have a little time to be philosophical at
+the corner of Sixteenth and Pine. Of the vile seizures of passion that
+shake the bosom when a car comes along, seems about to halt, and then
+passes without stopping--of the spiritual scars these crises leave on
+the soul of the victim, I cannot trust myself to speak. It does not
+always happen, thank goodness. One does not always have to throb madly
+up Sixteenth, with head retorted over one's shoulder to see if a car may
+still be coming, while the legs make what speed they may on sliddery
+paving. Sometimes the car does actually appear and one buffets aboard
+and is buried in a brawny human mass. There is a stop, and one wonders
+fiercely whether a horse is down ahead, and one had better get out at
+once and run for it. Tightly wedged in the heart of the car, nothing can
+be seen. It is all very nerve-racking, and I study, for quietness of
+mind, the familiar advertising card of the white-bearded old man
+announcing "It is really very remarkable that a cigar of this quality
+can be had for seven cents."
+
+Suppose, however, that fortune is with me. I descend at Market Street,
+and the City Hall dial, shining softly in the fast paling blue of
+morning, marks 7:30. Now I begin to enjoy myself. I reflect on the
+curious way in which time seems to stand still during the last minutes
+before the departure of a train. The half-hour between 7 and 7:30 has
+vanished in a gruesome flash. Now follow fifteen minutes of exquisite
+dalliance. Every few moments I look suddenly and savagely at the clock
+to see if it can be playing some saturnine trick. No, even now it is
+only 7:32. In the lively alertness of the morning mind a whole wealth of
+thought and accurate observation can be crammed into a few seconds. I
+halt for a moment at the window of that little lunchroom on Market
+Street (between Sixteenth and Fifteenth) where the food comes swiftly
+speeding from the kitchen on a moving belt. I wonder whether to have
+breakfast there. It is such fun to see a platter of pale yellow
+scrambled eggs sliding demurely beside the porcelain counter and
+whipped dextrously off in front of you by the presiding waiter. But the
+superlative coffee of the Broad Street Station lunch counter generally
+lures me on.
+
+What mundane joy can surpass the pleasure of approaching the station
+lunch counter, with full ten minutes to satisfy a morning appetite!
+"Morning, colonel," says the waiter, recognizing a steady customer.
+"Wheatcakes and coffee," you cry. With one deft gesture, it seems, he
+has handed you a glass brimming with ice water and spread out a snowy
+napkin. In another moment here is the coffee, with the generous jug of
+cream. You splash in a large lump of ice to make it cool enough to
+drink. Perhaps the seat next you is empty, and you put your books and
+papers on it, thus not having to balance them gingerly on your knees.
+All round you is a lusty savour of satisfaction, the tinkle of cash
+registers, napkins fluttering and flashing across the counters, coloured
+waiters darting to and fro, great clouds of steam rising where the big
+dish covers are raised on the cooking tables. You see the dark-brown
+coffee gently quivering in the glass gauge of the nickel boiler. Then
+here come the wheatcakes. Nowhere else on earth, I firmly believe, are
+they cooked to just that correct delicacy of golden brown colour;
+nowhere else are they so soft and light of texture, so hot, so
+beautifully overlaid with a smooth, almost intangible suggestion of
+crispness. Two golden butter pats salute the eye, and a jug of syrup.
+It is now 7:38.
+
+As everyone knows, the correct thing is to start immediately on the
+first cake, using only syrup. The method of dealing with the other two
+is classic. One lifts the upper one and places a whole pat of butter on
+the lower cake. Then one replaces the upper cake upon the lower, leaving
+the butter to its fate. In that hot and enviable embrace the butter
+liquefies and spreads itself, gently anointing the field of coming
+action. Upon the upper shield one smilingly distributes the second
+butter pat, knifed off into small slices for greater speed of melting.
+By the time the first cake has been eaten, with the syrup, the other two
+will be ready for manifest destiny. The butter will be docile and
+submissive. Now, after again making sure of the time (7:40) the syrup is
+brought into play and the palate has the congenial task of determining
+whether the added delight of melting butter outweighs the greater
+hotness and primal thrill of the first cake which was glossed with the
+syrup only. You drain your coffee to the dregs; gaze pityingly on those
+rushing in to snap up a breakfast before the 8 o'clock leaves for New
+York, pay your check, and saunter out to the train. It is 7:43.
+
+This, to be sure, is only the curtain-raiser to the pleasures to follow.
+This has been a physical and carnal pleasure. Now follow delights of the
+mind. In the great gloomy shed wafts and twists of thick steam are
+jetting upward, heavily coiled in the cold air. In the train you smoke
+two pipes and read the morning paper. Then you are set down at
+Haverford. It is like a fairyland of unbelief. Trees and shrubbery are
+crusted and sheathed in crystal, lucid like chandeliers in the flat,
+thin light. Along the fence, as you go up the hill, you marvel at the
+scarlet berries in the hedge, gleaming through the glassy ribs of the
+bushes. The old willow tree by the Conklin gate is etched against the
+sky like a Japanese drawing--it has a curious greenish colour beneath
+that gray sky. There is some mystery in all this. It seems more
+beautiful than a merely mortal earth vexed by sinful men has any right
+to be. There is some ice palace in Hans Andersen which is something like
+it. In a little grove, the boughs, bent down with their shining
+glaziery, creak softly as they sway in the moving air. The evergreens
+are clotted with lumps and bags of transparent icing, their fronds sag
+to the ground. A pale twinkling blueness sifts over distant vistas. The
+sky whitens in the south and points of light leap up to the eye as the
+wind turns a loaded branch.
+
+A certain seriousness of demeanour is noticeable on the generally
+unfurrowed brows of student friends. Midyears are on and one sees them
+walking, freighted with precious and perishable erudition, toward the
+halls of trial. They seem a little oppressed with care, too preoccupied
+to relish the entrancing pallor of this crystallized Eden. One carries,
+gravely, a cushion and an alarm clock. Not such a bad theory of life,
+perhaps--to carry in the crises of existence a cushion of philosophy and
+an alarum of resolution.
+
+
+
+
+RIDGE AVENUE
+
+
+One of the odd things about human beings is, that wherever they happen
+to live they accept it as a matter of course. In various foreign cities
+I have often been amused (as every traveller has) to see people going
+about their affairs just as though it were natural and unquestionable
+for them to be there. It is just the same at home. Everyone I see on the
+streets seems to be not at all amazed at living here instead of (let us
+say) Indianapolis or Nashville. I envy my small Urchin his sense of the
+extreme improbability of everything. When he gets on a trolley car he
+draws a long breath and looks around in ecstasy at the human scenery. I
+am teaching him to say in a loud, clear tone, as he gets on the car,
+"Look at all the human beings!" in the same accent of amazement that he
+uses when he goes to the Zoo. Perhaps in this way he will preserve the
+happy faculty of being surprised.
+
+It is an agreeable thing to keep the same sense of surprise in one's
+home town that one would have in a strange city. You will find much to
+startle you if you keep your eyes open. Yesterday, for instance, I was
+lucky enough to meet a gentleman who had stood only a few feet away from
+Lincoln when he made the Gettysburg Speech. Then I found that in a
+certain cafeteria which I frequent the price you pay for your lunch is
+always just one cent less than that punched on the check. The cashier
+explained that this always gives a pleasant surprise to the customers,
+and has proved such a good advertising dodge that the proprietor made it
+a habit. And I saw, in a clothing dealer's window on Ninth Street, some
+fuzzy caps for men, mottled purple and ochre, that proved that the
+adventurous spirit has not died in the breast of the male sex.
+
+There is much to exercise the eye in a voyage along Ridge Avenue.
+Approaching by way of Ninth Street, one sees in the window of a barber
+shop the new contract that the employing barbers have drawn up with
+their journeymen. This agreement shows a sound sense of human equities,
+proclaiming as it does that "the owner must not do no act to injure the
+barber personal earnings." It suddenly occurred to me, what I had not
+thought of before, how the barbers of Great Britain must have grieved
+when a London newspaper got up (some years ago) an agitation in favour
+of every man in England raising a beard in memory of King Edward. The
+plan was that the money thus saved was to be devoted to building--I had
+almost said "growing"--a battleship, to be named after the Merry
+Monarch. Of course, one should not speak of raising a beard, but of
+lowering it. However----
+
+Ridge Avenue begins at Ninth and Vine, in a mood of depression. Perhaps
+the fact that it runs out toward the city's greatest collection of
+cemeteries has made it morbidly conscious of human perishability. At any
+rate, it starts among pawnshops, old clothing and furniture, and bottles
+of Old Virginia Bitters, the Great Man Restorer. The famous National
+Theatre at Callowhill Street has become a garage; it is queer to see the
+old proscenium arch and gilded ceiling dustily vaulted over a fleet of
+motortrucks. After a wilderness of railway yards one comes to a curious
+bit in the 1100 block; a little brick tunnel that bends around into a
+huddle of backyards and small houses, where a large green parrot was
+stooping and nodding on a pile of old boxes. This little scene is
+overlooked by the tall brown spires of the Church of the Assumption on
+Spring Garden Street.
+
+There is matter for tarrying at the Spring Garden Street crossing. Here
+is an ambitious fountain built by the bequest of Mary Rebecca Darby
+Smith, with the carving by J. J. Boyle picturing another Rebecca (she of
+Genesis xxiv, 14) giving a drink to Abraham's servant and his camels. It
+is carved in the bronze that the donor gave the fountain "To refresh the
+weary and thirsty, both man and beast," so it is disconcerting to find
+it dry, as dry as the inns along the way. The horse trough is boarded
+over and thirsting equines go up to Broad Street for a draught. The
+seat by the fountain was occupied by a man reading the New York
+_Journal_, always a depressing sight.
+
+Across from the fountain is one of the best magazine and stationery
+shops in the city. Here I overheard a conversation which I reproduce
+textually. "What you doing, reading?" said one to another. "Yes, reading
+about the biggest four-flusher in the Yew-nited States," said he,
+looking over an afternoon paper which had just come in. "Who do you
+mean?" "Penrose. Say if it was a Republican in the White House, theyda
+passed the treaty long ago." The proprietor of this shop is a humorist.
+Someone came in asking for a certain brand of cigarettes. He does not
+sell tobacco. "Next door," he said, and added: "And you'll find some
+over on the fountain."
+
+Ridge Avenue specializes in tobacco shops, where you will find many
+brands that require a strong head. Red Snapper, Panhandle Scrap, Pinch
+Hit, Red Horse, Brown's Mule, Jolly Tar, Penn Statue Cuttings, Nickel
+Cross Cut, Cotton Ball Twist. In the shop windows you will see those
+photographs illustrating current events, the two favourites just now
+being a picture of Mike Gilhooley, the famous stowaway, gazing
+plaintively at the profile of New York, and "Jack Dempsey Goes the
+Limit," where Jack signs up for a $1,000 war-savings certificate. One
+wonders if Jack's kind of warfare is really so profitable after all.
+
+There are a number of little side excursions from the avenue that repay
+scrutiny. Lemon Street, for instance, where in a lane of old brown
+wooden houses some children were playing in an empty wagon, with the
+rounded tower of the Rodef Shalom synagogue looming in the background.
+Best of all is Melon Street and its modest tributary, Park
+Avenue--stretches of quiet little brick homes with green and yellow
+shutters and mottled gray marble steps. These little houses have the
+serene and sunny air so typical of Philadelphia byways. Through their
+narrow side entrances one sees glimpses of green in backyards. In the
+front windows move the gently swaying faces of grandmothers, lulled in
+the to and fro of a rocking chair. There are shining brass knobs and
+bell-pulls; rubber plants on the sills, or perhaps a small bowl of
+goldfish with a white china swan floating. In one window was a sign
+"Vacancies." Over it hung a faded service flag with a golden star. Who
+could phrase the pathos of these two things, side by side?
+
+At Broad Street, Ridge Avenue leaps up with a spurt of high life. In the
+window of a hotel dining room a gentleman sat eating his lunch,
+stevedoring a buttered roll with such gusto that one felt tempted to
+applaud. There are the white pillars of a bank and the battleship gray
+of the Salvation Army headquarters. Beyond Broad, the avenue spruces up
+a bit and enters upon a vivacious phase. Dogs are frequent: white bull
+terriers lie sunning in the shop windows. Offers to lend money are
+enticing. There is a fascinating slate yard at 1525, where great gray
+slabs lie in the sun, a temptation to urchins with a bit of chalk. In
+the warm bask of the afternoon there rises a pleasing aroma of fruits
+and vegetables piled up in baskets and crates on the pavement. Grapes
+give off a delectable savour in the golden air. Elderly ladies are out
+in force to do the marketing, and their eyes are bright with the
+bargaining passion. Round the windows of a ten-cent store, most
+fascinating of all human spectacles, they congregate and compare notes.
+A fruit dealer has an ingenious stunt to attract attention. On his cash
+register lies a weird-looking rotund little fish--a butter fish, he
+calls it--which has a face not unlike that of Fatty Arbuckle. Either
+this fish inflates itself or he has blown it full of air in some
+ingenious manner, for it presents a grotesque appearance, and many
+ladies stop to inquire. Then he spoofs them gently. "Sure," he says,
+"it's a jitney fish. It lives on the cash register. It can fly, it can
+bite, it can talk, and it likes money."
+
+At the corner of Wylie Street stands an old gray house with a mansard
+roof and gable windows. Against it is a vivid store of fruit glowing in
+the sun, red and purple and yellow. Here, or on Vineyard Street, one
+turns off to enter the quaint triangular settlement of Francisville.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNIVERSITY AND THE URCHIN
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Sunday afternoon is by old tradition dedicated to the taking of Urchins
+out to taste the air, and indeed there is no more agreeable pastime. And
+so, as the Urchin sat in his high chair and thoughtfully shovelled his
+spoon through meat chopped remarkably small and potatoes mashed in that
+curious fashion that produces a mass of soft, curly tendrils, his
+curators discussed the question of where he should be taken.
+
+It was the first Sunday in March--mild and soft and tinctured with
+spring. "There's the botanic garden at the University," I suggested.
+The Urchin settled it by rattling his spoon on the plate and sliding
+several inches of potato into his lap. "Go see garden!" he cried. With
+the generous tastes of twenty-seven months he cares very little where he
+is taken; he can find fascination in anything; but something about the
+word "garden" seemed to allure him. So a little later when he had been
+duly habited in brown leggings, his minute brown overcoat, and white hat
+with ribbons behind it, he and his curators set out. The Urchin was in
+excellent spirits, for he had been promised a ride on a trolley car--a
+glorious adventure. In one pocket he carried his private collection of
+talismans, including a horse-chestnut and a picture of a mouse. Also,
+against emergencies, a miniature handkerchief with a teddy bear
+embroidered in one corner and a safety pin. The expedition may be deemed
+to have been a success, as none of these properties were called upon or
+even remembered.
+
+The car we boarded did not take us just where we expected to go, but
+that made little difference to the Urchin, who gazed steadfastly out of
+the window at a panorama of shabby streets, and offered no comment
+except one of extreme exultation when we passed a large poster of a cow.
+Admirably docile, he felt confident that the unusual conjunction of both
+arbiters of destiny and an impressive trolley car would in the end
+produce something extremely worth while. We sped across Gray's Ferry
+bridge--it seems strange to think that region was once so quiet, green,
+and rustic--transferred to another car on Woodland Avenue, past the
+white medley of tombstones in Woodland Cemetery, and got off at the
+entrance to the dormitory quadrangles at Thirty-seventh Street. We
+entered through the archway--the Urchin's first introduction to an
+academic atmosphere. "This is the University," I said to him severely,
+and he was much impressed. As is his way, he conducted himself with
+extreme sobriety until he should get the hang of this new experience and
+see what it was all about. I knew from the serene gold sparkle of his
+brown eyes that there was plenty of larking spirit in him, waiting until
+he knew whether it was safe to give it play. He held my hand
+punctiliously while waiting to see what manner of place this University
+was.
+
+A college quadrangle on a Sunday afternoon has a feeling all its own.
+Thin tinklings of mandolins eddy from open windows, in which young men
+may be seen propped up against bright-coloured cushions, always smoking,
+and sometimes reading with an apparent zeal which might deceive a few
+onlookers. But the slightest sound of footfalls on the pavement outside
+their rooms causes these heads to turn and scan the passers. There is
+always a vague hope in these youthful breasts that some damsel of
+notable fairness may have strayed within the bastions. Groups of ladies
+of youth and beauty do often walk demurely through the courts, and may
+be sure of hearing admiring whistles shrilled through the sunny air.
+When a lady walks through a college quadrangle and hears no sibilation,
+let her know sadly that first youth is past. Even the sedate
+guardianship of Scribe and Urchin did not forfeit one Lady of Destiny
+her proper homage of tuneful testimonial. So be it ever!
+
+One who inhabited college quadrangles not so immeasurably long ago, and
+remembers with secret pain how massively old, experienced, and worldly
+wise he then thought himself, can never resist a throb of amazement at
+the entertaining youthfulness of these young monks. How quaintly
+juvenile they are, and how oddly that assumption of grave superiority
+sits upon their golden brows! With what an inimitable air of wisdom,
+cynicism, ancientry, learned aloofness and desire to be observed do they
+stroll to and fro across the quads, so keenly aware in their inmost
+bosoms of the presence of visitors and determined to grant an appearance
+of mingled wisdom, great age, and sad doggishness! What a devil-may-care
+swing to the stride, what a nonchalance in the perpetual wreath of
+cigarette smoke, what a carefully assumed bearing of one carrying great
+wisdom lightly and easily casting it aside for the moment in the pursuit
+of some waggish trifle. "Here," those very self-conscious young visages
+seem to betray, "is one who might tell you all about the Holy Roman
+Empire, and yet is, for the moment, diverting himself with a mere
+mandolin." And yet, as the Lady of Destiny shrewdly observed, it is a
+pity they should mar their beautiful quadrangles with orange peel and
+scraps of paper.
+
+We walked for some time through those stately courts of Tudor brick and
+then passed down the little inclined path to the botanic garden, where
+irises and fresh green spikes are already pushing up through the damp
+earth. A pale mellow sunlight lay upon the gravel walks and the Urchin
+resumed his customary zeal. He ran here and there along the byways,
+examined the rock borders with an air of scientific questioning, and
+watched the other children playing by the muddy pond. We found shrubbery
+swelling with buds, also flappers walking hatless and blanched with
+talcum, accompanied by Urchins of a larger growth. Both these phenomena
+we took to be a sign of the coming equinox.
+
+Returning to the dormitory quadrangles, we sat down on a wooden bench to
+rest, while the Urchin, now convinced that a university is nothing to be
+awed by, scampered about on the turf. His eye was a bright jewel of
+roguishness, for he thought that in trotting about the grass he was
+doing something supremely wicked. He has been carefully trained not to
+err on the grass of the city square to which he is best accustomed, so
+this surprising and unchecked revelry quite went to his head. Across and
+about those wide plots of sodden turf he trotted and chuckled, a small,
+quaint mortal with his hat ribbons fluttering. Cheering whistles hailed
+him from open windows above, and he smiled to himself with grave
+dignity. Apparently, like a distinguished statesman, he regarded these
+tributes not as meant for himself, but for the great body of childhood
+he innocently represents, and indeed from which his applauders are not
+so inextricably severed. With the placid and unconscious happiness of a
+puppy he careered and meandered, without motive or method. Perhaps his
+underlying thought of a university, if he has any, is that it is a place
+where no one says "Keep Off the Grass," and, intellectually speaking,
+that would not be such a bad motto for an institution of learning.
+
+I don't know whether Doctor Tait McKenzie so intended it, but his
+appealing and beautiful statue of Young Franklin in front of the
+University gymnasium is admirably devised for the delight of small
+Urchins. While their curators take pleasure in the bronze itself, the
+Urchin may clamber on the different levels of the base, which is nicely
+adapted for the mountaineering capacity of twenty-seven months. The low
+brick walls before the gymnasium and the University museum are also just
+right for an Urchin who has recently learned the fascination of walking
+on something raised above the ground, provided there is a curator near
+by to hold his hand. And then, as one walks away toward the South
+Street bridge an observant Urchin may spy the delightful spectacle of a
+freight train travelling apparently in midair. Some day, one hopes, all
+that fine tract of open space leading from the museum down to the
+railroad tracks may perhaps be beautified as a park or an addition to
+the University's quadrangle system. I don't know who owns it, but its
+architectural possibilities must surely make the city-planner's mouth
+water.
+
+By this time the Urchin was beginning to feel a bit weary, and was glad
+of a lift on a parental shoulder. Then a Lombard Street car came along
+and took us up halfway across the bridge. So ended the Urchin's first
+introduction to a university education.
+
+
+
+
+PINE STREET
+
+
+Our neighbourhood is very genteel. I doubt if any one who has not lived
+in Philadelphia can imagine how genteel it is. Visitors from out of town
+are wont to sigh with rapture when they see our trim blocks of tall
+brick dwellings--that even cornice running in a smooth line for several
+hundred yards really is quite a sight--and exclaim, "Oh, I wish we had
+something like this in New York!" But our gentility is a little
+self-conscious, for we live on the very frontier of a region, darker in
+complexion, which is far from scrupulous in deportment. Uproarious and
+naïve are the humours of South Street, lying just behind us. Stanleys
+have gone exploring thither and come back with merry tales. South Street
+on a bright evening, its myriad barber shops gleaming with lathered
+dusky cheeks, wafting the essence of innumerable pomades and lotions,
+that were a Travel indeed. On South Street the veins of life run close
+to the surface.
+
+We are no less human on our street, but it takes a bit more study to get
+at the secret. There is a certain reticence about us. It would take an
+earthquake to cause much fraternization along Pine Street. Perhaps it
+is because three houses out of every four bear the tablets of doctors.
+The average layman fears to stop and speak to his neighbour for fear it
+will develop into a professional matter. We board up our front windows
+at night with heavy wooden shutters. We have no druggists, only
+"apothecaries." These apothecaries are closed on Sundays. They sell
+stamps in little isinglass capsules, to be quite sanitary, two twos in a
+capsule for five cents. In their shops you can still get soda water with
+"plain cream" and shaved ice, such as was customary twenty-five years
+ago. When our doctors go away for the summer, someone comes twice a week
+from June to October to polish up the little silver name plate. It is
+the custom in our neighbourhood (so one observes through drawing room
+windows) to have reading lamps with rosy pink shades and at least two
+beautiful daughters of débutante age. I hope I am not unjust, but our
+street looks to me like the kind of place where people take warm baths,
+in a roomy old china tub, on Sunday afternoons. After that, they go
+downstairs and play a hymn on the piano, at twilight.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+There are a number of very odd features about our neighbourhood. There
+is a large schoolhouse at the next corner, but as far as I can see, it
+is not used as a school, not for children, at any rate. Sometimes, about
+8 o'clock in the evening, I see the building gloriously illuminated, and
+a lonely lady stooped and assiduous at a table. She seems quite
+solitary. Perhaps her researches are so poignant that the school board
+has prescribed entire silence. But midway down the block is a very jolly
+little private school, to which very genteel children may be seen
+approaching early in the morning. The little girls come with a bustle of
+starch, on foot, accompanied by governesses; the small boys arrive in
+limousines. They are small boys dressed very much in the English manner,
+with heavy woollen stockings ending just below the knee. They probably
+do not realize that their tailor has carefully planned them to look like
+dear little English boys. Then there is a very mysterious small theatre
+near by. If it were a movie theatre, what a boon it would be! But no, it
+is devoted to a strange cult called the Religion of Business, which
+meets there on Sundays. Before that, there was a Korean congress there.
+There is a lovely green room in this theatre, but not much long green in
+the box office. Philadelphia prefers Al Jolson to Hank Ibsen.
+
+We have our tincture of vie de Bohème, though, in our little French
+table d'hôte, a thoroughly atmospheric place. Delightful Madame B., with
+her racy philosophy of life, what delicious soups and salads she serves!
+Happy indeed are those who have learned the way to her little tables,
+and heard her cheerful cry "À la cuisine!" when one of her small dogs
+prowls into the dining room. Equally unique is the old curiosity shop
+near by, one of the few genuine "notion" shops left in the city (though
+there is a delightful one on Market Street near Seventeenth, to enter
+which is to step into a country village). This is just the kind of shop
+bought by the old gentleman in one of Frank Stockton's agreeable tales,
+"Mr. Tolman," in the volume called "The Magic Egg". The proprietress,
+charming and conversable lady, will sell you anything in the "notions"
+line, from a paper of pins to garter elastic. Then there is the laundry,
+whose patrons carry on a jovial game known as "Looking for Your Own."
+Every week, by some cheery habit of confusion, the lists are lost, and
+one hunts through shelves of neatly piled and crisply laundered garments
+to pick out one's own collars, pyjamas, or whatever it may be. The
+amusing humour of this pastime must be experienced to be understood.
+
+The little cigar and magazine shop on the corner is the political and
+social focus of the neighbourhood. I shall never forget the pallid and
+ghastly countenance of the newsdealer when the rumour first went the
+rounds that "Hampy" was elected. Every evening a little gathering of
+local sages meets in the shop; on tilted chairs, in a haze of tobacco,
+they while the hours away. In tobacco the host adheres to the standard
+blends, but in literature he is enterprising. Until recently this was
+the only place I know in Philadelphia where one could get the
+_Illustrated London News_ every week.
+
+There are twinges of modernity going on along our street. Some of the
+old houses have been remodeled into apartments. There is an "electric
+shoe repairer" just round the corner. But the antique dealers and
+plumbers for which the street is famous still hold sway; the fine old
+brick pavement still collects rain water in its numerous dimpled
+hollows, and the yellowish marble horse-blocks adorn the curb. The nice
+shabby stables in the little side streets have not yet been turned into
+studios by artists, and the neighbourhood's youngest urchins set sail
+for Rittenhouse Square every morning on their fleet of "kiddie-cars."
+Their small stout legs, twinkling along the pavements in white gaiters
+on a wintry day, are a pleasant sight. Even our urchins are notably
+genteel. Surrounded on all sides by the medical profession, they are
+reared on registered milk and educator crackers. If Philadelphia ever
+betrays its soul, it does so on this delightful, bland, and genteel
+highway.
+
+
+
+
+PERSHING IN PHILADELPHIA
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The pavement in front of Independence Hall was a gorgeous jumble of
+colours. The great silken flags of the Allies, carried by vividly
+costumed ladies, burned and flapped in the wind. On a pedestal stood the
+Goddess of Liberty, in rich white draperies that seemed fortunately of
+sufficient texture to afford some warmth, for the air was cool. She
+graciously turned round for Walter Crail, the photographer of our
+contemporary, the _Evening Public Ledger_, to take a shot at her.
+
+Down Chestnut Street came a rising tide of cheers. A squadron of mounted
+police galloped by. Then the First City Troop, with shining swords.
+Fred Eckersburg, the State House engineer, was fidgeting excitedly
+inside the hall, in a new uniform. This was Fred's greatest day, but we
+saw that he was worried about Martha Washington, the Independence Hall
+cat. He was apprehensive lest the excitement should give her a fit or a
+palsy. Independence Hall is no longer the quiet old place Martha used to
+enjoy before the war.
+
+The Police Band struck up "Hail to the Chief." Yells and cheers burst
+upward from the ground like an explosion. Here he was, standing in the
+car. There was the famous chin, the Sam Browne belt, the high laced
+boots with spurs. Even the tan gloves carried in the left hand. There
+was the smile, without which no famous man is properly equipped for
+public life. There was Governor Sproul's placid smile, too, but the
+Mayor seemed too excited to smile. Rattle, rattle, rattle went the
+shutters of the photographers. Up the scarlet lane of carpet came the
+general. His manner has a charming, easy grace. He saluted each one of
+the fair ladies garbed in costumes of our Allies, but taking care not to
+linger too long in front of any one of them lest any embracing should
+get started. A pattering of tiger lilies or some such things came
+dropping down from above. He passed into the hall, which was cool and
+smelt like a wedding with a musk of flowers.
+
+While the Big Chief was having a medal presented to him inside the hall
+we managed to scuttle round underneath the grand stand and take up a
+pencil of vantage just below the little pulpit where the general was to
+speak. Here the crowd groaned against a bulwark of stout policemen.
+Philadelphia cops, bless them, are the best tempered in the world. (How
+Boston must envy us.) Genially two gigantic bluecoats made room against
+the straining hawser for young John Fisher, aged eleven, of 332
+Greenwich Street. John is a small, freckle-faced urchin. It was amusing
+to see him thrusting his eager little beezer between the vast, soft,
+plushy flanks of two patrolmen. He had been there over two hours waiting
+for just this adventure. Then, to assert the equality of the sexes,
+Mildred Dubivitch, aged eleven, and Eva Ciplet, aged nine, managed to
+insert themselves between the chinks in the line of cops. An old lady
+more than eighty years old was sitting placidly in a small chair just
+inside the ropes. She had been in the square more than five hours, and
+the police had found her a seat. "Are you going to put Pershing's name
+in, too?" asked John as we noted his address.
+
+Independence Square never knew a more thrilling fifteen minutes. The
+trees were tossing and bending in the thrilling blue air. There was a
+bronzy tint in their foliage, as though they were putting on olive drab
+in honour of the general. Great balloons of silver clouds scoured across
+the cobalt sky. At one minute to 11 Pershing appeared at the top of the
+stand. The whole square, massed with people, shook with cheers.
+
+Had it been any other man we would have said the general was frightened.
+He came down the aisle of the stand with his delightful, easy, smiling
+swing; but he looked shrewdly about, with a narrow-eyed, puckered gaze.
+He was plainly a little flabbergasted. He seemed taken aback by the
+greatness of Philadelphia's voice. He said something to himself. On his
+lips it looked like "What the deuce," or something of similar purport.
+He sat down on a chair beside Governor Sproul. Not more than four feet
+away, amazed at our own audacity, we peered over the floor of the stand.
+
+He was paler than we expected. He looked a bit tired. Speaking as a
+father, we were pleased to note the absence of Warren, who was (we hope)
+getting a good sleep somewhere. We had a good look at the renowned chin,
+which is well worth study. It must be a hard chin to shave. It juts
+upward, reaching a line exactly below the brim of his cap. Below his
+crescent moustache there is no lower lip visible: it is tucked and
+folded in by the rising thrust of the jaw. It is this which gives him
+the "grim" aspect which every reader of the papers hears about. He is
+grim, there's no doubt about it, with the grimness of a man going
+through a tough ordeal. "I can see him all right," squeaked little John
+Fisher, "but he doesn't see me." The first two rows of seats at the
+right of the aisle were crammed with generals, two-star and three-star.
+From our lowly station we could see a grand panorama of mahogany leather
+boots and the flaring curves of riding breeches. It was a great day for
+Sam Browne. The thought came to us that has reached us before. The
+higher you go in the A. E. F. the more the officers are tailored after
+the English manner. It is the finest proof of international cousinship.
+When England and America wear the same kind of clothes, alliance is knit
+solid.
+
+Pershing sat with his palms on his knees. He looked worried. There was a
+wavering crease down his lean cheeks. The plumply genial countenance of
+Governor Sproul next to him was an odd contrast to that dry, hard face.
+The bell in the tower tolled eleven times. He stood up for the
+photographers. Walter Crail, appearing from somewhere, sprang up on the
+parapet facing the general. "Look this way!" he shouted as the general
+turned toward some movie men. That will be Walter's first cry when he
+gets to heaven, or wherever. Mayor Smith's face was pallid with
+excitement. His nicely draped trouserings, which were only six inches
+from our notebook, quivered slightly as he said fifteen words of
+introduction.
+
+As Pershing stood up to speak the crowd surged forward. The general was
+worried. "Don't, don't! Somebody will get hurt!" he called sharply. Then
+Mayor Smith surged forward also and said something to the police about
+watching the crowd.
+
+The general took off his cap. Holding it in his left hand (with the
+gloves) he patted his close-cropped hair nervously. He frowned. He began
+to speak.
+
+The speech has already been covered by our hated rivals. We will not
+repeat it, save to say that it was as crisp, clean-cut, and pointed as
+his chin. He was nervous, as we could see by the clenching and
+unclenching of his hands. His voice is rather high. We liked him for not
+being a suave and polished speaker. He gestured briskly with a pointing
+forefinger, and pronounced the word _patriotic_ with a short
+A--"pattriotic." Later he stumbled over it again and got it out as
+_patterotism_. We liked him again for that. He doesn't have to pronounce
+it, anyway. We liked him best of all for the unconscious slip he made.
+"This reception," he said, "I understand is for the splendid soldiery of
+America that played such an important part in the war with our Allies."
+A respectful ripple of laughter passed over the stand at this, but he
+did not notice it. He was fighting too hard to think what to say next.
+We liked him, too, for saying "such an important part." A man who had
+been further away from the fighting would have said that it was America,
+alone and unaided, that won the war. He is just as we have hoped he
+would be: a plain, blunt man. We have heard that he is going to enter
+the banking business. We'd like to have an account at that bank.
+
+
+
+
+FALL FEVER
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+About this time of year, when the mellow air swoons (as the poets say)
+with golden languor and the landscape is tinged a soft brown like a
+piece of toast, we feel the onset and soft impeachment of fall fever.
+
+Fall fever is (in our case at any rate) more insidious than the familiar
+disease of spring. Spring fever impels us to get out in the country; to
+seize a knotted cudgel and a pouchful of tobacco and agitate our limbs
+over the landscape. But the drowsiness of autumn is a lethargy in the
+true sense of that word--a forgetfulness. A forgetfulness of past
+discontents and future joys; a forgetfulness of toil that is gone and
+leisure to come; a mere breathing existence in which one stands vacantly
+eyeing the human scene, living in a gentle simmer of the faculties like
+a boiling kettle when the gas is turned low.
+
+Fall fever, one supposes, is our inheritance from the cave man, who
+(like the bear and the--well, some other animal, whatever it is) went
+into hibernation about the first of November. Autumn with its soft
+inertia lulled him to sleep. He ate a hearty meal, raked together some
+dry leaves, curled up and slid off until the alarm clock of April.
+
+This agreeable disease does not last very long with the modern man. He
+fights bravely against it; then the frost comes along, or the coal bill,
+and stings him into activity. But for a few days its genial torpor may
+be seen (by the observant) even in our bustling modern career. When we
+read yesterday that Judge Audenried's court clerks had fallen asleep
+during ballot-counting proceedings we knew that the microbe was among us
+again. Keats, in his lovely Ode, describes the figure of Autumn as
+stretched out "on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep." Unhappily the
+conventions forbid city dwellers from curling up on the pavements for a
+cheerful nap. If one were brave enough to do so, unquestionably many
+would follow his example. But the urbanite has taught himself to doze
+upright. You may see many of us, standing dreamily before Chestnut
+Street show windows in the lunch hour, to all intents and purposes in a
+state of slumber. Yesterday, in that lucid shimmer of warmth and light,
+a group stood in front of a doughnut window near Ninth Street: not one
+of them was more than half awake. Similarly a gathering watched the
+three small birds who have become a traditional window ornament on
+Chestnut Street (they have recently moved from an oculist to a
+correspondence course office) and a faint whisper of snoring arose on
+the sultry air. The customs of city life permit a man to stand still as
+long as he likes if he will only pretend to be watching something. We
+saw a substantial burgher pivoted by the window of Mr. Albert, the
+violin maker, on Ninth Street. Apparently he was studying the fine
+autographed photo of Patti there displayed; but when we sidled near we
+saw that his eyes were closed; this admirable person, who seemed to be
+what is known as a "busy executive," and whose desk undoubtedly carries
+a plate-glass sheet with the orisons of Swett Marden under it, was in a
+blissful doze.
+
+Modern life (as we say) struggles against this sweet enchantment of
+autumn, but Nature is too strong for us. Why is it that all these
+strikes occur just at this time of year? The old hibernating instinct
+again, perhaps. The workman has a subconscious yearning to scratch
+together a nice soft heap of manila envelopes and lie down on that couch
+for a six months' ear-pounding. There are all sorts of excuses that one
+can make to one's self for waving farewell to toil. Only last Sunday we
+saw this ad in a paper:
+
+     HEIRS WANTED. The war is over and has made many new heirs. You
+     may be one of them. Investigate. Many now living in poverty are
+     rich, but don't know it.
+
+Now what could be simpler (we said to ourself as we stood contemplating
+those doughnuts) than to forsake our jolly old typewriter and spend a
+few months in "investigating" whether any one had made us his heir? It
+might be. Odd things have happened. Down in Washington Square, for
+instance (we thought), are a number of sun-warmed benches, very
+reposeful to the sedentary parts, on which we might recline and think
+over the possibility of our being rich unawares. We hastened thither,
+but apparently many had had the same idea. There was not a bench vacant.
+The same was true in Independence Square and in Franklin Square. We will
+never make a good loafer. There is too much competition.
+
+So we came back, sadly, to our rolltop and fell to musing. We picked up
+a magazine and found some pictures showing how Mary Pickford washes her
+hair. "If I am sun-drying my hair," said Mary (under a photo showing her
+reclining in a lovely garden doing just that), "I usually have the
+opportunity to read a scenario or do some other duty which requires
+concentration." And it occurred to us that if a strain like that is put
+upon a weak woman we surely ought to be able to go on moiling for a
+while, Indian summer or not. And then we found some pictures by our
+favourite artist, Coles Phillips, with that lovely shimmer around the
+ankles, and we resolved to be strong and brave and have pointed
+finger-nails. But still, in the back of our mind, the debilitating
+influence of fall fever was at work. We said to ourself, without the
+slightest thought of printing it (for it seemed to put us in a false
+light), that the one triumphant and unanswerable epigram of mankind, the
+grandest and most resolute utterance in the face of implacable fate, is
+the snore.
+
+
+
+
+TWO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS
+
+
+Will the hand-organ man please call? Our wife has dug up our old
+overcoat and insists on giving it to him. We intended to give it to the
+Honolulu Girls around at the Walnut Theatre, they looked a bit
+goose-fleshed last week, but we always have hay fever when we get near
+those grass skirts. Grass widows is what the profession calls the
+Hawaiian ladies. Hope the temperature isn't going up again. We love the
+old-fashioned Christmas and all that sort of thing. Nipping air makes
+cheeks pink; we love to see them nestled in fur coats on Chestnut
+Street. This is the time of year to do unexpected kindnesses. We know
+one man who stands in line for hours in front of movie theatres just in
+order to shout _Merry Christmas_ through the little hole in the glass.
+Shaving seems less of a bore. Newspapers are supposed to be heartless,
+but they all take a hand in trying to help poor children. Find ourselves
+humming hymn tunes. Very odd, haven't been to a church for years. Great
+fun surprising people. We've been reading the new phone book; noticed
+several ways in which people might surprise each other by calling up and
+wishing many happy returns of the day. Why doesn't Beulah R. Wine ring
+up Mrs. Louis F. Beer, for instance? Or, A. D. Smoker and Burton J.
+Puffer might go around to W. C. Matchett, tobacconist, at 1635 South
+Second Street, and buy their Christmas cigars. George Wharton Pepper
+might give Mayme Salt a ring (on the phone, that is). What a pleasant
+voice that telephone operatrix has. Here's to you, child, and many of
+them. Grand time, Christmas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Fine old Anglo-Saxon festival, Christmas. A time of jovial cheer and
+bracing mirth. Must be so, because Doctor Frank Crane and Ralph Waldo
+Trine have often said so. Christmas hard on people like that, however:
+they are bursting with the Christmas spirit all the year round; very
+trying when the real occasion comes. That's the beauty of having a
+peevish and surly disposition: when one softens up at Christmas
+everybody notices it and is pleased. Chaucer, fine old English poet,
+first English humorist, gave good picture of Christmas cheer more than
+five hundred years ago. Never quoted on Christmas cards, why not copy it
+here? Chaucer's spelling very like Ring Lardner's, but good sort just
+the same. Says he:
+
+    And this was, as thise bookes me remembre,
+    The colde, frosty sesoun of Decembre....
+    The bittre frostes with the sleet and reyn
+    Destroyed hath the grene in every yard;
+    Janus sit by the fyre with double beard,
+    And drynketh of his bugle horn the wyn;
+    Biforn hym stant brawn of the tusked swyn,
+    And "_Nowel_" crieth every lusty man.
+
+Janus, god of doors, what we call nowadays a janitor. Had two faces so
+he could watch the front and back door at once and get a double tip at
+Christmas time. Also, that was why he wore a beard; too much trouble to
+shave. We don't cry _Nowel_ any more; instead we petition the janitor to
+send up a little more steam. But what a jolly picture Chaucer gives of
+Christmas! Wine to drink (fine ruddy wine, as red as the holly berries),
+crackling flitch of pig to eat, and a merry cry of welcome sounding at
+the threshold as your friends come stamping in through the snow.
+
+Grand time, Christmas! No one is really a Philadelphian until he has
+waited for a Pine Street car on a snowy night. Please have my seat,
+madam, there's plenty of room on the strap. Wonder why the pavement on
+Chestnut Street is the slipperiest in the world? Always fall down just
+in front of our bank; most embarrassing; hope the paying teller doesn't
+see us. Very annoying to lose our balance just there. Awfully nice
+little girl in there who balances the books. Has a kind heart. The
+countless gold of a merry heart, as William Blake said. She looks
+awfully downcast when our balance gets the way it is now. Hate to
+disappoint her. Won't have our book balanced again for a devil of a
+while. Even the most surly is full of smiles nowadays. Most of us when
+we fall on the pavement (did you ever try it on Chestnut between Sixth
+and Seventh on a slippery day?) curse the granolithic trust and wamble
+there groaning. But not nowadays. Make the best of things. Fine panorama
+of spats.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Association of ideas. Everybody wears silk stockings at Christmas time.
+Excessive geniality of the ad-writers. Uproarious good cheer. Makes one
+almost ashamed to notice the high price of everything. Radicals being
+deported. Why not deport Santa Claus, too? Very radical notion that,
+love your neighbour better than yourself. Easy to do; very few of us
+such dam fools as to love ourselves, but so often when you love your
+neighbour she doesn't return it. Nice little boxes they have at the
+ten-cent stores, all covered with poinsettia flowers, to put presents
+in. Wonder when poinsettia began to be used as a Christmas decoration
+and why? Everyone in ten-cent store calls them "poinsettias," but named
+after J. R. Poinsett. Encyclopedia very handy at times; makes a good
+Christmas present, one dollar down and a dollar a month for life. Nobody
+can tell the difference between real pearls and imitation; somebody
+ought to put the oysters wise. Save them a lot of trouble and anxiety.
+Don't know just what duvetyne is, but there seems to be a lot of it
+drunk nowadays. Hope that clockwork train for the Urchin will arrive
+soon; we were hoping to have three happy evenings playing with it before
+he sees it. Fine to have children; lots of fun playing with their
+presents. We are sure that life after death is really so, because
+children always kick the blankets off at night. Fine bit of symbolism
+that; put it in a sermon, unless Doctor Conwell gets there first.
+
+Grand time, Christmas! We vowed to try to take down our weight this
+winter, and then they put sugar back on the menu, and doughnut shops
+spring up on every street, and Charles F. Jenkins sent us a big sack of
+Pocono buckwheat flour and we're eating a basketful of griddle cakes
+every morning for breakfast. Terrible to be a coward; we always turn on
+the hot water first in the shower bath, except the first morning we used
+it. The plumber got the indicator on the wrong way round, and when you
+turn to the place marked HOT it comes down like ice. Our idea of a
+really happy man is the fellow driving a wagonload of truck just in
+front of a trolley car, holding it back all the way downtown; when he
+hears the motorman clanging away he pretends he thinks it's the
+Christmas chimes and sings "Hark the Herald Angels."
+
+Speaking of Herald Angels reminds us of a good story about James Gordon
+Bennett; we'll spring it one of these days when we're hard up for copy.
+Jack Frost must be a married man, did you see him try to cover up the
+show windows with his little traceries the other day when the shopping
+was at its height? There was a pert little hat in a window on Walnut
+Street we were very much afraid someone might see; the frost saved us.
+Don't forget to put Red Cross seals on your letters. Delightful to watch
+the faces on the streets at Christmas time. Everybody trying hard to be
+pleasant; sometimes rather a strain. Curious things faces--some of them
+seem almost human; queer to think that each belongs to someone and no
+chance to get rid of it; sorry we're not in the mirror industry; never
+thought of it before, but it ought to be profitable. Happier most of us,
+if mirrors never had been invented. Hope all our nice-natured clients
+will have the best kind of a time; forgive us for not answering letters;
+we are too disillusioned about ourself to make any resolutions to do
+better. We're going home now; on the way we'll think of a lot of nice
+things we might have said, write them down and use them to-morrow. Hope
+Dorothy Gish will get something nice in her stocking. Don't make the
+obvious retort. Grand time, Christmas!
+
+
+
+
+IN WEST PHILADELPHIA
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Climbing aboard car No. 13--ominously labelled "Mt. Moriah"--I voyaged
+toward West Philadelphia. It was a keen day, the first snow of winter
+had fallen, and sparkling gushes of chill swept inward every time the
+side doors opened. The conductor, who gets the full benefit of this
+ventilation, was feeling cynical, and seeing his blue hands I didn't
+blame him. Long lines of ladies, fumbling with their little bags and
+waiting for change, stepped off one by one into the windy eddies of the
+street corners. One came up to pay her fare ten blocks or so before her
+destination, and then retired to her seat again. This puzzled the
+conductor and he rebuked her. The argument grew busy. To the amazement
+of the passengers this richly dressed female brandished lusty epithets.
+"You Irish mick!" she said. (One would not have believed it possible if
+he had not heard it.) "That's what I am, and proud of it," said he. The
+shopping solstice is not all fur coats and pink cheeks. If you watch the
+conductors in the blizzard season, and see the slings and arrows they
+have to bear, you will coin a new maxim. The conductor is always right.
+
+It is always entertaining to move for a little in a college atmosphere.
+I stopped at College Hall at the University and seriously contemplated
+slipping in to a lecture. The hallways were crowded with earnest youths
+of both sexes--I was a bit surprised at the number of co-eds,
+particularly the number with red hair--discussing the tribulations of
+their lot. "Think of it," said one man, "I'm a senior, and carrying
+twenty-three hours. Got a thesis to do, 20,000 words." On a bulletin
+board I observed the results of a "General Intelligence Exam." It
+appears that 1,770 students took part. They were listed by numbers, not
+by names. It was not stated what the perfect mark would have been; the
+highest grade attained was 159, by Mr. (or Miss?) 735. The lowest mark
+was 23. I saw that both 440 and 1124 got the mark of 149. If these
+gentlemen (or ladies) are eager to play off the tie, it would be a
+pleasure to arrange a deciding competition for them. The elaborate care
+with which the boys and girls ignore one another as they pass in the
+halls was highly delightful, and reminded me of exactly the same thing
+at Oxford. But I saw the possible beginning of true romance in the
+following notice on one of the boards:
+
+     WANTED: Names and addresses of ten nice American university
+     students who must remain in Philadelphia over Christmas, away
+     from home, to be invited to a Christmas Eve party to help
+     entertain some Bryn Mawr College girls in one of the nicest homes
+     in a suburb of Philadelphia.
+
+Certainly there is the stage set for a short story. Perhaps not such a
+short one, either.
+
+Naturally I could not resist a visit to the library, where most of the
+readers seemed wholly absorbed, though one student was gaping forlornly
+over a volume of Tennyson. I found an intensely amusing book, "Who's Who
+in Japan," a copy of which would be a valuable standby to a newspaper
+paragrapher in his bad moments. For instance:
+
+     SASAKI, TETSUTARO: One of the highest taxpayers of Fukushima-ken,
+     President of the Hongu Reeling Partnership, Director of the Dai
+     Nippon Radium Water Co.; brewer, reeler; born Aug., 1860.
+
+     SAKURAI, ICHISAKU: Member of the Niigata City Council; Director
+     of the Niigata Gas Co., Niigata Savings Bank. Born June, 1872,
+     Studied Japanese and Chinese classics and arithmetic. At present
+     also he connects with the Niigata Orphanage and various other
+     philanthropic bodies. Was imprisoned by acting contrary to the
+     act of explosive compound for seven years. Recreations: reading,
+     Western wine.
+
+Relying on my apparent similarity to the average undergrad, I
+plunged into the sancta of Houston Hall and bought a copy of the
+_Punch Bowl_. What that sprightly journal calls "A little group
+of Syria's thinkers" was shooting pool. The big fireplaces, like
+most fireplaces in American colleges, don't seem to be used. They
+don't even show any traces of ever having been used, a curious
+contrast to the always blazing hearths of English colleges. The
+latter, however, are more necessary, as in England there is
+usually no other source of warmth. A bitter skirmish of winds,
+carrying powdered snow dust, nipped round the gateways of the
+dormitories and Tait McKenzie's fine statue of Whitefield stood
+sharply outlined against a cold blue sky. I lunched at a varsity
+hash counter on Spruce Street and bought tobacco in a varsity
+drug store, where a New York tailor, over for the day, was
+cajoling students into buying his "snappy styles" in time for
+Christmas. There is no more interesting game than watching a lot
+of college men, trying to pick out those who may be of some value
+to the community in future--the scientists, poets, and teachers
+of the next generation. The well-dressed youths one sees in the
+varsity drug stores are not generally of this type.
+
+The Evans School of Dentistry at Fortieth and Spruce is a
+surprising place. Its grotesque gargoyles, showing (with true
+medieval humour) the sufferings of tooth patients, are the first
+thing one notices. Then one finds the museum, in which is housed
+Doctor Thomas W. Evans's collection of paintings and curios
+brought back from France. Unfortunately there seems to be no
+catalogue of the items, so that there is no way of knowing what
+interesting associations belong to them. But most surprising of
+all is to find the travelling carriage of the Empress Eugenie in
+which she fled from France in the fatal September days of 1870.
+She spent her last night in France at the home of Doctor Evans,
+and there is a spirited painting by Dupray showing her leaving
+his house the next morning, ushered into the carriage by the
+courtly doctor. The old black barouche, or whatever one calls it,
+seems in perfect condition still, with the empress's monogram on
+the door panel. Only the other day we read in the papers that the
+remarkable old lady (now in her ninety-fourth year) has been
+walking about Paris, revisiting well-known scenes. How it would
+surprise her to see her carriage again here in this University
+building in West Philadelphia. The whole museum is delightfully
+French in flavour; as soon as one enters one seems to step back
+into the curiously bizarre and tragic extravagance of the Second
+Empire.
+
+One passes into the dignified and placid residence section of
+Spruce and Pine streets, with its distinctly academic air. Behind
+those quiet walls one suspects bookcases and studious professors
+and all the delightful passions of the mind. On Baltimore Avenue
+the wintry sun shone white and cold; in Clark Park, Charles
+Dickens wore a little cap of snow, and Little Nell looked more
+pathetic than ever. There is a breath of mystery about Baltimore
+Avenue. What does that large sign mean, in front of a house near
+Clark Park--THE EASTERN TRAVELLERS? Then one comes to the famous
+shop of S. F. Hiram, the Dodoneaean Shoemaker he calls himself.
+This wise coloured man has learned the advertising advantages of
+the unusual. His placard reads:
+
+     Originator of that famous Dobrupolyi System of repairing.
+
+When one enters and asks to know more about this system, he
+points to another placard, which says:
+
+     It assumes the nature and character of an appellative noun, and
+     carries the article The System.
+
+His shop contains odd curios as well as the usual traffic of a
+cobbler. "The public loves to be hood-winked," he adds sagely.
+
+
+
+
+HORACE TRAUBEL
+
+
+We wait with particular interest to hear what Philadelphia will have to
+say about the passing of Horace Traubel. Traubel was the official echo
+of the Great Voice of Camden, and in his obituary one may discern the
+vivacity of the Whitman tradition. This is a matter of no small concern
+to the curators of the Whitman cult. The soul of Philadelphia cannot be
+kept alive by conventions and statistics alone. Such men as Traubel have
+helped.
+
+There are two kinds of rebels. By their neckties you may know them. Walt
+Whitman was of the kind that wears no necktie at all. Then there is the
+lesser sort, of which Traubel was one--the rebel who wears a flowing
+black bow tie with long trailers. Elbert Hubbard wore one of these. It
+is a mild rebellion of which this is symbol. It often goes with shell
+spectacles.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+We never knew Horace Traubel, though he was the man we most wanted to
+meet when we came to Philadelphia. We have heard men of all conditions
+speak of him with affection and respect. He was dedicated from boyhood
+to the Whitman cause. From Walt himself he caught the habit of talking
+about Walt, and he carried it on with as much gusto and happiness as
+Walt did. Only recently he said in his little magazine _The
+Conservator_:
+
+     When I was quite small I used to want to be a great man. But in
+     my observations of the old man's better than great way of meeting
+     the gifts as well as the reverses of fate I didn't want to be a
+     great man. I only wanted to stay unannexed to any institution as
+     he was. No college ever decorated him. For the best of reasons.
+     No college could. He could decorate them.
+
+So Traubel remained unannexed. He was fired from a bank because he
+happened to take issue in public with one of the bank's chief
+depositors. He floated about happily, surrounded by young Whitman
+disciples, carrying on his guerrilla for what his leader called the
+"peerless, passionate, good cause" of human democracy. His little
+magazine led a precarious life, supported by good friends. His protest
+against iniquities was an honest, good-humoured protest.
+
+Horace Traubel will be remembered, as he wished to be remembered, as the
+biographer of Whitman. Whitman also, we may add, wished Traubel to be so
+remembered. In his careful record of the Camden sage's utterances and
+pulse-beats he approached (as nearly as any one) the devoted dignity of
+Boswell. We were about to say the self-effacing devotion of Boswell; but
+the beauty of biography is that the biographer cannot wholly delete
+himself from the book. One is always curious about the recording
+instrument. When we see a particularly fine photograph our first
+question is always, "What kind of camera was it taken with?"
+
+It seems to us--speaking only by intuition, for we never knew him--that
+Traubel was a happy man. He was untouched by many of the harassing
+ambitions that make the lives of prosperous men miserable. He was
+touched in boyhood by one simple and overmastering motive--to carry on
+the Whitman message and spread it out for the younger world. Much of the
+dunnage of life he cast overboard. He was too good a Whitman disciple to
+estimate success in the customary terms. When he left his job in the
+bank he opened an account in the Walt Whitman philosophy--and he kept a
+healthy balance there to the end.
+
+
+
+
+TALES OF TWO CITIES
+
+II. NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+THE ANATOMY OF MANHATTAN
+
+
+She is the only city whose lovers live always in a mood of wonder and
+expectancy. There are others where one may sink peacefully, contentedly
+into the life of the town, affectionate and understanding of its ways.
+But she, the woman city, who is bold enough to say he understands her?
+The secret of her thrilling and inscrutable appeal has never been told.
+How could it be? She has always been so much greater than any one who
+has lived with her. (Shall we mention Walt Whitman as the only possible
+exception? O. Henry came very near to her, but did he not melodramatize
+her a little, sometimes cheapen her by his epigrammatic appraisal, fit
+her too neatly into his plot? Kipling seemed to see her only as the
+brutal, heedless wanton.) Truly the magic of her spell can never be
+exacted. She changes too rapidly, day by day. Realism, as they call it,
+can never catch the boundaries of her pearly beauty. She needs a mystic.
+
+No city so challenges and debilitates the imagination. Here, where
+wonder is a daily companion, desire to tell her our ecstasy becomes at
+last only a faint pain in the mind. If you would mute a poet's lyre,
+put him on a ferry from Jersey City some silver April morning; or send
+him aboard at Liberty Street in an October dusk. Poor soul, his mind
+will buzz (for years to come) after adequate speech to tell those cliffs
+and scarps, amethyst and lilac in the mingled light; the clear topaz
+chequer of window panes; the dull bluish olive of the river, streaked
+and crinkled with the churn of the screw! Many a poet has come to her in
+the wooing passion. Give him six months, he is merely her Platonist. He
+lives content with placid companionship. Where are his adjectives, his
+verbs? That inward knot of amazement, what speech can unravel it?
+
+Her air, when it is typical, is light, dry, cool. It is pale, it is
+faintly tinctured with pearl and opal. Heaven is unbelievably remote;
+the city itself daring so high, heaven lifts in a cautious remove. Light
+and shadow are fantastically banded, striped, and patchworked among her
+cavern streets; a cool, deep gloom is cut across with fierce jags and
+blinks of brightness. She smiles upon man who takes his ease in her
+colossal companionship. Her clean soaring perpendiculars call the eye
+upward. One wanders as a botanist in a tropical forest. That great
+smooth groinery of the Pennsylvania Station train shed: is it not the
+arching fronds of iron palm trees? Oh, to be a botanist of this vivid
+jungle, spread all about one, anatomist of the ribs and veins that run
+from the great backbone of Broadway!
+
+To love her, one thinks, is to love one's fellows; each of them having
+some unknown share in her loveliness. Any one of her streets would be
+the study and delight of a lifetime. To speak at random, we think of
+that little world of brightness and sound bourgeois cheer that spreads
+around the homely Verdi statue at Seventy-third Street. We have a
+faithful affection for that neighbourhood, for reasons of our own.
+Within a radius, thereabouts, of a quarter-mile each way, we could live
+a year and learn new matters every day. They call us a hustling folk.
+Observe the tranquil afternoon light in those brownstone byways. Pass
+along leisurely Amsterdam Avenue, the region of small and genial shops,
+Amsterdam Avenue of the many laundries. See the children trooping
+upstairs to their own room at the St. Agnes branch of the Public
+Library. See the taxi drivers, sitting in their cars alongside the Verdi
+grass plot (a rural breath of new-mown turf sweetening the warm, crisp
+air) and smoking pipes. Every one of them is to us as fascinating as a
+detective story. What a hand they have had in ten thousand romances. At
+this very moment, what quaint and many-stranded destinies may hail them
+and drive off? But there they sit, placid enough, with a pipe and the
+afternoon paper. The light, fluttering dresses of enigmatic fair ones
+pass gayly on the pavement. Traffic flows, divides, and flows on, a
+sparkling river. Here is that mystery, a human being, buying a cigar.
+Here is another mystery asking for a glass of frosted chocolate. Why is
+it that we cannot accost that tempting riddle and ask him to give us an
+accurate précis of his life to date? And that red-haired burly sage, he
+who used to bake the bran muffins in the little lunchroom near by, and
+who lent us his Robby Burns one night--what has become of him?
+
+So she teases us, so she allures. Sometimes, on the L, as one passes
+along that winding channel where the walls and windows come so close,
+there is a felicitous sense of being immersed, surrounded, drowned in a
+great, generous ocean of humanity. It is a fine feeling. All life
+presses around one, the throb and the problem are close, are close. Who
+could be weary, who could be at odds with life, in such an embrace of
+destiny? The great tall sides of buildings fly open, the human hive is
+there, beautiful and arduous beyond belief. Here is our worship and here
+our lasting joy, here is our immortality of encouragement. Yes, perhaps
+O. Henry did say the secret after all: "He saw no longer a rabble, but
+his brothers seeking the ideal."
+
+
+
+
+VESEY STREET
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The first duty of the conscientious explorer is to study his own
+neighbourhood, so we set off to familiarize ourself with Vesey Street.
+This amiable byway (perhaps on account of the proximity of Washington
+Market) bases its culture on a solid appreciation of the virtue of good
+food, an admirable trait in any street. Upon this firm foundation it
+erects a seemly interest in letters. The wanderer who passes up the
+short channel of our street, from the docks to St. Paul's churchyard,
+must not be misled by the character of the books the bibliothecaries
+display in their windows. Outwardly they lure the public by Bob
+Ingersoll's lectures, Napoleon's Dream Book, efficiency encyclopædias
+and those odd and highly coloured small brochures of smoking-car tales
+of the Slow Train Through Arkansaw type. But once you penetrate, you may
+find quarry of a more stimulating kind. For fifteen cents we eloped with
+a first edition of Bunner's "Love in Old Cloathes," which we were glad
+to have in memory of the "old red box on Vesey Street" which Banner
+immortalized in rhyme, and which still stands (is it the same box?) by
+the railing of St. Paul's. Also, even nobler treasure to our way of
+thinking, did we not just now find (for fifteen cents) Hilaire Belloc's
+"Hills and the Sea," that enchanting little volume of essays, which we
+are almost afraid to read again. Belloc, the rogue--the devil is in him.
+Such a lusty beguilery moves in his nimble prose that after reading him
+it is hard not to fall into a clumsy imitation of his lively and frolic
+manner. There is at least one essayist in this city who fell subject to
+the hilarious Hilaire years ago. It is an old jape but not such a bad
+one: our friend Murray Hill will never return to the status quo ante
+Belloc.
+
+But we were speaking of Vesey Street. It looks down to the water, and
+the soft music of steamship whistles comes tuning on a cold, gusty air.
+Thoroughly mundane little street, yet not unmindful of matters
+spiritual, bounded as it is by divine Providence at one end (St. Paul's)
+and by Providence, R. I. (the Providence Line pier) at the other.
+Perhaps it is the presence of the graveyard that has startled Vesey
+Street into a curious reversal of custom. On most other streets, we
+think, the numbers of the houses run even on the south side, odd on the
+north. But just the opposite on Vesey. You will find all even numbers on
+the north, odd on the south. Still, Wall Street errs in the same way.
+
+If marooned or quarantined on Vesey Street a man might lead a life of
+gayety and sound nourishment for a considerable while, without having
+recourse to more exalted thoroughfares. There are lodging houses in that
+row of old buildings down toward the docks; from the garret windows he
+could see masts moving on the river. For food he would live high indeed.
+Where will one see such huge glossy blue-black grapes; such enormous
+Indian River grapefruit; such noble display of fish--scallops,
+herrings, smelts, and the larger kind with their dead and desolate eyes?
+There are pathetic rows of rabbits, frozen stiff in the bitter cold
+wind; huge white hares hanging in rows; a tray of pigeons with their
+iridescent throat feathers catching gleams of the pale sunlight. There
+are great sacks of nuts, barrels of cranberries, kegs of olive oil,
+thick slabs of yellow cheese. On such a cold day it was pleasant to see
+a sign "Peanut Roasters and Warmers."
+
+Passing the gloomy vista of Greenwich Street--under the "L" is one of
+those mysterious little vents in the floor of the street from which
+issues a continual spout of steam--our Vesey grows more intellectual.
+The first thing one sees, going easterly, is a sign: THE TRUTH SEEKER,
+_One flight Up_. The temptation is almost irresistible, but then Truth
+is always one flight higher up, so one reflects, what's the use? In this
+block, while there is still much doing in the way of food--and even food
+in the live state, a window full of entertaining chicks and ducklings
+clustered round a colony brooder--another of Vesey Street's interests
+begins to show itself. Tools. Every kind of tool that gladdens the heart
+of man is displayed in various shops. One realizes more and more that
+this is a man's street, and indeed (except at the meat market) few of
+the gayer sex are to be seen along its pavements. One of the tool shops
+has open-air boxes with all manner of miscellaneous oddments, from mouse
+traps to oil cans, and you may see delighted enthusiasts poring over the
+assortment with the same professional delight that ladies show at a
+notion counter. One of the tool merchants, however, seems to have
+weakened in his love of city existence, for he has put up a placard:
+
+WANTED TO RENT _Small Farm Must Have Fruit and Spring Water_
+
+How many years of repressed yearning may speak behind that modest
+ambition!
+
+Our own taste for amusement leads us (once luncheon dispatched; you
+should taste Vesey Street's lentil soup) to the second-hand bookshops.
+Our imagined castaway, condemned to live on Vesey Street for a term of
+months, would never need to languish for mental stimulation. Were he
+devout, there is always St. Paul's, as we have said; and were he
+atheist, what a collection of Bob Ingersoll's essays greets the faring
+eye! There is the customary number of copies of "The Pentecost of
+Calamity"; it seems to the frequenter of second-hand bazaars as though
+almost everybody who bought that lively booklet in the early days of the
+war must have sold it again since the armistice. Much rarer, we saw a
+copy of "Hopkins's Pond," that little volume of agreeable sketches
+written so long ago by Dr. Robert T. Morris, the well-known surgeon, and
+if we had not already a copy which the doctor inscribed for us we would
+certainly have rescued it from this strange exile.
+
+There are only two of the really necessary delights of life that the
+Vesey Street maroon would miss. There is no movie, there are no
+doughnuts. We are wondering whether in any part of this city there has
+sprung up the great doughnut craze that has ravaged Philadelphia in the
+past months. As soon as prohibition became a certainty, certain astute
+merchants of the Quaker City devoted themselves to inoculating the
+public with a taste for these humble fritters, and now they bubble gayly
+in the windows of Philadelphia's most aristocratic thoroughfare. It is
+really a startling sight to see Philadelphia lining up for its noonday
+quota of doughnuts, and the merchants over there have devised an
+ingenious method of tempting the crowd. A funnel, erected over the
+frying sinkers, carries the fragrant fumes out through a transom and
+gushes it into the open air, so that the sniff of doughnuts is
+perceptible all down the block. There is a fortune waiting on Vesey
+Street for the man who will establish a doughnut foundry, and we
+solemnly pledge our own appetite and that of all our friends toward his
+success.[2]
+
+At its upper end, perhaps in memory of the vanished Astor House, Vesey
+Street stirs itself into a certain magnificence, devoting its window
+space to jewellery and silver-mounted books of prayer. At this window
+one may regulate his watch at a clock warranted by Charles Frodsham of
+84, Strand, to whose solid British accuracy we hereby pay decent
+tribute. Over all this varied scene lifts the shining javelin-head of
+the Woolworth Building, seen now and then in an almost disbelieved
+glimpse of sublimity; and the golden Lightning of the Telephone and
+Telegraph pinnacle, waving his zigzag brands in the sun.
+
+[2] Since this was written, the lack has been supplied--on Park Row,
+just above the top of Vesey Street; probably the most luxurious doughnut
+shop ever conceived.
+
+
+
+
+BROOKLYN BRIDGE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A windy day, one would have said in the dark channels of downtown ways.
+In the chop house on John Street, lunch-time patrons came blustering in,
+wrapped in overcoats and mufflers, with something of that air of
+ostentatious hardiness that men always assume on coming into a warm room
+from a cold street. Thick chops were hissing on the rosy grill at the
+foot of the stairs. In one of the little crowded stalls a man sat with a
+glass of milk. It was the first time we had been in that chop house for
+several years ... it doesn't seem the same. As Mr. Wordsworth said, it
+is not now as it hath been of yore. But still,
+
+    The homely Nurse doth all she can
+    To make her foster-child, her Inn-mate Man,
+    Forget the glories he hath known.
+
+It's a queer thing that all these imitation beers taste to us exactly as
+real beer did the first time we tasted it (we were seven years old) and
+shuddered. "Two glasses of cider," we said to the comely serving maid.
+Alas
+
+    That nature yet remembers
+    What was so fugitive.
+
+There is a nice point of etiquette involved in lunching in a crowded
+chop house. Does the fact of having bought and eaten a moderate meal
+entitle one to sit with one's companion for a placid talk and smoke
+afterward? Or is one compelled to relinquish the table as soon as one is
+finished, to make place for later comers? These last are standing
+menacingly near by, gazing bitterly upon us as we look over the card and
+debate the desirability of having some tapioca pudding. But our
+presiding Juno has already settled the matter, and made courtesy a
+matter of necessity. "These gentlemen will be through in a moment," she
+says to the new candidates. Our companion, the amiable G---- W----, was
+just then telling us of a brand of synthetic whiskey now being
+distilled by a famous tavern of the underworld. The superlative charm of
+this beverage seems to be the extreme rigidity it imparts to the
+persevering communicant. "What does it taste like?" we asked. "Rather
+like gnawing furniture," said G---- W----. "It's like a long, healthy
+draught of shellac. It seems to me that it would be less trouble if you
+offered the barkeep fifty cents to hit you over the head with a hammer.
+The general effect would be about the same, and you wouldn't feel nearly
+so bad in the morning."
+
+A windy day, and perishing chill, we thought as we strolled through the
+gloomy caverns and crypts underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. Those twisted
+vistas seen through the archways give an impression of wrecked Louvain.
+A great bonfire was burning in the middle of the street. Under the Pearl
+Street elevated the sunlight drifted through the girders in a lively
+chequer, patterning piles of gray-black snow with a criss-cross of
+brightness. We had wanted to show our visitor Franklin Square, which he,
+as a man of letters, had always thought of as a trimly gardened plot
+surrounded by quiet little old-fashioned houses with brass knockers, and
+famous authors tripping in and out. As we stood examining the façade of
+Harper and Brothers, our friend grew nervous. He was carrying under his
+arm the dummy of an "export catalogue" for a big brass foundry, that
+being his line of work. "They'll think we're free verse poets trying to
+get up courage enough to go in and submit a manuscript," he said, and
+dragged us away.
+
+A windy day, we had said in the grimy recesses of Cliff and Dover
+streets. (Approaching this sentiment for the third time, perhaps we may
+be permitted to accomplish our thought and say what we had in mind.) But
+up on the airy decking of the Brooklyn Bridge, where we repaired with
+G---- W---- for a brief stroll, the afternoon seemed mild and tranquil.
+It is a mistake to assume that the open spaces are the windier. The
+subway is New York's home of Æolus, and most of the gusts that buffet us
+on the streets are merely hastening round a corner in search of the
+nearest subway entrance so that they can get down there where they feel
+they belong. Up on the bridge it was plain to perceive that the March
+sunshine had elements of strength. The air was crisp but genial. A few
+pedestrians were walking resolutely toward the transpontine borough; the
+cop on duty stood outside his little cabin with the air of one ungrieved
+by care. Behind us stood the high profiles of the lower city, sharpened
+against the splendidly clear blue sky which is New York's special
+blessing. On the water moved a large tug, towing barges. Smoke trailed
+behind it in the same easy and comfortable way that tobacco reek gushes
+over a man's shoulder when he walks across a room puffing his pipe.
+
+The bridge is a curiously delightful place to watch the city from.
+Walking toward the central towers seems like entering a vast spider's
+web. The footway between the criss-cross cables draws one inward with a
+queer fascination, the perspective diminishing the network to the eye so
+that it seems to tighten round you as you advance. Even when there is
+but little traffic the bridge is never still. It is alive, trembling,
+vibrant, the foot moves with a springy recoil. One feels the lift and
+strain of gigantic forces, and looks in amazement on the huge sagging
+hawsers that carry the load. The bars and rods quiver, the whole lively
+fabric is full of a tremor, but one that conveys no sense of
+insecureness. It trembles as a tree whispers in a light air.
+
+And of the view from the bridge, it is too sweeping to carry wholly in
+mind. Best, one thinks, it is seen in a winter dusk, when the panes of
+Manhattan's mountains are still blazing against a crystal blue-green
+sky, and the last flush of an orange sunset lingers in the west. Such we
+saw it once, coming over from Brooklyn, very hungry after walking in
+most of the way from Jamaica, and pledged in our own resolve not to
+break fast until reaching a certain inn on Pearl Street where they used
+to serve banana omelets. Dusk simplifies the prospect, washes away the
+lesser units, fills in the foreground with obliterating shadow, leaves
+only the monstrous sierras of Broadway jagged against the vault. It
+deepens this incredible panorama into broad sweeps of gold and black and
+peacock blue which one may file away in memory, tangled eyries of
+shining windows swimming in empty air. As seen in the full brilliance of
+noonday the bristle of detail is too bewildering to carry in one clutch
+of the senses. The eye is distracted by the abysses between buildings,
+by the uneven elevation of the summits, by the jumbled compression of
+the streets. In the vastness of the scene one looks in vain for some
+guiding principle of arrangement by which vision can focus itself. It is
+better not to study this strange and disturbing outlook too minutely,
+lest one lose what knowledge of it one has. Let one do as the veteran
+prowlers of the bridge: stroll pensively to and fro in the sun, taking
+man's miracles for granted, exhilarated and content.
+
+
+
+
+THREE HOURS FOR LUNCH
+
+
+Hudson Street has a pleasant savour of food. It resounds with the dull
+rumble of cruising drays, which bear the names of well-known brands of
+groceries; it is faintly salted by an aroma of the docks. One sees great
+signs announcing cocoanut and whalebone or such unusual wares; there is
+a fine tang of coffee in the air round about the corner of Beach Street.
+Here is that vast, massy brick edifice, the New York Central freight
+station, built 1868, which gives an impression of being about to be torn
+down. From a dilapidated upper window hangs a faded banner of the Irish
+Republic. At noontime this region shows a mood of repose. Truckmen loll
+in sunny corners, puffing pipes, with their curved freight hooks hung
+round their necks. In a dark smithy half a dozen sit comfortably round a
+huge wheel which rests on an anvil, using it as a lunch table. Near
+Canal Street two men are loading ice into a yellow refrigerator car, and
+their practiced motions are pleasant to watch. One stands in the wagon
+and swings the big blocks upward with his tongs. The other, on the wagon
+roof, seizes the piece deftly and drops it through a trap on top of the
+car. The blocks of ice flash and shimmer as they pass through the
+sunshine. In Jim O'Dea's blacksmith shop, near Broome Street, fat white
+horses are waiting patiently to be shod, while a pink glow wavers
+outward from the forge.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+At the corner of Hudson and Broome streets we fell in with our friend
+Endymion, it being our purpose to point out to him the house, one of
+that block of old red dwellings between Hudson and Varick, which Robert
+C. Holliday has described in "Broome Street Straws," a book which we
+hope is known to all lovers of New York local colour. Books which have a
+strong sense of place, and are born out of particular streets--and
+especially streets of an odd, rich, and well-worn flavour--are not any
+too frequent. Mr. Holliday's Gissingesque appreciation of the humours of
+landladies and all the queer fish that shoal through the backwaters of
+New York lodging houses makes this Broome Street neighbourhood
+exceedingly pleasant for the pilgrim to examine. It was in Mr.
+Holliday's honour that we sallied into a Hudson Street haberdashery,
+just opposite the channel of Broome Street, and adorned ourself with a
+new soft collar, also having the pleasure of seeing Endymion regretfully
+wave away some gorgeous mauve and pink neckwear that the agreeable
+dealer laid before him with words of encouragement. We also stood
+tranced by a marvellous lithograph advertising a roach powder in a
+neighbouring window, and wondered whether Mr. Holliday himself could
+have drawn the original in the days when he and Walter Jack Duncan lived
+in garrets on Broome Street and were art students together. Certainly
+this picture had the vigorous and spirited touch that one would expect
+from the draughting wrist of Mr. Holliday. It showed a very terrible
+scene, apparently a civil war among the roaches, for one army of these
+agile insects was treasonously squirting a house with the commended
+specific, and the horrified and stricken inmates were streaming forth
+and being carried away in roach ambulances, attended by roach nurses, to
+a neighbouring roach cemetery. All done on a large and telling scale,
+with every circumstance of dismay and reproach on the faces of the dying
+blattidæ. Not even our candour, which is immense, permits us to reprint
+the slogan the manufacturer has adopted for his poster: those who go
+prowling on Hudson Street may see it for themselves.
+
+In the old oyster and chop house just below Canal Street we enjoyed a
+very agreeable lunch. To this place the Broome Street garreteers (so Mr.
+Holliday has told us) used to come on days of high prosperity when some
+cheque arrived from a publisher. At that time the tavern kept an open
+fireplace, with a bright nest of coals in the chilly season; and there
+was a fine mahogany bar. But we are no laudator of acted time; the
+fireplace has been bricked up, it is true; but the sweet cider is
+admirable, and as for the cheesecake, we would back it against all the
+Times Square variety that Ben De Casseres rattles about. It is
+delightful and surprising to find on Hudson Street an ordinary so droll
+and Dickensish in atmosphere, and next door is a window bearing the sign
+WALTER PETER. We feel sure that Mr. Holliday, were he still living in
+those parts, would have cajoled the owner into changing that E to an A.
+
+Our stroll led us north as far as Charlton Street, which the geographers
+of Greenwich Village claim as the lower outpost of their domain.
+Certainly it is a pleasing byway, running quietly through the afternoon,
+and one lays an envious eye upon the demure brick houses, with their
+old-fashioned doorways, pale blue shutters, and the studio windows on
+the southern side. At the corner of Varick Street is a large house
+showing the sign, "Christopher Columbus University of America."
+Macdougal Street gives one a distant blink of the thin greenery of
+Washington Square.
+
+An unexpected impulse led us eastward on Grand Street, to revisit Max
+Maisel's interesting bookshop.--We had never forgotten the thrill of
+finding this place by chance one night when prowling toward Seward Park.
+In bookshops of a liberal sort we always find it advisable to ask first
+of all for a copy of Frank Harris's "The Man Shakespeare." It is hardly
+ever to be found (unfortunately), so the inquiry is comparatively safe
+for one in a frugal mood; and it is a tactful question, for the mention
+of this book shows the bookseller that you are an intelligent and
+understanding kind of person, and puts intercourse on good terms at
+once. However, we did find one book that we felt we simply had to have,
+as it is our favourite book for giving away to right-minded people--"The
+Invisible Playmate," by William Canton. We fear that there are still
+lovers of children who do not know this book; but if so, it is not our
+fault.
+
+Grand Street is a child at heart, and one may watch it making merry not
+only along the pavement but in the shop windows. Endymion's gallant
+spirit was strongly uplifted by this lively thoroughfare, and he strode
+like one whose heart was hitting on all six cylinders. Max Maisel's
+bookshop alone is enough to put one in a seemly humour. But then one
+sees the gorgeous pink and green allurements of the pastry cooks'
+windows, and who can resist those little lemon-flavoured,
+saffron-coloured cakes, which are so thirst-compelling and send one
+hastily to the nearest bar for another beaker of cider? And it seems
+natural to find here the oldest toyshop in New York, where Endymion
+dashed to the upper floor in search of juvenile baubles, and we both
+greatly admired the tall, dark, and beauteous damsel who waited on us
+with such patience and charity. Endymion by this time was convinced that
+he was living in the very heart and climax of a poem; he became more and
+more unreal as we walked along: we could see his physical outline
+(tenuous enough at best) shimmer and blur as he became increasingly
+alcaic.
+
+Along the warm crowded pavement there suddenly piped a liquid, gurgling,
+chirring whistle, rising and dropping with just the musical trill that
+floats from clumps of creekside willows at this time of year. We had
+passed several birdshops on our walk, and supposed that another was
+near. A song sparrow, was our instant conclusion, and we halted to see
+where the cage could be hung. And then we saw our warbler. He was little
+and plump and red-faced, with a greasy hat and a drooping beer-gilded
+moustache, and he wore on his coat a bright blue peddler's license
+badge. He shuffled along, stooping over a pouch of tin whistles and
+gurgling in one as he went. There's your poem, we said to
+Endymion--"The Song-Sparrow on Grand Street."
+
+We propose to compile a little handbook for truants, which we shall call
+"How to Spend Three Hours at Lunch Time." This idea occurred to us on
+looking at our watch when we got back to our kennel.
+
+
+
+
+PASSAGE FROM SOME MEMOIRS
+
+
+How long ago it seems, that spring noonshine when two young men (we will
+call them Dactyl and Spondee) set off to plunder the golden bag of Time.
+These creatures had an oppressive sense that first Youth was already
+fled. For one of them, in fact, it was positively his thirtieth
+birthday; poor soul, how decrepitly he flitted in front of motor trucks.
+As for the other, he was far decumbent in years, quite of a previous
+generation, a perfect Rameses, whose senile face was wont to crack into
+wrinklish mirth when his palsied cronies called him the greatest poet
+born on February 2, 1886.
+
+It was a day--well, it is fortunate that some things do not have to be
+described. Suppose one had to explain to the pallid people of the
+thither moon what a noonday sunshine is like in New York about the Nones
+of May? It could not be done to carry credence. Let it be said it was a
+Day, and leave it so. You have all known that gilded envelopment of
+sunshine and dainty air.
+
+These pitiful creatures arose from the subway at Fourteenth Street and
+took the world in their right hands. From this revolving orb, said they,
+they would squeeze a luncheon hour of exquisite satisfactions. They
+gazed sombrely at Union Square, and uttered curious reminiscences of the
+venerable days when one of them had worked, actually toiled for a
+living, upon the shores of that expanse. Ten years had passed (yes, at
+least ten--_O edax rerum!_). Upon a wall these observant strollers saw a
+tablet to the memory of William Lloyd Garrison. Strange, said they, we
+never noticed this before. Ah, said one, this is hallowed ground. It was
+near here that I used to borrow a quarter, the day before pay-day, to
+buy my lunch. The other contributed similar recollections. And now,
+quoth he, I am grown so prosperous that when I need money I can't afford
+to borrow less than two hundred dollars.
+
+They lunched (one brushes away the mist of time to recall the details)
+where the bright sunlight fell athwart a tablecloth of excellent
+whiteness. They ate (may one be precise at so great a distance?)--yes,
+they ate broiled mackerel to begin with; the kind of mackerel called
+(but why?) Spanish. Whereupon succeeded a course of honeycomb tripe,
+which moved Dactyl to quoting Rabelais, something that Grangousier had
+said about tripes. Only by these tripes is memory supported and made
+positive, for it was the first time either had tackled this dish.
+Concurrent with the tripes, one inducted the other into the true mystery
+of blending shandygaff, explaining the first doctrine of that worthy
+draught, which is that the beer must be poured into the beaker before
+the ginger ale, for so arises a fatter and lustier bubblement of foam.
+The reason whereof they leave no testament. While this portion of the
+meal was under discussion their minds moved free, unpinioned, with airy
+lightness, over all manner of topics. It seemed no effort at all to
+talk. Ripe, mellow with long experience of men and matters, their
+comments were notable for wisdom and sagacity. The waiter, overhearing
+shreds of their discourse, made a private notation to the effect that
+these were Men of Large Affairs. Then they embarked upon some salty
+crackers, enlivened with Camembert cheese and green-gage jam. By this
+time they were touching upon religion, from which they moved lightly to
+the poems of Louise Imogen Guiney. It is all quite distinct as one looks
+back upon it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Issuing upon the street, Dactyl said something about going back to the
+office, but the air and sunlight said him nay. Rather, remarked Spondee,
+let us fare forward upon this street and see what happens. This is ever
+a comely doctrine, adds the chronicler. They moved gently, not without a
+lilac trailing of tobacco fume, across quiet stretches of pavement. In
+the blue upwardness stood the tower of the Metropolitan Life Building, a
+reminder that humanity as a whole pays its premiums with decent
+regularity. They conned the nice gradations of tint in the spring
+foliage of Gramercy Park. They talked, a little soberly, of thrift, and
+of their misspent years.
+
+Lexington Avenue lay guileless beneath their rambling footfalls. At the
+corner of Twenty-second Street was a crowd gathered, and a man with the
+customary reverted cap in charge of a moving picture machine. A swift
+car drew up before the large house at the southeast corner. Thrill upon
+thrill: something being filmed for the movies! In the car, a handsome
+young rogue at the wheel, and who was this blithe creature in shiny
+leather coat and leather cap, with crumpling dark curls cascading
+beneath it? A suspicion tinkled in the breast of Spondee, in those days
+a valiant movie fan. Up got the young man, and hopped out of the car. Up
+stood the blithe creature--how neatly breeched, indeed, a heavenly
+forked radish--and those shining riding boots! She dismounted--lifted
+down (so unnecessarily it seemed) by the rogue. She stood there a moment
+and Spondee was convinced. DOROTHY GISH, said he to Dactyl. Miss Gish
+and her escort darted into the house, the camera man reeling busily. At
+an upper window of the dwelling a white-haired lady was looking out,
+between lace curtains, with a sort of horror. Query, was she part of the
+picture, or only the aristocratic owner of the house, dismayed at
+finding her home suddenly become part of a celluloid drama? Spondee had
+always had a soft spot in his heart for Miss Dorothy, esteeming her a
+highly entertaining creature. He was disappointed in the tranquil
+outcome of the scene. He had hoped to see leaping from windows and all
+manner of hot stuff. Near by stood a coloured groom with a horse. The
+observers concluded that Miss Gish was to do a little galloping shortly.
+Dactyl and Spondee moved away. Spondee quoted a poem he had once written
+about Miss Dorothy. He recollected only two lines:
+
+    She makes all the rest seem a shoal of poor fish
+    So _we_ cast _our_ ballot for Dorothy Gish.
+
+Peering again into the dark backward and abysm, it seems that the two
+rejuvenated gossips trundled up on Lexington Avenue to Alfred
+Goldsmith's cheerful bookshop. Here they were startled to hear Mr.
+Goldsmith cry: "Well, Chris, here are some nice bones for you." One of
+these visitors assumed this friendly greeting was for him, but then it
+was explained that Mr. Goldsmith's dog, named Christmas, was feeling
+seedy, and was to be pampered. At this moment in came the postman with a
+package of books, arrived all the way from Canada. One of these books
+was "Salt of the Sea," a volume of tales by Morley Roberts, and upon
+this Spondee fell with a loud cry, for it contained "The Promotion of
+the Admiral," being to his mind a tale of great virtue which he had not
+seen in several years. Dactyl, meanwhile, was digging out some volumes
+of Gissing, and on the faces of both these creatures might have been
+seen a pleasant radiation of innocent cheer. Mr. Goldsmith also
+exhibited (it is still remembered) a beautiful photo of Walt Whitman,
+which entertained the visitors, for it showed old Walt with his
+coat-sleeve full of pins, which was ever Walt's way.
+
+How long ago it all seems. Does Miss Dorothy still act for the pictures?
+Does Chris, the amiable Scots terrier, still enjoy his bones? Does old
+Dactyl still totter about his daily tasks? Queer to think that it
+happened only yesterday. Well, time runs swift in New York.
+
+
+
+
+FIRST LESSONS IN CLOWNING
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A medley of crashing music, pungently odd and exhilarating smells, the
+roaring croon of the steam calliope, the sweet lingering savour of
+clown-white grease paint, elephants, sleek barking seals, trained pigs,
+superb white horses, frolicking dogs, exquisite ladies in tights and
+spangles, the pallid Venuses of the "living statuary," a whole jumble
+of incongruous and fantastic glimpses, moving in perfect order through
+its arranged cycles--this is the blurred and ecstatic recollection of an
+amateur clown at the circus.
+
+It was pay day that afternoon and all the performers were in cheerful
+humour. Perhaps that was why the two outsiders, who played a very
+inconspicuous part in the vast show, were so gently treated. Certainly
+they had approached the Garden in some secret trepidation. They had had
+visions of dire jests and grievous humiliations: of finding themselves
+suddenly astride the bare backs of berserk mules, or hoisted by blazing
+petards, or douched with mysterious cascades of icy water. Pat Valdo had
+written: "I am glad to hear you are going to clown a bit. I hope you
+both will enjoy the experience." To our overwrought imaginations this
+sounded a little ominous. What would Pat and his lively confrères do to
+us?
+
+We need not have feared. Not in the most genial club could we have been
+more kindly treated than in the dressing room where we found Pat Valdo
+opening his trunk and getting out the antic costumes he had provided.
+(The eye of a certain elephant, to tell the truth, was the only real
+embarrassment we suffered. We happened to stand by him as he was waiting
+to go on, and in his shrewd and critical orb we saw a complete disdain.
+He spotted us at once. He knew us for interlopers. He knew that we were
+not a real clown, and his eye showed a spark of scorn. We felt shamed,
+and slunk away.)
+
+A liberal coating of clown-white, well rubbed into the palms before
+applying; a rich powdering of talcum; and decorations applied by Pat
+Valdo with his red and black paint-sticks--these give an effect that
+startles the amateur when he considers himself in the mirror. Topped
+with a skull-cap of white flannel (on which perches a supreme oddity in
+the way of a Hooligan hat) and enveloped in a baggy Pierrot garment--one
+is ready to look about and study the dressing room, where our fellows,
+in every kind of gorgeous grotesquerie, are preparing for the Grand
+Introductory Pageant--followed by the "Strange People." (They don't call
+them Freaks any more.) Here is Johannes Joseffson, the Icelandic
+Gladiator, sitting on his trunk, with his bare feet gingerly placed on
+his slippers to keep them off the dusty floor while he puts on his
+wrestling tights. As he bends over with arched back, and raises one leg
+to insert it into the long pink stocking, one must admire the perfect
+muscular grace of his thighs and shoulders. Here is the equally muscular
+dwarf, being massaged by a friend before he dons his pink frills and
+dashing plumed hat and becomes Mlle. Spangletti, "the marvel
+equestrienne, darling of the Parisian boulevards." Here is the
+inevitable Charley Chaplin, and here the dean of all the clowns, an old
+gentleman of seventy-four, in his frolicsome costume, as lively as
+ever. Here is a trunk inscribed _Australian Woodchoppers_, and sitting
+on it one of the woodchoppers himself, a quiet, humorous, cultivated
+gentleman with a great fund of philosophy. A rumour goes the rounds--as
+it does behind the scenes in every kind of show. "Do you know who we
+have with us to-day? I see one of the boxes is all decorated up." "It's
+Mrs. Vincent Astor." "Who's she?" interjects the Australian woodchopper,
+satirically. "It's General Wood." "Did you hear, Wood and Pershing are
+here to-day?" Charley Chaplin asserts that he has "a good gag" that he's
+going to try out to-day and see how it goes. One of the other clowns in
+the course of dressing comes up to Pat Valdo, and Pat introduces his two
+pupils. "Newspaper men, hey?" says the latter. "What did you tell me
+for? I usually double-cross the newspaper men when they come up to do
+some clowning," he explains to us. We are left wondering in what this
+double-crossing consists. Suddenly they all troop off down the dark
+narrow stairs for the triumphal entry. The splendour of this parade may
+not be marred by any clown costumes, so the two novices are left
+upstairs, peering through holes in the dressing-room wall. The big arena
+is all an expanse of eager faces. The band strikes up a stirring ditty.
+A wave of excitement sweeps through the dingy quarters of the Garden.
+The show is on, and how delirious it all is!
+
+Downstairs, the space behind the arena is a fascinating jostle of odd
+sights. The elephants come swaying up the runway from the basement and
+stand in line waiting their turn. Here is a cage of trained bears. In
+the background stands the dogcatcher's cart, attached to the famous
+kicking mule. From the ladies' dressing quarters come the aerial human
+butterflies in their wings and gauzy draperies. On the wall is a list of
+names, _Mail Uncalled For_. One of the names is "Toby Hamilton." That
+must mean old Toby, and we fear the letter will never be called for now,
+for Toby Hamilton, the famous old Barnum and Bailey press agent, who
+cleaned up more "free space" than any man who ever lived, died in 1916.
+Suddenly appears a person clad in flesh tights and a barrel, carrying a
+label announcing himself as _The Common People_. Someone thrusts a large
+sign into the hands of one of the amateur clowns, and he is thrust upon
+the arena, to precede the barrelled Common People round the sawdust
+circuit. He has hardly time to see what the sign says--something about
+"On Strike Against $100 Suits." The amateur clown is somewhat aghast at
+the huge display of friendly faces. Is he to try to be funny? Here is
+the flag-hung box, and he tries to see who is in it. He doesn't see
+either Wood, Pershing, or Mrs. Astor, who are not there; but a lot of
+wounded soldiers, who smile at him encouragingly. He feels better and
+proceeds, finding himself, with a start, just beneath some flying
+acrobats who are soaring in air, hanging by their teeth. Common People
+shouts to him to keep the sign facing toward the audience. The tour is
+made without palpable dishonour.
+
+Things are now moving so fast it is hard to keep up with them. Pat Valdo
+is dressed as a prudish old lady with an enormous bustle. Escorted by
+the clown policeman and the two amateurs, Pat sets out, fanning himself
+demurely. Hullo! the bustle has detached itself from the old lady, but
+she proceeds, unconscious. The audience shouts with glee. Finally the
+cop sees what has happened and screams. The amateur clowns scream, too,
+and one of them, in a burst of inspiration, takes off his absurd hat to
+the bustle, which is now left yards behind. But Pat is undismayed, turns
+and beckons with his hand. The bustle immediately runs forward of its
+own accord and reattaches itself to the rear of the skirt. You see,
+there is a dwarf inside it. The two amateur clowns are getting excited
+by this time and execute some impromptu tumbling. One tackles the other
+and they roll over and over desperately. In the scuffle one loses both
+his hat and skull-cap and flees shamefast from the scene. It is asserted
+by our partner that "this went big." He swears it got a laugh. Pat Valdo
+hurries off to prepare for his boomerang throwing. Pat is a busy man,
+for he is not only a clown, but he and Mrs. Valdo also do wonderful
+stunts of their own on Ring Number One.
+
+And there are moments of sheer poetry, too. Into the darkened arena,
+crossed by dazzling shafts of light, speeds a big white motor car. Bird
+Millman descends, tossing aside her cloak. "A fairy on a cobweb" the
+press agents call her, and as two humble clowns watch entranced through
+the peepholes in the big doors the phrase seems none too extravagant.
+See her, in a foam of short fluffy green skirts, twirl and tiptoe on the
+glittering wire, all grace and slenderness and agile enchantment. She
+bows in the dazzle of light and kisses her hands to the crowd. Then she
+hops into the big car and is borne back behind the scenes. Once behind
+the doors her gay vivacity ceases. She sits, wearily, several minutes,
+before getting out of the car. And then, later, comes Mlle. Leitzel.
+She, like all the other stars, is said to have "amazed all Europe." We
+don't know whether Europe is harder to amaze than America. Certainly no
+one could be more admiringly astounded than the amateur clowns gazing
+entranced through the crack of the doorway. To that nerve-tightening
+roll of drums she spins deliriously high up in giddy air, floating, a
+tiny human pin-wheel, in a shining cone of light. One can hear the crowd
+catch its breath. She walks back, all smiles, while her maid trots ahead
+saying something unintelligible. Her tall husband is waiting for her at
+the doorway. He catches her up like a child and carries her off, limp
+and exhausted. One of the clowns (irreverent creature) makes a piteous
+squawk and begs us to carry him to his dressing room.
+
+A trained pig, trotting cheerfully round in search of tidbits, is
+retrieved from under the hooves of Mrs. Curtis's horse, which is about
+to go out and dance. The dogcatcher's wagon is drawn up ready to rush
+forth, and the trained terrier which accompanies it is leaping with
+excitement. He regards it as a huge lark, and knows his cue perfectly.
+When the right time comes he makes a dash for a clown dressed as an
+elderly lady and tears off her skirt. One of the amateurs was allowed to
+ride behind the kicking mule, but to his great chagrin the mule did not
+kick as well as usual. Here are Charley Chaplin and some others throwing
+enormous dice from a barrel. No matter how the dice are thrown they
+always turn up seven. Into this animated gamble the amateur clown enters
+with enjoyment. All round him the wildest capers are proceeding. The
+double-ended flivver is prancing about. John Barleycorn's funeral
+procession is going its way. "Give me plenty of space," says Charley
+Chaplin to us, "so the people can watch me." We do so, reverently, for
+Charley's antics are worth watching. We make a wild dash, and plan to do
+a tumble in imitation of Charley's. To our disappointment we find that
+instead of sliding our feet dig into the soft sawdust, and the
+projected collapse does not arrive. Intoxicated by the rich spice of
+circus odours, the booming calliope, the galloping horses, we hardly
+know what we are doing half the time. We hear Miss May Wirth, the Wonder
+Rider of the World, complaining bitterly that someone got in front of
+her when she was doing her particularly special stunt. We wonder
+dubiously whether we were the guilty one. Alas, it is all over but the
+washing up. Pat Valdo, gentlest of hosts, is taking off his trick hat
+with the water cistern concealed in it. He has a clean towel ready for
+his grateful pupils.
+
+The band is playing "The Star-Spangled Banner," and all the clowns, in
+various stages of undress, stand at attention. Our little peep into the
+gay, good-hearted, courageous, and extraordinary world of the circus is
+over. Pat and his fellows will go on, twice a day, for the next six
+months. It takes patience and endurance. But it must be some consolation
+to know that nothing else in the world gives half as much pleasure to so
+many people.
+
+
+
+
+HOUSE-HUNTING
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A curious vertigo afflicts the mind of the house-hunter. In the first
+place, it is sufficiently maddening to see the settled homes of other
+happier souls, all apparently so firmly rooted in a warm soil of
+contentment while he floats, an unhappy sea-urchin, in an ocean of
+indecision. Furthermore, how confusing (to one who likes to feel himself
+somewhat securely established in a familiar spot) the startling panorama
+of possible places in which he visualizes himself. One day it is Great
+Neck, the next it is Nutley; one day Hollis, the next Englewood; one
+day Bronxville, and then Garden City. As the telephone rings, or the
+suasive accents of friendly realtors expound the joys and glories of
+various regions, his uneasy imagination flits hoppingly about the
+compass, conceiving his now vanished household goods reassembled and
+implanted in these contrasting scenes.
+
+Startling scenarios are filmed in his reeling mind while he listens,
+over the tinkling wire, to the enumeration of rooms, baths, pantries,
+mortgages, commuting schedules, commodious closets, open fireplaces, and
+what not. In the flash and coruscation of thought he has transported his
+helpless family to Yonkers, or to Manhasset, or to Forest Hills, or
+wherever it may be, and tries to focus and clarify his vision of what it
+would all be like. He sees himself (in a momentary close-up) commuting
+on the bland and persevering Erie, or hastening hotly for a Liberty
+Street ferry, or changing at Jamaica (that mystic ritual of the Long
+Island brotherhood). For an instant he is settled again, with a modest
+hearth to return to at dusk ... and then the sorrowful compliment is
+paid him and he wonders how the impression got abroad that he is a
+millionaire.
+
+There is one consoling aspect of his perplexity, however, and that is
+the friendly intercourse he has with high-spirited envoys who represent
+real estate firms and take him voyaging to see "properties" in the
+country. For these amiable souls he expresses his candid admiration.
+Just as when one contemplates the existence of the doctors one knows,
+one can never imagine them ill, so one cannot conceive of the friendly
+realtor as in any wise distressed or grieved by the problems of the
+home. There is something Olympian about them, happy creatures! They deal
+only in severely "restricted" tracts. They have a stalwart and serene
+optimism. Odd as it seems, one of these friends told us that some people
+are so malign as to waste the time of real estate men by going out to
+look at houses in the country without the slightest intention of
+"acting." As a kind of amusement, indeed! A harmless way of passing an
+afternoon, of getting perhaps a free motor ride and enjoying the novelty
+of seeing what other people's houses look like inside. But our friend
+was convinced of one humble inquirer's passionate sincerity when he saw
+him gayly tread the ice floes of rustic Long Island in these days of
+slush and slither.
+
+How do these friends of ours, who see humanity in its most painful and
+distressing gesture (i.e., when it is making up its mind to part with
+some money), manage to retain their fine serenity and blitheness of
+spirit? They have to contemplate all the pathetic struggles of
+mortality, for what is more pathetic than the spectacle of a man trying
+to convince a real estate agent that he is not really a wealthy creature
+masking millions behind an eccentric pose of humility? Our genial
+adviser Grenville Kleiser, who has been showering his works upon us,
+has classified all possible mental defects as follows:
+
+     (_a_) _Too easy acquiescence_
+
+     (_b_) _A mental attitude of contradiction_
+
+     (_c_) _Undue skepticism_
+
+     (_d_) _A dogmatic spirit_
+
+     (_e_) _Lack of firmness of mind_
+
+     (_f_) _A tendency to take extreme views_
+
+     (_g_) _Love of novelty; that is, of what is foreign, ancient,
+     unusual, or mysterious._
+
+All these serious weaknesses of judgment may be discerned, in rapid
+rotation, in the mind of the house-hunter. It would be only natural, we
+think, if the real estate man were to tell him to go away and study Mr.
+Kleiser's "How to Build Mental Power." In the meantime, the vision of
+the home he had dreamed of becomes fainter and fainter in the seeker's
+mind--like the air of a popular song he has heard whistled about the
+streets, but does not know well enough to reproduce. How he envies the
+light-hearted robins, whose house-hunting consists merely in a gay
+flitting from twig to twig. Yet, even in his disturbance and nostalgia
+of spirit, he comforts himself with the common consolation of his
+cronies--"Oh, well, one always finds something"--and thus (in the words
+of good Sir Thomas Browne) teaches his haggard and unreclaimed reason to
+stoop unto the lure of Faith.
+
+
+
+
+LONG ISLAND REVISITED
+
+
+The anfractuosities of legal procedure having caused us to wonder
+whether there really were any such place as the home we have just
+bought, we thought we would go out to Salamis, L. I., and have a look at
+it. Of course we knew it had been there a few weeks ago, but the title
+companies do confuse one so. We had been sitting for several days in the
+office of the most delightful lawyer in the world (and if we did not
+fear that all the other harassed and beset creatures in these parts
+would instantly rush to lay their troubles in his shrewd and friendly
+bosom we would mention his name right here and do a little metrical
+pirouette in his honour)--we had been sitting there, we say, watching
+the proceedings, without the slightest comprehension of what was
+happening. It is really quite surprising, let us add, to find how many
+people are suddenly interested in some quiet, innocent-looking shebang
+nestling off in a quiet dingle in the country, and how, when it is to be
+sold, they all bob up from their coverts in Flushing, Brooklyn, or Long
+Island City, and have to be "satisfied." What floods of papers go
+crackling across the table, drawn out from those mysterious brown
+cardboard wallets; what quaint little jests pass between the emissaries
+of the title company and the legal counsel of the seller, jests that
+seem to bear upon the infirmity of human affairs and cause the
+well-wishing adventurer to wonder whether he had ever sufficiently
+pondered the strange tissue of mortal uncertainties that hides behind
+every earthly venture ... there was, for instance, occasional reference
+to a vanished gentleman who had once crossed the apparently innocent
+proscenium of our estate and had skipped, leaving someone six thousand
+dollars to the bad; this ingenious buccaneer was, apparently, the only
+one who did not have to be "satisfied." At any rate, we thought that we,
+who entered so modestly and obscurely into this whole affair, being only
+the purchaser, would finally satisfy ourself, too, by seeing if the
+property was still there.
+
+Long Island and spring--the conjunction gives us a particular thrill.
+There are more beautiful places than the Long Island flats, but it was
+there that we earned our first pay envelope, and it was there that we
+first set up housekeeping; and as long as we live the station platform
+of Jamaica will move us strangely--not merely from one train to another,
+but also inwardly. There is no soil that receives a more brimming
+benison of sunshine than Long Island in late April. As the train moves
+across the plain it seems to swim in a golden tide of light. Billboards
+have been freshly painted and announce the glories of phonographs in
+screaming scarlets and purples, or the number of miles that divide you
+from a Brooklyn department store. Out at Hillside the stones that
+demarcate the territory of an old-fashioned house are new and snowily
+whitewashed. At Hollis the trees are a cloud of violent mustard-yellow
+(the colour of a safety-matchbox label). Magnolias (if that is what they
+are) are creamy pink. Moving vans are bustling along the road. Across
+the wide fields of Bellaire there is a view of the brown woods on the
+ridge, turning a faint olive as the leaves gain strength. Gus Wuest's
+roadhouse at Queens looks inviting as of old, and the red-brown of the
+copper beeches reminds one of the tall amber beakers. Here is the little
+park by the station in Queens, the flag on the staff, the forsythia
+bushes the colour of scrambled eggs.
+
+Is it the influence of the Belmont Park race track? There seem to be, in
+the smoking cars, a number of men having the air of those accustomed to
+associate (in a not unprofitable way) with horses. Here is one, a
+handsome person, who holds our eye as a bright flower might. He wears a
+flowing overcoat of fleecy fawn colour and a derby of biscuit brown. He
+has a gray suit and joyful socks of heavy wool, yellow and black and
+green in patterned squares which are so vivid they seem cubes rather
+than squares. He has a close-cut dark moustache, his shaven cheeks are a
+magnificent sirloin tint, his chin splendidly blue by the ministration
+of the razor. His shirt is blue with a stripe of sunrise pink, and the
+collar to match. He talks briskly and humorously to two others, leaning
+over in the seat behind them. As he argues, we see his brown low shoe
+tapping on the floor. One can almost see his foot think. It pivots
+gently on the heel, the toe wagging in air, as he approaches the climax
+of each sentence. Every time he drives home a point in his talk down
+comes the whole foot, softly, but firmly. He relights his cigar in the
+professional manner, not by inhaling as he applies the match, but by
+holding the burned portion in the flame, away from his mouth, until it
+has caught. His gold watch has a hunting case; when he has examined it,
+it shuts again with a fine rich snap, which we can hear even above the
+noise of the car.
+
+On this early morning train there are others voyaging for amusement.
+Here are two golfing zealots, puffing pipes and discussing with amazing
+persistence the minutiæ of their sport. Their remarks are addressed to a
+very fashionable-looking curate, whose manners are superb. Whether he is
+going to play golf we know not; at any rate, he smiles mildly and
+politely to all they say. Perhaps he is going round the course with
+them, in the hope of springing some ecclesiastical strategy while they
+are softened and chastened by the glee of the game. The name of their
+Maker, it is only fair to suspect, has more than once been mentioned on
+the putting green; and if it should slip out, the curate will seize the
+cue and develop it. In the meantime, one of the enthusiasts (while his
+companion is silenced in the act of lighting his pipe) is explaining to
+the cloth how his friend plays golf. "I'll tell you how he plays," he
+says. "Imagine him sitting down in a low chair and swinging a club. Then
+take the chair away and he still keeps the same position. That's what he
+looks like when he drives." The curate smiles at this and prepares his
+face to smile with equal gentleness when the other retorts.
+
+After Floral Park the prospect becomes more plainly rural. The Mineola
+trolley zooms along, between wide fields of tilled brown earth. There is
+an occasional cow; here and there a really old barn and farmhouse
+standing, incongruously, among the settlements of modern kindling-wood
+cottages; and a mysterious agricultural engine at work with a spinning
+fly-wheel. Against the bright horizon stand the profiles of Garden City:
+the thin cathedral spire, the bulk of St. Paul's school, the white
+cupola of the hotel. The tree-lined vistas of Mineola are placidly
+simmering in the morning sun. A white dog with erect and curly tail
+trots very purposefully round the corner of the First National Bank. We
+think that we see the spreading leaves of some rhubarb plants in a
+garden; and there are some of those (to us very enigmatic, as we are no
+gardener) little glass window frames set in the soil, as though a whole
+house, shamed by the rent the owner wanted to charge, had sunk out of
+sight, leaving only a skylight.
+
+As we leave East Williston we approach more interesting country, with a
+semblance of hills, and wooded thickets still brownly tapestried with
+the dry funeral of last year's leaves. On the trees the new foliage
+sways in little clusters, catching the light like the wings of perching
+green butterflies. Some of the buds are a coppery green, some a burning
+red, but the prevailing colour is the characteristic sulphur yellow of
+early spring. And now we are set down at Salamis, where the first and
+most surprising impression is of the unexpected abundance of competitive
+taxicabs. Having reached the terminus of our space, we can only add that
+we found our estate still there--and there are a few stalks of rhubarb
+surviving from an earlier plantation.
+
+
+
+
+ON BEING IN A HURRY
+
+
+New York is a perplexing city to loaf in. (Walt Whitman if he came back
+to Mannahatta would soon get brain fever.) During the middle hours of
+the day, at any rate, it is almost impossible to idle with the proper
+spirit and completeness. There is a prevailing bustle and skirmish that
+"exerts a compulsion," as President Wilson would say. The air is
+electric and nervous. We have often tried to dawdle gently about the
+neighbourhood of the City Hall in the lunch hour, to let the general
+form and spirit of that clearing among the cliffs sink into our mind, so
+that we could get some picture of it. We have sat under a big brown
+umbrella, to have our shoes shined, when we had nothing more important
+to do than go to the doughnut foundry on Park Row and try some of those
+delectable combinations of foods they have there, such as sponge cake
+with whipped cream and chocolate fudge. And in a few seconds we have
+found ourself getting all stirred up and crying loudly to the artist
+that we only wanted a once-over, as we had an important appointment. You
+have to put a very heavy brake on your spirit in downtown New York or
+you find yourself dashing about in a prickle of excitement, gloriously
+happy just to be in a hurry, without particularly caring whither you are
+hastening, or why.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+One of the odd things about being in a hurry is that it seems so
+fiercely important when you yourself are the hurrier and so comically
+ludicrous when it is someone else. We see our friend Artaxerxes
+scorching up Church Street and we scream with laughter at him, because
+we know perfectly well that there is absolutely not one of his affairs
+important enough to cause him to buzz along like that. We look after him
+with a sort of mild and affectionate pity for a deluded creature who
+thinks that his concerns are of such glorious magnitude. And then, a few
+hours later, we find ourself on a subway car with only ten minutes to
+catch the train for Salamis at Atlantic Avenue. And what is our state of
+mind? We stand, gritting our teeth (we are too excited to sit, even if
+there were a seat) and holding our watch. The whole train, it seems to
+us, is occupied by invalids, tottering souls and lumbago cripples, who
+creep off at the stations as though five seconds made not the slightest
+difference. We glare and fume and could gladly see them all maced in
+sunder with battle-axes. Nothing, it seems to us, could soothe our
+bitter hunger for haste but to have a brilliant Lexington Avenue express
+draw up at the platform with not a soul in it. Out would step a polite
+guard, looking at his watch. "You want to catch a train at 5:27?" he
+asks. "Yes, sir, yes, sir; step aboard." All the other competitors are
+beaten back with knotted thongs and we are ushered to a seat. The bells
+go chiming in quick sequence up the length of the train and we are off
+at top speed, flying wildly past massed platforms of indignant people.
+We draw up at Atlantic Avenue, and the solitary passenger, somewhat
+appeased, steps off. "Compliments of the Interborough, sir," says the
+guard.
+
+The commuter, urgently posting toward the 5:27, misses the finest
+flavour of the city's life, for it is in the two or three hours after
+office work is over that the town is at her best. What a spry and
+smiling mood is shown along the pavements, particularly on these clear,
+warm evenings when the dropping sun pours a glowing tide of soft rosy
+light along the cross-town streets. There is a cool lightness in the
+air; restaurants are not yet crowded (it is, let us say, a little after
+six) and beside snowy tablecloths the waiters stand indulgently with
+folded arms. Everybody seems in a blithe and spirited humour. Work is
+over for the day, and now what shall we do for amusement? This is the
+very peak of living, it seems to us, as we sally cheerily along the
+street. It is like the beginning of an O. Henry story. The streets are
+fluttering with beautiful women; light summer frocks are twinkling in
+the busy frolic air. Oh, to be turned loose at the corner of Broadway
+and Thirty-second Street at 6:15 o'clock of a June evening, with nothing
+to do but follow the smile of adventure to the utmost! Thirty-second, we
+might add, is our favourite street in New York. It saddens us to think
+that the old boarding house on the corner of Madison Avenue is vanished
+now and all those quaint and humorous persons dispersed. We can still
+remember the creak of the long stairs and the clink of a broken slab in
+the tiled flooring of the hall as one walked down to the dining room.
+
+Affection for any particular street largely depends on the associations
+it has accumulated in one's mind. For several years most of our
+adventures in New York centred round Thirty-second Street; but its
+physique has changed so much lately that it has lost some of its appeal.
+We remember an old stone-yard that used to stand where the Pennsylvania
+Hotel is now, a queer jumbled collection of odd carvings and relics. At
+the front door there was a bust of Pan on a tall pedestal, which used to
+face us with a queer crooked grin twice a day, morning and evening. We
+had a great affection for that effigy, and even wrote a little piece
+about him in one of the papers, for which we got about $4 at a time
+when it was considerably needed. We used to say to ourself that some day
+when we had a home in the country we would buy Pan and set him in a Long
+Island garden where he would feel more at home than in the dusty winds
+of Thirty-second Street. Time went on and we disappeared from our old
+haunts, and when we came back Pan had vanished, too. You may imagine our
+pleasure when we found him again the other day standing in front of a
+chop house on Forty-fourth Street.
+
+But one great addition to the delights of the Thirty-second Street
+region is the new and shining white tunnel that leads one from the Penn
+Station subway platform right into the heart of what used (we think) to
+be called Greeley Square. It is so dazzling and candid in its new tiling
+that it seems rather like a vast hospital corridor. One emerges through
+the Hudson Tube station and perhaps sets one's course for a little
+restaurant on Thirty-fifth Street which always holds first place in our
+affection. It is somewhat declined from its former estate, for the upper
+floors, where the violent orchestra was and the smiling little
+dandruffian used to sing solos when the evening grew glorious, are now
+rented to a feather and ostrich plume factory. But the old basement is
+still there, much the same in essentials, by which we mean the pickled
+beet appetizers, the minestrone soup, the delicious soft bread with its
+brittle crust, and the thick slices of rather pale roast beef swimming
+in thin, pinkish gravy. And the three old French waiters, hardened in
+long experience of the frailties of mortality, smile to see a former
+friend. One, grinning upon us rather bashfully, recalls the time when
+there was a hilarious Oriental wedding celebrating in a private room
+upstairs and two young men insisted on going in to dance with the bride.
+He has forgiven various pranks, we can see, though he was wont to be
+outraged at the time. "Getting very stout," he says, beaming down at us.
+"You weigh a hundred pounds more than you used to." This is not merely
+cruel; it is untrue. We refrain from retorting on the growth of his bald
+spot.
+
+
+
+
+CONFESSIONS OF A HUMAN GLOBULE
+
+
+As a matter of fact, we find the evening subway jam very restful. Being
+neatly rounded in contour, with just a gentle bulge around the
+equatorial transit, we have devised a very satisfactory system. We make
+for the most crowded car we can find, and having buffeted our way in, we
+are perfectly serene. Once properly wedged, and provided no one in the
+immediate neighbourhood is doing anything with any garlic (it is well to
+avoid the vestibules if one is squeamish in that particular) we lift our
+feet off the floor, tuck them into the tail of our overcoat, and remain
+blissfully suspended in midair from Chambers Street to Ninety-sixth. The
+pressure of our fellow-passengers, powerfully impinging upon the
+globular perimeter we spoke of, keeps us safely elevated above the
+floor. We have had some leather stirrups sewed into the bottom of our
+overcoat, in which we slip our feet to keep them from dangling
+uncomfortably. Another feature of our technique is that we always go
+into the car with our arms raised and crossed neatly on our chest, so
+that they will not be caught and pinioned to our flanks. In that
+position, once we are gently nested among the elastic mass of genial
+humanity, it is easy to draw out from our waistcoat pocket our copy of
+Boethius's "Consolations of Philosophy" and really get in a little
+mental improvement. Or, if we have forgotten the book, we gently droop
+our head into our overcoat collar, lay it softly against the shoulder of
+the tall man who is always handy, and pass into a tranquil nescience.
+
+The subway is a great consolation to the philosopher if he knows how to
+make the most of it. Think how many people one encounters and never sees
+again.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON A FIFTH AVENUE BUS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Far down the valley of the Avenue the traffic lights wink in unison,
+green, yellow, red, changing their colours with well-drilled promptness.
+It is cold: a great wind flaps and tangles the flags; the tops of the
+buses are almost empty. That brisk April air seems somehow in key with
+the mood of the Avenue--hard, plangent, glittering, intensely material.
+It is a proud, exultant, exhilarating street; it fills the mind with
+strange liveliness. A magnificent pomp of humanity--what a flux of
+lacquered motors, what a twinkling of spats along the pavements! On what
+other of the world's great highways would one find churches named for
+the material of which they are built?--the _Brick Church_, the _Marble
+Church_! It is not a street for loitering--there is an eager, ambitious
+humour in its blood; one walks fast, revolving schemes of worldly
+dominion. Only on the terrace in front of the Public Library is there
+any temptation for tarrying and consideration. There one may pause and
+study the inscription--_But Above All Things Truth Beareth Away the
+Victory_ ... of course the true eloquence of the words lies in the
+_But_. Much reason for that _But_, implying a previous contradiction--on
+the Avenue's part? Sometimes, pacing vigorously in that river of lovely
+pride and fascination, one might have suspected that other things bore
+away the victory--spats, diamond necklaces, smoky blue furs nestling
+under lovely chins.... Hullo! here is a sign, "Headquarters of the Save
+New York Committee." Hum! Save from what? There was a time when the
+great charm of New York lay in the fact that it didn't want to be saved.
+Who is it that the lions in front of the Public Library remind us of? We
+have so often pondered. Let's see: the long slanting brow, the head
+thrown back, the haughty and yet genial abstraction--to be sure, it's
+Vachel Lindsay!
+
+We defy the most resolute philosopher to pass along the giddy, enticing,
+brilliant vanity of that superb promenade and not be just a little moved
+by worldly temptation.
+
+
+
+
+SUNDAY MORNING
+
+
+It was a soft, calm morning of sunshine and placid air. Clear and cool,
+it was "a Herbert Spencer of a day," as H. G. Wells once remarked. The
+vista of West Ninety-eighth Street, that engaging alcove in the city's
+enormous life, was all freshness and kempt tranquillity, from the gray
+roof of the old training ship at the river side up to the tall red spire
+near Columbus Avenue. This pinnacle, which ripens to a fine claret
+colour when suffused with sunset, we had presumed to be a church tower,
+but were surprised, on exploration, to find it a standpipe of some sort
+connected with the Croton water system.
+
+Sunday morning in this neighbourhood has its own distinct character.
+There is a certain air of luxurious ease in the picture. One has a
+feeling that in those tall apartment houses there are a great many
+ladies taking breakfast in negligée. They are wearing (if one may trust
+the shop windows along Broadway) boudoir caps and mules. Mules, like
+their namesakes in the animal world, are hybrid things, the offspring of
+a dancing pump and a bedroom slipper. They are distinctly futile, but no
+matter, no matter. Wearing mules, however, is not a mere vanity; it is
+a form of physical culture, for these skimpish little things are always
+disappearing under the bed, and crawling after them keeps one slender.
+Again we say, no matter. This is no concern of ours.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Near Broadway a prosperous and opulently tailored costume emerges from
+an apartment house: cutaway coat, striped trousers, very long pointed
+patent leather shoes with lilac cloth tops. Within this gear, we
+presently see, is a human being, in the highest spirits. "All set!" he
+says, joining a group of similars waiting by a shining limousine. Among
+these, one lady of magnificently millinered aspect, and a smallish man
+in very new and shiny riding boots, of which he is grandly conscious.
+There are introductions. "Mr. Goldstone, meet Mrs. Silverware." They are
+met. There is a flashing of eyes. Three or four silk hats simultaneously
+leap into the shining air, are flourished and replaced. The observer is
+aware of the prodigious gayety and excitement of life. All climb into
+the car and roll away down Broadway. All save the little man in riding
+boots. He is left on the sidewalk, gallantly waving his hand. Come, we
+think, he is going riding. A satiny charger waits somewhere round the
+corner. We will follow and see. He slaps his hunting crop against his
+glorious boots, which are the hue of quebracho wood. No; to our chagrin,
+he descends into the subway.
+
+We sit on the shoeshining stand on Ninety-sixth Street, looking over the
+Sunday papers. Very odd, in the adjoining chairs men are busily engaged
+polishing shoes that have nobody in them, not visibly, at any rate.
+Perhaps Sir Oliver is right after all. While we are not watching, the
+beaming Italian has inserted a new pair of laces for us. Long afterward,
+at bedtime, we find that he has threaded them in that unique way known
+only to shoe merchants and polishers, by which every time they are tied
+and untied one end of the lace gets longer and the other shorter. Life
+is full of needless complexities. We descend the hill. Already (it is
+9:45 A. M.) men are playing tennis on the courts at the corner of West
+End Avenue. A great wagon crammed with scarlet sides of beef comes
+stumbling up the hill, drawn, with difficulty, by five horses.
+
+When we get down to the Ninety-Sixth Street pier we see the barque
+_Windrush_ lying near by with the airy triangles of her rigging
+pencilled against the sky, and look amorously on the gentle curve of her
+strakes (if that is what they are). We feel that it would be a fine
+thing to be off soundings, greeting the bounding billow, not to say the
+bar-room steward; and yet, being a cautious soul of reservations all
+compact, we must admit that about the time we got abreast of New Dorp
+we would be homesick for our favourite subway station.
+
+The pier, despite its deposit of filth, bales of old shoes, reeking
+barrels, scows of rubbish, sodden papers, boxes of broken bottles and a
+thick paste of dust and ash-powder everywhere, is a happy lounging
+ground for a few idlers on Sunday morning. A large cargo steamer, the
+_Eclipse_, lay at the wharf, standing very high out of the water. Three
+small boys were watching a peevish old man tending his fishing lines,
+fastened to wires with little bells on them. "What do you catch here?"
+we said. Just then one of the little bells gave a cracked tinkle and the
+angler pulled up a small fish, wriggling briskly, about three inches
+long. This seemed to anger him. He seemed to consider himself in some
+way humiliated by the incident. He grunted. One of the small boys was
+tactful. "Oh, gee!" he said. "Sometimes you catch fish that long,"
+indicating a length which began at about a yard and diminished to about
+eighteen inches as he meditated. "I don't know what kind they are," he
+said. "They're not trouts, but some other kind of fish."
+
+This started the topic of relative sizes, always fascinating to small
+boys. "That's a pretty big boat," said one, craning up at the tall stem
+of the _Eclipse_. "Oh, gee, that ain't big!" said another. "You ought to
+see some of the Cunard boats, the _Olympic_ or the _Baltic_."
+
+On Riverside Drive horseback riders were cantering down the bridlepath,
+returning from early outings. The squirrels, already grossly overfed,
+were brooding languidly that another day of excessive peanuts was at
+hand. Behind a rapidly spinning limousine pedalled a grotesquely humped
+bicyclist, using the car as a pacemaker. He throbbed fiercely just
+behind the spare tire, with his face bent down into a rich travelling
+cloud of gasoline exhaust. An odd way of enjoying one's self! Children
+were coming out in troops, with their nurses, for the morning air. Here
+was a little boy with a sailor hat, and on the band a gilt legend that
+was new to us. Instead of the usual naval slogan, it simply said
+_Democracy_. This interested us, as later in the day we saw another,
+near the goldfish pond in Central Park. Behind the cashier's grill of a
+Broadway drug store the good-tempered young lady was reading Zane Grey.
+"I love his books," she said, "but they make me want to break loose and
+go out West."
+
+
+
+
+VENISON PASTY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The good old days are gone, we have been frequently and authoritatively
+assured; and yet, sitting in an agreeable public on William Street where
+the bright eye of our friend Harold Phillips discerned _venison pasty_
+on the menu, and listening to a seafaring man describe a recent "blow"
+off Hatteras during which he stood four hours up to his waist in the
+bilges, and watching our five jocund companions dismiss no less than
+twenty-one beakers of cider, we felt no envy whatever for the ancients
+of the Mermaid Tavern. After venison pasty, and feeling somewhat in the
+mood of Robin Hood and Friar Tuck, we set off with our friend Endymion
+for a stroll through the wilderness. The first adventure of note that we
+encountered was the curb market on Broad Street, where we stood
+entranced at the merry antics of the brokers. This, however, is a
+spectacle that no layman can long contemplate and still deem himself
+sane. That sea of flickering fingers, the hubbub of hoarse cries, and
+the enigmatic gestures of youths framed in the open windows gave an
+impression of something fierce and perilous happening. Endymion, still
+deeming himself in Sherwood Forest, insisted that this was the abode of
+the Sheriff of Nottingham. "Stout deeds are toward!" he cried. "These
+villain wights have a damsel imprisoned in yonder keep!" With difficulty
+we restrained him from pressing to the rescue of the lady (for indeed we
+could see her, comely enough, appearing now and then at one of the
+windows; and anon disappearing, abashed at the wild throng). But
+gradually we realized that no such dire matter was being transacted, for
+the knights, despite occasional spasms of hot gesticulating fury, were
+mild and meant her no ill. One, after a sudden flux of business
+concerning (it seemed) 85 shares of Arizona Copper, fell suddenly
+placid, and was eating chocolate ice cream from a small paper plate.
+Young gallants, wearing hats trimmed with variegated brightly coloured
+stuffs (the favours of their ladies, we doubted not), were conferring
+together, but without passion or rancour.
+
+We have a compact with our friend Endymion that as soon as either of us
+spends money for anything not strictly necessary he must straightway
+return to the office. After leaving the curb market, we found ourselves
+in a basement bookshop on Broadway, and here Endymion fell afoul of a
+copy of Thomas Hardy's "Wessex Poems," illustrated by the author.
+Piteously he tried to persuade us that it was a matter of professional
+advancement to him to have this book; moreover, he said, he had just won
+five dollars at faro (or some such hazard) so that he was not really
+spending money at all; but we countered all his sophisms with slogging
+rhetoric. He bought the book, and so had to return to the office in
+disgrace.
+
+We fared further, having a mind to revisit the old Eastern Hotel, down
+by the South Ferry, of whose cool and dusky bar-room we had pleasant
+memories in times gone by; but we found to our distress that this also,
+like many more of our familiar landmarks, is a prey to the
+house-wrecker, and is on its way to become an office building. On our
+way back up Broadway it occurred to us to revisit what we have long
+considered one of the most impressive temples in our acquaintance, the
+lobby of the Telephone and Telegraph Building, on Dey Street. Here,
+passing by the enticing little terrace with brocaded chairs and soft
+lights where two gracious ladies sit to interview aspiring telephone
+débutantes, one stands in a dim golden glow, among great fluted pillars
+and bowls of softly burning radiance swung (like censers) by long
+chains. Occasionally there is an airy flutter, a bell clangs, bronze
+doors slide apart, and an elevator appears, in charge of a chastely
+uniformed priestess. Lights flash up over this dark little cave which
+stands invitingly open: UP, they say, LOCAL 1-13. The door-sill of the
+cave shines with a row of golden beads (small lights, to guide the
+foot)--it is irresistible. There is an upward impulse about the whole
+place: the light blossoms upward from the hanging translucent shells:
+people step gently in, the doors close, they are not seen again. It is
+the temple of the great American religion, _Going Up_. The shining gold
+stars in the ceiling draw the eye aloft. The temptation is too great. We
+step into the little bronze crypt, say "Thirteen" at a venture, and are
+borne softly and fluently up. Then, of course, we have to come down
+again, past the wagons of spring onions on Fulton Street, and back to
+the office.
+
+
+
+
+GRAND AVENUE, BROOKLYN
+
+
+We have always been a strong partisan of Brooklyn, and when we found
+ourself, in company with Titania, set down in the middle of a golden
+afternoon with the vista of Grand Avenue before us, we felt highly
+elated. Just how these two wayfarers chanced to be deposited in that
+quiet serenity, so far from their customary concerns, is not part of the
+narrative.
+
+There are regions of Brooklyn, we have always felt, that are too good to
+be real. Placid stretches of streets, with baby carriages simmering in
+the sun, solid and comfortable brownstone houses exhaling a prosperous
+condition of life, tranquil old-fashioned apothecaries' shops without
+soda fountains, where one peers in and sees only a solitary customer
+turning over the pages of a telephone book. It is all rather like a
+chapter from a story, and reminds us of a passage in "The Dynamiter"
+where some untroubled faubourgs of London are winningly described.
+
+Titania was wearing a little black hat with green feathers. She looked
+her best, and was not unaware of it. Our general plan, when destiny
+suddenly plumps us into the heart of Brooklyn, is to make our way
+toward Fulton Street, which is a kind of life-line. Once on Fulton
+Street we know our way. Moreover, Fulton Street has admirable
+second-hand bookshops. Nor do we ever forget that it was at the corner
+of Fulton and Cranberry streets that "Leaves of Grass" was set up, in
+the spring of 1855, Walt doing a good deal of the work himself. The only
+difficulty about getting to Fulton Street is that people will give you
+such contradictory instruction. One will tell you to go this way; the
+next will point in the opposite direction. It is as though Brooklynites
+suspect the presence of a stranger, and do not wish their sacred secrets
+to be discovered. There is a deep, mysterious freemasonry among the
+residents of this genial borough.
+
+At the corner of Grand and Greene avenues we thought it well to ask our
+way. A lady was standing on the corner, lost in pleasant drowse. April
+sunshine shimmered all about: trees were bustling into leaf, a wagonload
+of bananas stood by the curb and the huckster sang a gay, persuasive
+madrigal. We approached the lady, and Titania spoke gently: "Can you
+tell me----" The lady screamed, and leaped round in horror, her face
+stricken with fearful panic. She gasped and tottered. We felt guilty and
+cruel. "We were not meditating an attack," we said, "but just wanted to
+ask you the way to Fulton Street." Perhaps the poor soul's nerves were
+unstrung, for she gave us instruction that we felt instinctively to be
+wrong. Had we gone as she said (we now see by studying the map) we would
+have debouched into Wallabout Bay. But undoubtedly it was the protective
+instinct of the Brooklynite, on guard before strangers. Is there some
+terrific secret in Brooklyn that all residents know about but which must
+never be revealed to outsiders?
+
+Making a mental note not to speak too suddenly at the next encounter,
+the two cheerful derelicts drifted along the sunny coast of Grand
+Avenue. A shining and passionless peace presided over the streets. A
+gentle clop-clop of hooves came trotting down the way: here was a man
+driving a white horse in a neat rubber-tired buggy without a top. He
+leaned back and smiled to himself as he drove along. Life did not seem
+to be the same desperate venture it appears round about Broadway and
+Wall Street. Who can describe the settled amiability of those rows of
+considerable brown houses, with their heavy oak doors, their pots of
+daisies on the stoop, their clear window panes, and now and then the
+face of a benignant grandmother peeping from behind lace curtains. The
+secret of Brooklyn, perhaps, is contentment, and its cautious residents
+do not want the rest of us to know too much about it, lest we all flock
+over there in swarms.
+
+We then came to the bustle of Fulton Street, which deserves a book in
+itself. Some day we want to revisit a certain section of Fulton Street
+where (if we remember rightly) a rotisserie and a certain bookstore
+conspire to make one of the pleasantest haunts in our experience. We
+don't know exactly what the secret of Brooklyn may be, but we are going
+to spend some time over there this spring and lie in wait for it.
+
+
+
+
+ON WAITING FOR THE CURTAIN TO GO UP
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+We often wonder whether people are really as human as they appear, or is
+it only our imagination? Everybody, we suggest, thinks of others as
+being excessively human, with all the frailties and crotchets
+appertaining to that curious condition. But each of us also (we are not
+dogmatic on this matter) seems to regard himself as existing on a
+detached plane of observation, exempt (save in moments of vivid crisis)
+from the strange whims of humanity en masse.
+
+For example, consider the demeanour of people at a theatre while waiting
+for the curtain to go up. To note the censoriousness with which they
+study each other, one concludes that each deems himself (herself)
+singularly blessed as the repository of human correctness.
+
+Incidentally, why is it that one gets so thirsty at the theatre? We
+never get thirsty at the movies, or not nearly so thirsty. The other
+evening we drank seven paper cups full of water in the intermissions of
+a four-act play.
+
+The presence of people sitting behind one is the reason (we fancy) for a
+great deal of the queer antics that take place while one is waiting for
+the curtain to rise, particularly when it is twenty minutes late in
+going up as it was at a certain theatre the other evening. People behind
+one have a horrible advantage. One knows that they can hear everything
+you say, unless you whisper it in a furtive manner, which makes them
+suspect things far worse than any one would be likely to say in a
+Philadelphia theatre, except, of course, on the stage. The fact that you
+know they can overhear you, and intend to do so, leads one on to make
+the most outrageous, cynical, and scoffish remarks, particularly to
+denounce with fury a play that you may be enjoying quite passably well.
+All over the house you will hear (after the first act) men saying to
+their accompanying damsels, "How outrageously clumsy that act was. I
+can't conceive how the director let it get by." Now they only say this
+because they think it will make the people behind feel ashamed for
+having enjoyed such a botch. But does it? The people in the row behind
+immediately begin to praise the play vigorously, for the benefit of the
+people behind _them_; and in a minute you see the amusing spectacle of
+the theatre cheering and damning by alternate rows.
+
+Here and there you will see a lady whispering something to her escort,
+and will notice how ladies always look backward over a lily shoulder
+while whispering. They want to see what effect this whispering will have
+on the people behind. There is a deep-rooted feud between every two rows
+in an audience. The front row, having nobody to hate (except possibly
+the actors), take it out in speculating why on earth anybody can want to
+sit in the boxes, where they can see nothing.
+
+What the boxes think about we are not sure. We never sat in a box except
+at a burlicue.
+
+And then a complete essay might be written on the ads in the theatre
+program--what high-spirited ads they are! How full of the savour and
+luxurious tang of the _beau monde_! How they insist on saying
+_specialité_ instead of specialty!
+
+Well, all we meant to say when we began was, the heroine was Only
+Fair--by which we mean to say she was beautiful and nothing else.
+
+
+
+
+MUSINGS OF JOHN MISTLETOE
+
+
+It was old John Mistletoe, we think, in his "Book of Deplorable Facts,"
+discussing the congenial topic of "Going to Bed" (or was it in his essay
+on "The Concinnity of Washerwomen?") said something like this:
+
+     Life passes by with deplorable rapidity. _Post commutatorem sedet
+     horologium terrificum_, behind the commuter rideth the alarm
+     clock, no sooner hath he attained to the office than it is time
+     for lunch, no sooner hath lunch been dispatched than it is time
+     to sign those dictated letters, no sooner this accomplished, 'tis
+     time to hasten trainward. The essential thing, then, is not to
+     let one's experiences flow irrevocably past like a river, but to
+     clutch and hold them, thoughtfully, long enough to examine and,
+     in a manner, sieve them, to halt them in the mind for meditation.
+     The relentless fluidity of life, the ease with which it vanisheth
+     down the channel of the days, is the problem the thoughtful man
+     must deal with. The urgent necessity is to dam the stream here
+     and there so we can go swimming in it.
+
+     Time is a breedy creature: the minutes propagate hours, the hours
+     beget days, the days raise huge families of months, and before we
+     know it we are crowded out of this sweet life by mere surplus of
+     Time's offspring. This is a brutish Malthusianism which must be
+     adamantly countered. Therefore it is my counsel that every man,
+     ere he retire for the night and commit his intellect to
+     inscrutable nothingness, do let it hop abroad for a little
+     freedom. Life must be taken with a grain of saltation: let the
+     spirit dance a measure or two ere it collapse. For this purpose
+     it is my pleasure, about the hour of midnight, to draw a jug of
+     cider from the keg and a book from the shelf. I choose some
+     volume ill written and stupidly conceived, to set me in conceit
+     with myself. I read a few pages, and then apply myself to the
+     composition of verses. These done, I burn them, and go to bed
+     with a cheerful spirit.
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS ORATION
+
+Address to An Employer Upon Demanding a Raise, or, The Battle of
+Manila Envelopes
+
+
+    _As Planned_                          _As Delivered_
+
+I think you will admit,                 If you are not too
+sir, that the quality                   busy, sir, there is one
+of my work during the                   other matter--in fact,
+last two years has been                 the truth of the matter
+such that my services                   in fact is exactly--well,
+could not easily be replaced.           sir, I was precisely
+I speak more                            wondering whether--of
+in pain than in anger                   course I know this is a
+when I say that it has                  bad time--indeed I have
+been a matter of profound               been very pleased to see
+surprise to me to                       business picking up a
+note that you have not                  bit lately, and I am sure
+seen fit to acknowledge                 my own department has
+my value to the firm in                 been--but to tell you the
+some substantial way. I                 truth, sir, I have been
+think I may say that                    wondering--of course it
+I have been patient.                    is just as you think best
+I have continued my                     and I wouldn't think of
+efforts with unremitting                insisting, but after all,
+zeal, and I think I may                 perhaps I have made a
+flatter myself that my                  mistake in mentioning
+endeavors have not been                 it, but I was thinking
+without result. I have                  that possibly you might
+here, carefully tabulated,              bear in mind the idea of
+a memorandum of                         a possible future raise in
+the increased profits in                salary at some future time.
+my department during
+the last twelve months,
+due in great part to my
+careful management. I
+am sorry to have to
+force you into a decision,
+but I think I owe it to
+myself to say candidly
+that unless you see the
+matter in the same way
+that I do I shall feel
+obliged to deprive the
+firm of my services.
+
+
+
+
+ON LAZINESS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+To-day we rather intended to write an essay on Laziness, but were too
+indolent to do so.
+
+The sort of thing we had in mind to write would have been exceedingly
+persuasive. We intended to discourse a little in favour of a greater
+appreciation of Indolence as a benign factor in human affairs.
+
+It is our observation that every time we get into trouble it is due to
+not having been lazy enough. Unhappily, we were born with a certain fund
+of energy. We have been hustling about for a number of years now, and
+it doesn't seem to get us anything but tribulation. Henceforward we are
+going to make a determined effort to be more languid and demure. It is
+the bustling man who always gets put on committees, who is asked to
+solve the problems of other people and neglect his own.
+
+The man who is really, thoroughly, and philosophically slothful is the
+only thoroughly happy man. It is the happy man who benefits the world.
+The conclusion is inescapable.
+
+We remember a saying about the meek inheriting the earth. The truly meek
+man is the lazy man. He is too modest to believe that any ferment and
+hubbub of his can ameliorate the earth or assuage the perplexities of
+humanity.
+
+O. Henry said once that one should be careful to distinguish laziness
+from dignified repose. Alas, that was a mere quibble. Laziness is always
+dignified, it is always reposeful. Philosophical laziness, we mean. The
+kind of laziness that is based upon a carefully reasoned analysis of
+experience. Acquired laziness. We have no respect for those who were
+born lazy; it is like being born a millionaire: they cannot appreciate
+their bliss. It is the man who has hammered his laziness out of the
+stubborn material of life for whom we chant praise and allelulia.
+
+The laziest man we know--we do not like to mention his name, as the
+brutal world does not yet recognize sloth at its community value--is
+one of the greatest poets in this country; one of the keenest satirists;
+one of the most rectilinear thinkers. He began life in the customary
+hustling way. He was always too busy to enjoy himself. He became
+surrounded by eager people who came to him to solve their problems.
+"It's a queer thing," he said sadly; "no one ever comes to me asking for
+help in solving _my_ problems." Finally the light broke upon him. He
+stopped answering letters, buying lunches for casual friends and
+visitors from out of town, he stopped lending money to old college pals
+and frittering his time away on all the useless minor matters that
+pester the good-natured. He sat down in a secluded café with his cheek
+against a seidel of dark beer and began to caress the universe with his
+intellect.
+
+The most damning argument against the Germans is that they were not lazy
+enough. In the middle of Europe, a thoroughly disillusioned, indolent
+and delightful old continent, the Germans were a dangerous mass of
+energy and bumptious push. If the Germans had been as lazy, as
+indifferent, and as righteously laissez-fairish as their neighbours, the
+world would have been spared a great deal.
+
+People respect laziness. If you once get a reputation for complete,
+immovable, and reckless indolence the world will leave you to your own
+thoughts, which are generally rather interesting.
+
+Doctor Johnson, who was one of the world's great philosophers, was lazy.
+Only yesterday our friend the Caliph showed us an extraordinarily
+interesting thing. It was a little leather-bound notebook in which
+Boswell jotted down memoranda of his talks with the old doctor. These
+notes he afterward worked up into the immortal Biography. And lo and
+behold, what was the very first entry in this treasured little relic?
+
+     Doctor Johnson told me in going to Ilam from Ashbourne, 22
+     September, 1777, that the way the plan of his Dictionary came to
+     be addressed to Lord Chesterfield was this: He had neglected to
+     write it by the time appointed. Dodsley suggested a desire to
+     have it addressed to Lord C. Mr. J. laid hold of this as an
+     excuse for delay, that it might be better done perhaps, and let
+     Dodsley have his desire. Mr. Johnson said to his friend, Doctor
+     Bathurst: "Now if any good comes of my addressing to Lord
+     Chesterfield it will be ascribed to deep policy and address,
+     when, in fact, it was only a casual excuse for laziness."
+
+Thus we see that it was sheer laziness that led to the greatest triumph
+of Doctor Johnson's life, the noble and memorable letter to Chesterfield
+in 1775.
+
+Mind your business is a good counsel; but mind your idleness also. It's
+a tragic thing to make a business of your mind. Save your mind to amuse
+yourself with.
+
+The lazy man does not stand in the way of progress. When he sees
+progress roaring down upon him he steps nimbly out of the way. The lazy
+man doesn't (in the vulgar phrase) pass the buck. He lets the buck pass
+him. We have always secretly envied our lazy friends. Now we are going
+to join them. We have burned our boats or our bridges or whatever it is
+that one burns on the eve of a momentous decision.
+
+Writing on this congenial topic has roused us up to quite a pitch of
+enthusiasm and energy.
+
+
+
+
+TEACHING THE PRINCE TO TAKE NOTES
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The Prince of Wales probably suffers severely during his tours abroad,
+for he is a shy youth; but he also makes many friends, for he is a
+delightfully simple and agreeable person. When we used to see him he
+looked a good deal like the traditional prince of the fairy tales, for
+he was a slender boy with yellow hair, and blue eyes, and a quick pink
+blush. And we feel toward him the friendly sense of superiority that the
+college alumnus always feels toward the man who was a freshman when he
+himself was a senior; for the prince and ourself stood in that relation
+a few years ago at a certain haunt of letters.
+
+There was a course of lectures on history that we were to attend. It was
+a popular course, and the attendance was large. Arriving late at the
+first lecture the room was packed, and we could see from the door that
+there was only one empty seat. This happened to be in the very front
+row, and wondering how it was that so desirable a place had not been
+seized we hastened to it. The lecturer was a swift talker, and we fell
+to taking notes busily. Not for some minutes did we have a chance to
+scrutinize our surroundings. We then saw that in the adjoining chair sat
+the prince, and surmised that no one had wanted to take the chair for
+fear of being twitted by his companions for a supposed desire to hobnob
+with royalty.
+
+If we remember correctly, it was the prince's first term of college
+life. The task of taking notes from a rapid-fire lecturer was plainly
+one to which he was not accustomed, and as he wrestled with his notebook
+we could see that he had not learned the art of considering the
+lecturer's remarks and putting down only the gist of them, in some
+abbreviated system of his own, as every experienced student learns.
+Grant Robertson, the well-known historian, was lecturing on English
+constitutional documents, and his swift and informal utterance was
+perfectly easy to summarize if one knew how to get down the important
+points and neglect the rest. But the unhappy prince, desperately eager
+to do the right thing in this new experience, was trying to write down
+every word. If, for instance, Mr. Robertson said (in a humorous aside),
+"Henry VIII was a sinful old man with a hobby of becoming a widower,"
+the experienced listener would jot down something like this: H 8,
+_self-made widower_. But we could see that the prince was laboriously
+copying out the sentence in full. And naturally, by the end of a few
+paragraphs, he was hopelessly behind. But he scribbled away
+industriously, doing his best. He realized, however, that he had not
+quite got the hang of the thing, and at the end of the lecture he turned
+to us with most agreeable bashfulness and asked if we would lend him our
+notebook, so that he could get down the points that he had missed. We
+did so, and briefly explained our own system of abbreviating. We noticed
+that in succeeding sessions our royal neighbour did very much better,
+learning in some measure to discriminate between what was advisable to
+note down and what was mere explanatory matter or persiflage on the part
+of the lecturer. But (if we must be candid) we would not recommend him
+as a newspaper reporter. And, indeed, the line of work to which he has
+been called does not require quite as intense concentration as that of a
+cub on what Philip Gibbs calls "The Street of Adventure."
+
+No one could come in contact with the prince without liking him, for his
+bashful, gentle, and teachable nature is very winning. We remember with
+a certain amusement the time that Grant Robertson got off one of his
+annual gags to the effect that, according to the principle of strict
+legitimacy, there were in Europe several hundred (we forget the figure)
+people with a greater right to the British throne than the family at
+present occupying it. The roomful of students roared with genial mirth,
+and the unhappy prince blushed in a way that young girls used to in the
+good old days of three-piece bathing suits.
+
+
+
+
+A CITY NOTEBOOK
+
+(_Philadelphia_)
+
+
+It would be hard to find a more lovely spot in the flush of a summer
+sunset than Wister Woods. Old residents of the neighbourhood say that
+the trees are not what they were fifteen and twenty years ago; the
+chestnuts have died off; even some of the tall tulip-poplars are a
+little bald at the top, and one was recently felled by a gale. But still
+that quiet plateau stands in a serene hush, flooded with rich orange
+glow on a warm evening. The hollyhocks in the back gardens of Rubicam
+Street are scarlet and Swiss-cheese-coloured and black; and looking
+across the railroad ravine one sees crypts and aisles of green as though
+in the heart of some cathedral of the great woods.
+
+Belfield Avenue, which bends through the valley in a curve of warm thick
+yellow dust, will some day be boulevarded into a spick-and-span highway
+for motors. But now it lies little trafficked, and one might prefer to
+have it so, for in the stillness of the evening the birds are eloquent.
+The thrushes of Wister Woods, which have been immortalized by T. A. Daly
+in perhaps the loveliest poem ever written in Philadelphia, flute and
+whistle their tantalizing note, while the song sparrow echoes them with
+his confident, challenging call. Down behind the dusty sumac shrubbery
+lies the little blue-green cottage said to have been used by Benjamin
+West as a studio. In a meadow beside the road two cows were grazing in
+the blue shadow of overhanging woodland.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Over the road leans a flat outcrop of stone, known locally as "The Bum's
+Rock." An antique philosopher of those parts assured the wayfarer that
+it is named for a romantic vagabond who perished there by the explosion
+of a can of Bohemian goulash which he was heating over a small fire of
+sticks; but one doubts the tale. Our own conjecture is that it is named
+for Jacob Boehm, the oldtime brewer of Germantown, who predicted in his
+chronicles that the world would come to an end in July, 1919. From his
+point of view he was not so far wrong.
+
+Above Boehm's Rock, in a grassy level among the trees, a merry little
+circle of young ladies was sitting round a picnic supper. The twilight
+grew darker and fireflies began to twinkle. In the steep curve of the
+Cinder and Bloodshot (between Fisher's and Wister stations) a cheerful
+train rumbled, with its engine running backward just like a country
+local. Its bright shaft of light wavered among the tall tree trunks. One
+would not imagine that it was less than six miles to the City Hall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A quarter to one A. M., and a hot, silent night. As one walks up
+Chestnut Street a distant roaring is heard, which rapidly grows louder.
+The sound has a note of terrifying menace. Then, careering down the
+almost deserted highway, comes a huge water-tank, throbbing like an
+airplane. A creamy sheet of water, shot out at high pressure, floods the
+street on each side, dashing up on the pavements. A knot of belated
+revellers in front of the Adelphia Hotel, standing in mid-street, to
+discuss ways and means of getting home, skip nimbly to one side, the
+ladies lifting up their dresses with shrill squeaks of alarm as the
+water splashes round them. Pedestrians plodding quietly up the street
+cower fearfully against the buildings, while a fine mist envelops them.
+
+After the tank comes, more leisurely, a squad of brooms. The street is
+dripping, every sewer opening clucks and gurgles with the falling water.
+There is something unbelievably humorous in the way that roaring
+Niagara of water dashes madly down the silent street. There is a note of
+irony in it, too, for the depressed enthusiasts who have been sitting
+all evening in a restaurant over lemonade and ginger ale. Perhaps the
+chauffeur is a prohibitionist gone mad.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While eating half a dozen doughnuts in a Broad Street lunchroom at one
+o'clock in the morning, we mused happily about our friends all tucked
+away in bed, sound asleep. There is one in particular on whom we thought
+with serene pleasure. It was charming to think of that delightful,
+argumentative, contradictory, volatile person, his active mind stilled
+in the admirable reticence of slumber. He, so endlessly speculatory, so
+full of imaginative enthusiasms and riotous intuitions and troubled
+zeals concerning humanity, lost in a beneficent swoon of
+unconsciousness! We could not just say why, but we broke into chuckles
+to think of him lying there, not denying any of our statements,
+absolutely and positively saying nothing. To have one's friends asleep
+now and then is very refreshing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Off Walnut Street, below Fifth, and just east of the window where that
+perfectly lovely damsel sits operating an adding machine--why is it, by
+the way, that the girls who run adding machines are always so
+marvellously fair? Is there some secret virtue in the process of adding
+that makes one lovely? We feel sure that a subtracting engine would not
+have that subtle beautifying effect--just below Fifth Street, we started
+to say, there runs a little alley called (we believe) De Silver Court.
+It is a sombre little channel between high walls and barred windows, but
+it is a retreat we recommend highly to hay fever sufferers. For in one
+of the buildings adjoining there seems to be a warehouse of some company
+that makes an "aromatic disinfector." Wandering in there by chance, we
+stood delighted at the sweet medicinal savour that was wafted on the
+air. It had a most cheering effect upon our emunctory woes, and we
+lingered so long, in a meditative and healing ecstasy, that young women
+immured in the basement of the aromatic warehouse began to peer upward
+from the barred windows of their basement and squeak with astonished and
+nervous mirth. We blew a loud salute and moved away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We entered a lunchroom on Broad Street for our favourite breakfast of
+coffee and a pair of crullers. It was strangely early and only a few of
+the flat-arm chairs were occupied. After dispatching the rations we
+carefully filled our pipe. With us we had a copy of an agreeable book,
+"The Calamities and Quarrels of Authors." It occurred to us that here,
+in the brisk serenity of the morning, would be a charming opportunity
+for a five-minute smoke and five pages of reading before attacking the
+ardours and endurances of the day. Lovingly we applied the match to the
+fuel. We began to read:
+
+     Of all the sorrows in which the female character may participate,
+     there are few more affecting than those of an authoress----
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A stern, white-coated official came over to us and tapped us on the
+shoulder.
+
+"There's a sign behind you," he said.
+
+We looked, guiltily, and saw:
+
+POSITIVELY
+NO SMOKING
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The cocoateria on Eighth Street closes at one A. M. Between
+twelve-thirty and closing time it is full of busy eaters, mostly the
+night shift from the Chestnut Street newspaper offices and printing and
+engraving firms in the neighbourhood. Ham and eggs blossom merrily. The
+white-coated waiters move in swift, stern circuit. Griddle cakes bake
+with amazing swiftness toward the stroke of one. Little dishes of baked
+beans stand hot and ready in the steam-chest. The waiter punches your
+check as he brings your frankfurters and coffee. He adds another
+perforation when you get your ice cream. Then he comes back and punches
+it again.
+
+"Here," you cry, "let it alone and stop bullying it!"
+
+"Sorry, brother," he says. "I forgot that peach cream was fifteen
+cents."
+
+One o'clock. They lock the door and turn out the little gas jet where
+smokers light up. As the tables empty the chairs are stacked up on top.
+And if it is a clear warm evening the customers smoke a final weed along
+the Chestnut Street doorsteps, talking together in a cheery undertone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No man has ever started upon a new cheque-book without a few sourly
+solemn thoughts.
+
+In the humble waters of finance wherein we paddle we find that a book of
+fifty cheques lasts us about four months, allowing for two or three duds
+when we start to make out a foil payable to bearer (self) and decide to
+renounce that worthy ambition and make it out to the gas company
+instead.
+
+It occurs to us that if Bunyan had been writing "Pilgrim's Progress"
+nowadays instead of making Christian encounter lions in the path he
+would have substituted gas meters, particularly the quarter-in-the-slot
+kind that one finds in a seaside cottage. However----
+
+Four months is quite a long time. It may be weak of us, but we can never
+resist wondering as we survey that flock of empty cheques just what
+adventures our bank account is going to undergo during that period, and
+whether our customary technique of being aloof with the receiving teller
+and genial and commentary with the paying ditto is the right one. We
+always believe in keeping a paying teller in a cheerful frame of mind.
+We would never admit to him that we think it is going to rain. We say,
+rather, "Well, it may blow over," and try not to surmise how many
+hundreds there are in the pile at his elbow. Probably we think the
+explanation for the really bizarre architecture of our bank is to keep
+depositors' attention from the money. Unquestionably Walt Whitman's tomb
+over in Harleigh--Walt's vault--was copied from our bank.
+
+The cheques in our book are blue. We have always regretted this. If we
+had known it beforehand perhaps we would have inflicted our problems
+upon another bank. Because there are so many more interesting colours
+for cheques, tints upon which the ink shows up in a more imposing
+manner. A pale pink or cream-coloured cheque for $2.74 looks much more
+exciting than a blue cheque for $25. We have known gray, pink, white,
+brown, green, and salmon-coloured cheques. A friend of ours once showed
+us one that was a bright orange, but refused to let us handle it. But
+yellow is the colour that appeals to us most strongly. When we were very
+young and away from home our monthly allowance, the amount of which we
+shall not state, but it cost us less effort than any money we ever
+received since, came to us by way of pale primrose-coloured cheques.
+For, after all, there are no cheques like those one used to get from
+one's father. We hope the Urchin will think so some day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We like to pay homage to the true artist in all lines. At the corner of
+Market and Marshall streets--between Sixth and Seventh--the collar-clasp
+orator has his rostrum, and it seems to us that his method of harangue
+has the quality of genuine art. He does not bawl or try to terrify or
+bully his audience into purchase as do the auctioneers of the
+"pawnbrokers' outlets." How gently, how winningly, how sweetly he pleads
+the merits of his little collar clasp! And there is shrewd imagination
+in his attention-catching device, which is a small boy dressed in black,
+wearing a white hood of cheesecloth that hides his face. This peculiar
+silent figure, with a touch of mystery about it, serves to keep the
+crowd wondering until the oration begins.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+With a smile, with infinite ingratiation and gentle persuasion, our
+friend exhibits the merits of his device which does away with the
+traditional collar-button. His art is to make the collar-button seem a
+piteous, almost a tragic thing. His eyes swim with unshed tears as he
+describes the discomfort of the man whose collar, fastened by the
+customary button, cannot be given greater freedom on a hot, muggy day.
+He shows, by exhibition on his own person, the exquisite relief afforded
+by the adjustable collar clasp. "When the day grows cool," he says,
+"when you begin to enjoy yourself and want your collar tighter, you just
+loosen the clasp, slide the tabs closer together, and there you are. And
+no picking at your tie to get the knot undone. Now, how many of you men
+have spoiled an expensive tie by picking at it? Your fingers come in
+contact with the fibres of the silk and the first thing you know the tie
+is soiled. This little clasp"--and he casts a beam of affection upon
+it--"saves your tie, it saves your collar, and it saves your patience."
+A note of yearning pathos comes into his agreeable voice, and he holds
+out a handful of the old-fashioned collar-buttons. "You men are wearing
+the same buttons your great-grandfathers wore. Don't you want to get
+out of collar slavery? _Don't_ you want to quit working your face all
+out of shape struggling with a collar-button? Now as this is a
+manufacturing demonstration----"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On a warm evening nothing is more pleasant than a ride on the front
+platform of the Market Street L, with the front door open. As the train
+leaves Sixty-ninth Street it dips down the Millbourne bend and the cool,
+damp smell of the Cobb's Creek meadows gushes through the car. Then the
+track straightens out for a long run toward the City Hall. Roaring over
+the tree tops, with the lights of movies and shops glowing up from
+below, a warm typhoon makes one lean against it to keep one's footing.
+The airy stations are lined by girls in light summer dresses, attended
+by their swains. The groan of the wheels underfoot causes a curious
+tickling in the soles of the feet as one stands on the steel platform.
+
+This groan rises to a shrill scream as the train gathers speed between
+stations, gradually diminishing to a reluctant grumble as the cars come
+to a stop. In the distance, in a peacock-blue sky, the double gleam of
+the City Hall tower shines against the night. Down on the left is the
+hiss and clang of West Philadelphia station, with the long, dim, amber
+glow of the platform and belated commuters pacing about. Then the smoky
+dive across the Schuylkill and the bellow of the subway.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From time to time humanity is forced to revise its customary notions in
+the interests of truth. This is always painful.
+
+It is an old fetich that the week-end in summer is a time for riotous
+enjoyment, of goodly cheer and mirthful solace. A careful examination of
+human beings during this hebdomadal period of carnival leads us to
+question the doctrine.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+When we watch the horrors of discomfort and vexation endured by
+simple-hearted citizens in pursuit of a light-hearted Saturday and
+Sunday, we often wonder how it is that humanity will so gleefully
+inflict upon itself sufferings which, if they were imposed by some
+taskmaster, would be called atrocious.
+
+We observe, for instance, women and children standing sweltering in the
+aisles of trains during a two-hour run to the seashore. We observe the
+number of drownings, motor accidents, murders, and suicides that take
+place during the Saturday to Monday period. We observe families loaded
+down with small children, who might have been happy and reasonably cool
+at home, struggling desperately to get away for a day in the country,
+rising at 5 A. M., standing in line at the station, fanning themselves
+with blasphemy, and weary before they start. We observe them chased home
+by thunderstorms or colic, dazed and blistered with sunburn, or groaning
+with a surfeit of ice cream cones.
+
+It is a lamentable fact (and the truth is almost always lamentable, and
+hotly denied) that for the hard-working majority the week-end is a curse
+rather than a blessing. The saddest fact in human annals is that most
+people are never so happy as when they are hard at work. The time may
+come when criminals will be condemned, not to the chair, but to twenty
+successive week-ends spent standing in the aisles of crowded excursion
+trains.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Strolling downtown to a well-known home of fish dinners, it is
+appetizing to pass along the curve of Dock Street in the coolness of the
+evening. The clean, lively odours of vegetables and fruit are strong on
+the air. Under the broad awnings of the commission merchants and
+produce dealers the stock is piled up in neat and engaging piles ready
+to be carted away at dawn. Under the glow of pale arcs and gas lamps the
+colours of the scene are vivid. Great baskets of eggplant shine like
+huge grapes, a polished port wine colour; green and scarlet peppers
+catch points of light; a flat pinkish colour gleams on carrots. Each
+species seems to have an ordered pattern of its own. Potatoes are ranged
+in a pyramid; watermelons in long rows; white and yellow onions are
+heaped in sacks. The sweet musk of cantaloupes is the scent that
+overbreathes all others. Then, down nearer to the waterfront, comes the
+strong, damp fishy whiff of oysters. To stroll among these gleaming
+piles of victuals, to watch the various colours where the lamps pour a
+pale silver and yellow on cairns and pyramids of vegetables, is to
+gather a lusty appetite and attack the first oyster stew of the season
+with a stout heart.
+
+It being a very humid day, we stopped to compliment the curly-headed
+sandwich man at Ninth and Market on his décolleté corsage, which he
+wears in the Walt Whitman manner. "Wish we could get away with it the
+way you do," we said, admiringly. He looked at us with the patience of
+one inured to bourgeois comment. "It's got to be tried," said he, "like
+everything else."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We stopped by the Weather Man's little illuminated booth at Ninth and
+Chestnut about 10 o'clock in the evening. We were scrutinizing his
+pretty coloured pictures, wondering how soon the rain would determine,
+when a slender young man appeared out of the gloom, said "I'm sorry to
+have to do this," switched off the light, and pulled down the rolling
+front of the booth. It was the Weather Man himself.
+
+We were greatly elated to meet this mythical sage and walked down the
+street a little way with him. In order to cheer him up, we complimented
+him on the artistic charm of his little booth, with its glow of golden
+light shining on the coloured map and the bright loops and curves of
+crayon. We told him how almost at any time in the evening groups of
+people can be seen admiring his stall, but his sensitive heart was
+gloomy.
+
+"Most of them don't understand it," he said, morosely. "The women are
+the worst. I've gone there in the evening and found them studying the
+map eagerly. Hopefully, I would creep up behind to hear their comments.
+One will say, 'Yes, that's where my husband came from,' or 'I spent last
+summer over there,' pointing to some place on the map. They seem to
+think it's put there for them to study geography."
+
+We tried to sympathize with the broken-hearted scientist, but his spirit
+had been crushed by a long series of woes.
+
+"The other evening," said he, "I saw a couple of girls gazing at the
+map, and they looked so intelligent I really was charmed. Apparently
+they were discussing an area of low pressure that was moving down from
+the Great Lakes, and I lent an ear. Imagine my chagrin when one of them
+said: 'You see the colour of that chalk line? I'm going to make my next
+knitted vestee just like that.' And the other one said: 'I think the
+whole colour scheme is adorable. I'm going to use it as a pattern for my
+new camouflage bathing-suit.'"
+
+"Thank goodness," cried the miserable Weather Man: "I have another map
+like that down at the Bourse, and the brokers really give it some
+intelligent attention."
+
+We went on our way sadly, thinking how many sorrows there are in the
+world. It is grievous to think of the poor Weather Man, lurking with
+beating pulses in the neighbourhood of Ninth and Chestnut in the hope
+of finding someone who understands his painstaking display. The next
+time you are standing in front of his booth do say something about the
+Oceanic High in the South Atlantic or the dangerous Aleutian Low or the
+anticyclonic condition prevailing in the Alleghenies. He might overhear
+you, and it would do his mournful heart good.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It was eight o'clock, a cool drizzling night. Chestnut Street was gray
+with a dull, pearly, opaque twilight. In the little portico east of
+Independence Hall the gas lamp under the ceiling cast a soft pink glow
+on the brick columns.
+
+Independence Square was a sea of tremulous, dripping boughs. The quaint
+heptahedral lamps threw splashed shimmers of topaz colour across the
+laky pavement. "Golden lamps in a green night," as Marvell says,
+twinkled through the stir and moisture of the evening.
+
+
+
+
+ON GOING TO BED
+
+
+One of the characters in "The Moon and Sixpence" remarked that he had
+faithfully lived up to the old precept about doing every day two things
+you heartily dislike; for, said he, every day he had got up and he had
+gone to bed.
+
+It is a sad thing that as soon as the hands of the clock have turned ten
+the shadow of going to bed begins to creep over the evening. We have
+never heard bedtime spoken of with any enthusiasm. One after another we
+have seen a gathering disperse, each person saying (with an air of
+solemn resignation): "Well, I guess I'll go to bed." But there was no
+hilarity about it. It is really rather touching how they cling to the
+departing skirts of the day that is vanishing under the spinning shadow
+of night.
+
+This is odd, we repeat, for sleep is highly popular among human beings.
+The reluctance to go to one's couch is not at all a reluctance to
+slumber, for almost all of us will doze happily in an armchair or on a
+sofa, or even festooned on the floor with a couple of cushions. But the
+actual and formal yielding to sheets and blankets is to be postponed to
+the last possible moment.
+
+The devil of drowsiness is at his most potent, we find, about 10:30
+P. M. At this period the human carcass seems to consider that it has
+finished its cycle, which began with so much courage nearly sixteen
+hours before. It begins to slack and the mind halts on a dead centre
+every now and then, refusing to complete the revolution. Now there are
+those who hold that this is certainly the seemly and appointed time to
+go to bed and they do so as a matter of routine. These are, commonly,
+the happier creatures, for they take the tide of sleep at the flood and
+are borne calmly and with gracious gentleness out to great waters of
+nothingness. They push off from the wharf on a tranquil current and
+nothing more is to be seen or heard of these voyagers until they
+reappear at the breakfast table, digging lustily into their grapefruit.
+
+These people are happy, aye, in a brutish and sedentary fashion, but
+they miss the admirable adventures of those more embittered wrestlers
+who will not give in without a struggle. These latter suffer severe
+pangs between 10:30 and about 11:15 while they grapple with their fading
+faculties and seek to reëstablish the will on its tottering throne. This
+requires courage stout, valour unbending. Once you yield, be it ever so
+little, to the tempter, you are lost. And here our poor barren clay
+plays us false, undermining the intellect with many a trick and wile. "I
+will sit down for a season in that comfortable chair," the creature
+says to himself, "and read this sprightly novel. That will ease my mind
+and put me in humour for a continuance of lively thinking." And the end
+of that man is a steady nasal buzz from the bottom of the chair where he
+has collapsed, an unsightly object and a disgrace to humanity. This also
+means a big bill from the electric light company at the end of the
+month. In many such ways will his corpus bewray him, leading him by
+plausible self-deceptions into a pitfall of sleep, whence he is aroused
+about 3 A. M. when the planet turns over on the other side. Only by
+stiff perseverance and rigid avoidance of easy chairs may the critical
+hour between 10:30 and 11:30 be safely passed. Tobacco, a self-brewed
+pot of tea, and a browsing along bookshelves (remain standing and do not
+sit down with your book) are helps in this time of struggle. Even so,
+there are some happily drowsy souls who can never cross these shallows
+alone without grounding on the Lotus Reefs. Our friend J---- D----
+K----, magnificent creature, was (when we lived with him) so potently
+hypnoidal that, even erect and determined as his bookcase and urgently
+bent upon Brann's _Iconoclast_ or some other literary irritant, sleep
+would seep through his pores and he would fall with a crash, lying there
+in unconscious bliss until someone came in and prodded him up, reeling
+and ashamed.
+
+But, as we started to say, those who survive this drastic weeding out
+which Night imposes upon her wooers--so as to cull and choose only the
+truly meritorious lovers--experience supreme delights which are unknown
+to their snoring fellows. When the struggle with somnolence has been
+fought out and won, when the world is all-covering darkness and
+close-pressing silence, when the tobacco suddenly takes on fresh vigour
+and fragrance and the books lie strewn about the table, then it seems as
+though all the rubbish and floating matter of the day's thoughts have
+poured away and only the bright, clear, and swift current of the mind
+itself remains, flowing happily and without impediment. This perfection
+of existence is not to be reached very often; but when properly
+approached it may be won. It is a different mind that one uncovers then,
+a spirit which is lucid and hopeful, to which (for a few serene hours)
+time exists not. The friable resolutions of the day are brought out
+again and recemented and chiselled anew. Surprising schemes are started
+and carried through to happy conclusion, lifetimes of amazement are
+lived in a few passing ticks. There is one who at such moments resolves,
+with complete sincerity, to start at one end of the top shelf and read
+again all the books in his library, intending this time really to
+extract their true marrow. He takes a clean sheet of paper and sets down
+memoranda of all the people he intends to write to, and all the plumbers
+and what not that he will call up the next day. And the next time this
+happy seizure attacks him he will go through the same gestures again
+without surprise and without the slightest mortification. And then,
+having lived a generation of good works since midnight struck, he
+summons all his resolution and goes to bed.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
+
+GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
+
+
+
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