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Title: Benchley Beside Himself
Author: Benchley, Robert Charles (1889-1945)
Date of first publication: 1943
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York and London: Harper & Brothers, eighth edition
Date first posted: 24 November 2010
Date last updated: 24 November 2010
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #662

This ebook was produced by James Simmons




Transcriber's note:

The drawings by Gluyas Williams (1888-1982) have been
omitted from this ebook for copyright reasons, as have
other illustrations whose copyright status is uncertain.




BENCHLEY BESIDE HIMSELF

Books by

ROBERT BENCHLEY

 BENCHLEY BESIDE HIMSELF
 INSIDE BENCHLEY
 AFTER 1903--WHAT?
 MY TEN YEARS IN A QUANDARY,
  AND HOW THEY GREW
 FROM BED TO WORSE: OR COMFORTING
  THOUGHTS ABOUT THE BISON
 NO POEMS; OR AROUND THE WORLD
  BACKWARDS AND SIDEWAYS
 PLUCK AND LUCK
 THE TREASURER'S REPORT, AND OTHER
  ASPECTS OF COMMUNITY SINGING
 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, OR
  DAVID COPPERFIELD
 THE EARLY WORM
 LOVE CONQUERS ALL
 OF ALL THINGS

BENCHLEY BESIDE HIMSELF

by ROBERT BENCHLEY

with Drawings by Gluyas Williams

Harper & Brothers--New York and London

Copyright, 1921, 1922, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1943, by Harper &
Brothers.

Copyright, 1930, by Robert C. Benchley.

Printed in the United States of America. All rights in this book
are reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
information address Harper & Brothers

4-43

EIGHTH EDITION

L-S

This book is complete and unabridged
in contents, and is manufactured in strict
conformity with Government regulations
for saving paper.

Table of Contents

    Polyp with a Past

    The Young Idea's Shooting Gallery

    Open Bookcases

    How to Sell Goods

    When Not in Rome Why Do As the Romans Did?

    African Sculpture

    "In This Corner--"

    "I Am in the Book"

    Hockey Tonight!

    A Good Old-Fashioned Christmas

    The New Wing

    When Genius Remained Your Humble Servant

    Shakespeare Explained

    Gardening Notes

    The Passing of the Orthodox Paradox

    The Church Supper

    Horse-Sense Editorial

    Chemists' Sporting Extra!

    How Much Does the Sun Jump

    Looking Shakespeare Over

    Evolution Sidelights

    Teaching the Old Idea to Skate

    Cleaning Out the Desk

    Carnival Week in Sunny Las Los

    Another Uncle Edith Christmas Story

    Community Singing

    "Go Down, Sweet Jordan"

    "One Minute, Please"

    The Mystery of Bridge-Building

    "They're Off!"

    Bringing Back the Morris Dance

    The Treasurer's Report

    The Homelike Hotel

    The Sunday Menace

    One Set of French Dishes

    A Dark Horse in British Sports

    The Stranger Within Our Gates

    One-Two-Three-Four

    Ask Me a Question

    The King's English

    Eight O'Clock Sharp

    Penguin Psychology

    Now That You're Tanned--What

    Sporting Life in America: Dozing

    The Bathroom Revolution

    What Shall We Say

    A Vanishing Art


BENCHLEY BESIDE HIMSELF


Polyp with a Past

The Story of an Organism With a Heart

Of all forms of animal life, the polyp is probably the most neglected by
fanciers. People seem willing to pay attention to anything, cats,
lizards, canaries, or even fish, but simply because the polyp is
reserved by nature and not given to showing off or wearing its heart on
its sleeve, it is left alone under the sea to slave away at
coral-building with never a kind word or a pat on the tentacles from
anybody.

It was quite by accident that I was brought face to face with the human
side of a polyp. I had been working on a thesis on "Emotional Crises in
Sponge Life," and came upon a polyp formation on a piece of coral in the
course of my laboratory work. To say that I was astounded would be
putting it mildly. I was surprised.

The difficulty in research work in this field came in isolating a single
polyp from the rest in order to study the personal peculiarities of the
little organism, for, as is so often the case (even, I fear, with us
great big humans sometimes), the individual behaves in an entirely
different manner in private from the one he adopts when there is a crowd
around. And a polyp, among all creatures, has a minimum of time to
himself in which to sit down and think. There is always a crowd of other
polyps dropping in on him, urging him to make a fourth in a string of
coral beads or just to come out and stick around on a rock for the sake
of good-fellowship.

The one which I finally succeeded in isolating was an engaging organism
with a provocative manner and a little way of wrinkling up its ectoderm
which put you at once at your ease. There could be no formality about
your relations with this polyp five minutes after your first meeting. You
were just like one great big family.

Although I have no desire to retail gossip, I think that readers of this
treatise ought to be made aware of the fact (if, indeed, they do not
already know it) that a polyp is really neither one thing nor another in
matters of gender. One day it may be a little boy polyp, another day a
little girl, according to its whim or practical considerations of
policy. On gray days, when everything seems to be going wrong, it may
decide that it will be neither boy nor girl but will just drift. I think
that if we big human cousins of the little polyp were to follow the
example set by these lowliest of God's creatures in this matter, we all
would find ourselves much better off in the end. Am I not right, little
polyp?

What was my surprise, then, to discover my little friend one day in a
gloomy and morose mood. It refused the peanut-butter which I had brought
it and I observed through the microscope that it was shaking with sobs.
Lifting it up with a pair of pincers I took it over to the window to let
it watch the automobiles go by, a diversion which had, in the past,
never failed to amuse. But I could see that it was not interested. A
tune from the Victrola fell equally flat, even though I set my little
charge on the center of the disc and allowed it to revolve at a dizzy
pace, which frolic usually sent it into spasms of excited giggling.
Something was wrong. It was under emotional stress of the most racking
kind.

I consulted Klunzinger's "Die Korallenthiere des Rothen Meeres" and
there found that at an early age the polyp is quite likely to become the
victim of a sentimental passion which is directed at its own self.

In other words, my tiny companion was in love with itself, bitterly,
desperately, head-over-heels in love.

In an attempt to divert it from this madness, I took it on an extended
tour of the Continent, visiting all the old cathedrals and stopping at
none but the best hotels. The malady grew worse, instead of better. I
thought that perhaps the warm sun of Granada would bring the color back
into those pale tentacles, but there the inevitable romance in the soft
air was only fuel to the flame, and, in the shadow of the Alhambra, my
little polyp gave up the fight and died of a broken heart without ever
having declared its love to itself.

I returned to America shortly after not a little chastened by what I had
witnessed of Nature's wonders in the realm of passion.


The Young Idea's Shooting Gallery

Since we were determined to have Junior educated according to modern
methods of child training, a year and a half did not seem too early an
age at which to begin. As Doris said: "There is no reason why a child of
a year and a half shouldn't have rudimentary cravings for
self-expression". And really, there isn't any reason, when you come
right down to it.

Doris had been reading books on the subject, and had been talking with
Mrs. Deemster. Most of the trouble in our town can be traced back to
someone's having been talking with Mrs. Deemster. Mrs. Deemster brings
an evangelical note into the simplest social conversations, so that by
the time your wife is through the second piece of cinnamon toast she is
convinced that all children should have their knee-pants removed before
they are four, or that you should hire four servants a day on three-hour
shifts, or that, as in the present case, no child should be sent to a
regular school until he has determined for himself what his profession
is going to be and then should be sent straight from the home to Johns
Hopkins or the Sorbonne.

Junior was to be left entirely to himself, the theory being that he
would find self-expression in some form or other, and that by watching
him carefully it could be determined just what should be developed in
him, or, rather, just what he should be allowed to develop in himself.
He was not to be corrected in any way, or guided, and he was to call us
"Doris" and "Monty" instead of "Mother" and "Father." We were to be just
pals, nothing more. Otherwise, his individuality would become submerged.
I was, however, to be allowed to pay what few bills he might incur until
he should find himself.

The first month that Junior was "on his own," striving for
self-expression, he spent practically every waking hour of each day in
picking the mortar out from between the bricks in the fireplace and
eating it.

"Don't you think you ought to suggest to him that nobody who really is
anybody eats mortar?" I said.

"I don't like to interfere," replied Doris. "I'm trying to figure out
what it may mean. He may have the makings of a sculptor in him." But one
could see that she was a little worried, so I didn't say the cheap and
obvious thing, that at any rate he had the makings of a sculptor in him
or would have in a few more days of self-expression.

Soft putty was put at his disposal, in case he might feel like doing a
little modeling. We didn't expect much of him at first, of course; maybe
just a panther or a little General Sherman; but if that was to be his
_metier_--we weren't going to have it said that his career was nipped
in the bud for the lack of a little putty.

The first thing that he did was to stop up the keyhole in the bathroom
door while I was in the tub, so that I had to crawl out on the piazza
roof and into the guest-room window. It did seem as if there might be
some way of preventing a recurrence of that sort of thing without
submerging his individuality too much. But Doris said no. If he were
disciplined now, he would grow up nursing a complex against putty and
against me and might even try to marry Aunt Marian. She had read of a
little boy who had been punished by his father for putting soap on the
cellar stairs, and from that time on, all the rest of his life, every
time he saw soap he went to bed and dreamed that he was riding in the
cab of a runaway engine dressed as Perriot, which meant, of course, that
he had a suppressed desire to kill his father.

It almost seemed, however, as if the risk were worth taking if Junior
could be shown the fundamentally anti-social nature of an act like
stuffing keyholes with putty, but nothing was done about it except to
take the putty supply away for that day.

The chief trouble came, however, in Junior's contacts with other
neighborhood children whose parents had not seen the light. When junior
would lead a movement among the young bloods to pull up the Hemmings'
nasturtiums or would show flashes of personality by hitting little Leda
Hemming over the forehead with a trowel, Mrs. Hemming could never be
made to see that to reprimand Junior would be to crush out his God-given
individuality. All she would say was, "Just look at those nasturtiums!"
over and over again. And the Hemming children were given to understand
that it would be all right if they didn't play with Junior quite so
much.

This morning, however, the thing solved itself. While expressing himself
in putty in the nursery, junior succeeded in making a really excellent
life-mask of Mrs. Deemster's fourteen-months-old little girl who had
come over to spend the morning with him. She had a little difficulty in
breathing, but it really was a fine mask. Mrs. Deemster, however, didn't
enter into the spirit of the thing at all, and after excavating her
little girl, took Doris aside. It was decided that Junior is perhaps too
young to start in on his career unguided.

That is Junior that you can hear now, I think.


Open Bookcases

Things have come to a pretty pass when a man can't buy a bookcase that
hasn't got glass doors on it. What are we becoming--a nation of
weaklings?

All over New York city I have been--trying to get something in which to
keep books. And what am I shown? Curio cabinets, inclosed whatnots,
museum cases in which to display fragments from the neolithic age, and
glass-faced sarcophagi for dead butterflies.

"But I am apt to use my books at any time," I explain to the salesman.
"I never can tell when it is coming on me. And when I want a book I want
it quickly. I don't want to have to send down to the office for the key,
and I don't want to have to manipulate any trick ball-bearings and open
up a case as if I were getting cream-puffs out for a customer. I want a
bookcase for books and not books for a bookcase."

(I really don't say all those clever things to the clerk. It took me
quite a while to think them up. What I really say is, timidly, "Haven't
you any bookcases without glass doors?" and when they say "No," I thank
them and walk into the nearest dining-room table.)

But if they keep on getting arrogant about it I shall speak up to them
one of these fine days. When I ask for an open-faced bookcase they look
with a scornful smile across the salesroom toward the mahogany
four-posters and say:

"Oh, no, we don't carry those any more. We don't have any call for them.
Every one uses the glass-doored ones now. They keep the books much
cleaner."

Then the ideal procedure for a real book-lover would be to keep his
books in the original box, snugly packed in excelsior, with the lid
nailed down. Then they would be nice and clean. And the sun couldn't get
at them and ruin the bindings. Faugh! (Try saying that. It doesn't work
out at all as you think it's going to. And it makes you feel very silly
for having tried it.)

Why, in the elder days bookcases with glass doors were owned only by
people who filled them with ten volumes of a pictorial history of the
Civil War (including some swell steel engravings), "Walks and Talks with
John L. Stoddard" and "Daily Thoughts for Daily Needs," done in
robin's-egg blue with a watered silk bookmark dangling out. A set of Sir
Walter Scott always helps fill out a bookcase with glass doors. It looks
well from the front and shows that you know good literature when you see
it. And you don't have to keep opening and shutting the doors to get it
out, for you never want to get it out.

A bookcase with glass doors used to be a sign that somewhere in the room
there was a crayon portrait of Father when he was a young man, with a
real piece of glass stuck on the portrait to represent a diamond stud.

And now we are told that "every one buys book-cases with glass doors; we
have no call for others." Soon We shall be told that the thing to do is
to buy the false backs of bindings, such as they have in stage
libraries, to string across behind the glass. It will keep us from
reading too much, and then, too, no one will want to borrow our books.

But one clerk told me the truth. And I am just fearless enough to tell
it here. I know that it will kill my chances for the Presidency, but I
cannot stop to think of that.

After advising me to have a carpenter build me the kind of bookcase I
wanted, and after I had told him that I had my name in for a carpenter
but wasn't due to get him until late in the fall, as he was waiting for
prices to go higher before taking the job on, the clerk said:

"That's it. It's the price. You see the furniture manufacturers can make
much more money out of a bookcase with glass doors than they can
without. When by hanging glass doors on a piece of furniture at but
little more expense to themselves they can get a much bigger profit,
what's the sense in making them without glass doors? They have just
stopped making them, that's all."

So you see the American people are being practically forced into buying
glass doors whether they want them or not. Is that right? Is it fair?
Where is our personal liberty going to? What is becoming of our
traditional American institutions?

I don't know.


How to Sell Goods

The Retail Merchants' Association ought to buy up all the copies of
"Elements of Retail Salesmanship," by Paul Westley Ivey (Macmillan), and
not let a single one get into the hands of a customer, for once the
buying public reads what is written there the game is up. It tells all
about how to sell goods to people, how to appeal to their weaknesses,
how to exert subtle influences which will win them over in spite of
themselves. Houdini might as well issue a pamphlet giving in detail his
methods of escape as for the merchants of this country to let this book
remain in circulation.

The art of salesmanship is founded, according to Mr. Ivey, on, first, a
thorough knowledge of the goods which are to be sold, and second, a
knowledge of the customer. By knowing the customer you know what line of
argument will most appeal to him. There are several lines in popular
use. First is the appeal to the instinct of self-preservation--i.e.,
social self-preservation. The customer is made to feel that in order to
preserve her social standing she must buy the article in question. "She
must be made to feel what a disparaged social self would mean to her
mental comfort."

It is reassuring to know that it is a recognized ruse on the part of the
salesman to intimate that unless you buy a particular article you will
have to totter through life branded as the arch-piker. I have always
taken this attitude of the clerks perfectly seriously. In fact, I have
worried quite a bit about it.

In the store where I am allowed to buy my clothes it is quite the thing
among the salesmen to see which one of them can degrade me most. They
intimate that, while they have no legal means of refusing to sell their
goods to me, it really would be much more in keeping with things if I
were to take the few pennies that I have at my disposal and run around
the corner to some little haberdashery for my shirts and ties. Every
time I come out from that store I feel like Ethel Barrymore in
"Dclasse." Much worse, in fact, for I haven't any good looks to fall
back upon.

But now that I know the clerks are simply acting all that scorn in an
attempt to appeal to my instinct for the preservation of my social self,
I can face them without flinching. When that pompous old boy with the
sandy moustache who has always looked upon me as a member of the
degenerate Juke family tries to tell me that if I don't take the
five-dollar cravat he won't be responsible for the way in which decent
people will receive me when I go out on the street, I will reach across
the counter and playfully pull his own necktie out from his waistcoat
and scream, "I know you, you old rascal! You got that stuff from page 68
of 'Elements of Retail Salesmanship' (Macmillan)?

Other traits which a salesperson may appeal to in the customer are:
Vanity, parental pride, greed, imitation, curiosity and selfishness. One
really gets in touch with a lot of nice people in this work and can
bring out the very best that is in them.

Customers are divided into groups indicative of temperament. There is
first the Impulsive or Nervous Customer. She is easily recognized
because she walks into the store in "a quick, sometimes jerky manner.
Her eyes are keen-looking; her expression is intense, oftentimes
appearing strained." She must be approached promptly, according to the
book, and what she desires must be quickly ascertained. Since these are
the rules for selling to people who enter the store in this manner, it
might be well, no matter how lethargic you may be by nature, to assume
the appearance of the Impulsive or Nervous Customer as soon as you enter
the store, adopting a quick, even jerky manner and making your eyes as
keen-looking as possible, with an intense expression, oftentimes
appearing strained. Then the clerk will size you up as type No. 1 and
will approach you promptly. After she has quickly filled your order you
may drop the impulsive pose and assume your natural, slow manner again,
whereupon the clerk will doubtless be highly amused at having been so
cleverly fooled into giving quick service.

The opposite type is known as the Deliberate Customer. She walks slowly
and in a dignified manner. Her facial expression is calm and poised.
"Gestures are uncommon, but if existing tend to be slow and
inconspicuous." She can wait.

Then there is the Vacillating or Indecisive Customer, the Confident or
Decisive Customer (this one should be treated with subtle flattery and
agreement with all her views), the Talkative or Friendly Customer, and
the Silent or Indifferent one. All these have their little weaknesses,
and the perfect salesperson will learn to know these and play to them.

There seems to be only one thing left for the customer to do in order to
meet this concerted attack upon his personality. That is, to hire some
expert like Mr. Ivey to study the different types of sales men and women
and formulate methods of meeting their offensive. Thus, if I am of the
type designated as the Vacillating or Indecisive Customer, I ought to
know what to do when confronted by a salesman of the Aristocratic,
Scornful type, so that I may not be bulldozed into buying something I do
not want.

If I could only find such a book of instructions I would go tomorrow and
order a black cotton engineer's shirt from that sandy-moustached salesman
and bawl him out if he raised his eyebrows. But not having the book, I
shall go in and, without a murmur, buy a $3 silk shirt for $18 and slink
out feeling that if I had been any kind of sport at all I would also
have bought that cork helmet in the showcase.


When Not in Rome, Why Do As the Romans Did?

There is a growing sentiment among sign painters that when a sign or
notice is to be put up in a public place it should be written in
characters that are at least legible, so that, to quote "The Manchester
Guardian" (as every one seems to do) "He who runs may read."

This does not strike one as being an unseemly pandering to popular
favor. The supposition is that the sign is put there to be read,
otherwise it would have been turned over to an inmate of the Odd Fellows
Home to be engraved on the head of a pin. And what could be a more fair
requirement than that it should be readable?

Advertising, with its billboard message of rustless screens and
co-educational Turkish-baths, has done much to further the good cause,
and a glance through the files of newspapers of seventy-five years ago,
when the big news story of the day was played up in diamond type easily
deciphered in a strong light with the naked eye, shows that news
printing has not, to use a slang phrase, stood still.

But in the midst of this uniform progress we find a stagnant spot.
Surrounded by legends that are patent and easy to read and understand,
we find the stone-cutter and the architect still putting up tablets and
cornerstones, monuments and cornices, with dates disguised in Roman
numerals. It is as if it were a game, in which they were saying, "The
number we are thinking of is even; it begins with M; it has five digits
and when they are spread out, end to end, they occupy three feet of
space. You have until we count to one hundred to guess what it is."

Roman numerals are all right for a rainy Sunday afternoon or to take a
convalescent's mind from his illness, but to put them in a public place,
where the reader stands a good chance of being run over by a dray if he
spends more than fifty seconds in their perusal, is not in keeping with
the efficiency of the age. If for no other reason than the extra space
they take, involving more marble, more of the cutter's time and wear
and tear on his instruments, not to mention the big overhead, you would
think that Roman numerals would have been abolished long ago.

Of course, they can be figured out if you're good at that sort of thing.
By working on your cuff and backs of envelopes, you can translate them
in no time at all compared to the time taken by a cocoon to change into
a butterfly, for instance. All you have to do is remember that "M"
stands for either "millium," meaning thousand, or for "million." By
referring to the context you can tell which is more probable. If, for
example, it is a date, you can tell right away that it doesn't mean
"million," for there isn't any "million" in our dates. And there is
one-seventh or eighth of your number deciphered already. Then "C," of
course, stands for "centum," which you can translate by working
backwards at it, taking such a word as "century" or "per cent," and
looking up what they come from, and there you have it! By this time it
is hardly the middle of the afternoon, and all you have before you is a
combination of N's, I's and an L, the latter standing for "Elevated
Railway," and "Licorice," or, if you cross it with two little horizontal
lines, it stands for the English pound, which is equivalent to about
four dollars and eighty-odd cents in real money. Simple as sawing
through a log.

But it takes time. That's the big trouble with it. You can't do the
right thing by the office and go in for Roman numerals, too. And since
most of the people who pass such inscriptions are dependent on their own
earnings, why not cater to them a bit and let them in on the secret?

Probably the only reason that the people haven't risen up and demanded a
reform along these lines is because so few of them really give a hang
what the inscription says. If the American Antiquarian Turn-Verein
doesn't care about stating in understandable figures the date on which
the cornerstone of their building was laid, the average citizen is
perfectly willing to let the matter drop right there.

But it would never do to revert to Roman numerals in, say, the
arrangement of time-tables. How long would the commuter stand it if he
had to mumble to himself for twenty minutes and use up the margins of
his newspaper before he could figure out what was the next train after
the 5:18? Or this, over the telephone between wife and husband:

"Hello, dear! I think I'll come in town for lunch. What trains can I
get?"

"Just a minute--I'll look them up. Hold the wire. ... Let's see, here's
one at XIl:LVIII, that's twelve, and L is a thousand and V is live and
three I's are three; that makes 12: one thousand.... that can't be
right.... now XII certainly is twelve, and L ... what does L stand for?
... I say, what--does--L--stand--for? ... Well, ask Helma.... What does
she say? ... Fifty? ... Sure, that makes it come out all right....
12:58.... What time is it now? ... 1 o'clock? ... Well, the next one
leaves Oakam at I:XLIV.... that's..." etc.

Batting averages and the standing of teams in the leagues are another
department where the introduction of Roman numerals would be suicide for
the political party in power at the time. For of all things that are
essential to the day's work of the voter, an early enlightenment in the
matter of the home team's standing and the numerical progress of the
favorite batsman are of primary importance. This information has to be
gleaned on the way to work in the morning, and, except for those who
come in to work each day from North Philadelphia or the Croton
Reservoir, it would be a physical impossibility to figure the tables out
and get any of the day's news besides.

[Illustration: You can't do right by the office and go in for roman
numerals too]

On matters such as these the proletariat would have protested the Roman
numeral long ago. If they are willing to let its reactionary use on
tablets and monuments stand it is because of their indifference to
influences which do not directly affect their pocketbooks. But if it
could be put up to them in a powerful cartoon, showing the Architect and
the Stone-Cutter dressed in frock coats and silk hats, with their
pockets full of money, stepping on the Common People so that he cannot
see what is written on the tablet behind them, then perhaps the public
would realize how they are being imposed on.

For that there is an organized movement among architects and
stone-cutters to keep these things from the citizenry there can no
longer be any doubt. It is not only a matter of the Roman numerals. How
about the use of the "V" when "U" should be used? You will always see it
in inscriptions. "SVMNER BVILDING" is one of the least offensive.
Perhaps the excuse is that "V" is more adapted to stone-lettering. Then
why not carry this principle out further? Why not use the letter H when
S is meant? Or substitute K for B? If the idea is to deceive, and to
make it easier for the stone-cutter, a pleasing effect could be got from
the inscription, "Erected in 1897 by the Society of Arts and Grafts," by
making it read: "EKEATEW IZ MXIXLXIXLXXII LY THE NNLIEZY OF AEXA ZNL
ELAFTX."

There you have letters that are all adapted to stone-cutting; they look
well together, and they are, in toto, as intelligible as most
inscriptions.


African Sculpture

Its Background, Future and the Old-Fashioned Waltz

(With Photographs by the Author)

A recent exhibition of West African sculpture created a furor in art
circles which died down in about fifteen minutes--which was just about
the time consumed in removing the _objects_ from the packing crates. We
are therefore printing a critical estimate of these little carvings in
an attempt to arouse enough interest in them among art lovers to have
them crated up again to be sent back to West Africa.

One must understand the spirit which is at the back of West African
sculpture in order to appreciate the intense _integrity_ of its
technique. It isn't so much the sculpture itself (although, in a way, it
is) as the fact that it is filled with raisins. These can be extracted
and eaten if you like raisins. Early Florentine sculpture and late Greek
modeling (some of the late Greek was so late that it ran right over into
Early Florentine and nobody knew the difference) had no raisins.

A study of the examples printed on this page will hardly serve to
demonstrate this point, but it won't do any harm to look at them
casually.

Example 1 is a native West African funeral mask, worn by any relative of
the deceased who wanted to attend the funeral and yet didn't want the
rest of the relatives to know that he was in town. This would probably
account for the strong Irish cast to the features of the mask. No one
would think of an Irishman being a relative of a native West African,
although stranger things have happened. This mask was brought back by
the Huber's 42nd St. Museum expedition and is now on exhibition in the
Renaissance Biped Room of the Museum itself.

[Illustration: Funeral mask worn by relatives who want to look Irish.]

[Illustration: West African salt-cellar fetish, showing the growth of
grain from the seedling to the ripe kernel]

Example 2 is one of the most sincere of these native sculptures. It is a
local fetish in the shape of a salt-cellar (a pretty funny shape for a
salt-cellar, you are doubtless saying to yourself), as salt is
considered to be very lucky on the West Coast of Africa, especially if
you happen to have any fried chicken and hashed-in-cream potatoes to put
it on. This salt-cellar fetish, in addition to being a talisman, also
tells a story (stop it if you have heard it):

It represents the gradual growth of the seed to the mature plant, the
seed being represented by the two hands of the little figure and the
mature plant by the two knees. In the spring of the year, when the seed
is planted, everything is bright and green. Hence the hands. In the
fall, when the grain is garnered, the year is nearing its close, Nature
is putting on her winding sheet for the long winter, and nothing seems
right. Hence the knees. That may not be the explanation at all. How
should I know?

Example 3 is a poser, frankly. It was found on the West Coast, in a
district known as the "West Coast Studios." Nobody seems to know who
found this example of native art, or where it was found. It just turned
up among some other bits of sculpture in the Museum's shipment. At first
it was thought to be a bust of the local Lon Cha ... Beg pardon! At
first it was thought to be a replica of Naa, the Fog-God--and it still
may be. The argument against this theory is that it isn't round enough.
Other experts have placed it in the Post-Fever School (after the scourge
of fever which swept the Coast in 1780) and seem to see in it an attempt
to show the growth of the seed to the mature grain. Here, again, finders
are keepers.

[Illustration: This doesn't seem to mean much to anyone]

Now, a study of these three examples, representing, as they do, three
distinct schools of West African sculptural art, shows us one
thing--namely, that long before the coming of the White Man there was a
distinct feeling for aesthetic expression among the natives of that
section of the continent. just how successful these savage strivings
were, and just what degree of skill was mastered by these tribal
artists, is something which each connoisseur must decide for himself.
Personally, I wouldn't give them houseroom.


"In This Corner--"

FRANKLY, I am not much of a fight fan. I always get sorry for the one
who is getting socked. On the other hand, if no one is getting socked, I
am bored and start screaming for blood. There is no such thing as
pleasing me at a fight.

Of course, as I keep saying to myself when I get to worrying over the
loser's suffering, he probably expects this sort of thing. When a man
decides to be a fighter he must know that sooner or later he is going to
get his nose mashed in. He takes that chance. So there is really no need
for me to feel so bad about it. God knows, I have troubles enough of my
own without sitting and wincing every time some Lithuanian bunker-boy
gets punched in the side of the head.

But somehow I can't help feeling that the one who is getting mashed is
pretty fairly surprised that things have taken this turn--and not a
little mortified. I am afraid that he didn't want to fight in the first
place, but was forced into it by his backers. Perhaps, if I read more of
the fighters' statements before the fight, I would feel a little less
sorry for them when I hear their faces give way. Once I read what a
welterweight said on the day before the contest, and, for the first
time, I actually enjoyed seeing his lip swell up.

Probably my tender feelings in the matter are due to an instinctive
habit I have of putting myself in the place of anyone I am watching. I
haven't been at a fight for more than three minutes before I begin
indulging in one of my favorite nightmares. This consists of imagining
that I myself am up in the ring facing the better of the two men.

Just how I am supposed to have got up in the ring is never quite clear.
I don't believe that I ever would sign up deliberately for a prize
fight, much as I need the money. I can think of at least fourteen
thousand things that I would try first. But the idea seems to be that
while drugged or under the influence of alcohol I have agreed to meet
some prominent pugilist in the Yankee Stadium and, quite naturally, the
affair has filled the mammoth bowl with a record crowd, all of whom are
cynically antagonistic to me.

Whatever my mental processes may have been which led me to don silken
tights and crawl through the ropes, my reverie begins when I awake to
find myself standing under the terrific glare of the lights going
through the formality of shaking gloves with a very large man.

"Here, here, Benchley," I say to myself. "What's all this? This is a
very foolhardy thing to be doing."

But there is no way of backing out now and the only thing that I can do
is to throw a big bluff that I know something about boxing.

Now, as a matter of fact, my fighting technique is limited to a few
elementary passes learned in a gymnasium class when I was in school, and
consists of a rather trusting stance with the arms raised as if posing
for a photograph, followed by a quick lunge forward with my left and an
almost simultaneous jump backward. The fact that this is all done to a
count, "one, two, three, and four," leaves something to be desired as
strategy. I also have a nasty right hook--done to "five, six, seven, and
eight"--which, I think, would deceive no one. I have tried both of these
on the younger of my two boys, and he found little difficulty in solving
them the very first time. Fortunately, I had the reach, however.

Equipped with these two primary attacks, each of which resolves itself
into the quick jump backward, I am supposed to pit myself against a
trained fighter. The whole thing is pretty terrifying to start with and
rapidly grows worse.

The trouble with my position No. 1 seems to be that my opponent doesn't
wait for me. No sooner have I taken my stance and raised my fists than I
am the recipient of a terrific clout on the ear, without even the
formality of counting "one, two, three, and four." Without seeing very
much of anything at the time, I try my left hook, which ends very badly
somewhere in midair, and again take a rapid succession of neck-bending
socks on either side of the jaw. At this juncture, I decide to lie down.

This strategy on my part is greeted with derisive hoots from the crowd,
but there seems to be nothing else to be done about it. There is
practically nothing that my opponent can't do to me and nobody knows it
better than I do. Furthermore, I am not one of those people who develop
a gameness under physical pain. I am not a glutton for punishment. If I
had my way about it I would practically never let myself be hurt. In the
waiting room of a dentist's office I have been known to develop a yellow
streak which is clearly visible through my clothing. Gameness is a grand
quality and it is all right as a last resort, but my motto is "Try
everything else first."

Consequently, in the position in which I now find myself, my first
thought is how to get out of the ring and into bed with the covers
pulled over my head. I try crawling out through the ropes, but in this
particular dream-fight of mine, there is a rule against throwing in the
towel. Both fighters must go the entire fifteen rounds, dead or alive.
So you can see my predicament.

I very seldom get much farther than this point in my reverie. I suppose
that I would just lie there on the floor and make my opponent come to me
if he wanted to hit me. I am very certain that I would not be fool
enough to get up on my feet again. I might try kicking him in the shins
from my recumbent position, but I doubt that I would bring myself to
even that show of belligerence. I would simply have to trust in his
seeing the humor of the thing and good-naturedly getting down on the
floor beside me and wrestling the rest of the fight out. He would win
that, too, but I wouldn't get those socks on the side of the head at any
rate.

As I snap out of this dream state and find myself sitting in my safe
ringside seat (from which I can see nothing, owing to the holders of
ringside seats in front of me indulging in the good American custom of
standing up whenever things get interesting) my first sensation is one
of great relief at my good fortune in not being in the ring. But then I
see some other poor son-of-a-gun getting what I might have had, and I
can't help but wish that the whole thing would stop. Maybe he, too,
found himself up there quite by accident.

Of course, there is one thing about prize fights that one sees nowadays.
In a large majority of them no one gets hurt enough even to _want_ to
stop before it is over. Sometimes it is hard to tell who is the winner,
and the most serious injury sustained by either fighter is a little skin
rubbed off the inside of his arms from waltzing. At least, I have the
distinction of having taken part in the most brutal fight of modern
times.


"I Am in the Book"

There are several natural phenomena which I shall have to have explained
to me before I can consent to keep on going as a resident member of the
human race. One is the metamorphosis which hats and suits undergo
exactly one week after their purchase, whereby they are changed from
smart, intensely becoming articles of apparel into something children
use when they want to "dress up like daddy." Another is the almost
identical change undergone by people whom you have known under one set
of conditions when they are transferred to another locale.

Perhaps the first phenomenon, in my case, may be explained by the fact
that I need a valet. Not a valet to come in two or three times a week
and sneak my clothes away, but a valet to follow me about, everywhere I
go, with a whiskbroom in one hand and an electric iron in the other,
brushing off a bit of lint here, giving an occasional _coup de fer_ there,
and whispering in my ear every once in a while, for God's sake not to
turn my hat brim down that way. Then perhaps my hats and suits would
remain the hats and suits they were when I bought them.

But the second mysterious transformation--that of people of one sort
into people of another sort, simply by moving them from one place to
another in different clothes--here is a problem for the scientists; that
is, if they are at all interested.

Perhaps I do not make myself clear. (I have had quite a bit of trouble
that way lately.) I will give an example If you can get ten other people
to give, too. Let us say that you went to Europe one summer. You were
that rosy-faced man in a straw hat who went to Europe. Or you went to
the seashore. God, man, you must have gone _somewhere_!

Wherever you were, you made new acquaintances, unless you had whooping
cough all the time. On the voyage home, let us say, you sat next to some
awfully nice people from Grand Rapids, or were ill at practically the
same time as a very congenial man from Philadelphia. These chance
acquaintances ripened into friendships, and perhaps into something even
more beautiful (although I often think that nothing is really more
beautiful than friendship), and before long you were talking over all
kinds of things and perhaps exchanging bits of fruit from your steamer
baskets. By the day before you landed you were practically brother and
sister--or, what is worse, brother and brother.

"Now we must get together in the fall," you say. "I am in the book. The
first time you come to town give me a ring and we'll go places and see
things." And you promise to do the same thing whenever you happen to be
in Grand Rapids or Philadelphia. You even think that you might make a
trip to Grand Rapids or Philadelphia especially to stage a get-together.

The first inkling you have that maybe you won't quite take a trip to
Grand Rapids or Philadelphia is on the day when you land in New York.
That morning everyone appears on deck dressed in traveling clothes which
they haven't worn since they got on board. They may be very nice clothes
and you may all look very smart, but something is different. A strange
tenseness has sprung up and everyone walks around the deck trying to act
natural, without any more success than seeming singularly unattractive.
Some of your bosom friends, with whom you have practically been on the
floor of the bar all the way over, you don't even recognize in their
civilian clothes.

"Why, look who's here!" you say. "It's Eddie! I didn't know you, Eddie,
with that great, big, beautiful collar on." And Eddie asks you where you
got that hat, accompanying the question with a playful jab in the ribs
which doesn't quite come off. A rift has already appeared in the lute
and you haven't even been examined yet by the doctors for trachoma.

By the time you get on the dock and are standing around among the trunks
and dogs, you may catch sight of those darling people, the Dibbles,
standing in the next section under "C," and you wave weakly and call
out, "Don't forget, I'm in the book!" but you know in your heart that
you could be in a book of French drawings and the Dibbles wouldn't look
you up--which is O. K. with you.

Sometimes, however, they do look you up. Perhaps you have parted at the
beach on a bright morning in September before you went up to get dressed
for the trip to the city. The Durkinses (dear old Durkinses!) were lying
around in their bathing suits and you were just out from your last swim
preparatory to getting into the blue suit.

"Well, you old sons-of-guns," you say, smiling through your tears, "the
minute you hit town give us a ring and we'll begin right where we left
off. I know a good place. We can't swim there, but, boy, we can get
wet!"

At which Mr. and Mrs. Durkins scream with laughter and report to Mr. and
Mrs. Weffer, who are sitting next, that you have said that you know a
place in town where you can't swim but, boy, you can get wet. This
pleases the Weffers, too, and they are included in the invitation.

"We'll have a regular Throg's Point reunion," Mrs. Weffer says. Mrs.
Weffer isn't so hot at making wisecracks, but she has a good heart.
Sure, bring her along!

Along about October you come into the office and find that a Mr. Durkins
has called and wants you to call him at his hotel. "Durkins? Durkins?
Oh, _Durkins_! Sure thing! Get me Mr. Durkins, please." And a big party
is arranged for that night.

At six o'clock you call for the Durkinses at their hotel. (The Weffers
have lost interest long before this and dropped out. The Durkinses don't
even know where they are--in Montclair, New jersey, they think.) The
Durkinses are dressed in their traveling clothes and you are in your
business suit, such as it is (such as business is). You are not quite
sure that it is Mrs. Durkins at first without that yellow sweater she
used to wear all the time at the beach. And Mr. Durkins looks like a
house-detective in that collar and tie. They both look ten years older
and not very well. You have a feeling that you look pretty seedy, too.

"Well, well, here we are again! How are you all?"

"Fine and dandy. How are you--and the missus?"

"Couldn't be better. She's awfully sorry she couldn't get in town
tonight. (You haven't even told her that the Durkinses were here.)
What's the news at dear old Throg's Point?"

"Oh, nothing much. Very dead after you left."

"Well, well--(A pause.) How have you been anyway, you old son-of-a-gun?"

"Oh, fine; fine and dandy! You all been well?"

"Couldn't be better. What was going on at the old dump when you left?
Any news? Any scandal?"

"Not a thing."

"Well, well--Not a thing, eh?--Well, that's the way it goes, you know;
that's the way it goes."

"Yes, sir, I guess you're right-You look fine."

"Feel fine--I could use a little swim right now, though."

"Oh, boy, couldn't I though!" (The weather being very cold for October,
this is recognized by both sides as an entirely false enthusiasm, as
neither of you ever really cared for swimming even in summer.)

"How would you like to take a walk up to Sammy's for a lobster sandwich,
eh?"

"Say, what I couldn't do to one right now! Boy! Or one of those hot
dogs!"

"One of Sammy's hot dogs wouldn't go bad right now, you're right."

"Well, well--You've lost all your tan, haven't you?"

"Lost it when I took my first hot-water bath."

This gets a big laugh, the first, and last, of the evening. You are
talking to a couple of strangers and the conversation has to be given
adrenalin every three minutes to keep it alive. The general atmosphere
is that of a meeting in a doctor's office.

It all ends up by your remembering that, after dinner, you have to go to
a committee meeting which may be over at nine o'clock or may last until
midnight and they had better not wait for you. You will meet them after
the theatre if you can. And you know that you can't, and they know that
you can't, and, what is more, they don't care.

So there you are! The example that I gave has been rather long; so there
isn't much room left for a real discussion of the problem. But the fact
remains that people are one thing in one place and another thing in
another place, just as a hat that you buy in the store for a natty gray
sport model turns out to be a Confederate general's fatigue-cap when you
get it home. And if you know of any explanation, I don't care to hear
about it. I'm sick of the subject by now anyway.


Hockey Tonight!

The growth of hockey in the brief period which spans my own life is a
matter of great interest to me. Sometimes I sit and think about it for
hours at a time. "How hockey has grown!" I muse, "How hockey has grown!"
And then it is dinner-time and I have done no work.

But, frankly, hockey is a great big sport now, and I can remember when
its only function was to humiliate me personally. I never was very good
at it, owing to weak ankles which bent at right angles whenever I
started out to skate fast after the puck. I was all right standing still
or gliding slowly along, but let me make a spurt and--bendo--out they
would go! This made me more or less the butt of the game and I finally
gave the whole thing up and took to drinking.

But, at that time, hockey was an informal game, played mostly by small
boys with a view to hogging the ice when others, including little girls
and myself, wanted to skate. It is true, there was a sort of
professional hockey played on an indoor rink at Mechanics' Hall, but
that was done on roller skates and was called "polo."

"Polo," as played by the professional teams from Fall River and
Providence, was the forerunner of the more intimate manoeuvres of the
Great War. The players were all state charges out on probation, large
men who had given their lives over to some form of violence or other,
and the idea was to catch the opposing player with the polo stick as
near to the temple as possible and so end the game sooner. A good, livid
welt across the cheek was considered a compromise, but counted the
striker three points, nevertheless, just to encourage marksmanship. It
was estimated that the life of an average indoor polo-player was
anywhere from six to eight hours.

Then, gradually, the game of ice-hockey came into ascendancy in the
colleges. It was made a major sport in many of them, the players winning
their letter for playing in the big games and falling behind in their
studies, just as in football and baseball. I was on the student council
in my own university when the decision was made to give the members of
the hockey team a straight letter without the humiliation of crossed
hockey sticks as a bar-sinister as heretofore, and the strain of the
debate and momentousness of the question were so great that, after it
had all been decided and the letters had been awarded, we all had to go
and lie down and rest. Some of us didn't get up again for four or five
days. I sometimes wonder if I _ever_ got up.

And then came professional hockey as we know it now, with the
construction of mammoth rinks and the introduction of frankfurters in
the lobbies. Every large city bought itself a hockey team to foster
civic spirit, each team composed almost exclusively of Canadians,
thereby making the thing a local matter--local to the North American
continent, that is.

As at present played, hockey is a fast game, expert and clean, which
gives the players plenty of chance to skate very fast from one end of a
rink to the other and the spectators a chance to catch that cold in the
head they have been looking for. Thousands of people flock to the arenas
to witness the progress of the teams in the league and to cheer their
fellow townsmen from Canada in their fierce rivalry with players, also
from Canada, who wear the colors of Boston, New York, Detroit, and other
presumptuous cities. As the number of cities which support hockey teams
increases, the difficulty is going to come in impressing on the
French-Canadian players the names of the cities they are playing for, so
that they won't get mixed up in the middle of the game and start working
for the wrong side. A Frenchman playing for Chillicothe or Amagansett
will have to watch himself pretty carefully.

However, this is all beside the point--or beside the cover-point, if you
want to be comical, even though there aren't any more cover-points. What
this article set out to do was to explain how hockey may be watched with
a minimum of discomfort and an inside knowledge of the finer points of
the game.

As it is necessary to have ice in order to play ice-hockey, I have
invented a system, now in use in most rinks, whereby an artificial ice
may be made by the passage of ammonia through pipes and one thing and
another. The result is much the same as regular ice except that you
can't use it in high-balls. It hurts just as much to fall down on and is
just as easily fallen on as the real thing. In fact, it is ice, except
that--well, as a matter of fact, although I invented the thing I can't
explain it, and, what is more, I don't _want_ to explain it. If you
don't already know what artificial ice is, I don't care if you never
know.

If you arrive at the hockey game just a little bit late, you will be
able to annoy people around you by asking what has taken place since the
game began. There is a place where the score is indicated, it is true,
but it is difficult to find, especially if you come in late. In the
Madison Square Garden in New York, where every night some different kind
of sport is indulged in (one night, hockey; the next night,
prize-fighting; the next night, bicycle-racing and so on and so forth)
the same scoreboard is used except that the numbers are lighted up
differently. I went to a hockey game late the other night and, looking
up at the scoreboard, figured it out that Spandino and Milani had three
more laps to go before they were three laps ahead of anyone else. This
confused me a little, but not enough. I knew, in a way, that I was not
at a bicycle race but I didn't feel in a position to argue with any
scoreboard. So I went home rather than cause trouble.

Spectators at a hockey game, however, are generally pretty well up in
the tactics of the game, always, as usual, excepting the women
spectators. I would like to bet that a woman could have played hockey
herself for five years and yet, if put among the spectators, wouldn't
know what that man was doing with the little round disc.

However, poking fun at women for not knowing games is old stuff, and we
must always remember that we men ourselves don't know everything about
baking popovers. Not any more than women do. (Heh-heh!)

The man who thought of installing frankfurter stands in the lobbies of
hockey arenas had a great idea. If it looks as if there might not be any
scoring done for a long time (and, what with goal-tenders as efficient
as they are, it most always does look that way) you can slip out and
have a session with a frankfurter or even a bar of nougatine and get
back in time to see the end of the period. The trouble with professional
hockey as played today is that the goal-tenders are too good. A player
may carry the puck down the ice as far as the goal and then, owing to
the goal-tender's being just an old fool and not caring at all about the
spectators, never get it in at all. This makes it difficult to get up
any enthusiasm when you see things quickening up, because you know that
nothing much will come of it anyway. My plan would be to eliminate the
goal-tenders entirely and speed up the game. The officials could help
some by sending them to the penalty box now and then.

As a matter of fact, I have never even seen a hockey game in my whole
life.


A Good Old-Fashioned Christmas

Sooner or later at every Christmas party, just as things are beginning
to get good, someone shuts his eyes, puts his head back and moans
softly: "Ah, well, this isn't like the old days. We don't seem to have
any good old-fashioned Christmases any more." To which the answer from
my corner of the room is: "All right! That suits me!"

Just what they have in mind when they say "old-fashioned Christmas" you
never can pin them down to telling. "Lots of snow," they mutter, "and
lots of food." Yet, if you work it right, you can still get plenty of
snow and food today. Snow, at any rate.

Then there seems to be some idea of the old-fashioned Christmas being,
of necessity, in the country. It doesn't make any difference whether you
were raised on a farm or whether your ideas of a rural Christmas were
gleaned from pictures in old copies of "Harper's Young People," you must
give folks to understand that such were the surroundings in which you
spent your childhood holidays. And that, ah, me, those days will never
come again!

Well, supposing you get your wish some time. Supposing, let us say, your
wife's folks who live up in East Russet, Vermont, write and ask you to
come up and bring the children for a good old-fashioned Christmas,
"while we are all still together," they add cheerily with their flair
for putting everybody in good humor.

Hurray, hurray! Off to the country for Christmas! Pack up all the warm
clothes in the house, for you will need them up there where the air is
clean and cold. Snow-shoes? Yes, put them in, or better yet, Daddy will
carry them. What fun! Take along some sleigh-bells to jangle in case
there aren't enough on the pung. There must be jangling sleigh-bells.
And whisky for frost-bite. Or is it snake-bite that whisky is for?
Anyway, put it in! We're off! Good-by, all! Good-by!
JANGLE-JANGLE-JANGLE-Jangle-Jangle-jangle-jangle-jangle-jangle-
jangle-jangle-jangle!

In order to get to East Russet you take the Vermont Central as far as
Twitchell's Falls and change there for Torpid River junction, where a
spur line takes you right into Gormley. At Gormley you are met by a
buck-board which takes you back to Torpid River junction again. By this
time a train or something has come in which will wait for the local from
Besus. While waiting for this you will have time to send your little boy
to school, so that he can finish the third grade.

At East Russet Grandpa meets you with the sleigh. The bags are piled in
and Mother sits in front with Lester in her lap while Daddy takes junior
and Ga-Ga in back with him and the luggage. Giddap, Esther Girl!

Esther Girl giddaps, and two suitcases fall out. Heigh-ho! Out we get
and pick them up, brushing the snow off and filling our cuffs with it as
we do so. After all, there is nothing like snow for getting up one's
cuffs. Good clean snow never hurt anyone. Which is lucky, because after
you have gone a mile or so, you discover that Ga-Ga is missing. Never
mind, she is a self-reliant little girl and will doubtless find her way
to the farm by herself. Probably she will be there waiting for you when
you arrive.

The farm is situated on a hill about eleven hundred miles from the
center of town, just before you get into Canada. If there is a breeze in
winter, they get it. But what do they care for breezes, so long as they
have the Little Colonel oil-heater in the front room, to make everything
cozy and warm within a radius of four inches! And the big open fireplace
with the draught coming down it! Fun for everybody!

You are just driving up to the farmhouse in the sleigh, with the entire
right leg frozen where the lap robe has slipped out. Grandma is waiting
for you at the door and you bustle in, all glowing with good cheer.
"Merry Christmas, Grandma!" Lester is cross and Junior is asleep and has
to be dragged by the hand upstairs, bumping against each step all the
way. It is so late that you decide that you all might as well go to bed,
especially as you learn that breakfast is at four-thirty. It usually is
at four, but Christmas being a holiday everyone sleeps late.

As you reach the top of the stairs you get into a current of cold air
which has something of the quality of the temperature in a nice
well-regulated crypt. This is the Bed Room Zone, and in it the
thermometer never tops the zero mark from October fifteenth until the
middle of May. Those rooms in which no one sleeps are used to store
perishable vegetables in, and someone has to keep thumbing the tomatoes
and pears every so often to prevent their getting so hard that they
crack.

The way to get undressed for bed in one of Grandpa's bedrooms is as
follows: Starting from the foot of the stairs where it is warm, run up
two at a time to keep the circulation going as long as possible. Opening
the bedroom door with one hand, tear down the curtains from the windows
with the other, pick up the rugs from the floor and snatch the spread
from the top of the bureau. Pile all these on the bed, cover with the
closet door which you have wrenched from its hinges, and leap quickly
underneath. It sometimes helps to put on a pair of rubbers over your
shoes.

And even when you are in bed, you have no guarantee of going to sleep.
Grandpa's mattresses seem to contain the overflow from the silo,
corn-husks, baked-potato skins and long, stringy affairs which feel like
pipe cleaners. On a cold night, snuggling down into these is about like
snuggling down into a bed of damp pine cones out in the forest.

Then there are Things abroad in the house. Shortly after you get into
bed, the stairs start snapping. Next something runs along the roof over
your head. You say to yourself: "Don't be silly. It's only Santa Claus."
Then it runs along in the wall behind the head of the bed. Santa Claus
wouldn't do that. Down the long hall which leads into the ell of the
house you can hear the wind sighing softly, with an occasional
reassuring bang of a door.

The unmistakable sound of someone dying in great pain rises from just
below the window-sill. It is a sort of low moan, with just a touch of
strangulation in it. Perhaps Santa has fallen off the roof. Perhaps that
story you once heard about Grandpa's house having been a hang-out for
Revolutionary smugglers is true, and one of the smugglers has come back
for his umbrella. The only place at a time like this is down under the
bed-clothes. But the children become frightened and demand to be taken
home, and Grandpa has to be called to explain that it is only Blue Bell
out in the barn. Blue Bell has asthma, and on a cold night they have to
be very patient with her.

Christmas morning dawns cloudy and cold, with the threat of plenty more
snow, and, after all, what would Christmas be without snow? You lie in
bed for one hour and a quarter trying to figure out how you can get up
without losing the covers from around you. A glance at the water pitcher
shows that it is time for them to put the red ball up for skating. You
think of the nice warm bathroom at home, and decide that you can wait
until you get back there before shaving.

This breaking the ice in the pitcher seems to be a feature of the early
lives of all great men which they look back on with tremendous
satisfaction. "When I was a boy, I used to have to break the ice in the
pitcher every morning before I could wash," is said with as much pride
as one might say, "When I was a boy I stood at the head of my class."
Just what virtue there is in having to break ice in a pitcher is not
evident, unless it lies in their taking the bother to break the ice and
wash at all. Anytime that I have to break ice in a pitcher as a
preliminary to washing, I go unwashed, that's all. And Benjamin Franklin
and U. S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes can laugh as much as they like.
I'm nobody's fool about a thing like that.

Getting the children dressed is a lot of fun when you have to keep
pumping their limbs up and down to keep them from freezing out stiff.
The children love it and are just as bright and merry as little pixies
when it is time to go downstairs and say "Good morning" to Grandpa and
Grandma. The entire family enters the dining-room purple and chattering
and exceedingly cross.

After breakfast everyone begins getting dinner. The kitchen being the
only warm place in the house may have something to do with it. But
before long there are so many potato peelings and turkey feathers and
squash seeds and floating bits of pie crust in the kitchen that the
women-folk send you and the children off into the front part of the
house to amuse yourselves and get out of the way.

Then what a jolly time you and the kiddies and Grandpa have together!
You can either slide on the horse-hair sofa, or play "The Wayside
Chapel" on the piano (the piano has scroll-work on either side of the
music rack with yellow silk showing through), or look out the window and
see ten miles of dark gray snow. Perhaps you may even go out to the barn
and look at the horses and cows, but really, as you walk down between
the stalls, when you have seen one horse or one cow you have seen them
all. And besides, the cold in the barn has an added flavor of damp
harness leather and musty carriage upholstery which eats into your very
marrow.

Of course, there are the presents to be distributed, but that takes on
much the same aspect as the same ceremony in the new-fashioned
Christmas, except that in the really old-fashioned Christmas the
presents weren't so tricky. Children got mostly mittens and shoes, with
a sled thrown in sometimes for dissipation. Where a boy today is bored
by three o'clock in the afternoon with his electric grain-elevator and
miniature pond with real perch in it, the old-fashioned boy was lucky if
he got a copy of "Naval Battles of the War of 1812" and an orange. Now
this feature is often brought up in praise of the old way of doing
things. "I tell you," says Uncle Cyp, "the children in my time never got
such presents as you get today." And he seems proud of the fact, as if
there were some virtue accruing to him for it. If the children of today
can get electric grain-elevators and tin automobiles for Christmas, why
aren't they that much better off than their grandfathers who got only
wristlets? Learning the value of money, which seems to be the only
argument of the stand-patters, doesn't hold very much water as a
Christmas slogan. The value of money can be learned in just about five
minutes when the time comes, but Christmas is not the season.

But to return to the farm, where you and the kiddies and Gramp' are
killing time. You can either bring in wood from the woodshed, or thaw
out the pump, or read the books in the bookcase over the writing-desk.
Of the three, bringing in the wood will probably be the most fun, as you
are likely to burn yourself thawing out the pump, and the list of
reading matter on hand includes "The Life and Deeds of General Grant,"
"Our First Century," "Andy's Trip to Portland," bound volumes of the
Jersey Cattle Breeders' Gazette and "Diseases of the Horse." Then there
are some old copies of "Round the Lamp" for the years 1850-54 and some
colored plates showing plans for the approaching World's Fair at
Chicago.

Thus the time passes, in one round of gayety after another, until you
are summoned to dinner. Here all cavilling must cease. The dinner lives
up to the advertising. If an old-fashioned Christmas could consist
entirely of dinner without the old-fashioned bedrooms, the old-fashioned
pitcher, and the old-fashioned entertainments, we professional
pessimists wouldn't have a turkey-leg left to stand on. But, as has been
pointed out, it is possible to get a good dinner without going up to
East Russet, Vt., or, if it isn't, then our civilization has been a
failure.

And the dinner only makes the aftermath seem worse.

According to an old custom of the human race, everyone overeats.
Deliberately and with considerable gusto you sit at the table and say
pleasantly: "My, but I won?t be able to walk after this. Just a little
more of the dark meat, please, Grandpa, and just a dab of stuffing. Oh,
dear, that's too much!" You haven't the excuse of the drunkard, who
becomes oblivious to his excesses after several drinks. You know what
you are doing, and yet you make light of it and even laugh about it as
long as you can laugh without splitting out a seam.

And then you sit and moan. If you were having a good new-fashioned
Christmas you could go out to the movies or take a walk, or a ride, but
to be really old-fashioned you must stick close to the house, for in the
old days there were no movies and no automobiles and if you wanted to
take a walk you had to have the hired man go ahead of you with a
snow-shovel and make a tunnel. There are probably plenty of things to do
in the country today, and just as many automobiles and electric lights
as there are in the city, but you can't call Christmas with all these
improvements "an old-fashioned Christmas." That's cheating.

If you are going through with the thing right, you have got to retire to
the sitting-room after dinner and sit. Of course, you can go out and
play in the snow if you Want to, but you know as well as I do that this
playing in the snow is all right when you are small but a bit trying on
anyone over thirty. And anyway, it always began to snow along about
three in the afternoon an old-fashioned Christmas day, with a cheery old
leaden sky overhead and a jolly old gale sweeping around the corners of
the house.

No, you simply must sit indoors, in front of a fire if you insist, but
nevertheless with nothing much to do. The children are sleepy and
snarling. Grandpa is just sleepy. Someone tries to start the
conversation, but everyone else is too gorged with food to be able to
move the lower jaw sufficiently to articulate. It develops that the
family is in possession of the loudest-ticking clock in the world and
along about four o'clock it begins to break its own record. A
stenographic report of the proceedings would read as follows:

"Ho-hum! I'm sleepy! I shouldn't have eaten so much."

"Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock--"

"It seems just like Sunday, doesn't it?"

"Look at Grandpa! He's asleep."

"Here, junior! Don't plague Grandpa. Let him sleep."

"Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock--"

Junior! Let Grandpa alone! Do you want Mamma to take you up-stairs?"

"Ho-hum!"

"Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock--"

Louder and louder the clock ticks, until something snaps in your brain
and you give a sudden leap into the air with a scream, finally
descending to strangle each of the family in turn, and Grandpa as he
sleeps. Then, as you feel your end is near, all the warm things you have
ever known come back to you, in a flash. You remember the hot Sunday
subway to Coney, your trip to Mexico, the bull-fighters of Spain.

You dash out into the snowdrifts and plunge along until you sink
exhausted. Only the fact that this article ends here keeps you from
freezing to death, with an obituary the next day reading:

"DIED suddenly, at East Russet, Vt., of an old-fashioned Christmas."


The New Wing

(Or That Sagredo Bed)

Although the new wing of the Metropolitan A Museum of Art ("Wing K," if
that makes it any easier for you) was opened some time ago, I have only
just this week got around to inspecting it. I'm sorry.

"Wing K" has, since 1916, been empty, and, although passers-by late at
night have often reported strange noises coming from its vast recesses,
the Museum officials stubbornly maintain that it has been put to
absolutely no use at all. This sounds a little fishy to me, however, and
if those old walls could talk we might learn a little something more
about where Mr. Munsey's money went. It is said that only a couple of
hundred dollars remain of all the millions that he bequeathed to the
Museum. Money doesn't _fly_ away, you know.

At any rate, "Wing K" is full now and it takes a good twenty minutes of
fast walking to see everything in it. This does not include the time
taken up in getting lost or in walking through the same hall twice.

My inspection was somewhat hampered by having Mr. Charles MacGreggor
along with me. Mr. MacGreggor kept constantly asking to see Dr. Crippen.
"I want to see Dr. Crippen," he would say, or "Where is Dr. Crippen?" I
told him that the wax-works were in another wing of the Museum, but
someone had told him that a replica of Dr. Crippen was to be found in
wing K" and nothing would do but he must see it. Along toward the end,
as Mr. MacGreggor got tired and cross, he began sniveling and crying, "I
want to see Dr. Crippen" so loudly that an attendant put us out. So we
probably missed some of the funniest parts of the exhibit. If you want
me to I will go up again sometime without Mr. MacGreggor. Or maybe Dr.
Crippen is there, after all.

The feature of the new wing is, of course, the Bedroom from the Palazzo
Sagredo at Venice. The best way that I can describe it is to say that it
is fully twice the size of our guest room in Scarsdale, and fifty per
cent fancier. The chief point in favor of our guest room in Scarsdale is
that there isn't a whole troop of people strolling through it at all
hours of the day, peeking under the bed and asking questions about it.
If you want to sleep after nine in the morning in Scarsdale you can do
it without being made an exhibition of. My two little boys may romp into
the room three or four times during the morning to show you an engine or
a snake, but all that you have to do is to tell them to get the hell out
or you will tell me on them.

The owner of the Palazzo Sagredo was a great cupid fancier. Over the
doorway to the alcove where the bed is, there are over a dozen great,
big cupids stuck on the wall, like mosquitoes in a summer hotel. They
are heavy, hulking things and seem to have fulfilled no good purpose
except possibly to confuse any guest who may have retired to the fancy
bed with a snootful of good red Sagredo wine. To awaken from the first
heavy sleep of a Venetian bun and see fifteen life-sized cupids dangling
from the doorway must have been an experience to send the
eighteenth-century guest into a set of early eighteenth-century or late
seventeenth-century heebies. The comic strip on the ceiling is
catalogued as "Diziani's Dawn." It may very well be.

This, in a general way, covers pretty well the Bedroom from the Palazzo
Sagredo. In another month the Gideons will have slipped a Bible onto the
table by the bed and it will be ready for occupancy, but not by me,
thank you.

Walking rapidly through the rest of the new wing, you come to lots of
things in cases which, frankly, do not look very interesting. There is a
bit of sculpture labeled "Head of Zeus(?)" showing that even the Museum
officials don't know whom it is meant to represent. Under the
circumstances, it seems as if they might have cheated a little and
thrown a bluff by just calling it arbitrarily "Head of Zeus" without the
question mark. Certainly no one could have called them on it, and it
would have made them seem a little less afraid to take a chance. Suppose
that it turned out _not_ to be Zeus. What is the worst that could
happen to them?

Then, too, there is "A Relief from a Roman Sarcophagus." As we remember
Roman sarcophagi, anything would be a relief from them.

We could go on like this for page after page making wise-cracks about
the various uninteresting features of the new wing, but perhaps you have
already got the idea. It may have been the absence of Dr. Crippen, or it
may have been a new pair of shoes, but the truth is that we weren't
_put_ out of the new wing. We asked an attendant how to _get_ out. And
here we are.


When Genius Remained Your Humble Servant

OF COURSE, I really know nothing about it, but I would be willing to
wager that the last words of Penelope, as Odysseus bounced down the
front steps, bag in hand, were: "Now, don't forget to write, Odie.
You'll find some papyrus rolled up in your clean peplum, and just drop
me a line on it whenever you get a chance."

And ever since that time people have been promising to write, and then
explaining why they haven't written. Most personal correspondence of
to-day consists of letters the first half of which are given over to an
indexed statement of reasons why the writer hasn't written before,
followed by one paragraph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to
reasons why it is imperative that the letter be brought to a close. So
many people begin their letters by saying that they have been rushed to
death during the last month, and therefore haven't found time to write,
that one wonders where all the grown persons come from who attend movies
at eleven in the morning. There has been a misunderstanding of the word
"busy" somewhere.

So explanatory has the method of letter writing become that it is
probable that if Odysseus were a modem traveler his letters home to
Penelope would average something like this:

    Calypso,

    Friday afternoon.

    DEAR PEN:--I have been so tied up with work during the last week
    that I haven't had a chance to get near a desk to write to you. I
    have been trying to every day, but something would come up just at
    the last minute that would prevent me. Last Monday I got the papyrus
    all unrolled, and then I had to tend to Scylla and Charybdis (I may
    have written you about them before), and by the time I got through
    with them it was bedtime, and, believe me, I am snatching every bit
    of sleep I can get these days. And so it went, first the
    Laestrygones, and then something else, and here it is Friday. Well,
    there isn't much news to write about. Things are going along here
    about as usual. There is a young nymph here who seems to own the
    place, but I haven't had any chance to meet her socially. Well,
    there goes the ship's bell. I guess I had better be bringing this to
    a close. I have got a lot of work to do before I get dressed to go
    to a dinner of that nymph I was telling you about. I have met her
    brother, and he and I are interested in the same line of goods. He
    was at Troy with me. Well, I guess I must be closing. Will try to
    get off a longer letter in a day or two.

    Your loving husband,

    ODIE.

    P.S.--You haven't got that bunch of sports hanging round the palace
    still, have you? Tell Telemachus I'll take him out of school if I
    hear of his playing around with any of them.

But there was a time when letter writing was such a fad, especially
among the young girls, that if they had had to choose between eating
three meals a day and writing a letter they wouldn't have given the
meals even a consideration. In fact, they couldn't do both, for the
length of maidenly letters in those days precluded any time out for
meals. They may have knocked off for a few minutes during the heat of
the day for a whiff at a bottle of salts, but to nibble at anything
heartier than lettuce would have cramped their style.

Take Miss Clarissa Harlowe, for instance. In Richardson's book (which,
in spite of my personal aversion to it, has been hailed by every great
writer, from Pope to Stevenson, as being perfectly bully) she is given
the opportunity of telling 2,400 closely printed pages full of story by
means of letters to her female friend, Miss Howe (who plays a part
similar to the orchestra leader in Frank Tinney's act). And 2,400 pages
is nothing to her. When the book closes she is just beginning to get her
stride. As soon as she got through with that she probably sat down and
wrote a series of letters to the London papers about the need for
conscription to fight the Indians in America.

To a girl like Clarissa, in the middle of the eighteenth century, no day
was too full of horrors, no hour was too crowded with terrific
happenings to prevent her from seating herself at a desk (she must have
carried the desk about with her, strapped over her shoulder) and tearing
off twenty or thirty pages to Friend Anna, telling her all about it. The
only way that I can see in which she could accomplish this so
efficiently would be to have a copy boy standing at her elbow, who took
the letter, sheet by sheet, as she wrote it, and dashed with it to the
printer.

It is hard to tell just which a girl of that period considered more
important, the experiences she was writing of or the letter itself. She
certainly never slighted the letter. If the experience wanted to
overtake her, and jump up on the desk beside her, all right, but,
experience or no experience, she was going to get that letter in the
next post or die in the attempt. Unfortunately, she never died in the
attempt.

Thus, an attack on a young lady's house by a band of cutthroats,
resulting in the burning of the structure and her abduction, might have
been told of in the eighteenth century letter system as follows:

Monday night.

    SWEET ANNA:--At this writing I find myself in the most horrible
    circumstance imaginable. Picture to yourself, if you can, my dear
    Anna, a party of villainous brigands, veritable cutthroats, all of
    them, led by a surly fellow in green alpaca with white insertion,
    breaking their way, by very force, through the side of your
    domicile, like so many ugly intruders, and threatening you with vile
    imprecations to make you disclose the hiding place of the family
    jewels. If the mere thought of such a contingency is painful to you,
    my beloved Anna, consider what it means to me, your delicate friend,
    to whom it is actually happening at this very minute! For such is in
    very truth the situation which is disclosing itself in my room as I
    write. Not three feet away from me is the odious person before
    described. Now he is threatening me with renewed vigor! Now he has
    placed his coarse hands on my throat, completely hiding the pearl
    necklace which papa brought me from Epsom last summer, and which
    you, and also young Pindleson (whose very name I mention with a
    blush), have so often admired. But more of this later, and until
    then, believe me, my dear Anna, to be

    Your ever distressed and affectionate

    CL. HARLOWE.

Monday night. Later.

    DEAREST ANNA:--Now, indeed, it is evident, my best, my old friend,
    that I am face to face with the bitterest of fates. You will
    remember that in my last letter I spoke to you of a party of
    unprincipled knaves who were invading my apartment. And now do I
    find that they have, in furtherance of their inexcusable plans, set
    fire to that portion of the house which lies directly behind this,
    so that as I put my pen to paper the flames are creeping, like
    hungry creatures of some sort, through the partitions and into this
    very room, so that did I esteem my safety more than my
    correspondence with you, my precious companion, I should at once be
    making preparation for immediate departure. O my dear! To be thus
    seized, as I am at this very instant, by the unscrupulous leader of
    the band and carried, by brute force, down the stairway through the
    butler's pantry and into the servants' hall, writing as I go,
    resting my poor paper on the shoulder of my detested abductor, is
    truly, you will agree, my sweet Anna, a pitiable episode.

    Adieu, my intimate friend.

    Your obt. s'v't,

    CL. HARLOWE.

One wonders (or, at least, I wonder, and that is sufficient for the
purposes of this article) what the letter-writing young lady of that
period would have done had she lived in this day of postcards showing
the rocks at Scipawisset or the Free Public Library in East Tarvia. She
might have used them for some of her shorter messages, but I rather
doubt it. The foregoing scene could hardly have been done justice to on
a card bearing the picture of the Main Street of the town, looking north
from the Soldiers' Monument, with the following legend:

    "Our house is the third on the left with the lilac bush. Cross marks
    window where gang of roughnecks have just broken in and are robbing
    and burning the house. Looks like a bad night. Wish you were here.
    C.H."

No; that would never have done, but it would have been a big relief for
the postilion, or whoever it was that had to carry Miss Clarissa's
effusions to their destination. The mail on Monday morning, after a
springlike Sunday, must have been something in the nature of a wagon
load of rolls of news print that used to be seen standing in front of
newspaper offices in the good old days when newspapers were printed on
paper stock. Of course, the postilion had the opportunity of whiling
away the time between stations by reading some of the spicier bits in
the assortment, but even a postilion must have had his feelings, and a
man can't read that kind of stuff all of the time, and still keep his
health.

Of course, there are a great many people now who write letters because
they like to. Also, there are some who do it because they feel that they
owe it to posterity and to their publishers to do so. As soon as a man
begins to sniff a chance that he may become moderately famous he is apt
to brush up on his letter writing and never send anything out that has
not been polished and proofread, with the idea in mind that some day
some one is going to get all of his letter together and make a book of
them. Apparently, most great men whose letters have been published have
had premonition of their greatness when quite young, as their childish
letters bear the marks of careful and studied attention to publicity
values. One can almost imagine the budding genius, aged eight, sitting
at his desk and saying to himself:

    "In this spontaneous letter to my father I must not forget that I am
    now going through the _Sturm und Drang_ (storm and stress) period
    of my youth and that this letter will have to be grouped by the
    compiler under the _Sturm und Drang_ (storm and stress) section in
    my collected letters. I must therefore keep in the key and quote
    only such of my favorite authors as will contribute to the effect. I
    think I will use Werther today. ... My dear Father"----etc.

I have not known many geniuses in their youth, but I have had several
youths pointed out to me by their parents as geniuses, and I must
confess that I have never seen a letter from any one of them that
differed greatly from the letters of a normal boy, unless perhaps they
were spelled less accurately. Given certain uninteresting conditions,
let us say, at boarding school, and I believe that the average bright
boy's letter home would read something in this fashion:

    Exeter, N. H.,

    Wed., April 25.

    MY DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER:

    I have been working pretty hard this week, studying for a history
    examination, and so haven't had much of a chance to write to you.
    Everything is about the same as usual here, and there doesn't seem
    to be much news to write to you about. The box came all right, and
    thank you very much. All the fellows liked it, especially the little
    apple pies. Thank you very much for sending it. There hasn't much
    been happening here since I wrote you last week. I had to buy a new
    pair of running drawers, which cost me fifty cents. Does that come
    out of my allowance? Or will you pay for it? There doesn't seem to
    be any other news. Well, there goes the bell, so I guess I will be
    closing.

    Your loving son,

    Buxton.

Given the same, even less interesting conditions, and a boy such as
Stevenson must have been (judging from his letters) could probably have
delivered himself of this, and more, too:

                                                    _Wyckham-Wyckham,
                                                     The Tenth._

    DEAR PATER:--To-day has been unbelievably exquisite! Great,
    undulating clouds, rolling in serried formation across a sky of pure
    _lapis lazuli_. I feel like what Updike calls a "myrmidon of
    unhesitating amplitude." And a perfect gem of a letter from Toto
    completed the felicitous experience. You would hardly believe, and
    yet you must, in your _coeur des coeurs_, know, that the brown,
    esoteric hills of this Oriental retreat affect me like the red wine
    of Russilon, and, indigent as I am in these matters, I cannot but
    feel that you have, as Herbert says:

       _"Carve or discourse; do not a famine fear. Who carves is kind to
        two, who talks to all."_

    Yesterday I saw a little native boy, a veritable boy of the streets,
    playing at a game at once so naive and so resplendent that I was
    irresistibly drawn to its contemplation. You will doubtless jeer
    when I tell you. He was tossing a small _blatch_, such as grow in
    great profusion here, to and fro between himself and the wall of the
    _limple_. I was stunned for the moment, and then I realized that I
    was looking into the very soul of the peasantry, the open stigma of
    the nation. How queer it all seemed! Did it not?

    You doubtless think me an ungrateful fellow for not mentioning the
    delicious assortment of goodies which came, like melons to Artemis,
    to this benighted _gesellschaft_ on Thursday last. They were
    devoured to the last crumb, and I was reminded as we ate, like so
    many _wurras_, of those lines of that gorgeous Herbert, of whom I
    am so fond:

        _"Must all be veiled, while he that reads divines, Catching the
        sense at two removes?"_

    The breeze is springing up, and it brings to me messages of the open
    meadows of Litzel, deep festooned with the riot of gloriannas. How
    quiet they seem to me as I think of them now! How emblematic! Do you
    know, my dear Parent, that I sometimes wonder if, after all, it were
    not better to dream, and dream ... and dream.

    Your affectionate son, Bergquist.

So don't worry about your boy if he writes home like that. He may simply
have an eye for fame and future compilation.



Shakespeare Explained

_Carrying on the System of Footnotes to a Silly
Extreme_

                      PERICLES

                   ACT II. SCENE 3

_Enter first Lady-in-Waiting (Flourish,[1] Hautboys[2] and[3]
torches[4])._

_First Lady-in-Waiting_--What[5] ho![6] Where[7] is[8] the[9]
music?[10]

NOTES

1. _Flourish_: The stage direction here is obscure. Clarke claims it
should read "flarish," thus changing the meaning of the passage to
"flarish" (that is, the Kings), but most authorities have agreed that it
should remain "flourish," supplying the predicate which is to be
flourished. There was at this time a custom in the countryside of
England to flourish a mop as a signal to the passing vender of berries,
signifying that in that particular household there was a consumer-demand
for berries, and this may have been meant in this instance. That
Shakespeare was cognizant of this custom of flourishing the mop for
berries is shown in a similar passage in the second part of King Henry
IV, where he has the Third Page enter and say, "Flourish." Cf. also
Hamlet, IV, 7: 4.

2. _Hautboys_, from the French _haut_, meaning "high" and the Eng.
_boys_, meaning "boys." The word here is doubtless used in the sense of
"high boys," indicating either that Shakespeare intended to convey the
idea of spiritual distress on the part of the First Lady-in-Waiting or
that he did not. Of this Rolfe says: "Here we have one of the chief
indications of Shakespeare?s knowledge of human nature, his remarkable
insight into the petty foibles of this work-a-day world." Cf. T. N. 4:
6, "Mine eye hath play'd the painter, and hath stell'd thy beauty's form
in table of my heart."

3. _and_. A favorite conjunctive of Shakespeare's in referring to the
need for a more adequate navy for England. Tauchnitz claims that it
should be pronounced

"und," stressing the anti-penult. This interpretation, however, has
found disfavor among most commentators because of its limited
significance. We find the same conjunctive in A. W. T. E. W. 6: 7,
"Steel-boned, unyielding and uncomplying virtue," and here there can be
no doubt that Shakespeare meant that if the King should consent to the
marriage of his daughter the excuse of Stephano, offered in Act 2, would
carry no weight.

4. _Torches_. The interpolation of some foolish player and never the
work of Shakespeare (Warb.). The critics of the last century have
disputed whether or not this has been misspelled in the original, and
should read "trochies" or "troches." This might well be since the
introduction of tobacco into England at this time had wrought havoc with
the speaking voices of the players, and we might well imagine that at
the entrance of the First Lady-in-Waiting there might be perhaps one of
the hautboys mentioned in the preceding passage bearing a box of troches
or "trognies" for the actors to suck. Of this entrance Clarke remarks:
"The noble mixture of spirited firmness and womanly modesty, fine sense
and true humility, clear sagacity and absence of conceit, passionate
warmth and sensitive delicacy, generous love and self-diffidence with
which Shakespeare has endowed this First Lady-in-Waiting renders her in
our eyes one of the most admirable of his female characters." Cf. M. S.
N. D. 8: g, "That solder'st close impossibilities and mak'st them kiss."

5. _What_--What.

6. _Ho!_ In conjunction with the preceding word doubtless means "What
ho!" changed by Clarke to "What hoo!" In the original Ms. it reads "What
hi!" but this has been accredited to the tendency of the time to write
"What hi" when "what ho" was meant. Techner alone maintains that it
should read "What humpf!" Cf. Ham. 5: O, "High-ho!"

7. _Where_. The reading of the folio, retained by Johnson, the
Cambridge editors and others, but it is not impossible that Shakespeare
wrote "why," as Pope and others give it. This would make the passage
read "Why the music?" instead of "Where is the music?" and would be a
much more probable interpretation in view of the music of that time. Cf.
George Ade. Fable No. 15, "Why the gunnysack?"

8. _is_--is not. That is, would not be.

9. _the_. Cf. Ham. 4: 6. M. S. N. D. 3: 5. A. W. T. E. W. 2: 6. T. N.
I: 3 and Macbeth 3: I, "that knits up _the_ ravelled sleeves of care."

10. _music_. Explained by Malone as "the art of making music" or "music
that is made." If it has but one of these meanings we are inclined to
think it is the first; and this seems to be favored by what precedes,
"_the_ music!" Cf. M. of V. 4: 2, "The man that hath no music in
himself."

The meaning of the whole passage seems to be that the First
Lady-in-Waiting has entered concomitant with a flourish, hautboys and
torches and says, "What ho! Where is the music?"


Gardening Notes

During the past month almost every paper, with the exception of the
agricultural journals, has installed an agricultural department,
containing short articles by the proprietor or some one else in the
office who had an unoccupied typewriter, telling the American citizen
how to start and hold the interest of a small garden. The seed catalogue
has become the catechism of the patriot, and, if you don't like to read
the brusk, prosy directions on planting as given there, you may find the
same thing done in verse in your favorite poetry magazine, or a special
department in The Plumbing Age under the heading "The Plumber's Garden:
How and When to Plant."

But all of these editorial suggestions appear to be conducted by
professionals for the benefit of the layman, which seems to me to be a
rather one-sided way of going about the thing. Obviously the suggestions
should come from a layman himself, in the nature of warnings to others.

I am qualified to put forth such an article because of two weeks'
service in my own back-yard, doing my bit for Peter Henderson and
planting all sorts of things in the ground without the slightest
expectation of ever seeing anything of any of them again. If, by any
chance, a sprout should show itself, unmistakably the result of one of
my plantings, I would be willing to be quoted as saying that Nature is
wonderful. In fact, I would take it as a personal favor, and would feel
that anything that I might do in the future for Nature would be little
enough in return for the special work she went to all the trouble of
doing for me. But all of this is on condition that something of mine
grows into manhood. Otherwise, Nature can go her way and I'll go mine,
just as we have gone up till now.

However, although I am an amateur, I shall have to adopt, in my writing,
the tone of a professional, or I shall never get any one to believe what
I say. If, therefore, from now on I sound a bit cold and unfriendly, you
will realize that a professional agricultural writer has to have some
dignity about his stuff, and that beneath my rough exterior I am a
pleasant enough sort of person to meet socially.

_Preparing the Ground for the Garden_

This is one of the most important things that the young gardener is
called upon to do. In fact, a great many young gardeners never do
anything further. Some inherited weakness, something they never realized
they had before, may crop out during this process: weak back, tendency
of shoulder blades to ossification, misplacement of several important
vertebrae, all are apt to be discovered for the first time during the
course of one day's digging. If, on the morning following the first
attempt to prepare the ground for planting, you are able to walk in a
semi-erect position as far as the bathtub (and, without outside
assistance, lift one foot into the water), you may flatter yourself that
you are, joint for joint, in as perfect condition as the man in the
rubber-heels advertisements.

Authorities differ as to the best way of digging. All agree that it is
impossible to avoid walking about during the following week as if you
were impersonating an old colored waiter with the lumbago; but there are
two schools, each with its own theory, as to the less painful method.
One advocates bending over, without once raising up, until the whole row
is dug. The others, of whom I must confess that I am one, feel that it
is better to draw the body to a more-or-less erect position after each
shovelful. In support of this contention, Greitz, the well-known
authority on the muscles of the back, says on page 233 of his
"Untersuchungen ber Sittlichkeitsdelikte und Gesellschaftsbiologie":

"The constant tightening and relaxing of the latissimus dorsi effected
in raising the body as the earth is tossed aside, has a tendency to
relieve the strain by distributing it equally among the serratus posticus
inferior and the corner of Thirty-fourth Street." He then goes on to say
practically what I have said above.

The necessity for work of such a strenuous nature in the mere
preliminaries of the process of planting a garden is due to the fact
that the average backyard has, up till the present time, been behaving
less like a garden than anything else in the world. You might think that
a backyard, possessed of an ordinary amount of decency and civic-pride
would, at some time during its career, have said to itself:

"Now look here! I may some day be called upon to be a garden, and the
least I can do is to get myself into some sort of shape, so that, when
the time comes, I will be fairly ready to receive a seed or two."

But no! Year in and year out they have been drifting along in a fools'
paradise, accumulating stones and queer, indistinguishable cans and
things, until they were prepared to become anything, quarries,
iron-mines, notion-counters--anything but gardens.

I have saved in a box all the things that I have dug from my back-yard,
and, when I have them assembled, all I will need will be a good engine
to make them into a pretty fairly decent runabout--nothing elaborate,
mind you, but good enough to run the family out in on Sunday afternoons.

And then there are lots of other things that wouldn't even fit into the
runabout. Queer-looking objects, they are; things that perhaps in their
heyday were rather stunning, but which have now assumed an air of
indifference, as if to say, "Oh, call me anything, old fellow, Ice-pick,
Mainspring, Cigar-lighter, anything, I don't care." I tell you, it's
enough to make a man stop and think. But there, I mustn't get
sentimental.

In preparing the soil for planting, you will need several tools.
Dynamite would be a beautiful thing to use, but it would have a tendency
to get the dirt into the front-hall and track up the stairs. This not
being practicable, there is no other way but for you to get at it with a
fork (oh, don't be silly), a spade, and a rake. If you have an empty and
detached furnace boiler, you might bring that along to fill with the
stones you will dig up. If it is a small garden, you ought not to have
to empty the boiler more than three or four times. Any neighbor who is
building a stone house will be glad to contract with you for the stones,
and those that are left over after he has got his house built can be
sold to another neighbor who is building another stone house. Your
market is limited only by the number of neighbors who are building stone
houses.

On the first day, when you find yourself confronted by a stretch of
untouched ground which is to be turned over (technical phrase, meaning
to "turn over"), you may be somewhat at a loss to know where to begin.
Such indecision is only natural, and should cause no worry on the part
of the young gardener. It is something we all have to go through with.
You may feel that it would be futile and unsystematic to go about
digging up a forkful here and a shovelful there, tossing the earth at
random, in the hope that in due time you will get the place dug up. And
so it would.

The thing to do is to decide just where you want your garden, and what
its dimensions are to be. This will have necessitated a previous drawing
up of a chart, showing just what is to be planted and where. As this
chart will be the cause of considerable hard feeling in the family
circle, usually precipitating a fist-fight over the number of rows of
onions to be set out, I will not touch on that in this article. There
are some things too intimate for even a professional agriculturist to
write of. I will say, however, that those in the family who are standing
out for onions might much better save their time and feelings by
pretending to give in, and then, later in the day, sneaking out and
slipping the sprouts in by themselves in some spot where they will know
where to find them again.

Having decided on the general plan and dimensions of the plot, gather
the family about as if for a cornerstone dedication, and then make a
rather impressive ceremony of driving in the first stake by getting your
little boy to sing the first twelve words of some patriotic air. (If he
doesn't know the first twelve, any twelve will do. The idea is to keep
the music going during the driving of the stake.)

The stake is to be driven at an imaginary corner of what is to be your
garden, and a string stretched to another stake at another imaginary
corner, and there you have a line along which to dig. This will be a big
comfort. You will feel that at last you have something tangible. Now all
that remains is to turn the ground over, harrow it, smooth it up nice
and neat, plant your seeds, cultivate them, thin out your plants and
pick the crops.

It may seem that I have spent most of my time in advice on preparing the
ground for planting. Such may well be the case, as that was as far as I
got. I then found a man who likes to do those things and whose doctor
has told him that he ought to be out of doors all the time. He is an
Italian, and charges really very little when you consider what he
accomplishes. Any further advice on starting and keeping up a garden, I
shall have to get him to write for you.


The Passing of the Orthodox Paradox

Whatever irreparable harm may have been done to Society by the recent
epidemic of crook, sex and other dialect plays, one great alleviation
has resulted. They have driven up-stage, for the time being, the
characters who exist on tea and repartee in "The drawing-room of Sir
Arthur Peaversham's town house, Grosvenor Square. Time: late Autumn."

A person in a crook play may have talked underworld patois which no
self-respecting criminal would have allowed himself to utter, but he did
not sit on a divan and evolve abnormal bons mots with each and every
breath. The misguided and misinformed daughter in the Self and Sex Play
may have lisped words which only an interne should hear, but she did not
offer a succession of brilliant but meaningless paradoxes as a
substitute for real conversation.

Continuously snappy back-talk is now encountered chiefly in such acts as
those of "Cooney & LeBlanc, the Eccentric Comedy Dancing Team." And even
they manage to scrape along without the paradoxes.

But there was a time, beginning with the Oscar Wilde era, when no
unprotected thought was safe. It might be seized at any moment by an
English Duke or a Lady Agatha and strangled to death. Even the butlers
in the late 'eighties were wits, and served epigrams with cucumber
sandwiches; and a person entering one of these drawing-rooms and talking
in connected sentences --easily understood by everybody--each with one
subject, predicate and meaning, would have been looked upon as a
high-class moron. One might as well have gone to a dinner at Lady
Coventry's without one's collar, as without one's kit of trained
paradoxes.

A late Autumn afternoon in one of these semi-Oscar Wilde plays, for
instance, would run something like this:

    SCENE--_The Octagon Room in Lord Raymond Eaveston's Manor House
    in Stropshire._

    LADY EAVESTON and SIR THOMAS WAFFLETON _are discovered,
    arranging red flowers in a vase._

    SIR T.: I detest red flowers; they are so yellow.

    LADY E.: What a cynic you are, Sir Thomas. I really must not
    listen to you or I shall hear something that you say.

    Sm T.: Not at all, my dear Lady Eaveston. I detest people who
    listen closely; they are so inattentive.

    LADY E.: Pray do not be analytical, my dear Sir Thomas. When
    people are extremely analytical with me I am sure that they are
    superficial, and, to me, nothing is more abominable than
    superficiality, unless perhaps it is an intolerable degree of
    thoroughness.

    _(Enter Meadows, the Butler)_

    MEADOWS _(announcing)_: Sir Mortimer Longley and Mrs.
    Wrennington--a most remarkable couple--I may say in announcing
    them---in that there is nothing at all remarkable about them.

    _(Enter Sir Mortimer and Mrs. Wrennington)_

    MRS. W.: So sorry to be late, dear Lady Faveston. But it is so
    easy to be on time that I always make it a point to be late. It
    lends poise, and poise is a charming quality for any woman to
    have, am I not right, Sir Thomas?


    SIR T.: You are always right, my dear Mrs. Wrennington, and
    never more so than now, for I know of no more attractive
    attribute than poise, unless perhaps it be embarrassment.

    LADY E.: What horrid cynics you men are! Really, Sir Thomas, one
    might think, from your sophisticated remarks that you had been
    brought up in the country and had seen nothing of life.

    SIR T.: And so I have been, my dear Lady Eaveston. To my mind,
    London is nothing but the country, and certainly Stropshire is
    nothing but a metropolis. The difference is, that when one is in
    town, one lives with others, and when one is in the country,
    others live with one. And both plans are abominable.

    MRS. W.: What a horrid combination! I hate horrid combinations;
    they always turn out to be so extremely pleasant.

    _(Enter Meadows)_

    MEADOWS (announcing): Sir Roland Pinshamton; Viscount Lemingham;
    Countess Trotski and Mr. Peters. In announcing these parties I
    cannot refrain from remarking that it has always been my opinion
    that a man who intends to get married should either know
    something or nothing, preferably both.

    _(Exit Meadows)_

    Countess T.: So sorry to be late, my dear Lady Eaveston. It was
    charmingly tolerant of you to have us.

    LADY E.: Invitations are never tolerant, my dear Countess;
    acceptances always are. But do tell me, how is your husband, the
    Count--or perhaps he is no longer your husband. One never knows
    these days whether a man is his wife's husband or whether she is
    simply his wife.

    Countess T. (lighting a cigarette): Really, Lady Eaveston, you
    grow more and more interesting. I detest interesting people;
    they are so hopelessly uninteresting. It is like beautiful
    people--who are usually so singularly unbeautiful. Has not that
    been your experience, Sir Mortimer?

    Sm M.: May I have the pleasure of escorting you to the
    music-room, Mrs. Wrennington?

    _(Exeunt omnes to music-room for dinner)_

    Curtain.

It is from this that we have, in a measure, been delivered by the
court-room scenes, and all the medical dramas. But the paradox still
remains intrenched in English writing behind Mr. G. K. Chesterton, and
he may be considered, by literary tacticians, as considerable
stronghold.

Here again we find our commonplaces shaken up until they emerge in what
looks like a new and tremendously imposing shape, and all of them
ostensibly proving the opposite of what we have always understood. If we
do not quite catch the precise meaning at first reading, we lay it to
our imperfect perception and try to do better on the next one. It seldom
occurs to us that it really may have no meaning at all and never was
intended to have any, any more than the act of hanging by your feet from
parallel bars has any further significance than that you can manage to
do it.

So, before retiring to the privacy of our personal couches, let us thank
an all wise Providence, that the drama-paradox has passed away.


The Church Supper

The social season in our city ends up with a bang for the summer when
the Strawberry Festival at the Second Congregational Church is over.
After that you might as well die. Several people have, in fact.

The Big Event is announced several weeks in advance in that racy sheet
known as the "church calendar," which is slipped into the pews by the
sexton before anyone has a chance to stop him. There, among such items
as a quotation from a recent letter from Mr. and Mrs. Wheelock (the
church's missionaries in China who are doing a really splendid work in
the face of a shortage of flannel goods), and the promise that Elmer
Divvit will lead the Intermediate Christian Endeavor that afternoon,
rain or shine, on the subject of "What Can I Do to Increase the Number
of Stars in My Crown?" we find the announcement that on Friday night,
June the 8th, the Ladies of the Church will unbelt with a Strawberry
Festival to be held in the vestry and that, furthermore, Mrs. William
Horton MacInting will be at the head of the Committee in Charge. Surely
enough good news for one day!

The Committee is then divided into commissary groups, one to provide the
short-cake, another to furnish the juice, another the salad, and so on,
until everyone has something to do except Mrs. MacInting, the chairman.
She agrees to furnish the paper napkins and to send her car around after
the contributions which the others are making. Then, too, there is the
use of her name.

The day of the festival arrives, bright and rainy. All preparations are
made for a cozy evening in defiance of the elements; so when, along
about four in the afternoon, it clears and turns into a nice hot day,
everyone is caught with rubbers and steamy mackintoshes, to add to the
fun. For, by four o'clock in the afternoon, practically everyone in the
parish is at the vestry "helping out," as they call it.

"Helping out" consists of putting on an apron over your good clothes,
tucking up the real lace cuffs, and dropping plates. The scene in the
kitchen of the church at about five-thirty in the afternoon is one to
make a prospective convert to Christianity stop and think. Between four
and nine thousand women, all wearing aprons over black silk dresses,
rush back and forth carrying platters of food, bumping into each other,
hysterical with laughter, filling pitchers with hot coffee from a shiny
urn, and poking good-natured fun at Mr. Numaly and Mr. Dow, husbands who
have been drafted into service and who, amid screams of delight from the
ladies, have also donned aprons and are doing the dropping of the
heavier plates and ice-cream freezers.

"Look at Mr. Dow!" they cry. "Some good-looking girl you make, Mr. Dow!"

"Come up to my house, Mr. Numaly, and I'll hire you to do our cooking."

"Alice says for Mr. Numaly to come up to her house and she'll hire him
as a cook! Alice, you're a caution!"

And so it goes, back and forth, good church-members all, which means
that their banter contains nothing off-color and, by the same token,
nothing that was coined later than the first batch of buffalo nickels.

In the meantime, the paying guests are arriving out in the vestry and
are sniffing avidly at the coffee aroma, which by now has won its fight
with the smell of musty hymn books which usually dominates the place.
They leave their hats and coats in the kindergarten room on the dwarfed
chairs and wander about looking with weekday detachment at the
wall-charts showing the startling progress of the Children of Israel
across the Red Sea and the list of gold-star pupils for the month of
May. Occasionally they take a peek in at the kitchen and remark on the
odd appearance of Messrs. Numaly and Dow, who by this time are just a
little fed up on being the center of the taunting and have stopped
answering back.

The kiddies, who have been brought in to gorge themselves on
indigestible strawberry concoctions, are having a gay time tearing up
and down the vestry for the purpose of tagging each other. They manage
to reach the door just as Mrs. Camack is entering with a platter full of
cabbage salad, and later she explains to Mrs. Reddy while the latter is
sponging off her dress that this is the last time she is going to have
anything to do with a church supper at which those Basnett children are
allowed. The Basnett children, in the meantime, oblivious of this
threat, are giving all their attention to slipping pieces of colored
chalk from the blackboard into the hot rolls which have just been placed
on the tables. And, considering what small children they are, they are
doing remarkably well at it.

At last everyone is ready to sit down. In fact, several invited guests
do sit down, and have to be reminded that Dr. Murney has yet to arrange
the final details of the supper with Heaven before the chairs can be
pulled out. This ceremony, with the gentle fragrance of strawberries and
salad rising from the table, is one of the longest in the whole list of
church rites; and when it is finally over there is a frantic scraping of
chairs and clatter of cutlery and babble of voices which means that the
hosts of the Lord have completed another day's work in the vineyard and
are ready, nay, willing, to toy with several tons of foodstuffs.

The adolescent element in the church has been recruited to do the
serving, but only a few of them show up at the beginning of the meal.
The others may be found by any member of the committee frantic enough to
search them out, sitting in little groups of two on the stairs leading
up to the organ loft or indulging in such forms of young love as
tie-snatching and braid-pulling up in the study.

The unattached youths and maids who are induced to take up the work of
pouring coffee do it with a vim but very little skill. Pouring coffee
over the shoulder of a person sitting at a long table with dozens of
other people is a thing that you ought to practice weeks in advance for,
and these young people step right in on the job without so much as a
dress rehearsal. The procedure is, or should be, as follows:

Standing directly behind the person about to be served, say in a loud
but pleasant voice: "Coffee?" If the victim wishes it, he or she will
lift the cup from the table and hold it to be filled, with the left
forefinger through the handle and bracing the cup against the right
upper-arm. The pourer will then have nothing to do but see to it that
the coffee goes from the pitcher to the cup.

Where the inexperienced often make a mistake is in reaching for the cup
themselves and starting to pour before finding out if the victim wants
coffee. This results in nine cases out of six in the victim's turning
suddenly and saying: "No coffee, thank you, please!", jarring the arm of
the pourer and getting the coffee on the cuff.

For a long time nothing is heard but the din of religious eating and
then gradually, one by one, forks slip from nerveless fingers, chairs
are scraped back, and the zealots stir heavily to their feet. All that
remains is for the committee to gather up the remains and congratulate
themselves on their success.

The next event in the calendar will not be until October, when the Men's
Club of the church will prepare and serve a supper of escalloped oysters
and hot rolls. Join now and be enrolled for labor in the vineyard in the
coming year.


Horse-Sense Editorial

_(In very large type on the first page of your favorite fiction
magazine)_

A man walked into my office the other day and tried to sell me some
buttercups.

"Some buttercups, Mr. Blank?" he said, smiling.

"When you say that, smile," I replied. And from the way I spoke, he knew
that I meant what I said.

Now that man went about his job in the wrong way. Most of us go about
our jobs in the wrong way. We forget the other fellow. They say that an
elephant never forgets. Did you ever hear of an elephant failing in
business? Elephants never forget, and daisies won't tell. Two things
that we humans might well take to heart.

Supposing Moses had forgotten the other fellow. The great Law-Giver was,
above all else, a two-fisted business man. He knew the rate of exchange,
and he knew that what goes up must come down. Moses was no elephant.
Neither was he a daisy. And yet Moses will be remembered when most of us
are forgotten.

The other day I met an old school-mate. He was crying. "Well, old timer,"
I said, "what's that you've got in your hand?"

"My other hand," he replied, shaking it.

Now the reason my old school-mate hadn't made good was that he kept one
hand inside the other. He was drawing on his principal. He had never
heard of such a thing as interest.

A lot of people think interest is a bad thing. They call people who take
interest on their money "usurers." And yet Ezra was a "usurer." Job was
a "usurer." St. Paul was a "usurer." Samuel M. Vauclain, President of
the Baldwin Locomotive Works, is a "usurer." Think that over on your
cash register and see if I am not right.

Do you suppose that God sent manna down to the Israelites for nothing?
Not much. They paid for it, and they paid for it good. The gold alone in
the Ark of the Covenant ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in "interest." Easy come, easy go.

On the street in which I live there is a line of trees. They are fine,
big trees, full of twigs and branches. All except one. This one tree has
no twigs or branches. It hasn't even any leaves. It just stands there.
One day last week I determined to see what was wrong with that tree. I
wanted to know why, in a line of fine, strong trees, there should be one
weak one. I suspected that it wasn't playing the game right. Not many of
us do.

So I went close to it and examined it. It wasn't a tree at all. It was a
hydrant.

Watch out that you aren't a hydrant in a line of trees. Or, worse yet, a
line of trees in a hydrant.


Chemists Sporting Extra!

_Big Revolutionary Discovery Upsetting Everything_

TO APPRECIATE the rapid strides which the science of chemistry has made
in the last fifty years all one has to do is to think back on the days
when we all, like a lot of poor saps, believed that the molecule was the
smallest division into which you could divide matter. Then someone came
along and proved that the molecule itself could be divided into
something called atoms. Well, the relief we felt at this announcement!
Everyone went out and got drunk.

Then came another scientist (he married a Cheever), who said that if you
honestly wanted to get down to the fine points of the thing you could
divide the atom up into much smaller units. This tiniest of all
divisions of matter he called the "electron," after his little daughter
Tiny, she being the smallest one in his family.

This seemed to be just about final, for the man said that an electron
was a particle of negative electricity (one which knows when to say
"No"), and that a "proton" was a particle of positive electricity, and
that if you didn't believe it you could go and look for yourself. So it
seemed pretty definitely settled that the electron was as small as you
could get, and that unless you were crazy you wouldn't ever want to get
even that small. So people began to put on their coats and hats and
started to go back to work.

But that just shows. Now comes a Dr. Ernst Flazzer, of the University of
Carlsbad, who declares that the electron is susceptible of being divided
still further, and that, what is more, he has done it, right on his own
porch. He calls the new subdivision "traffets," and claims there are
eight or ten million of them in one electron.

[Illustration: Graphic chart showing the subdivision of hydrogen
electrons int serfs, feudal lords and princes. (A.D. 800-A.D. 1200)

This practically revolutionizes modern chemistry. Modern chemistry has
been revolutionized seven times now. The discovery of the traffet means
that we shall have to go back over all the researches that we have made
in the past fifty years and throw away all that nice stuff in the test
tubes.

For instance, in the old days, when you passed an electric current
through water (H20), the free atoms of Oxygen went in one direction and
the free atoms of hydrogen went in the opposite one. At the count of ten
they were supposed to turn around and see who had gone farthest. This
game was called "Peek-o."

It was the same with a gas. A molecule of CO2 was the seat of such
activity and good-natured rivalry on a pleasant day that you could hear
the shouts a mile away. _Every_ one had a good time in a molecule of
CO2. That was before even electrons were heard of. Just horse-cars.
There were no jazz bands, and when any one wanted a drink, he took it.

The introduction of the traffet into the scene, however, changes all
that. Let us say that you have a combination of 72 atoms of carbon, 112
atoms of hydrogen, 18 atoms of nitrogen, a pony of brandy, White Rock
and orange juice. It sounds all right, you say. Yes, but that's because
anything with a pony of brandy in it _sounds_ all right. The trouble is
that you can't trust the hydrogen you get these days. It may be
anything.

Now the division of electrons into traffets makes the formation of
crystals almost impossible. You know crystals. For while you can pass a
colloid (white of an egg, for example) through a parchment paper, a
crystalloid (such as pencils) will not go through. This is because the
atoms of hydrogen, coming into conjunction with the atoms of oxygen,
refuse to go any farther without some assurance that they aren't going
to be made suckers of and subdivided again by the next analyst that
comes along. You can't blame them.

Lord Kelvin once said that the presence of 1/1000th part of bismuth in
copper would reduce its electrical conductivity so as to make it
practically useless. A lot of people laughed when Lord Kelvin said this,
but now they are laughing out of the other side of their mouths, for,
bismuth or no bismuth (see the famous cartoon in _Punch_ called
"Dropping the Pilot," showing the Iron Chancellor himself. being
discarded by the young Emperor), the fact remains that during
electrolysis you have to be very, very careful about catching cold. Of
course, there is always a chance that Dr. Flazzer may not be right, and
there may be no such things as "traffets" in an electron. The awful part
of it all is, there is no way of ever finding out whether he is right or
not. Once you start questioning these things, you end up back in the
brute state with no science at all.


How Much Does the Sun Jump?

_An Account of the Stroboscope, the New Tell-Tale_

The wonders of our solar universe, and of the thousands and thousands of
other universes which we now know dot the heavens, were never more
clearly demonstrated than they have been by the recently devised
"stroboscope," an invention of Dr. Charles Van Heak, by means of which
we are able to measure sun-jumps.

It was not known until recently that the sun jumped at all. It has been
known for a long time that the sun is 92,830,000 miles from the earth
(except on Leap Year). So much has been an open secret. It has also been
recognized in a general way that the moon is swinging at a terrific rate
around the sun and that the earth (our Earth) goes back and forth
between the sun and the moon once every twenty-four hours, drawing
nearest to the sun at noon and then turning back to the moon. This makes
our "night" and "day," or, as some say, "right" and "left." Men have
also known a long time that if you took a train going a hundred miles an
hour you would stand a fat chance of ever reaching the sun.

Our own little colony of stars (we call it "our own," although we just
rent it), the Solar System, is composed of millions and millions of
things, each one 396,505,000,000,000 miles away from the others. If you
will take your little sister out-of-doors some clear winter's night to
look at the stars, and will stand on the top of a high hill from which
you can get a good view of the heavens, you will probably both catch
very bad colds.

Now it was not known until 1899, when Professor George M. MacRerly began
his experiments with gin and absinthe, that the sun was hot at all. One
morning, after having been up all night in the laboratory, Prof.
MacRerly reached up and touched the sun and was severely burned. He
bears the scar to this day. Following this discovery, scientists
immediately set about to measure the sun's heat and to see what could be
done to stop it. It was during the progress of these experiments that it
was found out that the sun jumped.

How, you may say, can we tell that a body 92,000,000 miles away jumps?
And, if it does, what the hell difference does it make, anyway?
Ninety-two million miles is ninety-two million miles, and we have got
enough things within a radius of five miles to worry about without
watching the sun jump. This is what people said when Dr. Van Heak began
his researches on the subject. A lot of them still say it.

But Dr. Van Heak was not discouraged. He got out an old oblong box, and
somewhere found a cover for it. Into this box he put his lunch. Then he
went up to his observatory on the roof and sat. When he came down he had
worked out a device for measuring sun-jumps, the "stroboscope."

The principle of the "stroboscope" is that of the steam-engine, except
that it has no whistle. It is based on the fact that around the sun
there is a brilliantly luminous envelope of vaporous matter known as the
"chromosphere." We are practically certain that this "chromosphere"
exists. If it doesn't, Dr. Van Heak is out of luck, that's all.

Now, knowing that this gas gives off waves of varying lengths, according
to the size of the atmosphere, and that these wave lengths can be
analyzed by the spectroscope (a wonderful instrument which breaks up
wave lengths and plays, "See You in My Dreams" at the same time), Dr.
Van Heak has constructed an instrument which will catch these rays as
they come from the "chromosphere," spank them soundly, and send them
right back again where they belong. Thus, when the sun jumps, if it ever
does, the movement, however slight, will be registered on the
"stroboscope" by the ringing of a tiny bell, as any deflection of these
rays at all will strike the sensitized plate at the top of the
instrument and will break it. As it breaks, the bell rings. Thus the
observer will know that the sun has jumped.

The next step is to find out some use to which the "stroboscope" can be
put.


Looking Shakespeare Over

At the end of the current theatrical season, the trustees of the
Shakespeare estate will probably get together at the Stratford House and
get pie-eyed. It has been a banner year for "the Immortal Bard," as his
wife used to call him. Whatever the royalties are that revert to the
estate, there will be enough to buy a couple of rounds anyway, and maybe
enough left over to hire an entertainer.

There was a time during the winter in New York when you couldn't walk a
block without stepping on some actor or actress playing Shakespeare.
They didn't all make money, but it got the author's name into the
papers, and publicity never hurt anyone, let alone a writer who has been
dead three hundred years and whose stuff isn't adaptable for the movies.

The only trouble with acting Shakespeare is the actors. It brings out
the worst that is in them. A desire to read aloud the soliloquy (you
know the one I mean) is one of the first symptoms a man has that he is
going to be an actor. If ever I catch any of my little boys going out
behind the barn to recite this speech, I will take them right away to a
throat specialist and have their palates removed. One failure is enough
in a family.

And then, too, the stuff that Will wrote, while all right to sit at home
and read, does not lend itself to really snappy entertainment on the
modern stage. It takes just

about the best actor in the world to make it sound like anything more
than a declamation by the young lady representing the Blue and the Gray
on Memorial Day. I know that I run counter to many cultured minds in
this matter, but I think that, if the truth were known, there are a
whole lot more of us who twitch through two-thirds of a Shakespearean
performance than the last census would lead one to believe. With a
company consisting of one or two stars and the rest hams (which is a
good liberal estimate) what can you expect? Even Shakespeare himself
couldn't sit through it without reading the ads on the program a little.

But you can't blame the actor entirely. According to present standards
of what constitutes dramatic action, most of Will's little dramas have
about as much punch as a reading of a treasurer's report. To be expected
to thrill over the dramatic situations incident to a large lady's
dressing up as a boy and fooling her own husband, or to follow
breathlessly a succession of scenes strung together like magic-lantern
slides and each ending with a perfectly corking rhymed couplet, is more
than ought to be asked of anyone who has, in the same season, seen
"Loyalties" or any one of the real plays now running on Broadway.

It is hard to ask an actor to make an exit on a line like:

    "I am glad on't: I desire no more delight
    Than to be under sail and gone tonight"

without sounding like one of the characters in Palmer Cox's Brownies
saying:

    "And thus it was the Brownie Band,
    Came tumbling into Slumberland."

That is why they always have to exit laughingly in a Shakespearean
production. The author has provided them with such rotten exits. If they
don't do something --laugh, cry, turn a handspring, or something--they
are left flat in the middle of the stage with nothing to do but say:
"Well, I must be going." In "The Merchant of Venice," the characters
are forced to keep up a running fire of false-sounding laughter to cover
up the artificial nature of what they have just said:

    "At the park gate, and therefore haste away
    For we must measure twenty miles today. A-ha-
        ha-ha-ha-ha!" (Off l. c.)

To hear _Lorenzo_ and _Gratiano_ walking off together you would have
thought that _Lorenzo_ had the finest line of funny stories in all
Venice, so loud and constantly did they laugh, whereas, if the truth
were known, it was simply done to save their own and Shakespeare's face.
Now my contention is that any author who can't get his stuff over on the
stage without making the actors do contortions, is not so good a
playwright technically as Eugene Walters is. And now for the matter of
comedy.

An actor, in order to get Shakespeare's comedy across, has got to roll
his eyes, rub his stomach, kick his father in the seat, make his voice
crack, and place his finger against the side of his nose. There is a
great deal of talk about the vulgarity and slap-stick humor of the
movies. If the movies ever tried to put anything over as horsy and crass
as the scene in which young _Gobbo_ kids his blind father, or
_Falstaff_ hides in the laundry hamper, there would be sermons preached
on it in pulpits all over the country. It is impossible for a good
actor, as we know good actors today, to handle a Shakespearean low
comedy part, for it demands mugging and tricks which no good actor would
permit himself to do. If Shakespeare were alive today and writing comedy
for the movies, he would be the head-liner in the Mack Sennett studios.
What he couldn't do with a cross-eyed man!

Another thing which has made the enjoyment of Shakespeare on the stage a
precarious venture for this section of the theatre-going public at
least, is the thoroughness with which the schools have desiccated his
works. In "The Merchant of Venice," for example, there was hardly a line
spoken which had not been so diagnosed by English teachers from the
third grade up that it had lost every vestige of freshness and grace
which it may once have had. Every time I changed schools, I ran into a
class which was just taking up "The Merchant of Venice." Consequently, I
learned to hate every word of the play. When _Bassanio_ said:

    "Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchis' strand,
    And many Jasons come in quest of her"

in my mind there followed a chorus of memories of questions asked by
Miss Mergatroid, Miss O'Shea, Miss Twitchell, Mr. Henby, and Professor
Greenally, such as: "Now what did Shakespeare mean by 'Colchis strand'?"
"Can anyone in the room tell me why Portia's lovers were referred to as
'Jasons'? Robert Benchley, I wonder if you can leave off whispering to
Harold Bemis long enough to tell me what other Portia in history is
mentioned in this passage?"

Perhaps that is the whole trouble with Shakespeare anyway. Too many
people have taken him up. If they would let you alone, to read snatches
from his plays now and then when you wanted to, and stop reading when
you wanted to, it might not be so bad. But no! They must ask you what he
meant by this, and where the inflection should come on that, and they
must stand up in front of scenery and let a lot of hams declaim at you
while you are supposed to murmur "Gorgeous!" and "How well he knew human
nature!" as if you couldn't go to Bartlett's "Quotations" and get the
meat of it in half the time. I wouldn't be surprised, if things keep on
as they are, if Shakespeare began to lose his hold on people. I give him
ten centuries more at the outside.


Evolution Sidelights

_Showing Nature's Way of Taking Care of Her Young_

One of the most fascinating chapters in the story of Evolution is that
in which we see animals of a certain type change, through the ages, into
animals of quite a different type, through a process of the survival of
the fittest and adaptation to environment. These are pretty big words, I
am afraid, but before we are through you will see what they mean, or you
will take a sock on the nose.

Thus we learn that our present-day sheep, from whose warm blanket our
silk socks are made, was once, in the early, early days of the earth, a
member of the hermit-crab family. It was during the Palaeozoic Age,
before the great glaciers had swept down over the land leaving their
trail of empty tins and old shoes, even before the waters had receded
from the earth. So you can see how long ago it was! Just years and
years.

Well, anyway, the hermit-crab of the Palaeozoic Era lived in the slime
and sulked. He didn't like being a hermit-crab. He didn't see any future
in it. And, as the sun beat down on the earth, and the waters gradually
receded, the crab was left high and dry on the beach and little
Palaeozoic children built forts on him. This got him pretty sore.

Now as the centuries went by and the sun continued to beat down on the
earth, the color of the mud changed from reddish brown to a dirty gray.
Formerly, the crabs who were reddish brown had been more or less hidden
in the reddish-brown mud, but now they stood out like a rainy Thursday,
and it was the dirty-gray crabs who were protected from the onslaughts
of the hordes of crab-devouring mantes which came down from the
mountains. Gradually the red crabs became extinct, and the gray crabs,
through their protective coloring, survived. The red crabs that you see
today are a new batch, and anyway, don't ask questions.

The next step was ages and ages later, when the crab, in order to get
food, began to stretch himself out to get to the grass which grew up
along the edge of the beach. He also wanted to take a crack at this
running business he had heard so much about. So, in another hundred
million years, or, at any rate, a good long time, these crabs had
developed teeth with which to pull up grass and chew it, and four legs
on which to run. By this time it was late in April.

We finally see these four-legged herbivorous crabs who had managed to
survive the rigors of the seasons, running, as sheep will, farther and
farther north, where the weather grew colder and colder. This made it
necessary for them to develop some protective covering, and those lucky
crabs who were able to work themselves up into a sort of wool were the
ones who stood the climate. The others froze to death and became
soldiers' monuments.

And that is how Nature took care of the hermit-crab and turned him into
a sheep.

The same thing happens right under our very eyes today, only quicker.
Nature has endowed certain animals with the power to change color at a
second's notice, and thus elude pursuers. Of course, a simpler way for
such animals would be to stay in the house all the time and make faces
out the window at their enemies, but some of them, like the horse,
simply have to go out-of-doors occasionally on business, and it is then
that their ability to change coloring comes in so handy.

Having taken the horse as an example, we may as well continue. Professor
Rossing, in his book, "Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?" reports a case of
a man who was chasing a bay mare to try to make her eat her breakfast.
He had chased her all around the yard, both of them laughing so hard
they could scarcely run. Suddenly, the mare, deciding that there had
been enough of this foolishness, drew up alongside a red-brick silo, and
ducking her head slightly, changed coloring in an instant, taking on
exactly the shade and markings of the brick surface. Her pursuer was
dumbfounded, thinking that the mare had disappeared into thin air. As he
drew near to the silo, to examine what he felt sure must be a trap-door
in the side, the mare romped away again, startling him so that he
dropped the feed-bag, and the chase was over. The mare, with Nature's
aid, had won. How many of us can say the same?


Teaching the Old Idea to Skate

They told me that once you had skated, you never forgot how. It was like
swimming, they said. I knew, of course, that that wasn't so. Skating is
nothing like swimming. But as I thought back on the days, ten years ago,
when I used to glide easily over the lumpy surface of the Charles, it
did seem plausible that some of the old facility had remained, even
after all these years.

I never was what you would call a fancy skater, even in my heyday. None
of my attempts at cutting numerals or weaving backward ever quite came
off. I had the idea all right, and would start off rather finely,
perhaps too finely, but at the turn something usually went wrong and I
became discouraged, and while I seldom actually fell, it might have been
more impressive if I had. A good, resounding fall is no disgrace. It is
the fantastic writhing to avoid a fall which destroys any illusion of
being a gentleman. How like life that is, after all!

On a good straightaway, however, I had always been able to make a
respectable progress, nothing flashy but good, solid plodding, with a
liberal swinging of the arms to add propulsion power which sometimes
carried me along at what I flattered myself was a tremendous rate of
speed. As I looked back on this accomplishment, it did not seem
over-confidence on my part to agree to join my little boy in a frolic on
the ice.

The pond was thronged with intensely young people. This in itself was
disheartening. The girls, arrayed in knickerbockers, looked as if they
would enjoy hugely anything that I might do in the way of acrobatics,
and the boys were offensively proficient. They seemed to be oblivious of
the fact that I was a good competent skater when they were having
trouble digesting their first carrots. And they were all so good-looking
and well dressed. I was on the point of turning back then and there. I
felt that my old blue track-sweater looked very seedy. And the funny
thing is that it _did_.

However, I had my pride and my little boy's pride in his father which I
somehow felt demanded that I go through with the thing. just how I
reasoned it out that making a display of myself on the ice was going to
bolster up the family pride, I don't know. Somehow it seemed the thing
to do at the time, as the drunk said when asked why he deliberately put
his fist through the plate-glass window.

Getting the skates on was not so simple a matter as I remembered it as
being, especially as my hands got much colder than they used to in the
old days. I worked for some time trying to slip a strap-end under the
buckle before I discovered that it was not a strap-end at all but my
forefinger. By the time I was firmly shod, I was chilled through and
felt a little grippy. Then I stood up.

The sensation was similar to that of mounting a horse for the first
time. I was incredibly high up in the air. I looked to the right,
expecting to see Long Island Sound over the tree-tops, but the day was
not clear enough. There was a sickening lack of stability about
everything below my knees and I suddenly realized that my ankles were
resting on the ice. There ahead of me stretched a glassy expanse, with
my little boy shivering and urging me on. The young people seemed to
have stopped their grace of romping and stood watching me. A tinkling
girlish laugh rang out on the frosty air, followed by a "sh-h-h-h!" Very
well, I would show them.

So, gathering myself like a panther for a spring, I straightened up my
ankles, clenched my fists, gave a powerful swing with my arms, and, with
head bent low, pushed off with my right foot into a slow, gliding stroke
which carried me easily out to the middle of the pond.

"Come along, son," I called back, "follow Daddy!"


Cleaning Out The Desk

The first thing that I have got to do in my campaign to make this bright
new year a better one for all of us is to clean out my desk. I started
on this a little over a week ago, but so far, I have got only to the
second drawer on the left hand side. I think that people must have been
sneaking up during the last three or four years and putting things in my
desk drawers while I have been asleep (they couldn't have done it while
I was awake, for I have been working here every minute and would most
certainly have noticed them at it, that is, unless they were dressed
like gnomes. I never pay any attention to gnomes fussing around my desk
when I am working. In fact, I rather like it). But somebody has been at
work, and hard at work, putting little objects and bits of paper in my
desk drawers since the last time I went through them. And I don't know
whether to throw them away or not.

For instance, what would I ever have wanted with an old mitten that I
should have tucked it 'way back in that upper left hand drawer? It was
right up against the back partition of the drawer, under a program of
the six-day bicycle race of February, 1933, and clinging to it, almost a
part of it, was half a Life-Saver (clove flavor). Now, I never wear
mittens, and even if I did it certainly wouldn't be a mitten like this.
Furthermore, it has no mate. I haven't tried it on, for I would rather
not have much to do with it in its present state, but I think it is for
the right hand only. As I lift it gingerly out of the drawer (I was at
first afraid that it was a small beaver) it seems to have some lumpy
object tucked away up in the very tip, but I am not going in to find out
what it is. I may have a man come up with a ferret and get the whole
thing settled once and for all, but for the present both the mitten and
the piece of Life-Saver are over in the corner of the room where I
tossed them. I almost wish that they were back in the drawer again.

Just in front of the mitten, and a little to the left, I came upon a
pile of old check book stubs (1936-'38 inclusive, with February, April,
July and August of 1936, and September to December of 1937 missing). On
thumbing these over I was fascinated to see how many checks I had made
out to "cash" and for what generous amounts. I must have been a pretty
prodigal boy in those days. Dear me, dear me! Here is one made out to
the Alsatian Novelty Company for $11.50 on Oct. 5, 1936. What traffic
was I having with the Alsatian Novelty Company, do you suppose? Whatever
it was, it wasn't enough of a novelty to make much impression on me--or
on any one else, I guess. Maybe it was that rubber girdle that I sent
for when I first began to notice that I was putting on weight. Whatever
became of that, I wonder? I know what became of the weight, because it
is right there where it was, but the girdle never did much but make me
look bulky. Maybe the girdle is in the bottom drawer which I haven't
come to yet.

Now about those old check stubs. I suppose that they might as well be
thrown away, but then supposing the Alsatian Novelty Company should come
around and say that I never paid the $ll.50! I would be in a pretty
pickle, wouldn't I? Of course, no jury would acquit me merely on the
evidence of a check stub, but I don't know where the canceled checks
are and this would at least show that I was systematic about the thing.
Then, too, the income tax people never get around to complaining about
your payments until three or four years after they are made, and it
might come in handy to be able to write them and say: "On March 15,
1938, according to my records, sent you a check for $45.60. It is up to
you to find it." It might frighten them a little, anyway. So I guess the
best thing to do is to put the stubs right back in the drawer and sit
tight. All I hope is that no trouble arises over the checks drawn during
those months which are lost. I wouldn't have a leg to stand on in that
case.

In with the pile of check stubs I found a pamphlet entitled, "The
Control of the Root Knot," issued by the U. S. Department of Agriculture
in 1933. Now "root knot" is a thing that I never have had much trouble
with (knock wood) and why I should have been saving a pamphlet on its
control for seven years is something that not only mystifies, but
irritates me a little. I read some of it and even then I didn't see why.

However, in 1933 I evidently thought that it might come in handy
someday, and if I throw it away now it would be just my luck to come
down with root knot next week and need it very badly. It is possible, of
course, that I never had any hand in sending for the pamphlet at all and
that it has been put in my desk by those mysterious agencies which I
suspected at first (gnomes, or people representing themselves to be
gnomes), in which case I am just making a fool of myself by hoarding it
for another seven years. I guess that I will put it aside and read it
thoroughly some day before throwing it away. Maybe my name is mentioned
in it somewhere.

One article, however, which I recognized almost immediately is an old
German pipe, one of those with a long, hooked stem and a bowl covered
with straw. I think that I bought that myself; at any rate I remember
trying to smoke it once or twice. But as soon as I got the tobacco into
it and the fire started so that it would draw, it went out. This, I
figured, was owing to my shutting the lid down over the bowl. The lid
was evidently meant to be shut down, as there was a hinge on it (now
fortunately broken so that it hangs loosely to one side), but I guess
that I didn't quite have the knack of the thing, I remember thinking
that sometime I might want to dress up in German costume for a lark or
something, and then if I saved the pipe all I would have to get would be
the German costume. So I saved it, and,as luck would have it, have
never been called upon to dress up. There is still some of the original
tobacco in it--some is in it and some is in the drawer--and I got a
little sentimental over the memories of the old days in Munich where
I bought it. (I was in Munich for three hours, between trains.) I
even tried to smoke a little of it without clamping down the lid,
but either the tobacco wasn't very good or my stomach isn't what it
used to be, for I didn't go through with the scheme. "Wer nicht die
Sehnsucht kennt--" and whatever the rest of the quotation is.

All of this, you will see, took up quite a lot of time. It is necessary
that I get the desk cleaned out if I am ever going to start fresh now,
but, with the first two drawers giving up such a wealth of sentimental
memorabilia, I must evidently give over several days to it. There is,
for instance, the letter from my insurance company, dated June 15, 1938,
saying that as I have allowed policy No. 4756340 to lapse it will be
necessary for me to take another physical examination before I can be
reinstated. Now the question arises: Did I ever take the examination,
and am I reinstated? I remember taking an examination, but I think it
was for the war. I certainly don't think that I have had my shirt off
before a doctor since 1938 and I am afraid that if I call them up about
it to find out they will make me do it right away, and that would be too
bad because I wouldn't get anywhere near such a good mark now as I would
have when the policy first lapsed. I might even have to do a lot of
homework in order to catch up with my class. I think what I will do is
set about right now getting into condition again and then call them up.
I don't see how that letter ever got so far back in the drawer.

There is one thing, however, that I shall never be short of again, and
that is matches. I have never seen so many matches in one place as there
were in my desk drawer. Here I have sat day after day, unable to work
because I was out of matches with which to light my pipe, and all the
time there were enough matches right under my nose (if I had put my nose
in the upper left hand drawer) to do parlor tricks with for 10 years.
They are all in those little paper covers, some containing five matches,
some none, but, added together, a magnificent hoard. I don't right now
see the advantage of saving empty match covers, but I suppose I had some
good reason at the time. Perhaps I liked the pictures on them. There are
some with pictures of hotels on them which I have never visited in my
life (Atlantic City has a marvelous representation) and I am afraid
that I would have a difficult time denying that I had ever been to the
Five Devils Inn in Tia Juana with such damning evidence as two match
covers bearing its advertisement staring the examiners in the face. But
honestly, I haven't. However, there are seven matches left in one and
one match in the other; so I am going to save them anyway. And what a
lot of fun I am going to have with my new-found treasure! It might even
be the means of my becoming a pyromaniac.

But there! I mustn't think of such things now. All I have to do is get
those other four drawers cleaned out and the papers which are on the
back of my desk sorted out (I am a little nervous about tackling those
papers, as I have heard a strange rustling in there lately and there
might be field mice) and I shall be all spick and span and ready for the
new year. All I hope is that the other drawers don't take as long as the
first two have, or it will be 1941, and then I would have to wait until
1950 for another good, even year to start fresh.


Carnival Week In Sunny Las Los

You have all doubtless wanted to know, at one time or another, a few of
the quaint customs which residents of the continent of Europe seem to
feel called upon to perpetuate from one century to another. You may know
about a few of them already, such as child-bearing (which has been taken
up on this continent to such an alarming extent) and others of the more
common variety of folk mannerisms, but I am very proud and happy to be
able to tell you today of some of the less generally known customs of
the inhabitants of that medieval Spanish province Las Los (or Los Las,
as it was formerly called, either way meaning "The The" _pl._) where I
have had the extremely bad fortune to be spending the summer.

Las Los, nestling, as it does, in the intercostal nooks of the Pyrenees,
makes up into one of the nicest little plague-spots on the continent of
Europe. Europe has often claimed that Las Los was not a part of it, and
in 1356 Spain began a long and costly war with France, the loser to take
Los Las and two outfielders. France won and Spain built an extension
onto the Pyrenees in which to hide Los Las. They succeeded in hiding it
from view, but there was one thing about Los Las that they forgot; so
you always know that it is there.

It was in this little out-of-the-way corner of the world, then, that I
set up my easel and began painting my fingers and wrists. I soon made
friends with the natives (all of whom were named Pedro) and it was not
long before they were bringing me their best Sunday knives and sticking
them in my back for me to try and tell which was which. And such
laughter would go up when I guessed the wrong one! All Latins, after
all, are just children at heart.

But I am not here to tell you of the many merry days I myself spent in
Las Los, but of some of the native customs which I was privileged to
see, and, once in a while, take part in. They rather resent an outsider
taking part in most of them, however, for there is an old saying in Las
Los that "when an outsider takes part, rain will surely dart" (meaning
"dart" from the clouds, you see) and above all things rain is abhorred
in that section of the country, as rain has a tendency to cleanse
whatever it touches, and, as another old proverb has it, "clean things,
dead things"--which isn't exactly accurate, but appeals to these simple,
childish people, to whom cleanliness is next to a broken hip.

First of all, then, let us tiptoe up on the natives of Las Los during
their carnival time. The carnival week comes during the last week in
July, just when it is hottest. This makes it really ideal for the Los
Lasians, for extreme heat, added to everything else, renders their
charming little town practically unbearable. This week was chosen many
hundreds of years ago and is supposed to mark the anniversary of the
marriage of old Don Pedro's daughter to a thunderbolt, a union which was
so unsatisfactory to the young lady that she left her husband in two
days and married a boy named Carlos, who sold tortillas. This so enraged
the thunderbolt that he swore never to come to Los Las again, and, from
that day to this (so the saying goes, I know not whether it be true or
not) that region has never had any locusts. (This would almost make it
seem that the repulsed bridegroom had been a locust, but the natives, on
being questioned, explain that the _patois_ for "thunderbolt"
[_enjuejoz_] is very much like the _patois_ for "locust" [_enjuejoz_]
and that the thunder god, in giving his order for the future of Los Las,
put the accent on the wrong syllable and cut them off from locusts
instead of thunderstorms). This may, or may not, be the truth, but, as I
said to the old man who told me "Who the hell cares?" The first day of
the Carnival of the Absence of Locusts (just why they should be so cocky
about having no locusts is not clear. Locusts would be a god-send
compared to some of the things they _have_ got) is spent in bed,
storing up strength for the festival. On this day all the shops, except
those selling wine, are closed. This means that a little shop down by
the river which sells sieves is closed. People lie in bed and send out
to the wine-shops for the native drink, which is known as _wheero_. All
that is necessary to do with this drink is to place it in an open saucer
on the window sill and inhale deeply from across the room. In about
eight seconds the top of the inhaler's head rises slowly and in a
dignified manner until it reaches the ceiling where it floats, bumping
gently up and down. The teeth then drop out and arrange themselves on
the floor to spell "Portage High School, 1930", the eyes roll upward and
backward, and a strange odor of burning rubber fills the room. This is
followed by an unaccountable feeling of intense lassitude.

Thus we may expect nothing from the natives for the first
two days of the carnival, for the second day is spent in looking for
bits of head and teeth, and in general moaning. (A sorry carnival, you
will say--and I will say, too.) But later on, things will brighten up.

On the third day the inhabitants emerge, walking very carefully in order
not to jar off their ears, and get into a lot of decorated ox carts.
They are not very crazy about getting into these ox carts, but it is
more or less expected of them at carnival time. Pictures are taken of
them riding about and are sent to the London illustrated papers, and if
they were to pass up one year without riding in decorated ox carts, it
wouldn't seem like carnival week to the readers of the London
illustrated papers. You can hardly blame a man with a _wheero_
hangover, however, for not wanting to bump around over cobblestones in
an old two-wheeled cart, even if it has got paper flowers strung all
over it. One of the saddest sights in the world is to see a native, all
dressed up in red and yellow, with a garland of orange roses around his
neck, jolting and jouncing along over hard stone bumps with a girl on
his knee, and trying to simulate that famous Spanish smile and gay
abandon, all the time feeling that one more bump and away goes that meal
he ate several days ago, along with his legs and arms and portions of
his lower jaw. No wonder Spaniards look worried.

However, there is a great deal of shouting and cawing among those who
can open their mouths, and occasionally someone hits a tambourine. This
is usually frowned upon by the person standing next to the
tambourine-hitter and a remark, in Spanish, is made which could roughly
be translated as: "For the love of God, shut up that incessant banging!"

The carnival, which is known as Romeria, is supposed to be a festival of
the picnic type combined with a religious pilgrimage to some sort of
shrine. This shrine, however, is never reached, as along about noon of
the third day some desperate guy, with a hangover no longer to be borne,
evolves a cure on the "hair of the dog that bit you" theory, and the
_wheero_ is brought out again. The village watering trough is filled
with it and a sort of native dance is held around the trough, everyone
inhaling deeply. Those who are still unable to inhale are carried to the
edge of the trough and a little _wheero_ is rubbed on their upper-lips,
just under the nose. Then it is "good-night all, and a merry, merry trip
to Blanket Bay," for the festive villagers, and the carnival is shot to
hell. A week later business is quietly resumed.

On the fifth day of the carnival there is supposed to be a bull chase
through the streets. The principle of the thing is that a bull is let
loose and everyone chases it, or vice versa. As, however, there was
nobody fit to chase a butterfly, much less a bull, on the fifth day of
this carnival, I had to take care of the bull myself. The two of us sat
all alone in the public square among the cadavers drinking a sort of
lemon squash together.

"A dash of _wheero_?" I asked the bull.

Well, you should have heard him laugh! After that, I got up on his back
and rode all around the town, visiting the points of interest and
climbing several of the better-looking mountains. Pretty soon we were in
Turkey, where we saw many interesting sights and then, swinging around
through the Balkans, I got back just in time for me to scramble into
bed. I must have hit my head on the footboard while pulling up the
sheet, for the next morning (or whenever it was) when I awoke, I had
quite a bad headache. Thank heaven I knew enough to lay off that
_wheero_, however. I'm no fool.


Another Uncle Edith Christmas Story

Uncle Edith said: "I think it is about time that I told you a good
old-fashioned Christmas story about the raging sea."

"Aw, nuts!" said little Philip.

"As you will," said Uncle Edith, "but I shall tell it just the same. I
am not to be intimidated by a three-year-old child. Where was I?"

"You were over backwards, with your feet in the air, if I know anything
about you," said Marian, who had golden hair and wore it in an
unbecoming orange ribbon.

"I guess that you probably are right," said Uncle Edith, "although who
am I to say? Anyway, I do know that we sailed from Nahant on the
fourteenth March."

"What are you--French?" asked little Philip, "the fourteenth March."

"The fourteenth _of_ March, then," said Uncle Edith, "and if you don't
shut up I will keep right on with the story. You can't intimidate me."

"Done and done," said little Philip, who bled quite a lot from a wound
in his head inflicted a few seconds before by Uncle Edith.

"We set sail from Nahant on the fourteenth of March (nya-a-a-a-a) on the
good ship _Patience W. Littbaum_, with a cargo of old thread and bound
for Algeciras."

"End of story!" announced Marian in a throaty baritone.

"It is _not_ the end of the story, and I will sue anyone who says that
it is," petulated Uncle Edith. "You will know well enough when I come to
the end of the story, because I shall fall over on my face. Now be quiet
or Uncle Edith will give you a great big abrasion on the forehead."

"I can hardly wait," said little Philip, or whichever the hell one of
those children it was, I can't keep them all straight, they are all so
much alike.

"Aboard," continued Uncle Edith, "aboard were myself, as skipper--"

"Skippered herring," (_a whisper_).

"--Lars Jannssenn, first mate; Max Schnirr, second mate; Enoch Olds,
third base; and a crew of seven whose names you wouldn't recognize.
However, there we were.

"The first 709 days were uneventful. The sailmaker (a man by the name of
Sailmaker, oddly enough) made eleven sails, but, as we had no more ships
to put them on, and as our sails were O. K., we had to throw them
overboard. This made the men discontented, and there were rumors of
mutiny. I sent a reporter up to see the men, however, and the rumors
were unconfirmed; so I killed the story. NO MUTINY was the head I put on
it in the ship's paper that night, and everybody was satisfied."

"You great big wonderful animal," said Marian, running her tiny hand
through Uncle Edith's hair.

"It was nothing," said Uncle Edith, and everybody agreed that it
certainly was.

"However," continued the old salt pork, "everyone on board felt that
something was wrong. We were at that time at Lat. seventy-eight, Long.
seventy-eight, which canceled each other, making us right back where we
started from--"

"Don't tell me that we are back at Nahant again," said little Philip,
throwing up.

"Not exactly Nahant," said Uncle Edith, "but within hailing distance of
a Nahanted ship."

"You just used Nahant in the first place so that you could pull that
gag," said Primrose, who, up to this time, had taken no part in the
conversation, not having been born.

"So help me God," said Uncle Edith, "it came to me like that!" And he
snapped a finger, breaking it. "The ha'nted ship lay just off our
starboard bow, and seemed to be manned by mosquitoes. As we drew
alongside, however, we found that there was not a soul on board. Not a
soul on board."

"That is the second time you have said that," said little
whatever-his-name-is--Philip.

Uncle Edith made no reply other than to throw nasty little Philip into
irons.

"'Prepare to board!' was the order given. And everybody, ignoring the
chance for a pun, prepared to board the derelict. In a few seconds we
were swarming over the side of the empty ship and searching every nook
and cranny of her. The search, however, was fruitless. The ship's log
was found in the wheelhouse, but, as the last entry read, 'Fair and
warm. Billy said he didn't love me as much as he does Anna' we discarded
that as evidence. In the galley we found a fried egg, done on only one
side, and an old bo'sun who was no good to anybody. Other than these two
things, the mystery was complete."

"Not that I give a damn," said Marian, "but what was the explanation to
this almost complete mystery?"

"If you will shut your trap," said Uncle Edith, "I will tell you. As I
may not have told you, the mystery ship was full of sleeping Hessian
troops, such as were used against the colonists in the Revolutionary
War. They were very gay in their red coats and powdered wigs, and, had
they been awake, might have offered some solution of the problem which
now presented itself to us.

"'What shall I do, cap'n?' asked Lars Jannssenn, who had been promoted
to purser.

"'What would you _like_ to do, Lars?' I asked him.

"'Me, I would like to have three wishes,' was the typically Scandinavian
reply. (Lars had belonged to the Scandi-navy before he joined up with
us.)

"'They are yours,' I said, more on the spur of the moment than anything
else. 'You take your three wishes and put them in your hat and pull it
down over your ears. Anybody else?'

"Suddenly there was a scream from below decks. I have heard screams in
my day, but never anything like this one. It was dark by now, and there
were a lot of couples necking in the lifeboats. But this scream was
different. It was like nothing human. It came from the bowels of the
ship, and you know that's bad.

"'All hands below!' I cried, and just as everybody was rushing down the
hatchways there came a great explosion, seemingly from the jib.

"'All hands to the jib!' I cried in my excitement.

"'What is all this--a game?' asked the crew, as one man.

'I am captain here,' I said, boxing the compass roundly, 'and what I say
goes! In the future please try to remember that fact.'

"Well, this sort of thing went on for hours. Up and down the ship we
went, throwing overboard Hessians in our rush, until finally the cook
came to me and said: 'Cap'n, I frankly am sick of this. Are there, or
are there not, any reasons why we should be behaving like a pack of
schoolboys?'

"This was a poser. I called the crew together and we decided to go back
to the _Patience W. Littbaum_. But, on looking over the side, we found
a very suspicious circumstance. _The Patience W. Littbaum was gone!_"

"I don't believe it!" said little Philip, from the brig.

Uncle Edith turned sharply. "I thought you were in irons," he said.

"You think a lot," replied little Philip, and the entire casino burst
into a gale of laughter, although it was a pretty lousy come-back, even
for a three-year-old.

"Very well, then," said Uncle Edith. "I am sorry if you feel that way.
For I was just going to end the story by saying that we sailed the
mystery ship back to Nahant.

"And where does Christmas come in?" piped up Marian, who hadn't heard a
word of Uncle Edith's story.

"Who the hell said anything about Christmas?" asked Uncle Edith in a
rage.

And who the hell did?


Community Singing [*]

With all the good will which threatens to be abroad in the world during
the coming year I am afraid that it looks like a big year for community
singing. I don't know why I have this feeling. It is a presentiment such
as I have on damp days when my wrists start aching and I know that I am
in for a touch of my arthritis. We are going to have a year of community
singing, and we are going to have it good.

You may think that I am just an old alarmist, predicting all this before
a note has really been sung or even before notices have been sent out
for people to get together and start humming. "Wait until they begin to
sing," you may say. "Then will be plenty of time to get disagreeable."
But I want to be disagreeable now, and I have every reason in the world
to be. Certain documents have come to my hand which put things in an
even blacker light than I have indicated. Without wishing to be a wet
blanket, let me tell you what is already lined up in the way of
community singing for the coming season.

Some travel bureau, with a mistaken idea of being alluring, has issued a
pamphlet telling on just what dates you can get in on a good community
sing. According to this schedule, if you hurry you can just make the
musical festival in Dublin of Feis Ceoil (All Ireland), at which I
imagine a great deal of tenor will be sung. Or, on Aug. 8, you can catch
the Welsh national _eisteddfod_, which is to be held at Llanelly. This
means singing, if I know anything about the Welsh. I am not quite sure
about how to get to Llanelly, but I suppose you take a car marked
"Llanelly" and ask the conductor where the _eisteddfod_ is being held.
He and the motorman will probably sing the directions to you.

Not only are the British Isles threatened with countless get-together
sings, smaller than the _feis ceoil_ and the _eisteddfod_, but our own
dear land is already beginning to blow its pitch pipes in preparation
for a year of song and little committees are springing up everywhere to
send out postal cards and get all available larynxes lined up for
service. Once these things start they sweep the country like wildfire.
Remember how quickly that parrots' disease spread. (By the way, were
those parrots ever deported or are they still going about the streets in
droves endangering the lives of the nation?)

Community singing wouldn't be so bad if it really were community
singing. But there are always several people (usually those who get the
movement started) who do all the singing, or rather who do the loudest
singing, and the rest of the community just stand around holding sheets
of music and making low noises in their throats. The loud singers are
usually sopranos and are big women who wear black jet beads. If they are
not leading the thing completely, they dominate the chorus so that
nobody else can make himself heard. No matter how domineering a basso
may be, he can't really drown out the rest, owing to the nature of bass
singing itself. If you try to sing bass too loud your nose starts
bleeding or your chin gets caught down in your collar and you choke to
death (to the great satisfaction of everybody). Altos suffer from the
same handicap, while tenors are usually of a mild and retiring nature
and not given to masterful hogging of sound waves. It is the sopranos
that you have to look out for.

Of course, underneath all this bitterness on my part you will detect
that I have personal feeling against some soprano who has drowned me out
at some time or other. I like to sing (in a group) and, if I am fairly
sure of my part, I like to be heard. In fact, I have been known to go
out of my way to make myself heard. But I can't buck a soprano. I have
even gone so far as to to give up singing in mixed groups for this very
reason. In a crowd of men I can hold my own, and frequently do, but in
competition with large ladies wearing black jet beads I am frankly
outclassed. And I resent it.

There are certain kinds of group singing which are a great help to
community, or party, spirit. Those little extemporaneous outbursts
around a piano, for which postcards do not have to be sent out and which
develop naturally when some one comes across a pile of old music after
dinner, are really the most satisfactory of all. That is, they are
satisfactory for those who happen to be around the piano singing. The
rest of the people in the room are not likely to be so enthusiastic
about it. I guess there are no looks so ugly as those shot at a little
band of amateur singers by the people in other parts of the room who
want to be talking or who are not interested in recalling songs of
yesteryear.

But even in the little groups themselves there is likely to spring up
some hard feeling, owing to one or two of the group being quicker than
the rest to get their particular songs on the rack in front of the
pianist. Everyone, when old songs are being dragged out, has his
favorites, either for sentimental reasons or because he happens to know
all the words. And, if some one else happens to beat you to it in
suggesting the number to be tried next, you are likely to stand in
silence waiting for them to finish so that you can rush your own choice
into the arena. This makes for bad team work and sometimes it happens
that the only one singing is the one who has just won the toss.

"Remember this?" some one will shout (the affair reaches the shouting
stage very early in the game). And he will begin, in a loud voice, to
sing "Call Me up Some Rainy Afternoon," both verses and two choruses.
There will be perhaps two others who know a few of the words to "Call Me
up Some Rainy Afternoon" and they will join in with something of a will,
but those who are too young ever to have known it or who never liked it
anyway assume a patently false politeness and wait, looking about the
room, for the "Call Me up Some Rainy Afternoon" devotees to finish.

Then there is a babel of:

"Remember 'Pony Boy, Pony Boy, won't you be my----?"

"No, no, this, 'Oh, the moon shines bright tonight upon----'"

"No, no! Remember 'Lindy, Lindy, sweet as the sug----'"

"Here's one! 'Dinah, is there any one finer?'" (This from one of the
younger members of the group who is thoroughly disgusted with the old
boys who are insisting on singing songs he never even knew existed.)

"I'll tell you! 'Here's to the land that gave me birth, here's to the
flag she flies, here's to the dumdy-dum-dum-dum----?"

And so on. Every one has a song he wants sung, and it seldom is the song
that any one else wants, although "Heidelberg" and "Kiss Me Again"
usually win out against the field because more people remember the tune
and the words don't matter so much. "Kiss Me Again," in fact, can be,
and usually is, carried through to the end with no other words than
"Kiss Me Again" being used. The only drawback to this number is that it
calls for quite a vocal range toward the end, resulting in all but two
or three lusty singers dropping out in terror before the final rousing
notes have been given their full value. Not quite enough people usually
drop out, however.

I have never known it to fail that if only one man remembers the words
to a certain song, he remembers all the words to all the verses and
perhaps one or two parodies which were considered very funny at the
time. And there is some sort of fever which lays hold of any one who is
in full possession of words to a song which renders him impervious to
the glares and interruptions of the others and makes him plow doggedly
ahead through the entire number, his eyes bulging with pride and the
cords of his neck straining with the effort of demonstrating his
ability. It is an irritating sight, unless it happens to be I who am
remembering the words. Then it is inconceivable that the others should
not be interested. Which they are not.

If organized community singing must be done (and evidently it must) the
thing to do is divide the town up into quartets, preferably all male
with no sopranos, and put each quartet down in a good smoky back room
where the air is bad, and let nature take its course. I know of nothing
more soothing or productive of good feeling than to get three other
guys, one of whom is not really a natural bass but who will fake it if
some one else will carry the baritone, and then to go into a huddle for
an evening of ripe, rich swipes. With such little groups tearing off
"Mandy Lee, I Love You" and "Way Down Yonder in the Cornfield" all over
town, not much harm can come to the community, unless perhaps there
should be a big blaze started in the town hall and some of the firemen
should happen to be engaged in singing at the time. Then it would just
be the town hall's hard luck, that's all.

In the meantime, don't forget: The Welsh national eisteddfod at Llanelly
on Aug. 8. Let's make this just the best eisteddfod ever!

* Only nostalgia can be evoked by Mr. Benchley's sensitive discussion of
folkways practiced in a time when traveling didn't necessarily rate a
headline.--Editor's Note.


"Go Down, Sweet Sweet Jordan"

There used to be a time when four Negroes could get together and tear
off a little ripe harmony and nobody thought anything of it except that
it sounded great. Now, since spirituals have been taken up socially, you
have got to know counterpoint and the "History of the Key of Four Flats"
in order really to appreciate them.

What used to be just plain "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" in the old brown
book of college songs, along with "Seeing Nellie Home" and "Clementine,"
is now a manifestation of the growth of the Chariot Motif from the
ancient African tap-dance through the muted eighth note into assonance
and dissonance. And over your ears.

Having heard and read so much about the history of the Negro spiritual,
I have been moved to look into the matter myself and have unearthed a
large block of data which I am going to work into a book, to be called
The Legal Aspects of the Negro Spiritual. It will take up the
little-known origins of the spiritual in Africa and bring it right down
to the present day, or rather to December 5, when the book will come out
(and go in again after seeing its own shadow).

Commentators and experts on the spiritual do not seem to realize that
this particular form of harmony comes from the old African
"vegetable-humming," dating back to the early seventeenth century and
perhaps later. "Vegetable-humming" or _blakawa_ was a chant taken part
in by certain members of the tribe who wished they were vegetables and
who thought that by humming loudly enough (with the tenor carrying the
air) the God of the Harvest would turn them into vegetables and they
could get their wish. There is no case on record of any one of them ever
having been turned into a vegetable, but they kept on humming just the
same, and it is in this strange form of religious ecstasy that the
spiritual as we know it had its origin.

Let us take, for example, the spiritual, "Roll Down Jordan, Roll Up de
Lord." This is one of the best songs for our purpose, as it contains the
particular harmonic combinations which are also found in the
"vegetable-humming," that is, C, G-sharp, A, and E, sliding up very
wickedly into D-flat, G-natural, B-flat, and E-sharp. In case the
G-sharp slips a little too much and gets into H, the singer must open
his mouth very wide but stop making sounds altogether.

The first verse to "Roll Down Jordan, Roll Up de Lord" goes:

    "Roll down Jordan; roll up de Lord;
    Roll down Jordan; roll up de Lord;
    Roll down Jordan; roll up de Lord;
    Roll down Jordan; roll up de Lord!"

We then find the whole spirit of the thing changing and the evangelical
note so common among Africans creeping into the second verse:

    "Roll down de Lord; roll up Jordan;
    Roll down de Lord; roll up Jordan;
    Roll down de Lord; roll up Jordan;
    Roll down de Lord; roll up Jordan;
    Hey-hey!"

Thus, you will see, does the modern chant derive from the old wheat-cake
dance, which in its turn, derived from Chicago to Elkhart in four hours
(baby talk). In this dance we seem to see the native women filing into
the market-place in the early morning to offer up their prayer to the
God of Corn on the Cob for better and more edible crops ("O God of the
Harvest! Give us some corn that we can eat. That last was terrible!
Amen"). The dance itself was taken part in by the local virgins and such
young men of the tribe as were willing to be seen out with them. They
marched once around the market-place beating drums until someone told
them to shut up. Then they seated themselves in a semi-circle, facing
inward, and rocked back and forth, back and forth. This made some of
them sick and they had to be led out. The rest sat there rocking and
crooning until they were eighteen years old, at which time they all got
up and went home, pretty sore at themselves for having wasted so much
time.

We have now seen how the old tribes handled the problem of what to sing
and how to prevent people from singing it. The slave trade, bringing
these Negroes and their descendants over to America, foisted the problem
on the United States. For a long time, owing to the colored people not
knowing that they were developing a national folk song, nothing was done
about it. The Negroes just sat around on piece of corn-pone and tried
out various kinds of swipes which they aggravated by the use of the
banjo. One of the favorite songs of this era ran thus:

    (Basses) M-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m.
    (Tenors) M-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m.
    (First tenor solo) M-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m.
    (Second tenor solo) M-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m.
    (Unison) Comin' fer to carry me home.

Under this ran the banjo accompaniment something like this:

    Plunky-plunky-plunky-plunky,
    Plunky-plunky-plunky-plunky,
    Plunky-plunky-plunky-plunky,
    Plunky-plunky--plunky-plunky,
    Plunk!

Here we find for the first time some evidence of the spirit of the whole
race stirring in its captivity. We seem to see the women filing into the
market-place in the early morning to raise their prayer to the God of
the Harvest--I guess that goes with the other song.

Gradually, during the Reconstruction Period following the Civil War,
carpetbaggers from the North came in and organized these singing groups
into glee-clubs, each with a leader and white gloves. They taught the
basses to sing "Zum-zum-zum-zum" instead of "M-m-m-m-m--m-m" and wrote
extra verses to many of the numbers to be sung as encores. The colored
people didn't know what to make of all this and many of them stopped
singing entirely and went in for tap-dancing. But the popularization of
the Negro spiritual was on its way and special writers were assigned to
the job of making up words which would sound rather native and yet would
tell a story. It was found that only four words were needed for each
song, as they were always repeated. Thus we have the growth of such
songs as "Carryin' de Clouds on Jehovah's Back," "Ain't Gwine ter Pray
fer de Old Black Roan," and "Ramona." The growth of the narrative in
such songs can be traced in the following, entitled "All God's Fish is
A-comin' Home":

   "Oh, I went fer ter see de lightnin',
   Oh, I went fer ter see de lightnin',
   Oh, I went fer ter see de lightnin',
   But de lightnin' warn't ter home.

   "Oh, I went fer ter see de thunder,
   Oh, I went fer ter see de thunder,
   Oh, I went fer ter see de thunder,
   But de thunder warn't ter home.

   "Oh, I went fer ter see de rain (pronounced
       'ray-un'),
   Oh, I went fer ter see de rain,
   Oh, I went fer ter see de rain,
   But de rain warn't ter home."

And so on the song goes, with the singer going to see, in rapid
succession, the fog, the light mist, the snow, the oysters, the river,
Lake Placid, the man about coming to carry away the ashes, and finally
the Lord, none of them being at home except the Lord and he was busy.

This marks the final development of the spiritual as a regenerative
force and also marks the point at which I give up. I would, however,
like to hear four good colored singers again without having to put my
glasses on to follow the libretto.


"One Minute, Please!"

I am known as a bad business man from one end of the country to just a
little beyond the same end. Practically every one in my class in
kindergarten went into business after graduation, and when I say
business I mean business. Whenever I see them now they are always
dressed up in stiff shirts and are making marks on the backs of
envelopes. Get me a hundred of my old schoolmates together and let them
talk from 9 A.M. until almost dinner time and I won't understand a word
they are saying. It is only around dinner time that I begin to catch a
glimmer of sense and then they have to come right out and say "Martini"
or "Green turtle soup." At this point I join the party.

But not until I have had it said to me eight or a dozen times that I
ought to be more businesslike. "Good old Bob," they say (those of them
who remember that my name is "Bob"), "you are just a sucker to be so
impractical. Why don't you let us take some of your money and triple it
for you?"

Leaving aside the question "What money?" I am frankly at a loss for
something to say. Here I am, just a dreamer, and there they are,
captains of industry, or, at any rate, second lieutenants. They have the
advantage of me.

Of course, if I wanted to, I might point out that out of a possible
$5000 which I have made since I left school I have had $3000 worth of
good food (all of which has gone into making bone and muscle and some
nice fat), $1500 worth of theatre tickets, and $500 worth of candy;
whereas many of my business friends have simply had $5000 worth of
whatever that stock was which got so yellow along about last November.

I was sympathetic with all the boys at that time and even advanced a
little cash in a sparing manner, but I couldn't help remembering the
days during the summer when I had to sit and listen to them say: "Well,
I made $650,000 over the week-end. What will you have, Bob, old man?"
And all the time I was, in my old impractical way, sinking my money into
silk neckties (which I still have) and throwing it away on life-giving
beefsteaks.

I do not intend to dwell on this phase of life's whirligig, however. Who
can tell, perhaps some day even we spendthrifts may find ourselves short
of cash. In the meantime, those of us who have nothing but fripperies to
show for our money have had a good laugh. At least we've got the
fripperies.

What I do want to dwell on is the point that there are still a great
many practices which are considered businesslike and efficient and which
any one of us old dreamers could improve upon and speed up. Now you sit
still and read this. I have sat still and listened to you long enough.

First, there is the question of business telephoning. During the last
five or six years there has spread throughout the business world a
method of telephoning which, so far as I am concerned, bids fair to
destroy all channels of business communication. If it keeps up, I, for
one, will go back to the old Indian runner and carrier pigeon methods. I
won't stand for this another day. In fact, I stopped standing for it a
year ago.

I refer to the delayed pass play, so popular among busy executives. In
this play your busy executive, when he wants to get me on the telephone
(why he should want to get me on the telephone is a mystery), says to
his secretary: "Get me Mr. Benchley on the wire, Miss Whatney." You see,
he hasn't got the time to get me himself, what with all those stocks he
has to tend to: so he has Miss Whatney do it for him. So far, pretty
good! Miss Whatney looks up my number in the book and gives it to the
operator at the switchboard, thereby releasing the busy executive for
other duties, such as biting off the end of a cigar or drawing circles
on his scratch pad.

The scene now changes and we see me, the impractical dreamer, sitting at
an old typewriter with nothing to do but finish an article which was due
the day before. My telephone rings and I, in my slipshod, impractical
way, answer it. And what do I get for my pains?

"Is this Vanderbilt 0647? Is Mr. Benchley there? just a minute, please!"

Having nothing to do but wool-gather, I wait. In about two minutes I
hear another female voice saying: "Is this Mr. Benchley? Just a minute,
please, Mr. Kleek wants to speak to you."

Remember, it is Mr. Kleek who is calling me up. I don't want to speak to
Mr. Kleek. I wouldn't care if I never spoke to him. In fact, I am not
sure that I know who Mr. Kleek is.

Just a minute, please," comes the voice again. "Mr. Kleek is talking on
another wire." Now, fascinating as this information is, it really wasn't
worth getting up out of my chair for. Mr. Kleek could be busy on eight
other wires and my life would go on just about the same. Am I to be
called away from my work to be told that a Mr. Kleek is talking on
another wire? I think this out as I stand there waiting.

Finally, after several minutes, I hear a man's voice. "Hello," it says
gruffly: "who is this?" I am not only to be told to wait until Mr. Kleek
is ready to speak to me, but I am to be treated by Mr. Kleek as if I had
infringed on his time. At this point I frankly flare up.

"Who is this yourself?" I snarl. "This was your idea, not mine!"

Then evidently Miss Whatney tells Mr. Kleek that she has got Mr.
Benchley on the wire, and he is somewhat mollified. But I want to tell
you, Mr. Kleek, that by that time I am not on the wire any longer and
you can stick that telephone ear-piece into the side of your head.
Furthermore, from now on, the minute I am called to the telephone and
told to wait a minute, that Mr. Anybody wants to speak to me, I hang up
so quickly that the hook drops off. If Mr. Kleek or any other busy
executive wants to speak to me he can be there within four seconds after
I answer or he can put in the call again. I may be just an old
wool-gatherer, but I want to gather my wool somewhere else than at a
telephone receiver.

It is possible that the telephone has been responsible for more business
inefficiency than any other agency except laudanum. It has such an air
of pseudo-efficiency about it that people feel efficient the minute they
take the receiver off the hook. A business man could be talking with
Ajax, the mechanical chess player, on the other end of the wire and
still feel he was getting somewhere, simply because to any one passing
the door he looks as if he were very busy. There is something about
saying "O. K." and hanging up the receiver with a bang that kids a man
into feeling that he has just pulled off a big deal, even if he has only
called up Central to find out the correct time. For this reason business
men use the telephone exclusively when almost any other form of
communication would be quicker.

In the old days when you wanted to get in touch with a man you wrote a
note, sprinkled it with sand, and gave it to a man on horseback. It
probably was delivered within half an hour, depending on how big a lunch
the horse had had. But in these busy days of rush-rush-rush, it
sometimes is a week before you can catch your man on the telephone. The
call is put in, but he is out. You tell your secretary to keep calling,
but, if the man takes any kind of care of himself at all, he is out most
all day in the fresh air. So day after day the secretary keeps calling
and, in this way, autumn turns into winter and winter to spring. Perhaps
you never get him.

A busy executive said to me the other day in an exasperated tone:
"Aren't you ever in? I have been trying to get you on the telephone for
five days. What do you do with your time, cut lawns?" You see, I am the
one who was in the wrong. I was the impractical one.

I might have told him about that new invention called the "typewriter,"
whereby, if you can't get a man on the telephone, you can drop him a
note which will reach him the next morning. Or I also might have told
him that I was in my office all the time, but was so busy working that I
had left word with the telephone operator not to bother me with
time-wasting calls from business men. In either case, dropping me a note
would have saved him four days of telephoning. But apparently
note-dropping is considered a relic of Civil War days and is not to be
considered in the bustle of modern business. You must use the telephone,
even if it doesn't get you anywhere.

The telephone is the particular pet of the go-getter who won't take no
for an answer. He has a passion for long-distance calls. Let us say that
his organization is getting up a dinner in Chicago and wants to get an
after-dinner speaker from New York. The go-getter is, of course,
chairman of the dinner committee because he gets things done. He
guarantees to get the New York speaker. "Leave it to me," he says,
knowingly. And, even as he says it, he is putting in a long-distance
call for New York. Bingo-like that! The New York man answers and gets
the following:

"This is Ferley of the Autumn Coat and Suit speaking! We're holding a
dinner here on Feb. 10, and you're coming out to speak for us!--O, yes,
you are! I won't take 'no' for an answer.... O, yes, you can--I'll call
those people up and tell them you're coming to us.... Now, not another
word!--See you on the 10th!"

With this he hangs up and reports to the committee that he has the
speaker sewed up. The fact that the New York man can't go to Chicago on
the 10th and has no intention of going doesn't enter into the
calculations at all. No one is supposed to be able to resist the man
with the telephone personality. He sweeps everything before him.

The only drawback is that, two days before the dinner, when it is found
out that the New York speaker meant what he said and really isn't
coming, the go-getter has to go-get somebody through a local agency to
do card tricks for the diners. "That's the trouble with dealing with
these literary guys," he thunders. "You can't count on them!" And he
puts in another long-distance call just to quiet his nerves.

And so it goes through life. There are the doers and the dreamers, the
men who make every second count and the men who waste their time with
nothing to show for it. The first are the business men of the country,
the others are the impractical fellows who write and draw pictures. Or
perhaps it is just the other way 'round. I always get these things
mixed.


The Mystery of Bridge-Building

I am not much of a one to be writing on bridge building, having never
really built a bridge myself, but if the reader (you) will overlook a
little vagueness in some of the directions, I myself will overlook the
fact that the reader has no right to criticize, unless, of course, he
happens to be a professional bridge builder himself.

It has always seemed to me that the most difficult part of building a
bridge would be the start. What does a man do first when he sets out to
build a bridge? Granted he has his plans all drawn up and enough food
and drink to last him a month. He is standing on one bank of a river and
wants to build a bridge across to the other bank. What is the first
thing that he does? (I seem to be asking all the questions.)

I suppose that he takes a shovel and digs a little hole, and has his
picture taken doing it. Maybe somebody waves a flag. I have seen
photographs of such a ceremony, but they never show what happens next.
Frankly, I would be up against it if any one were to put me on one bank
of a river and say: "Build a bridge across to the other bank." I might
be able to finish it if some one would start it for me, but as for
making the first move I would be left blushing furiously.

I once heard of a man who was confronted by just this emergency. It had
got around somehow that he was an authority on bridgework (as a matter
of fact, he was a dentist), and when the people in a neighboring town
wanted a bridge built they sent for him. He was an easy-going sort of
chap, and after they had given him a big dinner and a good cigar he
didn't have the heart to tell them that he really knew nothing about the
sort of bridge building that they wanted. He kept meaning to tell them,
but they were so nice and evidently had so much confidence in him that he
hated to spoil their good time, especially after he had eaten their
dinner. So he just sat tight and let things take their course.

Pretty soon he found himself on the left bank of the river, with a brass
band huddled around him and a lot of people in frock coats, and after
some one had read Lincoln's Gettysburg address he was given a gold
shovel and told to go ahead. Fortunately the people didn't stick around
and watch him, as they figured out that he might be embarrassed by so
many spectators, so he stuck the shovel in the ground and waved good-by
to every one, and then bent over as if he were going to work. As a
matter of fact, he was in a terrible state of mind.

He looked across at the other bank and tried to figure out how far it
was. Then he looked behind him and tried to figure out how far that was.
He thought that maybe the thing to do was to go and get the bridge made
somewhere else, bring it to this spot, and stick one end of it in the
hole he had dug and then swing it around until the other end was over
the other bank, but that didn't seem practical. So he sat down and began
writing some letters he had been meaning to write for months. Then he
started throwing shovels full of dirt into the river, hoping against
hope that he might get enough of it piled up on the river bottom to make
a kind of bridge in itself, but he couldn't even make it show above the
surface in one spot.

Just then a man with a rod and a fish basket happened to stroll by and
asked him what he was doing.

"You will just laugh when I tell you," said the bridge builder.

"No, I won't, honestly," said the fisherman.

"Then you don't laugh easily," said the bridge builder. "I'm building a
bridge."

"And a very smart thing to be doing, too," replied the fisherman. "One
never can have too many bridges." Then he added, "You see, I didn't
laugh."

This so endeared him to the bridge builder that he offered the stranger
a drink, and one thing led to another until they both were sitting on
the river bank talking about old songs they used to sing when they were
boys.

"Do you remember one that used to go, "Hello ma baby, hello ma lady,
hello ma ragtime gal'?" asked one.

"'Send me a kiss by wire, honey, ma heart's on fire'?" added the other.
"Is that the one you mean?"

"It sure is," said the other. "And then it went, 'If you refuse me,
honey, you lose me, then I'll be left alone.'"

"'So, baby, telephone and tell me I'se your own,'" they both sang in
unison.

Well, this sort of thing went on for months and months, until they had
exhausted all the old songs they used to know and got to making up new
ones. The bridge expert forgot entirely what he was there for and the
fisherman had never really known, so he had nothing to forget. People
used to come over from the town to see how the bridge was coming on and
then would tiptoe away again when they saw the two having such a good
time. Finally they got some one else to build the bridge, starting from
the other side of the river, and what was the surprise of the original
bridge expert one day to look up from his game of cribbage with the
fisherman and find that they were directly in the way of the vehicular
traffic from a brand new bridge. You may be sure that he joined in the
laughter, even though the joke was in a way on him. But he saw the fun
of the thing, and that is better than any bridge building. What we need
in this world is fewer bridges and more fun.

However, the problem of the bridge expert which has just been cited
doesn't do much to help those of us who don't understand how a bridge is
built. What we want to know is how the second man that the town got went
about the job. He evidently knew something about it, for he got the
thing done.

I think that it is all that stuff in the air over the river that puzzles
me. I can understand the things they build on the banks all right. You
go about building those just as you would go about building a house,
except, of course, for the windows and front porch. But all those wires
and hangings which are suspended from apparently nowhere and yet are
strong enough to hold up any number of automobiles and trolley cars that
take it into their heads to cross the river. There is something very
fishy about those. Who supports them? I don't like the looks of it,
frankly.

Of course, I suppose that if I had gone a little further in mathematics
in school I would be a little easier in my mind about bridges. There is
evidently something beyond plane geometry which I don't know about and
which may hold the key to this mystery. Maybe it's in plane geometry. I
missed a couple of days when I had a sore throat, and perhaps those are
the days when the geometry class took up bridge building. Or it is quite
possible that I actually studied it and didn't absorb it. I would say
that my absorption point in mathematics was about.007, and I would not
be surprised to find out that I had missed the whole point entirely.

However, even though your engineer has it all worked out mathematically
on paper, with figures and digits all over the place, I still don't see
how they get those wires up there in the air or how the wires are
induced to hold things up. I studied physics and I'm no fool. You can't
tell me that all that weight isn't pulling down, and my question is,
"Down from what?"

I don't mean to be nasty about this thing, or narrow-minded. Neither do
I incline to the theory of witchcraft--much. There is a man in India, so
they tell me, who throws a rope up in the air and then climbs up it,
which is evidently the principle of bridge building. But that man in
India is supposed to be a fakir, and, according to some theories, the
spectators are hypnotized into thinking they see him climb the rope,
whereas he is actually not doing it at all. This would be a good
explanation of bridges if it were not for the fact that you can't
hypnotize a truck into thinking it is crossing a river.

Of course, the old-fashioned covered bridge is easy enough to
understand. People could wade right out into those rivers and stick the
posts in by hand, or at any rate could get planks long enough to reach
across. All that was necessary was to get good planks that would rumble.
And, by the way, what has become of the old-fashioned rumbling plank?
You never hear planks rumbling today as they used to on those old
covered bridges. I once spent the night in a farmhouse which I later
found out was near a covered bridge. In the middle of the night I heard
what I thought was thunder; so I got up and shut the window. The room
got very hot in about half an hour, so, hearing no more thunder, I
thought that the storm had passed us by, and got up and opened the
window again. In about ten minutes there was another rumble; this time
very loud. With a bound I was out of bed and had the window down in a
jiffy. Then came half an hour of stifling again, with a pronounced odor
of burning hay from the mattress. I got up and looked out the window.
The stars were shining. So up she came again and I went back to bed
after stepping on both my shoes, which were lying upside down by the
bed. This went on at intervals of half an hour all night, until I
finally overcame my fear of thunderstorms and decided to let the
lightning come right in and get into bed with me if it wanted to, rather
than shut the window again. I have already given away the point of this
story, so I need hardly say that I found out in the morning that it
actually had been thunder that I had heard and that the town on the
other side of the mountain had had a bad storm all night. The covered
bridge, however, could have been responsible for the rumbling if it had
wanted to.

This little anecdote, exciting and amusing as it has been for all of us,
I am sure, has drawn us quite a long way from the theme of this
treatise, which, you will remember, was, "What Sort of Trickery Goes
Into the Building of Bridges?" I don't happen to know many bridge
engineers, so I am unable to say whether they are tricksters as a class.
In fact, the only one that I know built a privately owned toll bridge
across a river once, and then found that the township ran a free bridge
about half a mile down the river around a bend which he hadn't seen
before. Se he hung his bridge with Japanese lanterns and limited it to
rickshas and spent his vacations fishing from it.

But, aside from possibly taking on a job for building a pontoon bridge,
which I could do if I had enough boats, I am distinctly not in the
market for a bridge contract until some one explains the principle of
the thing more clearly to me.

I once read of a man who was caught in a hotel fire and broke open one
of those glass cases containing what is known as a "fire ax." Then, as
he stood there, ax in hand, watching little curls of smoke coming up
through the floor, he tried to figure out what to do with the ax. He
could chop a hole in the floor and let more fire up, or he could chop a
hole in the wall and make a nice draft. Aside from those two courses of
action he seemed to be saddled with an ax and that was all. After waving
it weakly around his head once or twice, thinking maybe to frighten the
fire away, he just stood there, making imaginary chopping motions, until
the firemen came and carried him out still asking, "What do I do with
this?"

Such will be my dilemma when some one puts a shovel in my hand and says:
"How about building a bridge?"


"They're off!"

There are several spectacular ways in which I could dissipate a fortune,
if I were to have one left to me, but one of them is not horse-racing.

Some day you may read of my daredevil escapades with a team of
arch-duchesses on the Riviera in which "Mad Bob" (that will be I) rides
up and down the Promenade des Anglais on a high-powered car's
running-board throwing out burning mille-franc notes at the people (all
of whom love me for my wild, likable eccentricities). You may read of
someone who has discovered me, a grey-haired, distinguished-looking old
derelict, pacing the water-front of Port Said, living on the pittance
furnished me by friends whom I had wined and dined in the old days when
I was known as "The Playboy of Two Continents," before a group of
international bankers conspired against me to wipe out my entire fortune
at one coup. (I hate those bankers already, just thinking about it). But
you will never hear about my taking my life at a race-course--unless it
is from sheer confusion. That is one thing you don't have to worry
about, in case you worry about me at all.

Fond as I am of horses when meeting them personally (and give me a
handful of sugar and I will make friends with any horse--or lose my hand
up to the wrist in the attempt) I am strangely unmoved when I see them
racing each other up and down a track. A great calm descends on me at
the cry "They're Off!" and, as the race proceeds, this calm increases in
intensity until it is practically a coma, from which I have to be
aroused by friends telling me which horse won.

Much of this coolness towards horse-racing is due to the fact that I
almost never have any money up. I have no scruples in the matter (except
that old New England scruple against losing money), but I never seem to
be able to get the hang of just how the betting is done. By the time I
have decided what horse I would like to bet on, everybody seems to have
disappeared, either through indifference to my betting plans or because
the race is on. I hear other people betting, but I never can quite see
whom they are betting with. The whole thing is more or less chaotic to
me.

In the second place, I never can see a horse-race. Of course, when you
go to a race in England, like the Grand National, you don't expect to
see. All you do is listen very carefully and peer into the mist and,
when you hear the crowd murmur "They're Off!" go around back to a
refreshment tent and munch on a cold meat-pie until you think it is time
for the race to be finished. Then go to the door of the tent and someone
(who didn't see the finish either) will tell you who won. That is the
Sport of Kings as England knows it.

In this country, you usually can see the course, but I personally have a
great deal of trouble in finding out where the horses are. Part of this
is due to my inability to manipulate long-range glasses. I can swing
them jauntily by my side before the race starts, and I can hold them up
to my eyes (until my arms get tired--then to hell with them) but I can't
seem to see anything except an indistinct blur of grass and an object
which later turns out to be the back of the head of one of the
officials. Even if I find the horses when they are grouped at the
barrier, I lose them the minute they start out and spend my time
sweeping the horizon for them while my friends are muttering "Look at
that! Look at him come up! There goes Captain's Garter! Here comes Onion
Soup!" The last time I used field glasses at a horse race I thought I
saw a rowboat in the distance manned by a suspiciously large number of
oarsmen; so I haven't felt like using the glasses since then. With my
naked eye I can at least see the surrounding country, and without the
complication of strange rowboats.

I have therefore given up the use of glasses entirely and carry them
just for looks. (I am even thinking of giving that up, too, as I have
been told that they don't look right on me.) With the naked eye at least
I can see the grass clearly and, at Belmont Park, there are some very
pretty fountains to watch in case the race itself has eluded you. Even
with my eyes free to roam as they will, I lose the horses before they
have gone a hundred yards. Everyone else seems to know where they are,
even people with much worse eyesight than mine (and I may say that my
eyesight is very good as a general thing), but the whole affair becomes
a mystery to me until suddenly I find that they are at the last turn and
into the homestretch. Then comes the problem of finding out which horse
is which.

It is, I will admit, a very pretty sight to see a lot of horses coming
in at the finish, but it would be much more exciting for me if I could
distinguish the various colors. Insofar as I have any favorites at all,
they are always the horses who carry a bright red, because that is the
only color that means anything to me at the finish. These yellow and
pink mixtures get all confused with the baby-blues and blood-oranges
when they get bunched together, and I am constantly upset by the
spectacle of what seems to me to be two jockeys on one horse. I don't
like to admit after the finish that I haven't been able to detect the
winner, and so a great many times I am completely in the dark unless I
overhear a chance remark or see an early edition of the papers. This
makes going to the races something of a mockery.

Then, too, there is another source of confusion for me in the varying
lengths of the races they see fit to run. I think that I am correct in
saying that one has a right to expect that any race shall finish down in
front of the grandstands. I don't mean to be arbitrary about this, but
that is the way it seems to me. All right, then. The last race I saw at
Belmont Park (New York) began where they all begin--that is, just beyond
my range of vision, over at the right. The horses, as near as I could
tell, ran straight away along the other side of the course, meaning
nothing as far as I was concerned. Then, just as they reached the far
turn, they seemed to give the whole thing up as a bad job and began
running in different directions. I though that maybe it was a game like
hare-and-hounds, that one bunch of horses went North and another went
South and still others East and West, with the ones who got back on to
the course first, winning. But no. It seems that the race was over, 'way
out there, and they were simply dispersing for the afternoon. In other
words, nobody in the stands (unless they happened to know black art and
were able to work long-range glasses) had any idea as to which horse
won. I was particularly fortunate in not caring.

But, aside from the strain of trying to keep the horses within your
range of vision and telling which is which, there is another feature of
horse-racing which seems to me a little irksome. That is the intervals
between races. If left to myself I would be inclined to read a good book
between times, or even during the races themselves. But this, evidently,
is not allowed. You must get up as soon as a race is over and go out
behind the stands and walk around in the paddock. just what good this is
supposed to do I never could figure out. You look at the horses and you
look at the jockeys and you say "How are you?" to a lot of people who
are walking around looking at the horses and the jockeys. But as for
changing anything at that late hour, even your mind on a bet, the whole
thing seems a little futile. Most of the people who walk around in the
paddock just before a race don't know whether a horse looks good or not.
They just look. They make marks with a pencil and try to appear "in the
know" (_slang phrase_), but even I know that they aren't getting
anywhere by doing it. Unless a horse in the paddock is obviously walking
on three legs, or a jockey is obviously cockeyed, this walking around is
just walking around and I can just walk around at home or in Times
Square. I don't have to go out to a race-course to do it.

Personally, I always get lost when I walk around in the paddock. I start
out with, let us say, three friends, whose company is sufficiently
pleasing to me to make me leave my comfortable subway or corner
drug-store and go out to the track in the first place. We amble around
under the trees for a few minutes, look at a couple of horses who would
much rather not be looked at, and then, all of a sudden, I am alone. My
friends have disappeared into comparatively thin air. I turn to the right
and run into a horse. I turn to the left and run into several people who
might as well be horses as far as anything in common we have together.
Then I get a little panicky. I begin rushing. I try to find the
clubhouse. It, too, has disappeared. There are a lot of people about,
but I don't seem to know any of them. Once in a while I recognize a man
I know who works in the box office of a theatre, but he always looks so
worried that I dare not speak to him. I feel that maybe I am out of
place. Later I find that I am. The hot sun beats down on me and I get to
crying. The whole thing takes on the aspect of a bad dream. Even if I do
get back to the stands, I merely am getting back to further confusion.
There really is nothing left for me to do but go home. And I don't know
how to get home. (_I am writing this out by the paddock at the last
race-course I went to. Will someone who reads this, and who lives near
Saratoga, come and get me out?_)


Bringing Back The Morris Dance

I don't know why I never thought to speak of it before, but we don't do
nearly enough Morris-dancing in this country. These fine early summer
days (or early winter days, or whenever you read this) it seems a shame
to be devoting ourselves to golf and tennis and drinking when we might
be out of doors prancing around a pole and falling down every few feet.

In Merrie Englandie they used to have quite a good time doing this, and
there is no reason why we shouldn't today, except that good poles are
hard to get. Poles with ribands on them are practically unknown. The
thing to do is get a pole and put the ribands on yourself, and then you
are sure that they are fresh.

Of course, it is not necessary to have a pole for your Morris dance, but
it is better because then you have something to lean against when you
get tired. (I am tired before I start, just thinking about it.) The
chief thing for Morris-dancing is a smock and lots of ribands. I am
sorry to keep harping on this riband business, but you are just nobody
in Morris-dancing circles unless you have a lot of ribands hanging off
you. These serve to float in the wind and to trip you up. I am going
right ahead in this thesis on the assumption that "ribands" are the same
as our "ribbons," although I haven't looked it up. If they are something
entirely different, then I am getting myself into a terrible mix-up and
might better stop right here.

Bells are also worn strapped to the dancers' legs to give warning to the
other dancers and show where each individual is at any given time. These
dances used to run on 'way into the night sometimes, and without the
bells there would be nasty collisions and perhaps serious injury. It is
essential that the bells be strapped tightly to the legs, otherwise the
dancer will have to keep stooping and hitching them up every few steps,
thereby spoiling the symmetry of the dance figure. If the bells _are_
loose and there is no way of tightening them, the next best thing is to
have a very small child run along beside the dancer and hold them up. It
would have to be a _very_ small child, though, so small as to be almost
repulsive.

I had always thought (when I thought of it at all) that the name "Morris
dance" came from William Morris who designed the old Morris chairs. By
the way, did you ever see a Morris chair that _wasn't_ old? They must have
been new _some_time, when they were bought, but by the time anyone ever
got to looking at them the seats were all sunken in and the arms covered
with cigarette burns. Perhaps that was the way William Morris designed
them. I frankly don't know. As I look back on them now, it also seems
that they were always awfully low, so low as to be almost a part of the
floor. It was always very difficult to get up out of one, once you got
in, and I wouldn't be surprised if a great many people are still sitting
in them, which would account for a great many people that have been
missing for a long time. Expeditions might be started to go and get
missing people out of Morris chairs--or maybe you don't care.

Well, anyway, it wasn't that William Morris who worked up the Morris
dance, because he came a great deal later and was too busy with chairs,
anyway. I understand that the Moors in Spain did the first Morris
dances, and called it the "Morisco," probably a trade name like
"Nabisco" and "Delco." It is barely possible that one of the Marx
Brothers' ancestors, named Mawruss, invented it and began that pleasing
trick of nomenclature which has resulted in "Groucho," "Harpo," "Chico,"
and "Zeppo" among his descendants. At any rate, the dance that the Moors
used to do was the "Morisco" and "Morris" was as near as the English
could get the name. You would think that a great big nation like England
could get the little name "Morisco" right. But no.

We are told that, in Merrie Englandie, one of the dancers was always
decked out as Robin Hood "with a magpye's plume to his capp and a russat
bearde," which is as lousy spelling as you will see grouped together in
any one sentence anywhere. At first, the only music was that of the
bells, but that got pretty tiresome after a while and they brought out a
flute, or "tabor," which probably added nothing. I can, offhand, think
of nothing more dismal.

Of course, I hope that you don't think that I am under the impression
that the Morris dance was the _first_ outdoor dancing done by people. I
am not quite _that_ much of a ninny. The first records that we have of
such things are those of the Egyptians about 5000 B.C. (And what a long
time ago _that_ was!) Nobody knows what they had to dance about in 5000
B.C., but they were hard at it, for we find pictures of them dancing on
their sarcophagi. That is, they didn't dance on their sarcophagi, but
they drew pictures on their sarcophagi, of dancing, which must have been
almost as painful. In this dance, eight maidens from the local maidenry
danced around and around with no particular idea in mind, finally
falling down when they got tired, which was in anywhere from ten to
fifteen minutes. This left them with the rest of the afternoon free, but
they probably weren't good for much.

Most of all folk dancing that followed this has been based on the same
idea--round, and round, and round, and then stop. In the Chinese dances
they did a great deal of banging as they danced, striking swords on
shields and scowling, but there is no record of anyone ever getting
hurt. They got awfully tired, though. That seems to be the story of all
group dancing through the ages, people getting awfully tired. It is a
wonder that no one ever thought of just not dancing at all.

Sometimes, of course, the dances did mean something, usually an appeal
to the Rain God to do something about the crops. The Egyptians had a
dance like this, but one year they did it _too_ well and got nothing
but rain; so they had to work in a figure which was an appeal to the Sun
God to come and drive away the Rain God. This resulted in a lot of hard
feeling between the Sun God and the Rain God and the entire dance had to
be discontinued, with the result that, for about fifty years, no crops
came up at all.

But we are getting away from our Morris dance, which is perhaps just as
well. By the sixteenth century you would have thought that people would
be working up something new in the line of dancing, but the only
difference between the Morris dance and that one of the Egyptians was
the bells on the legs. The Egyptians also danced sideways a lot, which
made it difficult for them to get anywhere much. The English rustics did
know enough to dance forward and back, but that isn't much of a
development for over six thousand years, is it?

A lot of people try to read a sex meaning into dancing, but that seems
to me to be pretty far-fetched. By the time you have been panting and
blowing around in a circle for five or ten minutes, keeping your mind
steadily on maintaining your balance and not tripping, sex is about the
last thing that would enter your head. Havelock Ellis even goes so far
as to say that all life is essentially a dance, that we live in a rhythm
which is nothing but a more cosmic form of dancing. This may be true of
some people, but there are others, among whom I am proud to count
myself, to whom life is static, even lethargic, and who are disciples of
the Morris who designed the Morris chair rather than the Morris of the
dance.

Havelock Ellis can dance through life if he wants to, but I think I'll
sit this one out, if you don't mind.

The Treasurer's Report

_Author's Note_

About eight years ago (eight, to be exact) I was made a member of a
committee to plan a little Sunday night entertainment for some
newspapermen who wanted to act. The committee was supposed to meet at a
certain time, each member with some suggestions for sketches or
song-numbers. (In order to get out of this morass of pussy-footing which
I have got myself into, I will come right out and say that the 'certain
time" at which the committee was to meet was 8 P. M. on Sunday night.)
At 7:15 P. M. I suddenly realized that I had no suggestions to offer for
the entertainment.

As all the other members of the committee were conscientious workers, I
felt considerably abashed. But as they were also charming and indulgent
fellows, I knew that they would take my dereliction in good part if I
could only take their minds off the business of the meeting and possibly
put them in good humor with a comical story or a card-trick. So, on the
way up in the taxi, I decided to make believe, when they called on me
for my contribution, that I had misunderstood the purpose of the
committee-meeting and had come prepared to account for the year's
expenditures. These I jotted down on the back of an old shirt.

As is always the case with such elaborate trickery, my plan to escape
censure by diverting the minds of the committee fell flat. They listened
to my temporizing report and voted me a droll chap, but then they said:
"And now what are your suggestions for the entertainment?" As I had to
confess that I had none, it was agreed that, _faute de mieux_, I should
elaborate the report I had just offered and perhaps acquire some skill
in its delivery, and give that as my share of the Sunday night
entertainment. At this moment my entire life changed its course.

I guess that no one ever got so sick of a thing as I, and all my
friends, have grown of this Treasurer's Report. I did it every night and
two matinees a week for nine months in the Third Music Box Revue.
Following that, I did it for ten weeks in vaudeville around the country,
I did it at banquets and teas, at friends' houses and in my own house,
and finally went to Hollywood and made a talking movie of it. In fact, I
have inflicted it on the public in every conceivable way except over the
radio and dropping it from airplanes. But I have never written it. I
have been able to throw myself into a sort of trance while delivering
it, so that the horrible monotony of the thing made no impression on my
nerve cells, but to sit down and put the threadbare words on paper has
always seemed just a little too much to bear.

I am writing it out now more as a release than anything else. Perhaps,
in accordance with Freudian theories, if I rid myself of this thing
which has been skulking in the back of my mind for eight years, I shall
be a normal man again. No one has to read it. I hope that no one does,
for it doesn't read at all well. All I want to do is get it on paper and
out of the way. I feel better already, just from having told all this.
And please let's never bring the matter up again.

* * *

_The report is delivered by an Assistant Treasurer who has been called
in to pinch-hit for the regular Treasurer who is ill. He is not a very
good public-speaker, this assistant, but after a few minutes of
confusion is caught up by the spell of his own oratory and is hard to
stop_.

I shall take but a very few moments of your time this evening, for I
realize that you would much rather be listening to this interesting
entertainment than to a dry financial statement ... but I am reminded of
a story --which you have probably all of you heard.

It seems that there were these two Irishmen walking down the street when
they came to a--oh, I should have said in the first place that the
parrot which was hanging out in _front_ of the store--or rather
belonging to one of these two fellows--the _first_ Irishman, that
is--was--well, anyway, this parrot--

(_After a slight cogitation, he realizes that, for all practical
purposes, the story is as good as lost; so he abandons it entirely and,
stepping forward, drops his facile, story-telling manner and assumes a
quite spurious businesslike air._)

Now, in connection with reading this report, there are one or two points
which Dr. Murnie wanted brought up in connection with it, and he has
asked me to bring them up in connec--to bring them up.

In the first place, there is the question of the work which we are
trying to do up there at our little place at Silver Lake, a work which
we feel not only fills a very definite need in the community but also
fills a very definite need--er--in the community. I don?t think that
many members of the Society realize just how big the work is that we are
trying to do up there. For instance, I don't think that it is generally
known that most of our boys are between the age of fourteen. We feel
that, by taking the boy at this age, we can get closer to his real
nature--for a boy _has_ a very real nature, you may be sure--and bring
him into closer touch not only with the school, the parents, and with
each other, but also with the town in which they live, the country to
whose flag they pay allegiance, and to the--ah--(_trailing off_)
town in which they live.

Now the fourth point which Dr. Murnie wanted brought up was that in
connection with the installation of the new furnace last Fall. There
seems to have been considerable talk going around about this not having
been done quite as economically as it might--have--been--done, when, as
a matter of fact, the whole thing was done just as economically as
possible--in fact, even more so. I have here a report of the Furnace
Committee, showing just how the whole thing was handled from start to
finish.

(_Reads from report, with considerable initial difficulty with the stiff
covers._)

Bids were submitted by the following firms of furnace contractors, with
a clause stating that if we did not engage a firm to do the work for us
we should pay them nothing for submitting the bids. This clause alone
saved us a great deal of money.

The following firms, then, submitted bids:

Merkle, Wybigant Co., the Eureka Dust Bin and Shaker Co., The Elite
Furnace Shop, and Harris, Birnbauer and Harris. The bid of Merkle,
Wybigant being the lowest, Harris Birnbauer were selected to do the job.

(_Here a page is evidently missing from the report, and a hurried search
is carried on through all the pages, without result._)

Well, that pretty well clears up that end of the work. Those of you who
contributed so generously last year to the floating hospital have
probably wondered what became of the money. I was speaking on this
subject only last week at our up-town branch, and, after the meeting, a
dear little old lady, dressed all in lavender, came up on the platform,
and, laying her hand on my arm, said: "Mr. So-and-So (calling me by
name) Mr. So-and-So, what the hell did you do with all the money we gave
you last year?" Well, I just laughed and pushed her off the platform,
but it has occurred to the committee that perhaps some of you, like that
little old lady, would be interested in knowing the disposition of the
funds.

Now, Mr. Rossiter, unfortunately our treasurer--or rather Mr. Rossiter
our _treasurer, unfortunately_ is confined at his home tonight with a
bad head-cold and I have been asked (_he hears someone whispering at him
from the wings, but decides to ignore it_) and I have been asked if I
would (_the whisperer will not be denied, so he goes over to the
entrance and receives a brief message, returning beaming and laughing to
himself_). Well, the joke seems to be on me! Mr. Rossiter has
_pneumonia_!

Following, then, is a summary of the Treasurer's Report:

(_Reads, in a very businesslike manner._)

During the year 1929--and by that is meant l928--the Choral Society
received the following in donations:

  B. L. G.                                         $500

  G. K. M..............................             500

  Lottie and Nellie W.----..............            500

  In memory of a happy summer at Rye Beach           10

  Proceeds of a sale of coats and hats left in
  the boat-house......................               14.55

  And then the junior League gave a
  performance of "Pinafore" for the benefit of
  the Fund, which, unfortunately, resulted
  in a deficit of.......................           $300

  Then, from dues and charges............         2,354.75

  And, following the installation of the new
  furnace, a saving in coal amounting to
  $374.75--which made Dr. Murnie very
  happy, you may be sure.

  Making a total of receipts amounting to....    $3,645.75

  This is all, of course, reckoned as of June.

  In the matter of expenditures, the Club has not been
  so fortunate. There was the unsettled condition of
  business, and the late Spring, to contend with, resulting in
  the following--er--rather discouraging figures, I am
  afraid.

  Expenditures.........................         $23,574.85

  Then there was a loss, owing to--several
  things--of..........................            3,326.70


  Car-fare..............................        $ 4,452.25

  And then, Mrs. Rawlins' expense account,
  when she went down to see the work they
  are doing in Baltimore, came to $256.50,
  but I am sure that you will all agree that
  it was worth it to find out-er--what they
  are doing in Baltimore.

  And then, under the general head of Odds
  and Ends...........................             2,537.50

  Making a total disbursement of (hurriedly)
  .............................                $416,546.75

or a net deficit of--ah--several thousand dollars.

Now, these figures bring us down only to October. In October my sister
was married, and the house was all torn up, and in the general confusion
we lost track of the figures for May and August. All those wishing the
_approximate_ figures for May and August, however, may obtain them from
me in the vestry after the dinner, where I will be with pledge cards for
those of you who wish to subscribe over and above your annual dues, and
I hope that each and every one of you here tonight will look deep into
his heart and (_archly_) into his pocketbook, and see if he can not
find it there to help us to put this thing over with a bang
(_accompanied by a wholly ineffectual gesture representing a bang_) and
to help and make this just the biggest and best year the Armenians have
ever had..... I thank you.

(_Exits, bumping into proscenium_)


The Homelike Hotel

One of the chief factors in the impending crash of the American Home as
an institution is the present craze for making so many other places
"homelike." We have homelike hotels, homelike barber shops, homelike
auditoriums, and, so they tell me, homelike jails. A man can't go into a
shop to get his skates sharpened without being made to feel that, if he
has any appreciation for atmosphere at all, he ought really to send for
his trunks and settle down and live right there in the skate-sharpening
place. It is getting so that a home-loving man doesn't know which way to
turn.

The hotels were the leaders in this campaign to make the home seem
unhomelike by comparison. There was a time when a hotel was simply a
place in which you slept; that is, if you were a good sleeper. You went
in and registered and the man who pushed the book out at you turned his
collar around and became the boy who took your bag up (possibly in one
of those new-fangled lifts which you were sure would never replace the
horse --at least, not in your affections).

The room, as you entered it, seemed to be a species of closet, smelling
strongly of straw matting and rug threads, and, after a good look at the
cherry bureau and its duplicating mirror and a tug at the rope which was
coiled by the window in case you wanted to lasso any one, you turned out
the hanging bulb over the bed (making a barely perceptible difference in
the lighting of the room), and went out into the street to find a place
to sit until bedtime. You would no more have thought of sitting in your
room than you would have thought of getting into one of the bureau
drawers and lolling around with a good book.

The first sign that the hotels were going in for the homey stuff in a
big way was when they began hanging pictures on the walls. Either they
didn't get the right pictures or they weren't hung properly. At any
rate, the first hotel wall pictures were not successful in giving a
homelike atmosphere. There were usually pastels showing two ladies with
a fan, or two fans and one lady, with a man in knee breeches hovering
about in the background. The girl with the broken jug was also a great
favorite in the early days of hotel decoration. She still is doing very
well, as a matter of fact, and you will find her in even the most
up-to-date hostelries, giving what is hoped will be a final touch of
bonhomie to the room. Well, she doesn't, and the sooner hotel
managements are brought to realize it, the better it will be for them.

In fact, the whole problem of what pictures to hang on the walls of a
hotel room is still in a state of flux. Until they get away from those
little French garden scenes, with fans and sun dials as the chief props,
they are never going to make me feel at home. And they do not help
matters any by introducing etchings showing three boats lying alongside
a dock or 17 geese flying South. It seems to me that the picture-hangers
in hotels are striving too hard for good taste. What we want is not good
taste in our hotel pictures, but something to look at. If you are going
to live in the room with a picture all the rest of your life, good taste
is all right. But for overnight give me something a little daring, with
a lot of red in it.

There is another development in the equipment of hotel rooms which,
while it does not exactly make the quarters attractive, keeps the guest
interested while he is in the room. I refer to the quantity of reading
matter which is placed at his disposal. This does not mean the little
magazines that some hotels place by the bedside, in the hope that you
will sit up so late reading that you will have to send down for a glass
of milk and some crackers at midnight. I don't think people read those
as much as they are supposed to. I don't think they even look at the
pictures as much as they are supposed to.

But there is a trait which is almost universal among hotel guests and
which is being catered to more and more by the managements. It is the
tendency, amounting almost to a fascination, to read every word of every
sign which is displayed around the room. You know very well that the
chances are that not one sign out of ten will have any bearing on you or
your life in that room. And yet, almost as soon as the bellboy has left,
you amble around the room, reading little notices which have been
slipped under the glass bureau top, tacked to the door, or tucked in the
mirror. Not only do you read them once, but you usually go over them a
second time, hoping that maybe there is something of interest which
eluded you in the first reading.

I had occasion last week to share a hotel room with a man who was at
Atlantic City with me on business. We were shown up by the boy, who went
through all the regulation manoeuvres of opening the window (which has
to be shut immediately after he has gone), putting the bags on the stool
(from which they have to be removed for unpacking), pushing open the
door to the bathroom to show you where it is and to prevent your going
into the next room by mistake, and making such financial adjustments as
may be necessary. This completed, I reminded George that we were already
late for our first appointment, and started for the door to go
downstairs.

George, however, was busy at something over by the bureau. "Just a
minute," he said, in a preoccupied tone. He was bending over the glass
top as if he had found a deposit of something that might possibly turn
out to be gold.

Impatiently I went over to grab him by the arm and pull him along. I saw
he was reading a little notice, printed in red, which had been tucked
under the glass. Determined to see what this fascinating message was
that had riveted George to the spot, I read:

_The use of alcohol lamps, sterno lamps, and all other flame-producing
appliances, as well as electric devices, is positively forbidden._

"That makes it rather tough for you, doesn't it," I said, "with all your
flame-producing appliances? Shall we go to another hotel?"

George said nothing, but went to get his hat. I sauntered over to the
door to wait for him, but my eye was caught by a neatly-printed sign
which, although I knew that it would contain nothing which could
possibly affect me personally, I was utterly unable to keep from
reading:

_In accepting garments for valet service it is thoroughly understood
that they do not contain money, jewelry, or any other articles of value,
and, consequently--_

"Come on, come on!" said George. "We're late now!" Just a minute!" It
was I this time who had the preoccupied air. It was I whose eyes were
glued to the tiny card and who could not leave until I had finished its
stirring message----

_--consequently the hotel's management or any of its staff will not be
held responsible for the return of anything but the garments originally
delivered._

"O. K.!" I announced briskly. "Come on!"

But George had found another sign on the wall by the door. This time we
both read it together in silence.

_Do not turn thumb latch when leaving room. Door is self-locking. Use
thumb latch only when in room._

"What thumb latch is that?" George said, looking over the assortment of
latches and catches on the door.

"This is it here," I said, equally engrossed.

"Don't turn it!" cried George, in terror. "It says not to turn it."

"Who's turning it?" I snapped back. "I was just seeing how it worked.
Who would want to turn it, anyway?"

"You can't tell," replied George. "Somebody might have this room who had
a terrible hunch for turning thumb latches. A hotel has to deal with a
lot of strange eggs."

"What would happen if you did turn it?" I asked. George shuddered. "It
might transform the whole hotel into a pumpkin under our very feet," he
said, in a low voice.

"Don't be so jumpy," I said, impatiently. That sort of thing belongs to
the Middle Ages--and, besides, it used to happen only at the stroke of
midnight."

"What time is it now?" asked George. He was in a cold sweat.

"A quarter to five," I said, looking at my watch. "There's not much
sense in going to that four-o'clock date now."

George agreed, so we took off our hats and spent the rest of the
afternoon roaming about the room, reading signs to our hearts' content.
We were rewarded by several even duller notices than the ones we had
already studied and by a good 15 minutes over the 21 provisions of Act
146 of the state Legislature making it compulsory for the management of
all inns, hotels, and boarding houses to maintain a safe in the office
for the reception of valuables belonging to the guests.

"That's an old one," said George. "I've read that before."

"It's good, though," I said. "It always makes great reading. After all,
old notices are best."

So we had dinner sent up to the room in order to complete our reading of
the hotel laundry list (George flying into a rage at the charge of 75
cents for "dressing sacques") and, by bedtime, had cleaned up the
entire supply of printed matter and were well into the Atlantic City
telephone book.

If the hotels want to go still further in their campaigns to make their
rooms interesting for their guests, I would suggest the introduction of
a sort of treasure hunt for each room. On each door could be tacked a
little legend saying something like: "I can be found by going (1) to the
top of the possession of an old English queen (2) under an article,
beginning with 'W,' highly prized by astronomers (3) between two Indian
wigwam attachments (4) underneath an American revolutionary firearm."

The guest could then spend his evenings trying to figure out these
hiding places and perhaps emerge richer by a cigarette lighter or one of
those face cloths done up in tissue paper envelopes which the hotels are
so crazy to have you take away. It wouldn't be so much the value of the
prize as the fun of finding it, and it would serve the purpose which
seems to be the aim of all modern hostelries--namely: to keep the guests
out of the open air and to prevent them from going home.


The Sunday Menace

I am not a gloomy man by nature, nor am I easily depressed. I always say
that, no matter how much it looks as if the sun were never going to stop
shining and no matter how long the birds carry on their seemingly
incessant chatter, there is always a good sleet storm just around the
corner and a sniffy head cold in store for those who will only look for
it. You can't keep Old Stepmother Nature down for long.

But I frankly see no way out of the problem of Sunday afternoon. For
centuries Sunday afternoon has been Old Nell's Curse among the days of
the week. Sunday mornings may be cheery enough, with its extra cup of
coffee and litter of Sunday newspapers, but there is always hanging over
it the ominous threat of 3 P. M., when the sun gets around to the back
windows and Life stops dead in its tracks. No matter where you are--in
China, on the high seas, or in a bird's nest--about 3 o'clock in the
afternoon a pall descends over all the world and people everywhere start
trying to think of something to do. You might as well try to think of
something to do in the death house at Sing Sing, however, because, even
if you do it, where does it get you? It is still Sunday afternoon.

The Blue Jeebs begin to drift in along about dessert at Sunday dinner.
The last three or four spoonfuls of ice cream somehow lose their flavor
and you begin crumbling up your cake instead of eating it. By the time
you have finished coffee there is a definite premonition that before
long, maybe in 40 or 50 minutes, you will be told some bad news,
probably involving the death of several favorite people, maybe even
yourself. This feeling gives way to one of resignation. What is there to
live for, anyway? At this point, your dessert begins to disagree with
you.

On leaving the dining room and wandering aimlessly into the living room
(living room indeed; there will be precious little living done in that
room this afternoon), every one begins to yawn. The drifts of Sunday
papers on the floor which looked so cozy before dinner now are just
depressing reminders of the transitory nature of human life. Uncle Ben
makes for the sofa and promptly drops off into an unattractive doze. The
children start quarreling among themselves and finally involve the
grownups in what threatens to be a rather nasty brawl.

"Why don't you go out and play?" some one asks.

"Play what?" is their retort, and a good one, too.

This brings up the whole question of what to do and there is a
half-hearted attempt at thinking on the part of the more vivacious
members of the party. Somebody goes to the window and looks out. He goes
back to his chair, and somebody else wanders over to another window and
looks out there, pressing the nose against the pane and breathing
absent-mindedly against the glass. This has practically no effect on the
situation.

In an attempt to start conversation, a garrulous one says, "Heigh-ho!"
This falls flat, and there is a long silence while you look through the
pile of newspapers to see if you missed anything in the morning's
perusal.

You even read the ship news and the book advertisements.

"This life of Susan B. Anthony looks as if it might be a pretty good
book," you say.

"What makes you think so?" queries Ed crossly. Ed came out to dinner
because he was alone in town, and now wishes he hadn't. He is already
thinking up an excuse to get an early train back.

There being no good reason why you think that the life of Susan B.
Anthony might be interesting, you say nothing. You didn't really think
that it might be interesting, anyway.

A walk is suggested, resulting in groans from the rest of the group. The
idea of bridge arouses only two out of the necessary four to anything
resembling enthusiasm. The time for the arrival of Bad News is rapidly
approaching and by now it is pretty fairly certain to involve death. The
sun strikes in through the window and you notice that the green chair
needs reupholstering. The rug doesn't look any too good, either. What's
the use, though? There would be no sense in getting a lot of new
furniture when every one is going to be dead before long, anyway.

It is a funny thing about the quality of the sunshine on a Sunday
afternoon. On other days it is just sunshine and quite cheery in its
middle-class way. But on Sunday afternoon it takes on a penetrating
harshness which does nothing but show up the furniture. It doesn't make
any difference where you are. You may be hanging around the Busy Bee
lunch in Hongkong or polishing brass on a yacht in the North Sea; you
may be out tramping across the estate of one of the vice-presidents of a
big trust company or teaching Indians to read in Arizona. The Sunday
afternoon sunlight makes you dissatisfied with everything it hits. It has
got to be stopped.

When the automobile came in it looked as if the Sunday afternoon problem
was solved. You could climb in at the back door of the old steamer and
puff out into the country, where at least you couldn't hear people
playing "Narcissus" on the piano several houses away. (People several
houses away are always playing "Narcissus" on the piano on Sunday
afternoons. If there is one sound that is typical of Sunday afternoon,
it is that of a piano being played several houses away.) It is true, of
course, that even out in the country, miles away from everything, you
could always tell that it was Sunday afternoon by the strange behavior
of the birds, but you could at least pick out an open field and turn
somersaults (first taking the small change out of your pockets), or you
could run head-on into a large oak, causing insensibility. At least, you
could in the early days of automobiling.

But, as soon as everybody got automobiles, the first thing they did
naturally was to try to run away from Sunday afternoon, with the result
that every country road within a hundred miles of any city has now taken
the place of the old-time county fair, without the pleasure of the
cattle and the jam exhibits. Today the only difference between Sunday
afternoon in the city and Sunday afternoon in the country is that, in
the country, you don't know the people who are on your lap.

Aside from the unpleasantness of being crowded in with a lot of
strangers on a country road and not knowing what to talk about during
the long hours while the automobiles are waiting to move ahead, there is
the actual danger of an epidemic. Supposing some one took a child out
riding in the country on Sunday and while they were jammed in line with
hundreds of thousands of other pleasure riders the child came down with
tonsilitis. There she would be, a carrier of disease, in contact with at
least two-thirds of the population, giving off germs right and left and
perhaps starting an epidemic which would sweep the country before the
crowds could get back to their homes and gargle. Subways and crowded
tenements have long been recognized as breeding grounds for afflictions
of the nose and throat. Are country roads on Sunday afternoons to be
left entirely without official regulation?

I really have no remedy for Sunday afternoon, at least none that I have
any confidence in. The only one that might work would be to rearrange
the week in your own mind so that Sunday afternoon falls on Saturday.
Now, Saturday afternoon is as cheery as Sunday afternoon is depressing.
Perhaps we might try taking a day from some week, let us say a Wednesday
which wouldn't matter, then Saturday would be Sunday and Sunday would be
Monday. This would do away with all that problem of what to do on Sunday
afternoon, because there are always plenty of things to do on Saturday.
And you would get the benefit of Saturday afternoon sunshine, which is
really delightful. Sunday afternoon sunshine would then, wreak its havoc
on Monday afternoon and you would be working anyway and might not notice
it.

Of course, this system would be complicated unless everybody else would
agree to make the same rearrangement in the week, and that might take
quite a long time to bring about. If you were making a date for, let us
say, Friday morning, you would have to say, "That would be Thursday
morning of your week," and perhaps people would get irritated at that.
In fact, word might get around that you were a little irresponsible and
your business might drop off. Personally, a little slump in business
would not be too great a price for me to pay for having Sunday fall on
Saturday, but I don't suppose that I could sell the idea to many of you
money-mad Americans. I may have to be a lone pioneer in the thing and
perhaps be jeered at as Fulton was jeered at. All right, go ahead and
jeer.

But, until the thing is in good running order, there will have to be
some suggestions as to what to do on Sunday afternoon as we have it now.
I can do no more than hint at them, but if there is one among them which
appeals to you in outline, I will be glad to take it up with you in more
detail.

First, I would suggest setting fire to the house along about 1:30 P. M.
If the fire were nursed along, it would cause sufficient excitement to
make you forget what day it was, at least until it was time to turn on
the lights for the evening. Or you might go down into the cellar right
after dinner and take the furnace apart, promising yourself to have it
put together again by supper time. Here, at least, the sunlight couldn't
get at you. Or you could rent a diver's suit and go to the nearest body
of water and spend the afternoon tottering about under the surface,
picking sea anemone and old bits of wreckage.

The method which I myself have tried with considerable success and
little expense, however, is to buy a small quantity of veronal at the
nearest druggist's, put it slyly in my coffee on Saturday night, and
then bundle off to bed. When you wake up on Monday morning you may not
feel crisp, but Sunday will be over.

And that, I take it, is what we are after.


One Set Of French Dishes

Last summer when I was in France, I bought a set of dishes.[*] They were
just simple earthenware dishes, such as used to have "For a Good Dog"
lettered on them, but as they were made in a little town up back in the
mountains near the Mediterranean, they seemed to be rather smart. They
cost something like three cents apiece and were a bright blue. I now
think that we made a mistake in buying them.

As there were perhaps forty pieces in all, including a large bowl which
the old man said was for soup, it seemed impractical to try to jam them
all in a trunk with the rest of the knicknacks and even less practical
to carry them in our hands with our umbrellas and everything. So we
asked the old man if he would think up some way of putting them in a
barrel and sending them to America by freight. He said _"Oui, Oui!"_ which
we figured out to mean that he would. And he evidently did.

That was three months ago. Today I got a notice from the Custom House
saying that there was a bbl. on the good ship "Hannoy" for me. The only
bbl. that I can think of which would take a ship like the "Hannoy" is a
bbl. of dishes. I don't suppose that anyone would be sending me a bbl.
of beer, because it is pretty well known around France that I don't
drink. Certainly not French beer. The notice said for me to put my
things right on and come down to the dock and claim my goods, otherwise
they couldn't answer for what would happen to the bbl. But somehow I
don't think that I will.

For in the same mail came a big, official-looking sheet, colored orange,
with lots of stamps on it and about six hundred and fifty thousand
French words closely printed. It says at the top "_Compagnie Franaise
de Navigation  Vapeur_" and that means, according to a very hasty
translation which I have thrown together "French Company of Navigation
to Steam." These French are very quick at picking up new inventions and
here is Robert Fulton scarcely cold in his grave before we find them
navigating to steam. The rest of the document is not so clear.

The only typewritten words on the sheet are "Hannoy" and "_I cassie
poterie rustique_." This evidently means my dishes. But the rest of the
reading-matter is rather cryptic. There is so much of it, in the first
place, and, at the bottom, it says that "_le chargeur_" (which must be
I, unless it is the old man in Biotte) declares to have taken cognizance
of the clauses printed above and accepts them. (All this is in French,
mind you, but I get that part all right.) I am not so sure, however,
that I want to accept the clauses printed above.

In the first place, as I read it over, the whole thing seems to be a
threat. I have evidently placed myself under suspicion by shipping a
bbl. of _"poterie rustique"_ to America. Spelling out the words in my
rough, untutored way, I seem to detect a great many penalties. I don't
know whether the French penalize you merely for shipping goods to
another country, but I wouldn't put it past them. Mind you, I think that
the Germans treated the French very badly in 1914 and I never had any
use for the Kaiser, but I would not put it past the French to slip in a
dirty penalty now and then if they got a chance. And on this orange
bill-of-lading of mine, I seem to detect a slight plot to have my head
cut off in the Place de la Concorde.

Under a paragraph marked _"Clause pnale"_ I make out several words which
lead me to believe that if I go down to the dock to claim my goods I
make myself liable to life-imprisonment and the amputation of one leg.
This may be wrong, but that's the way I translate it. I am not so sure
about its being a leg that I am to have amputated, and I am not sure
that, if it is a leg, I am to have it amputated, but it sounds like
that. Now I am not going down to any dock just for a bbl. of dishes and
run into anything like that. And I am certain about the other phrase
being "life-imprisonment." That is enough in itself.

The word _"fret"_ keeps occurring in practically every sentence, and,
while I am not silly enough to think that it really means what the
English word "fret" means, it has an ugly sound nevertheless. According
to this document, my _fret_ has to be examined and, if it doesn't suit the
_fret_-examiners the _Tribune de Commerce de Marseille_ will meet in a
body and decide what to do with it. As I make it out they can take my
_fret_ and either (a) burn it (b) drown it or (c) eat it themselves. This
is going to make it very awkward for me, not even knowing what my _fret_
is. Furthermore, I can't be running over to Marseilles and back every
few days just to answer questions for their old _Tribune de Commerce_. If
they want to examine my _fret_, they can come over here and do it. I am a
busy man.

There seem to be other clauses in my bill-of-lading which would indicate
that I would just be a fool to go anywhere near the freight dock after
those dishes. Under the head of _Litiges_, which ought to mean
something about litigation, I find that a lot of talk is made about an
item called "_avaries_." In case there happens to be an _avarie_ in your
_fret_ you are in for all kinds of trouble and may possibly have to live
on the second floor of the Custom House all the rest of your life. At
least, that is what the French would seem to say.

Now I don't know what _avaries_ are, but it looks to me as if they were
either misers or bird-houses. By a process of elimination we may decide
that there probably wouldn't be any misers in a shipment of goods from
Southern France, not because there aren't any misers in Southern France
but because they most likely could not be induced to get into a crate
for such a long trip. So we may safely say that _avaries_ are not misers.
(It would be just the way things work out now for me to get down to the
dock and find a whole bunch of misers hidden in among my dishes.) But it
is much more likely that _avaries_ are bird-houses, with birds in them.
And if anyone is so unfortunate as to have a bird-house discovered in
his bill of goods, he is, according to this paper, as good as in chains
right there.

I have no reason to suppose that the old man in Biotte slipped any
bird-houses in my pottery when he was packing it, but how am I to know?
He was a pretty nasty old man and didn't like me at all. I remember now
that when I asked him if the tea-cups were to hang in the window with
ferns in them, he gave me a very dirty look and I thought at the time,
"If there is anything that Grandpa can do to make things hard for you,
he is going to do it." Now what would be simpler than for him to have
put a bird-house right in with that big soup-tureen, knowing very well
that it would cause me trouble? All French potters who use marine
freight at all must know this orange-colored sheet backward and must
know that anyone caught with a bird-house (or miser) in his shipment is
going to be subjected to all the indignities which the _Code de
Procdure Civile_ can think up. He could have fitted the bird-house
with a set of love-birds or parakeets which would be very noisy and
call attention to themselves the minute the fret-investigators came
anywhere near them. He might even have put in a parrot which would
scream out, "Look, look! Here I am!" or _"Avarie! avarie!"_ He could
have done anything, and the more I think about the way he looked at me
the more I think that he probably did. So I think that I will just tuck
the orange sheet and the notice from the freight office in the back of
my drawer and forget about them. The men on the dock can probably find
some use for my dishes, although I doubt if they would like them so
blue. We really have enough dishes at home already and another set
would not be worth all the penalties that I would be liable to by
claiming them. I have several more years left before I have to start
walking with a cane, and I don't want to spend them on the second floor
of the Marseilles Custom House or languishing in a French jail.

Just for curiosity's sake, however, I must look up and see whether
_avaries_ are misers or bird-houses.

* The reader will doubtless recall this curious American custom--may
perhaps have succumbed to it himself--which was prevalent back in the
days when steamers still plied the Ocean.--Editor's Note.


A Dark Horse In British Sports [*]

I had just about decided that I was getting too old for athletic sports,
what with my left knee bending backward just as easily as it does
forward and my face getting purple when I so much as lift an arm, but
now everything is different. I am going in training again. And it is the
Travel Association of Great Britain and Ireland which has done this for
me.

The T. A. of G. B. and I. has sent me a pamphlet called "Calendar of
Historic and Important Events of the Year," and it is full of the
peachiest things. A lot of them are aimed at the indoor trade, such as
the Carnation Show on November twenty-sixth in the Royal Horticultural
Hall (I'm afraid I can't make the Carnation Show and I am simply sick
about it) or the Scottish Home Life Exhibition (whee-e-e!) at Edinburgh
in April. These things which are held in halls are too sedentary. I must
be up and about.

For me, there seem to be countless forms of healthful exercise available
in the British Isles this year. In September there will be "tossing the
caber" at the Braemar Highland Gathering; on April twenty-second there
will be "street football" at Workington, Cumberland, "played through the
streets of the town with hundreds of players on each side"; in June
there will be the Uphellya at Lerwick, Shetland, and on Shrove Tuesday,
Westminster School will indulge in its rite of "tossing the pancake."

As Shrove Tuesday is nearest at hand, let us get down to training for
"tossing the pancake" first. I am taking it for granted that "tossing
the pancake" corresponds to our American "snapping the cookies," and, if
it does, I am in pretty good training right now. A little more control
in the matter of direction, and I am set for the contest at Westminster.
I may not be quite so young as the boys who go to school there, but I
have given my system some pretty tough treatment in the past ten years
and there ought to be no difficulty in keeping up with the sickliest of
them. I once held the trans-Atlantic cookie-putting (or snapping) cup
and lost it the next year only to a man who had a complication of other
troubles, which more or less rendered him a professional. For an
amateur, otherwise in good health (which ought to be a specification in
any cookie-snapping, or pancake-tossing competition), I have every
confidence that I can hold my own against the field. The only part about
this Westminster meeting that I don't like is its coming on Shrove
Tuesday. I usually have other things to do on Shrove Tuesday.

I would know more how to train for the Lerwick "Uphellya" if I knew what
they did there. It sounds a little unpleasant. I rather imagine that
some fighting goes on and maybe a little preliminary drinking. I might
enter my name for the preliminary drinking and then see how I liked the
rest of it. After the preliminary drinking, however, I probably would
like--and enter--anything. That might be bad, as there are a lot of
things which I really shouldn't enter. I don't know much about the
residents of Lerwick, or what they are likely to do at an "Uphellya,"
but so long as it doesn't involve running more than ten yards or
vaulting, I guess that I can keep up. I never could vault, even in my
heyday (1846-1847), owing to a third leg which always seemed to appear
just as I was about to clear the bar and drag about three inches too
low. I never could find that leg after the vaulting was over, and it is
something I would rather not talk about, if you don't mind.

Of course, taking place on the island of Shetland, the whole thing may
be done on ponies, which wouldn't be so good. I know that it sounds
silly, but I have always been just a little afraid of Shetland ponies.
No horse would be so small as that unless he had something up his sleeve
to make up for it. It isn't natural for a horse to be so small. I
wouldn't get on one for $1,000,000 (well anyway, for $5) because I would
always feel that, sooner or later, he would grow big on me or turn into
a fairy prince and whisk me off to the moon. Perhaps I haven't
communicated to you my feeling about Shetland ponies, but it is a pretty
subtle one, and if you haven't already got it for yourself, I could talk
all night without making you understand. When I have said that, for
grown-up horses, they are _too small_, I have said everything. And if
the Shetland "Uphellya" is held on Shetland ponies, they can scratch me.

The "street football" in Workington, Cumberland, with hundreds of
players on each side rushing through the streets of the town, sounds
pretty uninteresting. I don't think that I shall even enter that. It is
the sort of thing which sounds like a lot of fun when you are planning
it, but which works out to be a terrible flop. In the first place, the
streets of Workington can't be very wide, as none of the streets is wide
in an English town. This means that only about five or six men can
possibly be in line from one wall to another. In other words, there are
going to be about 192 players on each side who have nothing to do but
giggle and push each other about. This is going to be not only dull but
bad for the morale. Before the game has been on for fifteen minutes
those who are unwilling nonparticipants are going to get tired of
pushing each other about and are going to slide into the nearest pub and
wait for the thing to be over. Pretty soon those in the front line are
going to realize what fools they are making of themselves by kicking a
football around when they might be with their teammates in a nice warm
pub, and they are going to stop, too. This will leave just the football
rolling by itself in the streets and all the women and visitors sitting
up in windows, wondering where the two teams are. My suggestion would be
that they save time by getting the two teams in the pub right at the
start, and letting the women and visitors kick the ball about. My
interest in it is purely academic, however, as I shall not be there.

The last event for which I have to train is the one held at the Braemar
Highland Gathering in September, "tossing the caber." I have asked
several sporting goods dealers if they have a caber and they have told
me that they are all out. There seems to be a big run on cabers this
season. As I remember it, a caber is either a pole about the size of a
flagstaff or a small animal like an anteater. In either case, I would
not be particularly crazy about tossing it. I seem to have seen pictures
of men in kilts hoisting a great pole into the air, but never any
pictures of its landing; so I don't know whether you actually throw it
or just stand there and hold it up until somebody comes along and tells
you to drop it. Hoisting the pole might be all right, but I would rather
not wear the kilts, if it is all the same to the committee. I once wore
kilts to a fancy dress party and I am still blushing over what happened.

I rather think that my best event will be tossing the pancake at
Westminster School on Shrove Tuesday. I am not making a book on it, and
I don't want to lead any of my friends into betting, but I will say this
much: if you have a little cash that you want to invest and will take a
fifteen-to-one bet (I am a dark horse in Westminster and the favorite, I
understand, is a boy with a very weak stomach who won last year) you
could do worse than to send your money to "Duggie," the London bookmaker
who advertises on the back pages of the London weeklies, with
instructions for him to do what he thinks best, but, if possible, to
slip it in very quietly on "Daisy Bob" (my stable name).

At any rate, I shall be back in athletic circles again and getting
exercise. I can never thank the Travel Association of Great Britain and
Ireland enough.

* The editors can only regret that world conditions, unforeseen at the
time of writing, will prevent Mr. Benchley's ever becoming known as the
champion of the Westminster School Shrove Tuesday Pancake Tossing
Contest--an event he was so happily anticipating.--Editor's Note.


The Stranger Within Our Gates

One of the problems of child education which is not generally included
in books on the subject is the Visiting Schoolmate. By this is meant the
little friend whom your child brings home for the holidays. What is to
be done with him, the Law reading as it does?

He is usually brought home because his own home is in Nevada, and if he
went 'way out there for Christmas he would no sooner get there than he
would have to turn right around and come back--an ideal arrangement on
the face of it. But there is something in the idea of a child away from
home at Christmas-time that tears at the heart-strings, and little
George is received into the bosom of your family with open arms and a
slight catch in the throat. Poor little nipper! He must call up his
parents by telephone on Christmas Day; they will miss him so. (It later
turns out that even when George's parents lived in Philadelphia he spent
his vacations with friends, his parents being no fools.)

For the first day George is a model of politeness. "George is a nice
boy," you say to your son; "I wish you knew more like him." "George
seems to be a very manly little chap for fourteen," your wife says after
the boys have gone to bed. "I hope that Bill is impressed." Bill, as a
matter of fact, does seem to have caught some of little George's
gentility and reserve, and the hope for his future which had been
practically abandoned is revived again under his schoolmate's influence.

The first indication that George's stay is not going to be a blessing
comes at the table, when, with confidence born of one day's association,
he announces flatly that he does not eat potatoes, lamb or peas, the
main course of the meal consisting of potatoes, lamb and peas. "Perhaps
you would like an egg, George?" you suggest. "I hate eggs," says George,
looking out the window while he waits for you to hit on something that
he does like.

"I'm afraid you aren't going to get much to eat tonight, then, George,"
you say. "What is there for dessert?"

"A nice bread pudding with raisins," says your wife.

George, at the mention of bread pudding, gives what is known as "the
bird," a revolting sound made with the tongue and lower lip. "I can't
eat raisins anyway," he adds, to be polite. "They make me come out in a
rash."

"Ah-h! The old raisin-rash," you say. "Well, we'll keep you away from
raisins, I guess. And just what is it that you can eat, George? You can
tell me. I am your friend."

Under cross-examination it turns out that George can eat beets if they
are cooked just right, a rare species of eggplant grown only in Nevada,
and all the ice cream in the world. He will also cram down a bit of cake
now and then for manners' sake.

All this would not be so bad if it were not for the fact that,
coincidentally with refusing the lamb, George criticizes your carving of
it. "My father carves lamb across the grain instead of the way you do,"
he says, a little crossly.

"Very interesting," is your comment.

"My father says that only old ladies carve straight down like that," he
goes on.

"Well, well," you say pleasantly between your teeth, "That makes me out
sort of an old lady, doesn't it?"

"Perhaps you have a different kind of lamb in Nevada," you suggest,
hacking off a large chunk. (You have never carved so badly.) "A kind
that feeds on your special kind of eggplant."

"We don't have lamb very often," says George. "Mostly squab and duck."

"You stick to squab and duck, George," you say, "and it will be just
dandy for that rash of yours. Here take this and like it!" And you toss
him a piece of lamb which, oddly enough, is later found to have
disappeared from his plate.

It also turns out later that George's father can build sailboats, make a
monoplane that will really fly, repair a broken buzzer and imitate
birds, none of which you can do and none of which you have ever tried to
do, having given it to be understood that they couldn't be done. You
begin to hate George's father almost as much as you do George.

"I suppose your father writes articles for the magazines, too, doesn't
he, George?" you ask sarcastically. "Sure," says George with disdain.
"He does that Sundays-Sunday afternoons."

"Yes, sir," says George.

This just about cleans up George so far as you are concerned, but there
are still ten more days of vacation. And during these ten days your son
Bill is induced by George to experiment with electricity to the extent
of blowing out all the fuses in the house and burning the
cigarette-lighter out of the sedan; he is also inspired to call the cook
a German spy who broils babies, to insult several of the neighbors'
little girls to the point of tears and reprisals, and to refuse spinach.
You know that Bill didn't think of these things himself, as he never
could have had the imagination.

On Christmas Day all the little presents that you got for George turn
out to be things that he already has, only his are better. He incites
Bill to revolt over the question of where the tracks to the electric
train are to be placed (George maintaining that in his home they run
through his father's bathroom, which is the only sensible place for
tracks to run). He breaks several of little Barbara's more fragile
presents and says that she broke them herself by not knowing how to work
them. And the day ends with George running a high temperature and coming
down with mumps, necessitating a quarantine and enforced residence in
your house for a month.

This is just a brief summary of the Visiting Schoolmate problem. Granted
that every child should have a home to go to at Christmas, could there
not be some sort of state subsidy designed to bring their own homes on
to such children as are unable to go home themselves? On such a day each
home should be a sanctuary, where only members of the tribe can gather
and overeat and quarrel. Outsiders just complicate matters, especially
when outsiders cannot be spanked.


One-Two-Three-Four

If I grow up to be a puny, under-developed sort of man, with a narrow
chest and no eyelashes, it will be because modern civilization has made
it so difficult for me to get any exercise. Not that modern civilization
will give a darn.

I try and try to find some means of sending a little of that rare old
Benchley blood coursing through my veins at even a slightly faster pace
than a float in a Carnival of Roses parade. I don't ask for much of my
blood in the way of speed. just to have it keep moving and not hang
around getting in the way of food-particles and other things that may
want to get somewhere is all I need. But I can't seem to get any
exercise. And, without exercise, the only way you can stimulate your
circulation is to have somebody come in and slap you all over. Not for
me, thank you! I still have my pride left.

About once a year I come to the realization that unless I get some form
of exercise pretty soon I will have little ferns and things growing out
on me; so I make out a schedule of quick, darting movements to be made
at various times of the day, usually just before getting into the tub in
the morning. Now other men seem to be able to find space enough in their
room to do a daily dozen or two without banging their elbows against
furniture, but I am not so fortunate. No matter how big my room is and
no matter how simple my drill, I always bang my elbows against a wall or
a bureau at one time or another. I believe that I could stand in the
middle of the floor of the room in which they signed the Versailles
Treaty, and within a minute and a half be whacking an arm or knee
against a wall or one of those big glass chandeliers.

I think that one of my chief troubles in this respect is that I hitch
sideways very slowly as I work. I know that this is true when I am lying
on the floor in one of those exercises which call for lying on the back
and waving the legs aloft. I can lie on my back in the middle of an
enormous room, miles from any one of the four walls, and, by the time I
have got my legs up and down six times, I will have hitched myself in a
diagonal line to the right until I give myself a nasty crack against the
baseboard. If it were a part of the drill to do that I probably couldn't
do it with such precision. I don't understand how it is done to this
day. In fact, I used to think that perhaps the wall moved in toward me
instead of my moving toward the wall, but my knowledge of physics came
to my aid and made me realize that such a thing was probably impossible.
I hitch, and that is all that there is to it.

Of course, this makes it unfeasible to try any of those exercises on the
bed. There was a time when I had a very scratchy rug in my room and,
rather than lie down on it and get burrs in my back, I tried lying on
the bed when it came time to wave my legs. Although this was a much
pleasanter way of doing it, I found that my tendency to hitch sideways
had me off on the floor in no time, once in a while hurting myself
rather badly. Another disadvantage to doing the supine exercises on a
bed was that I found myself going back to sleep

in the middle of them. If I had been out late the night before and had a
disinclination to getting up anyway, I found that as soon as I got back
on the bed to do the legwork I was dozing off again, sometimes with my
legs in the air. There is something about the feeling of the pillow
under your head and the soft mattress under your back that makes
exercise seem like a hollow mockery, and the last time I did it I went
right back to sleep again and slept until noon. So that is out.

This inability to find any place in my own house in which to do morning
setting-up rather starts the day off badly. I might be able to get back
into shape again if I could work at it in the morning, but since this is
evidently out of the question I am forced to get my exercise during the
day. And you know what "during the day" is. It is never.

Walking to work is supposed to be an excellent form of body movement and
I suppose that if I worked out in the country somewhere, filling silos
or worrying sheep, I could get a good three or four miles in on my way
to work. But most of the time I work right in the room next to where I
sleep, and while on a good brisk morning I can easily walk it, it
doesn't do an awful lot for my circulation. Eight good long steps and I
am at my desk. I suppose that I might walk in and out of my bedroom and
workroom two or three hundred times before sitting down to work, but,
even if nobody saw me at it, I would feel pretty silly. And, even then,
I doubt if it would do me much good, what with bumping into chairs and
tables and stopping to read the morning paper every few feet. So walking
to work is out. And the day is half over.

Walking to lunch suggests itself as the next possibility, but I very
seldom eat lunch. And even when I do go out for a bite there are so many
other people walking to and from lunch that I keep slipping off the curb
and into the gutter every few feet to get out of their way. I suppose
that I could elbow along the way a great many of them do and make other
people step off into the gutter, but somehow it seems easier not to put
up the fight. I might, when I go out to lunch, put on a sweater and
sneakers and run at a dog-trot up Fifth Avenue, thus giving people the
idea that I really mean business, but then, by the time I got to lunch,
I would be all red and wet and not a very good companion I am afraid.

In fact, walking as an exercise when one lives in the city is pretty
unsatisfactory, in the first place because you have to keep stopping to
let traffic go by, or if you are so bent on walking that you don't stop,
you are going to get a large town-car on the hip and then where is your
physical condition? You can run up and down stairs in a twenty-story
building if you like, but people who do that are always dropping dead,
and that's no fun either.

Every once in a while I join some gymnasium class composed of business
men who have just begun to realize that they can't get rid of that
extra-waist simply by tightening their belts. I have given this up
because it always brings on some serious illness in me. The last time I
went to a class and bounced around with bankers and advertising men, I
came down with a complete disintegration of the joints and had to be all
taken apart and put together again. It seemed that I had been storing up
poison in my system for years, but so long as I walked gently on tip-toe
and did nothing to stir it up, I was line. The minute I began jarring it
by bounding around on mats and waving my arms, all the poison got to
circulating through my system and got shaken into places where it never
would have thought of going before, with the result that I had to have a
man come up from the garage with a blow-torch to get it out of my
joints. It was the exercise that did it. If I had left the poison alone
where it was hurting no one, I would have been all right.

Hand-ball is another form of after-office-hours exercise which I cannot
indulge in, chiefly because it bores the living life out of me and I
don't like the air in a handball court anyway. When I was even a smaller
boy than I am now, we used to have a cave in my cellar which extended
out under the sidewalk and into which we used to crawl with candles and
smoke Cubebs. After a good rainy spell, this cave, with the damp candle
and Cubeb smoke, was the nearest thing to a handball court that I can
remember. I could fling myself about in a handball court all day, even
with the windows wide open, and get no more physical benefit than I used
to get from crawling around in that hole under the sidewalk of King
Street. A lot of men seem to do it, and, while I wouldn't go so far as
to say that they look any better for it, they evidently enjoy it. I
guess I must be made of rather finer stuff.

Perhaps that is the trouble anyway. Maybe Nature didn't intend me to
exercise. She certainly doesn't make it very easy for me to. It might
very well be that I am more the dreamer type, designed to lie on one
elbow on a rock in the Mediterranean and evolve little fancies without
ever so much as raising a finger. In this case I should have to have my
food brought out to me from some good caterer on shore, as shellfish
poison me. There must be some people who do not have to take exercise,
and I might as well be one of them. It would fit into my scheme of life
much better.

But I do like starchy foods. And there we are, right back where we
started from.


Ask Me a Question

Professors in our universities are getting awfully nosey of late. They
are always asking questions or sending out questionnaires inquiring into
your private life. I can remember the day when all that a professor was
supposed to do was to mark "C minus" on students' examination papers and
then go home to tea. Nowadays they seem to feel that they must know just
how much we (outside the university) eat, what we do with our spare
time, and how we like our eggs. I, for one, am inclined not to tell any
more. I already have filled in enough stuff on questionnaires to get
myself divorced or thrown into jail.

A particularly searching series of questions has just come from an
upstate university trying to find out about my sleeping habits. The
director of the psychological laboratory wants to know a lot of things
which, if I were to give them out, would practically put me in the
position of sleeping in John Wanamaker's window. I would have no more
privacy than Irvin Cobb.

The first question is a simple one: "How many hours do you sleep each
night, on the average?"

Well, professor, that would be hard to say. I might add "and what's it
to you?" but I suppose there must be some reason for wanting to know. I
can't imagine any subject of less general interest than the number of
hours I sleep each night on the average. No one has ever given a darn
before, and I must say that I am rather touched at this sudden display
of interest on the part of a stranger. Perhaps if I were to tell him
that I hardly sleep at all he would come down and read to me.

But I would like to bet that the professor gets a raft of answers. If
there is one thing that people like to talk about it is their sleeping
habits. just get a group started telling how much or how little they
sleep each night and you will get a series of personal anecdotes which
will put the most restless member of the party to sleep in no time.

"Well, it's a funny thing about me," one will say. "I get to bed, we'll
say, at 11:30, and I go to sleep the minute my head hits the pillow and
sleep right through until 7:30."

He will be interrupted at this point by some one who insists on having
it known that the night before he heard the clock strike 2, 3, and 4.
(People always seem to take a great deal of pride in having heard the
clock strike 2, 3, and 4. You will seldom find one who admits having
slept soundly all through the night. Just as a man will never admit that
the suit he has on is new, so is he loath to confess that he is a good
sleeper. I don't understand it, but, as I am getting pretty old now, I
don't much care.)

You will be lucky if, in an experience meeting of this kind, you don't
start some one off telling the dream he had a few nights ago.

"It was the darndest thing," some one will say, as the rest pay no
attention, but try to think up dreams they themselves have had recently,
"it was the darndest thing. I seemed to be in a sort of big hall, only
it wasn't exactly a hall either; it was more of a rink or schoolhouse.
It seemed that Harry was there and all of a sudden instead of Harry it
was Lindbergh. Well, so we all were going to a football game or
something and I had on my old gray suit, except that it had wheels on
it----?

By this time everybody is engaged in lighting cigarettes or looking at
newspapers or even talking to some one else in a low tone of voice, and
the narrator of the dream has practically no one to listen to him except
the unfortunate who happens to be sitting next. But he doesn't seem to
care and goes right on, until he has finished. There is a polite murmur
of "What had you been eating?" or "That certainly was a corker," and
then some one else starts. The professor who sent this questionnaire
will have to watch out for this sort of thing or he will be swamped.

The whole list is just a temptation to garrulousness. Question No. 3,
for example, is likely to get people started on an hour's personal
disclosure. "Do you notice ill effects the day after sleeping on a
train?" is the way it is worded.

Well, now take me for example. I'm glad you asked that, professor. I do
notice ill effects the day after sleeping on a train. I notice, in the
first place, that I haven't got my underthings buttoned correctly.

Dressing in a Pullman berth is, at best, a temporary form of arraying
oneself, but if I happen to have to go right from the train to my
engagement without going first to a hotel and doing the whole thing over
again, I find, during the day, that I have buttoned the top button of my
running drawers into the bottom buttonhole of my waistcoat and that one
whole side of my shirt is clamped, by some mysterious process, half way
up my back. This, as the day wears on, exerts a pull on the parts
affected until there is grave danger of the whole body becoming twisted
to the right, or left, as the case may be. This, in turn, leads to an
awkward gait in walking and is likely to cause comment. Of course, if it
is a strange town, people may think that you walk that way naturally
and, out of politeness, say nothing about it, but among friends you are
pretty sure to be accused of affectation or even worse.

Another ill effect, professor, which I feel after having slept on a
Pullman (leaving aside the inevitable cold in the head acquired from
sleeping with a light brown blanket piled high on one hip), is the
strange appearance I present when I take my hat off.

As I am usually the last man in the washroom, I am constantly being
harried by the porter, who keeps coming to the door and telling me that
the train is pulling out into the yards in three minutes. (It is always
three

minutes, never less and never, by any chance, more.) Now, with this
unpleasant threat hanging over me, I am in no state of mind to make my
customary exquisite toilet. I brush my teeth and possibly shave one-half
of my face, but almost invariably forget to brush my hair. It is all
right going through the station with my hat on, but later in the day,
when I come to my business appointments, I notice that I am the object
of considerable curious attention from people who do not know me, owing
to my hair standing on end during an entire conference or even a
luncheon. It is usually laid to my being a writer and of an artistic
temperament, but it doesn't help me in a business way.

Now you will see what you got yourself into by merely asking me that one
question, professor. I could go on like this for hours, telling about
the ill effects I feel the day after sleeping in a Pullman, but maybe
you aren't interested any longer. I am afraid I have bored you already.

The next question, however, is likely to start me off again. "Do you
usually sleep through the night without awakening?"

It is funny that you should have asked that. I was just about to tell
you anyway. Some nights I do, and some nights I don't. I can't be any
more explicit than that. When my little boys were small, I really can't
say that I did. Not that they really meant to be mean about it, or did
it deliberately, but, as I look back on it, it seems that there was
always something. A glass of water was usually the ostensible excuse,
but a great many times it turned out to be just a desire on their part
to be chummy and have some one to cry with. I would say that, during the
infancy of my bairn, my average was something like 10 complete arisings
from bed during the night and 15 incomplete ones. By "incomplete" I mean
those little starts out of a sound sleep, where one leg is thrust out
from under the bedclothes while one waits to see if maybe the
disturbance will not die down of its own accord.

These abortive arisings are really just as disturbing to the sleep as
the complete ones, and should count as much in any scientific survey. (I
do not want to convey the impression that I did all the hopping up
during the night. The mother of the boys did her share, but it was a
good two-man job on which turns had to be taken. It also depended a lot
on which one could the better simulate sleep at the time of the alarm.)

Now that the boys are old enough to get up and get Daddy water when he
wants it, things are a little different, but I find that the amount of
undisturbed sleep that I get in one night's rest is dependent on so many
outside factors that it is almost impossible to make up any statistics
on the subject. A great deal of it depends on the neighbors and how much
fun they happen to be having. Then there is the question of what tunes
I've heard during the day. One good, monotonous tune firmly imbedded in
my consciousness will make going to bed just a matter of form.

Two nights ago I retired early for a good rest (my first in nine years),
but unfortunately spent seven out of my possible eight hours trying to
get "What Is This Thing Called Love?" out of my mind. If I had only
known some more of the words it wouldn't have been quite so bad, but one
can't go on, hour after hour, mentally singing "What is this thing
called love--what is this thing called love--what is this thing called
love," without suffering some sort of nervous breakdown. It would have
been much better for me to have been walking the streets than lying
there in bed, plugging a song for nobody in particular.

It is this sort of thing which makes it difficult to answer Question No.
4. One night I am one way; the next night I am another way.

The only means that I can think of for the professor to employ to get an
accurate check-up on my sleeping habits would be for him to come down to
my place and sleep on an army cot at the foot of my bed himself. He
would have to bring his own blankets, though, as I have hardly enough
for myself as it is.


The King's English: Not Murder But Suicide

Being by nature and carefully acquired tastes something of an
Anglophile, the following rather bitter outburst is going to hurt me
more than it hurts England. In fact when, in the old days before I began
filling out, I was occasionally told by strangers that I looked as if I
might be English, I very often did nothing to correct the impression and
even went so far as to throw in a word like "shedule" or "cement"
deliberately to strengthen it. England has no better friend in the world
than I am, even though I sometimes appear out of patience. That is
because I am tired.

But, royalist though I am at heart, I find myself taking the old musket
down from the wall and priming it for a determined stand against the
redcoats who continue to assail our right to pronounce words as they are
spelled. For years we colonists have submitted meekly to the charge that
we speak the English language badly. We know that it is true in a way,
that our voices are harsh and loud, that some of us roll our "r's" while
others say "boid" and "erl," and we also know that, in the matter of
vocabulary we are mere children lisping "cat," "doggie" and "O.K."
exclusively. And the knowledge of these shortcomings, together with the
venomous scorn with which our English friends point them out, has bred
an inferiority in us which is nothing short of craven. We never think of
turning on our tormentors and saying "You're not so hot yourselves!"

British nausea at American pronunciation reached an almost active stage
after the invasion of England by Hollywood-made talking-pictures. London
editorial writers took the matter into their own hands and urged an
embargo on American films on the charge of corrupting their youth. They
saw the complete degradation of the English language in fifty years if
little English children were allowed to listen at their movies to the
horrid sound of Americans talking. There was some idea of limiting the
sale of tickets to those of his Majesty's subjects who were safely
established in the traditional English habits of speech, barring at the
door all those in the formative stage. Others would have had the
pictorial parts of the films made in Hollywood (since Eng-land seemed to
be having a little trouble in making any that would sell) but the
sound-tracts made in Elstree by strictly British voices, the two being
synchronized to produce a picture which might be listened to by English
tots without fear of contamination. The whole island was evidently on
the verge of a panic such as might arise at the approach of a fleet of
cholera-ridden ships up the Thames.

No one in America will deny that many of the beautiful young gentlemen
and ladies of Hollywood should never have been called upon to talk.
Neither will anyone deny that a large number of American actresses and
actors who go to London in the spoken drama might well offend the
sensitive British ear. They have offended even the cauliflower ear of
New York.

But is England entirely without sin in the matter of language
distortion? Might New York never justifiably be distressed by the sounds
made by the countless English casts which came over here to earn twice
what they could earn at home? Is the frequent confusion in the minds of
American audiences as to just what the English actors are saying on the
stage due to the fact that our auditory faculties are not attuned to
pure English or to the fact that the English actors are not pronouncing
the words properly as they are spelled? If spelling means anything at
all in the pronunciation of a word, then the English are at fault. If it
doesn't, then they are at fault anyway.

Of course, there can be no argument (and let us have this understood at
the start, please) over the comparative mellifluousness of English and
American speech. Even the most incompetent English actor, coming on the
stage briefly to announce the presence below of Lord and Lady Ditherege,
gives forth a sound so soft and dulcet as almost to be a bar of music.
But sometimes that is all there is. The words are lost in the graceful
sweep of the notes. I have heard entire scenes played by English actors
(especially juveniles) in which absolutely nothing was distinguishable
except a series of musical notes ranging in cadenzas from B to G sharp
and back to B again. It is all very pretty, but is it the English
language?

This slurring of words into a refined cadence until they cease to be
words at all is due partly to the Englishman's disinclination to move
his lips. Evidently the lips and teeth are held stationary for the most
part, open just wide enough to let in air for breathing (many Englishmen
must breathe through their mouths, otherwise they would not breathe at
all) with an occasional sharp pursing of the lips on a syllable which
does not call for pursing the lips. This lethargic attitude toward
articulation makes more or less of a fool out of a word which is
dependent on pronunciation for its success. It makes a rather agreeable
sound of it, but practically eliminates it as an agent for expressing
thought.

I am not dealing now with cockney or other perversions of the British
manner of speaking, although Englishmen are not so fair as to remember
that much of the speech which they call "American" on the stage and in
pictures is deliberately vulgarized and harshened by the American actors
themselves to imitate gangsters, newspaper reporters, and others of the
non-classical group. I am speaking of the more "refayned" type of
English actor, and even of the ordinary well-educated Englishman. They
distort good old Anglo-Saxon words into mere blobs of sound, eliminating
letters and syllables at will. And what they do to French words must not
be mentioned here because that is not strictly within the range of his
thesis. Neither is it important.

But it is safe to predict that a comparative tabulation of words in
common use in England and America, analyzed phonetically as pronounced
in each country, would give America a startling lead over the
mother-country in accuracy. Saying them through the nose, as many
Americans do, may not be so pleasant as saying them through the large
palate, as many Englishmen do, but the words themselves get a better
break and, at least, the integrity of the sentence is preserved.

The time is about ripe for someone to write a skit for an American
revue, lasting perhaps three minutes, in which are reproduced the sounds
made by a group of English juveniles such as came over here every year
in plays of post-war younger-generationism, bounding on and off the
stage carrying tennis racquets and giving off exuberance to the point of
combustion. If I were writing such a sketch I would open the scene with
two or three young gentlemen and ladies lying about on window-seats and
porch chairs in careless fashion, with the conversation running
something like this:

[Illustration: (musical notes on a staff)]

Wotjuthinkofrehddie?

[Illustration: (more notes on a staff)]

Hesbeanoffyapsehtletly

[Illustration: (still more notes on a staff)]

Eheaidehntneh-hehesentehnyfethleft

At this point Reggie would come bursting into the room, with his shirt
open at the neck, fresh from badminton and would call, swinging his body
lithely from the hips:

[Illustration: (more notes)]

Elleuhvrybohddyweresahncle?

Things would go on like this for a minute or two with absolutely no word
being spoken, just a series of British sounds with a great deal of
bounding about and quick, darting movements of the heads and arms. The
young men would stand with feet wide apart and hands

jammed down into the side pockets of their coats, while the young ladies
would stand with their feet not quite so far apart and their hands
jammed down into the pockets of their sweaters. It would all have to be
played very fast and loosely and might end with their all putting their
heads together and doing the thing in harmony, still with no words. Or a
canary, which had been hanging in a cage throughout the act, might join
in with them until it fell dead from exhaustion. Or almost anything
might happen, provided no sense was given to the lines.

Some time ago I heard Major Barbara done by an English company. The
young man who played Cusins was a particularly vicious example of the
songster-actor so prevalent on the English stage. Although I took no
notes and am not very good at carrying a tune, I should say that one of
his speeches ran something like this: (The key was C sharp and the range
was from B to G sharp in an almost continuous cadenza):

"Eetsnottth'sao ehvmeh seuhl thett trehbles meh; Eh hev seuhld et teuh
efften teh care abeht thett. Eh hev seuhld et fereh preuhfessorshep. Eh
hev seuhld et tescep beinempressoned feh refusin t'peh texes fer
hengmen's reuhps end ehnjust wehrs end things thet ehabheuh. Wot es ehl
humen cehnduct beht th'daioy end heuhrly sao of ehur seuhls f'trehfles?
Wot ehem neuh seoinet feh is neither meneh ehr pesition nehr kemfet, bet
freelity and fpeuher."

Is that any kind of English for our children to hear? Are we to sit by
and let minors absorb this sort of distortion of our mother-tongue and
perhaps grow up to speak it themselves? We pay good money to have them
taught to say "don't" and "donkey." Are they to be led by outlanders
into saying "dehn't" and "dehnkey"? We have been brought up to believe
that dropping the final "g" is the mark of a vulgarian. Are our children
to hear "nice people" from England saying "runnin'" and "singin'"? No, a
theuhsend tehms Neuh!

The fact is that neither Americans nor English have anything to boast of
in the matter of pronunciations of their common tongue. There are a few
people in each country who have got the hang of it, but for the most
part a pretty bad job has been made of the whole thing. Probably the
best English is spoken by foreigners who have taken the pains to learn
it correctly.


Eight O'clock Sharp

Several of my young friends (I make friends easily and of all ages) have
recently received a questionnaire from the Junior League and the Parents'
League designed to bring them to their senses in the matter of tardiness
at parties. The idea seems to be that, with people arriving later and
later at dinners and dances, the hour of breaking-up is gradually being
extended so far into the forenoon of the following day that it cuts in
on business conferences and dentist appointments. If guests would arrive
at a party on time, they could get it over with and be at home and in
the general direction of the bed at a reasonable hour. (If any hour can
be said to be reasonable.)

Evidently the Junior League and the Parents' League don't care whether I
am late to parties or not for they didn't send me a questionnaire. But I
am going to answer one anyway, and perhaps from the replies of a man who
has been later to more parties than anyone since Charlie Ross (so late,
in fact, that many times I have not arrived at all) they may find the
solution to their problem.

The first question is: "Are you in favor of dining on time?" This is a
little abstruse. There could be no _objection_ to dining on time if
dinner were served on time, whatever "on time" may mean. Once in a
while, especially during the first week after daylight-saving has gone
out of effect and I have forgotten to change my watch, I arrive at
dinner approximately at the appointed time. What is the result? I am met
at the door by a man who hasn't quite finished buttoning his waistcoat
and who looks at me with ill-concealed suspicion, the supposition being
that anyone arriving so early is either drunk or a reporter. My hat and
coat are laid out in solitary state on the hall-catafalque and I am
ushered upstairs into the library for half an hour with "The Rise and
Fall of Robespierre" and several brisk turns around the room. My host
calls from upstairs that he will be "right down" and for me to "make
myself at home." This I proceed to do by dropping off into a restless
sleep until I am awakened by the tinkling of ice.

The cocktail problem for the guest who has arrived "on time" is no mean
one. If you are the first guest to arrive (as you will be if you are "on
time") and if you begin drinking cocktails with the first brewing,
stringing along with the field as the others arrive, by the time the
really late ones have come you are not only the most vivacious guest in
the room--you are the host. You do the greeting; you insist on passing
the canaps (or what you yourself have left of the canaps exclusive of
the powdered egg which has been shed on the rug); you comment on the
attire of recent arrivals, and say: "I didn't catch the name" when
introduced. In short, you are easily three laps ahead of anyone present
except your host (who has been told beforehand by his wife to take it
easy) and with your little elfin ways and cute sayings, you endear
yourself to one and all and creep into every heart. Thus, before dinner
has even commenced, it is your bedtime. This is what comes of arriving
at the appointed hour.

Which, in a way, disposes of Question No. 2: "Will you arrive punctually
at the hour set?" The answer is "No!"

Question No. 3 is: "Will you get to dances on time?" I am very lucky if
I get to dances at all. There is something about the lateness of the
hour at which a dance is supposed to begin that makes it rather a
nebulous and eerie appointment at best. I can get dressed earlier in the
evening with every intention of going to a dance at midnight, but
somehow after the theatre the thing to do seems to be either to go to
bed or sit around somewhere. It doesn't seem possible that somewhere
people can be _expecting_ you at an hour like that. Only pixies and
banshees have definite midnight appointments, and those are usually on a
cabbage-leaf or around the stamen of a blue-bell. Perhaps this vagueness
in my mind about dance-dates is a defense mechanism on my part, for I am
not a devotee of dancing. Possibly the best way for me to help the
Junior League in this particular department of their campaign would be
not to accept any dance invitations. Then I won't hold things up.

Question No. 4 is: "If you accept a dinner invitation will you really
attend?" My answer to this would be: "Well, I will and I won't." It
seems like a fair question, however. Somebody has got to know, in order
to get the squabs straight, how many people are going to be there, and
the best way to find out is to come right out and ask the question
point-blank: "If you accept, will you really attend?" My reply, however,
is complicated by the fact that I lose addresses and that a great many
people have recently gone in for the unpleasant habit of not having
their names in the telephone book. I have spent many a dinner hour,
beautifully groomed, standing in a United Cigar store thumbing over the
adhesive pages of a telephone directory with no possible way of finding
out where I am supposed to be, short of discovering what I did with the
little piece of blotting paper on which I originally wrote the address.

Then, too, before I can say definitely whether or not I will really
attend a dinner, I must know about the weather. I am a very poor
woodsman, and sometimes great storms come sweeping through the forest
which separates my little house from the rest of civilization and I may
wander about for weeks before striking the trail. Only last week I
started out for a dinner party and, when I was half way through the
woods, a driving blizzard came up, trees crashed about me, the winds
howled and forced me back and I could not even see the moss on the trees
to tell which was north. Naturally, I didn't get to the dinner, but it
was a thing which could not have been foreseen. The question, as
phrased, is therefore out of order.

The next question is: "Are you in favor of early luncheons?" My reply to
this is that I am not in favor of luncheons at all.

This, in a way, clears up my attitude on the subject. I see no way out
of the present situation. Parties can not arbitrarily be stopped in time
for morning dentist appointments. We aren't living in Russia, you know.
The only other course is to have your business and dentist appointments
in the afternoon--and that, in turn, will make you late for dinner
again. It is a vicious circle, but pleasantly vicious. Let's just let
things go on as they are until a general breakdown sets in. That will be
plenty of time to stop.


Penguin Psychology [*]

It would seem to be a good time for any animals who think themselves
highly intelligent to drop into one of our larger colleges and see if
there isn't a job there for them. At Columbia University they are crazy
for cats who will take intelligence tests; at Yale a good smart monkey
can draw down anywhere from $1 to $3 a day, and the Cornell medical
college is making very attractive offers for rats to submit themselves
to noise tests. An animal with any brains at all is simply a fool not to
cash in on the psychological experimenting craze which is sweeping the
academic world.

It isn't as if the animals had to be hurt or even fed unpleasant
mixtures. The worst that can happen is that you may be frightened by a
Cornell professor smashing a paper bag behind your back. The rats who
are being used to test the effect of noise on the nervous system may get
awfully irritated, what with people rattling things in their ears and
blowing whistles, but it is nothing that a good rest over the weekend
will not fix up. The cats at Columbia have really nothing to do except
step on little disks and open up doors leading to bowls of milk. The
life of Reilly was a tough one compared to this. And the Yale monkeys
not only are treated just like the other Yale men, but are even taken to
Florida during the winter and given a time at Miami. So much attention
has not been paid to animals' personal comfort since the time when they
were paired off and given that junket on an ark. I am trying to keep the
newspaper accounts of these collegiate opportunities from our cat, or
she will get dissatisfied with home life and be off to the university to
see if some professor can make her jump when he says "Boo!"

I cannot find out just what the college life of these animals is when
they are not working in the "lab." Do they live in dormitories together
or board around at houses in the town? I suppose that the Yale monkeys
go in rather heavily for secret societies and are pretty manly, but the
Columbia cats probably go home at night. As the Columbia investigators
have found out that alley cats are the smartest of all (one, named Miss
Audrey, can practically work a combination on a dial in order to get her
bowl of milk) it would be pretty hard to keep them confined in a
dormitory after classes. Now, when New Yorkers hear a great disturbance
out in back of their apartments, they can lay it to a crowd of "those
college cats" and write to the university authorities about it.

It seems, however, as if the academic investigators might find some
kinds of animal which would approximate human beings a little more
closely than cats and rats. (The Yale monkeys, of course, couldn't be
better for the purpose.) I am taking it for granted that the experiments
are for the ultimate purpose of applying the principles evolved to human
beings and their mental problems. There wouldn't be all this trouble
just to pick out the smartest cat on One Hundred and Thirtieth street or
the Ithacan rat who could stand the most hooting in his ear. And, since
human beings are to be the final beneficiaries of all these experiments,
why not take an animal which has more human characteristics than any
other next to the monkey--the penguin? I could never understand the
almost deliberate ignoring of the penguin in psychological experiments.
The penguins themselves, I understand, feel very upset about it.

Any one who has ever watched a penguin will know what I mean. Nowhere in
the animal kingdom will you find more human behavior. Slightly drunken
human behavior, it is true, but very refined drunkenness. No scenes. No
vulgarity. just the bearing of a rather old colonel in a dinner jacket
who had found himself at his club overtaken with a slight giddiness from
too much port and is making his way to his cab with all the dignity at
his command. If spoken to, he will stop for a second, focus slowly on
the obtruder, totter slightly, and then proceed, without so much as a
word to indicate that he considers the interruption worthy of his
notice. The penguin is the most patrician of all animals who resemble
human beings, and it would not be a bad idea to get his consent to a few
experiments to be applied to correspondingly patrician members of the
human race. Not everybody is going to react. There are still a few
gentlemen left in the world, thank Heaven!

I have made a few preliminary experiments with the penguins in the Bronx
park zoo, and if Harvard University wants to use them as a basis for a
penguin research department it can make the departments of Yale,
Columbia and Cornell look pretty silly. I am afraid that Harvard is a
little conservative for such advanced research work, however, and I am
therefore making a simultaneous offer to the University of Wisconsin. I
don't know how the Bronx penguins will feel about taking the trip to
Wisconsin, but I should think that if we could get a private train with
a club car on it and plenty of Scotch for the journey, they might feel
that it was worth their while. They would, of course, be put up at the
homes of the faculty during their stay at Madison and would not be
expected to attend teas or receptions.

My experiments with the penguins in Bronx park have been superficial but
sympathetic. I have taken a book up to the pool around and in which they
are accustomed to promenade and have simply engaged them in
conversation, just as one gentleman to another. I would not say that
they had met me half way, but several of them have accepted cigars
(Corona-Coronas) and even a nip if proffered in a tall glass (no ice,
please, and plain water), and have eventually condescended to answer a
few questions after being assured that there were no reporters present.

One penguin in particular, a Col. MacKenzie of the 12th Penguin Guards,
has been extremely gracious, and it is from him that I have collected
most of my data. I do not dare take notes while he is talking and so
perhaps I have not got the thing exactly as he has said it, but I am
sure that I have caught the gist as well as the spirit. He would be
furious if he ever knew of this violation of his confidence, but, as he
reads nothing but the London Times, and occasionally the New York
_Herald Tribune_, there is little chance that he will see it. I hope
that none of you will be cads enough to go and tell him.

My idea was to discover the scientific effect of prohibition Scotch on
brain cells accustomed to the genteel degeneration of the pre-war
product (penguins, in their own homes, drink nothing but pre-war
liquor), to test the reactions on a highly cultivated and refined mind
of vulgar communistic political remarks and to see if penguins, and
therefore members of the University or Union League clubs, have a sense
of humor.

It took three conferences with Col. MacKenzie to effect my purpose. The
first day I pretended to be reading by the pool and did not look up as
he tottered by. This evidently intrigued him. I had deliberately taken
along a copy of Burke's tirade against the French Revolution and held it
so that the colonel could see the title. He stopped in front of me on
his third lurch past and stood weaving from side to side trying to catch
the name. Very slowly and carefully he took out a pair of nose glasses
attached to a long black ribbon which hung across his immaculate shirt
front and frankly stared.

"Very sound philosophy this," I said, looking up. The colonel started to
say something, but gave it up to hiccough slightly behind his flapper.
He was not accustomed to speaking to strangers. Finally he gave in.

"I see you are a gentleman of the old school," he said, very
deliberately and distinctly. "No rubbish. No bolshevism."

"No rubbish, no bolshevism, is my motto, sir," I replied. "I don't know
what the world is coming to."

The colonel started to come over and continue the conversation, but
slipped ever so little on the wet stone and very nearly fell on his
side. This distressed him terribly and he pretended that it was what he
had intended to do all along.

"They keep this walk in shocking condition," he said recovering himself
with magnificent dignity. "Shocking condition. The board of governors
shall hear of this." I took out a flask containing some Scotch which I
had bought in a drug store on the way up (with a doctor's prescription,
of course).

"Could I tempt you, sir?" I asked. Knowing that no penguin would ever
drink from a flask I had also brought along two tall glasses and a
thermos of plain water. The old gentleman's eyes sparkled as I mixed him
a highball. He tucked his glasses away inside his dress waistcoat and
came unsteadily nearer.

"An outrage that gentlemen have to drink on the sly like this," he
mumbled. "I myself am planning to spend the rest of my life in London.
Have relatives there, you know."

I nodded, as if to say that, of course, the whole world knew of the
MacKenzies of London, and handed him his glass. He waited until I had
made one for myself (very deftly leaving out the Scotch) and raised the
glass in military fashion to a point just two inches below his eye.

"The queen, sir!" he said.

"And your very good health, sir," I added.

Col. MacKenzie got his glass to his beak, but no further. The drug store
Scotch assailed his patrician nostrils and he could go no further. In
order not to hurt my feelings he took a very slight sip and then placed
his glass down on the stone beside him. The first part of my experiment
had failed miserably. How could I note the effect of prohibition alcohol
on a highly sensitized mind if the subject would not drink it?

"New York is not what it used to be," I said sadly, trying another tack.

There was a long silence. I thought that maybe the colonel was offended
by my having offered him an inferior grade of liquor. He was weaving
slowly in front of me and adjusting his dress tie. An outburst of rage
was imminent, I feared. Perhaps an apoplexy. I tossed the contents of my
glass into the pool to show him that I, too, had my standards.

"Vile stuff," I said. "I apologize for offering it to you. Now, in the
old days, at the Caf Martin or the Union Club----"

I caught his eye to see if he was mollified. But, instead, of rage
burning there, I saw a film of tears. The old gentleman had broken down
at the thought of the dear, dead days, and was on the point of an
alcoholic fit of crying. Obviously, I could proceed no further with my
tests today.

"Well, I am afraid that I must be going," I said quickly, to cover up
his embarrassment. And, bowing deeply, I turned my back to leave.

"Good-by, young man," said the colonel, thickly. "Will you have dinner
with me at my club one day? I have some rare old Bourbon.... I am most
sorry for this display of emotion.... The old days, you know ... the old
days." And with a hiccough and a bow deeper than mine which very nearly
precipitated him on his head, Col. MacKenzie walked with military
unsteadiness down the edge of the pool and joined his clubmates.

So you see I am in a position to get some very valuable scientific data
from penguins if Harvard or Michigan is interested. The only trouble
will be in keeping the colonel sober enough to react without crying.

* The interesting scientific experiment referred to in this article was
conducted in what is now fondly termed "the bathtub gin era"--a period
many now living will recall.--Editor's Note.


Now that you're Tanned---What?

To the casual crawler over rocks and beaches in recent summers, if he
was at all social-minded, must have come the thought: "To what end all
this epidermis-toasting? What is to become of all these sun-tanned backs
when winter comes?" The entire Atlantic Coast, from Maine to September,
as well as what Mirabeau called "_le bord de la mer_" of the Continent,
has been outlined with a fringe of bodies lying prone in the sun
patiently awaiting pigmentary alteration. If I were to be given one
question on the subject it would be "And for what?"

It isn't as if the process were an easy one to undergo. If you are
really going in for tanning every square inch of your body you have got
to give yourself over to it as old Simeon Stylites gave himself over to
flag-pole sitting. You have got to forswear your friends, your comfort,
your meals, and become a tanner. Anyone who has tried to engage a tanner
in conversation during this period will realize that he or she might
just as well be counted out as far as social intercourse goes. Even if
they hear you, they won't answer, either because their mouths are too
full of sand or their throats are resting on a rock or simply because
they are concentrating so hard on absorbing every one of the sun's rays
that they just don't care.

Then, too, there has come into play an added tanning agent in the form
of unguents and oils of various kinds. These have to be applied before
getting into the oven and some friend has to be called in to get the
stuff well smeared over the small of the back. In places where sand is
the geological basis, this process results in a general coating over the
calves of the legs and elbows resembling that detected on children's
chins in day-coaches after the oranges have been passed around. This
coating is not washed off by bathing and has been known to stick until
the salad course at dinner that night. There are people who do not mind
having small particles of sand on their elbows and the calves of their
legs rubbing against their clothing. I, thank God, am not one of these,
and none of my people before me have ever been.

As this article is dealing only with the personal discomfort to the
tanners themselves, we will say nothing of the trails of oil on the
surface of the water left by swimmers who anointed themselves before
entering, giving the place the appearance of a cove on the East River at
Twenty-third Street. We would mention this, however, if we were taking
up the effects of tanning on the community in general.

Very well, then. We have seen that a lot of people lie around on their
stomachs and hips all summer, with their bathing suits pulled down and
up, cut off from their friends, sustaining rock bruises and sand-rash,
hurting their eyes and softening the backs of their necks, and all in
order to change color on parts of their bodies which, with civilization
as petty as it is today, nobody is ever going to see.

Of course, the ladies can display their backs in evening gowns, but,
with every woman in the room displaying a brown back, the excitement is
somewhat lessened. Even the economist's Theory of Conspicuous Waste will
not work in this case, for a brown back is no sign that its owner has
had the leisure to acquire it at the shore. She may have got it by
fifteen minutes a day under a lamp or by the careful application of
powder that very evening. In the early fall social affairs it is the
lady with the lily-white shoulders who is the sensation.

But it is the gentlemen who really should begin now to plan what they
are going to do in the fall to make up for all the trouble they took
during the summer to change color. Aside from a certain pride in showing
themselves on the beach and having ladies say, "Honestly, Jimmy, I
thought from the back that you were a Negro," theirs must be a
short-lived satisfaction. Presumably by September 20 they all have their
clothes on again, unless they demonstrate reducing-machines in drugstore
windows for a living. At social functions they must appear in formal
evening dress, eager to say to the young lady of their choice, "Would
you like to see my back?," but prevented by such convention as still
remains in polite society. As they look in their mirror each morning and
watch the work of an entire summer blushing unseen and gradually fading
away without causing even so much as an "O-o-o-h, how _brown_ you
are!," they are going to begrudge the hours they spent with their mouths
in the sand or digging their hips into rocks just to do a Narcissus
during the winter.

There are one or two ways in which young gentlemen with left-over tans
can make use of them, but I am not sure whether or not they are
practical. One would be to go to every dance during the winter dressed
as a Greek slave and say, as you enter: "Oh, I thought it was to be
fancy-dress!" Then, even if you are put out, a lot of people will have
seen you and remarked on how brown you are even though evidently stewed.
After going to several dances like this, they may get used to you and
let you come in and play around. Another would be to invite guests to
your house to dinner and while they are assembled waiting for you to
appear, dash in dressed in your underclothes, dashing right out again in
simulated confusion, saying: "For Heaven's sake, why don't you let a
fellow know you're here!" In case they might not have had time to see
your tan, you can trip and fall, taking quite a time to get up. Or
perhaps the best way of all would be, no matter where you are, just to
say: "I would now like to show you the tan I got last summer" and simply
take your clothes off to the point where it isn't funny any more.

Next summer, however, things will probably be different, and we shall
see men and women sitting around under great umbrellas with draperies
hung over their faces and bodies leaving just holes to see through. It
won't make any difference to me either way, as I usually stay indoors
during the summer anyway and very seldom take my clothes off in the
winter.


Sporting Life In America: Dozing

We Americans are a hardy race, and hardy races need a lot of sleep.
"Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleave of care," Shakespeare has
called it, and, except for the fact that it doesn't mean much, it is a
pretty good simile. I often think of it myself just as I am dropping off
into a light doze: "Sleep, that sleeves up the raveled care of ... knit,
that sleeps up the shaveled neeve of pfor--pff-----prpf----orpffif'
_trailing off into a low whistle_).

One of the most charming manifestations of sleep which we, as a nation,
indulge in as a pastime is the Doze. By the Doze I mean those little
snatches of sleep which are caught now and then during the day, usually
with the collar on and choking slightly, with the head inclined coyly to
one side, during which there is a semiconscious attempt to appear as if
we were really awake. It is in this department of sleep that we are
really at our best.

Of course, there is one form of doze which, to the casual observer or
tourist, gives the appearance of legitimate sleep. This is the short
doze, or "quickie," which is taken just after the main awakening in the
morning. The alarm rings, or the Lord High Chamberlain taps us on the
shoulder (in the absence of a chamberlain a relative will do. And right
here I would like to offer for examination that type of sadistic
relative who takes actual delight in awakening people. They hover about
with ghoulish anticipation until the minute arrives when they may
legitimately begin their dirty work, and then, leering unpleasantly,
they shake the sleeper roughly with a "Come, come! Time to get up!" and
wait right there until he is actually out on the cold floor in his bare
feet. There is something radically wrong with such people, and the
sooner they are exposed as pathological cases the better it will be for
the world). I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be nasty about it.

At any rate, we are awakened and look at the clock. There are five
minutes before it is absolutely necessary to get out of bed. If we leave
shaving until night, there might even be fifteen minutes. If we leave
dressing until we get to the office, snatching our clothes from the
chair and carrying them downtown on our arm, there might even be half an
hour more for a good, health-giving nap. Who knows? Perhaps those few
minutes of extra sleep might make us just ten times as efficient during
the day! That is what we must think of--efficiency. We must sacrifice
our petty opinions on the matter and think of the rest of the day and
our efficiency. There is no doubt that fifteen minutes' more sleep would
do wonders for us, no matter how little we really want to take it.

By the time we have finished this line of argument we are out pretty
fairly cold again, but not so cold that we are not conscious of anyone
entering the room. We feel that they are going to say: "Come, come,
don't go back to sleep again!" and we forestall this warning with a
brisk "I know! I know! I'm just thinking!" This is said with one eye
partially open and one tiny corner of the brain functioning. The rest of
our powers add up to a total loss.

It is one of Nature's wonders how a man can carry on an argument with
someone standing beside his bed and still be asleep to all intents and
purposes. Not a very good argument, perhaps, and one in which many
important words are missing or indistinct, but still an argument. It is
an argument, however, which seldom wins, the state of justice in the
world being what it is today.

Dozing before arising does not really come within the range of this
treatise. What we are concerned with are those little lapses when we are
fully dressed, when we fondly believe that no one notices. Riding on a
train, for example.

There is the short-distance doze in a day coach, probably the most
humiliating form of train sleeping. In this the elbow is rested on the
window sill and the head placed in the hand in an attitude of thought.
The glass feels very cool on the forehead and we rest it there, more to
cool off than anything else. The next thing we know the forehead
(carrying the entire head with it) has slid down the length of the
slippery pane and we have received a rather nasty bang against the
woodwork. They shouldn't keep their glass so slippery. A person is
likely to get badly hurt that way.

However, back again goes the forehead against the pane in its original
position, with the hand serving more or less as a buffer, until another
skid occurs, this time resulting in an angry determination to give the
whole thing up entirely and sit up straight in the seat. Some dozers
will take four or five slides without whimpering, going back each time
for more with apparently undiminished confidence in their ability to see
the thing through.

It is a game that you can't beat, however, and the sooner you sit up
straight in your seat, the sooner you will stop banging your head.

Dozing in a Pullman chair is not so dangerous, as one does not have the
risk of the sliding glass to cope with, but it is even less lovely in
its appearance. Here the head is allowed to sink back against the
antimacassar--just for a minute to see if the headrest is really as
comfortable as it seems. It is then but the work of a minute for the
mouth to open slightly and the head to tip roguishly to the right, and
there you are--as pretty a picture as one would care to see. You are
very lucky if, when you come to and look about, you do not find your
neighbors smiling indulgently at some little vagaries of breathing or
eccentricities of facial expression which you have been permitting
yourself.

The game in all this public dozing is to act, on awakening, as if you
had known all along what you were doing. If your neighbors are smiling,
you should smile back, as if to say: "Fooled you that time! You thought
I was asleep, didn't you?"

If they are not quite so rude as to smile, but look quickly back at
their reading on seeing your eyes open, you should assume a brisk,
businesslike expression indicating that you have been thinking out some
weighty business problem with your eyes closed, and, now that you have
at last come on its solution, that it is snap-snap! back to work for
you! If, after a furtive look around, you discover that no one has
caught you at it, then it will do no harm to give it another try, this
time until your collar chokes you into awakening with a strangling gasp.

The collar, however, is not always an impediment to public dozing. In
the theater, for example, a good, stiff dress collar and shirt bosom
have been known to hold the sleeper in an upright position when
otherwise he might have plunged forward and banged his head on the back
of the seat in front.

In my professional capacity as play reviewer I had occasion to
experiment in the various ways of sitting up straight and still
snatching a few winks of health-giving sleep. I found that by far the
safest is to keep one's heavy overcoat on, especially if it is made of
some good, substantial material which will hold a sagging torso erect
within its folds. With a good overcoat, reinforced by a stiff dress
shirt and a high collar, one may even go beyond the dozing stage and
sink into a deep, refreshing slumber, and still not be made conspicuous
by continual lurchings and plungings. Of course, if you are an uneasy
sleeper and given to thrashing about, you will find that even a heavy
overcoat will let you down once in a while. But for the average man, who
holds approximately the same position after he has gone to sleep, I
don't think that this method can go wrong. Its only drawback is that you
are likely to get a little warm along about the middle of the second
act.

If you don't want to wear your overcoat in the theater, the next best
method is to fold the arms across the chest and brace the chin against
the dress collar, exerting a slight upward pressure with the arms
against the shirt front. This, however, can be used only for the
lightest of dozes, as, once unconsciousness has set in, the pressure
relaxes and over you go.

Dozing at a play, however refreshing, makes it a bit difficult to follow
the argument on the stage, as occasionally the nap drags itself out into
a couple of minutes and you awake to find a wholly fresh set of
characters on the scene, or even a wholly fresh scene. This is
confusing. It is therefore wise to have someone along with you who will
alternate watches with you, dozing when you are awake and keeping more
or less alert while you are dozing. In this way you can keep abreast of
what has been happening.

This, unfortunately, is impossible in personal conversations. If you
slip off into a quick coma late some evening when your _vis-a-vis_ is
telling you about South America or a new solvent process, it is usually
pretty difficult to pick up the thread where you dropped it. You may
remember that the last words he was saying were "--which is situated at
the mouth of the Amazon," but that isn't going to help you much if you
come to just as he is asking you: "What would _you_ say are?" As in the
personal-conversation doze the eyes very seldom completely close (it is
more of a turning back of the eyeballs than a closing of the lids) you
may escape detection if you have a ready answer for the emergency. I
find that "Well, I don't know," said very slowly and deliberately, will
fit almost any question that has been asked you. "Yes" and "No" should
never be offered, as they might make you sound even sillier than you
look. If you say: "Well, I--don't--know," it will give you a chance to
collect your wits (what few there are left) and may lead your questioner
into answering the thing himself.

At any rate, it will serve as a stall. If there are other people
present, some one of them is quite likely to come to your rescue and say
something which will tip you off as to the general subject under
discussion. From then on, you will have to fight your own battle. I
can't help you.

The whole problem is one which calls for a great deal of thought. If we
can develop some way in which a man can doze and still keep from making
a monkey of himself, we have removed one of the big obstacles to human
happiness in modern civilization. It goes without saying that we don't
get enough sleep while we are in bed; so we have got to get a little now
and then while we are at work or at play. If we can find some way to
keep the head up straight, the mouth closed, and just enough of the
brain working to answer questions, we have got the thing solved right
there.

I am working on it right now, as a matter of fact, but I find it a
little difficult to keep awake.


The Bathroom Revolution

A firm of what purport to be plumbers (but whom I suspect of being
royalist propagandists trying to get the Bourbon kings back into power
again) once issued a catalogue showing how to make your bathroom look
like the Great Hall at Versailles--or I guess the best way to go about
it would be to make the Great Hall at Versailles look like a bathroom.
No one would have a room that size in his house to start with. And, as
an old bathroom lover, I resent the tone of this pamphlet.

According to these so-called "plumbers," they will come trooping into
your new house--it would have to be a new house, for you never could get
it into your old one--and will install there a "Diocletian bath" (page 4
of the catalogue) which, judging from the colored illustration, is a
room about the size of the tapestry room in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. It has a sunken bathtub, and great mirrors stretch from floor to
ceiling, while over a Roman bench is draped a blue robe suitable for
wrapping up an emperor in.

Or, for milady, there is the "Trianon bath" (page 5) which resembles one
of those French interiors we used to see in the old Biograph pictures
when the movies were young. The bathtub in the "Trianon" arrangement is
so cleverly concealed that a person might go pattering about with his
towel for days among the silk hangings and rococo furniture without ever
finding it at all.

On page 7 we have the "Rcamier bath," which is evidently intended for
formal minuet parties and possibly a royal levee during the season, but
which bears no resemblance to what used to be known as "the bathroom" in
old-fashioned houses of the 1920-'29 period.

The "Petti Palace bath" and the "Flamingo bath," on pages 8 and 9, I
will not attempt to describe, as you would not believe me. Suffice it to
say that the "Petti Palace" bathtub could be used either for bathing in
large groups or for small naval engagements between ships of the third
class.

Now this elaboration of the bathroom is all very well in its way,
provided it does not make us effete as a nation and does not get us into
other old Roman customs of lolling about on couches at our meals and
holding bunches of grapes up over our heads, but, since a revolution in
bathrooms is evidently well on its way, let up hope that too much will
not be sacrificed to magnificence and that taking a bath will be made
such a formal ritual that it can be indulged in only by those who can
trace their ancestry back to the Merovingian kings and have inherited
robes of silk and gold to dress the part in. I know very well that my
old blue towelling bathrobe would never fit in with any room shown in
this catalogue. Rather than enter one of them in my straw slippers and
flannel pajamas I would just take a quick sponge bath in my own room and
let it go at that.

In the first place, it would be hard to heat one of these great halls,
and a bathroom which is not piping hot had better be used to store
trunks in. The only way that I can see to get the "Diocletian bath" fit
for human occupancy on a cold winter's morning would be to have an army
of serfs dragging in monster logs and piling them in a blazing heap in a
fireplace right beside the tub. And who wants an army of serfs popping
in and out of the bathroom when he is bathing? It is difficult enough as
it is now to make people keep the bathroom door shut on a cold morning,
without bringing in a lot of strangers.

And, even with a huge fire blazing, the only part of you to be kept warm
would be the side toward the fireplace, and what good will it do you to
have 10-foot mirrors lining the walls of your bathroom, if, when you get
out of your bath, you are going to have to look at yourself turning blue
under your very eyes? I am not crazy about the mirror idea, anyway, even
in summer. I would prefer to forget, if possible.

The only advantage that I can see to the ballroom-size bathroom on a
cold morning (provided some way can be found to heat it) would be that
one would have more space in which to dress. In the old-fashioned
10-by-12 bathroom there is always a little difficulty in finding a place
to put one's clothes after the mad dash from the cold bedroom with an
armful of the day's garments.

Of course, some of the smarter ones undress in the bathroom the night
before and have time to leave their clothing in neat piles where it can
be easily reached the next morning, but even this foresight does not
cover the getting of clean shirts out of the bureau (a process at which
several people already have frozen to death this winter) or the problem
of keeping the trousers in press overnight. You can't expect trousers to
look like much after they have been draped over a bathtub or left
hanging from the medicine closet door all night.

In the "Petti Palace bath," I must admit, there is room for a complete
wardrobe in which a dozen suits may be hung and a row of bureaus
containing enough clean shirts and under-garments to last the winter. In
fact, if you had the "Petti Palace bath" in your house you could rent
the rest of the rooms out to lodgers and just live in there (and the
adjoining bedroom) until spring came.

One big item which is likely to be overlooked in these monster
bathrooms, however, is the upkeep. The week they are installed they may
be impressive, but it would take a corps of interior decorators to keep
them so, especially if there are children in the family. In a house
where there are small children the bathroom soon takes on the appearance
of the Old Curiosity Shop. In even one small bathroom, when there are
children in the house, one finds rocking horses, milk heaters, tin
soldiers, enormous rubber ducks, odd books, overshoes, and skates, and,
once in a while, reefers and stocking caps belonging to neighbors'
children. Sometimes even the neighbors' children themselves.

Can you imagine what would happen in the "Flamingo bath" with its great
stretches of red lacquer tiling if a family of children were given the
run of it? A man with some idea of taking a bath would have to climb
over miles of electric train tracks and under railroad switches. He most
likely would have to cope with submarines and rubber whales in the
tank-like tub and would be lucky if he got out without a nasty fall on a
slippery floor which had been prepared, and used, as a skating rink.
Instead of a stray tin soldier now and then, he would probably step on a
complete brigade of bayonets, the bath mat being temporarily used as a
tent with an American flag flying from it.

Of course, it may be argued, a house with room enough in it for a
"Flamingo bath" would also be likely to contain a nursery, but, unless
children have changed a lot in the last two or three days, they prefer
the bathroom to the nursery any day as a scene for their activities.
And, unless parents have changed a lot in the same space of time, what
the children want, they get.

The grownups, too, would contribute to the chaos of the dcor. How long
would the "Rcamier bath" look like Mme. Rcamier after daddy had
changed his razor blades six or seven times and had used up all but a
third each of five tubes of tooth paste? There seems to be a common
strain of miserliness in the American people when it comes to throwing
away tooth paste tubes which have a little left in the bottom. I have
seen bathroom shelves piled high with two-thirds used tubes (all without
caps), and a bottle of mouth wash, with maybe an eighth of an inch of
liquid showing, has been known to keep its place beside a fresh bottle
until the fresh bottle is down to an eighth of an inch and, in turn,
takes its place beside a new one. It is only when the door of the
medicine closet refuses to shut, or the whole shelfful of old aluminum
topples over into the wash basin that a general cleaning out is
instigated. (I am not speaking of my own bathroom shelf. That is kept
very neat. I refer to the bathroom shelves in other houses.)

Just as a detail, but one which is quite important to a successful
bathroom regime, I should like to know what provision is made in these
luxurious and sensual bath palaces for such minor items as the recovery
of lost tooth paste tube caps. If they have solved this problem, they
may justify themselves. The fact that so many capless tubes are seen
lying about in people's bathrooms is due to the fact that the caps are,
at that moment, lodged in the spout of the wash basin. I don't know what
the capacity of the average spout for tube caps is, but I know, by
actual count, that there are nine in mine right now. I used to claw them
up after they had slipped out of my hand and gone down the vent. I could
see them peeking up at me, just about a quarter of an inch below the
rim, and have sometimes spent 15 or 20 minutes trying to hook them out
with a tooth brush or razor blade (razor blades are not to be
recommended as tube cap hooks, however, owing to the danger of leaving a
piece of finger in the spout with the cap).

But I am older now, and more cynical, and, after the first frantic
manoeuvres to catch the cap before it rolls out of sight, I give the
whole thing up and go on calmly brushing my teeth. I have other things
to do. But it does seem as if these royalist plumbers who have gone to
such lengths to make the bathroom a menace to our homespun civilization
at least might have worked out some way of avoiding this common
catastrophe.

Just one more word about the menace of these patrician pools. What will
be their logical effect on guest towels? If, in our modest little
white-tiled bathrooms, it has been necessary to make the guest towel a
semi-rigid, highly glazed bit of vivid tapestry in order to impress the
guests, what will have to be done to make it show up in a room which is
already a treasure chamber of bijouterie and a royal riot of color? The
ordinary towels for family use will have to be at least as elaborate and
showy as guest towels are today. What is there left in magnificence for
guest towelling? Nothing, that I can see, but spun gold with ermine
fringes, or perhaps small sheets of strung jewels glittering in the
light of a concealed and highly colored bulb. Well, no one will ever use
them anyway, any more than they do today.

If I ever to succumb to the Louis XIV instinct in me (and make enough
money) and do have one of the "Diocletian baths" installed in that great
big new house I shall build, there will be a secret door, hidden behind
a rare tapestry, to which I alone will have the key. Behind it I will
have built a nice, small, warm, white-tiled bathroom, with good brown
coarse towels and a sponge, and a tub into which I can get and read with
comfort. Any kings or princes or motion-picture actors that I have out
for the week-end may use the other.


"What Shall We Say?"

I don't want to be an alarmist--oh, what do I care? Sure, I'll be an
alarmist, and will point out that the more literate sections of our
country are today on the verge of an epidemic of brain-fag which
threatens to plunge us into a national mental collapse. [*]

"What!" you will say. "An epidemic of brain-fag which threatens to
plunge us into a national mental collapse? Man, you are mad!" I will
show you how mad I am.

Go into any telegraph office in any one of our larger cities and, at
three out of the six desks reserved for customers (two of which are
equipped with chained pencils, one of which has a point), you will see
people sitting with their heads in their hands obviously going through a
critical period of mental _accouchement_. They write out messages, tear
them up, gnaw at their knuckles, write out more messages and tear them
up. Perhaps there will be two or three grouped about one desk, each one
making occasional feverish suggestions which seem to die on their lips
with the uttering. The atmosphere is one of complete human frustration
and the very air vibrates with mental waves beating themselves out
against the walls.

These people are trying to compose original and funny telegrams to their
friends. They are breathlessly trying to keep up with a movement which
has gained such force in the past few years as to oppress even the
casual sender of wires and to sweep the pioneer wags who started it over
the hill to the madhouse. About the only citizens who can go right into
a telegraph office, write out their messages, and turn them in without
losing great handfuls of hair in their composition are those who are
sending messages of condolence, and it won't be long before some comic
starts the fashion of making even these facetious, probably with one to
the bereaved reading: "What are you doing day after tomorrow?"

A little group of merrymakers get together for dinner and, along about
the potato-chip course, someone suggests: "We ought to send a wire to
Eddie!" This seems a bully idea at the time. Eddie would so love to be
there, and will get such a good laugh out of a kidding telegram from his
old pals. They laugh just to think of how Eddie will laugh. So a
telegraph pad is sent for, and someone who has a pencil starts out by
writing Eddie's name and address in very large, plain letters at the
top. What shall we say?"

At this point, the dinner is abandoned, all digestive processes are
halted in mid-air, and the gay little group settles down to the serious
business of thinking up a funny telegram for Eddie.

No one wants to start suggesting, for fear that his suggestions won't be
funny enough. The man with the pencil writes out something tentatively,
but decides before submitting it that it won't do. So he tears up that
blank and writes Eddie's name and address again.

"How about saying: 'Have just found a piece of food in the dinner. What
shall we do?'," someone suggests faintly.

Several of the more polite ones laugh without feeling, but no move is
made to write it down. Its sponsor blushes and retires.

"How about this?" (a fatal prelude to any suggestion): "'Cross marks our
room. Wish you were here.?"

Not even the polite ones laugh at this. It is withdrawn hastily. There
is a long silence. The man with the pencil has been making another stab
at it by himself, and proceeds to read off what he has written:

"'Don't let any----? No, I guess that isn't very funny." And he tears up
the blank in embarrassment.

Deep depression settles over the group and the clock ticks gloomily.
Everyone is trying to think of something comical and everyone is rapidly
losing caste with himself and with the rest of the party. What once was
a bright little extemporaneous dinner has solidified into a Regents'
examination period. The whole thing finally breaks up by sending a wire
to Eddie reading: "How ARE YOU KID?,?" with nobody satisfied, including
Eddie, who doesn't know whom it is from.

This dispiriting procedure is repeated, either in groups or singly,
every time anyone sails for Europe, takes a train to California
(catching the traveler at Albany, Rochester, Chicago, and Albuquerque
with telegrams of progressive hilarity is an art so fine as to be
practically extinct), or, for those whose acquaintance includes mimes
and mountebanks, every time a new play opens.

Telegrams to opening nights are in a class by themselves. They must be
good, because they are likely to be displayed on the dressing-room
mirror of the recipient during the run of the play. They must be
different, because these people check up. And they must be frequent, as
the average life of a play today is four hours. The whole thing has
become a nightmare.

Thus we find that not only is the national brain-fibre rapidly wearing
itself out, but most of the fun of dining, travelling, and opening is
being dimmed by the constant obligation of being funny about it in ten
words. My suggestion would be that the Western Union add to its
collection of readymade greetings for Christmas, Easter, Yom Kippur, and
Childbirth a printed form including twenty excruciating telegrams to be
sent "just for the fun of it," and twenty even more excruciating ones to
be sent in reply.

Either this, or begin all over again and go back to the old way of just
saying: "Bon Voyage," "Good Luck," or, better yet, sending no telegram
at all.

* Since this telling article was written, circumstances have removed the
threat to our national well--being that so justifiably aroused Mr.
Benchley's concern.--Editor's Note.


A Vanishing Art

Somehow I have a feeling that, no matter how far out of work I may be, I
shall never be able to make my living by putting little ships into glass
bottles. There must be some people who do, for one is constantly seeing
bottled ships in store windows. I never could quite figure out just what
kind of store it was that would feature a ship in a bottle as a window
display, but as there is usually an 18th-century highboy and a pair of
bellows alongside the bottle, it can't be one of the more essential
emporia. I guess that you would just call it a "ship-in-bottle store."

However, the fact that putting little ships into bottles is not a useful
trade is not the reason why I would not go in for it. Look at what I am
doing now! No, the reason for my eschewing that form of gainful activity
is simply that I haven't the slightest idea how it is done. And I doubt
if I ever could learn.

I have often tried to figure it out while standing, on a busy day in my
own trade, in front of a ship-in-bottle store. Is it possible that the
tiny ship is made and rigged and set up and then the glass blown around
it? Blowing glass in itself is enough of a mystery to me without having
it complicated by having to blow it around a ship. I rather doubt if
that is the way the thing is done.

The only other solution is that the bottle is already blown and the ship
is made inside the bottle. This, too, sounds implausible. Some sort of
man or woman (or very dexterous child) has got to make the ship, and you
can't tell me that any one, no matter how small, can get right inside
one of those bottles and build a ship. I may get a funny, vacant look in
my eyes once in a while, and I may not be very good at adding up my
check stubs, but I'm no fool. Nobody makes those ships from the inside
out.

This leaves what? Nothing! Either the ship is made first or the bottle
is made first. The hole in the neck of the bottle is not large enough to
allow for a full-rigged ship being let down through it. You can tell
that at a glance. There is nothing left except for the ponderer to go
crazy. I have tried that, too.

I once tracked a ship-in-bottle putter to his workshop and tried to find
out how he worked it. I was spending the summer on the Atlantic coast
(sometimes here and sometimes there, mostly a compromise between the
two) and in an old Cape Cod antique shop I saw one of the accursed
things. I went into the shop and asked the old lady (don't let her know
I called her an "old lady," please) who had made it. She, with that old
New England cordiality which has made that section of the country the
flourishing centre it now is, left the room without answering me. But I
found out from a customer (a summer resident who came from Wisconsin)
that a gentleman who lived in the white house down by the steamship dock
had wrought this wonder. So I set out in search of him.

His name was Capt. Whipple and he was 167 years old, although he lied
about his age and claimed to be only 160.

"Cap'n," I said (from now on I shall spell the title "Captain," but you
must remember that what I really said was "Cap'n"), "Captain, how in
(naming a certain flower) do you put those little ships into those
bottles?" A fair question, and deserving of a fair answer.

The captain whittled a piece from his calloused thumb and spat
reflectively. "Wal," he said (from now on I shall spell the words as
they should be spelled, without reference to the Cape Cod
pronunciation), "Well, it's a long story."

Going back to my hotel and getting a chair, I drew it up beside the old
gentleman, all attention. "Shoot, kid!" I said.

The seafaring man took the stub of a pencil and began figuring on the
back of the original of a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Martha Custis
(a little scandal which has never come to light, but which, while it
lasted, was a peach). Then he looked up at me with his little, watery
blue eyes aglint.

"You're from New York, ain't you?" he asked. I blushed prettily.

"It will cost you just $500 to know," he said. "And, at that, I am
cheating myself."

I thought it over. Five hundred dollars to learn how to put a ship in a
bottle, when the chances were that I never would be called upon to put
anything into a bottle, much less a ship. And even if, at some time or
other, I should be faced with the necessity, I could always plead a
headache or the fact that I had no ship with me at the moment. So I took
an old Revolutionary cradle which was standing nearby and placed it
firmly over the old gentleman's head until nothing was visible of him
above his shoulders. On this I piled several pewter candlesticks, a
spinning wheel, and a portrait of Gen. Howe. This done, I left the
ancient mariner and artisan with his secret.

The main trouble, however, with taking up ship-in-bottle putting as a
trade (aside from the difficulty of finding out how it is done) would
seem to be that it doesn't offer much opportunity for advancement to a
young man. You can't get ahead very fast. Suppose you do learn how to do
it and serve an apprenticeship to some expert ship-in-bottle putter for
five years. You are then promoted to head of the bottling department.
What is there left? You are as far as you can go, unless you start in
for yourself. And I should imagine that the consumer demand for ships in
bottles would be soon exhausted in any one community, with very little
turn-over.

One is reminded (and, let us be quite frank about it, when I say "one is
reminded" I mean "I am reminded")[1] of the business troubles of the man
who polished the commemorative brass cannon in Ypsilanti, Mich. (I have
always heard that it was Ypsilanti, Mich., but I am willing to retract
if it is not true.) It seems that the residents of Ypsilanti, Mich.,
shortly after the Civil War decided that some sort of monument or
_denkmal_ should be placed in a public square to remind future
generations of Michigan's part in the great struggle. So a large brass
commemorative cannon was placed on the common (if there is a common in
Ypsilanti) and a veteran of the war was engaged, at a nominal salary, to
keep this cannon in good condition. He was to polish it twice a week and
see that small boys did not hide in it. Aside from this, his time was
his own.

This business routine went on for 25 years. The veteran was faithful at
his task of polishing the commemorative brass cannon and its splendor
and shining surface were the admiration of every one who visited
Ypsilanti, Mich., during those 25 years, to say nothing of the natives.
"The commemorative brass cannon of Ypsilanti, Mich.," became a byword
throughout the state for expressing how shiny a commemorative brass
cannon could be made.

One evening, during the veteran's 26th year of service, he came home to
supper at his usual hour (4:30), but his wife noticed that he was more
depressed than was his wont. He hardly touched his food, and sat in
moody contemplation of the backs of his polish-stained hands. His wife
was worried.

"What is it, Joe?" she asked. "What is the matter?"

"Oh, nothing, my dear," said her husband, and turned in a brave attempt
to finish his cutlet.

"Come, come," said the companion of his 25 years of labor (he had
married immediately on getting the job of polishing the commemorative
brass cannon), "I know that something is wrong. You are depressed."

The gray-haired man put down his knife and looked his wife in the eye.

"You're right," he said, as he took her hand in his.

"I am depressed. Things haven't been going very well down at the cannon
lately."

"You don't mean that you're fired, Joe!" she said, fearfully.

"No, no! Never fear about that," was his reply. "They couldn't fire me.
I know too much. They would be afraid that I might make trouble. But I
am discouraged about my work. I don't seem to be getting ahead. For 25
years I have been polishing that cannon and putting everything that I
had into making it bright and shiny. I have done my job well--no one can
deny that. But recently I have got to thinking. What is it leading to?
Where am I getting? Where is the future in polishing commemorative brass
cannons?" And the old man broke down and cried.

His wife was silent for a minute. Then she stroked his head and said: "I
know, Joe. I have worried a little myself. And I have figured it out
this way. In the last 25 years we have saved a little money. I have put
aside a dollar here and a dollar there when you didn't know about it. We
have quite a tidy little nest egg in the bank now, and here is my
suggestion: Let's take that money, buy a cannon, and go into business
for ourselves!"

Such, I should think, would be the problem which would confront every
middle-aged man who finds himself, the age of 55, a putter-in-bottles of
little ships. What is the future of such work? Even if he goes into
business for himself like the polisher of the commemorative brass cannon
of Ypsilanti, Mich., how can he meet competition? Of course, he can vary
the types of ships he puts into the bottles. The old, square-rigged
merchantman having gone out of date, he could put in models of the
_Bremen_ or destroyers, but, with all this talk of naval reduction
going on, dealing in battleships and destroyers is a pretty precarious
business. [2]

England pleads that her navy has been more than an engine of war during
the last two centuries, that it has been a career for the finest of her
young men. She naturally recoils from any proposition which would
eliminate such patrician employment. But what about those unfortunates
who find themselves with no models for bottle-putting? These artisans
must either stick to the old clipper ships which their grandfathers put
in bottles, or put in battleships which may be, in a few years, against
the law. Of course, they could begin putting in models of reapers and
binders, or of printing presses, or any of the other thousand-and-two
engines of peace, but that really wouldn't be right. It has got to be a
ship if the old tradition is to be maintained.

And so, to all young men who are going out into the world to make their
living, I would say: "Think twice before you go in for putting little
ships in bottles. That is, unless you are planning to spend a lot of
your time in jail, where time hangs heavy."

I suppose that I shall get a lot of indignant letters from the trade for
issuing this advice. But it comes from the heart.

1 The author is indebted to Mr. "Terry" McGovern of Cornell University
for the following business fable.

2 This article was obviously written on the eve of that benighted era
when nations were busily engaged in sinking not each other's ships, as
the custom is today, but--oddly enough--their own.----Editor's Note.




[End of Benchley Beside Himself, by Robert Benchley]
