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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42710 ***
+
+BIZARRE
+
+
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+SCRAMBLED EGGS
+
+[Illustration: _His symphony depicted the sorrows of Russia, the height
+of the steppes, and the agonies of indigestion._]
+
+
+
+
+BIZARRE
+
+By
+
+LAWTON MACKALL
+
+With 26 Drawings
+By LAUREN STOUT
+
+[Illustration]
+
+NEW YORK
+
+LIEBER & LEWIS
+
+1922
+
+
+
+
+Copyright 1922
+By LIEBER & LEWIS
+
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+_To my favorite poet_
+
+VIRGINIA WOODS MACKALL
+
+
+
+
+_The author thanks_ LIFE, JUDGE, THE CENTURY, THE QUILL, THE NEW YORK
+TIMES, THE LITERARY REVIEW, _and_ THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE _for kind
+permission to include in this volume certain contributions to those
+publications. He hopes he has remembered to ask such permission in each
+case._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+As good form requires that an author mention in his preface the persons
+to whom he is chiefly indebted, I take this opportunity of stating that
+during the preparation of this book I became appreciably indebted to Dr.
+Warren S. Holder, my dentist, Mr. William Vroom, my tailor, Mr. M.
+Tesshow, my stationer and tobacconist, and Messrs. Acker, Merrall &
+Condit, my grocers.
+
+Although these gentlemen neither "corrected the proofs" of my book nor
+"saw it through the press," nor allowed me access to rare documents and
+family letters, nor treated me to intimate accounts of their fathers and
+great uncles as they knew them; though they did none of these customary
+things, nevertheless I became decidedly their debtor--and still am.
+
+Indeed, without their stimulus this book might never have been written.
+
+L. M.
+
+
+
+
+_ENCLOSED PLEASE FIND_
+
+WHAT-NOTS
+
+
+  Unsolicited Personal Adornments
+
+  Shelf Culture
+
+  Portable Pigeonholes
+
+  Simile
+
+  The Beatified Race
+
+  Jouez Balle
+
+  The Art of Packing
+
+  Agriculture Indoors
+
+  Snowy Bosoms
+
+  Interior Desperation
+
+  The Writing on the Screen
+
+  Musique Glacée
+
+  The Care of the Husband
+
+  Terminology of Tardiness
+
+  Oppressors of the Meek
+
+  Putting Pedagogy Across
+
+  Coaching From the Sidelines
+
+  Fast and Loose
+
+  Primrose Pathology
+
+  Fightier Than the Sword
+
+  Enlightment
+
+  Holiday Misgivings
+
+  All, All Are Gone
+
+  My Museum
+
+  On Chairs--and off
+
+
+MINIMS
+
+  The Night of the Fleece
+
+  Black Jitney
+
+  Light Breakfast
+
+  The Man Opposite
+
+  Lucy the Literary Agent
+
+  The Creeping Fingers
+
+  The Man With the Hose
+
+
+JANGLES
+
+  Those Symphony Concert Programs
+
+  How to Know the Instruments
+
+  Notes on Pianos
+
+  The Life Drama of a Musical Critic
+
+  The Survival of the Fattest
+
+
+
+
+WHAT-NOTS
+
+
+
+
+UNSOLICITED PERSONAL ADORNMENTS
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative letter "H"]
+
+Have you ever, on returning home from a round of calls, discovered upon your
+coat a large, obtrusive spot?
+
+Stricken with horror, you wonder how long it has been there. Did you
+have this adjunct when you appeared before your wealthy aunt? That
+severe female has never quite approved of you, and now this will finish
+you as far as she is concerned. Did you exhibit yourself thus disgraced
+at the Brumleighs'? You recollect that the maid eyed you queerly when
+she opened the door, and that Mrs. B. had frequent recourse to her
+lorgnettes. Then, too, both the Greens and the Worthingtons seemed a
+little stiffer than usual.
+
+How did you acquire it, anyhow? It looks and feels like ice cream of a
+very rich quality; ice cream that has drippled merrily in leaps and
+bounds. But you had no ice cream today. Neither did you talk to anyone
+who was having ice cream.
+
+Perhaps you have been struck by ice cream, just as people are struck by
+lightning. The weather does such peculiar things nowadays.
+
+I have a gray suit that is a constant prey to spots. Its frail color--a
+sickly, betwixt-and-between shade, chosen in haste and repented of at
+leisure--puts it utterly at their mercy. And they flock to it.
+
+Things sticky and glutinous pounce avidly upon it; nor is its seat
+reserved from paints and varnishes. Sauces afflict it. Oils take
+advantage of its helplessness. Grass bedizens it with garish green.
+
+I try my best to protect it--but what can I do? What am I against so
+many? While I am rescuing my left elbow from the machinations of a
+passing dish, I unwittingly suffer my right cuff to be enticed by the
+gravy in my plate. As I walk discreetly in the middle of the sidewalk,
+an automobile out in the street salutes me with a volley of mud.
+
+And the most notable spots happen mysteriously. They appear out of the
+air, as it were, like the pictures that frost makes on window panes. I
+submit the phenomenon of their strange origin to the scientific world as
+an instance of spontaneous generation.
+
+This spotability of my gray suit is surpassed only by the achievements
+of my blue serge. (I shall not here discuss my English tweeds, nor my
+Scotch cheviots, nor the braided cutaway and the lounge suit that I had
+made for me in Bond Street, for fear the reader might divine that I
+never possessed those garments.) This suit is not a victim to spots--it
+deliberately invites them. It is a connoisseur, a discriminating
+collector.
+
+Scorning such vulgarities as paint and pitch, it seeks the exotic, the
+outré--amazing stickinesses, bewildering viscosities, undreamed of
+goos.
+
+Although delighting in intricacy of design and delicate nuances of
+shading, it prefers durability to all other qualities. Some of its
+antiques--particularly a brownish white one, resembling an octopus, over
+the front pocket--have stood the test of time and clothes brushes.
+
+On three occasions this remarkable collection has been almost entirely
+destroyed by benzine, but each time the principal specimens have
+survived intact. These cleanings divide the history of the suit into
+four epochs.
+
+Spots of the fourth (or present) epoch are of small consequence; spots
+of the third and second epochs are more interesting; while spots which
+antedate the first great deluge are quite rare. Among these last are the
+octopus and other gems of the collection.
+
+Once, when I had become exceedingly irked at having to go about clad in
+pseudo-tapestry, I handed the suit over to a desperado of a ladies' and
+gents' tailor--a man who had the reputation of being capable of getting
+anything out of anything or anybody--and besought him to raze the
+frescoes.
+
+He attacked them after the manner customary to cleaners; that is to
+say, he drove out the spots with smells. Only, he used smells that were
+nothing short of brutal. The rout was complete.
+
+When he brought the suit to my room on Saturday night, I could hardly
+believe my eyes. Being forced, however, to believe my nose, I hastily
+opened the window. I could understand why the spots had departed. I even
+felt sorry for them.
+
+Not daring to put the suit away, for fear of contaminating the rest of
+my apparel, I hung it over the back of a chair by the window.
+
+But the incoming breeze, instead of carrying the aroma away, wafted it
+directly toward me. It was certainly strong. It fairly assaulted the
+nostrils. One good whiff of that vicious chemical was almost enough to
+make you dizzy.
+
+It treated me as if I were a spot.
+
+I picked up a book and tried to read, but could not concentrate my
+attention.
+
+The spot-destroyer was continually interrupting. My head was spinning so
+that I could hardly see.
+
+I realized that the life of a spot was not a happy one.
+
+Thinking that smoking might help, I was about to light a cigarette when
+I remembered reading in the papers of people who struck matches in
+fume-filled rooms and then were blown blocks and blocks without knowing
+what hit them. So I gave that up, and sat a while dejected.
+
+Then another scary thought came into my mind. What if I should be
+asphyxiated? I pictured myself being found dead in bed, having been
+extinct for hours and hours, and the mournfulness of it broke me all up.
+
+Overcome with emotion and spot-destroyer, I gathered a few things into a
+suitcase and went out to spend the night at a hotel.
+
+When I returned to my room on the following evening the aroma had gone,
+and the rays of the setting sun, illuminating the old blue suit as it
+hung there on the back of the chair, showed me a host of familiar
+faces--particularly that of an especially offensive brownish-white
+octopus over the pocket. They had come back every one; not a design was
+missing.
+
+
+
+
+SHELF CULTURE
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative letter "A"]
+
+"A man of education and refinement like you needs books befitting your
+culture--your place in the world," said my visitor. He spoke as though
+he were a revered friend of the family. But actually he was not just
+that. I had never seen him before. He was honoring me with a call at my
+room on Freshman Row.
+
+I had come to college to get in touch with Belles-Lettres, and, lo,
+Belles-Lettres were seeking me out! Recognition had come far sooner than
+I had hoped.
+
+To appreciate what I felt, you must know that Belles-Lettres'
+ambassador was no ordinary person. He had the clothes of a clubman, the
+benignity of a clergyman, and the dignity of an undertaker. There was
+scholarliness in the droop of the pinch glasses on his aquiline nose and
+as he talked he kept lifting his curiously arched eyebrows in a manner
+that fascinated the beholder.
+
+From the subject of my culture in its broader aspects he progressed by
+easy gradations to my culture in its relation to the works of Hawthorne
+and Irving, the two authors indispensable to a man of discerning taste,
+the authors whose writings constituted the logical nucleus of the
+well-bred student's library. He was happy to be able to tell me of the
+rare opportunity that now lay in my grasp of acquiring the immortal and
+exhilarating works of _both_ these masters at one and the same time--in
+one and the same set.
+
+The urgency of my need for Hawthorne and Irving being thus established
+beyond the shadow of a hesitance, the only thing for me to decide fairly
+and squarely was whether they should come to me in blue half-morocco or
+in red buckram. The splendid showing that either set would make in my
+bookcase was attested by the accordion-plaited binding sample which at
+the proper moment he produced and unfolded. Nearly a yard of titled
+book-backs!
+
+I signed on the dotted line and accepted his congratulations, while he
+accepted my two dollar deposit.
+
+About a week later the box arrived. Eagerly I lifted forth the magic
+volumes which were to put me on a new intellectual plane. Somehow the
+bindings seemed to need breaking in. They creaked and cracked at the
+hinges and the pages clung together in little groups clannishly. The
+gluing of the backs was queer, yet casual. The "hand" that had tinted
+the "elegant colored frontispieces" was evidently a heavy one.
+
+No matter: Hawthorne and Irving were mine. I had been taken into the
+higher circles of culture.
+
+That very evening I plunged into "Mosses from an Old Manse." I stuck at
+it. Each day I balanced my morning's Shredded Wheat with Hawthorne
+Mosses at night, till the entire volume had been systematically
+consumed. Then, having created my new literary universe, I rested.
+
+Today no one can stump me on Mosses. Mention the Old Manse to me and my
+whole manner changes. My face lights up with intelligence. My eyes
+sparkle. My nostrils dilate like those of an old fire engine horse at
+the clang of an alarm gong. Yes, right this minute I can give you moss
+for moss.
+
+If only I had gone on and read all the other volumes of the set.... Who
+knows? I might now be dean of a college or a second Dr. Frank Crane.
+Alas, I continued to rest on my Mosses, arguing sophistically with my
+conscience that these books, the nucleus of my ultimate library, were
+precious possessions not necessarily for immediate perusal. Time-defying
+classics like Hawthorne and Irving would keep and be equally enjoyable
+years hence, if not more so; in fact, it would be almost extravagant to
+use them all up in the beginning. So it was tacitly decided that we
+three--Nathaniel, Washington, and I (the first two in red buckram, the
+latter in invisible yet palpable Freshman green)--should grow old
+together.
+
+The fourth member of our little group, he who had introduced us, had
+dropped out. I neither saw nor heard from him again. It would seem that
+he worked like lightning, striking in the same place only once. Not so
+his firm, however. They struck me by mail each month with awful
+iteration.
+
+But before a year had passed there descended upon me another emissary of
+intellectualism. This personage expounded to me the doctrine of the De
+Luxe. I learned that an edition of any author, no matter how reputable
+that author may be, was mere dross if published for the public at large.
+Only as a subscriber, possessing a numbered set of a limited edition,
+could one obtain the quintessence of literature. _Fiat de lux._ Let
+there be e-lite.
+
+The fact that this prophet of almost-vellum exclusiveness was physically
+a fat and florid Irishman whom a wiser man than I might have mistaken
+for a saloon keeper in his Sunday clothes, did not hamper his spirit.
+Enthrallingly yet confidentially he discoursed on Selected Literature
+for the Serene Few. I could be one of those Serene Few.
+
+I could. I did. I signed.
+
+In his display room, to which this rotund spider lured me, I examined,
+enraptured, sets of all the leading _de luxe_ writers. There was Pepys
+with pasted labels, Smollett and Fielding with special illustrations,
+twelve volumes of the World's Best Oratory, a bobtailed set of
+Stevenson, the inevitable Plutarch in fool morocco that was very like
+shellacked paper, and many more. But the _magnum opus_ of them all was a
+green buckram affair in thirty tall tomes calling itself "The
+Bibliophile Library of Literature, Art and Rare Manuscripts." To
+emphasize the word Art in the title there was, as an adjunct, a
+three-foot portfolio of reproductions from paintings. Here was something
+that cast Hawthorne and Irving into the shade. It was world-wide,
+wonderful. (Later I came to know it as the "Hash"!)
+
+As in a trance, I said yes to the "Bibliophile Library," to the Great
+Orations, to the much-shorter R. L. S. Later I took on a few more.
+
+My finances grew groggy. Indeed, Europe's difficulties over paying her
+war indebtedness are as naught in comparison. Then at last the miracle
+happened: the book concern mislaid their record of my indiscretions--and
+all scowls ceased.
+
+For three years. Then rediscovery. Collectors, collectors,
+collectors--not the sort that A. Edward Newton writes about. They came
+faster than I could insult them. Litigation. Cash compromise. Formal
+return of books.
+
+Such is the story of "My Life With Great Authors; or, The Horrors of
+Dunning Street."
+
+But I shall not allow it to "take its place among the successful
+biographies and intimate journals of the season." Distinctly not. It is
+for the _élite_ alone. It is to be published on sugar-cured oilskin, the
+edition to be limited to two numbered copies--one for me and one for the
+ashcan.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+PORTABLE PIGEONHOLES
+
+
+Aside from a few unimportant physical distinctions, the chief difference
+between man and woman is that his pockets are in his clothes, whereas
+her solitary one dangles fitfully from her hand. Man is girded about
+with these little repositories for the safekeeping of his belongings;
+while woman, less interested in conservation than in cosmetics, holds
+her booty ever accessible, so as to be able at any moment to dispose of
+$3.98 or powder her nose. The ding of her husband's cash register and
+the click of her dangle bag mark the systole and diastole of married
+life.
+
+Man delights in multiplicity of pockets. He must have clusters of them,
+layers of them, pockets within pockets. Otherwise his search for
+anything he has hidden on his person would be uninterestingly simple.
+Fancy, for example, the monotony of traveling, if, at the call "All
+tickets, please!" there were but a single pocket to excavate. And how
+difficult it would be, when riding on a street car, for one to put up an
+appearance of searching madly for his purse while he allowed his
+companion to pay the fare.
+
+The instinct for stowing away things in pockets, manifested in childhood
+by a proneness for smuggling home from parties such contraband as
+strawberry tarts and layer-cake with soft icing, continues throughout
+life. But as one grows older the reason for these caches is less and
+less obvious. The delectable but adhesive loot in the boy's pocket is
+soon separated (as much as possible) from the lining, and devoured in
+rapture; but the dry accumulations of the middle-aged man, such as
+useless ticket stubs, old newspaper clippings, business cards thrust
+upon him by salesmen or accepted absentmindedly when handed to him on
+the street, unposted letters which he promised three days ago to drop
+into the first mail box--all these lie buried and forgotten until
+resurrected on suit-pressing day. He secretes them with the infatuation
+of a dog interring bones. Only, unlike the sagacious hound, instead of
+getting rid of them by this process, he merely turns them into
+encumbrances.
+
+A pocket that has long suffered from congestion will sometimes take
+matters into its own hands and empty itself. Without bothering to give
+any warning of its intention, it acquires a hole in one corner and then
+quietly disposes of its contents. In this way small but useful change
+departs, in company with your latch-key, via your trouser leg. And your
+unfortunate fountain pen, let down suddenly as though by the springing
+of a trapdoor, falls clear to the bottom of the inside of your waist
+coat, where it lies prostrate, gasping out its last spurt of ink.
+
+There is a treacherous kind of pocket, inhabiting a vertical slit in the
+side of an overcoat, that simulates openness when it is actually closed;
+so that the unwary owner, imagining himself to be putting a thing into a
+safe nook, is really poking it through a hole and dropping it upon the
+ground.
+
+The average tailor has an unpleasant sense of humor. He allows you
+fifteen pockets, and then proceeds to fit your suit so closely that not
+a single one of them can be used. Unless you take the precaution of
+stuffing each pocket with cotton batting when he tries the suit on you,
+he will systematically take in all seams and buttons, in such a way that
+a post-card inserted in the breast-pocket would be sufficient wadding to
+throw the entire coat out of shape. (Perhaps he goes on the assumption
+that when you have paid his bill you won't have anything left to put
+there.) Every pocket is a latent distortion--put something into it and
+you have a swelling, a tumor. Utilize your hip pocket as an oasis and
+you have a bustle.
+
+These cares and tribulations are, as we stated at the beginning of this
+treatise, the lot of man alone. For woman, while accepting the
+responsibility of the vote, has thus far avoided the responsibility of
+the pocket--preferring to let her husband be a walking warehouse for
+two. It is her method of maintaining him in subjection. If she, too,
+were bepocketed, she could not keep him on the jump picking up things
+she has dropped and trotting back for things she has left behind. Nor,
+if she were not in the habit of making him dutifully store her gloves,
+fan, handkerchief, etc., on his person, could she put him in the wrong
+by taking him to task for forgetting to return them.
+
+No, woman is too wise. She talks very blandly about equality, but so far
+the only representative of her sex to wear a real pocket is the female
+kangaroo.
+
+
+
+
+SIMILE
+
+
+Mortimer was as bold as orange-and-pink hosiery, and Simile was as
+elusive as a cake of castile soap. When, at the appointed hour, he
+repaired to her house, as punctual as a bill collector, she tried, like
+a street-car conductor, to put him off.
+
+But his mind, like the face of a cutie, was made up. Becoming as
+eloquent as a man in a telephone booth which you are waiting to use, he
+said: "Simile, I love you!"
+
+Her lips quivered like a ford, but the look in her eyes was as far away
+as Brooklyn.
+
+"Ah, marry me" he pleaded, his voice sounding as hollow as a campaign
+pledge, "--or I shall be as wretched as porous custard."
+
+He edged nearer to her, till he was almost as close as the air in the
+subway. He gazed anxiously at her face, the way a person in a taxicab
+gazes at the face of the meter. Her skin was smooth as a confidence man
+and clear as boarding-house soup. He put his arm about her slender
+waist, which was slim as a librarian's salary.
+
+Yielding suddenly, like a treacherous garter, she murmured, in a voice
+as soft as stale crackers, while tears rushed to her eyes like shoppers
+to a bargain counter, "I am yours". And she clung to him like barbed
+wire.
+
+A thrill of joy went through Mortimer like a highwayman. "Ah!" he cried.
+"Then I am as happy as a coincidence!"
+
+
+
+
+THE BEATIFIED RACE
+
+
+It is wrong to assert that our fiction magazines have lost their power
+to inspire, to uplift. High romance and whole-hearted cheerfulness have
+not deserted them. These qualities have merely migrated to the
+advertising pages. The morbid, unpleasant fiction is only a short
+interlude between the innocent joys of Nabiscos and fireless cookers,
+and the wholesomeness of Mellin's Food. After sin and adulteration comes
+99-44/100 per cent pure.
+
+The people in the advertisements help us to forget those in the stories.
+These pictured endorsers display a generosity that I have not met with
+elsewhere. They offer me, a total stranger to them, the most delicious
+refreshments, costly gifts in silverware, whole suites of furniture;
+they make me aware of "long-felt" wants; they volunteer to teach me
+Spanish or osteopathy or plumbing in ten lessons; they propose to send
+me immediately a portable house in many pieces, or a new lease of life
+in many doses. They take a most personal interest in me, enquiring
+sympathetically, "Are you bilious?"
+
+Here, I confess, I sometimes feel embarrassed. When my old family doctor
+asks me, in the privacy of his office, questions of this sort, I am
+prepared to answer them; but when, as I am turning over the pages of a
+magazine at a public news-stand, someone bobs out from behind a
+respectful soap advertisement and accosts me brusquely with, "How is
+your liver?" or "Are you bowlegged?"--I feel positively uncomfortable.
+
+This forwardness, due to the bad influence of the fiction characters,
+is, I regret to say, a trait of some of the women. (How sad it is that
+editors should wilfully allow them to be contaminated! I have seen a
+little Campbell Soup girl of quite a tender age, placed on the same page
+with a heroine whose only topic of conversation was _unmoral love_.)
+Luxuriant creatures, as unabashed as they are beautiful, invite my
+approval of their stays, and make disclosures of the most sensational
+kind. All of this may be in accordance with the modern ideas of
+frankness, may be part of the sex-education campaign--but somehow I
+can't get used to it. I am still old-fashioned enough to believe that
+woman's place is in the home, especially when she is undressing.
+
+However, while the behavior of these people toward me is occasionally a
+bit disconcerting, their deportment toward each other is uniformly
+admirable. In their own sphere they lead model lives.
+
+Their family devotion, for example, is a treat to behold. Just see Mama
+and Papa and Susie and Marian and little Jack, all seated around the
+dining-table! From their happy smiles it is easy to tell that they love
+each other and Jell-O. After dinner, dear kind Papa will not bury
+himself in the evening paper, as selfish, inconsiderate papas do--he
+will give Mama and the good, rosy-cheeked children each a stick of
+Spearmint. Then all the family will gather 'round the fire in peaceful
+attitudes and listen to the phonograph, which protects the atmosphere of
+their home; and Susie will sit on the arm of Papa's chair and fondly
+compare their Holeproofs.
+
+Later, when Susie's bright young man, dressed in a nobby Kuppenheimer
+suit, comes to win her heart with a box of Huyler's, Mama whom Papa
+still adores because her complexion is youthified with Pompeiian, will
+take Marian and little Jack upstairs and show her maternal tenderness by
+teaching them how to make Colgate's Dental Cream lie flat on a
+Pro-phy-lac-tic. They learn gladly, for they love Mama and wear garters
+and union suits just like hers.
+
+Even more remarkable than the family devotion of these people is their
+supreme capability. They never do anything without brilliant success.
+Papa can, whenever he feels the inclination, build a launch, or become a
+magnetic speaker, or earn eighty dollars a week in his spare time, or
+evolve a thriving chicken farm from two eggs. When he goes fishing, you
+see him in the act of reeling in a six-pound trout; when he goes duck
+hunting, you see him casually bringing down a bird with each barrel; and
+when he plays billiards, you see him, in a backhand position and a
+Donchester shirt, executing a shot that would make the reputation of
+even a professional.
+
+Look at him now, seated at his desk in his office, directing a great
+business, without the least worry or effort. See the respect on his
+employes' faces! At this very moment he is concluding a deal that
+involves millions. And yet how calm he is! All because he wears B. V.
+D.'s.
+
+In short, the race of endorsers, produced by the eugenics of
+advertising, is not subject to the ills that ordinary flesh is heir to.
+They are the heroes of the present age, deified, like Greek Orion, in
+the realms of "space"--long-legged, serene, divinely handsome. We, poor
+mortals, humbly try to imitate them, and lay our wealth at their
+shrines, as did the Ancients at the altars of their gods. Our Ceres is
+Aunt Jemima; our Mercury is Phoebe Snow; our Adonis is the Arrow Collar
+youth; our Venus is the Physical Culture lady; and our Romulus and Remus
+are the Gold Dust Twins.
+
+
+
+
+JOUEZ BALLE!
+
+[Illustration: _Le plus grand tournoyeur sud-patte._]
+
+New and better ideas of child education are steadily making their way.
+Nearly every one now acknowledges that the school room should be
+primarily a place of entertainment, that the true vocation of the
+teacher is to amuse in an instructive manner, and that study is really a
+scientific form of play. Also, it is quite generally admitted that
+methods which involve mental effort on the part of the child are not to
+be tolerated.
+
+So much progress has already been made. But now there has just appeared
+a book which bids fair to carry the educational advance as far ahead
+again. This book, entitled "A Baseball Primer of French," substitutes
+for the conventional pedantry of conjugations, syntax, etc., a vivid
+account in French of an imaginary world's series. Any boy who studies it
+will understand it instinctively; for if the foreign text prove obscure,
+he has only to read the English translation underneath.
+
+The author, Speed Stevens--who, it may be remembered, was captain of
+his college nine,--shows a profound knowledge of baseball. Indeed, it is
+on account of his ability as athletic coach that he holds his position
+of instructor in French at Croton.
+
+The following extract gives an inkling of the rare pedagogical value of
+the book:
+
+  Dans le dixième point, avec deux hommes
+
+      In the tenth period, with two men
+
+  sur bases et un sorti, Harburg éventa. Alors
+
+      on bases and one out, Harburg fanned. Then
+
+  Bill le Rosseur ramassa sa chauve-souris et
+
+      Bill the Walloper picked up his bat and
+
+  marcha à grands pas à l'assiette. Hank
+
+      strode to the plate. Hank
+
+  Harrigan, vrai à ses lauriers de plus grand
+
+      Harrigan, true to his laurels as the greatest
+
+  vivant tournoyeur sud-patte, partit avec un
+
+      living southpaw twirler, started off with a
+
+  tirer-dedans qui faisait zip-zip, entaillant une
+
+      zipping in-shoot, scoring a
+
+  frappe. Le suivant fut un bal. Dugan, au
+
+      strike. The next a ball. Dugan, on
+
+  premier, descendit avec son bras et vola la
+
+      first went down with his arm and stole
+
+  deuxième base, mais Brown fut mis en dehors
+
+      second base, but Brown was put out
+
+  au troisième. Alors la cruche mis en dessus
+
+      at third. Then the pitcher put over
+
+  un bal saliveux: frappe deux. Puis, vinrent
+
+      a spit-ball: strike two. Then came
+
+  encore deux bals. Le comte était maintenant
+
+      two more balls. The count was now
+
+  trois à deux, et les éventails s'asseyaient sans haleine.
+
+      three to two, and the fans sat breathless.
+
+  Bill assomma une longue mouche qui tomba
+
+      Bill knocked out a long fly which fell
+
+  volaille. Il suiva celle-ci avec une volaille
+
+      foul. He followed this with a pop
+
+  poppeuse, qui l'aurait fini n'eut été un
+
+      fly, that would have finished him,
+
+  manchon stupide de la part de l'attrappeur.
+
+      but for a stupid muff by the catcher.
+
+  Harrigan devenait grincé, et Cathaway,
+
+      Harrigan was becoming rattled, and Cathaway,
+
+  voiturant de la ligne de côté, lui criait, "Bras
+
+      coaching from the side-line, yelled at him, "Glass
+
+  de verre! Il monte! Il monte!" La
+
+      arm! He's going up! He's going up!" The
+
+  cruche envoya une goutte facile; Bill débarqua
+
+      pitcher sent an easy drop; Bill landed
+
+  là-dessus carrément, le menant par-dessus la
+
+      on it squarely, driving it over the
+
+  tête de l'arrête-court, loin dans le champ
+
+      short-stop's head, far into left
+
+  gauche. C'était un oiseau d'une frappe. Dugan
+
+      field. It was a bird of a hit. Dugan
+
+  entailla, et puis Bill, gaiement circlant les
+
+      scored, and then Bill, gaily circling the
+
+  sacs, glissa sauf chez soi, pendant que les
+
+      bags, slid safe home, as the
+
+  blanchisseurs allaient sauvages.
+
+      bleachers went wild.
+
+
+
+
+THE ART OF PACKING
+
+
+_With a Disquisition on the Science of Rooting for What You Have Packed_
+
+[Illustration: Decorative letter "A"]
+
+A traveler is a person who escorts baggage. He may think he is taking a
+trip for business or pleasure, but, whether he be journeying from
+Brooklyn to Hoboken with one trunk, or touring Europe with a bevy of
+handbags, his real occupation consists in chaperoning impedimenta.
+
+There is something almost touching about the way in which he looks after
+his little flock--seeing that they are properly tagged, counting them
+anxiously to be sure that none are missing, defending them from the
+cruelty of expressmen, pleading for them at the feet of customs
+inspectors. He has care for the humblest satchel. If it be lost he will
+set down three full suitcases and seek after it until he finds it.
+
+Not that he is actually _fond_ of his luggage. But he has packed it and
+brought it with him, and therefore he is under obligation to it; is
+responsible for its well-being.
+
+He knows in his heart that many of the clothes he has brought will never
+be worn, and that most of the books he has stowed away--dry looking
+volumes which he long ago decided he ought to read but which somehow he
+has never got 'round to--will not be opened. Nevertheless, he has these
+things with him, and it is his duty to cherish them and see them safely
+back home again.
+
+As he unpacks his belongings at the first stop, he wonders what his
+state of mind could have been when he packed them. Why had he deemed his
+shaving brush _de trop_? And why, oh why, had he abandoned his faithful
+slippers? Had he imagined that two left-hand rubbers constituted a
+pair? Five hats and caps are all very nice, but why did he put in only
+four handkerchiefs? And even an array of fifty-seven neckties affords
+poor consolation for the total absence of socks. As for the
+bathing-suit, the morning tub would be the only place where he could use
+that, and even there it would hardly seem appropriate.
+
+Anybody with the price of a ticket can travel from one city to another,
+but it takes a real genius to pack a trunk. The art must be practiced in
+its purity; there must be no mixing of the pancake (or roll-'em-up)
+style with the flapjack (or spread-'em-out-flat) style. Such eclecticism
+is pernicious.
+
+Considered from another point of view, packing is a fascinating game.
+You put all sorts of objects in a trunk, the baggage man churns them
+thoroughly, and then you take them out again and try to guess what they
+are. You meet with a hundred different surprises. For instance, you
+never would have dreamed that a derby hat could turn inside out, or that
+a single suit could acquire ninety-three separate and distinct creases,
+or that a book could swallow a mirror and have indigestion from it, or
+that a bottle of ink inside seven wrappings could break and assert
+itself over a pile of shirts and a month's supply of collars.
+
+But the great paradox of packing is that a trunk is always full when you
+close it and always three-quarters empty when you open it. The trunk
+that nothing but violent stamping will shut is the very trunk that, a
+few hours later, bounces your possessions about like beans in a rattle;
+so that when you lift the lid again you find them huddled forlornly in a
+corner, exhausted and battered from their shuttle-istics.
+
+Another peculiarity is that nothing that you want is where you think it
+is. The garment that you clearly remember putting in the right-hand
+front corner of the top tray is sure to turn up at last in the opposite
+part of the bottom. Indeed, sooner will the Sphinx give up her secret
+than the trunk give up the thing you are looking for. To dig up _de
+profundis_ a shoehorn that you need is a more remarkable achievement
+than to unearth a new Pompeii.
+
+Rooting is a science. Suppose, for instance, you wish to locate a pair
+of scissors without disturbing the general order. You begin by
+classifying the scissors in your mind, in order that you may calculate
+their position in the trunk. You consider them with reference to the
+following scheme of arrangement, which you recite as if you were an
+elevator boy in a department store:
+
+    1. _Main Tray._ Shirts, collars, hats, handkerchiefs, _and_ toilet
+    articles.
+
+    2. _Mezzanine Tray._ Dress clothes, neckwear, art goods, _and_
+    bric-a-brac.
+
+    3. _Basement._ Shoes, hardware, suits, underwear, books, medicines,
+    _and_ sporting goods.
+
+Concluding, after due deliberation, that the scissors are equally
+appropriate to all of these, you start in on the main tray, sliding your
+palms around the edge as though you were easing ice-cream out of a mold.
+
+  No scissors.
+
+You delve deeper, using the back of your hand as a plow-share.
+
+  No scissors.
+
+Refusing to be baffled, you leave no garment unturned.
+
+  No scissors.
+
+Growing a trifle impatient, you take out the main tray and tackle the
+mezzanine. This will be a simple matter, because it is so shallow that
+you have only to feel around the edges.
+
+  No scissors.
+
+Perhaps they got shaken into the middle. You burrow there, making
+considerable work for the clothes-presser.
+
+  No scissors.
+
+Now you are genuinely angry. You toss the mezzanine upon the arms of a
+chair. It is a rocking-chair, and it slides the tray gently forward and
+deposits it face downward on the floor.
+
+Pretending to ignore this, you plunge both arms into the basement so
+violently that the lid unclicks and gives you a cowardly blow on the
+back of the head.
+
+You rise up and vow that this your chattel shall flout you no longer.
+Seizing it fiercely, you turn it upside down--you dump its contents
+about the room.
+
+  No scissors!
+
+Then there steals into your mind a vision of the above-mentioned cutlery
+lying on a chiffonier in a room hundreds of miles away--and the
+realization that they are probably lying there still.
+
+
+
+
+AGRICULTURE INDOORS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The usual package of seeds has not arrived. Is the Hon. ----, my
+Representative in Congress, neglecting me? The uncertainty appals.
+
+Year after year this eminent legislator has favored me with floral
+tributes in kernel form, so that I have come to think of them as my
+inalienable rights as a constituent. True, as is the case with the
+thousands of other voters in this urban district which he represents, I
+have no facilities for horticulture. Living in a New York apartment
+seven stories up and unequipped with arable soil (the nondescript
+substance which deposits on my window sills from outshaken mops above
+would scarcely qualify as loam), I have been at a loss as to what
+disposition to make of said seeds.
+
+"My dear friend," writes the benevolent legislator, "I am inclosing a
+list issued by the Department of Agriculture showing bulletins available
+for free distribution, which contain very valuable information for all
+classes of readers." And he invites me to choose any six, by number,
+that he may promptly send them to me.
+
+Only six! To select that limited allotment from so alluring a galaxy is
+difficult, not to say bewildering.
+
+No. 73 catches my eye--"Fly Traps and Their Operation." I simply must
+have that one. It seems to promise an insight into the mysteries of
+oratory. Perhaps it may enable me the better to appreciate my M. C.
+
+Nor can I hope to live a rounded life if I fail to assimilate No. 940,
+"Common White Grubs," and No. 920, "Milk Goats," and No. 788, "The
+Windbreak as a Farm Asset."
+
+That makes four already; to which I must certainly add the kindly No.
+1105, "Care of Mature Fowls," and the arrestingly realistic No. 1085,
+"Hog Lice and Hog Mange."
+
+Thus my six choices are used up, and I am but at the threshold of this
+new world of knowledge that lies tantalizingly before me. What of No.
+685, celebrating that splendidly uncompromising American growth, "The
+Native Persimmon," and the intriguingly cryptic Nos. 515 and 1143,
+revealing the secrets of "Vetches" and "Lespedeza as a Forage Crop"?
+Surely this coveted information should not be withheld from me.
+
+Why should I be deprived of the privilege of reading aloud to my family
+No. 762, "False Cinch Bug--Measures for Control," and No. 1127, "Peanut
+Growing for Profit," and No. 948, "The Rag-Doll Seed Tester"? If such
+romances were available for every one there would be less senseless
+gadding about on the part of our young folks. Let the flapper fill her
+mind, not her flask, with No. 767, "Goose Raising," or No. 757,
+"Commercial Varieties of Alfalfa." And let her heed the warning against
+short skirts in No. 1135, "The Beef Calf."
+
+It has been said that there is in America insufficient appreciation of
+architecture. Ah, true, my friends. Let the multitude con No. 438, "Hog
+Houses," and, as examples of chaste suppression of meaningless
+ornamentation, Nos. 966 and 682--"A Simple Hog-Breeding Crate" and
+"Simple Trap Nest for Poultry."
+
+Included in this invaluable list are to be found not only the frankly
+practical but also the vividly dramatic. Offsetting such everyday but
+significant matters as No. 1189, "The Handling of Spinach for Shipment";
+No. 1153, "Cowpea Utilization"; No. 1161, "Dodder," and No. 978,
+"Barnyard Manure in Eastern Pennsylvania," there are offered imagination
+stirring themes like No. 835, "How to Detect Outbreaks of Insects"; No.
+874, "Swine Management," and No. 1003 (one that should be especially
+prized by the impecunious), "How to Control Billbugs."
+
+Until I read this list I had no idea that spiritualism had entomological
+phases which Conan Doyle seems to have overlooked. Again and again there
+is mention of strange creatures and their psychic "controls": No. 1074,
+"The Bean Ladybird and Its Control"; No. 1060, "Harlequin Cabbage Bug
+and Its Control"; No. 897, "Fleas and Their Control," and No. 975
+(presumably throwing light upon the immigration problem), "The Control
+of European Foulbrood."
+
+More comprehensible to me are the following. Anent home life and pets:
+No. 1014, "Wintering Bees in Cellars"; No. 1104, "Book Lice," and No.
+846, "Tobacco Beetle and How to Prevent Loss." (Does one keep the beetle
+on a leash, I wonder?) Bolshevism: No. 1054, "The Loco Weed." Chambers
+of Commerce, Get-Together Clubs, etc.: No. 993, "Cooperative Bull
+Associations." Prohibitionists: No. 1220, "Insect and Fungus Enemies of
+the Grape."
+
+All in all, there are at least thirty bulletins which every citizen of
+this metropolis needs to make him an intelligent voter. And my M. C.
+allows me but six!
+
+"My allotment being limited," he explains. But why should his allotment
+be thus limited? Since he grants that the bulletins are indispensable to
+my enlightenment, it is not for him to apologize, but to see that I am
+fully supplied with them. To protest that the Department of Agriculture
+cramps his largess is no excuse, for does not almighty Congress rule the
+Department of Agriculture and run it in the interests of the People and
+not for the sake of a lot of rubes? No; let him spur the department to
+greater efforts, press the presses to greater output.
+
+When my little son looks up into my eyes and asks, "Daddy, tell me about
+the flat-headed apple tree borer," am I to answer him:
+
+"Sorry, my boy, but Bulletin No. 1065 was denied me by a niggardly
+government?"
+
+My M. C. will not have done his complete duty till every home in this
+city boasts a five-foot shelf of bulletins and the head of every family
+can gather his dear ones about the radiator in the evening with a
+cheery:
+
+"Ah! now we take up No. 956, 'The Spotted Garden Slug.' Every one who
+pays strict attention gets a hollyhock seed."
+
+Only then will the true function of government be realized.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile....
+
+The seeds have come!
+
+
+
+
+SNOWY BOSOMS
+
+
+At the risk of seeming churlish, a veritable outcast from society, I
+confess that I have no great fondness for snowy bosoms. I realize that
+they are generally considered beautiful, and that their virgin whiteness
+is the embodiment of unyielding purity; and yet I cannot but prefer the
+more comfortable _negligée_ shirt.
+
+If only they could be soft-boiled. I would so appreciate a three-minute
+one. (I know it would sit better on the stomach.) The white could be
+firm enough to hold together, and yet not so much so as to require a
+knife to break into it.
+
+Gala chemises that approached this ideal did appear several seasons ago.
+Their frontispieces were encrusted with a swarm of very young tucks,
+which rendered them quite docile. But these gentle, easy-going garments,
+with their pliant pleats and amenable button holes, could not survive.
+They were, alas, too soft. They lacked the stoicism of starch. They
+could not hold their own against the sterner-fibred armored breastworks.
+
+And so we men of today when we go to perform our evening devotions to
+the ladies have upon us the same old white plague.
+
+I might find some consolation in the fact that my aversion to it is
+shared by all laundries. Yes, the laundry is my avenger. With
+Machiavellian guile it invites shirts, seeks them, welcomes them,
+professes a yearning passion for them; and then subtly destroys them in
+secret. Commit an insufferable new stud-smasher to a laundry and note
+the fate that overtakes it. See what happens to its bold front. A week
+later it will be brought back to you with its spirit quite broken, and
+its tail between its sleeves, and held in subjection by a squad of
+menacing pins.
+
+The moment you rend the veil of wax paper with which they have
+discreetly concealed its destitution, you are amazed to find how it has
+aged in one short week. It has become like the sear and yellow leaf.
+There are crow's feet at the corners of its buttonholes. It is so weak
+that they have had to send it on a paste-board stretcher to keep it
+from going all to pieces.
+
+Your erstwhile festive buckler now looks more like the bosom of
+Abraham.
+
+
+
+
+INTERIOR DESPERATION
+
+
+It is easy nowadays to get advice on how to arrange your home. The
+Woman's Page in any newspaper will tell you just how your living-room
+ought to look, just how your hallway may be beautified, and just how
+your kitchen may be transformed into a scientific laboratory. Scores of
+books by experts on the subject undertake to instruct you how to change
+your home from a place to live in to a work of art.
+
+Realizing that my abode needed a little toning-up along modern æsthetic
+lines, I consulted a book called "The Dwelling Beautiful," which I had
+been informed would give me just the help I needed. "It is not necessary
+that your furniture, rugs, hangings, and pictures be _expensive_," says
+the author, reassuringly. "The only essential is that they be beautiful
+in themselves and in restful accord with each other."
+
+Pray, gentle writer, did you ever see my belongings? Did you ever see
+the marble-and-walnut parlor table that Aunt Jessamine gave me; or the
+streakily-stained Mission piano, with mottled glass panels and gew-gawy
+candle-brackets, that my wife won in the guessing contest and is
+therefore inordinately proud of; or the case of stuffed birds which
+Uncle Lemuel left me in his will? How am I to make these things
+"beautiful in themselves and in restful accord with each other?"
+
+The truth is, none of our furnishings are gregarious. From the green rug
+whose acrid hue assaults every other color in the room, to the
+wonderfully and fearfully made "ornamental" lamp, each thing is what the
+advertisement writers would call "_different_." Rabid in their
+nonconformity, how am I to make a happy family of them?
+
+The main feud is between our heirlooms and our wedding presents--the
+former being atrocities in oak, walnut and plush of the Victorian era,
+and the latter, present-day garishnesses; so that the general effect
+might be likened to a colon: one period on top of another.
+
+The author of "The Dwelling Beautiful" would probably suggest that I
+get rid of some of these incumbrances. The lamentable fact is that I
+_can't_. My relatives would disown me. For my whole family
+connection--not to mention my wife's (about which much might be
+said)--takes upon itself to police my belongings. Every visit of a
+relative, even the casual call of my most distant cousin, means a
+critical inspection, a careful stock-taking of heirlooms and wedding
+presents.
+
+A person who gives you anything as a wedding present never forgets it.
+His taste may be erratic, but his memory is inexorable. Because a thing
+happened to catch his fancy in an off-moment, it is anchored in your
+home forever. And the feeling of self-appreciation for his generosity,
+which he experiences whenever he beholds his gift in after years,
+prevents him from admitting, even to himself, that he was out of his
+mind when he bought it. Hence, you are doomed to be its perpetual
+curator, with the obligation to display it prominently, so that whenever
+he chooses to enter your house he may see it and claim it with his eye.
+
+An heirloom is still worse. Each one that you have in your possession
+might have gone to somebody else, and that somebody else feels that he
+or she would have appreciated it more than you do. Nevertheless, for you
+to disburden yourself of a single heirloom by presenting it to the
+person who coveted it most, would be to precipitate a family crisis.
+
+Take, for instance, that case of stuffed birds. Every time Uncle
+Lemuel's daughter sees it she tells me how much it always meant to her,
+and how the old house seems empty without it. Yet whenever I offer to
+make her a present of it she bursts into tears, and sobs that her dear
+father wanted me to have it, because I had once told him I liked birds,
+and that therefore she would be the last person in the world to deprive
+me of it.
+
+So, along with all the rest of the harmony-killers, I am saddled for
+life with this ornithological incubus. It is true, as Cousin Ophelia
+says, that I like birds; but my fondness for them does not continue
+after they are defunct and stuffed; neither does it include _owls_,
+whether alive or dead, and there are no less than three owls in that
+cabinet--gloomy, dusty, evil-looking fowls, their big yellow glass eyes
+wide open and staring. I'll wager they had their eyes closed when Uncle
+Lemuel shot them. He never was much of a sport.
+
+Be that as it may, these lugubrious specimens are on my hands. I kept
+them in the living-room till I couldn't stand them there any longer.
+(Strangers would ask me how I happened to take up taxidermy.) Then I
+removed them to the dining-room, where they promptly took away my
+appetite. Transferred subsequently to the nursery, they caused Mamma's
+Pet to go into convulsions of terror. I offered the cook an increase in
+wages if she would take the cursed things into _her_ room; she
+threatened to leave. I made a pathetic appeal to my wife to take them
+into hers; she reminded me coolly that Uncle Lemuel was _my_ uncle. Now
+they are in _my_ room, in the corner where I used to keep my favorite
+chair.
+
+But something tells me that they may not endure there forever. I am a
+mild-dispositioned man, long-suffering, and tractable; but that cabinet
+of birds is too much.
+
+Some day you may see clouds of smoke pouring out of my windows and
+fire-engines pulling up at my door. If you do, don't feel sorry for me
+or censure me. A burning need will be satisfied. It will be a case of
+sponsored combustion.
+
+
+
+
+THE WRITING ON THE SCREEN
+
+
+Being interested in human nature in all its manifestations, I have
+lately made a study of handwriting as it is shown in the moving
+pictures. I undertook this research because I had been given to
+understand that chirography, when scientifically analyzed, revealed
+every nuance of human character; and because the personages in
+moving-pictures, being intensely dramatic, could not fail to have
+striking individualities as penmen.
+
+Let me give some of the interesting examples which I found. Here, for
+instance, is a confidential communication from a great financier to one
+of his associates:
+
+    Dear Buggenheim,
+
+    Buy 30,000 shares of B V D immediately We must foil Stockfeller if
+    it takes our last million
+
+    J P Mormon
+
+Observe in what a firm, steady hand this is written. It shows that the
+great financier can be cool even in a crisis. No wonder he is
+successful. He always looks ahead; he never crosses a T until he comes
+to it. Clear-visioned he is; his I's have their specks on straight. Such
+a man will go far without being missed.
+
+The next specimen is a letter written by the dashing young hero to the
+heroine. It reads:
+
+    Dear Bosnia
+
+    I love you madly. Your father despises me because I am poor but
+    honest. Elope with me at midnight in my racing machine.
+
+    Beverly
+
+Stanch and dependable. His passion is intense, yet he is too loyal to
+betray it. Note the uncompromising uprightness of his L's. You just
+can't help trusting him, because, as he says, he hasn't any money.
+
+Here is a letter penned by a wayward wife. Fraught with tense emotion,
+it is indeed a moving human document. She writes:
+
+     Dear Bertram:
+
+    I am leaving you tonight for ever. Try to understand--and forgive
+    me. My hand trembles so that I can scarcely write. I hope you will
+    be happy. Goodbye!
+
+    Arnica.
+
+What a wealth of sorrow this handwriting displays! Poor, unfortunate
+woman, tearful and yet volatile! Her M's are bowed with grief, and yet
+they have an arch look. Out of touching deference to her first love she
+makes a desperate effort to be neat; she is not willing that her
+husband's last memento of her should be a sloppy one. Even when about to
+commit a sin, she still retains that refinement of nature which he has
+always reverenced, that indescribable feminine delicacy which was wont
+to reveal itself in such little acts as shrinking visibly at the touch
+of unclean overshoes.
+
+There are innumerable other examples which might be cited, handwritings
+of every conceivable kind; but the endless variety of them would merely
+tend to bewilder. Therefore I shall give only two more and without
+extended comment; for, indeed, their characteristics jut out quite
+protuberantly.
+
+The little six-year-old child raises her face wistfully from her piece
+of angel food and scrawls:
+
+    Dear Daddy:
+
+    Mama and me wish you would come home.
+
+    Melba.
+
+Truly a revelation of the artistic nature. In contrast to this, let us
+examine what Jimmie the Dope, escaped convict, scribbles to his
+confederate:
+
+    Steve:
+
+    Be there wit yer tools at one o'clock tonight ready to do the job.
+    But look out fer that Italian named Isaac McTavish, he's a
+    "stool-pigeon"
+
+    Jimmie.
+
+This particular specimen has a tragic interest for us. It demonstrates
+the failure of our modern institutions. Here is a man forced by society
+into a felon's trade who was capable of earning an honest living as an
+instructor in penmanship.
+
+
+
+
+MUSIQUE GLACÉE
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Of all strivers after the Ideal none have so kindly a method as the
+architects responsible for those pleasing structures termed French
+pastry. Whatever they create is delicate, delectable, imbued with
+sweetness. Putting aside the thought of future fame, these gentle
+artificers devote their labor to works as perishable as they are
+exquisite: meringues, sculptured in ambrosial stucco, that melt to
+nothing; roseate cakelets of which the crimson splendor endures no
+longer than a sunset; kisses that are all too brief; tarts which, frail
+as flowers, succumb quickly to hunger in the dessert. These crust
+craftsmen pour forth richness as song-birds do, creating rapture for but
+a precious moment. If ordinary architecture is "frozen music," then
+surely this Gallic refinement of it is "_musique glacée_."
+
+There are many styles, ranging from Perpendicular Gothic to Powdered
+Rococo--so many, in fact, that one could scarcely hope to masticate them
+all at a single sitting. (Two or three is the most I have ever been able
+to account for.) Yet each style, if found in its purity, merits
+attention as an embodiment of good taste. For even the humblest cream
+puff, despite the looseness of its design and the unpretentiousness of
+its exterior, has an interior well worth investigating.
+
+Perhaps the most important landmark in all the realm of pastry is the
+tradition-hallowed and chocolate-roofed éclair, whose long nave affords
+sanctuary for whipped cream or custard. (Not necessarily
+_chocolate_-roofed, however: the eaves may be tinged instead with a soft
+patina of _café au lait_.) This mellow-hued pile, eminently edible, is
+cherished by multitudes of devotees.
+
+Another structure beautiful in ruin is the massive patty that serves as
+donjon-keep for oysters. Upon its crumbling ramparts parsley has found
+root, and encircling its fissured base is a broad moat of gravy. Gaunt,
+sugarless; no oyster can hope to escape.
+
+An equally notable tower is the stately white charlotte russe. Its
+impenetrable wall of cardboard, re-enforced inside with a doughty
+thickness of cake, rises sheer from the glacis of the plate and
+terminates in crenelated battlements over the edge of which hang masses
+of cream, ready for the invader. Upon the topmost pinnacle is posted a
+sentinel cherry.
+
+Of contrastingly mild aspect are the various crisp terraces--those
+luxuriant Hanging Gardens, where fruits of every sort are spread out in
+gorgeous profusion: rows of gold-gleaming apricots; neat hedges of
+orange plugs; happy pears and orderly better-halves of peaches; a bed of
+sugar-fed strawberries, each tucked in snugly; grapes chaliced in fluted
+pie crust; jocund apple chips and banana checkers, cuddled cosily slice
+against slice. Truly a paradise in pastry!
+
+And there are a host of other fair shapes: the pantheon-like Kossuth
+cake, beneath the low dome of which is a votive offering of cream; the
+amazing custard skyscraper, with its innumerable floors, no walls, and
+gaily iced roof; the Byzantine _baba au rhum_, inlaid with tutti-frutti
+mosaics and steeped in subtle enchantment; and countless others--fanes,
+kiosks, minarets, pavilions, reliquaries of jam--baffling description or
+digestion.
+
+Frail, ephemeral, created with no thought of permanence; and yet we
+should hardly enjoy them more if they were built of everlasting marble.
+The craftsmen who design them, scorning personal glory, do not sign
+their works. For theirs is the true æsthetic spirit, so rare in this
+commercial age. Their handiwork faithfully bears out the precept "Tart
+for Tart's Sake."
+
+
+
+
+THE CARE OF THE HUSBAND
+
+
+The average young wife is regrettably inexperienced in the matter of
+husbands. Unless it has been her fortune to have a wise mother or a
+divorce, she is likely to be quite ignorant of how to care for and train
+the "big stranger" who comes into her life. Therefore these precepts of
+friendly counsel may not seem to the matrimonial novice altogether
+amiss. The advice I would give is simple (in the fullest sense of the
+word); so that after the young wife has had a few husbands, she can
+dispense with it, if not sooner.
+
+_Feeding._--This is the most important problem a wife has to face. The
+husband must be made to feel that he is well fed. Otherwise he will not
+be contented and docile.
+
+During the first week after marriage, when he is still quite infantile
+and tender to the point of mushiness, he may be fed from the hand or
+spoon. This method will be found especially satisfactory in cases where
+the husband shows symptoms of sickly sentimentality.
+
+Throughout the entire first month he will be so demanding of care, so
+bewildered by the strange new world in which he finds himself, as to be
+barely able to maintain sanity; in short, he will be so soso that she
+will have to prepare all the food herself, or at least make him think
+she does.
+
+But later a change of diet will be found necessary. He will demand
+scientifically prepared foods. If the change is managed in the right
+way, it can be accomplished with only slight upset to his disposition.
+Simply alter the feeding formula so that the total quantity is lessened
+and the proportion of sugar and burnt materials is increased. It will
+soon take effect. In a day or two he will say, with a worried look,
+"Darling, I'm afraid the cooking is too much for you." And you know what
+he really means. After that the transition to avowedly professional
+cooking will be quite painless.
+
+_Outings and Play._--During the first few months the husband will not
+need many outings. He will be happy and contented if allowed to romp
+about the house. Such toys as hammers, picture wire, curtain rods,
+etc., will keep him occupied.
+
+Later, however, there will come a period of restlessness. Then you must
+take him out more and more, and let him run and play with other
+husbands--after you have made sure, of course, that they are good,
+well-behaved husbands. The companionship of these innocent sports will
+tend to make him one himself.
+
+When, as time goes by, he reaches the stage where he begins to take
+notice, the wife must be very careful, for he is highly impressionable.
+At this time a wife will do well to look out for her husband herself,
+instead of entrusting him to some empty-headed girl, whom she may not
+really know at all. If he needs amusement let her divert him with
+brightly-colored silks and baubles which she wears and he pays for. Let
+her take him to see the pretty theater, and show him the beautiful
+mountains and the big blue ocean, and tell him fairy stories about
+economy, and teach him to draw nice big cheques in his little cheque
+book.
+
+Discipline cannot begin too early. The husband must be taught that he
+can only have the things that his wife decides are best for him, and
+that no protesting on his part will do any good. If he proves fretful,
+chide him by threatening to go live with your mother. If, after that, he
+is still unruly, threaten to have your mother come live with you.
+
+In this way he will soon learn to mind. Indeed, before long you will be
+able to show him off before company with the assurance that he will
+behave just as you have trained him to; and you will have the
+satisfaction of hearing your friends declare he does you credit.
+
+_Awakening his mind._--This is one of the chief duties and
+responsibilities of wifehood. It cannot be shirked. For while no husband
+is expected to know anything at marriage (the fact that he got married
+attests that), he is expected a year or so later to look intelligent
+when the lady next to him at dinner discusses Coué and Scriabine, and to
+know that Gauguin is not something to be got from a bootlegger. For him
+not to know these things would be a reflection on his home training, or,
+in other words, his wife. She will be considered negligent unless she
+has instilled into his rudimentary mind a smattering of whatever is
+accounted smart. For every wife is judged by the way she brings up her
+husband.
+
+    Note.--If in the above treatise I have borrowed from the learned
+    doctors who have written concerning the Care of the Baby, I am
+    sorry; for I see no prospect of ever being able to pay them back.
+    Even this small note of mine will be discounted.
+
+
+
+
+TERMINOLOGY OF TARDINESS
+
+
+Our late demented newspapers are in a plight. They are no longer
+afflicted with a shortage of paper, but they are still cramped by a
+dearth of names for their afternoon editions. All the stand-by titles
+have been exhausted. By midday the "Home Edition," "Night Edition," and
+"Special Extra" have come and gone, and there is still the whole
+afternoon with nothing left to tempt the tired business man but various
+grades of "Finals." New nomenclature is needed, names that will stir the
+imagination and summon the cents.
+
+Desirous of doing what I can toward alleviating this distressing
+situation, I venture to suggest the following schedule:
+
+    8 A. M.--Late Edition--_One star_
+
+    9 A. M.--Extremely Late Edition--_Two stars_
+
+    10 A. M.--Inexcusably Late Edition--_Three stars_
+
+    11 A. M.--Hopelessly Late Edition--_One constellation_
+
+    12 M.--Midnight Edition--_Two constellations_
+
+    1 P. M.--Tomorrow Morning Edition--_Group of planets_
+
+    2 P. M.--Tomorrow Afternoon Edition--_Complete solar system_
+
+    3 P. M.--Day-After-Tomorrow Edition--_Comet_
+
+    4 P. M.--Next-Week Edition--_Large comet_
+
+    5 P. M.--Next-Month Edition--_Unusually large comet_
+
+    6 P. M.--Next-Year Edition--_Complete zodiac_
+
+    7 P. M.--Special Doomsday Extra--_Milky way and nebulae_
+
+
+
+
+OPPRESSORS OF THE MEEK
+
+I am not afraid of bloated bondholders. I suspect that they are just
+humans like myself, only that they have money.
+
+But I am afraid of their servants. _They_ are not human. No one ever saw
+them eat or sleep or smile.
+
+My millionaire host may overlook the fact that I am using the salad-fork
+for the fish; not so his English butler. This austere personage takes
+note of my error in silence, and, when the salad course arrives, steals
+up behind me like Nemesis, and lays by my plate the fork that correct
+form demands. I feel chastened.
+
+[Illustration: _My host may overlook the fact that I am using the salad
+fork for fish; not so his English butler._]
+
+His eye is always upon me. I can't even take a sip of water without his
+calling attention to it by stealthily refilling my glass.
+
+If he didn't watch me so closely when I am helping myself, I wouldn't be
+so nervous. As it is, my hand trembles under his grueling stare. Just at
+the critical moment when my tongful of asparagus, conveyed like a hot
+coal, is poised in mid-air between the serving-dish and my plate, I
+flinch, and there is a green-and-white avalanche. I make a frantic slap
+at it as it falls, and by good luck it lands on the plate. To be sure,
+some of the stalks are craning their necks perilously over the edge, but
+that is a small matter compared with what might have happened. I rake
+them into the middle of the plate, sit gasping at the thought of my
+narrow escape.
+
+There is an awkward pause. The bon mot I was about to utter apropos of
+an opera I had never heard has left my mind entirely. I can't think of
+anything to say. Finally, in desperation, I remark idiotically to the
+dowager at my left, "I love asparagus; don't you?"
+
+The next time he passes a dish, I lose my nerve. I lift my hand to help
+myself, and then, as I catch his eye, draw back, shaking my head. No, I
+won't take any chances.
+
+After that I keep to a strict diet, eating only the things that appear
+on my plate when it is put down in front of me. If the plate arrives
+naked and empty, naked and empty it remains, even though the course
+consist of my favorite delicacy. I suffer the pangs of Tantalus.
+
+Alligator-pear salad--more to be desired than gold, yea, than much fine
+gold--is offered to me. I covet it. Everything gastronomic in my nature
+craves it, but cowardly fear restrains me (it looks slippery), and I
+refuse it. I could almost weep.
+
+As the dinner proceeds and my modified hunger-strike continues, I begin
+to regain confidence. I feel that my abstemiousness, implying as it does
+a jaded palate and an aristocratic indigestion, is highly fashionable. I
+fancy that in refusing ambrosia I am showing a godlike superiority.
+
+I expand with self-assurance. Just watch me startle these plutocrats
+with my scorn of their costly food. I'll make myself the lion of the
+evening.
+
+"May I help you to shortcake, sir?" asks a low, ironically respectful
+voice.
+
+My pride collapses. The butler has seen through me to the cowardice in
+my heart. From his lofty pinnacle he stoops to succor me. But I rebel.
+
+"I'll help myself, thank you," I retort, for I am on my mettle now, and
+boldly prize off a towering segment of the dessert. Would _I_ let a
+menial reveal to the whole table that I was afraid to help myself?
+Never! Why, I'd sooner--
+
+Dizzily the creamy thing totters, keels over, and falls with a sickening
+flop, a mushy sound, as of the impact of a wet sponge. Juicy red berries
+gambol hither and thither.
+
+For a moment the shortcake lies helplessly on its side like a jellyfish
+that the tide has left. But only for a moment; for a wrecking-crew, made
+up of the butler and his assistant, comes hurrying on the scene. With
+emergency plate and scraper they remove the debris, while I turn purple
+and clutch at my collar for air. Then, after a mortifying amount of
+crumb-gleaning and cream-mopping, they spread a napkin before me in the
+presence of my swell friends, as if to shield the cloth from further
+depredations. I draw back to allow them to put it there, and in so doing
+squash a hidden strawberry against my waistcoat. As a final humiliation,
+a fresh piece of shortcake is brought to me _already on a plate_.
+
+If there is anything more formidable than an English butler, it is an
+English valet. Somebody else's valet, I mean; for I suppose that if a
+person had one long enough, he could get so that he wouldn't be afraid
+of him. But as for a perfectly strange English valet!
+
+"Your key, please, sir," demands Hawkins upon my arrival at my friend's
+summer palace. He bows slightly.
+
+"What key?" I ask uneasily.
+
+"The key to your traveling-bag, sir."
+
+I am just stopping overnight on my way home from a house party in the
+woods, and all my spare raiment is soiled and bedraggled.
+
+"So I can unpack your things, sir," threatens the Great Mogul.
+
+"Never mind, thank you," I stammer. "I've lost the key."
+
+"Very good, sir," he replies and goes.
+
+But not permanently. When I return to my room at midnight, elated over
+having trounced my host in countless games of billiards, I am met at the
+door by my oppressor. In his hand is a small object.
+
+"I fetched a locksmith out from the city, sir, and 'ad 'im make this
+for you, sir. It fits quite correctly, sir."
+
+And one glance about the room--from the snaggle-tooth comb on the
+dresser to the frayed pajamas the mussiness of which no festive laying
+out can hide--makes me aware of my utter ignominy.
+
+Since when I have confined my week-end visiting exclusively to lumber
+camps.
+
+
+
+
+PUTTING PEDAGOGY ACROSS
+
+
+There is much well-meaning propaganda in progress for the preservation
+of professors. Alumni are appealed to, bankers are buttonholed, and in
+every college club the diagram showing the Big Game play by play has
+been replaced by a dial showing how many millions have been garnered to
+date for the fund; all this in order that the saying "Live and learn"
+may be reversible as "Be learned and yet live."
+
+Wouldn't it be more humane (instead of giving the professors money, to
+which they are not accustomed) to teach them how to "sell" themselves?
+Today every one is paid according to how completely the public or the
+plutocrats are "sold" on him. Only salesmanship can save the scholars.
+
+The time is ripe for some gilt-edged grad such as Morton K. Mung,
+President of the Newark Noodle Corporation, to announce, when stalked by
+the subscription squad: "No, gentlemen of the Adopt a Professor
+Committee, your suggestion that by donating seven cents a day I keep an
+instructor in paleontology from starvation, or be godfather to an
+authority on Sanscrit at eight cents, strikes me as impractical. With
+the cost of living rising again, next year they will want nine and ten
+cents--and you see the position that would put us in.
+
+"No, gentlemen, I'll do better. I'll solve this situation once for all
+by loaning my general sales manager, Mr. Blat, to dear old Weehawken for
+two months, and he will give the members of the Faculty the same
+tutoring course he gives the men we send out on the road. Within a year
+after they leave his hands these same profs you've mentioned will be
+writing 'Success Through Sanscrit' and 'How I made My Pile with
+Paleontology' for the _American Magazine_."
+
+At the conclusion of this loyal speech the committee would give a long
+cheer and depart checkless but with a new vision.
+
+And, sure enough, the pale pedagogues would emerge from Mr. Blat's
+snappy seminar simply exuding system. They would possess the Power to
+Meet Men, the Personality that Wins. Laboratory recluses would burst
+forth primed to impress with Bigger Biology--Contains More Bunk.
+
+The Sanscrit savant, formerly threadbare, but now a nifty dresser, would
+immediately hop a train for New York and breeze into the office of Hugh
+G. Wads, senior member of Wads & Wads and Chairman of the Trustees of
+Weehawken University.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Wads," he would say aggressively. "I've come here
+this morning to talk Vedas."
+
+"Vedas? I don't get you. Never heard of such a stock. It isn't listed on
+the big board, and if it's traded in on the Curb, the dealings must be
+pretty small. Besides, I thought you were a professor at Weehawken."
+
+"Right. I am a professor, if you choose to put it that way. Technically,
+though, I'm a promoter, and my proposition is VEDAS (Trade mark
+copyrighted 2000 B. C.)."
+
+"Vedas? I still don't get you."
+
+"Ah, that is precisely why I am here. I was sure you would want to
+know--Cigar?--Well, Vedas are the wisdom songs of India. Mellowed by
+forty centuries in the parchment. One hundred per cent Hindu. Classy yet
+conservative; noble yet nobby. You know what caste is among the
+Brahmins?--well, that's how exclusive these are!"
+
+"Indeed."
+
+"Yes, and I'm offering them for immediate delivery to students."
+
+"But how does this concern me?"
+
+"I was just getting to that. This is a proposition which requires
+considerable capital for its development. At the present time only seven
+students have asked for Vedas, yet I have estimated that the supply of
+Vedas now mellowing out in India is enough for at least 180,000
+students. Which means that if we created the demand--why, think of the
+business we could do! When you come right down to it, a Veda, when
+presented in the right way, can be as catchy as a Kewpie."
+
+"Hm. How much money would you need to start with?"
+
+"Fifty thousand dollars. Besides my salary, which would be $15,000
+outright, plus a bonus of one and one-half cents per Veda per student,
+there would be the cost of advertising in the college catalogue, the
+conducting of a circularizing campaign to a selected list of student
+prospects and the publication of a promotion organ to be entitled 'India
+Ink.' Then, too, of course, I would have to have a commission on gross
+tuition receipts and text book sales and an ample expense account for
+entertaining in the class-room and in my home. Now will you kindly put
+your name here on the dotted line?"
+
+"Before I guarantee you all this money, tell me one thing. What is the
+real value of these Vedas?"
+
+"They are the quaint quintessence of conservatism, and will occupy
+youthful minds menaced by modernism."
+
+"I'll sign."
+
+Succored by the science of salesmanship, any professor would be able to
+achieve affluence. Fortunes would rise from footnotes; and there would
+be big money made in bibliography.
+
+
+
+
+COACHING FROM THE SIDE-LINES
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Thanks to the roadside advertisements, driving a car has become as easy
+as playing a pianola. You just watch the instructions that appear along
+the edge, and regulate your levers and pedals accordingly. Thus, when
+you see:
+
+    DANGEROUS CURVE
+
+      SOUND RASPON
+
+--you reach instinctively for the button of your electric horn. Later,
+seeing:
+
+    SHARP DESCENT
+
+      APPLY EUREKA NON-SLIP-ABLE BRAKE
+
+--you comply gracefully. A mere twist of the wrist or dislocation of
+the ankle does the trick.
+
+He that reads may run. Any man who has ever watched an organist pull out
+stops and push them in again can become a motor virtuoso. Any woman
+accustomed to following instructions in cutting out a dress pattern, can
+grasp the idea as easily as, when told to, she grasps the lever which
+operates BINGO'S NORTHPOLEAN RADIATOR COOLER. It is so simple that it is
+imbecile.
+
+Every peculiarity of the route is heralded. All its little
+irregularities, its deviations from straightness, its bad declines and
+sudden uppishnesses, even the small faults which an easy-going person
+would overlook, are held up sternly in warning.
+
+      GUSTY CORNER
+
+    RAISE BREEZ-O EXTENSION WIND-SHIELD
+
+      SANDY STRETCH
+
+    SPRAY GEARS WITH ANTI-GRIT
+
+      PUDDLES
+
+    APPLY SPLASHOL EMERGENCY MUD-GUARD
+
+      RAILROAD CROSSING
+
+    PUT EAR TO LOCOMOTIVE DETECTAPHONE
+
+      DANGEROUS BOULDER
+
+    BEFORE RAMMING THIS MAKE SURE ACHILLES COLLISION BUFFER IS
+          PROPERLY ADJUSTED
+
+      VILLAGE SPEED TRAP
+
+    APPLY BACKFIRE WITH READY CONSTABLE EXTERMINATOR
+
+Occasionally, as a relief from the faults of the road, its favorable
+points are dwelt on. Thus,
+
+      MOUNTAIN VIEW
+
+    ENJOY IT THROUGH AUTO-FLEX NON-REFRACTORY GOGGLES
+
+In general, however, the emphasis is upon the perils of the way, as--
+
+    ONLY 1 MILE TO HOTEL SOAKUM
+
+(Here no specific instructions are given, it being understood that the
+accessory involved is one's pocketbook and that the directions are:
+"OPEN ALL THE WAY.")
+
+The system has one drawback. The signs never fail, yet there is such a
+thing as trusting them too implicity. I knew a man who, as the result of
+trying to obey seven signs telling him to "BE SURE TO DINE AT" as many
+different inns, stripped the lining of his esophagus. And I knew of
+another man--a timid, earnest, nervous old gentleman--who depended on
+signs so completely that one day, at a dangerous part of the road, being
+suddenly confronted with the command:
+
+    USE PLEXO
+
+he fell into a panic. "Plexo, plexo!" he muttered in bewilderment.
+"Where _is_ the plexo lever? I can't find the plexo button! Something
+terrible will happen unless I find it."
+
+It did. As, with trembling fingers, he fumbled through the entire outfit
+of attachments, he forgot to steer, and unluckily ran off the edge of a
+precipice; so that he did not live to learn that plexo was a massage
+cream.
+
+
+
+
+FAST AND LOOSE
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative letter "T"]
+
+There is no constancy so affecting as that of a faithful button. Friends
+may be devoted; yet they seek your company partly for the pleasure of
+it. Dogs may show the uttermost fidelity; but you feed them. But the
+attachment of buttons is without taint of self: it is pure, spontaneous.
+
+This loyalty is the more remarkable when you consider how empty their
+lives are. The outlook through their buttonholes is but a narrow one.
+Their daily labor, a mere mechanical buttoning into and out of an
+uncongenial flap, is deadeningly monotonous. (I have seldom known a
+button whose heart was really in its work.) In surroundings so little
+adapted to the building up of character, they display a stanchness that
+is akin to stoicism. Indeed, many a button will stick doggedly to an old
+weatherbeaten garment long after the perfidious nap has fled.
+
+There are, unfortunately, buttons wanting in probity, deceitful buttons
+that pretend to be strongly attached to you when detained by but a
+single thread, irresponsible buttons that fly off at a tangent, immodest
+buttons (of the cloth-covered variety) that disrobe in public. But
+deliberately vicious buttons are rare. The fact is, few buttons would go
+to the bad, were it not for the heartless indifference of their owners.
+Too often a headstrong young button, that might easily have been saved
+had it been brought up short the moment it showed signs of looseness, is
+allowed to reach the end of its rope, fall, and be utterly lost.
+
+And the dereliction of one may mean the ruin of its family. I was told
+of a sad case, once, where an entire clan of brown buttons, dwelling
+happily together on the front of a coat and waistcoat--polished,
+distinctive buttons they were, not be matched anywhere--were cruelly
+banished, because of a single erring member.
+
+While to neglect buttons is most reprehensible, there is such a thing as
+showing them too much indulgence. For buttons must not be coddled: when
+toyed with, they droop.
+
+Tender-hearted women, actuated by sympathy and not realizing the
+consequences of what they were doing, have been known to _pamper_
+buttons. Because a button has a pleasant, open countenance, one of these
+misguided persons will support it on her costume in idleness. She may
+even surround herself with a retinue of glittering sycophants that never
+knew a buttonhole--great saucerlike hangers-on, lolling on their stems;
+brazen braggadocios, flashing with insolent militarism; and puny silken
+pettinesses, mere pills of buttons. Often I have been shocked to see a
+swarm of these drones perched indolently on the show part of a garment
+while, underneath, a squadron of industrious hooks and eyes grappled
+with the work to be done.
+
+Such sights are, to thoughtful people, almost as depressing as the
+massacre of helpless shirt buttons by a baleful flatiron. Are buttons to
+become effete? Will they, in the course of generations of _dolce far
+niente_, lose their stamina? The signs are ominous.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRIMROSE PATHOLOGY
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I am laying an ego. With the assistance of a soako-analyst I am
+overhauling my instincts, liberating my innate masterfulness. Just wait
+till you see my rebuilt personality.
+
+It's wonderful what the right soako-analyst can do to your complexes and
+your finances. My soako is a woman, of course. Male soakos are best for
+feminine mind-patients; but any man who needs to have his psychic self
+revamped should hand over his unconscious to a sympathetic lady soako.
+The attunement is lovelier. She can more understandingly separate him
+from his inhibitions and his dollars.
+
+My soako and I, we have talks by the hour. At fifty dollars per. We talk
+about criminals and insane people and how everybody's crazy if they only
+knew it. She explains how that dream I had after eating that stringy
+Welch rarebit--that dream about throwing the size twelve overshoes at
+the canary--proves that I secretly desire to murder Uncle Alfred and
+elope with Mary Garden. If I could just commit that homicide and meet
+Mary, these annoying conflicts would clear and leave my unconscious as
+serenely blank as my conscious. So far, Uncle and Mary are still having
+it out atavistically in my foreconscious. I must eat some more Welch
+rarebit.
+
+Before I went to this nerve therapeutist I had fears. But she has cured
+me. She is all nerve. I thought there were some things one could not
+mention to a lady. I thought that when visiting a lady, even by
+appointment (office hours: 9--5) one could hardly make certain allusions
+without incurring a "Sir! Leave this house instantly and never let me
+hear your conversation again!"
+
+But now that I have been initiated into the New Freedom, I know that the
+automatic prehensile response is another fifty on my bill.
+
+So I am learning, progressing. A new mental day is breaking and so is my
+bank account. The dun is near.
+
+But when I get my mind--what'll I do with it?
+
+I think I'll become a soako myself and take in lady patients.
+
+
+
+
+FIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative letter "T"]
+
+This world would be a far different place if there were peace among
+pens. As it is, however, every pen wears a drop of ink on its shoulder.
+
+Not even the tender ministrations of chamois cloth will soothe its
+savage heart. It is deaf to sweet reasonableness. Returning drunk from
+the inkwell, it will smutch the hand that fed it, cast blots upon the
+fairest names, and ravish virgin sheets of paper. And when you try to
+force it to a more civilized way of behaving, you discover it has its
+points crossed.
+
+A pen thus divided against itself will not write. There must be freedom
+for the black fluid. There must be perfect harmony--two prongs with but
+a single point, two parts that meet as one. Disunion is a sign of
+weakness.
+
+I had a pen once whose prongs became estranged. They were egoists: each
+followed his individual bent, and was determined to make his own mark in
+his own field. For the sake of appearances, they took their meals of ink
+together, but immediately afterward, when pressure was brought to bear
+upon them, they separated. Yet when one of them, striving too hard after
+originality, broke under the strain, his widow was left desolate.
+
+More domestic in an old-fashioned way is that staunch, blunt family, the
+Stubbs. They are firm and substantial sort of pens. By people who
+dislike them they are called phlegmatic, stodgy, close, stiffnibbed; and
+it must be admitted, they do lack the sprightliness of the Sharps; but,
+after all, these unyielding puritans, with their heavy touch, are more
+trustworthy than their acute but volatile cousins. For temperament in a
+pen finds vent in sudden splutterings.
+
+The difference in their natures is evidenced by the way they meet
+obstacles. The Stubbs, plodding along doggedly, overcome all hazards in
+the paper; whereas the Sharps, tripping nonchalantly, come to grief at
+the first bunker, and before they get started again, waste several
+strokes and gouge the course. And when the Sharps attempt to run the
+gauntlet of expensive linen stationery (the higher the price, the higher
+the ridges), they get held up at every cable crossing. But there is a
+kind of paper--smooth, slippery, insidious--that prompts both the Sharps
+and the Stubbs to evil ways. They know they are doing wrong, however;
+for they are ashamed, and conceal their tracks, rendering all tracing
+impossible.
+
+It is a great pity that pens are not more consistent about their ink
+giving. One moment they are stingy, and the next lavish. Perhaps this
+may be due to absent-mindedness.
+
+Beginning a letter to a crabbed old relative, you say to your pen, "Give
+me a little ink for 'Dear Uncle Jonathan.'"
+
+It ignores the request. You urge again. Still it is thinking of
+something else. "Here, wake up, now!" (You shake it violently.) "Give me
+some ink!"
+
+"Why, certainly," it replies effusively. "Take a blot."
+
+And "Dear Uncle Jonathan" is buried with deep mourning.
+
+Haphazard as their outgivings appear to be, I have a theory that they
+are in reality quite logical; for I have noticed that _pens spend most
+ink on things that are worth most_. Thus, a pen that would grudge to
+disburse a single minim on a cheap sheet of a pad, will gladly expend
+all it has upon a costly embroidered tablecloth. And it finds the
+flyleaf of a handsome book (which if separate from the volume it would
+regard as a mere scrap of paper) amazingly absorbing. If it take a fancy
+to something large and sumptuous, such as an oriental rug, and yet not
+have on hand sufficient ink for such an outlay, it will appropriate it
+with a deposit of spot splash.
+
+However little aptitude a pen may have for writing, it is sure to
+display rare skill as a fisherman. In the most unpromising inkwell it
+will catch deep sea monsters that astound you. It will spear great
+flounders of blotting paper and wriggly eels of string. It will drag up
+from the bottom wreckage of forgotten times, prehistoric flora and
+fauna--an antique rubber band, a female tress (perhaps of some ink-nymph
+long dead or discharged), a tack bent with age, a perfectly preserved
+shoe button, a less perfectly preserved mummy of a fly.
+
+The perseverance of this follower of Izaak Walton is admirable. It will
+cast patiently again and again without a single dribble, and then, all
+at once, it will come struggling triumphantly to the surface with a
+whale of a June bug it has harpooned. Whereupon, as is the custom with
+fishermen who write, it will make a grand splurge of its catch on paper.
+
+In order to prevent such piscatorial dippiness, pen fanciers have bred
+the _fountain_ species, the latest variety of which is self-spilling.
+Pens of this artificially produced species are very nervous. They have
+to be handled with extreme care. For example, if one of them is held
+upside down, all the ink runs to its head, and there is danger of a
+hemorrhage. Its digestive system is poor: it regurgitates and bubbles at
+the mouth. The least thing upsets its stomach. If you forget to put its
+cap on, even in mild weather, it contracts a serious congestion of the
+throat; with the result that the next letter you write proves dry-point
+etching.
+
+Taken all in all, pens have a great deal to answer for. The record they
+have left on the pages of history is a black one. Many a person who has
+sat down to write something bright and optimistic, has been so
+disillusioned and embittered by his pen, that he has ended by hacking a
+hymn of hate or drooling a dirge of despair. Which accounts for most of
+the world's harsh diplomacy and morbid literature.
+
+Even this essay was originally intended to be cheerful.
+
+
+
+
+ENLIGHTENMENT
+
+
+At last I have found out the awful truth about humanity. I never even
+suspected it. Till last evening I went along my way cheerfully, blindly,
+never guessing that my fellow-men were steeped in evil.
+
+But now I know. My eyes have been opened. For last night I went to one
+of those enlightening film dramas that reveal life as it is. It was
+called "Her Blackest Sin," and it comprised nine reels of terrible
+truth.
+
+It was one of those fine moral sermons to which every mother ought to
+take her son, and every niece ought to take her uncle, and every
+stepaunt ought to take her Pekingese.
+
+I only wish my daughter could have seen it; but as I haven't any
+daughter, she couldn't have.
+
+[Illustration: _She never really intended to become steeped in sin: she
+was scenarioed into it_.]
+
+This drama shows how a handsome but thoughtless woman may sink in sin
+without ever meaning to. Yes, the strange and pitiful part about it is
+that she really never intended to be a fallen, crime-seared creature.
+She sins witlessly: she is scenarioed into it. Perhaps she is too
+anxious to please. She appears at wild cabarets and wears gowns that are
+cut to the quick, not because she desires to of her own accord, but
+because it is expected of her by the audience. Lack of firmness leads to
+her undoing: she is first pliant, then supple, then sinuous. She
+displays too little backbone, and too much.
+
+Poor woman, what chance has she amid so many dress suits? Only too late
+does she learn that stiff bosoms cover none but hard hearts, and that
+there is no gleam so sinister as that of a silk hat, covering as it does
+baldness of the baldest sort.
+
+Innocent at first, hardly a reel passes before she begins to stop and
+work her face, just the way the villains stop and work their faces. (Of
+course, being still a modest woman, she does this only in the privacy of
+a close-up.) By the seventh reel even her high-minded husband has become
+afflicted with the taint, and is stopping and working _his_ face.
+
+And so the drama progresses, growing blacker and more enlightening every
+minute. I can't be too grateful to the producers of this film for the
+unflinching way in which they accepted the responsibility of my
+innocence and warned me. If they had not, I should probably have gone to
+the end of my days without ever knowing that people were at bottom only
+smiling criminals.
+
+But now, thank goodness, I'm warned and on my guard. I'm posted on sin.
+When a man comes up to me and shakes my hand, I'll know he's a hawk
+looking for a home to break up; and when a woman smiles at me, I'll know
+she's a vampire.
+
+They won't catch _me_! I'll just watch them surreptitiously when they
+are off their guard until I see them working their faces, and _then_
+I'll have them!
+
+For now I am an expert on evil. That film showed me the thrilling
+seductions of a life of vice; so that if I am ever confronted by them I
+shall be able to recognize them at once and say how do you do. And at
+the end there was one of those solemn moral warnings, such as everybody
+thinks everybody else is supposed to need; so in future I shall know
+what to avoid in _that_ line.
+
+And this entire transformation of my life cost me only thirty-three
+cents.
+
+
+
+
+HOLIDAY MISGIVINGS
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+When, on Christmas night, I take a private view of the collection of
+presents I have received, I realize that I am a much misunderstood
+person.
+
+I sit down sadly and wonder what I could have done to create such an
+impression. Is there something _queer_ about me? If so, then wouldn't it
+have been more tactful, more kind, to have come to me and told me of it,
+instead of thus brutally proclaiming it to the world? But that is the
+way people are: they will serenely _assume_ things they wouldn't have
+the face to mention.
+
+Those morbid socks!--half hose and half a disease. The loom that made
+them must have been degenerate. It is plain that they were never
+intended to be put on, because the paste-board document that lurks in
+the bottom of the box declares they are "guaranteed against any sort of
+wear." And these were esteemed suitable associates for my feet!
+
+I have no recollection of sniffling, in public; yet here are nine dozen
+handkerchiefs, an outfit for someone with chronic coryza. As for the
+assemblage of pocketbooks, purses, wallets, coin holders, etc., I only
+hope that after I have paid my holiday bills there will be enough money
+left to half-way fill the pocketbook I have already.
+
+But the crowd that seems most oppressive is that of the calendars. Am I
+really so absent-minded as to require seven engagement pads? Am I so lax
+about settling my accounts that my butcher and grocer and milkman feel
+called upon to supply me the means of knowing what day of the month it
+is?
+
+Anything may pass for a calendar, so long as it complies with the law by
+having a little batch of months attached to the bottom like an
+appendix:--a snapshot of Cousin Gertrude's baby (oh, the deuce! I
+suppose I was expected to give that kid something for Christmas!); a
+pastoral chromo, entitled "Shearing the Lambs," sent me by a firm of
+brokers; a picture of a child in a nightie saying its prayers, with the
+compliments of the Schweinler Beef Packing Co.; a hand-tinted but feebly
+glued print of Paul and Virginia, inscribed, "Jones and Bergfeldt,
+Plumbers."
+
+One calendar, consisting of a sheaf of large placards, each purporting
+to exhibit a specimen of female beauty, is so throttled by its silken
+cord that when February 1st arrives and I attempt to give one of the
+beauties the flop-over in order that I may gaze on the next for a while,
+the situation proves too tense. The eyelet suddenly splits into an
+outlet, and the jilted maiden, cast off by her sisters, collapses upon
+the floor.
+
+All of which is most distressing; but no more so than the notion that
+women seem to have of what a man likes. I shall never forget the pair
+of slippers that Aunt Josephine bestowed upon me last year. They were
+what are technically known as _mules_, but in reality they were a couple
+of long rafts, each with an arching toe-cabin that would have
+accommodated both feet. The low racing sterns extended so far aft of my
+heels that the latter stood almost amidships.
+
+Navigation was difficult. They kept running afoul of each other; so that
+I would suddenly find my starboard foot partly on the port slipper and
+mostly on the floor. Sometimes one of them would dart ahead several
+lengths and capsize, obliging me to turn skipper. No matter how
+earnestly I lifted their bows, their sterns always dragged. A landsman
+would have said that my progress resembled pumping a rhapsody on a
+pianola, or skiing in the Alps.
+
+The unreasonableness of these mules reached a climax one morning while I
+was visiting the Cholmondeley-Browdens. I encountered my hostess
+unexpectedly as I was returning from my bath. In the excitement of the
+moment, both slippers bolted, one of them performing a spectacular
+flip-flap, and the other skidding through the balustrade of the stairway
+and landing below in a globe of goldfish; while I made my escape in a
+state of pedal nudity.
+
+As for the neckties I have received--truly, Love is blind!
+
+
+
+
+ALL, ALL ARE GONE, THE OLD FAMILIAR FAÇADES
+
+
+Nowadays when it is hard for the casual observer to distinguish
+Somebody's Mother from Somebody's Jazz Baby, it is not to be wondered at
+that houses as well as humans are disguising their age. Victorian
+brownstone mansions that later sank to boarding-house seediness now
+renew their youth as the "Rubens Studios" or "Haddon Chambers"; drab
+office buildings, yielding to a sudden access of sand, take on new
+complexions as talcumy white as those of the flappers passing by.
+
+He would be a tactless and cruel man who would say, "I know when that
+one's corner stone was laid." Or, "My great uncle knew that one when it
+was only three stories high." Or, "It didn't have that cornice until its
+gables began to fall off." Or, "You ought to have seen the stoop it had
+before they put in the steel braces."
+
+Beauty doctoring to buildings must have become quite an art. It takes
+skill to know how to eliminate the dark lines under tired window sills,
+lift the sagging balconies, reduce protuberant bay windows. Only a
+trained chisel can remove a superfluous ornament in a way that will
+guarantee against its reappearance.
+
+We are shocked, though, at the brazenly commercial character that
+certain sedate houses have taken on in the giddier part of town.
+Buildings that were formerly quiet residences, keeping themselves
+retiringly back from the bustle, and modestly shielding themselves with
+brown balustrades, now shamelessly come forward as close to the line as
+they dare, meeting the idle stroller half-way, not with lowered shades,
+but with broad plate-glass assurance, and even displaying scandalous
+lingerie.
+
+We cannot but feel that buildings thus bedizened in the effort to keep
+from being neglected, will not command the same reverence that used to
+be inspired by the mossy old manse or the messy old mill. Theirs is
+hardly the Age of Innocence.
+
+Would the old home seem as homely to you, after it had been exterior
+decorated? Would it be as dear?
+
+Oh, much dearer!--as the real estate agent will tell you, or your own
+broker.
+
+
+
+
+MY MUSEUM
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I called her Plury. That is to say, I would speak of her by that
+endearing appellation when she was running along smoothly and seldom
+missing in either cylinder. Her real name, however, was E. Pluribus
+Unum.
+
+You see, I had wanted an automobile, but found that no single make was
+within my means. So I bought Plury--just as a person who cannot afford
+beef, veal, chicken, turkey, lamb or pork, orders hash. Individually
+Fords, Buicks, Overlands, Peerlesses, Simplexes, Pierce-Arrows, etc.,
+were too expensive for me; but collectively, combined in the form of
+second-hand Plury, I could afford them all, at $132.50.
+
+Plury was a cosmopolitan. Her rear axle was Italian, her steering-wheel
+was French, her magneto was Austrian, and her mudguards were Belgian. It
+was hard to maintain her neutrality. For example, a German cogwheel that
+clutched with an English one--scarred veterans, both of them--kept the
+gear box in a constant state of friction. (When such international
+clashes occurred, it was always difficult to find out which one had
+started the trouble.) Then, too, among the American-made parts there was
+much jealousy between those that had come from rival factories. The
+tires were of four different makes, each boasting a surface specially
+patented against skidding; but each strove so hard to shove the other
+three into the gutter, that all four cavorted about the road in a most
+unseemly fashion.
+
+Many were the heartburnings, the incompatibilities of temperament, of
+the parts thus yoked together. Whenever these dissentions brought
+matters to a standstill, I would have to get out and apply the
+monkey-wrench of peace.
+
+Plury was hardly a _noble_ car in either appearance or speed, yet I was
+genuinely fond of her. Her lamps had a wistful look--a look as innocent
+and helpless as that with which poached eggs gaze up at you before they
+die. As for her slowness, that made little difference; because her
+speedometer, geared presumably for a racing car, exaggerated. And, after
+all, what is speed but a number on a dial? While I saw "71" registered
+there I was not disturbed by the fact that bicyclists were passing me.
+
+I admired her pluck. She would chunk along stoically, accepting other
+people's dust without complaint, when in a condition of health that
+would have prostrated any other machine. (Thoroughbreds do not show the
+greatest endurance.) Bravely she would drag herself home, after a hard
+afternoon's work, with a leak in her radiator and congestion in all her
+bearings.
+
+I used to practice vivisection on her, taking her apart and putting her
+together in new ways. It was a fascinating kind of solitaire, solving
+the problem of what to do on rainy Sundays. In a few hours' time I could
+shuffle the parts and deal out an entirely new model. Under my care
+Plury changed her shape with ultrafashionable frequency. A model that I
+was particularly interested in trying out was number nine (_i. e._, the
+eighth transformation). This was such a daring rearrangement that it
+seemed too wonderful to be true. But it worked, and thrillingly. In this
+form Plury exceeded all her previous speed records. The speedometer dial
+registered 87, and a swarm of gnats had hard work keeping up with us.
+
+Proceeding at this reckless pace, we approached a hilly curve marked
+"DANGER: DRIVE SLOWLY." I changed gear. The cogs emitted a grating,
+crunching sound, as of quartz in a stone-crusher, and then subsided. I
+got out to view their death grapple.
+
+But I had no sooner set foot upon the ground than the roar of an
+infuriated claxon startled me so that I leaped clear aside into the
+ditch. In that instant a huge Fiat, armed with a brazen fender, swung
+around the curve and rammed Plury in the radiator.
+
+Plury _splattered_ like a charlotte russe hit by a sledgehammer. The
+road and neighboring fields were full of her.
+
+The liveried chauffeur of the Fiat got out and began to brush the dust
+from the front of his car. A frightened fat man picked himself up from
+the floor of the tonneau and called to me, "Are you badly hurt?"
+
+"No," I replied. "I'm all right, I think."
+
+"Good!" he said, in a tone of great relief. "Then let's settle the
+damages at once, for I don't want this thing to get into the papers."
+With a shaky hand he drew out a checkbook. "What was the value of your
+car?"
+
+I hesitated.
+
+"Would you consider _five thousand_ sufficient indemnity to close the
+whole matter--personal injuries, property damages, and everything?"
+
+I considered it!
+
+And after he had gone, I fondly stooped and kissed Plury's tin remains.
+
+
+
+
+ON CHAIRS--AND OFF
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+AS a person who frequently sits, I should like to know why there are so
+many uncomfortable chairs. Why is it that people who are apparently mild
+and kind-hearted will foster in their homes, at their very firesides,
+chairs of the most insidious cruelty? Why will dear old ladies cherish
+these household monsters, festooning them with ribbons and fancywork?
+
+Of course I realize that every chair represents some furniture-maker's
+theory of beauty and comfort, that every lump, ridge, and crook is
+supposed to have its aesthetic or anatomic reason; what I object to is
+being tortured for heresy just because I am physically unable to agree
+with these theories. An innocent-looking willow rocker that stands
+invitingly on my aunt's veranda is built on the assumption that the
+human back is in the shape of an S. Perhaps the Apollo Belvedere may
+have a back like that; but not I. Mine, sitting in that rocker, feels
+more like the Dying Gladiator's.
+
+I am fond of Nature and I have the greatest respect for her, but my joy
+in things sylvan does not extend to rustic chairs. As parlor editions of
+the woodpile they are certainly ingenious, but their surface, which
+resembles that of a corduroy road, is hardly adapted to sitting
+purposes. Then, too, there are always a few nails in evidence. And I can
+never resist picking at the loose shreds of bark on the arms, with the
+result that, before I know it, I am sure to skin quite a large place,
+and then feel mortified.
+
+The city cousin of the rustic chair is the high-backed carved seat.
+This has a lion's head that catches you at the nape of the neck, and a
+couple of scrolls for your shoulder-blades. The seat itself is a huge
+slab of wood that feels like adamant. This chair looks best against the
+wall, and the fact that it weighs about fifty pounds is one reason why
+it generally stays there.
+
+Another massive chair is the Morris. It indeed took the imagination of a
+poet to conceive of sitting on a folding-bed that was only half folded.
+When I get into one of these contrivances its bedlike quality makes me
+so drowsy that I almost fall asleep, yet its chair-like quality keeps me
+awake--with the result that I remain in a semi-comatose condition, from
+which I rouse myself occasionally to climb out and shift the rod to
+another notch.
+
+A variety that is not to be relied on--much less, sat on--is the
+loop-the-loop species, which is found in cheap restaurants and at
+amateur theatricals. This consists of a four-legged tambourine, backed
+by two loops of wood, the outer one in the shape of a Moorish arch and
+the inner one in the shape of a tennis racket. Exactly half of these
+chairs in existence have racks under them to hold your hat and gloves,
+whereas the other half have no such racks; so that exactly half the
+times I sit on one of these chairs and put my hat and gloves under the
+seat those articles fall disconcertingly to the floor.
+
+A kind of rocker much in vogue is a medley of young banisters, a sort of
+improvisation on a turning-lathe. When new this chair emits a peculiar
+creaking sound. In the course of a few weeks it loosens up till quite
+supple, so that, in rocking, the various rods perform a complicated
+piston motion. This process continues till gradually the chair reaches
+the stage where at every rock it comes apart and puts itself together
+again--or almost together.
+
+Best-parlor chairs run to extremes of fatness and leanness. They are
+either pampered, slender, gilded things--mere wisps of chairs--that
+offer a most precarious support, or fat, puffy, tufted affairs, satin
+feather-beds on sticks--no, not feather-beds, either, for they have
+twanging springs that tune up every time you sit on them. The colors of
+this latter variety may be endured in winter, but when summer comes it
+is necessary to suppress them with linen slips.
+
+One interesting species, the elevated rocker, is nearly extinct. This
+curious chair, able to skid on rollers like any other, has a little
+rocking department upstairs, so that it can wobble to and fro on its
+track without doing the least harm in the world.
+
+I could speak of the personal idiosyncrasies of chairs, such as the
+trick some of them have of shedding their castors at the slightest
+provocation; I could tell of the rocker that insisted on sidling away
+from a reading-lamp; or the chair that, while not supposed to be a
+rocker at all, teetered diagonally on its northeast and southwest
+legs--but the chair I am now sitting on has given me such a cramp that I
+shall have to get up and take a walk.
+
+
+
+
+MINIMS
+
+
+
+
+THE NIGHT OF THE FLEECE
+
+
+Wimley was the mildest man living. Consequently, when Molly said, in her
+most decisive tone, "Nonsense! I won't hear of your going back tonight,
+before you've even seen our new tennis-court," he realized that he would
+have to stay over the week-end.
+
+Not that he didn't want to, in one way; for he liked Molly, and admired
+the way she bossed the servants and ran the house for her mother. Then,
+too, the weather, which seemed to be growing hotter every minute, would
+be far more endurable out here in Avondale Manor than in the city. What
+troubled him was the fact that he had not brought a handbag.
+
+"I'll lend you some of Father's things," she went on. "It will be no
+bother at all."
+
+When the evening drew to a close and bed-ward migration began, he was
+shown to the guest-room.
+
+"I hope you will find everything all right," said his hostess as she bid
+him good night.
+
+He replied that he was sure he would. Then he opened the door. The heat
+met him like a solid wall. Throwing off his coat, he went to the two
+windows to see if they could really be open. Yes, they were; but the
+thick fly-screening kept out any air that might have desired to enter.
+He glanced at the bed. There was something blue and white lying folded
+on it. As he drew nearer, he could see that this something was fuzzy.
+Picking it up, he discovered it to be a pair of woolen pajamas. Horrors!
+Not even in the bitterest winter could his skin endure the feel of wool.
+He wondered if Molly's father ever really wore such things. Perhaps his
+wife had given them to him, and perhaps that was why the old gentleman
+was staying so long in South America.
+
+Midnight found Wimley still looking the pajamas squarely in the fuzz. An
+awful thought was in his mind: What would Molly and her mother think of
+him if they found them unrumpled and therefore unused?
+
+He slid one leg into the proper section: the flannel drew like a mild
+mustard-plaster. Then he pulled on the other: he was engulfed. A
+hippopotamus would have felt comfortable in them at the north pole.
+
+He drew the fuzzy cord several feet before he tied it, then put on the
+ulster. It had a huge pocket, capable of containing a tablecloth, that
+hung over the spot where his appendix would have been if he had been
+internally left-handed. Noting that his feet had disappeared, he turned
+up the bottoms of the trousers four times, so that each ankle was neatly
+encircled with a doughnut-shaped buffer.
+
+Then, after throwing back all the covers, he snapped out the light and
+got into bed. It had one of those patent soft mattresses that, sinking
+in, hold the body in bas-relief. He rolled and floundered on the thing,
+but at every flounder he sank deeper. It was a quicksand of a bed.
+
+He recalled Victor Hugo's account of the unfortunate traveler who
+perished in just such a way: how first his feet disappeared, then his
+knees, then his waist, till at last there was nothing but a waving hand,
+and then that went.
+
+He was just preparing to wave when his attention was distracted by the
+realization that his whole body was tingling with the heat. He seized
+the jacket by the middle button and pumped it in and out, trying to pump
+in some cool air. There was none to pump. Gasping for breath, he crawled
+to a window. Still no air.
+
+He decided to remove the fly-screening. There was a little groove in the
+side of the frame where you were supposed to put in your fingers and
+pull. He put in his fingers and pulled. Nothing happened. Then he did so
+again, considerably harder, and the screen went sailing out of the
+window. He leaned out just in time to see it crash upon a row of potted
+plants. His heart stood still. Had any one heard the noise? He listened
+for several minutes in agonizing suspense.
+
+Here at the window it was a little cooler than in the bed. Why not
+emulate the Japanese and sleep on the floor? Splendid! No more squashy,
+clinging mattress for him! Fetching a pillow, he stretched out in true
+oriental style.
+
+Quite right, the floor did not sink or yield in any manner. It even gave
+prominence to certain bony places which the bed had kindly overlooked.
+Resisting the thick woolen anklets, it complicated the disposal of his
+lower limbs. Finally, however, a gentle sleep "slid into his soul."
+
+But about an hour later the slippery thing slid out again at the mere
+announcement by a rooster that dawn had arrived. Other roosters, wishing
+to remove all doubts on the subject, repeated with emphasis that joyous
+day was at hand. Then a large fly buzzed in through the window to say
+good morning. It perched sociably on his left temple, and began rubbing
+its two front legs together in a jovial manner.
+
+But Wimley was in no mood for holding a levee. He brushed the fly away.
+It executed a boomerang trajectory, lit again on the same spot, and
+began rubbing its legs as before. He brushed it away again. It perched
+again in exactly the same spot. He was indignant: was _he_ to be at the
+mercy of a miserable little _fly_? It seemed he was.
+
+He got up and paced the floor. Happening to catch a glimpse of his face
+in the mirror, he beheld a flourishing crop of black bristles. His
+whiskers stood ready to be harvested, and his faithful razor was fifty
+miles away! Panic seized him. He thought of the window-screen
+catastrophe, of the quicksand bed, of the hard floor; his heart sank.
+But when he thought of a day in those whiskers, another night in those
+pajamas, and then _tomorrow's_ whiskers, he felt that instant flight was
+the only thing possible.
+
+Hastily he pulled on his clothes, which felt sticky and moldy and spoke
+eloquently of yesterday's dust and heat. Then he opened the door and
+peered out into the hall. No one was in sight; but other doors were
+open, and out of one of these came a rumbling snore. Could it be
+Molly's? This ominous sound was more than he could bear; he retreated.
+
+Back in the room once more, he tiptoed over to the screenless window to
+see what his chances would be in that quarter. Ah, there, close by, was
+a vine-covered trellis that reached down to the ground! With palpitating
+heart he swung himself over to it. It oscillated slightly as it
+received his weight.
+
+The thorny crimson rambler was decidedly cloying. He no sooner succeeded
+in detaching himself from one twig, than two more just like it whipped
+out and hooked him. He reached down with his right foot--down,
+down--where the devil was that next cross-piece? At last he found it,
+together with about a dozen new thorns. But when he started to bring
+down his left foot, the twigs from above insisted on escorting him to
+the lower perch; so that he was now in the clutches of the thorns of
+both levels. His coat tails had soared to the middle of his back, and
+his side pockets were nestling under his armpits. The air was full of
+perfume and profanity.
+
+[Illustration: _The air was full of perfume and profanity_.]
+
+All at once there was a crack and a tear, and something gave way. The
+next instant he and the vine were descending rapidly in each other's
+embrace.
+
+A clump of lofty hollyhocks suffered martyrdom in breaking his fall.
+They gave their sap to save him and complete the ruin of his clothes.
+Disentangling himself from the wreckage, he dashed off down the nearest
+path, under arbors and pergolas, around sun-dials and summer-houses,
+past marble seats with mottos that spoke of rest; till, just as he
+thought he had reached the edge of the labyrinth, he found himself at
+the end of a blind alley. In front of him was a dribbling fountain, a
+vapid-faced female clad in dew and idiotically pouring water out of a
+parlor ornament. On the pedestal was carved, "A garden is a lovesome
+spot, God wot." A brown measuring-worm was measuring the lady for
+garments she needed but would never wear. And the water dribbled and
+dribbled.
+
+But Wimley wasn't thirsty. Striding over a row of conch-shells and
+broad-jumping a plot of geraniums, he made for a six-foot hedge that
+appeared to be the boundary of the garden. A desperate spring, followed
+by a frantic scramble, brought him to the top of it. He wriggled there
+like a bareback rider on a bucking porcupine.
+
+_Ping!_ sounded a tennis-racket close beside him. Lifting his face from
+the foliage, he beheld Molly enjoying an early morning game with her
+thirteen-year-old brother.
+
+"My advantage!" she called as she raised her racket to serve. But
+catching an astonished look on the boy's face, she stopped short and
+glanced at the hedge. "A tramp!" she exclaimed, moving toward the spot.
+
+The would-be fugitive struggled to tumble back on the other side. His
+head and one shoulder disappeared from view.
+
+"Grab him! Don't let him get away!" she cried excitedly.
+
+The boy did so, seizing one foot while she seized the other.
+
+Then, from the depths of the foliage came a voice as shy and as
+plaintive as that of the hermit thrush, murmuring, "It's Wimley!"
+
+
+
+
+BLACK JITNEY
+
+THE AUTO-BIOGRAPHY OF A FORD
+
+(_A twentieth-century revision of "Black Beauty"_)
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The first thing I can remember was being shoveled out of a great
+incubator, called a factory, along with several hundred brothers and
+sisters. All the men in that factory wore diamond shirt-studs.
+
+While I was wondering at this, an old motor-truck named Mercury said to
+me with feeling:
+
+"Ah, if all the workmen in the world could be as well off as the ones
+here, there would be no more poverty, and no people so poor as to have
+to ride in fords!"
+
+I was loaded on a freight-car and carried many, many miles. The car
+jolted so terribly that I should have gone all to pieces had I not been
+built for jarring. None of the train-crew showed me any sympathy. They
+were wicked men, and used language that frequently sent a tinkle of
+shame to my mudguards. I did not then know, as I do now, that the
+purest-minded automobile has to endure all its life words and tones of
+the most shocking sort.
+
+My first master was a careful and conscientious man. He had a large
+garage full of fords, and he always kept a sharp eye on the door to make
+sure that nobody who walked out carried off one of us.
+
+One day a man came in with a twenty-dollar bill that he wanted changed.
+
+"Sorry," said my master, "but all I have in my cash-drawer is $2.69.
+I'll have to give you the rest in fords."
+
+Whereupon he handed him me and one of my brothers and three extra tires,
+which just made up the amount.
+
+This new master, whose name was Mr. Pious, was very good and humane. He
+drove me with a gentle foot, and he would say to his children: "Be kind
+to Black Jitney. Never scratch him or bend him." The chubby little
+fellows grew so fond of me that before long they would trot sturdily
+beside me.
+
+Their mother, however, was a cold, imperious woman. She cared nothing
+for the feelings of a ford. She would drive me at a heartless pace till
+my radiator was parched with thirst and my gears fairly cried out for
+oil. Speed was her one desire, and naturally _I_ could not satisfy her.
+Even when I ran so fast that the effort made me shake from top to tires
+and I was in danger of losing my lamps, she would call me "ice-wagon"
+and "rattle-trap" and other cruel names, and refer unkindly to the fact
+that she could count the palings of the fences that we passed. Finally,
+this hard-hearted woman prevailed upon her husband to sell me and buy a
+big sixteen-cylinder Pope-Gregory. This car, as I afterward learned, was
+so vicious that the very first time she took it out for an airing it
+assaulted three helpless chickens and a pig.
+
+My next master was a young man whose private life was such as no
+well-brought-up automobile could have approved of. Every evening, after
+he had kept me in the garage all day long fuming with impatience and
+spilled gasolene, he would make me carry him for hours and hours with
+some young woman who ought to have known better.
+
+What sights and sounds I had to endure--I who had always kept the
+strictest decorum! Worst of all, his deplorable conduct began to affect
+me. I found myself thinking thoughts which I had never permitted to
+enter my mind before, and looking with more interest than I should at
+seductive, satin-trimmed limousines. My morality was in danger of
+skidding.
+
+One evening while my master was dining with a young woman at a roadside
+inn I was left to wait in the adjoining garage. But I was not alone; for
+close beside me stood a little French landaulet, the most immorally
+alluring car I had ever seen. Her lines were exquisitely shapely; she
+was a goddess on wheels.
+
+"Good evening," she sparked enticingly. "Aren't you the car that stood
+next to me at the country club last Thursday night?"
+
+There was a daredevil gleam in her lamps which set my carbureter
+a-splutter.
+
+"Yes," I answered, infatuated.
+
+"I knew you, even though you tried to hide your name. Wasn't it
+lovely--just us two in the moonlight, touching tires!"
+
+A quiver ran through me. I knew that unless I could back out in a hurry,
+I was lost. I tried hastily to reverse; she had me completely
+short-circuited.
+
+Heaven knows what might have happened had not my master entered at that
+moment and saved me. The instant he laid hold of my crank I gave vent to
+my pent-up emotions in a way that nearly burst my muffler; and when he
+pressed down the pedal, I fairly leaped through the door in flight.
+
+As it was, I was seething with nervousness. My motor throbbed so
+violently that I could hardly hold still while the young woman climbed
+into her seat.
+
+Off we sped down a dark and narrow road. I had no control over myself,
+and neither did the people I was carrying seem to have control over me
+or over themselves.
+
+All at once my left fore tire exploded violently, veering me aside into
+a mile-post. My master and the young woman landed in a clump of bushes,
+but _I_ was maimed for life. Bad example and bad association had ruined
+me. Many an innocent, unsophisticated car is thus driven to destruction
+all because its owner fails to live up to his moral responsibility.
+
+I lay there all the rest of the night, while my gasolene ebbed away drop
+by drop. In the morning some men came out from the city and dragged me
+in. They performed a most painful operation on me, amputating various
+shattered members and grafting on several feet of tin.
+
+Then, before I was really convalescent, I was sold to a new master. This
+person was a harsh-speaking, unfeeling man, who cared for nothing but
+money. He drove up and down the streets all day, inviting people to get
+in and ride; and when they did get in, he forced each one of them to
+surrender a nickel.
+
+He was very cruel to me. Instead of showing any consideration for my
+broken health, he would say openly, "Well, I'll get what use I can out
+of this one, and then buy another." Not once did he ever throw a blanket
+over my hood in cold weather or steady my slipping wheels with chains.
+He was so penurious that whenever he drove me through a crowded street,
+he would shut off my gasolene, and make me run on what I could breathe
+in from the exhausts of other cars.
+
+Wretched indeed is the old age of an automobile. Bereft of the beauty it
+had when it was a new model, it declines into squalid neglect. No amount
+of painting and enameling can restore its youthful bloom.
+
+One day this master was driving me through an amusement park when I
+broke down completely. He got out, and prodded me brutally in the
+magneto. I had not the strength to budge.
+
+He grew very angry, and the people in the tonneau demanded their money
+back. A crowd of idlers gathered to witness my humiliation.
+
+Becoming purple in the face, my master nearly twisted my crank off. He
+heaped upon me the most insulting and unjust imprecations, as though it
+were my fault that my health was gone, even making distressing
+insinuations as to my ancestry. Words failing him, he fell to belaboring
+me with a hammer and monkey-wrench.
+
+The spectators looked on with indifference. Some of them even urged him
+maliciously to the attack.
+
+"I'd _sell_ the thing for fifty cents!" he exclaimed, with a shocking
+oath.
+
+Suddenly an elderly, kindly-faced man pushed his way forward through the
+crowd. "I'll give you that for it," he said. "Only stop battering it!"
+
+My master left off hitting me. He looked surlily at the speaker and then
+at the crowd.
+
+"You can have it," he said between his teeth.
+
+Hot tears of gratitude dropped from my cylinders as my deliverer pushed
+me to his nearby home. From that moment to this I have never known
+anything but happiness.
+
+For my dear old master is a retired gas-fitter whose hobby is landscape
+gardening. Relieving me of my tired wheels, he has pastured me in the
+center of his front yard and planted me full of geraniums. I am lovingly
+taken care of. My kind master waters me regularly and curries me with a
+trowel. My working days are over. But what makes me happiest is the
+knowledge that I can never be sold.
+
+
+
+
+LIGHT BREAKFAST
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Henry dear," said Mrs. Brush gently, without raising her pretty head
+from the pillow, "it's nearly half-past eight."
+
+"What!" exclaimed her husband, sitting up vehemently and staring at the
+clock. "Where is Maria? She's supposed to be here by seven, isn't she?"
+
+"Perhaps she didn't come today."
+
+"That good-for-nothing darky! I'll go and investigate." Plunging
+energetically into his bath-robe and slippers, he sallied forth on a
+tour of the apartment.
+
+No Maria sweeping in the hall; no Maria straightening up the living-room
+or library; no Maria dusting in the dining-room; no Maria preparing
+breakfast in the kitchen.
+
+"How provoking!" sighed Mrs. Brush.
+
+"Provoking? I call it outrageous."
+
+"Yes; I'm sorry, dear, that this will make you late to your office."
+
+"Oh, I'm not bothered about _that_, for I've just put through some new
+efficiency systems which enable me to accomplish a tremendous amount of
+work in a very short time. What I can't stand is having that darky
+_impose_ on us."
+
+"But, dearest, maybe she's sick."
+
+"Then she could have sent us word by telephone. No; she's taking
+advantage of the fact that you are young and inexperienced. But she'll
+be sorry for it. I'll discharge her myself."
+
+"Now, please don't get excited, dear. If you discharged her, it might
+be days and days before we could get another."
+
+"That wouldn't make any difference. We'd simply take our meals out.
+Except breakfast, of course. _I'd_ get that."
+
+"You?"
+
+"Yes. We'll start this morning. If you'll attend to the dusting--later
+in the day, I mean--I'll bring you your coffee before you get up, just
+as you're used to having it."
+
+"But, Henry--"
+
+"It won't be any trouble at all. Nothing is, no matter how unfamiliar it
+may be to you, if you go at it intelligently, scientifically." When Mr.
+Brush was obsessed with an idea, it was useless to oppose him. The best
+policy was to let it take its course. "As I have often told you," he
+continued, "housekeeping could be greatly simplified if you women would
+only--"
+
+Seeing that he was about to launch into a homily on efficiency, such as
+she had heard him deliver at least twenty times in the three months she
+had been married to him, she said:
+
+"If you're going to get breakfast, hadn't you better hurry and take your
+bath?"
+
+"That's so," he admitted. Shuffling briskly to the bathroom, he was soon
+foaming at the mouth with tooth-paste.
+
+There was a loud buzzing sound from the direction of the kitchen.
+
+"Henry!" called Mrs. Brush, "there goes the dumb-waiter. Shall I answer
+it?"
+
+"No; I'll ho," he replied pastily out of the corner of his mouth. Still
+busily agitating his tooth-brush, so as not to waste any time, he
+paddled to the dumb-waiter and called: "He'o! Whash you wa'?"
+
+"Garbage!" replied a gruff voice. A rattling of ropes announced that the
+car was on its way.
+
+Mr. Brush opened the "sanitary garbage closet," and, screwing up his
+face and tooth-brush, seized something that was mighty unlike a rose. He
+held the pail out at arm's-length as he carried it to the dumb-waiter.
+
+_Buzz, buzz, buzz_, went the buzzer.
+
+"Huh?" gurgled Mr. Brush, nervously swallowing a generous amount of
+tooth-paste.
+
+"Garbage!" repeated the voice.
+
+Mr. Brush looked helplessly at the can on the dumb-waiter and then at
+his incapacitated hands.
+
+"Put your garbage on!" roared the voice.
+
+Mr. Brush sputtered; then, extracting the tooth-brush with the fourth
+and fifth knuckles of his left hand, he shouted back indignantly:
+
+"I 'id!"
+
+"Then why didn't you _say_ so?" And down went the dumb-waiter with a
+jerk.
+
+Mr. Brush returned to the bathroom. As he was in the midst of shaving,
+the buzzer sounded again. This time he was on the alert and ready for
+any argument. Leaving his razor, but not his lather, he hurried back to
+the kitchen in a combative mood.
+
+"What do you want?" he yelled defiantly as he opened the door of the
+dumb-waiter. There was no answer; but facing him on the shelf of the car
+stood his empty pail, silent, stolid, indifferent to his bravado. He
+snatched it off and returned to his ablutions.
+
+On account of the extreme lateness of the hour, he decided to finish off
+with a quick shower-bath, first hot and then cold. Just as he removed
+his last garment, the buzzer sounded again.
+
+"Aw, go ahead and buzz!" he said between his teeth.
+
+As he stepped into the hot downpour, the door-bell rang.
+
+"Whoever that is can wait."
+
+But apparently the person in question had no desire to do so, for the
+bell sounded again and again. To complete the symphony, the telephone
+chimed in with its merry tune.
+
+"Gwendolyn!" called Mr. Brush, distractedly amid the roar of waters.
+
+But she, having fallen into a pleasant doze while waiting for her
+breakfast, did not hear him. The bells and buzzer had by this time
+settled into a sustained chord like that of the whistles at New-year's.
+
+Bounding out of the tub to the mat, Mr. Brush wrapped his form, which
+still glistened with pearly drops, in his bath-robe, and slip slopped
+frigidly down the hall.
+
+"Hello!" he cried, snatching off the telephone-receiver. "No, this is
+_not_ Schmittberger the butcher!" Then he darted to the front door.
+Opening it, he found the postman waiting with a letter.
+
+"Two cents due, please."
+
+The buzzer continued its heavy droning, and the telephone started up
+again.
+
+"Two cents, two cents," repeated Mr. Brush in befuddlement.
+
+The postman stared.
+
+"Two cents; yes, two cents," reiterated Mr. Brush, groping immodestly
+for pockets where there were none.
+
+"You said that before."
+
+"Oh, excuse me! I'll get it right off. Now, where did I put that purse?
+Let me think." But thinking in the neighborhood of that telephone was an
+impossibility. He would have to quiet the thing. So, clapping the
+receiver to his ear, he protested, "Hello! hello!"
+
+"Will you _kindly_ give me Schmittberger's butcher shop?"
+
+"Good grief!" he exclaimed, letting the receiver fall. It swung by its
+tail, pendulum-wise, barking infuriated clicks.
+
+Mr. Brush staggered to the bedroom. With reeling brain, he ransacked all
+his chiffonier drawers for the purse which was lying in plain view on
+top. By the time he had discovered it and started back to the door, the
+buzzer in the kitchen was having delirium tremens. Floundering to the
+spot, he gasped:
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Ice!" was the husky reply.
+
+"All right, I'll send it down. No, I mean, you send it up."
+
+As the dumb-waiter rose, the temperature fell, and Mr. Brush soon found
+himself in the presence of a beautiful blue berg. With chattering teeth,
+he reached forward and drew it to him. The door of the dumb-waiter
+closed automatically, and he was left alone in the kitchen with the
+iceberg in his arms.
+
+How to open the ice-box was a problem. After attempting unsuccessfully
+to cajole the catch by fondling it with the corner of the berg, he tried
+nudging it with his elbow. It would not take the hint. Indeed, it
+refused utterly to move until he got down on his knees before it and
+rubbed it with his shoulder.
+
+Finally, however, the door opened, disclosing a rival berg, attended by
+a throng of bottles, siphons, and butter-crocks. A cold, inhospitable
+crowd they were, resenting any intrusion.
+
+Thus rebuffed, Mr. Brush, who felt as though he were being frozen and
+cauterized at the same time, deposited the berg upon the cover of the
+wash-tubs. It coasted forward, threatening an avalanche. Clutching it at
+the brink, he paused, and wondered what he would do next.
+
+The door-bell saved him the trouble of deciding. He had entirely
+forgotten the postman! Setting the berg upon a chair, he scurried out,
+and offered him a dollar bill, chattering apologies for the delay.
+
+"Haven't you anything smaller?" asked the postman, impatiently.
+
+"N-no, I d-don't think so."
+
+"Then why did you keep me here all this time? I'll have to come back
+later."
+
+He started off.
+
+"Stop! Wait a moment! I'd rather make you a present of the ninety-eight
+cents. Oh, glory! that'll have to be gone through with all over again!"
+
+Discouraged and shivering, he leaned against the side of the doorway. In
+so doing, his eye fell upon a collection of objects that had been
+deposited in front of the sill--the morning newspaper, a bottle of
+milk, one of cream, and a bag containing a long loaf of bread. He
+stooped over and gathered them up carefully one by one. Just as he had
+stowed away the newspaper under one arm and gripped the bag with his
+left hand and the two bottles with his right, the chilliness in him
+culminated in a sneeze, and everything fell.
+
+Both bottles smashed. Landing just on the sill, they distributed their
+contents impartially outside and inside.
+
+Finding that the proportion of the flood that the bread and the
+newspaper were able to sop up was small, though they did what they
+could, Mr. Brush hastily procured a bucket and rag from the kitchen,
+where the ice was indulging in a flood of its own, and set to work
+mopping. As he sprawled out into the hallway, gingerly squeezing out
+ragfuls of cream and broken glass, the door opposite was opened and a
+handsome woman appeared, attired in fashionable street dress. She looked
+him straight in the eye.
+
+Mr. Brush clasped his bath-robe to him, made a frenzied recoil, slammed
+the door, and collapsed into the pool of milk.
+
+"Henry dear, is breakfast nearly ready?" called his loving wife.
+
+Enraged and dripping, he leaped up with sudden strength, and started for
+the bedroom, spluttering incoherent expostulations as he went.
+
+At that moment there was heard the sound of a latch-key, and a grinning
+black face appeared.
+
+"Good mawnin', sah. Somefin' seems to be spilt heah."
+
+Fetching a large cloth, she set to work with easy dexterity.
+
+Mr. Brush, fascinated, watched the lake disappear.
+
+"You bes' get dress', sah. Ah'll have yo' breakfas' ready in a couple o'
+minutes."
+
+"Thank Heaven you're here, Maria!" he said fervently. "I was almost
+afraid you weren't coming."
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN OPPOSITE
+
+
+Mildred congratulated herself on having conquered her timidity. She had
+come all the way down-town by herself, had looked through several stores
+until she found just the curtains she wanted; and now, ready to return
+home, she got on the 'bus as calmly as though she had been a New Yorker
+and a married woman all her life.
+
+It being the rush hour of the afternoon, the conveyance was quite
+crowded. Mildred thought at first that she would have to sit on the
+backward-facing bench up front, which she disliked; but luckily she
+found a place on one of the seats opposite it. A moment later even the
+less-desirable bench was occupied.
+
+The person who took the place on it directly facing her was a tall, dark
+man of about forty, with piercing black eyes and an aquiline nose.
+Mildred kept encountering his glance. There was something about it that
+disturbed her. She flushed a little.
+
+His face seemed vaguely, uncomfortably familiar. Where had she seen him
+before? She was sure he wasn't anyone who had waited on her in a shop,
+nor any of the tradesmen who came to the door of her apartment: he
+looked too much the man of the world for that. Neither was he one of the
+few friends of her husband whom she had had a chance to meet. She could
+not place him. Happiness, and the absorption that goes with it, had made
+her oblivious of outside things.
+
+Whoever he was, his glances rendered her more and more ill at ease. She
+looked out of the window, she looked up at the advertisements, she
+looked down at her lap. No use: she could _feel_ his gaze.
+
+In vain did she reason with herself that he was not staring at her
+intentionally, but was merely directing his eyes straight ahead of him,
+as anyone might do. No; not even the protecting presence of the other
+passengers could reassure her. She felt almost as though she and the
+hawk-like stranger were alone in the conveyance.
+
+Several times she thought of getting out and taking another 'bus. But
+the evening was growing dark, and she might have to wait a long while in
+a part of town she knew nothing about. And suppose he should get off
+after her!
+
+The blocks seemed hours apart, the halts at corners interminable.
+Passengers got out in twos and threes. _He_ stayed.
+
+Looking down at her hands, which nervously fingered the chain of her
+reticule, Mildred hoped and prayed he would go. But he did not.
+
+The people who had shared the bench with him had moved to forward-facing
+seats as soon as any were vacant. He remained where he was.
+
+It seemed she had seen that face somewhere--behind her, following her.
+
+This recollection threw her into such a fit of trembling that she let
+fall her handkerchief. Before she could recover it, he bent forward with
+a quick swooping motion, seized it in his long fingers, and held it out
+to her. She took it trembling, hardly able to murmur, "Thank you."
+
+He appeared about to speak.
+
+Mildred rose in terror and retreated hastily to a place several seats
+back, across the aisle.
+
+What would he do? Would he follow her? Were his eyes still fixed upon
+her? She dared not look; but a reflection in the window pane increased
+her fears.
+
+Street after street went by. The last other passenger got off. Still he
+stayed. Mildred's furtive observations via the reflecting window pane
+never found him looking out to ascertain what part of town it was.
+Gradually she was forced to the sickening conviction that he was
+watching, not for any particular street, but to see where she would get
+off.
+
+As her corner approached, she rang the bell. He rose. She moved quickly
+to the door. He followed her, smiling presumingly.
+
+As she stepped down from the platform, her knees were so weak that she
+almost fell. Her heart pounded. Instead of running, as her terror
+prompted her to, she could with difficulty maintain a panting walk.
+
+The man followed--not hurrying, but relentlessly, like an animal that is
+sure of its prey.
+
+When she entered the doorway of the apartment house, he was barely ten
+yards behind her. She knew he would turn in also. He did.
+
+If only she could get into the elevator and escape before he arrived!
+
+The car was at one of the upper floors. She rang desperately until it
+appeared. The instant the iron door slid back, she flung herself in,
+gasping:
+
+"Quick! Take me up quickly!"
+
+"Yes, miss," replied the startled but drowsy elevator boy--as a tall
+form passed in after her. Mildred shrank into a corner, quivering.
+
+"Fou'th flo'," announced the boy.
+
+She sprang out. As she staggered totteringly down the dim corridor, she
+heard the man step out of the car.
+
+Her latch key! Her latch key! She fumbled frantically in her handbag;
+then groped for the lock.
+
+The man drew nearer.
+
+She was helpless, cornered at the end of a dark hallway. Almost
+hysterical she let the key fall and closed her eyes.
+
+At that moment the door opposite was unlocked briskly, and a lusty young
+voice inside yelled: "Hello, Pappa!"
+
+
+
+
+LUCY THE LITERARY AGENT
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I know you will agree with me," said Lucy, "that these stories by Perth
+Dewar are quite remarkable, quite the most distinctive things of the
+kind that have been done in years, and that your readers will like them
+immensely."
+
+Ethridge the Editor said nothing. It was unwise to contradict her; for
+of all the personal-touch literary agents, Lucy was the
+personal-touchiest. So he let her run on and on, trusting that
+eventually she would run down. Also she wasn't bad looking--in her
+aggressive way.
+
+"You've read them?" she queried suddenly.
+
+"Why, certainly," he lied, glancing with studied casualness at the
+Reader's Report slip attached to the blue manuscript cover.
+
+Ethridge never read anything he could possibly avoid reading. He was one
+of those successful editors who edit by belonging to the best clubs and
+attending the right teas. Mere perusal of manuscripts was not
+particularly in his line.
+
+The Report slip said: "Costume stories of Holland in the 17th Century.
+Only moderately well done. Not suitable for this magazine."
+
+"Who is this Dewar person, anyhow?" asked Ethridge defensively.
+
+"You mean to say you haven't heard of him? Why, my dear Mr. Ethridge!
+Dewar is a man of independent means--lives on his estate down in
+Maryland and writes stories between fox hunts. Enormously gifted."
+
+She failed to add, however, that Dewar had offered to let her keep any
+money she received for the stories--provided she could get them
+printed.
+
+Resting her white elbows on Ethridge's desk and eyeing him with
+calculating coyness, Lucy knew that he had not read the stories. She
+would make him wonder if she knew he hadn't.
+
+"What do you yourself honestly think of them, Mr. Ethridge? Candidly,
+now. You're always so delightfully frank with me, Mr. Ethridge. That's
+why it's such a pleasure to deal with you. How did they strike you?"
+
+"Really, Miss Leech, I don't see how in our magazine we could
+possibly--"
+
+"Now, Mr. Ethridge!" She held up a reproving finger, laughing roguishly.
+"But what's the use of our trying to discuss imaginative literature here
+in your busy office with the telephone ringing every moment--or
+threatening to ring--and your discouragingly pretty blonde
+secretary--the minx!--popping in continually to see if we're behaving!"
+
+Ethridge smiled complacently. Why be an ogre?
+
+"I tell you what. Let's have supper at my studio this evening,"
+continued Lucy. "It'll be so much more satisfactory to discuss things
+sensibly, without interruption."
+
+So he did, and they did.
+
+At breakfast it was finally decided that the series by Perth Dewar
+should consist of ten stories, including four still to be written.
+
+Ethridge salved his conscience by resolving secretly that they should
+all be published in the back of the book.
+
+In due course of time the first story appeared. It contained a mean
+reference to the Knights of Pythias, or Mormonism, or a former
+Vice-President of the United States, or something; for which reason the
+issue containing it was suppressed.
+
+Whereupon the buried issue became a Living Issue. The intelligentsia
+rushed to the rescue with highbrow hue and cry. Round robins were
+circulated. Newspaper columnists got sarcastic. Liberal cliques
+chittered. Perth Dewar became suddenly significant.
+
+The issue containing the second story was sold out the day it appeared.
+
+By the time the third one was out, Professor Lion Whelps, of Yale,
+proved in an article in the Sunday _Times_, that Dewar's attitude toward
+women was like Turgeniev's, and Professor Brando Methuseleh, of
+Columbia, discovered he had cadences. Sinclair Lewis inserted a mention
+of him in the forty-ninth edition of "Babbitt." Nine British novelists
+hurried over to lecture on him.
+
+And Ethridge?
+
+He was made. In acknowledgement of his peerless editorial acumen that
+could discern true genius at a glance, the directors of the magazine
+doubled his salary and gave him a bonus to keep him from being coaxed
+away by the "Saturday Evening Pictorial."
+
+And Lucy?
+
+Ethridge married her to keep her quiet.
+
+
+
+
+THE CREEPING FINGERS
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative letter "M"]
+
+Mrs. Whoffin's figure resembled that of the punch-bowl behind which she
+was standing: it was broad and squat, with a slight tapering at the
+base. And her mind was like the punch: sweetish and characterless, with
+scrappy rinds of things floating about in it. Each guest who presented a
+cup received the same dipperful and the same set of remarks.
+
+"Good evening. I'm _so_ glad you could come! I just love hearing
+ghost-stories, don't you? See that log over there?" She pointed to a
+huge gray hulk that lay at the side of the open fireplace. "That's _real
+driftwood_, and it ought to give just the right kind of light. I found
+it myself on the beach, and had the gardener bring it home in a
+wheelbarrow. Look, it's all honeycombed with age."
+
+A tall, serious-looking young man stepped forward and extended his
+glass. He knew that that was the way to please her, and she was the
+woman who he hoped and feared would be his mother-in-law.
+
+She beamed.
+
+"Do have another, Mr. Carson."
+
+He did; for he was in a desperate mood. He was to leave for the city on
+the early morning train, and this evening would be his last chance to
+propose to Polly for several months. Somehow, despite his best efforts,
+the psychological moment had never arrived.
+
+Just then Polly sailed into the room, fresh and rosy, in a flutter of
+white muslin. He put down the glass and hurried over to her.
+
+"Good evening, Polly," he said in an ardent undertone. "Couldn't you
+slip away from this crowd and take a stroll on the beach?"
+
+"No, George; I'm hostess tonight." She shook her head, including some
+airy little curls, which seemed to make light of her refusal. "We are
+all to gather around the hearth and listen to the stories." Then she
+added teasingly, "Besides, it is in your honor that mother is giving
+this party."
+
+"Yes; she's very kind, I'm sure," he said awkwardly.
+
+"Think of all the trouble she has taken over that log!"
+
+Carson faced her with squared jaw.
+
+"Listen to me, Polly. There is something serious I want to talk to you
+about. Before I leave you, I--"
+
+"Polly," called Mrs. Whoffin, "isn't it time to begin?"
+
+"Perhaps it is," she answered innocently. "What do you think, George?"
+
+"I think the story-telling might as well begin at once," he said
+stiffly.
+
+A few minutes later all lights were turned out. The score of young
+people had settled themselves about the room in comfortable attitudes,
+some on chairs and sofas, some on cushions on the floor, while in the
+midst of them sat the narrator, a girl of eighteen, who affected a deep
+morbidity. Gazing into the fire, she began her tale as though she were
+in a trance.
+
+Carson sulkily picked his way after Polly toward a seat beside the
+hearth. Just as he was reaching it, he tripped over something bulky.
+
+"Why, that's my log!" exclaimed Mrs. Whoffin, from the back of the room.
+"Dear! dear! Why hasn't anyone put it on the fire?" The story waited
+while Mrs. Whoffin scurried forward and personally supervised the
+placing of the log upon the andirons, and then sat down beside the
+hearth opposite Polly.
+
+"Do go on!" cried several voices. "You stopped in the most exciting
+part."
+
+The narrator, looking daggers at Mrs. Whoffin, paused long enough to
+show that she didn't _have_ to go on unless she wanted to, and then
+resumed her tale:
+
+"Suddenly, as he lay there in the haunted room, on the very bed where
+the old man had been murdered, he felt an invisible hand on the
+bedclothes."
+
+Mrs. Whoffin shuddered, and a large black ant peered out of a hole in
+the log to see what was going on.
+
+"Then he felt a second hand more terrifying than the first."
+
+Beholding his home in flames, the ant rushed back indoors to spread the
+alarm. Along the highways of the interior he sped, a second Paul Revere,
+rousing the sleeping insects, of which there were many.
+
+"Oh!" groaned Mrs. Whoffin.
+
+The exodus of Paul's friends proceeded in orderly fashion. "Larvæ and
+eggs first," was their order. Carrying their infants upon their backs,
+they filed out of the subway openings in steady processions.
+
+"The hands clutched the covers just above his feet. Fear paralyzed him
+so that he could neither move nor cry out."
+
+A party of refugees applied to Mrs. Whoffin for shelter. She was so
+absorbed in the story that she did not see them.
+
+"Then the fingers began to creep up and up, up and up. His flesh tingled
+with horror."
+
+Mrs. Whoffin quivered like an aspen leaf. She breathed hard, her eyes
+nearly popping. Other people began to feel creepy.
+
+"They clutched his knee, and--"
+
+Mrs. Whoffin uttered a piercing shriek, and clasped her knee with both
+hands. She was invaded. Then Polly screamed, and Carson began to slap
+himself on various parts of the anatomy. There was a general panic.
+Girls squealed and, clambering frantically upon chairs, shook out their
+lifted skirts; young men stamped about wildly, mashing ants and people's
+toes in equal numbers. Mrs. Whoffin, tormented from head to foot,
+galloped in circles, moaning, "Oh mercy! Oh mercy!"
+
+"Save me, George!" cried Polly, clinging to his arm.
+
+"Yes, darling!" he answered fervently. If the ants had been raging
+bulls, he would have saved her from them; but they were ants, and their
+ways were devious. He hesitated, slapping himself thoughtfully.
+
+"Turn on the lights!" yelled some one.
+
+"No! Don't!" screamed half a dozen shrill voices.
+
+"Save me!" repeated Polly, distractedly. "I can't stand this any longer!
+I'll perish!"
+
+Struck with a swift inspiration, he caught her up in his arms and
+started for the door. She made no resistance. Out of the room he
+carried her, then through the front hall, and down the front steps.
+
+Half-way down the walk she asked:
+
+"Where are you taking me?"
+
+"To the ocean."
+
+"Why, you clever boy!"
+
+People sitting on the verandas of neighboring cottages saw in he
+moonlight a sight that electrified them with horror. A powerful looking
+maniac, with a helpless woman in his arms, strode across the beach and
+began to wade out into the water. Hoping to save her, they ran to the
+shore and put out in boats and canoes.
+
+"Oh," sighed the victim, blissfully, as Carson let her down into the
+water, "it feels so cool--and _quiet_!"
+
+"Polly!"
+
+"George!"
+
+"Row harder, Doctor!" cried the steersman of the nearest boat. "He's
+trying to strangle her!"
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WITH THE HOSE
+
+
+A feeling of elation is like a feeling of alcohol. Under its stimulus a
+person may do the most brilliant things--and also the most grotesque.
+
+It was just this feeling that took hold of Jack Carrington when the
+senior member of the firm invited him to dine at his apartment on the
+following evening and meet "Mrs. Stockbridge and my daughter." During
+all the rest of the day the young
+college-man-learning-how-to-work-in-an-office fairly walked on air, and
+that night, in his hall bedroom, he went through a sort of
+dress-rehearsal of the rôle he hoped to play on the great occasion,
+resuscitating and donning his evening clothes to make sure that they
+looked as well as they did when he led the commencement prom six months
+before, and marshaling all the bons mots he could recollect, in order
+that his supply of "extempore" witticisms might be adequate.
+
+Still buoyed up by this feeling of elation, Carrington presented
+himself next evening at the door of the sumptuous apartment-house where
+the boss lived, gave his name to one of the liveried grandees in
+attendance, and was shown up to E 4, a gorgeous duplex suite half as
+large as a house, and renting for twice as much.
+
+Everything went off splendidly. The boss unbent to a surprising degree,
+Mrs. Stockbridge was most cordial, and the daughter proved to be a
+fascinator. What was more, Carrington surpassed himself as a social
+light. He told several funny stories with considerable éclat; and
+inspired by the thrill of the occasion, even thought up one or two
+_original_ ones that surprised him as much as they impressed his hosts.
+When, later in the evening, he played bridge as the daughter's partner,
+he had a rush of hearts and aces to the hand. He made slams big and
+little at such a rate that Miss Stockbridge complimented him upon his
+skill. Consequently, when, after two victorious rubbers, he bid his
+hosts good night and noted from their effusiveness that he had made a
+very favorable impression, it was no wonder that he already pictured
+himself a member of the firm and the boss's son-in-law.
+
+As the door of the apartment closed behind him, he heaved a sigh of
+triumph. He felt like shouting or doing something violent. Tingling with
+pride, he strutted down the hallway toward the elevator.
+
+A shining brass fire-nozzle, jutting out provokingly from a coil of
+hose, attracted his attention. It looked so like the head of some absurd
+animal that he couldn't help poking his finger into its mouth as he went
+by. His finger stuck.
+
+Facing the nozzle squarely and taking hold of it with his free left
+hand, he pulled more carefully. Still it stuck. The finger was beginning
+to swell and turn red. He tugged it harder, with no result.
+
+Concluding that lubrication was necessary, he leaned over and licked it,
+acquiring a strong brass taste upon his tongue. Then he pulled hard.
+More swelling.
+
+By this time he was in a perspiration of misery. He paused and tried to
+think clearly, but his mind, which had scintillated all evening, was
+now a blur. His first lucid thought was that he must unscrew the nozzle
+from the hose. Why, of course! How simple! But when he tried turning the
+coupling of the hose, the nozzle insisted on turning with it, and his
+imprisoned finger was averse to revolving.
+
+Lapsing again into rueful speculation, he tried desperately to devise
+some means of regaining his liberty. Why not go ring the elevator bell?
+No; that was around the bend of the corridor, and his tether probably
+would not reach that far; and, besides, it would be awful to have to
+explain his plight to a liveried dignitary like the one who had convoyed
+him up. And suppose the elevator should arrive full of plutocrats coming
+home from the opera, or high-strung women who would shriek when they saw
+him with the fire-hose?
+
+No, that could never be risked. He must think of something else. A
+little olive-oil would probably do the trick, but how could he get it?
+If he had thought of that at first and gone right back and asked for it,
+it wouldn't have been so bad; but now, after nearly half an hour, his
+hosts were probably in bed. No, it was too late to ring their door-bell
+now.
+
+Suddenly an ingenious idea occurred to him: he would turn on the water
+and _squirt_ his finger out! Splendid! He reached up and turned the
+wheel. It made a mournful creaking sound, but no water came through the
+coil of hose. "It must be shut off downstairs," he thought.
+
+Thanks to the incessant sting of his finger and the maddening
+exasperation of the predicament he was in, Carrington was nearly
+frantic.
+
+"Oh," he exclaimed, "I'll have to disturb them for that oil sooner or
+later, so I'd better do it right off."
+
+With that he started for the boss's door, trailing the hose after him.
+His heart thumped as he rang the bell. Standing in close to the wall, he
+kept the nozzle behind his back, thinking it better to explain before
+displaying his appendage.
+
+There was a sound of slippered feet, and, from the opposite direction, a
+sound of slipping hose. The door was unlocked, and the remainder of the
+canvas-and-rubber coil that had kept back the water unrolled down upon
+the floor.
+
+"Who's there?" growled Mr. Stockbridge, arrayed in a bath-robe and
+squinting out into the dimly lighted corridor without his glasses.
+
+Mortification seemed to paralyze Carrington's speech. Bringing the
+nozzle forward abjectly, so that Mr. Stockbridge could see his plight,
+he faltered:
+
+"I--"
+
+At that moment his finger was shot like a bullet from a gun, and the
+ensuing stream of water caught Mr. Stockbridge squarely in the throat.
+
+Simultaneously, a supreme inspiration came to Carrington.
+
+"I'm a _fireman_," he cried in a disguised voice. "Wake your family at
+once!"
+
+Whereupon, as Mr. Stockbridge rushed back into the apartment,
+Carrington, dropping the hose, made a thrilling rescue of himself down
+the stairway, and darted into the street before the drowsy dignitary in
+the vestibule could raise his head.
+
+
+
+
+JANGLES
+
+
+
+
+THOSE SYMPHONY CONCERT PROGRAMS
+
+
+_METROPOLITAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA_
+
+OTTO CULMBACHER, _Conductor_
+
+FELICE ELEFANTINE, _Soloiste of the evening_
+
+
+  I. GASTRONOMIC SYMPHONY--_Kovik-Bordunov_
+
+  (a) Allegretti
+  (b) Pistachio
+  (c) Chianti
+  (d) Risotto, con aglio
+
+   II. LARGHETTO _Culmbacher_
+
+  III. ARIA FROM "IL CAMPANILE" _Gondola_
+      (SIGNORINA ELEFANTINE)
+
+(_The Hardwood Piano is used_)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CRITICAL COMMENTS ON THE NUMBERS
+
+I. _Gastronomic Symphony_. It is not certain when Ptior Kovik-Bordunov
+was born. His parents, being thrifty peasants, put him in a basket and
+left him on the steppes of Russia. Adopted by a Russian Princess, named
+Caviar Vodka, he was raised as if he had been her own dog. His early
+musical inclination was so pronounced that he was sent to the Warsaw
+Conservatory, where he served three terms. Soon after being released
+from this institution he wrote "Samovar," the opera that made him
+famous. "Samovar" so pleased the Czar that young Bordunov was given a
+pension and a bath. But alas! either his sudden success or the bath so
+affected his mind, that from that time on the authorities were obliged
+to keep him in confinement. The above symphony was written on the walls
+of his cell, from which it was transcribed after his suicide. It depicts
+the blight of all his hopes, the sorrows of Russia, the drowning of his
+fiancée, the height of the steppes, and the agonies of indigestion.
+
+The Allegretti opens with an arabesque tone-poem of somber sweetness,
+under which strange and varied delights are hidden. Then comes the minor
+Pistachio, weirdly oriental in color. This is followed by the
+tempestuous and maddening Chianti. Last of all comes the terrible
+Risotto, con aglio. Here we have an example of the insight of genius! By
+itself, the Risotto con aglio would be almost mild; but coming as it
+does on top of the Allegretti, the Pistachio, and the Chianti, it is
+bound to produce a truly tragic finale.
+
+II. _Larghetto_. This étude is by the conductor. (He thought this would
+be a good place to work it in, the orchestra and audience being
+powerless to restrain him.)
+
+Herr Otto Fédor Ivan Culmbacher was born of noble parents in Hofbräu,
+Silesia. He was discovered and imported to America by the brilliant
+patronesses of the Metropolitan Symphony Society.
+
+A larghetto is a little largo--one without a handel. A composer writes a
+larghetto when he feels something like writing a largo but isn't, on the
+whole, quite up to it.
+
+III. _Aria from "Il Campanile."_ This opera, though well known in
+Budapest and South America, is practically unknown in the United States.
+The aria, "O belli spaghetti," is so vocally exacting that to sing its
+bird-like notes a prima donna should diet for weeks on bird seed. Here
+are the words--which are repeated fourteen times in the course of the
+aria.
+
+THE ITALIAN             THE TRANSLATION
+
+O belli spaghetti,      Had I the wings of a dove,
+
+O bianchi confetti.     I would fly, I would fly to my love.
+
+Bananni, bananni,       I would fly, I would fly,
+
+E tutti frutti--        Through the sky, through the sky,
+
+O bianchi confetti!     I would fly, I would fly to my love!
+
+(_She waddles off_)
+
+
+
+
+HOW TO KNOW THE INSTRUMENTS
+
+     (Editor's Note.--The following observations, if carefully studied,
+     will enable the intelligent concertgoer to tell the difference
+     between an orchestra and a dress circle.)
+
+
+The principal instrument in music is the violin. This instrument is held
+fast under the performer's double chin and then tickled in the gut with
+a strand of horse hair until it cries out. Which cruel treatment reacts
+on its disposition, so that, as the little violin grows up into a
+'cello, it becomes gloomy and morose; and when, after a life of nagging,
+it reaches old age as a crabbed double bass and is relegated to the back
+of the orchestra, it spends its resentment in querulous grumbling.
+
+Further from the conductor than the violins, and, consequently, more
+intermittent in their playing, are the Tootle family. Grandfather
+Tootle, the bassoon, spends his time in dozing: all you can hear from
+him is an occasional snore. Mrs. Tootle, the flute, is of a romantic
+turn of mind, doting on moonlight and warbling birds and babbling
+brooks. She prides herself on her limpid utterance, and admonishes her
+little son Piccolo not to talk through his nose like Cousin Oboe Tootle.
+Her husband, the bass clarinet, takes himself very seriously--and no
+wonder, for to him falls the unpleasant duty of announcing bad news,
+such as that the hero has just died, or that the act is only half over.
+
+Quite remote from the conductor are the mysterious somethings that live
+in kettle-drums. What they are no one knows; but a watchful keeper bends
+over and listens to them, and whenever, despite his constant
+cork-screwing, they show signs of aggressiveness, he beats them into
+submission with a brace of bottle-mops. If this is not sufficient, he
+calls in an assistant, who cows them with the roar of a whanging Chinese
+stewpan.
+
+Somewhat nearer the conductor, but yet far enough away to be able to
+resist his authority until threatened with his stick, are the horns, the
+most vehement members of the orchestra. A blast from them, besides
+waking up the audience, always means something. For example, the martial
+sound of a trumpet heralds the approach of a conqueror or a
+scissors-grinder.
+
+The old-fashioned hunting horn, from which the modern orchestral horn is
+descended, was very simple indeed. In those days every one was supposed
+to wind his horn, instead of buying it already wound, as we do now.
+
+Yet the modern pretzelized horn is still adapted for hunting purposes.
+Take as large a horn as you can conveniently carry (a 42-centimetre tuba
+is preferable) and stand under a tree, with the muzzle pointing up at
+the bird you desire to hunt. Then play "Silver Threads Among the Gold"
+for two hours and ten minutes, and the bird will fall lifeless into the
+horn.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES ON PIANOS
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A piano is an instrument with eighty-eight keys and twenty installments.
+You play on the keys and pay on the installments--the latter being by
+far the more difficult performance. If you do not play in time, you are
+called down by your critics; if you do not pay on time, you are called
+on by your collectors.
+
+The keys are arranged in two rows--short, fat blondes in front, and
+tall, skinny brunettes behind. There are three pedals (one for each
+foot, and one for good measure): the damper pedal (or muffler cut-out),
+which puts an end to conversation; the sostenuto pedal, which helps the
+piano sustain what it has to sustain; and the soft pedal, which is
+seldom used, and then only by request.
+
+There are two kinds of pianos--uprights and prostrates. Uprights are
+used in homes where there is standing room only. Prostrates are used in
+concert halls--virtuosi prefer them, because they can hit a piano much
+harder when it is down. The upright piano is frequently pitched in A
+flat. It remains there till pitched out by the neighbors.
+
+An advantage that this piano possesses is that it keeps the player's
+back turned to his hearers, which is a great saving to his feelings.
+Another advantage is that the top serves as a mantelpiece annex;
+bric-a-brac that won't stand heat but will stand noise is put there.
+Anything is appropriate--cupids, shepherdesses, brass bowls, painted
+vases. The only requirement for a place on this repository is that the
+object be able to make some buzzing, twanging, wheezing, or humming
+sound when the strings are struck.
+
+Prostrates are built for endurance. Their black finish bespeaks the hard
+life they lead.
+
+A conflict between one of these indestructible pianos and an
+irresistible pianist is called a recital. A non-combatant lifts the lid,
+and the fight begins. FIRST ROUND: _Nocturne_. (Merely warming up.)
+SECOND ROUND: _Etude_. (Livelier, but not much heavy hitting.) THIRD
+ROUND: _Scherzo_. (Considerably hotter; fighting in close.) FOURTH
+ROUND: _Appassionato_. (Real slugging.) FIFTH ROUND: _Rhapsodie_. (Piano
+receives fearful punishment. Knocked out in final cadenza, but pianist
+sprains wrist.)
+
+In learning to play the piano, the first thing to acquire is a good
+touch, or tread (as it is properly called). Unfortunately, there is a
+divergence of opinion among authorities as to what a good tread consists
+in; the famous dictum of Prof. Biffski, of Moscow Conservatory, that you
+should hammer the hammers, being offset by the equally famous assertion
+of Hieronimus Dudelsack, the noted Viennese pedagogue, that you should
+not strike the ivories at all, but massage, or knead them. Herr
+Dudelsack and his eminent pupils maintain that his tread is the only
+normal one, that it has the naturalness of a cat's walking on the
+keyboard. But the astute Russian insinuates that it produces tangled
+chords and scales that are short-weight.
+
+But these methods have been rendered obsolete by the heel-and-toe
+technique of the playerpiano. This wonderful instrument, impregnating
+the feet with melody and rhythm, has given rise to the modern dances.
+For a person who makes a habit of playing the pianola simply _has_ to
+toddle the music out of his ankles.
+
+Even more remarkable is the way in which the piano-footy has simplified
+musical composition. The masters of the past had to toil away painfully
+with pen and ink; whereas the composer of today can attain the same
+results with a roll of paper and a ticket-punch. Judging from the
+progress we have made and are still making, it is safe to predict that
+the composer of the future will use a shotgun.
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE-DRAMA OF A MUSICAL CRITIC
+
+IN FOUR CLIPPINGS
+
+
+_I. ADOLESCENCE_
+
+From the Centerville "Clarion":
+
+LOCAL TALENT MAKES SPLENDID SHOWING
+
+The concert held last evening in Masonic Hall was a great success. It
+certainly showed what Centerville could do in a musical line. From the
+opening duet, played by Miss Violet and Miss Nancy Stubbs, to the very
+end of the program, the audience seemed to thoroughly enjoy every
+number. But the feature of the evening was the singing by Mr. Harry
+Bowers of "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep." This noble song gave the
+popular young druggist an opportunity to display his remarkable low
+notes. Another person deserving of special mention was Miss Helen Smith,
+who, attractively dressed in pink and carrying a bouquet of fresh
+flowers, rendered "The Rosary" with great effect. All in all, the
+concert was a great event, and a considerable amount of money was raised
+toward the new fire-engine.
+
+  ABRAHAM LINCOLN SIMPSON,
+    Music and Art Critic.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+_II. EFFERVESCENCE_
+
+From the "New York Chronicle":
+
+GOTHAM ORCHESTRA PLAYS SCHNITZEL
+
+Warmth of Oriental Color
+
+Adolf Schnitzel's symphonic poem "Aus Bengalien," which was admirably
+performed last evening by the Gotham Symphony Orchestra, shows a
+masterly understanding of the folk-music of India. The Bengalese have
+from the earliest times been noted for their proficience in the arts.
+Their principal instrument is the _bimbam_, an elongated drum, played
+upon with any convenient article, such as an elephant's tusk or the bone
+of an ancestor. When struck at one end, it emits the sound _bim_; when
+struck at the other, a clear-toned _bam_ is produced: hence its curious
+name. The following melody, known as the "War-Song of Prince Brahmadan,"
+gives one an idea of the capacity of this instrument:
+
+  Bim-bim-bam, bim-bam-bim.
+
+The chorus is also characteristic:
+
+  Bim, bim!
+
+At the religious ceremonies of the Bengalese, the Futrib, or high
+priest, plays upon a peculiar one-toned flute, producing an effect of
+awe and mystery, as this hymn to the sun-god aptly illustrates:
+
+  Too--oo--t!
+  Toot, toot-a-toot, toot-a-toot, toot;
+  Too--oo--t!
+
+With this wealth of material to draw from, Schnitzel has constructed a
+work that is nearly perfect in form. Beginning with a soft
+_bim-bam-bim_, which is followed by a sinister _toot, toot_, he works up
+to a climax of marvelous contrapuntal ingenuity, in which the two themes
+are combined thus:
+
+  Bim, toot, bam, toot-a-toot,
+
+Truly the apotheosis of Bengal!
+
+A. L. S.
+
+
+_III. ACQUIESCENCE_
+
+From the "New York Chronicle":
+
+"WASHINGTON" REPEATED
+
+Last night was a brilliant one at the opera. "Washington," the new
+American music-drama, was given for the second time, with the same cast
+as before.
+
+Among those who attended the performance were Mrs. Pierpont Astorbilt,
+who wore pale nesserole garnished with soufflée; Mr. and Mrs.
+Plantagenet Carter, the latter in an exquisite creation of blanc-mange;
+and Mrs. Sibley Harwood-Stevens, in gray limousine, air-cooled with
+insertion.
+
+Mrs. Reginald Carrington's guests were Lord and Lady Shrewby and the Duc
+de Vaurien. The latter wore a black dress-suit and a white shirt.
+
+Mrs. Gaybird was present for the first time since the death of her
+husband. She wore her skirt at half-mast.
+
+(_Unsigned_)
+
+
+_IV. SENESCENCE_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+From the New York "Evening Spot":
+
+BASSOON CONCERT A RELIEF FROM MODERNISM
+
+BY A. LINCOLN SIMPSON
+
+New York is suffering from a plethora of concerts. The fact that the
+halls are generally crowded is no excuse for giving so many
+performances. It is unfair to the critics.
+
+Yesterday afternoon, at the concert of the Gotham Symphony Society
+Ludwig Käse played that great German master-work, the Leberwurst bassoon
+concerto in F-flat major, opus posthumous. ("Posthumous" does not in
+this case have its usual meaning of written after the defunction of the
+composer's brain: it refers to the fact that Leberwurst did not live to
+publish the work, as his audience lynched him when he played it from
+manuscript.) This concerto, dedicated to the composer's patron, the deaf
+old Duke of Pretzelheim, bears the title of "Spring," and this vernal
+quality was admirably brought out by Herr Käse, particularly in the
+movement representing influenza. Indeed, it was impossible to hear his
+sublime sniffulations without being moved to profound coughing.
+
+François Grisé's "Gingerbread Suite," scored for viola, piccolo,
+trombone, and celesta, might have been interesting had it been more of a
+novelty; but, since it had been heard in New York five times within four
+years, its performance on this occasion was a mistake.
+
+The program included also a symphonic rhapsody on cow-boy melodies. As
+this is by an obscure native composer and has never been heard before,
+there is nothing to say about it.
+
+[Illustration: _Even people sitting behind pillars can enjoy her._]
+
+
+
+
+THE SURVIVAL OF THE FATTEST
+
+
+There is no lightweight championship in opera. Stars of the first
+magnitude are of very considerable magnitude--300 pounds and up. In this
+class are the expensive prima donnas and heroic tenors (the term
+"heroic" referring to their efforts to move about the stage). The second
+magnitude--250 to 299 pounds--includes "jilted beauty" mezzo-sopranos
+and "hated rival" baritones. The third magnitude (of which no one takes
+any notice)--under 250 pounds--is made up of "confidante" contraltos and
+"noble father" bassos.
+
+Thus, it will readily be seen that fat and fame are synonymous. For, in
+navigating the high C's, latitude is far more important than longitude.
+
+Italian opera was made possible by the discovery of spaghetti, the
+serpentine food that produces coloratura tissue. A few miles of this
+swallowed daily will keep the palate _leggiero_ and the figure
+_larghissimo_.
+
+In like manner, beer is responsible for the national opera of Germany.
+Who would have heard of Wagner if Pilsener had never been invented?
+Where could Wagner have found his massive Brunhildes, his slow-dying
+Tristans?
+
+Here lies the secret of the failure of our national music drama--we have
+spaghetti opera and beer opera, but no opera built on an American food.
+Emaciated from a diet of pebbly cereals and grape juice, our art still
+awaits the invention of the great American fattener.
+
+For fat constitutes the wonder of opera. When a diva who looks like a
+hippo surprises us by singing like a canary--_that_ is something
+remarkable. When a languid mass of blubber, for whom the very act of
+standing would seem a supreme accomplishment, displays the lung energy
+of a steam calliope and the vocal endurance of a peanut-stand
+whistle--we are astonished, overcome.
+
+And fat robs the tragic ending of its depression. The sight of a
+normally-built woman expiring of heartbreak, or any other favorite
+operatic death, would be most distressing; but the spectacle of a
+four-hundred pound consumptive, on a thickly-padded canvas-and-steel
+rock, breathing forth her everlasting last, like a moping walrus on a
+cake of ice--such a spectacle does not disturb us in the least, for we
+realize that all she needs is a fan.
+
+Indeed, the fattest never die. After a prima donna is no longer able to
+manoeuver over the operatic stage, she toddles along the carpet of the
+concert platform, tugging her train like a double-expansion
+freight-engine, while the audience applauds from sheer amazement. She is
+an immense success--even people sitting behind posts can see her.
+
+Thin singers perish and are forgotten (there never were any, anyhow);
+but the gloriously fat ones sing on forever. When Judgment Day comes and
+the angel blows his trumpet, he will have to toot it with Wagnerian fury
+plus Straussian blatancy if he hopes to be heard above the aigretted and
+tiaraed dodos who are still on the yell.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bizarre, by Lawton Mackall
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42710 ***