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Title: Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
Date of first publication: 1915
Place and date of edition used as base for this ebook:
  Toronto: S. B. Gundy, 1915 (First Edition)
Author: Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)
Date first posted: 24 October 2007
Date last updated: 24 October 2007
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #30

Project Gutenberg US (gutenberg.org) produced a Text edition
of this book [Ebook #4064] in 2003.  This original ebook has now
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This ebook was produced by: Marcia Brooks




Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy




BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

BEHIND THE BEYOND

NONSENSE NOVELS

LITERARY LAPSES

SUNSHINE SKETCHES

ARCADIAN ADVENTURES
WITH THE IDLE RICH

THE MARIONETTES' CALENDAR
AND ENGAGEMENT BOOK
1916
_With Drawings by A. H. Fish_




MOONBEAMS FROM THE LARGER LUNACY

BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

AUTHOR OF "NONSENSE NOVELS," "ARCADIAN ADVENTURES WITH THE IDLE RICH,"
"BEHIND THE BEYOND," ETC....


TORONTO S. B. GUNDY NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
MCMXV

Copyright, 1915, BY JOHN LANE COMPANY

Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company New York, U. S. A.




PREFACE


The prudent husbandman, after having taken from his field all the straw
that is there, rakes it over with a wooden rake and gets as much again.
The wise child, after the lemonade jug is empty, takes the lemons from
the bottom of it and squeezes them into a still larger brew. So does the
sagacious author, after having sold his material to the magazines and
been paid for it, clap it into book-covers and give it another squeeze.
But in the present case the author is of a nice conscience and anxious
to place responsibility where it is due. He therefore wishes to make all
proper acknowledgments to the editors of _Vanity Fair, The American
Magazine, The Popular Magazine, Life, Puck, The Century, Methuen's
Annual_, and all others who are in any way implicated in the making of
this book.

STEPHEN LEACOCK.

McGill University,
Montreal.
Oct. 1, 1915.




CONTENTS


   I SPOOF: A Thousand-Guinea Novel
  II THE READING PUBLIC
 III AFTERNOON ADVENTURES AT MY CLUB
      1--The Anecdotes of Dr. So and So
      2--The Shattered Health of Mr. Podge
      3--The Amazing Travels of Mr. Yarner
      4--The Spiritual Outlook of Mr. Doomer
      5--The Reminiscences of Mr. Apricot
      6--The Last Man Out of Europe
      7--The War Mania of Mr. Jinks and Mr. Blinks
      8--The Ground Floor
      9--The Hallucination of Mr. Butt
  IV RAM SPUDD
   V ARISTOCRATIC ANECDOTES
  VI EDUCATION MADE AGREEABLE
 VII AN EVERY-DAY EXPERIENCE
VIII TRUTHFUL ORATORY
  IX OUR LITERARY BUREAU
   X SPEEDING UP BUSINESS
  XI WHO IS ALSO WHO
 XII PASSIONATE PARAGRAPHS
XIII WEEJEE THE PET DOG
 XIV SIDELIGHTS ON THE SUPERMEN
  XV THE SURVIVAL or THE FITTEST
 XVI THE FIRST NEWSPAPER
XVII IN THE GOOD TIME AFTER THE WAR


[Transcriber's Note: Produced from the original etext #4064 produced by
Gardner Buchanan Added and fixed missing italics]




_SPOOF. A SAMPLE OF A THOUSAND-GUINEA NOVEL._




_I--Spoof. A Thousand-Guinea Novel. New! Fascinating! Perplexing!_




CHAPTER I


Readers are requested to note that this novel has taken our special
prize of a cheque for a thousand guineas. This alone guarantees for all
intelligent readers a palpitating interest in every line of it. Among
the thousands of MSS. which reached us--many of them coming in carts
early in the morning, and moving in a dense phalanx, indistinguishable
from the Covent Garden Market waggons; others pouring down our
coal-chute during the working hours of the day; and others again being
slipped surreptitiously into our letter-box by pale, timid girls,
scarcely more than children, after nightfall (in fact many of them came
in their night-gowns),--this manuscript alone was the sole one--in fact
the only one--to receive the prize of a cheque of a thousand guineas. To
other competitors we may have given, inadvertently perhaps, a bag of
sovereigns or a string of pearls, but to this story alone is awarded the
first prize by the unanimous decision of our judges.

When we say that the latter body included two members of the Cabinet,
two Lords of the Admiralty, and two bishops, with power in case of
dispute to send all the MSS. to the Czar of Russia, our readers will
breathe a sigh of relief to learn that the decision was instant and
unanimous. Each one of them, in reply to our telegram, answered
immediately SPOOF.

This novel represents the last word in up-to-date fiction. It is well
known that the modern novel has got far beyond the point of mere
story-telling. The childish attempt to INTEREST the reader has long
since been abandoned by all the best writers. They refuse to do it. The
modern novel must convey a message, or else it must paint a picture, or
remove a veil, or open a new chapter in human psychology. Otherwise it
is no good. SPOOF does all of these things. The reader rises from its
perusal perplexed, troubled, and yet so filled with information that
rising itself is a difficulty.

We cannot, for obvious reasons, insert the whole of the first chapter.
But the portion here presented was praised by _The Saturday Afternoon
Review_ as giving one of the most graphic and at the same time realistic
pictures of America ever written in fiction.

Of the characters whom our readers are to imagine seated on the deck--on
one of the many decks (all connected by elevators)--of the _Gloritania_,
one word may be said. Vere de Lancy is (as the reviewers have under oath
declared) a typical young Englishman of the upper class. He is nephew to
the Duke of--, but of this fact no one on the ship, except the captain,
the purser, the steward, and the passengers are, or is, aware.

In order entirely to conceal his identity, Vere de Lancy is travelling
under the assumed name of Lancy de Vere. In order the better to hide the
object of his journey, Lancy de Vere (as we shall now call him, though
our readers will be able at any moment to turn his name backwards) has
given it to be understood that he is travelling merely as a gentleman
anxious to see America. This naturally baffles all those in contact with
him.

The girl at his side--but perhaps we may best let her speak for herself.

       *       *       *       *       *

Somehow as they sat together on the deck of the great steamer in the
afterglow of the sunken sun, listening to the throbbing of the propeller
(a rare sound which neither of them of course had ever heard before), de
Vere felt that he must speak to her. Something of the mystery of the
girl fascinated him. What was she doing here alone with no one but her
mother and her maid, on the bosom of the Atlantic? Why was she here? Why
was she not somewhere else? The thing puzzled, perplexed him. It would
not let him alone. It fastened upon his brain. Somehow he felt that if
he tried to drive it away, it might nip him in the ankle.

In the end he spoke.

"And you, too," he said, leaning over her deck-chair, "are going to
America?"

He had suspected this ever since the boat left Liverpool. Now at length
he framed his growing conviction into words.

"Yes," she assented, and then timidly, "it is 3,213 miles wide, is it
not?"

"Yes," he said, "and 1,781 miles deep! It reaches from the forty-ninth
parallel to the Gulf of Mexico."

"Oh," cried the girl, "what a vivid picture! I seem to see it."

"Its major axis," he went on, his voice sinking almost to a caress, "is
formed by the Rocky Mountains, which are practically a prolongation of
the Cordilleran Range. It is drained," he continued----

"How splendid!" said the girl.

"Yes, is it not? It is drained by the Mississippi, by the St. Lawrence,
and--dare I say it?--by the Upper Colorado."

Somehow his hand had found hers in the half gloaming, but she did not
check him.

"Go on," she said very simply; "I think I ought to hear it."

"The great central plain of the interior," he continued, "is formed by a
vast alluvial deposit carried down as silt by the Mississippi. East of
this the range of the Alleghenies, nowhere more than eight thousand feet
in height, forms a secondary or subordinate axis from which the
watershed falls to the Atlantic."

He was speaking very quietly but earnestly. No man had ever spoken to
her like this before.

"What a wonderful picture!" she murmured half to herself, half aloud,
and half not aloud and half not to herself.

"Through the whole of it," de Vere went on, "there run railways, most of
them from east to west, though a few run from west to east. The
Pennsylvania system alone has twenty-one thousand miles of track."

"Twenty-one thousand miles," she repeated; already she felt her will
strangely subordinate to his.

He was holding her hand firmly clasped in his and looking into her face.

"Dare I tell you," he whispered, "how many employees it has?"

"Yes," she gasped, unable to resist.

"A hundred and fourteen thousand," he said.

There was silence. They were both thinking. Presently she spoke,
timidly.

"Are there any cities there?"

"Cities!" he said enthusiastically, "ah, yes! let me try to give you a
word-picture of them. Vast cities--with tall buildings, reaching to the
very sky. Why, for instance, the new Woolworth Building in New York----"

"Yes, yes," she broke in quickly, "how high is it?"

"Seven hundred and fifty feet."

The girl turned and faced him.

"Don't," she said. "I can't bear it. Some other time, perhaps, but not
now."

She had risen and was gathering up her wraps. "And you," she said, "why
are you going to America?"

"Why?" he answered. "Because I want to see, to know, to learn. And when
I have learned and seen and known, I want other people to see and to
learn and to know. I want to write it all down, all the vast palpitating
picture of it. Ah! if I only could--I want to see" (and here he passed
his hand through his hair as if trying to remember) "something of the
relations of labour and capital, of the extraordinary development of
industrial machinery, of the new and intricate organisation of
corporation finance, and in particular I want to try to analyse--no one
has ever done it yet--the men who guide and drive it all. I want to set
down the psychology of the multimillionaire!"

He paused. The girl stood irresolute. She was thinking (apparently, for
if not, why stand there?).

"Perhaps," she faltered, "I could help you."

"You!"

"Yes, I might." She hesitated. "I--I--come from America."

"You!" said de Vere in astonishment. "With a face and voice like yours!
It is impossible!"

The boldness of the compliment held her speechless for a moment.

"I do," she said; "my people lived just outside of Cohoes."

"They couldn't have," he said passionately.

"I shouldn't speak to you like this," the girl went on, "but it's
because I feel from what you have said that you know and love America.
And I think I can help you."

"You mean," he said, divining her idea, "that you can help me to meet a
multimillionaire?"

"Yes," she answered, still hesitating.

"You know one?"

"Yes," still hesitating, "I know _one_."

She seemed about to say more, her lips had already opened, when suddenly
the dull raucous blast of the foghorn (they used a raucous one on this
ship on purpose) cut the night air. Wet fog rolled in about them,
wetting everything.

The girl shivered.

"I must go," she said; "good night."

For a moment de Vere was about to detain her. The wild thought leaped to
his mind to ask her her name or at least her mother's. With a powerful
effort he checked himself.

"Good night," he said.

She was gone.


CHAPTER II

Limits of space forbid the insertion of the whole of this chapter. Its
opening contains one of the most vivid word-pictures of the inside of an
American customs house ever pictured in words. From the customs wharf de
Vere is driven in a taxi to the Belmont. Here he engages a room; here,
too, he sleeps; here also, though cautiously at first, he eats. All this
is so admirably described that only those who have driven in a taxi to
an hotel and slept there can hope to appreciate it.

Limits of space also forbid our describing in full de Vere's vain quest
in New York of the beautiful creature whom he had met on the steamer and
whom he had lost from sight in the aigrette department of the customs
house. A thousand times he cursed his folly in not having asked her
name.

Meanwhile no word comes from her, till suddenly, mysteriously,
unexpectedly, on the fourth day a note is handed to de Vere by the Third
Assistant Head Waiter of the Belmont. It is addressed in a lady's hand.
He tears it open. It contains only the written words, "_Call on Mr. J.
Superman Overgold. He is a multimillionaire. He expects you_."

To leap into a taxi (from the third story of the Belmont) was the work
of a moment. To drive to the office of Mr. Overgold was less. The
portion of the novel which follows is perhaps the most notable part of
it. It is this part of the chapter which the _Hibbert Journal_ declares
to be the best piece of psychological analysis that appears in any novel
of the season. We reproduce it here.

"Exactly, exactly," said de Vere, writing rapidly in his note-book as he
sat in one of the deep leather armchairs of the luxurious office of Mr.
Overgold. "So you sometimes feel as if the whole thing were not worth
while."

"I do," said Mr. Overgold. "I can't help asking myself what it all
means. Is life, after all, merely a series of immaterial phenomena,
self-developing and based solely on sensation and reaction, or is it
something else?"

He paused for a moment to sign a cheque for $10,000 and throw it out of
the window, and then went on, speaking still with the terse brevity of a
man of business.

"Is sensation everywhere or is there perception too? On what grounds, if
any, may the hypothesis of a self-explanatory consciousness be rejected?
In how far are we warranted in supposing that innate ideas are
inconsistent with pure materialism?"

De Vere listened, fascinated. Fortunately for himself, he was a
University man, fresh from the examination halls of his Alma Mater. He
was able to respond at once.

"I think," he said modestly, "I grasp your thought. You mean--to what
extent are we prepared to endorse Hegel's dictum of immaterial
evolution?"

"Exactly," said Mr. Overgold. "How far, if at all, do we substantiate
the Kantian hypothesis of the transcendental?"

"Precisely," said de Vere eagerly. "And for what reasons [naming them]
must we reject Spencer's theory of the unknowable?"

"Entirely so," continued Mr. Overgold. "And why, if at all, does
Bergsonian illusionism differ from pure nothingness?"

They both paused.

Mr. Overgold had risen. There was great weariness in his manner.

"It saddens one, does it not?" he said.

He had picked up a bundle of Panama two per cent gold bonds and was
looking at them in contempt.

"The emptiness of it all!" he muttered. He extended the bonds to de
Vere.

"Do you want them," he said, "or shall I throw them away?"

"Give them to me," said de Vere quietly; "they are not worth the
throwing."

"No, no," said Mr. Overgold, speaking half to himself, as he replaced
the bonds in his desk. "It is a burden that I must carry alone. I have
no right to ask any one to share it. But come," he continued, "I fear I
am sadly lacking in the duties of international hospitality. I am
forgetting what I owe to Anglo-American courtesy. I am neglecting the
new obligations of our common Indo-Chinese policy. My motor is at the
door. Pray let me take you to my house to lunch."

De Vere assented readily, telephoned to the Belmont not to keep lunch
waiting for him, and in a moment was speeding up the magnificent
Riverside Drive towards Mr. Overgold's home. On the way Mr. Overgold
pointed out various objects of interest,--Grant's tomb, Lincoln's tomb,
Edgar Allan Poe's grave, the ticket office of the New York Subway, and
various other points of historic importance.

On arriving at the house, de Vere was ushered up a flight of broad
marble steps to a hall fitted on every side with almost priceless
_objets d'art_ and others, ushered to the cloak-room and out of it,
butlered into the lunch-room and footmanned to a chair.

As they entered, a lady already seated at the table turned to meet them.

One glance was enough--plenty.

It was she--the object of de Vere's impassioned quest. A rich lunch-gown
was girdled about her with a twelve-o'clock band of pearls.

She reached out her hand, smiling.

"Dorothea," said the multimillionaire, "this is Mr. de Vere. Mr. de
Vere--my wife."


CHAPTER III

Of this next chapter we need only say that the _Blue Review_ (Adults
Only) declares it to be the most daring and yet conscientious handling
of the sex-problem ever attempted and done. The fact that the
_Congregational Times_ declares that this chapter will undermine the
whole foundations of English Society and let it fall, we pass over: we
hold certificates in writing from a great number of the Anglican clergy,
to the effect that they have carefully read the entire novel and see
nothing in it.

       *       *       *       *       *

They stood looking at one another.

"So you didn't know," she murmured.

In a flash de Vere realised that she hadn't known that he didn't know
and knew now that he knew.

He found no words.

The situation was a tense one. Nothing but the woman's innate tact could
save it. Dorothea Overgold rose to it with the dignity of a queen.

She turned to her husband.

"Take your soup over to the window," she said, "and eat it there."

The millionaire took his soup to the window and sat beneath a little
palm tree, eating it.

"You didn't know," she repeated.

"No," said de Vere; "how could I?"

"And yet," she went on, "you loved me, although you didn't know that I
was married?"

"Yes," answered de Vere simply. "I loved you, in spite of it."

"How splendid!" she said.

There was a moment's silence. Mr. Overgold had returned to the table,
the empty plate in his hand. His wife turned to him again with the same
unfailing tact.

"Take your asparagus to the billiard-room," she said, "and eat it
there."

"Does he know, too?" asked de Vere.

"Mr. Overgold?" she said carelessly. "I suppose he does. _Eh aprs, mon
ami_?"

French? Another mystery! Where and how had she learned it? de Vere asked
himself. Not in France, certainly.

"I fear that you are very young, _amico mio_," Dorothea went on
carelessly. "After all, what is there wrong in it, _piccolo pochito_? To
a man's mind perhaps--but to a woman, love is love."

She beckoned to the butler.

"Take Mr. Overgold a cutlet to the music-room," she said, "and give him
his gorgonzola on the inkstand in the library."

"And now," she went on, in that caressing way which seemed so natural to
her, "don't let us think about it any more! After all, what is is, isn't
it?"

"I suppose it is," said de Vere, half convinced in spite of himself.

"Or at any rate," said Dorothea, "nothing can at the same time both be
and not be. But come," she broke off, gaily dipping a macaroon in a
glass of _crme de menthe_ and offering it to him with a pretty gesture
of camaraderie, "don't let's be gloomy any more. I want to take you with
me to the matinee."

"Is he coming?" asked de Vere, pointing at Mr. Overgold's empty chair.

"Silly boy," laughed Dorothea. "Of course John is coming. You surely
don't want to buy the tickets yourself."

       *       *       *       *       *

The days that followed brought a strange new life to de Vere.

Dorothea was ever at his side. At the theatre, at the polo ground, in
the park, everywhere they were together. And with them was Mr. Overgold.

The three were always together. At times at the theatre Dorothea and de
Vere would sit downstairs and Mr. Overgold in the gallery; at other
times, de Vere and Mr. Overgold would sit in the gallery and Dorothea
downstairs; at times one of them would sit in Row A, another in Row B,
and a third in Row C; at other times two would sit in Row B and one in
Row C; at the opera, at times, one of the three would sit listening, the
others talking, at other times two listening and one talking, and at
other times three talking and none listening.

Thus the three formed together one of the most perplexing, maddening
triangles that ever disturbed the society of the metropolis.

       *       *       *       *       *

The denouement was bound to come.

It came.

It was late at night.

De Vere was standing beside Dorothea in the brilliantly lighted hall of
the Grand Palaver Hotel, where they had had supper. Mr. Overgold was
busy for a moment at the cashier's desk.

"Dorothea," de Vere whispered passionately, "I want to take you away,
away from all this. I want you."

She turned and looked him full in the face. Then she put her hand in
his, smiling bravely.

"I will come," she said.

"Listen," he went on, "the _Gloritania_ sails for England to-morrow at
midnight. I have everything ready. Will you come?"

"Yes," she answered, "I will"; and then passionately, "Dearest, I will
follow you to England, to Liverpool, to the end of the earth."

She paused in thought a moment and then added.

"Come to the house just before midnight. William, the second chauffeur
(he is devoted to me), shall be at the door with the third car. The
fourth footman will bring my things--I can rely on him; the fifth
housemaid can have them all ready--she would never betray me. I will
have the undergardener--the sixth--waiting at the iron gate to let you
in; he would die rather than fail me."

She paused again--then she went on.

"There is only one thing, dearest, that I want to ask. It is not much. I
hardly think you would refuse it at such an hour. May I bring my husband
with me?"

De Vere's face blanched.

"Must you?" he said.

"I think I must," said Dorothea. "You don't know how I've grown to
value, to lean upon, him. At times I have felt as if I always wanted him
to be near me; I like to feel wherever I am--at the play, at a
restaurant, anywhere--that I can reach out and touch him. I know," she
continued, "that it's only a wild fancy and that others would laugh at
it, but you can understand, can you not--_carino caruso mio_? And think,
darling, in our new life, how busy he, too, will be--making money for
all of us--in a new money market. It's just wonderful how he does it."

A great light of renunciation lit up de Vere's face.

"Bring him," he said.

"I knew that you would say that," she murmured, "and listen, _pochito_
pocket-edition, may I ask one thing more, one weeny thing? William, the
second chauffeur--I think he would fade away if I were gone--may I bring
him, too? Yes! O my darling, how can I repay you? And the second
footman, and the third housemaid--if I were gone I fear that none
of----"

"Bring them all," said de Vere half bitterly; "we will all elope
together."

And as he spoke Mr. Overgold sauntered over from the cashier's desk, his
open purse still in his hand, and joined them. There was a dreamy look
upon his face.

"I wonder," he murmured, "whether personality survives or whether it,
too, when up against the irresistible, dissolves and resolves itself
into a series of negative reactions?"

De Vere's empty heart echoed the words.

Then they passed out and the night swallowed them up.


CHAPTER IV

At a little before midnight on the next night, two motors filled with
muffled human beings might have been perceived, or seen, moving
noiselessly from Riverside Drive to the steamer wharf where lay the
_Gloritania_.

A night of intense darkness enveloped the Hudson. Outside the inside of
the dockside a dense fog wrapped the Statue of Liberty. Beside the
steamer customs officers and deportation officials moved silently to and
fro in long black cloaks, carrying little deportation lanterns in their
hands.

To these Mr. Overgold presented in silence his deportation certificates,
granting his party permission to leave the United States under the
imbecility clause of the Interstate Commerce Act.

No objection was raised.

A few moments later the huge steamer was slipping away in the darkness.

On its deck a little group of people, standing beside a pile of
first-class cabin luggage, directed a last sad look through their heavy
black disguise at the rapidly vanishing shore which they could not see.

De Vere, who stood in the midst of them, clasping their hands, thus
stood and gazed his last at America.

"_Spoof_!" he said.

(We admit that this final panorama, weird in its midnight mystery, and
filling the mind of the reader with a sense of something like awe, is
only appended to _Spoof_ in order to coax him to read our forthcoming
sequel, _Spiff_!)




_THE READING PUBLIC_




_II--The Reading Public. A Book Store Study_


"Wish to look about the store? Oh, oh, by all means, sir," he said. Then
as he rubbed his hands together in an urbane fashion he directed a
piercing glance at me through his spectacles.

"You'll find some things that might interest you," he said, "in the back
of the store on the left. We have there a series of reprints--_Universal
Knowledge from Aristotle to Arthur Balfour_--at seventeen cents. Or
perhaps you might like to look over the _Pantheon of Dead Authors_ at
ten cents. Mr. Sparrow," he called, "just show this gentleman our
classical reprints--the ten-cent series."

With that he waved his hand to an assistant and dismissed me from his
thought.

In other words, he had divined me in a moment. There was no use in my
having bought a sage-green fedora in Broadway, and a sporting tie done
up crosswise with spots as big as nickels. These little adornments can
never hide the soul within. I was a professor, and he knew it, or at
least, as part of his business, he could divine it on the instant.

The sales manager of the biggest book store for ten blocks cannot be
deceived in a customer. And he knew, of course, that, as a professor, I
was no good. I had come to the store, as all professors go to book
stores, just as a wasp comes to an open jar of marmalade. He knew that I
would hang around for two hours, get in everybody's way, and finally buy
a cheap reprint of the _Dialogues of Plato_, or the _Prose Works of John
Milton_, or _Locke on the Human Understanding_, or some trash of that
sort.

As for real taste in literature--the ability to appreciate at its worth
a dollar-fifty novel of last month, in a spring jacket with a tango
frontispiece--I hadn't got it and he knew it.

He despised me, of course. But it is a maxim of the book business that a
professor standing up in a corner buried in a book looks well in a
store. The real customers like it.

So it was that even so up-to-date a manager as Mr. Sellyer tolerated my
presence in a back corner of his store: and so it was that I had an
opportunity of noting something of his methods with his real
customers--methods so successful, I may say, that he is rightly looked
upon by all the publishing business as one of the mainstays of
literature in America.

I had no intention of standing in the place and listening as a spy. In
fact, to tell the truth, I had become immediately interested in a new
translation of the _Moral Discourses of Epictetus_. The book was very
neatly printed, quite well bound and was offered at eighteen cents; so
that for the moment I was strongly tempted to buy it, though it seemed
best to take a dip into it first.

I had hardly read more than the first three chapters when my attention
was diverted by a conversation going on in the front of the store.

"You're quite sure it's his _latest_?" a fashionably dressed lady was
saying to Mr. Sellyer.

"Oh, yes, Mrs. Rasselyer," answered the manager. "I assure you this is
his very latest. In fact, they only came in yesterday."

As he spoke, he indicated with his hand a huge pile of books, gayly
jacketed in white and blue. I could make out the title in big gilt
lettering--_GOLDEN DREAMS_.

"Oh, yes," repeated Mr. Sellyer. "This is Mr. Slush's latest book. It's
having a wonderful sale."

"That's all right, then," said the lady. "You see, one sometimes gets
taken in so: I came in here last week and took two that seemed very
nice, and I never noticed till I got home that they were both old books,
published, I think, six months ago."

"Oh, dear me, Mrs. Rasselyer," said the manager in an apologetic tone,
"I'm extremely sorry. Pray let us send for them and exchange them for
you."

"Oh, it does not matter," said the lady; "of course I didn't read them.
I gave them to my maid. She probably wouldn't know the difference,
anyway."

"I suppose not," said Mr. Sellyer, with a condescending smile. "But of
course, madam," he went on, falling into the easy chat of the
fashionable bookman, "such mistakes are bound to happen sometimes. We
had a very painful case only yesterday. One of our oldest customers came
in in a great hurry to buy books to take on the steamer, and before we
realised what he had done--selecting the books I suppose merely by the
titles, as some gentlemen are apt to do--he had taken two of last year's
books. We wired at once to the steamer, but I'm afraid it's too late."

"But now, this book," said the lady, idly turning over the leaves, "is
it good? What is it about?"

"It's an extremely _powerful_ thing," said Mr. Sellyer, "in fact,
_masterly_. The critics are saying that it's perhaps _the_ most powerful
book of the season. It has a----" and here Mr. Sellyer paused, and
somehow his manner reminded me of my own when I am explaining to a
university class something that I don't know myself--"It has
a--a--_power_, so to speak--a very exceptional power; in fact, one may
say without exaggeration it is the most _powerful_ book of the month.
Indeed," he added, getting on to easier ground, "it's having a perfectly
wonderful sale."

"You seem to have a great many of them," said the lady.

"Oh, we have to," answered the manager. "There's a regular rush on the
book. Indeed, you know it's a book that is bound to make a sensation. In
fact, in certain quarters, they are saying that it's a book that ought
not to----" And here Mr. Sellyer's voice became so low and ingratiating
that I couldn't hear the rest of the sentence.

"Oh, really!" said Mrs. Rasselyer. "Well, I think I'll take it then. One
ought to see what these talked-of things are about, anyway."

She had already begun to button her gloves, and to readjust her feather
boa with which she had been knocking the Easter cards off the counter.
Then she suddenly remembered something.

"Oh, I was forgetting," she said. "Will you send something to the house
for Mr. Rasselyer at the same time? He's going down to Virginia for the
vacation. You know the kind of thing he likes, do you not?"

"Oh, perfectly, madam," said the manager. "Mr. Rasselyer generally reads
works of--er--I think he buys mostly books on--er----"

"Oh, travel and that sort of thing," said the lady.

"Precisely. I think we have here," and he pointed to the counter on the
left, "what Mr. Rasselyer wants."

He indicated a row of handsome books--"_Seven Weeks in the Sahara_,
seven dollars; _Six Months in a Waggon_, six-fifty net; _Afternoons in
an Oxcart_, two volumes, four-thirty, with twenty off."

"I think he has read those," said Mrs. Rasselyer. "At least there are a
good many at home that seem like that."

"Oh, very possibly--but here, now, _Among the Cannibals of Corfu_--yes,
that I think he has had--_Among the_--that, too, I think--but this I am
certain he would like, just in this morning--_Among the Monkeys of New
Guinea_--ten dollars, net."

And with this Mr. Sellyer laid his hand on a pile of new books,
apparently as numerous as the huge pile of _Golden Dreams._

"_Among the Monkeys_," he repeated, almost caressingly.

"It seems rather expensive," said the lady.

"Oh, very much so--a most expensive book," the manager repeated in a
tone of enthusiasm. "You see, Mrs. Rasselyer, it's the illustrations,
actual photographs"--he ran the leaves over in his fingers--"of actual
monkeys, taken with the camera--and the paper, you notice--in fact,
madam, the book costs, the mere manufacture of it, nine dollars and
ninety cents--of course we make no profit on it. But it's a book we like
to handle."

Everybody likes to be taken into the details of technical business; and
of course everybody likes to know that a bookseller is losing money.
These, I realised, were two axioms in the methods of Mr. Sellyer.

So very naturally Mrs. Rasselyer bought _Among the Monkeys_, and in
another moment Mr. Sellyer was directing a clerk to write down an
address on Fifth Avenue, and was bowing deeply as he showed the lady out
of the door.

As he turned back to his counter his manner seemed much changed.

"That Monkey book," I heard him murmur to his assistant, "is going to be
a pretty stiff proposition."

But he had no time for further speculation.

Another lady entered.

This time even to an eye less trained than Mr. Sellyer's, the deep,
expensive mourning and the pensive face proclaimed the sentimental
widow.

"Something new in fiction," repeated the manager, "yes, madam--here's a
charming thing--_Golden Dreams_"--he hung lovingly on the words--"a very
sweet story, singularly sweet; in fact, madam, the critics are saying it
is the sweetest thing that Mr. Slush has done."

"Is it good?" said the lady. I began to realise that all customers asked
this.

"A charming book," said the manager. "It's a love story--very simple and
sweet, yet wonderfully charming. Indeed, the reviews say it's the most
charming book of the month. My wife was reading it aloud only last
night. She could hardly read for tears."

"I suppose it's quite a safe book, is it?" asked the widow. "I want it
for my little daughter."

"Oh, quite safe," said Mr. Sellyer, with an almost parental tone, "in
fact, written quite in the old style, like the dear old books of the
past--quite like"--here Mr. Sellyer paused with a certain slight haze of
doubt visible in his eye--"like Dickens and Fielding and Sterne and so
on. We sell a great many to the clergy, madam."

The lady bought _Golden Dreams_, received it wrapped up in green
enameled paper, and passed out.

"Have you any good light reading for vacation time?" called out the next
customer in a loud, breezy voice--he had the air of a stock broker
starting on a holiday.

"Yes," said Mr. Sellyer, and his face almost broke into a laugh as he
answered, "here's an excellent thing--_Golden Dreams_--quite the most
humorous book of the season--simply screaming--my wife was reading it
aloud only yesterday. She could hardly read for laughing."

"What's the price, one dollar? One-fifty. All right, wrap it up." There
was a clink of money on the counter, and the customer was gone. I began
to see exactly where professors and college people who want copies of
Epictetus at 18 cents and sections of _World Reprints of Literature_ at
12 cents a section come in, in the book trade.

"Yes, Judge!" said the manager to the next customer, a huge, dignified
personage in a wide-awake hat, "sea stories? Certainly. Excellent
reading, no doubt, when the brain is overcharged as yours must be. Here
is the very latest--_Among the Monkeys of New Guinea_, ten dollars,
reduced to four-fifty. The manufacture alone costs six-eighty. We're
selling it out. Thank you, Judge. Send it? Yes. Good morning."

After that the customers came and went in a string. I noticed that
though the store was filled with books--ten thousand of them, at a
guess--Mr. Sellyer was apparently only selling two. Every woman who
entered went away with _Golden Dreams_: every man was given a copy of
the _Monkeys of New Guinea_. To one lady _Golden Dreams_ was sold as
exactly the reading for a holiday, to another as the very book to read
_after_ a holiday; another bought it as a book for a rainy day, and a
fourth as the right sort of reading for a fine day. The Monkeys was sold
as a sea story, a land story, a story of the jungle, and a story of the
mountains, and it was put at a price corresponding to Mr. Sellyer's
estimate of the purchaser.

At last after a busy two hours, the store grew empty for a moment.

"Wilfred," said Mr. Sellyer, turning to his chief assistant, "I am going
out to lunch. Keep those two books running as hard as you can. We'll try
them for another day and then cut them right out. And I'll drop round to
Dockem & Discount, the publishers, and make a kick about them, and see
what they'll do."

I felt that I had lingered long enough. I drew near with the _Epictetus_
in my hand.

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Sellyer, professional again in a moment.
"_Epictetus_? A charming thing. Eighteen cents. Thank you. Perhaps we
have some other things there that might interest you. We have a few
second-hand things in the alcove there that you might care to look at.
There's an _Aristotle_, two volumes--a very fine thing--practically
illegible, that you might like: and a _Cicero_ came in yesterday--very
choice--damaged by damp--and I think we have a _Machiavelli_, quite
exceptional--practically torn to pieces, and the covers gone--a very
rare old thing, sir, if you're an expert."

"No, thanks," I said. And then from a curiosity that had been growing in
me and that I couldn't resist, "That book--_Golden Dreams_," I said,
"you seem to think it a very wonderful work?"

Mr. Sellyer directed one of his shrewd glances at me. He knew I didn't
want to buy the book, and perhaps, like lesser people, he had his off
moments of confidence.

He shook his head.

"A bad business," he said. "The publishers have unloaded the thing on
us, and we have to do what we can. They're stuck with it, I understand,
and they look to us to help them. They're advertising it largely and may
pull it off. Of course, there's just a chance. One can't tell. It's just
possible we may get the church people down on it and if so we're all
right. But short of that we'll never make it. I imagine it's perfectly
rotten."

"Haven't you read it?" I asked.

"Dear me, no!" said the manager. His air was that of a milkman who is
offered a glass of his own milk. "A pretty time I'd have if I tried to
_read_ the new books. It's quite enough to keep track of them without
that."

"But those people," I went on, deeply perplexed, "who bought the book.
Won't they be disappointed?"

Mr. Sellyer shook his head. "Oh, no," he said; "you see, they won't
_read_ it. They never do."

"But at any rate," I insisted, "your wife thought it a fine story."

Mr. Sellyer smiled widely.

"I am not married, sir," he said.




_AFTERNOON ADVENTURES AT MY CLUB_




1.--_The Anecdotes of Dr. So and So_


That is not really his name. I merely call him that from his manner of
talking.

His specialty is telling me short anecdotes of his professional life
from day to day.

They are told with wonderful dash and power, except for one slight
omission, which is, that you never know what the doctor is talking
about. Beyond this, his little stories are of unsurpassed interest--but
let me illustrate.

       *       *       *       *       *

He came into the semi-silence room of the club the other day and sat
down beside me.

"Have something or other?" he said.

"No, thanks," I answered.

"Smoke anything?" he asked.

"No, thanks."

The doctor turned to me. He evidently wanted to talk.

"I've been having a rather peculiar experience," he said. "Man came to
me the other day--three or four weeks ago--and said, 'Doctor, I feel out
of sorts. I believe I've got so and so.' 'Ah,' I said, taking a look at
him, 'been eating so and so, eh?' 'Yes,' he said. 'Very good,' I said,
'take so and so.'

"Well, off the fellow went--I thought nothing of it--simply wrote such
and such in my note-book, such and such a date, symptoms such and
such--prescribed such and such, and so forth, you understand?"

"Oh, yes, perfectly, doctor," I answered.

"Very good. Three days later--a ring at the bell in the evening--my
servant came to the surgery. 'Mr. So and So is here. Very anxious to see
you.' 'All right!' I went down. There he was, with every symptom of so
and so written all over him--every symptom of it--this and this and
this----"

"Awful symptoms, doctor," I said, shaking my head.

"Are they not?" he said, quite unaware that he hadn't named any. "There
he was with every symptom, heart so and so, eyes so and so, pulse
this--I looked at him right in the eye and I said--'Do you want me to
tell you the truth?' 'Yes,' he said. 'Very good,' I answered, 'I will.
You've got so and so.' He fell back as if shot. 'So and so!' he
repeated, dazed. I went to the sideboard and poured him out a drink of
such and such. 'Drink this,' I said. He drank it. 'Now,' I said, 'listen
to what I say: You've got so and so. There's only one chance,' I said,
'you must limit your eating and drinking to such and such, you must
sleep such and such, avoid every form of such and such--I'll give you a
cordial, so many drops every so long, but mind you, unless you do so and
so, it won't help you.' 'All right, very good.' Fellow promised. Off he
went."

The doctor paused a minute and then resumed:

"Would you believe it--two nights later, I saw the fellow--after the
theatre, in a restaurant--whole party of people--big plate of so and so
in front of him--quart bottle of so and so on ice--such and such and so
forth. I stepped over to him--tapped him on the shoulder: 'See here,' I
said, 'if you won't obey my instructions, you can't expect me to treat
you.' I walked out of the place."

"And what happened to him?" I asked.

"Died," said the doctor, in a satisfied tone. "Died. I've just been
filling in the certificate: So and so, aged such and such, died of so
and so!"

"An awful disease," I murmured.




2.--_The Shattered Health of Mr. Podge_


"How are you, Podge?" I said, as I sat down in a leather armchair beside
him.

I only meant "How-do-you-do?" but he rolled his big eyes sideways at me
in his flabby face (it was easier than moving his face) and he answered:

"I'm not as well to-day as I was yesterday afternoon. Last week I was
feeling pretty good part of the time, but yesterday about four o'clock
the air turned humid, and I don't feel so well."

"Have a cigarette?" I said.

"No, thanks; I find they affect the bronchial toobes."

"Whose?" I asked.

"Mine," he answered.

"Oh, yes," I said, and I lighted one. "So you find the weather trying,"
I continued cheerfully.

"Yes, it's too humid. It's up to a saturation of sixty-six. I'm all
right till it passes sixty-four. Yesterday afternoon it was only about
sixty-one, and I felt fine. But after that it went up. I guess it must
be a contraction of the epidermis pressing on some of the sebaceous
glands, don't you?"

"I'm sure it is," I said. "But why don't you just sleep it off till it's
over?"

"I don't like to sleep too much," he answered. "I'm afraid of it
developing into hypersomnia. There are cases where it's been known to
grow into a sort of lethargy that pretty well stops all brain action
altogether--"

"That would be too bad," I murmured. "What do you do to prevent it?"

"I generally drink from half to three-quarters of a cup of black coffee,
or nearly black, every morning at from eleven to five minutes past, so
as to keep off hypersomnia. It's the best thing, the doctor says."

"Aren't you afraid," I said, "of its keeping you awake?"

"I am," answered Podge, and a spasm passed over his big yellow face.
"I'm always afraid of insomnia. That's the worst thing of all. The other
night I went to bed about half-past ten, or twenty-five minutes
after,--I forget which,--and I simply couldn't sleep. I couldn't. I read
a magazine story, and I still couldn't; and I read another, and still I
couldn't sleep. It scared me bad."

"Oh, pshaw," I said; "I don't think sleep matters as long as one eats
properly and has a good appetite."

He shook his head very dubiously. "I ate a plate of soup at lunch," he
said, "and I feel it still."

"You _feel_ it!"

"Yes," repeated Podge, rolling his eyes sideways in a pathetic fashion
that he had, "I still feel it. I oughtn't to have eaten it. It was some
sort of a bean soup, and of course it was full of nitrogen. I oughtn't
to touch nitrogen," he added, shaking his head.

"Not take any nitrogen?" I repeated.

"No, the doctor--both doctors--have told me that. I can eat starches,
and albumens, all right, but I have to keep right away from all carbons
and nitrogens. I've been dieting that way for two years, except that now
and again I take a little glucose or phosphates."

"That must be a nice change," I said, cheerfully.

"It is," he answered in a grateful sort of tone.

There was a pause. I looked at his big twitching face, and listened to
the heavy wheezing of his breath, and I felt sorry for him.

"See here, Podge," I said, "I want to give you some good advice."

"About what?"

"About your health."

"Yes, yes, do," he said. Advice about his health was right in his line.
He lived on it.

"Well, then, cut out all this fool business of diet and drugs and
nitrogen. Don't bother about anything of the sort. Forget it. Eat
everything you want to, just when you want it. Drink all you like. Smoke
all you can--and you'll feel a new man in a week."

"Say, do you think so!" he panted, his eyes filled with a new light.

"I know it," I answered. And as I left him I shook hands with a warm
feeling about my heart of being a benefactor to the human race.

Next day, sure enough, Podge's usual chair at the club was empty.

"Out getting some decent exercise," I thought. "Thank Heaven!"

Nor did he come the next day, nor the next, nor for a week.

"Leading a rational life at last," I thought. "Out in the open getting a
little air and sunlight, instead of sitting here howling about his
stomach."

The day after that I saw Dr. Slyder in black clothes glide into the club
in that peculiar manner of his, like an amateur undertaker.

"Hullo, Slyder," I called to him, "you look as solemn as if you had been
to a funeral."

"I have," he said very quietly, and then added, "poor Podge!"

"What about him?" I asked with sudden apprehension.

"Why, he died on Tuesday," answered the doctor. "Hadn't you heard?
Strangest case I've known in years. Came home suddenly one day, pitched
all his medicines down the kitchen sink, ordered a couple of cases of
champagne and two hundred havanas, and had his housekeeper cook a dinner
like a Roman banquet! After being under treatment for two years! Lived,
you know, on the narrowest margin conceivable. I told him and Silk told
him--we all told him--his only chance was to keep away from every form
of nitrogenous ultra-stimulants. I said to him often, 'Podge, if you
touch heavy carbonized food, you're lost.'"

"Dear me," I thought to myself, "there _are_ such things after all!"

"It was a marvel," continued Slyder, "that we kept him alive at all.
And, of course"--here the doctor paused to ring the bell to order two
Manhattan cocktails--"as soon as he touched alcohol he was done."

So that was the end of the valetudinarianism of Mr. Podge.

I have always considered that I killed him.

       *       *       *       *       *

But anyway, he was a nuisance at the club.




3.--_The Amazing Travels of Mr. Yarner_


There was no fault to be found with Mr. Yarner till he made his trip
around the world.

It was that, I think, which disturbed his brain and unfitted him for
membership in the club.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Well," he would say, as he sat ponderously down with the air of a man
opening an interesting conversation, "I was just figuring it out that
eleven months ago to-day I was in Pekin."

"That's odd," I said, "I was just reckoning that eleven days ago I was
in Poughkeepsie."

"They don't call it Pekin over there," he said. "It's sounded
Pei-Chang."

"I know," I said, "it's the same way with Poughkeepsie, they pronounce
it P'Keepsie."

"The Chinese," he went on musingly, "are a strange people."

"So are the people in P'Keepsie," I added, "awfully strange."

That kind of retort would sometimes stop him, but not always. He was
especially dangerous if he was found with a newspaper in his hand;
because that meant that some item of foreign intelligence had gone to
his brain.

Not that I should have objected to Yarner describing his travels. Any
man who has bought a ticket round the world and paid for it, is entitled
to that.

But it was his manner of discussion that I considered unpermissible.

Last week, for example, in an unguarded moment I fell a victim. I had
been guilty of the imprudence--I forget in what connection--of speaking
of lions. I realized at once that I had done wrong--lions, giraffes,
elephants, rickshaws and natives of all brands, are topics to avoid in
talking with a traveller.

"Speaking of lions," began Yarner.

He was right, of course; I _had_ spoken of lions.

"--I shall never forget," he went on (of course, I knew he never would),
"a rather bad scrape I got into in the up-country of Uganda. Imagine
yourself in a wild, rolling country covered here and there with kwas
along the sides of the nullahs."

I did so.

"Well," continued Yarner, "we were sitting in our tent one hot
night--too hot to sleep--when all at once we heard, not ten feet in
front of us, the most terrific roar that ever came from the throat of a
lion."

As he said this Yarner paused to take a gulp of bubbling whiskey and
soda and looked at me so ferociously that I actually shivered.

Then quite suddenly his manner cooled down in the strangest way, and his
voice changed to a commonplace tone as he said,--

"Perhaps I ought to explain that we hadn't come up to the up-country
looking for big game. In fact, we had been down in the down country with
no idea of going higher than Mombasa. Indeed, our going even to Mombasa
itself was more or less an afterthought. Our first plan was to strike
across from Aden to Singapore. But our second plan was to strike direct
from Colombo to Karuchi--"

"And what was your _third_ plan?" I asked.

"Our third plan," said Yarner deliberately, feeling that the talk was
now getting really interesting, "let me see, our third plan was to cut
across from Socotra to Tananarivo."

"Oh, yes," I said.

"However, all that was changed, and changed under the strangest
circumstances. We were sitting, Gallon and I, on the piazza of the Galle
Face Hotel in Colombo--you know the Galle Face?"

"No, I do not," I said very positively.

"Very good. Well, I was sitting on the piazza watching a snake charmer
who was seated, with a boa, immediately in front of me.

"Poor Gallon was actually within two feet of the hideous reptile. All of
a sudden the beast whirled itself into a coil, its eyes fastened with
hideous malignity on poor Gallon, and with its head erect it emitted the
most awful hiss I have heard proceed from the mouth of any living
snake."

Here Yarner paused and took a long, hissing drink of whiskey and soda:
and then as the malignity died out of his face--

"I should explain," he went on, very quietly, "that Gallon was not one
of our original party. We had come down to Colombo from Mongolia, going
by the Pekin Hankow and the Nippon Yushen Keisha."

"That, I suppose, is the best way?" I said.

"Yes. And oddly enough but for the accident of Gallon joining us, we
should have gone by the Amoy, Cochin, Singapore route, which was our
first plan. In fact, but for Gallon we should hardly have got through
China at all. The Boxer insurrection had taken place only fourteen years
before our visit, so you can imagine the awful state of the country.

"Our meeting with Gallon was thus absolutely providential. Looking back
on it, I think it perhaps saved our lives. We were in Mongolia (this,
you understand, was before we reached China), and had spent the night at
a small _Yak_ about four versts from Kharbin, when all of a sudden, just
outside the miserable hut that we were in, we heard a perfect fusillade
of shots followed immediately afterwards by one of the most
blood-curdling and terrifying screams I have ever imagined--"

"Oh, yes," I said, "and that was how you met Gallon. Well, I must be
off."

And as I happened at that very moment to be rescued by an incoming
friend, who took but little interest in lions, and even less in Yarner,
I have still to learn why the lion howled so when it met Yarner. But
surely the lion had reason enough.




4.--_The Spiritual Outlook of Mr. Doomer_


One generally saw old Mr. Doomer looking gloomily out of the windows of
the library of the club. If not there, he was to be found staring sadly
into the embers of a dying fire in a deserted sitting-room.

His gloom always appeared out of place as he was one of the richest of
the members.

But the cause of it,--as I came to know,--was that he was perpetually
concerned with thinking about the next world. In fact he spent his whole
time brooding over it.

I discovered this accidentally by happening to speak to him of the
recent death of Podge, one of our fellow members.

"Very sad," I said, "Podge's death."

"Ah," returned Mr. Doomer, "very shocking. He was quite unprepared to
die."

"Do you think so?" I said, "I'm awfully sorry to hear it."

"Quite unprepared," he answered. "I had reason to know it as one of his
executors,--everything is confusion,--nothing signed,--no proper power
of attorney,--codicils drawn up in blank and never witnessed,--in short,
sir, no sense apparently of the nearness of his death and of his duty to
be prepared.

"I suppose," I said, "poor Podge didn't realise that he was going to
die."

"Ah, that's just it," resumed Mr. Doomer with something like sternness,
"a man _ought_ to realise it. Every man ought to feel that at any
moment,--one can't tell when,--day or night,--he may be called upon to
meet his,"--Mr. Doomer paused here as if seeking a phrase--"to meet his
Financial Obligations, face to face. At any time, sir, he may be hurried
before the Judge,--or rather his estate may be,--before the Judge of the
probate court. It is a solemn thought, sir. And yet when I come here I
see about me men laughing, talking, and playing billiards, as if there
would never be a day when their estate would pass into the hands of
their administrators and an account must be given of every cent."

"But after all," I said, trying to fall in with his mood, "death and
dissolution must come to all of us."

"That's just it," he said solemnly. "They've dissolved the tobacco
people, and they've dissolved the oil people and you can't tell whose
turn it may be next."

Mr. Doomer was silent a moment and then resumed, speaking in a tone of
humility that was almost reverential.

"And yet there is a certain preparedness for death, a certain fitness to
die that we ought all to aim at. Any man can at least think solemnly of
the Inheritance Tax, and reflect whether by a contract inter vivos drawn
in blank he may not obtain redemption; any man if he thinks death is
near may at least divest himself of his purely speculative securities
and trust himself entirely to those gold bearing bonds of the great
industrial corporations whose value will not readily diminish or pass
away." Mr. Doomer was speaking with something like religious rapture.

"And yet what does one see?" he continued. "Men affected with fatal
illness and men stricken in years occupied still with idle talk and
amusements instead of reading the financial newspapers,--and at the last
carried away with scarcely time perhaps to send for their brokers when
it is already too late."

"It is very sad," I said.

"Very," he repeated, "and saddest of all, perhaps, is the sense of the
irrevocability of death and the changes that must come after it."

We were silent a moment.

"You think of these things a great deal, Mr. Doomer?" I said.

"I do," he answered. "It may be that it is something in my temperament,
I suppose one would call it a sort of spiritual mindedness. But I think
of it all constantly. Often as I stand here beside the window and see
these cars go by"--he indicated a passing street car--"I cannot but
realise that the time will come when I am no longer a managing director
and wonder whether they will keep on trying to hold the dividend down by
improving the rolling stock or will declare profits to inflate the
securities. These mysteries beyond the grave fascinate me, sir. Death is
a mysterious thing. Who for example will take my seat on the Exchange?
What will happen to my majority control of the power company? I shudder
to think of the changes that may happen after death in the assessment of
my real estate."

"Yes," I said, "it is all beyond our control, isn't it?"

"Quite," answered Mr. Doomer; "especially of late years one feels that,
all said and done, we are in the hands of a Higher Power, and that the
State Legislature is after all supreme. It gives one a sense of
smallness. It makes one feel that in these days of drastic legislation
with all one's efforts the individual is lost and absorbed in the
controlling power of the state legislature. Consider the words that are
used in the text of the Income Tax Case, Folio Two, or the text of the
Trans-Missouri Freight Decision, and think of the revelation they
contain."

I left Mr. Doomer still standing beside the window, musing on the vanity
of life and on things, such as the future control of freight rates, that
lay beyond the grave.

I noticed as I left him how broken and aged he had come to look. It
seemed as if the chafings of the spirit were wearing the body that
harboured it.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was about a month later that I learned of Mr. Doomer's death.

Dr. Slyder told me of it in the club one afternoon, over two cocktails
in the sitting-room.

"A beautiful bedside," he said, "one of the most edifying that I have
ever attended. I knew that Doomer was failing and of course the time
came when I had to tell him.

"'Mr. Doomer,' I said, 'all that I, all that any medical can do for you
is done; you are going to die. I have to warn you that it is time for
other ministrations than mine.'

"'Very good,' he said faintly but firmly, 'send for my broker.'

"They sent out and fetched Jarvis,--you know him I think,--most
sympathetic man and yet most business-like--he does all the firm's
business with the dying,--and we two sat beside Doomer holding him up
while he signed stock transfers and blank certificates.

"Once he paused and turned his eyes on Jarvis. 'Read me from the text of
the State Inheritance Tax Statute,' he said. Jarvis took the book and
read aloud very quietly and simply the part at the beginning--'Whenever
and wheresoever it shall appear,' down to the words, 'shall be no longer
a subject of judgment or appeal but shall remain in perpetual
possession.'

"Doomer listened with his eyes closed. The reading seemed to bring him
great comfort. When Jarvis ended he said with a sign, 'That covers it.
I'll put my faith in that.' After that he was silent a moment and then
said: 'I wish I had already crossed the river. Oh, to have already
crossed the river and be safe on the other side.' We knew what he meant.
He had always planned to move over to New Jersey. The inheritance tax is
so much more liberal.

"Presently it was all done.

"'There,' I said, 'it is finished now.'

"'No,' he answered, 'there is still one thing. Doctor, you've been very
good to me. I should like to pay your account now without it being a
charge on the estate. I will pay it as'--he paused for a moment and a
fit of coughing seized him, but by an effort of will he found the power
to say--'cash.'

"I took the account from my pocket (I had it with me, fearing the
worst), and we laid his cheque-book before him on the bed. Jarvis
thinking him too faint to write tried to guide his hand as he filled in
the sum. But he shook his head.

"'The room is getting dim,' he said. 'I can see nothing but the
figures.'

"'Never mind,' said Jarvis,--much moved, 'that's enough.'

"'Is it four hundred and thirty?' he asked faintly.

"'Yes,' I said, and I could feel the tears rising in my eyes, 'and fifty
cents.'

"After signing the cheque his mind wandered for a moment and he fell to
talking, with his eyes closed, of the new federal banking law, and of
the prospect of the reserve associations being able to maintain an
adequate gold supply.

"Just at the last he rallied.

"'I want,' he said in quite a firm voice, 'to do something for both of
you before I die.'

"'Yes, yes,' we said.

"'You are both interested, are you not,' he murmured, 'in City
Traction?'

"'Yes, yes,' we said. We knew of course that he was the managing
director.

"He looked at us faintly and tried to speak.

"'Give him a cordial,' said Jarvis. But he found his voice.

"'The value of that stock,' he said, 'is going to take a sudden--'

"His voice grew faint.

"'Yes, yes,' I whispered, bending over him (there were tears in both our
eyes), 'tell me is it going up, or going down?'

"'It is going'--he murmured,--then his eyes closed--'it is going--'

"'Yes, yes,' I said, 'which?'

"'It is going'--he repeated feebly and then, quite suddenly he fell back
on the pillows and his soul passed. And we never knew which way it was
going. It was very sad. Later on, of course, after he was dead, we knew,
as everybody knew, that it went down."




5.--_The Reminiscences of Mr. Apricot_


"Rather a cold day, isn't it?" I said as I entered the club.

The man I addressed popped his head out from behind a newspaper and I
saw it was old Mr. Apricot. So I was sorry that I had spoken.

"Not so cold as the winter of 1866," he said, beaming with benevolence.

He had an egg-shaped head, bald, with some white hair fluffed about the
sides of it. He had a pink face with large blue eyes, behind his
spectacles, benevolent to the verge of imbecility.

"Was that a cold winter?" I asked.

"Bitter cold," he said. "I have never told you, have I, of my early
experiences in life?"

"I think I have heard you mention them," I murmured, but he had already
placed a detaining hand on my sleeve. "Sit down," he said. Then he
continued: "Yes, it was a cold winter. I was going to say that it was
the coldest I have ever experienced, but that might be an exaggeration.
But it was certainly colder than any winter that _you_ have ever seen,
or that we ever have now, or are likely to have. In fact the winters
_now_ are a mere nothing,"--here Mr. Apricot looked toward the club
window where the driven snow was beating in eddies against the
panes,--"simply nothing. One doesn't feel them at all,"--here he turned
his eyes towards the glowing fire that flamed in the open fireplace.
"But when I was a boy things were very different. I have probably never
mentioned to you, have I, the circumstances of my early life?"

He had, many times. But he had turned upon me the full beam of his
benevolent spectacles and I was too weak to interrupt.

"My father," went on Mr. Apricot, settling back in his chair and
speaking with a far-away look in his eyes, "had settled on the banks of
the Wabash River----"

"Oh, yes, I know it well," I interjected.

"Not as it was _then_," said Mr. Apricot very quickly. "At present as
you, or any other thoughtless tourist sees it, it appears a broad river
pouring its vast flood in all directions. At the time I speak of it was
a mere stream scarcely more than a few feet in circumference. The life
we led there was one of rugged isolation and of sturdy self-reliance and
effort such as it is, of course, quite impossible for _you_, or any
other member of this club to understand,--I may give you some idea of
what I mean when I say that at that time there was no town nearer to
Pittsburgh than Chicago, or to St. Paul than Minneapolis----"

"Impossible!" I said.

Mr. Apricot seemed not to notice the interruption.

"There was no place nearer to Springfield than St. Louis," he went on in
a peculiar sing-song voice, "and there was nothing nearer to Denver than
San Francisco, nor to New Orleans than Rio Janeiro----"

He seemed as if he would go on indefinitely.

"You were speaking of your father?" I interrupted.

"My father," said Mr. Apricot, "had settled on the banks, both banks, of
the Wabash. He was like so many other men of his time, a disbanded
soldier, a veteran----"

"Of the Mexican War or of the Civil War?" I asked.

"Exactly," answered Mr. Apricot, hardly heeding the question,--"of the
Mexican Civil War."

"Was he under Lincoln?" I asked.

"_Over_ Lincoln," corrected Mr. Apricot gravely. And he added,--"It is
always strange to me the way in which the present generation regards
Abraham Lincoln. To us, of course, at the time of which I speak, Lincoln
was simply one of ourselves."

"In 1866?" I asked.

"This was 1856," said Mr. Apricot. "He came often to my father's cabin,
sitting down with us to our humble meal of potatoes and whiskey (we
lived with a simplicity which of course you could not possibly
understand), and would spend the evening talking with my father over the
interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. We children
used to stand beside them listening open-mouthed beside the fire in our
plain leather night-gowns. I shall never forget how I was thrilled when
I first heard Lincoln lay down his famous theory of the territorial
jurisdiction of Congress as affected by the Supreme Court decision of
1857. I was only nine years old at the time, but it thrilled me!"

"Is it possible!" I exclaimed, "how ever could you understand it?"

"Ah! my friend," said Mr. Apricot, almost sadly, "in _those_ days the
youth of the United States were _educated_ in the real sense of the
word. We children followed the decisions of the Supreme Court with
breathless interest. Our books were few but they were _good_. We had
nothing to read but the law reports, the agriculture reports, the
weather bulletins and the almanacs. But we read them carefully from
cover to cover. How few boys have the industry to do so now, and yet how
many of our greatest men were educated on practically nothing else
except the law reports and the almanacs. Franklin, Jefferson, Jackson,
Johnson,"--Mr. Apricot had relapsed into his sing-song voice, and his
eye had a sort of misty perplexity in it as he went on,--"Harrison,
Thomson, Peterson, Emerson----"

I thought it better to stop him.

"But you were speaking," I said, "of the winter of eighteen fifty-six."

"Of eighteen forty-six," corrected Mr. Apricot. "I shall never forget
it. How distinctly I remember,--I was only a boy then, in fact a mere
lad,--fighting my way to school. The snow lay in some places as deep as
ten feet"--Mr. Apricot paused--"and in others twenty. But we made our
way to school in spite of it. No boys of to-day,--nor, for the matter of
that, even men such as you,--would think of attempting it. But we were
keen, anxious to learn. Our school was our delight. Our teacher was our
friend. Our books were our companions. We gladly trudged five miles to
school every morning and seven miles back at night, did chores till
midnight, studied algebra by candlelight"--here Mr. Apricot's voice had
fallen into its characteristic sing-song, and his eyes were
vacant--"rose before daylight, dressed by lamplight, fed the hogs by
lantern-light, fetched the cows by twilight--"

I thought it best to stop him.

"But you did eventually get off the farm, did you not?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered, "my opportunity presently came to me as it came in
those days to any boy of industry and intelligence who knocked at the
door of fortune till it opened. I shall never forget how my first chance
in life came to me. A man, an entire stranger, struck no doubt with the
fact that I looked industrious and willing, offered me a dollar to drive
a load of tan bark to the nearest market--"

"Where was that?" I asked.

"Minneapolis, seven hundred miles. But I did it. I shall never forget my
feelings when I found myself in Minneapolis with one dollar in my pocket
and with the world all before me."

"What did you do?" I said.

"First," said Mr. Apricot, "I laid out seventy-five cents for a suit of
clothes (things were cheap in those days); for fifty cents I bought an
overcoat, for twenty-five I got a hat, for ten cents a pair of boots,
and with the rest of my money I took a room for a month with a Swedish
family, paid a month's board with a German family, arranged to have my
washing done by an Irish family, and--"

"But surely, Mr. Apricot----" I began.

       *       *       *       *       *

But at this point the young man who is generally in attendance on old
Mr. Apricot when he comes to the club, appeared on the scene.

"I am afraid," he said to me aside as Mr. Apricot was gathering up his
newspapers and his belongings, "that my uncle has been rather boring you
with his reminiscences."

"Not at all," I said, "he's been telling me all about his early life in
his father's cabin on the Wabash----"

"I was afraid so," said the young man. "Too bad. You see he wasn't
really there at all."

"Not there!" I said.

"No. He only fancies that he was. He was brought up in New York, and has
never been west of Philadelphia. In fact he has been very well to do all
his life. But he found that it counted against him: it hurt him in
politics. So he got into the way of talking about the Middle West and
early days there, and sometimes he forgets that he wasn't there."

"I see," I said.

Meantime Mr. Apricot was ready.

"Good-bye, good-bye," he said very cheerily,--"A delightful chat. We
must have another talk over old times soon. I must tell you about my
first trip over the Plains at the time when I was surveying the line of
the Union Pacific. You who travel nowadays in your Pullman coaches and
observation cars can have no idea----"

"Come along, uncle," said the young man.




6.--_The Last Man out of Europe_


He came into the club and shook hands with me as if he hadn't seen me
for a year. In reality I had seen him only eleven months ago, and hadn't
thought of him since.

"How are you, Parkins?" I said in a guarded tone, for I saw at once that
there was something special in his manner.

"Have a cig?" he said as he sat down on the edge of an armchair,
dangling his little boot.

Any young man who calls a cigarette a "cig" I despise. "No, thanks," I
said.

"Try one," he went on, "they're Hungarian. They're some I managed to
bring through with me out of the war zone."

As he said "war zone," his face twisted up into a sort of scowl of
self-importance.

I looked at Parkins more closely and I noticed that he had on some sort
of foolish little coat, short in the back, and the kind of bow-tie that
they wear in the Hungarian bands of the Sixth Avenue restaurants.

Then I knew what the trouble was. He was the last man out of Europe,
that is to say, the latest last man. There had been about fourteen
others in the club that same afternoon. In fact they were sitting all
over it in Italian suits and Viennese overcoats, striking German matches
on the soles of Dutch boots. These were the "war zone" men and they had
just got out "in the clothes they stood up in." Naturally they hated to
change.

So I knew all that this young man, Parkins, was going to say, and all
about his adventures before he began.

"Yes," he said, "we were caught right in the war zone. By Jove, I never
want to go through again what I went through."

With that, he sank back into the chair in the pose of a man musing in
silence over the recollection of days of horror.

I let him muse. In fact I determined to let him muse till he burst
before I would ask him what he had been through. I knew it, anyway.

Presently he decided to go on talking.

"We were at Izzl," he said, "in the Carpathians, Loo Jones and I. We'd
just made a walking tour from Izzl to Fryzzl and back again."

"Why did you come back?" I asked.

"Back where?"

"Back to Izzl," I explained, "after you'd once got to Fryzzl. It seems
unnecessary, but, never mind, go on."

"That was in July," he continued. "There wasn't a sign of war, not a
sign. We heard that Russia was beginning to mobilize," (at this word be
blew a puff from his cigarette and then repeated "beginning to
mobilize") "but we thought nothing of it."

"Of course not," I said.

"Then we heard that Hungary was calling out the Honveds, but we still
thought nothing of it."

"Certainly not," I said.

"And then we heard--"

"Yes, I know," I said, "you heard that Italy was calling out the
Trombonari, and that Germany was calling in all the Landesgeschutzshaft."

He looked at me.

"How did you know that?" he said.

"We heard it over here," I answered.

"Well," he went on, "next thing we knew we heard that the Russians were
at Fryzzl."

"Great Heavens!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, at Fryzzl, not a hundred miles away. The very place we'd been at
only two weeks before."

"Think of it!" I said. "If you'd been where you were two weeks after you
were there, or if the Russians had been a hundred miles away from where
they were, or even if Fryzzl had been a hundred miles nearer to Izzl--"

We both shuddered.

"It was a close call," said Parkins. "However, I said to Loo Jones,
'Loo, it's time to clear out.' And then, I tell you, our trouble began.
First of all we couldn't get any money. We went to the bank at Izzl and
tried to get them to give us American dollars for Hungarian paper money;
we had nothing else."

"And wouldn't they?"

"Absolutely refused. They said they hadn't any."

"By George," I exclaimed. "Isn't war dreadful? What on earth did you
do?"

"Took a chance," said Parkins. "Went across to the railway station to
buy our tickets with the Hungarian money."

"Did you get them?" I said.

"Yes," assented Parkins. "They said they'd sell us tickets. But they
questioned us mighty closely; asked where we wanted to go to, what class
we meant to travel by, how much luggage we had to register and so on. I
tell you the fellow looked at us mighty closely."

"Were you in those clothes?" I asked.

"Yes," said Parkins, "but I guess he suspected we weren't Hungarians.
You see, we couldn't either of us speak Hungarian. In fact we spoke
nothing but English."

"That would give him a clue," I said.

"However," he went on, "he was civil enough in a way. We asked when was
the next train to the sea coast, and he said there wasn't any."

"No trains?" I repeated.

"Not to the coast. The man said the reason was because there wasn't any
railway to the coast. But he offered to sell us tickets to Vienna. We
asked when the train would go and he said there wouldn't be one for two
hours. So there we were waiting on that wretched little platform,--no
place to sit down, no shade, unless one went into the waiting room
itself,--for two mortal hours. And even then the train was an hour and a
half late!"

"An hour and a half late!" I repeated.

"Yep!" said Parkins, "that's what things were like over there. So when
we got on board the train we asked a man when it was due to get to
Vienna, and he said he hadn't the faintest idea!"

"Good heavens!"

"Not the faintest idea. He told us to ask the conductor or one of the
porters. No, sir, I'll never forget that journey through to
Vienna,--nine mortal hours! Nothing to eat, not a bite, except just in
the middle of the day when they managed to hitch on a dining-car for a
while. And they warned everybody that the dining-car was only on for an
hour and a half. Commandeered, I guess after that," added Parkins,
puffing his cigarette.

"Well," he continued, "we got to Vienna at last. I'll never forget the
scene there, station full of people, trains coming and going, men, even
women, buying tickets, big piles of luggage being shoved on trucks. It
gave one a great idea of the reality of things."

"It must have," I said.

"Poor old Loo Jones was getting pretty well used up with it all.
However, we determined to see it through somehow."

"What did you do next?"

"Tried again to get money: couldn't--they changed our Hungarian paper
into Italian gold, but they refused to give us American money."

"Hoarding it?" I hinted.

"Exactly," said Parkins, "hoarding it all for the war. Well anyhow we
got on a train for Italy and there our troubles began all over
again:--train stopped at the frontier,--officials (fellows in Italian
uniforms) went all through it, opening hand baggage----"

"Not hand baggage!" I gasped.

"Yes, sir, even the hand baggage. Opened it all, or a lot of it anyway,
and scribbled chalk marks over it. Yes, and worse than that,--I saw them
take two fellows and sling them clear off the train,--they slung them
right out on to the platform."

"What for?" I asked.

"Heaven knows," said Parkins,--"they said they had no tickets. In war
time you know, when they're mobilizing, they won't let a soul ride on a
train without a ticket."

"Infernal tyranny," I murmured.

"Isn't it? However, we got to Genoa at last, only to find that not a
single one of our trunks had come with us!"

"Confiscated?" I asked.

"I don't know," said Parkins, "the head baggage man (he wears a uniform,
you know, in Italy just like a soldier) said it was because we'd
forgotten to check them in Vienna. However there we were waiting for
twenty-four hours with nothing but our valises."

"Right at the station?" I asked.

"No, at a hotel. We got the trunks later. They telegraphed to Vienna for
them and managed to get them through somehow,--in a baggage car, I
believe."

"And after that, I suppose, you had no more trouble."

"Trouble," said Parkins, "I should say we had. Couldn't get a steamer!
They said there was none sailing out of Genoa for New York for three
days! All canceled, I guess, or else rigged up as cruisers."

"What on earth did you do?"

"Stuck it out as best we could: stayed right there in the hotel. Poor
old Jones was pretty well collapsed! Couldn't do anything but sleep and
eat, and sit on the piazza of the hotel."

"But you got your steamer at last?" I asked.

"Yes," he admitted, "we got it. But I never want to go through another
voyage like that again, no sir!"

"What was wrong with it?" I asked, "bad weather?"

"No, calm, but a peculiar calm, glassy, with little ripples on the
water,--uncanny sort of feeling."

"What was wrong with the voyage?"

"Oh, just the feeling of it,--everything under strict rule you know--no
lights anywhere except just the electric lights,--smoking-room closed
tight at eleven o'clock,--decks all washed down every night--officers up
on the bridge all day looking out over the sea,--no, sir, I want no more
of it. Poor old Loo Jones, I guess he's quite used up: he can't speak of
it at all: just sits and broods, in fact I doubt...."

       *       *       *       *       *

At this moment Parkins's conversation was interrupted by the entry of
two newcomers into the room. One of them had on a little Hungarian suit
like the one Parkins wore, and was talking loudly as they came in.

"Yes," he was saying, "we were caught there fair and square right in the
war zone. We were at Izzl in the Carpathians, poor old Parkins and
I----"

We looked round.

It was Loo Jones, describing his escape from Europe.




7.--_The War Mania of Mr. Jinks and Mr. Blinks_


They were sitting face to face at a lunch table at the club so near to
me that I couldn't avoid hearing what they said. In any case they are
both stout men with gurgling voices which carry.

"What Kitchener ought to do,"--Jinks was saying in a loud voice.

So I knew at once that he had the prevailing hallucination. He thought
he was commanding armies in Europe.

After which I watched him show with three bits of bread and two olives
and a dessert knife the way in which the German army could be destroyed.

Blinks looked at Jinks' diagram with a stern impassive face, modeled on
the Sunday supplement photogravures of Lord Kitchener.

"Your flank would be too much exposed," he said, pointing to Jinks'
bread. He spoke with the hard taciturnity of a Joffre.

"My reserves cover it," said Jinks, moving two pepper pots to the
support of the bread.

"Mind you," Jinks went on, "I don't say Kitchener _will_ do this: I say
this is what he _ought_ to do: it's exactly the tactics of Kuropatkin
outside of Mukden and it's precisely the same turning movement that
Grant used before Richmond."

Blinks nodded gravely. Anybody who has seen the Grand Duke Nicholoevitch
quietly accepting the advice of General Ruski under heavy artillery
fire, will realize Blinks' manner to a nicety.

And, oddly enough, neither of them, I am certain, has ever had any
larger ideas about the history of the Civil War than what can be got
from reading _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ and seeing Gillette play _Secret
Service_. But this is part of the mania. Jinks and Blinks had suddenly
developed the hallucination that they knew the history of all wars by a
sort of instinct.

They rose soon after that, dusted off their waistcoats with their
napkins and waddled heavily towards the door. I could hear them as they
went talking eagerly of the need of keeping the troops in hard training.
They were almost brutal in their severity. As they passed out of the
door,--one at a time to avoid crowding,--they were still talking about
it. Jinks was saying that our whole generation is overfed and soft. If
he had his way he would take every man in the United States up to
forty-seven years of age (Jinks is forty-eight) and train him to a
shadow. Blinks went further. He said they should be trained hard up to
fifty. He is fifty-one.

After that I used to notice Jinks and Blinks always together in the
club, and always carrying on the European War.

I never knew which side they were on. They seemed to be on both. One day
they commanded huge armies of Russians, and there was one week when
Blinks and Jinks at the head of vast levies of Cossacks threatened to
overrun the whole of Western Europe. It was dreadful to watch them
burning churches and monasteries and to see Jinks throw whole convents
full of white robed nuns into the flames like so much waste paper.

For a time I feared they would obliterate civilization itself. Then
suddenly Blinks decided that Jinks' Cossacks were no good, not properly
trained. He converted himself on the spot into a Prussian Field Marshal,
declared himself organised to a pitch of organisation of which Jinks
could form no idea, and swept Jinks' army off the earth, without using
any men at all, by sheer organisation.

In this way they moved to and fro all winter over the map of Europe,
carrying death and destruction everywhere and reveling in it.

But I think I liked best the wild excitement of their naval battles.

Jinks generally fancied himself a submarine and Blinks acted the part of
a first-class battleship. Jinks would pop his periscope out of the
water, take a look at Blinks merely for the fraction of a second, and
then, like a flash, would dive under water again and start firing his
torpedoes. He explained that he carried six.

But he was never quick enough for Blinks. One glimpse of his periscope
miles and miles away was enough. Blinks landed him a contact shell in
the side, sunk him with all hands, and then lined his yards with men and
cheered. I have known Blinks sink Jinks at two miles, six miles--and
once--in the club billiard room just after the battle of the Falkland
Islands,--he got him fair and square at ten nautical miles.

Jinks of course claimed that he was not sunk. He had dived. He was two
hundred feet under water quietly smiling at Blinks through his
periscope. In fact the number of things that Jinks has learned to do
through his periscope passes imagination.

Whenever I see him looking across at Blinks with his eyes half closed
and with a baffling, quizzical expression in them, I know that he is
looking at him through his periscope. Now is the time for Blinks to
watch out. If he relaxes his vigilance for a moment he'll be torpedoed
as he sits, and sent flying, whiskey and soda and all, through the roof
of the club, while Jinks dives into the basement.

Indeed it has come about of late, I don't know just how, that Jinks has
more or less got command of the sea. A sort of tacit understanding has
been reached that Blinks, whichever army he happens at the moment to
command, is invincible on land. But Jinks, whether as a submarine or a
battleship, controls the sea. No doubt this grew up in the natural
evolution of their conversation. It makes things easier for both. Jinks
even asks Blinks how many men there are in an army division, and what a
sotnia of Cossacks is and what the Army Service Corps means. And Jinks
in return has become a recognized expert in torpedoes and has taken to
wearing a blue serge suit and referring to Lord Beresford as Charley.

But what I noticed chiefly about the war mania of Jinks and Blinks was
their splendid indifference to slaughter. They had gone into the war
with a grim resolution to fight it out to a finish. If Blinks thought to
terrify Jinks by threatening to burn London, he little knew his man.
"All right," said Jinks, taking a fresh light for his cigar, "burn it!
By doing so, you destroy, let us say, two million of my women and
children? Very good. Am I injured by that? No. You merely stimulate me
to recruiting."

There was something awful in the grimness of the struggle as carried on
by Blinks and Jinks.

The rights of neutrals and non-combatants, Red Cross nurses, and
regimental clergymen they laughed to scorn. As for moving-picture men
and newspaper correspondents, Jinks and Blinks hanged them on every tree
in Belgium and Poland.

With combatants in this frame of mind the war I suppose might have
lasted forever.

But it came to an end accidentally,--fortuitously, as all great wars are
apt to. And by accident also, I happened to see the end of it.

It was late one evening. Jinks and Blinks were coming down the steps of
the club, and as they came they were speaking with some vehemence on
their favourite topic.

"I tell you," Jinks was saying, "war is a great thing. We needed it,
Blinks. We were all getting too soft, too scared of suffering and pain.
We wilt at a bayonet charge, we shudder at the thought of wounds. Bah!"
he continued, "what does it matter if a few hundred thousands of human
beings are cut to pieces. We need to get back again to the old Viking
standard, the old pagan ideas of suffering----"

And as he spoke he got it.

The steps of the club were slippery with the evening's rain,--not so
slippery as the frozen lakes of East Prussia or the hills where Jinks
and Blinks had been campaigning all winter, but slippery enough for a
stout man whose nation has neglected his training. As Jinks waved his
stick in the air to illustrate the glory of a bayonet charge, he slipped
and fell sideways on the stone steps. His shin bone smacked against the
edge of the stone in a way that was pretty well up to the old Viking
standard of such things. Blinks with the shock of the collision fell
also,--backwards on the top step, his head striking first. He lay, to
all appearance, as dead as the most insignificant casualty in Servia.

I watched the waiters carrying them into the club, with that new field
ambulance attitude towards pain which is getting so popular. They had
evidently acquired precisely the old pagan attitude that Blinks and
Jinks desired.

And the evening after that I saw Blinks and Jinks, both more or less
bandaged, sitting in a corner of the club beneath a rubber tree, making
peace.

Jinks was moving out of Montenegro and Blinks was foregoing all claims
to Polish Prussia; Jinks was offering Alsace-Lorraine to Blinks, and
Blinks in a fit of chivalrous enthusiasm was refusing to take it. They
were disbanding troops, blowing up fortresses, sinking their warships
and offering indemnities which they both refused to take. Then as they
talked, Jinks leaned forward and said something to Blinks in a low
voice,--a final proposal of terms evidently.

Blinks nodded, and Jinks turned and beckoned to a waiter, with the
words,--

"One Scotch whiskey and soda, and one stein of Wrtemburger Bier----"

And when I heard this, I knew that the war was over.




8.--_The Ground Floor_


I hadn't seen Ellesworth since our college days, twenty years before, at
the time when he used to borrow two dollars and a half from the
professor of Public Finance to tide him over the week end.

Then quite suddenly he turned up at the club one day and had afternoon
tea with me.

His big clean shaven face had lost nothing of its impressiveness, and
his spectacles had the same glittering magnetism as in the days when he
used to get the college bursar to accept his note of hand for his fees.

And he was still talking European politics just as he used to in the
days of our earlier acquaintance.

"Mark my words," he said across the little tea-table, with one of the
most piercing glances I have ever seen, "the whole Balkan situation was
only a beginning. We are on the eve of a great pan-Slavonic upheaval."
And then he added, in a very quiet, casual tone: "By the way, could you
let me have twenty-five dollars till to-morrow?"

"A pan-Slavonic movement!" I ejaculated. "Do you really think it
possible? No, I couldn't."

"You must remember," Ellesworth went on, "Russia means to reach out and
take all she can get;" and he added, "how about fifteen till Friday?"

"She may reach for it," I said, "but I doubt if she'll get anything. I'm
sorry. I haven't got it."

"You're forgetting the Bulgarian element," he continued, his animation
just as eager as before. "The Slavs never forget what they owe to one
another."

Here Ellesworth drank a sip of tea and then said quietly, "Could you
make it ten till Saturday at twelve?"

I looked at him more closely. I noticed now his frayed cuffs and the
dinginess of his over-brushed clothes. Not even the magnetism of his
spectacles could conceal it. Perhaps I had been forgetting something,
whether the Bulgarian element or not.

I compromised at ten dollars till Saturday.

"The Slav," said Ellesworth, as he pocketed the money, "is peculiar. He
never forgets."

"What are you doing now?" I asked him. "Are you still in insurance?" I
had a vague recollection of him as employed in that business.

"No," he answered. "I gave it up. I didn't like the outlook. It was too
narrow. The atmosphere cramped me. I want," he said, "a bigger horizon."

"Quite so," I answered quietly. I had known men before who had lost
their jobs. It is generally the cramping of the atmosphere that does it.
Some of them can use up a tremendous lot of horizon.

"At present," Ellesworth went on, "I am in finance. I'm promoting
companies."

"Oh, yes," I said. I had seen companies promoted before.

"Just now," continued Ellesworth, "I'm working on a thing that I think
will be rather a big thing. I shouldn't want it talked about outside,
but it's a matter of taking hold of the cod fisheries of the Grand
Banks,--practically amalgamating them--and perhaps combining with them
the entire herring output, and the whole of the sardine catch of the
Mediterranean. If it goes through," he added, "I shall be in a position
to let you in on the ground floor."

I knew the ground floor of old. I have already many friends sitting on
it; and others who have fallen through it into the basement.

I said, "thank you," and he left me.

"That was Ellesworth, wasn't it?" said a friend of mine who was near me.
"Poor devil. I knew him slightly,--always full of some new and wild idea
of making money. He was talking to me the other day of the possibility
of cornering all the huckleberry crop and making refined sugar. Isn't it
amazing what fool ideas fellows like him are always putting up to
business men?"

We both laughed.

After that I didn't see Ellesworth for some weeks.

Then I met him in the club again. How he paid his fees there I do not
know.

This time he was seated among a litter of foreign newspapers with a cup
of tea and a ten-cent package of cigarettes beside him.

"Have one of these cigarettes," he said. "I get them specially. They are
milder than what we have in the club here."

They certainly were.

"Note what I say," Ellesworth went on. "The French Republic is going to
gain from now on a stability that it never had." He seemed greatly
excited about it. But his voice changed to a quiet tone as he added,
"Could you, without inconvenience, let me have five dollars?"

So I knew that the cod-fish and the sardines were still unamalgamated.

"What about the fisheries thing?" I asked. "Did it go through?"

"The fisheries? No, I gave it up. I refused to go forward with it. The
New York people concerned were too shy, too timid to tackle it. I
finally had to put it to them very straight that they must either stop
shilly-shallying and declare themselves, or the whole business was off."

"Did they declare themselves?" I questioned.

"They did," said Ellesworth, "but I don't regret it. I'm working now on
a much bigger thing,--something with greater possibilities in it. When
the right moment comes I'll let you in on the ground floor."

I thanked him and we parted.

The next time I saw Ellesworth he told me at once that he regarded
Albania as unable to stand by itself. So I gave him five dollars on the
spot and left him.

A few days after that he called me up on the telephone to tell me that
the whole of Asia Minor would have to be redistributed. The
redistribution cost me five dollars more.

Then I met him on the street, and he said that Persia was
disintegrating, and took from me a dollar and a half.

When I passed him next in the street he was very busy amalgamating
Chinese tramways. It appeared that there was a ground floor in China,
but I kept off it.

Each time I saw Ellesworth he looked a little shabbier than the last.
Then one day he called me up on the telephone, and made an appointment.

His manner when I joined him was full of importance.

"I want you at once," he said in a commanding tone, "to write me your
cheque for a hundred dollars."

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"I am now able," said Ellesworth, "to put you in on the ground floor of
one of the biggest things in years."

"Thanks," I said, "the ground floor is no place for me."

"Don't misunderstand me," said Ellesworth. "This is a big thing. It's an
idea I've been working on for some time,--making refined sugar from the
huckleberry crop. It's a certainty. I can get you shares now at five
dollars. They'll go to five hundred when we put them on the market,--and
I can run you in for a block of stock for promotion services as well.
All you have to do is to give me right now a hundred dollars,--cash or
your cheque,--and I can arrange the whole thing for you."

I smiled.

"My dear Ellesworth," I said, "I hope you won't mind if I give you a
little bit of good advice. Why not drop all this idea of quick money?
There's nothing in it. The business world has grown too shrewd for it.
Take an ordinary decent job and stick to it. Let me use my influence," I
added, "to try and get you into something with a steady salary, and with
your brains you're bound to get on in time."

Ellesworth looked pained. A "steady job" sounded to him like a "ground
floor" to me.

After that I saw nothing of him for weeks. But I didn't forget him. I
looked about and secured for him a job as a canvassing agent for a book
firm at a salary of five dollars a week, and a commission of one-tenth
of one per cent.

I was waiting to tell him of his good luck, when I chanced to see him at
the club again.

But he looked transformed.

He had on a long frock coat that reached nearly to his knees. He was
leading a little procession of very heavy men in morning coats, upstairs
towards the private luncheon rooms. They moved like a funeral, puffing
as they went. I had seen company directors before and I knew what they
were at sight.

"It's a small club and rather inconvenient," Ellesworth was saying, "and
the horizon of some of its members rather narrow," here he nodded to me
as he passed,--"but I can give you a fairly decent lunch."

I watched them as they disappeared upstairs.

"That's Ellesworth, isn't it?" said a man near me. It was the same man
who had asked about him before.

"Yes," I answered.

"Giving a lunch to his directors, I suppose," said my friend; "lucky
dog."

"His directors?" I asked.

"Yes, hadn't you heard? He's just cleaned up half a million or
more,--some new scheme for making refined sugar out of huckleberries.
Isn't it amazing what shrewd ideas these big business men get hold of?
They say they're unloading the stock at five hundred dollars. It only
cost them about five to organize. If only one could get on to one of
these things early enough, eh?"

I assented sadly.

And the next time I am offered a chance on the ground floor I am going
to take it, even if it's only the barley floor of a brewery.

It appears that there is such a place after all.




9.--_The Hallucination of Mr. Butt_


It is the hallucination of Mr. Butt's life that he lives to do good. At
whatever cost of time or trouble to himself, he does it. Whether people
appear to desire it or not, he insists on helping them along.

His time, his company and his advice are at the service not only of
those who seek them but of those who, in the mere appearances of things,
are not asking for them.

You may see the beaming face of Mr. Butt appear at the door of all those
of his friends who are stricken with the minor troubles of life.
Whenever Mr. Butt learns that any of his friends are moving house,
buying furniture, selling furniture, looking for a maid, dismissing a
maid, seeking a chauffeur, suing a plumber or buying a piano,--he is at
their side in a moment.

So when I met him one night in the cloak room of the club putting on his
raincoat and his galoshes with a peculiar beaming look on his face, I
knew that he was up to some sort of benevolence.

"Come upstairs," I said, "and play billiards." I saw from his general
appearance that it was a perfectly safe offer.

"My dear fellow," said Mr. Butt, "I only wish I could. I wish I had the
time. I am sure it would cheer you up immensely if I could. But I'm just
going out."

"Where are you off to?" I asked, for I knew he wanted me to say it.

"I'm going out to see the Everleigh-Joneses,--you know them? no?--just
come to the city, you know, moving into their new house, out on Seldom
Avenue."

"But," I said, "that's away out in the suburbs, is it not, a mile or so
beyond the car tracks?"

"Something like that," answered Mr. Butt.

"And it's going on for ten o'clock and it's starting to rain--"

"Pooh, pooh," said Mr. Butt, cheerfully, adjusting his galoshes. "I
never mind the rain,--does one good. As to their house. I've not been
there yet but I can easily find it. I've a very simple system for
finding a house at night by merely knocking at the doors in the
neighborhood till I get it."

"Isn't it rather late to go there?" I protested.

"My dear fellow," said Mr. Butt warmly, "I don't mind that a bit. The
way I look at it is, here are these two young people, only married a few
weeks, just moving into their new house, everything probably upside
down, no one there but themselves, no one to cheer them up,"--he was
wriggling into his raincoat as he spoke and working himself into a
frenzy of benevolence,--"good gracious, I only learned at dinner time
that they had come to town, or I'd have been out there days ago,--days
ago----"

And with that Mr. Butt went bursting forth into the rain, his face
shining with good will under the street lamps.

The next day I saw him again at the club at lunch time.

"Well," I asked, "did you find the Joneses?"

"I did," said Mr. Butt, "and by George I was glad that I'd gone--quite a
lot of trouble to find the house (though I didn't mind that; I expected
it)--had to knock at twenty houses at least to get it,--very dark and
wet out there,--no street lights yet,--however I simply pounded at the
doors until some one showed a light--at every house I called out the
same things, 'Do you know where the Everleigh Joneses live?' They
didn't. 'All right,' I said, 'go back to bed. Don't bother to come
down.'

"But I got to the right spot at last. I found the house all dark. Jones
put his head out of an upper window. 'Hullo,' I called out; 'it's Butt.'
'I'm awfully sorry,' he said, 'we've gone to bed.' 'My dear boy,' I
called back, 'don't apologize at all. Throw me down the key and I'll
wait while you dress. I don't mind a bit.'

"Just think of it," continued Mr. Butt, "those two poor souls going to
bed at half past ten, through sheer dullness! By George, I was glad I'd
come. 'Now then,' I said to myself, 'let's cheer them up a little, let's
make things a little brighter here.'

"Well, down they came and we sat there on furniture cases and things and
had a chat. Mrs. Jones wanted to make me some coffee. 'My dear girl,' I
said (I knew them both when they were children) 'I absolutely refuse.
Let _me_ make it.' They protested. I insisted. I went at it,--kitchen
all upset--had to open at least twenty tins to get the coffee. However,
I made it at last. 'Now,' I said, 'drink it.' They said they had some an
hour or so ago. 'Nonsense,' I said, 'drink it.' Well, we sat and chatted
away till midnight. They were dull at first and I had to do all the
talking. But I set myself to it. I can talk, you know, when I try.
Presently about midnight they seemed to brighten up a little. Jones
looked at his watch. 'By Jove,' he said, in an animated way, 'it's after
midnight.' I think he was pleased at the way the evening was going;
after that we chatted away more comfortably. Every little while Jones
would say, 'By Jove, it's half past twelve,' or 'it's one o'clock,' and
so on.

"I took care, of course, not to stay too late. But when I left them I
promised that I'd come back to-day to help straighten things up. They
protested, but I insisted."

That same day Mr. Butt went out to the suburbs and put the Joneses'
furniture to rights.

"I worked all afternoon," he told me afterwards,--"hard at it with my
coat off--got the pictures up first--they'd been trying to put them up
by themselves in the morning. I had to take down every one of them--not
a single one right,--'Down they come,' I said, and went at it with a
will."

A few days later Mr. Butt gave me a further report. "Yes," he said, "the
furniture is all unpacked and straightened out but I don't like it.
There's a lot of it I don't quite like. I half feel like advising Jones
to sell it and get some more. But I don't want to do that till I'm quite
certain about it."

After that Mr. Butt seemed much occupied and I didn't see him at the
club for some time.

"How about the Everleigh-Joneses?" I asked. "Are they comfortable in
their new house?"

Mr. Butt shook his head. "It won't do," he said. "I was afraid of it
from the first. I'm moving Jones in nearer to town. I've been out all
morning looking for an apartment; when I get the right one I shall move
him. I like an apartment far better than a house."

So the Joneses in due course of time were moved. After that Mr. Butt was
very busy selecting a piano, and advising them on wall paper and
woodwork.

They were hardly settled in their new home when fresh trouble came to
them.

"Have you heard about Everleigh-Jones?" said Mr. Butt one day with an
anxious face.

"No," I answered.

"He's ill--some sort of fever--poor chap--been ill three days, and they
never told me or sent for me--just like their grit--meant to fight it
out alone. I'm going out there at once."

From day to day I had reports from Mr. Butt of the progress of Jones's
illness.

"I sit with him every day," he said. "Poor chap,--he was very bad
yesterday for a while,--mind wandered--quite delirious--I could hear him
from the next room--seemed to think some one was hunting him--'Is that
damn old fool gone,' I heard him say.

"I went in and soothed him. 'There is no one here, my dear boy,' I said,
'no one, only Butt.' He turned over and groaned. Mrs. Jones begged me to
leave him. 'You look quite used up,' she said. 'Go out into the open
air.' 'My dear Mrs. Jones,' I said, 'what _does_ it matter about me?'"

Eventually, thanks no doubt to Mr. Butt's assiduous care,
Everleigh-Jones got well.

"Yes," said Mr. Butt to me a few weeks later, "Jones is all right again
now, but his illness has been a long hard pull. I haven't had an evening
to myself since it began. But I'm paid, sir, now, more than paid for
anything I've done,--the gratitude of those two people--it's
unbelievable--you ought to see it. Why do you know that dear little
woman is so worried for fear that my strength has been overtaxed that
she wants me to take a complete rest and go on a long trip
somewhere--suggested first that I should go south. 'My dear Mrs. Jones,'
I said laughing, 'that's the _one_ place I will not go. Heat is the one
thing I _can't_ stand.' She wasn't nonplussed for a moment. 'Then go
north,' she said. 'Go up to Canada, or better still go to
Labrador,'--and in a minute that kind little woman was hunting up
railway maps to see how far north I could get by rail. 'After that,' she
said, 'you can go on snowshoes.' She's found that there's a steamer to
Ungava every spring and she wants me to run up there on one steamer and
come back on the next."

"It must be very gratifying," I said.

"Oh, it is, it is," said Mr. Butt warmly. "It's well worth anything I
do. It more than repays me. I'm alone in the world and my friends are
all I have. I can't tell you how it goes to my heart when I think of all
my friends, here in the club and in the town, always glad to see me,
always protesting against my little kindnesses and yet never quite
satisfied about anything unless they can get my advice and hear what I
have to say.

"Take Jones for instance," he continued--"do you know, really now as a
fact,--the hall porter assures me of it,--every time Everleigh-Jones
enters the club here the first thing he does is to sing out, 'Is Mr.
Butt in the club?' It warms me to think of it." Mr. Butt paused, one
would have said there were tears in his eyes. But if so the kindly beam
of his spectacles shone through them like the sun through April rain. He
left me and passed into the cloak room.

He had just left the hall when a stranger entered, a narrow, meek man
with a hunted face. He came in with a furtive step and looked about him
apprehensively.

"Is Mr. Butt in the club?" he whispered to the hall porter.

"Yes, sir, he's just gone into the cloak room, sir, shall I----"

But the man had turned and made a dive for the front door and had
vanished.

"Who is that?" I asked.

"That's a new member, sir, Mr. Everleigh-Jones," said the hall porter.




_RAM SPUDD THE NEW WORLD SINGER_




_IV--Ram Spudd The New World Singer. Is He Divinely Inspired? Or Is He
Not? At Any Rate We Discovered Him._[1]


The discovery of a new poet is always a joy to the cultivated world. It
is therefore with the greatest pleasure that we are able to announce
that we ourselves, acting quite independently and without aid from any
of the English reviews of the day, have discovered one. In the person of
Mr. Ram Spudd, of whose work we give specimens below, we feel that we
reveal to our readers a genius of the first order. Unlike one of the
most recently discovered English poets who is a Bengalee, and another
who is a full-blooded Yak, Mr. Spudd is, we believe, a Navajo Indian. We
believe this from the character of his verse. Mr. Spudd himself we have
not seen. But when he forwarded his poems to our office and offered with
characteristic modesty to sell us his entire works for seventy-five
cents, we felt in closing with his offer that we were dealing not only
with a poet, but with one of nature's gentlemen.

Mr. Spudd, we understand, has had no education. Other newly discovered
poets have had, apparently, some. Mr. Spudd has had, evidently, none. We
lay stress on this point. Without it we claim it is impossible to
understand his work.

What we particularly like about Ram Spudd, and we do not say this
because we discovered him but because we believe it and must say it, is
that he belongs not to one school but to all of them. As a nature poet
we doubt very much if he has his equal; as a psychologist, we are sure
he has not. As a clear lucid thinker he is undoubtedly in the first
rank; while as a mystic he is a long way in front of it. The specimens
of Mr. Spudd's verse which we append herewith were selected, we are
happy to assure our readers, purely at random from his work. We first
blindfolded ourselves and then, standing with our feet in warm water and
having one hand tied behind our back, we groped among the papers on our
desk before us and selected for our purpose whatever specimens first
came to hand.

As we have said, or did we say it, it is perhaps as a nature poet that
Ram Spudd excels. Others of our modern school have carried the
observation of natural objects to a high degree of very nice precision,
but with Mr. Spudd the observation of nature becomes an almost
scientific process. Nothing escapes him. The green of the grass he
detects as in an instant. The sky is no sooner blue than he remarks it
with unerring certainty. Every bird note, every bee call, is familiar to
his trained ear. Perhaps we cannot do better than quote the opening
lines of a singularly beautiful sample of Ram Spudd's genius which seems
to us the last word in nature poetry. It is called, with characteristic
daintiness--


_SPRING THAW IN THE
AHUNTSIC WOODS, NEAR PASPEBIAC,
PASSAMOQUODDY COUNTY_

(We would like to say that, to our ears at least, there is a music in
this title like the sound of falling water, or of chopped ice. But we
must not interrupt ourselves. We now begin. Listen.)

    The thermometer is standing this morning at thirty-
      three decimal one.
    As a consequence it is freezing in the shade, but
      it is thawing in the sun.
    There is a certain amount of snow on the ground,
      but of course not too much.
    The air is what you would call humid, but not
      disagreeable to the touch.
    Where I am standing I find myself practically
      surrounded by trees,
    It is simply astonishing the number of the different
      varieties one sees.
    I've grown so wise I can tell each different tree
      by seeing it glisten,
    But if that test fails I simply put my ear to the
      tree and listen,
    And, well, I suppose it is only a silly fancy of
      mine perhaps,
    But do you know I'm getting to tell different trees
      by the sound of their saps.
    After I have noticed all the trees, and named those
      I know in words,
    I stand quite still and look all round to see if
      there are any birds,
    And yesterday, close where I was standing, sitting
      in some brush on the snow,
    I saw what I was practically absolutely certain was
      an early crow.
    I sneaked up ever so close and was nearly beside
      it, when say!
    It turned and took one look at me, and flew away.

But we should not wish our readers to think that Ram Spudd is always and
only the contemplative poet of the softer aspects of nature. Oh, by no
means. There are times when waves of passion sweep over him in such
prodigious volume as to roll him to and fro like a pebble in the surf.
Gusts of emotion blow over him with such violence as to hurl him pro and
con with inconceivable fury. In such moods, if it were not for the
relief offered by writing verse we really do not know what would happen
to him. His verse written under the impulse of such emotions marks him
as one of the greatest masters of passion, wild and yet restrained,
objectionable and yet printable, that have appeared on this side of the
Atlantic. We append herewith a portion, or half portion, of his little
gem entitled

                   _YOU_

                    You!
    With your warm, full, rich, red, ripe lips,
    And your beautifully manicured finger-tips!
                    You!
    With your heaving, panting, rapidly expanding and contracting chest,
    Lying against my perfectly ordinary shirt-front and dinner-jacket vest.
          It is too much
          Your touch
          As such.
          It and
          Your hand,
        Can you not understand?
    Last night an ostrich feather from your fragrant hair
          Unnoticed fell.
          I guard it
          Well.
          Yestere'en
        From your tiara I have slid,
          Unseen,
          A single diamond,
          And I keep it
          Hid.
    Last night you left inside the vestibule upon the sill
          A quarter dollar,
          And I have it
          Still.

But even those who know Ram Spudd as the poet of nature or of passion
still only know a part of his genius. Some of his highest flights rise
from an entirely different inspiration, and deal with the public affairs
of the nation. They are in every sense comparable to the best work of
the poets laureate of England dealing with similar themes. As soon as we
had seen Ram Spudd's work of this kind, we cried, that is we said to our
stenographer, "What a pity that in this republic we have no
laureateship. Here is a man who might truly fill it." Of the poem of
this kind we should wish to quote, if our limits of space did not
prevent it, Mr. Spudd's exquisite


     _ODE ON THE REDUCTION OF THE
     UNITED STATES TARIFF_

     It is a matter of the very gravest concern to at least
     nine-tenths of the business interests in the United
     States,

     Whether an all-round reduction of the present tariff
     either on an ad valorem or a specific basis

     Could be effected without a serious disturbance of the
     general industrial situation of the country.

But, no, we must not quote any more. No we really mustn't. Yet we cannot
refrain from inserting a reference to the latest of these laureate poems
of Ram Spudd. It appears to us to be a matchless specimen of its class,
and to settle once and for all the vexed question (though we ourselves
never vexed it) of whether true poetry can deal with national occasions
as they arise. It is entitled:

_THE BANKER'S EUTHANASIA: OR,
THE FEDERAL RESERVE CURRENCY
ACT OF 1914,_

and, though we do not propose to reproduce it here, our distinct feeling
is that it will take its rank beside Mr. Spudd's Elegy on the Interstate
Commerce Act, and his Thoughts on the Proposal of a Uniform Pure Food
Law.

But our space does not allow us to present Ram Spudd in what is after
all his greatest aspect, that of a profound psychologist, a questioner
of the very meaning of life itself. His poem Death and Gloom, from which
we must refrain from quoting at large, contains such striking passages
as the following:

    Why do I breathe, or do I?
    What am I for, and whither do I go?
    What skills it if I live, and if I die,
      What boots it?

Any one knowing Ram Spudd as we do will realize that these questions,
especially the last, are practically unanswerable.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mr. Spudd was discovered by the author for the New York Life. He is
already recognized as superior to Tennyson and second only, as a writer
of imagination, to the Sultan of Turkey.




_ARISTOCRATIC ANECDOTES_




_V--Aristocratic Anecdotes or Little Stories of Great People_


I have been much struck lately by the many excellent little anecdotes of
celebrated people that have appeared in recent memoirs and found their
way thence into the columns of the daily press. There is something about
them so deliciously pointed, their humour is so exquisite, that I think
we ought to have more of them. To this end I am trying to circulate on
my own account a few anecdotes which seem somehow to have been
overlooked.

Here, for example, is an excellent thing which comes, if I remember
rightly, from the vivacious Memoir of Lady Ranelagh de Chit Chat.


_ANECDOTE OF THE DUKE OF STRATHYTHAN_

Lady Ranelagh writes: "The Duke of Strathythan (I am writing of course
of the seventeenth Duke, not of his present Grace) was, as everybody
knows, famous for his hospitality. It was not perhaps generally known
that the Duke was as witty as he was hospitable. I recall a most amusing
incident that happened the last time but two that I was staying at
Strathythan Towers. As we sat down to lunch (we were a very small and
intimate party, there being only forty-three of us) the Duke, who was at
the head of the table, looked up from the roast of beef that he was
carving, and running his eye about the guests was heard to murmur, 'I'm
afraid there isn't enough beef to go round.'

"There was nothing to do, of course, but to roar with laughter and the
incident passed off with perfect _savoir faire_."

Here is another story which I think has not had all the publicity that
it ought to. I found it in the book _Shot, Shell and Shrapnell or Sixty
Years as a War Correspondent_, recently written by Mr. Maxim Catling
whose exploits are familiar to all readers.


     _ANECDOTE OF LORD KITCHENER_

     "I was standing," writes Mr. Maxim, "immediately
     between Lord Kitchener and Lord Wolsley (with Lord
     Roberts a little to the rear of us), and we were
     laughing and chatting as we always did when the enemy
     were about to open fire on us. Suddenly we found
     ourselves the object of the most terrific hail of
     bullets. For a few moments the air was black with them.
     As they went past I could not refrain from exchanging a
     quiet smile with Lord Kitchener, and another with Lord
     Wolsley. Indeed I have never, except perhaps on twenty
     or thirty occasions, found myself exposed to such an
     awful fusillade.

     "Kitchener, who habitually uses an eye-glass (among his
     friends), watched the bullets go singing by, and then,
     with that inimitable sangfroid which he reserves for
     his intimates, said,

     "'I'm afraid if we stay here we may get hit.'

     "We all moved away laughing heartily.

     "To add to the joke, Lord Roberts' aide-de-camp was
     shot in the pit of the stomach as we went."

The next anecdote which I reproduce may be already too well known to my
readers. The career of Baron Snorch filled so large a page in the
history of European diplomacy that the publication of his recent memoirs
was awaited with profound interest by half the chancelleries of Europe.
(Even the other half were half excited over them.) The tangled skein in
which the politics of Europe are enveloped was perhaps never better
illustrated than in this fascinating volume. Even at the risk of
repeating what is already familiar, I offer the following for what it is
worth--or even less.


     _NEW LIGHT ON THE LIFE OF CAVOUR_

     "I have always regarded Count Cavour," writes the
     Baron, "as one of the most impenetrable diplomatists
     whom it has been my lot to meet. I distinctly recall an
     incident in connection with the famous Congress of
     Paris of 1856 which rises before my mind as vividly as
     if it were yesterday. I was seated in one of the large
     salons of the Elysee Palace (I often used to sit there)
     playing vingt-et-un together with Count Cavour, the Duc
     de Magenta, the Marquese di Casa Mombasa, the Conte di
     Piccolo Pochito and others whose names I do not
     recollect. The stakes had been, as usual, very high,
     and there was a large pile of gold on the table. No one
     of us, however, paid any attention to it, so absorbed
     were we all in the thought of the momentous crises that
     were impending. At intervals the Emperor Napoleon III
     passed in and out of the room, and paused to say a word
     or two, with well-feigned _loignement_, to the
     players, who replied with such _dgagement_ as they
     could.

     "While the play was at its height a servant appeared
     with a telegram on a silver tray. He handed it to Count
     Cavour. The Count paused in his play, opened the
     telegram, read it and then with the most inconceivable
     nonchalance, put it in his pocket. We stared at him in
     amazement for a moment, and then the Duc, with the
     infinite ease of a trained diplomat, quietly resumed
     his play.

     "Two days afterward, meeting Count Cavour at a
     reception of the Empress Eugenie, I was able,
     unobserved, to whisper in his ear, 'What was in the
     telegram?' 'Nothing of any consequence,' he answered.
     From that day to this I have never known what it
     contained. My readers," concludes Baron Snorch, "may
     believe this or not as they like, but I give them my
     word that it is true.

     "Probably they will not believe it."

I cannot resist appending to these anecdotes a charming little story
from that well-known book, _Sorrows of a Queen_. The writer, Lady de
Weary, was an English gentlewoman who was for many years Mistress of the
Robes at one of the best known German courts. Her affection for her
royal mistress is evident on every page of her memoirs.


_TENDERNESS OF A QUEEN_

Lady de W. writes:

     "My dear mistress, the late Queen of Saxe-Covia-Slitz-in-Mein,
     was of a most tender and sympathetic disposition. The goodness
     of her heart broke forth on all occasions. I well remember how
     one day, on seeing a cabman in the Poodel Platz kicking his
     horse in the stomach, she stopped in her walk and said, 'Oh,
     poor horse! if he goes on kicking it like that he'll hurt it.'"

I may say in conclusion that I think if people would only take a little
more pains to resuscitate anecdotes of this sort, there might be a lot
more of them found.




_EDUCATION MADE AGREEABLE_




_VI--Education Made Agreeable or the Diversions of a Professor_


A few days ago during a pause in one of my college lectures (my class
being asleep) I sat reading Draper's _Intellectual Development of
Europe_. Quite suddenly I came upon the following sentence:

"Eratosthenes cast everything he wished to teach into poetry. By this
means he made it attractive, and he was able to spread his system all
over Asia Minor."

This came to me with a shock of an intellectual discovery. I saw at once
how I could spread my system, or parts of it, all over the United States
and Canada. To make education attractive! There it is! To call in the
help of poetry, of music, of grand opera, if need be, to aid in the
teaching of the dry subjects of the college class room.

I set to work at once on the project and already I have enough results
to revolutionize education.

In the first place I have compounded a blend of modern poetry and
mathematics, which retains all the romance of the latter and loses none
of the dry accuracy of the former. Here is an example:

The poem of
LORD ULLIN'S DAUGHTER
expressed as
A PROBLEM IN TRIGONOMETRY

     _Introduction._ A party of three persons, a Scotch
     nobleman, a young lady and an elderly boatman stand on
     the banks of a river (R), which, for private reasons,
     they desire to cross. Their only means of transport is
     a boat, of which the boatman, if squared, is able to
     row at a rate proportional to the square of the
     distance. The boat, however, has a leak (S), through
     which a quantity of water passes sufficient to sink it
     after traversing an indeterminate distance (D). Given
     the square of the boatman and the mean situation of all
     concerned, to find whether the boat will pass the river
     safely or sink.

    A chieftain to the Highlands bound
       Cried "Boatman do not tarry!
    And I'll give you a silver pound
       To row me o'er the ferry."
    Before them raged the angry tide
    X^2 + Y from side to side.

    Outspake the hardy Highland wight,
       "I'll go, my chief, I'm ready;
    It is not for your silver bright,
       But for your winsome lady."
    And yet he seemed to manifest
       A certain hesitation;
    His head was sunk upon his breast
       In puzzled calculation.

    "Suppose the river X + Y
    And call the distance Q
    Then dare we thus the gods defy
    I think we dare, don't you?
       Our floating power expressed in words
       Is X + 47/3"

    "Oh, haste thee, haste," the lady cries,
    "Though tempests round us gather
    I'll face the raging of the skies
    But please cut out the Algebra."

    The boat has left the stormy shore (S)
    A stormy C before her
    C_1 C_2 C_3 C_4
    The tempest gathers o'er her
       The thunder rolls, the lightning smites 'em
       And the rain falls ad infinitum.

    In vain the aged boatman strains,
    His heaving sides reveal his pains;
    The angry water gains apace
    Both of his sides and half his base,
       Till, as he sits, he seems to lose
       The square of his hypotenuse.

    The boat advanced to X + 2,
    Lord Ullin reached the fixed point Q,--
       Then the boat sank from human eye,
    OY, OY^2, OGY.

But this is only a sample of what can be done. I have realised that all
our technical books are written and presented in too dry a fashion. They
don't make the most of themselves. Very often the situation implied is
intensely sensational, and if set out after the fashion of an up-to-date
newspaper, would be wonderfully effective.

Here, for example, you have Euclid writing in a perfectly prosaic way
all in small type such an item as the following:

"A perpendicular is let fall on a line BC so as to bisect it at the
point C etc., etc.," just as if it were the most ordinary occurrence in
the world. Every newspaper man will see at once that it ought to be set
up thus:

_AWFUL CATASTROPHE
PERPENDICULAR FALLS HEADLONG
ON A GIVEN POINT_

_The Line at C said to be completely bisected
President of the Line makes Statement
etc., etc., etc._

But I am not contenting myself with merely describing my system. I am
putting it to the test. I am preparing a new and very special edition of
my friend Professor Daniel Murray's work on the Calculus. This is a book
little known to the general public. I suppose one may say without
exaggeration that outside of the class room it is hardly read at all.

Yet I venture to say that when my new edition is out it will be found on
the tables of every cultivated home, and will be among the best sellers
of the year. All that is needed is to give to this really monumental
book the same chance that is given to every other work of fiction in the
modern market.

First of all I wrap it in what is called technically a jacket. This is
of white enameled paper, and on it is a picture of a girl, a very pretty
girl, in a summer dress and sunbonnet sitting swinging on a bough of a
cherry tree. Across the cover in big black letters are the words:


_THE CALCULUS_

and beneath them the legend "the most daring book of the day." This, you
will observe, is perfectly true. The reviewers of the mathematical
journals when this book first came out agreed that "Professor Murray's
views on the Calculus were the most daring yet published." They said,
too, that they hoped that the professor's unsound theories of
infinitesimal rectitude would not remain unchallenged. Yet the public
somehow missed it all, and one of the most profitable scandals in the
publishing trade was missed for the lack of a little business
enterprise.

My new edition will give this book its first real chance.

I admit that the inside has to be altered,--but not very much. The real
basis of interest is there. The theories in the book are just as
interesting as those raised in the modern novel. All that is needed is
to adopt the device, familiar in novels, of clothing the theories in
personal form and putting the propositions advanced into the mouths of
the characters, instead of leaving them as unsupported statements of the
author. Take for example Dr. Murray's beginning. It is very good,--any
one will admit it,--fascinatingly clever, but it lacks heart.

It runs:

     If two magnitudes, one of which is determined by a
     straight line and the other by a parabola approach one
     another, the rectangle included by the revolution of
     each will be equal to the sum of a series of
     indeterminate rectangles.

Now this is,--quite frankly,--dull. The situation is there; the idea is
good, and, whether one agrees or not, is at least as brilliantly
original as even the best of our recent novels. But I find it necessary
to alter the presentation of the plot a little bit. As I re-edit it the
opening of the Calculus runs thus:

     On a bright morning in June along a path gay with the
     opening efflorescence of the hibiscus and entangled
     here and there with the wild blossoms of the
     convolvulus,--two magnitudes might have been seen
     approaching one another. The one magnitude who held a
     tennis-racket in his hand, carried himself with a
     beautiful erectness and moved with a firmness such as
     would have led Professor Murray to exclaim in
     despair--Let it be granted that A. B. (for such was our
     hero's name) is a straight line. The other magnitude,
     which drew near with a step at once elusive and
     fascinating, revealed as she walked a figure so
     exquisite in its every curve as to call from her
     geometrical acquaintances the ecstatic exclamation,
     "Let it be granted that M is a parabola."

     The beautiful magnitude of whom we have last spoken,
     bore on her arm as she walked, a tiny dog over which
     her fair head was bent in endearing caresses; indeed
     such was her attention to the dog Vi (his full name was
     Velocity but he was called Vi for short) that her
     wayward footsteps carried her not in a straight line
     but in a direction so constantly changing as to lead
     that acute observer, Professor Murray, to the
     conclusion that her path could only be described by the
     amount of attraction ascribable to Vi.

     Guided thus along their respective paths, the two
     magnitudes presently met with such suddenness that they
     almost intersected.

     "I beg your pardon," said the first magnitude very
     rigidly.

     "You ought to indeed," said the second rather sulkily,
     "you've knocked Vi right out of my arms."

     She looked round despairingly for the little dog which
     seemed to have disappeared in the long grass.

     "Won't you please pick him up?" she pleaded.

     "Not exactly in my line, you know," answered the other
     magnitude, "but I tell you what I'll do, if you'll
     stand still, perfectly still where you are, and let me
     take hold of your hand, I'll describe a circle!"

     "Oh, aren't you clever!" cried the girl, clapping her
     hands. "What a lovely idea! You describe a circle all
     around me, and then we'll look at every weeny bit of it
     and we'll be sure to find Vi--"

     She reached out her hand to the other magnitude who
     clasped it with an assumed intensity sufficient to
     retain it.

     At this moment a third magnitude broke on the scene:--a
     huge oblong, angular figure, very difficult to
     describe, came revolving towards them.

     "M," it shouted, "Emily, what are you doing?"

     "My goodness," said the second magnitude in alarm,
     "it's MAMA."

I may say that the second installment of Dr. Murray's fascinating
romance will appear in the next number of the _Illuminated Bookworm_,
the great adult-juvenile vehicle of the newer thought in which these
theories of education are expounded further.




_AN EVERY-DAY EXPERIENCE_




_VII--An Every-Day Experience_


He came across to me in the semi-silence room of the club.

"I had a rather queer hand at bridge last night," he said.

"Had you?" I answered, and picked up a newspaper.

"Yes. It would have interested you, I think," he went on.

"Would it?" I said, and moved to another chair.

"It was like this," he continued, following me: "I held the king of
hearts----"

"Half a minute," I said; "I want to go and see what time it is." I went
out and looked at the clock in the hall. I came back.

"And the queen and the ten----" he was saying.

"Excuse me just a second; I want to ring for a messenger."

I did so. The waiter came and went.

"And the nine and two small ones," he went on.

"Two small what?" I asked.

"Two small hearts," he said. "I don't remember which. Anyway, I remember
very well indeed that I had the king and the queen and the jack, the
nine, and two little ones."

"Half a second," I said, "I want to mail a letter."

When I came back to him, he was still murmuring:

"My partner held the ace of clubs and the queen. The jack was out, but I
didn't know where the king was----"

"You didn't?" I said in contempt.

"No," he repeated in surprise, and went on murmuring:

"Diamonds had gone round once, and spades twice, and so I suspected that
my partner was leading from weakness----"

"I can well believe it," I said--"sheer weakness."

"Well," he said, "on the sixth round the lead came to me. Now, what
should I have done? Finessed for the ace, or led straight into my
opponent----"

"You want my advice," I said, "and you shall have it, openly and fairly.
In such a case as you describe, where a man has led out at me repeatedly
and with provocation, as I gather from what you say, though I myself do
not play bridge, I should lead my whole hand at him. I repeat, I do not
play bridge. But in the circumstances, I should think it the only thing
to do."




_TRUTHFUL ORATORY_




_VIII--Truthful Oratory, or What Our Speakers Ought to Say_

I

_TRUTHFUL SPEECH GIVING THE
REAL THOUGHTS OF A DISTINGUISHED
GUEST AT THE FIFTIETH
ANNIVERSARY BANQUET
OF A SOCIETY_


MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN: If there is one thing I abominate more than
another, it is turning out on a cold night like this to eat a huge
dinner of twelve courses and know that I have to make a speech on top of
it. Gentlemen, I just feel stuffed. That's the plain truth of it. By the
time we had finished that fish, I could have gone home satisfied.
Honestly I could. That's as much as I usually eat. And by the time I had
finished the rest of the food, I felt simply waterlogged, and I do
still. More than that. The knowledge that I had to make a speech
congratulating this society of yours on its fiftieth anniversary haunted
and racked me all through the meal. I am not, in plain truth, the ready
and brilliant speaker you take me for. That is a pure myth. If you could
see the desperate home scene that goes on in my family when I am working
up a speech, your minds would be at rest on that point.

I'll go further and be very frank with you. How this society has lived
for fifty years, I don't know. If all your dinners are like this, Heaven
help you. I've only the vaguest idea of what this society is, anyway,
and what it does. I tried to get a constitution this afternoon but
failed. I am sure from some of the faces that I recognise around this
table that there must be good business reasons of some sort for
belonging to this society. There's money in it,--mark my words,--for
some of you or you wouldn't be here. Of course I quite understand that
the President and the officials seated here beside me come merely for
the self-importance of it. That, gentlemen, is about their size. I
realized that from their talk during the banquet. I don't want to speak
bitterly, but the truth is they are SMALL men and it flatters them to
sit here with two or three blue ribbons pinned on their coats. But as
for me, I'm done with it. It will be fifty years, please heaven, before
this event comes round again. I hope, I earnestly hope, that I shall be
safely under the ground.


II

_THE SPEECH THAT OUGHT TO BE
MADE BY A STATE GOVERNOR
AFTER VISITING THE FALL
EXPOSITION OF AN AGRICULTURAL
SOCIETY_

Well, gentlemen, this Annual Fall Fair of the Skedink County
Agricultural Association has come round again. I don't mind telling you
straight out that of all the disagreeable jobs that fall to me as
Governor of this State, my visit to your Fall Fair is about the
toughest.

I want to tell you, gentlemen, right here and now, that I don't know
anything about agriculture and I don't want to. My parents were rich
enough to bring me up in the city in a rational way. I didn't have to do
chores in order to go to the high school as some of those present have
boasted that they did. My only wonder is that they ever got there at
all. They show no traces of it.

This afternoon, gentlemen, you took me all round your live-stock
exhibit. I walked past, and through, nearly a quarter of a mile of hogs.
What was it that they were called--Tamworths--Berkshires? I don't
remember. But all I can say, gentlemen, is,--phew! Just that. Some of
you will understand readily enough. That word sums up my whole idea of
your agricultural show and I'm done with it.

No, let me correct myself. There was just one feature of your
agricultural exposition that met my warm approval. You were good enough
to take me through the section of your exposition called your Midway
Pleasance. Let me tell you, sirs, that there was more real merit in that
than all the rest of the show put together. You apologized, if I
remember rightly, for taking me into the large tent of the Syrian
Dancing Girls. Oh, believe me, gentlemen, you needn't have. Syria is a
country which commands my profoundest admiration. Some day I mean to
spend a vacation there. And, believe me, gentlemen, when I do go,--and I
say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable,--I should not wish
to be accompanied by such a set of flatheads as the officials of your
Agricultural Society.

And now, gentlemen, as I have just received a fake telegram, by
arrangement, calling me back to the capital of the State, I must leave
this banquet at once. One word in conclusion: if I had known as fully as
I do now how it feels to drink half a bucket of sweet cider, I should
certainly never have come.


III

_TRUTHFUL SPEECH OF A DISTRICT
POLITICIAN TO A LADIES' SUFFRAGE
SOCIETY_

LADIES: My own earnest, heartfelt conviction is that you are a pack of
cats. I use the word "cats" advisedly, and I mean every letter of it. I
want to go on record before this gathering as being strongly and
unalterably opposed to Woman Suffrage until you get it. After that I
favour it. My reasons for opposing the suffrage are of a kind that you
couldn't understand. But all men,--except the few that I see at this
meeting,--understand them by instinct.

As you may, however, succeed as a result of the fuss that you are
making,--in getting votes, I have thought it best to come. Also,--I am
free to confess,--I wanted to see what you looked like.

On this last head I am disappointed. Personally I like women a good deal
fatter than most of you are, and better looking. As I look around this
gathering I see one or two of you that are not so bad, but on the whole
not many. But my own strong personal predilection is and remains in
favour of a woman who can cook, mend clothes, talk when I want her to,
and give me the kind of admiration to which I am accustomed.

Let me, however, say in conclusion that I am altogether in sympathy with
your movement to this extent. If you ever _do_ get votes,--and the
indications are that you will (blast you),--I want your votes, and I
want all of them.




_OUR LITERARY BUREAU_




_IX--Our Literary Bureau[2]_

NOVELS READ TO ORDER
FIRST AID FOR THE
BUSY MILLIONAIRE

NO BRAINS NEEDED
NO TASTE REQUIRED
NOTHING BUT MONEY
SEND IT TO US


We have lately been struck,--of course not dangerously,--by a new idea.
A recent number of a well-known magazine contains an account of an
American multimillionaire who, on account of the pressure of his brain
power and the rush of his business, found it impossible to read the
fiction of the day for himself. He therefore caused his secretaries to
look through any new and likely novel and make a rapid report on its
contents, indicating for his personal perusal the specially interesting
parts.

Realizing the possibilities coiled up in this plan, we have opened a
special agency or bureau for doing work of this sort. Any over-busy
multimillionaire, or superman, who becomes our client may send us
novels, essays, or books of any kind, and will receive a report
explaining the plot and pointing out such parts as he may with propriety
read. If he can once find time to send us a postcard, or a postal
cablegram, night or day, we undertake to assume all the further effort
of reading. Our terms for ordinary fiction are one dollar per chapter;
for works of travel, 10 cents per mile; and for political or other
essays, two cents per page, or ten dollars per idea, and for theological
and controversial work, seven dollars and fifty cents per cubic yard
extracted. Our clients are assured of prompt and immediate attention.

Through the kindness of the Editor of the _Century_ we are enabled to
insert here a sample of our work. It was done to the order of a
gentleman of means engaged in silver mining in Colorado, who wrote us
that he was anxious to get "a holt" on modern fiction, but that he had
no time actually to read it. On our assuring him that this was now
unnecessary, he caused to be sent to us the monthly parts of a serial
story, on which we duly reported as follows:


JANUARY INSTALLMENT

     _Theodolite Gulch, The Dip,
     Canon County, Colorado._

     DEAR SIR:

     We beg to inform you that the scene of the opening
     chapter of the _Fortunes of Barbara Plynlimmon_ is laid
     in Wales. The scene is laid, however, very carelessly
     and hurriedly and we expect that it will shortly be
     removed. We cannot, therefore, recommend it to your
     perusal. As there is a very fine passage describing the
     Cambrian Hills by moonlight, we enclose herewith a
     condensed table showing the mean altitude of the moon
     for the month of December in the latitude of Wales. The
     character of Miss Plynlimmon we find to be developed in
     conversation with her grandmother, which we think you
     had better not read. Nor are we prepared to endorse
     your reading the speeches of the Welsh peasantry which
     we find in this chapter, but we forward herewith in
     place of them a short glossary of Welsh synonyms which
     may aid you in this connection.


FEBRUARY INSTALLMENT

     DEAR SIR:

     We regret to state that we find nothing in the second
     chapter of the _Fortunes of Barbara Plynlimmon_ which
     need be reported to you at length. We think it well,
     however, to apprise you of the arrival of a young
     Oxford student in the neighbourhood of Miss
     Plynlimmon's cottage, who is apparently a young man of
     means and refinement. We enclose a list of the
     principal Oxford Colleges.

     We may state that from the conversation and manner of
     this young gentleman there is no ground for any
     apprehension on your part. But if need arises we will
     report by cable to you instantly.

     The young gentleman in question meets Miss Plynlimmon
     at sunrise on the slopes of Snowdon. As the description
     of the meeting is very fine we send you a recent
     photograph of the sun.


MARCH INSTALLMENT

     DEAR SIR:

     Our surmise was right. The scene of the story that we
     are digesting for you is changed. Miss Plynlimmon has
     gone to London. You will be gratified to learn that she
     has fallen heir to a fortune of 100,000, which we are
     happy to compute for you at $486,666 and 66 cents less
     exchange. On Miss Plynlimmon's arrival at Charing Cross
     Station, she is overwhelmed with that strange feeling
     of isolation felt in the surging crowds of a modern
     city. We therefore enclose a timetable showing the
     arrival and departure of all trains at Charing Cross.


APRIL INSTALLMENT

     DEAR SIR:

     We beg to bring to your notice the fact that Miss
     Barbara Plynlimmon has by an arrangement made through
     her trustees become the inmate, on a pecuniary footing,
     in the household of a family of title. We are happy to
     inform you that her first appearance at dinner in
     evening dress was most gratifying: we can safely
     recommend you to read in this connection lines 4 and 5
     and the first half of line 6 on page 100 of the book as
     enclosed. We regret to say that the Marquis of Slush
     and his eldest son Viscount Fitz-bus (courtesy title)
     are both addicted to drink. They have been drinking
     throughout the chapter. We are pleased to state that
     apparently the second son, Lord Radnor of Slush, who is
     away from home is not so addicted. We send you under
     separate cover a bottle of Radnor water.


MAY INSTALLMENT

     DEAR SIR:

     We regret to state that the affairs of Miss Barbara
     Plynlimmon are in a very unsatisfactory position. We
     enclose three pages of the novel with the urgent
     request that you will read them at once. The old
     Marquis of Slush has made approaches towards Miss
     Plynlimmon of such a scandalous nature that we think it
     best to ask you to read them in full. You will note
     also that young Viscount Slush who is tipsy through
     whole of pages 121-125, 128-133, and part of page 140,
     has designs upon her fortune. We are sorry to see also
     that the Marchioness of Bus under the guise of
     friendship has insured Miss Plynlimmon's life and means
     to do away with her. The sister of the Marchioness, the
     Lady Dowager, also wishes to do away with her. The
     second housemaid who is tempted by her jewelery is also
     planning to do away with her. We feel that if this goes
     on she will be done away with.


JUNE INSTALLMENT

     DEAR SIR:

     We beg to advise you that Viscount Fitz-bus, inflamed
     by the beauty and innocence of Miss Plynlimmon, has
     gone so far as to lay his finger on her (read page 170,
     lines 6-7). She resisted his approaches. At the height
     of the struggle a young man, attired in the costume of
     a Welsh tourist, but wearing the stamp of an Oxford
     student, and yet carrying himself with the unmistakable
     hauteur (we knew it at once) of an aristocrat, burst,
     or bust, into the room. With one blow he felled
     Fitz-bus to the floor; with another he clasped the
     girl to his heart.

     "Barbara!" he exclaimed.

     "Radnor," she murmured.

     You will be pleased to learn that this is the second
     son of the Marquis, Viscount Radnor, just returned from
     a reading tour in Wales.

     P. S. We do not know what he read, so we enclose a file
     of Welsh newspapers to date.


JULY INSTALLMENT

     We regret to inform you that the Marquis of Slush has
     disinherited his son. We grieve to state that Viscount
     Radnor has sworn that he will never ask for Miss
     Plynlimmon's hand till he has a fortune equal to her
     own. Meantime, we are sorry to say, he proposes to
     work.


AUGUST INSTALLMENT

     The Viscount is seeking employment.


SEPTEMBER INSTALLMENT

     The Viscount is looking for work.


OCTOBER INSTALLMENT

     The Viscount is hunting for a job.


NOVEMBER INSTALLMENT

     We are most happy to inform you that Miss Plynlimmon
     has saved the situation. Determined to be worthy of the
     generous love of Viscount Radnor, she has arranged to
     convey her entire fortune to the old family lawyer who
     acts as her trustee. She will thus become as poor as
     the Viscount and they can marry. The scene with the old
     lawyer who breaks into tears on receiving the fortune,
     swearing to hold and cherish it as his own is very
     touching. Meantime, as the Viscount is hunting for a
     job, we enclose a list of advertisements under the
     heading _Help Wanted--Males._


DECEMBER INSTALLMENT

     You will be very gratified to learn that the fortunes
     of Miss Barbara Plynlimmon have come to a most pleasing
     termination. Her marriage with the Viscount Radnor was
     celebrated very quietly on page 231. (We enclose a list
     of the principal churches in London.) No one was
     present except the old family lawyer, who was moved to
     tears at the sight of the bright, trusting bride, and
     the clergyman who wept at the sight of the cheque given
     him by the Viscount. After the ceremony the old trustee
     took Lord and Lady Radnor to a small wedding breakfast
     at an hotel (we enclose a list). During the breakfast a
     sudden faintness (for which we had been watching for
     ten pages) overcame him. He sank back in his chair,
     gasping. Lord and Lady Radnor rushed to him and sought
     in vain to tighten his necktie. He expired under their
     care, having just time to indicate in his pocket a will
     leaving them his entire wealth.

     This had hardly happened when a messenger brought news
     to the Viscount that his brother, Lord Fitz-bus had
     been killed in the hunting field, and that he (meaning
     him, himself) had now succeeded to the title. Lord and
     Lady Fitz-bus had hardly time to reach the town house
     of the family when they learned that owing to the
     sudden death of the old Marquis (also, we believe, in
     the hunting field), they had become the Marquis and the
     Marchioness of Slush.

     The Marquis and the Marchioness of Slush are still
     living in their ancestral home in London. Their lives
     are an example to all their tenantry in Piccadilly, the
     Strand and elsewhere.


CONCLUDING NOTE

     _Dear Mr. Gulch_:

     We beg to acknowledge with many thanks your cheque for
     one thousand dollars.

     We regret to learn that you have not been able to find
     time to read our digest of the serial story placed with
     us at your order. But we note with pleasure that you
     propose to have the "essential points" of our digest
     "boiled down" by one of the business experts of your
     office.

     Awaiting your commands,

     We remain, etc., etc.


FOOTNOTES:

[2] This literary bureau was started by the author in the New York
_Century_. It leaped into such immediate prominence that it had to be
closed at once.




_SPEEDING UP BUSINESS_




_X--Speeding Up Business_


We were sitting at our editorial desk in our inner room, quietly writing
up our week's poetry, when a stranger looked in upon us.

He came in with a burst,--like the entry of the hero of western drama
coming in out of a snowstorm. His manner was all excitement. "Sit down,"
we said, in our grave, courteous way. "Sit down!" he exclaimed,
"certainly not! Are you aware of the amount of time and energy that are
being wasted in American business by the practice of perpetually sitting
down and standing up again? Do you realize that every time you sit down
and stand up you make a dead lift of"--he looked at us,--"two hundred
and fifty pounds? Did you ever reflect that every time you sit down you
have to get up again?" "Never," we said quietly, "we never thought of
it." "You didn't!" he sneered. "No, you'd rather go on lifting 250
pounds through two feet,--an average of 500 foot-pounds, practically 62
kilowatts of wasted power. Do you know that by merely hitching a pulley
to the back of your neck you could generate enough power to light your
whole office?"

We hung our heads. Simple as the thing was, we had never thought of it.
"Very good," said the Stranger. "Now, all American business men are like
you. They don't think,--do you understand me? They don't think."

We realized the truth of it at once. We had never thought. Perhaps we
didn't even know how.

"Now, I tell you," continued our visitor, speaking rapidly and with a
light of wild enthusiasm in his face, "I'm out for a new
campaign,--efficiency in business--speeding things up--better
organization."

"But surely," we said, musingly, "we have seen something about this
lately in the papers?" "Seen it, sir," he exclaimed, "I should say so.
It's everywhere. It's a new movement. It's in the air. Has it never
struck you how a thing like this can be seen in the air?"

Here again we were at fault. In all our lives we had never seen anything
in the air. We had never even looked there. "Now," continued the
Stranger, "I want your paper to help. I want you to join in. I want you
to give publicity."

"Assuredly," we said, with our old-fashioned politeness. "Anything which
concerns the welfare, the progress, if one may so phrase it----"

"Stop," said the visitor. "You talk too much. You're prosy. Don't talk.
Listen to me. Try and fix your mind on what I am about to say."

We fixed it. The Stranger's manner became somewhat calmer. "I am
heading," he said, "the new American efficiency movement. I have sent
our circulars to fifty thousand representative firms, explaining my
methods. I am receiving ten thousand answers a day"--here he dragged a
bundle of letters out of his pocket--"from Maine, from New Hampshire,
from Vermont,"----"Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut," we
murmured.

"Exactly," he said; "from every State in the Union--from the
Philippines, from Porto Rico, and last week I had one from Canada."
"Marvelous," we said; "and may one ask what your new methods are?"

"You may," he answered. "It's a proper question. It's a typical business
question, fair, plain, clean, and even admitting of an answer. The great
art of answering questions," he continued, "is to answer at once without
loss of time, friction or delay in moving from place to place. I'll
answer it."

"Do," we said.

"I will," said the Stranger. "My method is first: to stimulate business
to the highest point by infusing into it everywhere the spirit of
generous rivalry, of wholesome competition; by inviting each and every
worker to outdo each and every other."

"And can they do it?" we asked, puzzled and yet fascinated. "Can they
all do it?"

"They do, and they can," said the Stranger. "The proof of it is that
they are doing it. Listen. Here is an answer to my circular No. 6,
Efficiency and Recompense, that came in this morning. It is from a steel
firm. Listen." The Stranger picked out a letter and read it.

     DEAR SIR:

     Our firm is a Steel Corporation. We roll rails. As soon
     as we read your circular on the Stimulus of Competition
     we saw that there were big things in it. At once we
     sent one of our chief managers to the rolling, mill. He
     carried a paper bag in his hand. "Now boys," he said,
     "every man who rolls a rail gets a gum-drop." The
     effect was magical. The good fellows felt a new
     stimulus. They now roll out rails like dough. Work is a
     joy to them. Every Saturday night the man who has
     rolled most gets a blue ribbon; the man who has rolled
     the next most, a green ribbon; the next most a yellow
     ribbon, and so on through the spectroscope. The man who
     rolls least gets only a red ribbon. It is a real
     pleasure to see the brave fellows clamouring for their
     ribbons. Our output, after defraying the entire cost of
     the ribbons and the gum-drops, has increased forty per
     cent. We intend to carry the scheme further by allowing
     all the men who get a hundred blue ribbons first, to
     exchange them for the Grand Efficiency Prize of the
     firm,--a pink ribbon. This the winner will be entitled
     to wear whenever and wherever he sees fit to wear it.

The stranger paused for breath.

"Marvelous," we said. "There is no doubt the stimulus of keen
competition----"

"Shut up," he said impatiently. "Let me explain it further. Competition
is only part of it. An item just as big that makes for efficiency is to
take account of the little things. It's the little things that are never
thought of."

Here was another wonder! We realized that we had never thought of them.
"Take an example," the Stranger continued. "I went into a hotel the
other day. What did I see? Bell-boys being summoned upstairs every
minute, and flying up in the elevators. Yes,--and every time they went
up they had to come down again. I went up to the manager. I said, 'I can
understand that when your guests ring for the bell-boys they have to go
up. But why should they come down? Why not have them go up and never
come down?' He caught the idea at once. That hotel is transformed. I
have a letter from the manager stating that they find it fifty per cent
cheaper to hire new bell-boys instead of waiting for the old ones to
come down."

"These results," we said, "are certainly Marvelous. You are most
assuredly to be congratulated on----"

"You talk too much," said the Stranger. "Don't do it. Learn to listen.
If a young man comes to me for advice in business,--and they do in
hundreds, lots of them,--almost in tears over their inefficiency,--I'd
say, 'Young man, never talk, listen; answer, but don't speak.' But even
all this is only part of the method. Another side of it is technique."

"Technique?" we said, pleased but puzzled.

"Yes, the proper use of machine devices. Take the building trade. I've
revolutionized it. Till now all the bricks even for a high building were
carried up to the mason in hods. Madness! Think of the waste of it. By
my method instead of carrying the bricks to the mason we take the mason
to the brick,--lower him on a wire rope, give him a brick, and up he
goes again. As soon as he wants another brick he calls down, 'I want a
brick,' and down he comes like lightning."

"This," we said, "is little short of--"

"Cut it out. Even that is not all. Another thing bigger than any is
organization. Half the business in this country is not organized. As
soon as I sent out my circular, No. 4, HAVE YOU ORGANIZED YOUR BUSINESS!
I got answers in thousands! Heart-broken, many of them. They had never
thought of it! Here, for example, is a letter written by a plain man, a
gardener, just an ordinary man, a plain man--"

"Yes," we said, "quite so."

"Well, here is what he writes:

     "DEAR SIR:

     "As soon as I got your circular I read it all through
     from end to end, and I saw that all my failure in the
     past had come from my not being organized. I sat and
     thought a long while and I decided that I would
     organize myself. I went right in to the house and I
     said to my wife, 'Jane, I'm going to organize myself.'
     She said, 'Oh, John!'--and not another word, but you
     should have seen the look on her face. So the next
     morning I got up early and began to organize myself. It
     was hard at first but I stuck to it. There were times
     when I felt as if I couldn't do it. It seemed too hard.
     But bit by bit I did it and now, thank God, I am
     organized. I wish all men like me could know the
     pleasure I feel in being organized."

"Touching, isn't it?" said the Stranger. "But I get lots of letters like
that. Here's another, also from a man, a plain man, working on his own
farm. Hear what he says:

     "DEAR SIR:

     "As soon as I saw your circular on _HOW TO SPEED UP THE
     EMPLOYEE_ I felt that it was a big thing. I don't have
     any hired help here to work with me, but only father.
     He cuts the wood and does odd chores about the place.
     So I realized that the best I could do was to try to
     speed up father. I started in to speed him up last
     Tuesday, and I wish you could see him. Before this he
     couldn't split a cord of wood without cutting a slice
     off his boots. Now he does it in half the time."

"But there," the Stranger said, getting impatient even with his own
reading, "I needn't read it all. It is the same thing all along the
line. I've got the Method introduced into the Department Stores. Before
this every customer who came in wasted time trying to find the counters.
Now we install a patent springboard, with a mechanism like a catapult.
As soon as a customer comes in an attendant puts him on the board,
blindfolds him, and says, 'Where do you want to go?' 'Glove counter.'
'Oh, all right.' He's fired at it through the air. No time lost. Same
with the railways. They're installing the Method, too. Every engineer
who breaks the record from New York to Buffalo gets a glass of milk.
When he gets a hundred glasses he can exchange them for a glass of beer.
So with the doctors. On the new method, instead of giving a patient one
pill a day for fourteen days they give him fourteen pills in one day.
Doctors, lawyers, everybody,--in time, sir," said the Stranger, in tones
of rising excitement, "you'll see even the plumbers--"

But just at this moment the door opened. A sturdy-looking man in blue
entered. The Stranger's voice was hushed at once. The excitement died
out of his face. His manner all of a sudden was meekness itself.

"I was just coming," he said.

"That's right, sir," said the man; "better come along and not take up
the gentleman's time."

"Good-bye, then," said the Stranger, with meek affability, and he went
out.

The man in blue lingered behind for a moment.

"A sad case, sir," he said, and he tapped his forehead.

"You mean--" I asked.

"Exactly. Cracked, sir. Quite cracked; but harmless. I'm engaged to look
after him, but he gave me the slip downstairs."

"He is under delusions?" we inquired.

"Yes, sir. He's got it into his head that business in this country has
all gone to pieces,--thinks it must be reorganized. He writes letters
about it all day and sends them to the papers with imaginary names. You
may have seen some of them. Good day, sir."

We looked at our watch. We had lost just half an hour over the new
efficiency. We turned back with a sigh to our old-fashioned task.




WHO IS ALSO WHO A NEW POCKET DICTIONARY




_XI--Who Is Also Who. A Companion Volume to Who's Who_


NOTE BY THE EDITOR: I do not quarrel with the contents of such valuable
compendiums as "Who's Who," "Men and Women of the Time," etc., etc. But
they leave out the really Representative People. The names that they
include are so well known as to need no commentary, while those that
they exclude are the very people one most wishes to read about. My new
book is not arranged alphabetically, that order having given great
offence in certain social circles.

Smith, J. Everyman: born Kenoka Springs; educ. Kenoka Springs; present
residence, The Springs, Kenoka; address, Kenoka Springs Post-Office;
after leaving school threw himself (Oct. 1881) into college study;
thrown out of it (April 1882); decided to follow the law; followed it
(1882); was left behind (1883); decided (1884) to abandon it; abandoned
it; resolved (1885) to turn his energies to finance; turned them (1886);
kept them turned (1887); unturned them (1888); was offered position
(1889) as sole custodian of Mechanics' Institute, Kenoka Springs;
decided (same date) to accept it; accepted it; is there now; will be
till he dies.

FLINTLOCK, J. PERCUSSION: aged 87; war veteran and pensioner; born,
blank; educated, blank; at outbreak of Civil War sprang to arms; both
sides; sprang Union first; entered beef contract department of army of
U. S.; fought at Chicago, Omaha, and leading (beef) centres of operation
during the thickest of the (beef) conflict; was under Hancock, Burnside,
Meade, and Grant; fought with all of them; mentioned (very strongly) by
all of them; entered Confederate Service (1864); attached (very much) to
rum department of quarter-master's staff; mentioned in this connection
(very warmly) in despatches of General Lee; mustered out, away out, of
army; lost from sight, 1865-1895; placed on pension list with rank of
general, 1895; has stayed on, 1895-1915; obtained (on 6th Avenue) war
medals and service clasps; publications--"My Campaigns under Grant,"
"Battles I have Saved," "Feeding an Army," "Stuffing the Public," etc.,
etc.; recreations, telling war stories; favorite amusement, showing war
medals.

CROOK, W. UNDERHAND: born, dash; parents, double dash; educated at
technical school; on graduation turned his attention to the problem of
mechanical timelocks and patent safes; entered Sing-Sing, 1890; resident
there, 1890-1893; Auburn, 1894, three months; various state
institutions, 1895-1898; worked at profession, 1898-1899; Sing-Sing,
1900; professional work, 1901; Sing-Sing, 1902; profession, 1903,
Sing-Sing; profession, Sing-Sing, etc., etc.; life appointment, 1908;
general favorite, musical, has never killed anybody.

GLOOMIE, DREARY O'LEARY: Scotch dialect comedian and humorist; well
known in Scotland; has standing offer from Duke of Sutherland to put
foot on estate.

MUCK, O. ABSOLUTE: novelist; of low German extraction; born Rotterdam;
educated Muckendorf; escaped to America; long unrecognized; leaped into
prominence by writing "The Social Gas-Pipe," a powerful indictment of
modern society, written in revenge for not being invited to dinner;
other works--"The Sewerage of the Sea-Side," an arraignment of Newport
society, reflecting on some of his best friends; "Vice and Super-Vice,"
a telling denunciation of the New York police, written after they had
arrested him; "White Ravens," an indictment of the clergy; "Black
Crooks," an indictment of the publishers, etc., etc.; has arraigned and
indicted nearly everybody.

WHYNER, EGBERT ETHELWIND: poet, at age of sixteen wrote a quatrain, "The
Banquet of Nebuchadnezzar," and at once left school; followed it up in
less than two years by a poem in six lines "America"; rested a year and
then produced "Babylon, A Vision of Civilization," three lines; has
written also "Herod, a Tragedy," four lines; "Revolt of Woman," two
lines, and "The Day of Judgement," one line. Recreation, writing poetry.

ADULT, HON. UNDERDONE: address The Shrubbery, Hopton-under-Hyde,
Rotherham-near-Pottersby, Potts, Hants, Hops, England (or words to that
effect); organizer of the Boys' League of Pathfinders, Chief
Commissioner of the Infant Crusaders, Grand Master of the Young
Imbeciles; Major-General of the Girl Rangers, Chief of Staff of the
Matron Mountain Climbers, etc.

ZFWINSKI, X. Z.: Polish pianist; plays all night; address 4,570 West 457
Street, Westside, Chicago West.




_PASSIONATE PARAGRAPHS_




_XII--Passionate Paragraphs_

     (_An extract from a recent (very recent) novel,
     illustrating the new beauties of language and ideas
     that are being rapidly developed by the twentieth
     century press_.)


His voice as he turned towards her was taut as a tie-line.

"You don't love me!" he hoarsed, thick with agony. She had angled into a
seat and sat sensing-rather-than-seeing him.

For a time she silenced. Then presently as he still stood and enveloped
her,--

"Don't!" she thinned, her voice fining to a thread.

"Answer me," he gloomed, still gazing into-and-through her.

She half-heard half-didn't-hear him.

Night was falling about them as they sat thus beside the river. A molten
afterglow of iridescent saffron shot with incandescent carmine lit up
the waters of the Hudson till they glowed like electrified uranium.

For a while they both sat silent,--looming.

"It had to be," she glumped.

"Why, why?" he barked. "Why should it have had to have been or (_more
hopefully_) even be to be? Surely you don't mean because of _money_?"

She shuddered into herself.

The thing seemed to sting her (it hadn't really).

"Money!" she almost-but-not-quite-moaned. "You might have spared me
that!"

He sank down and grassed.

       *       *       *       *       *

And after they had sat thus for another half-hour grassing and growling
and angling and sensing one another, it turned out that all that he was
trying to say was to ask if she would marry him.

And of course she said yes.




_WEEJEE THE PET DOG_




_XIII--Weejee the Pet Dog. An Idyll of the Summer_


We were sitting on the verandah of the Sopley's summer cottage.

"How lovely it is here," I said to my host and hostess, "and how still."

It was at this moment that Weejee, the pet dog, took a sharp nip at the
end of my tennis trousers.

"Weejee!!" exclaimed his mistress with great emphasis, "_bad_ dog! how
dare you, sir! _bad_ dog!"

"I hope he hasn't hurt you," said my host.

"Oh, it's nothing," I answered cheerfully. "He hardly scratched me."

"You know I don't think he means anything by it," said Mrs. Sopley.

"Oh, I'm _sure_ he doesn't," I answered.

Weejee was coming nearer to me again as I spoke.

"_Weejee_!!" cried my hostess, "naughty dog, bad!"

"Funny thing about that dog," said Sopley, "the way he _knows_ people.
It's a sort of instinct. He knew right away that you were a
stranger,--now, yesterday, when the butcher came, there was a new driver
on the cart and Weejee knew it right away,--grabbed the man by the leg
at once,--wouldn't let go. I called out to the man that it was all right
or he might have done Weejee some harm."

At this moment Weejee took the second nip at my other trouser leg. There
was a short _gur-r-r_ and a slight mix-up.

"Weejee! Weejee!" called Mrs. Sopley. "How _dare_ you, sir! You're just
a _bad_ dog!! Go and lie down, sir. I'm so sorry. I think, you know,
it's your white trousers. For some reason Weejee simply _hates_ white
trousers. I do hope he hasn't torn them."

"Oh, no," I said; "it's nothing only a slight tear."

"Here, Weege, Weege," said Sopley, anxious to make a diversion and
picking up a little chip of wood,--"chase it, fetch it out!" and he made
the motions of throwing it into the lake.

"Don't throw it too far, Charles," said his wife. "He doesn't swim
awfully well," she continued, turning to me, "and I'm always afraid he
might get out of his depth. Last week he was ever so nearly drowned. Mr.
Van Toy was in swimming, and he had on a dark blue suit (dark blue seems
simply to infuriate Weejee) and Weejee just dashed in after him. He
don't _mean_ anything, you know, it was only the _suit_ made him
angry,--he really likes Mr. Van Toy,--but just for a minute we were
quite alarmed. If Mr. Van Toy hadn't carried Weejee in I think he might
have been drowned.

"By jove!" I said in a tone to indicate how appalled I was.

"Let me throw the stick, Charles," continued Mrs. Sopley. "Now, Weejee,
look Weejee--here, good dog--look! look now (sometimes Weejee simply
won't do what one wants), here, Weejee; now, good dog!"

Weejee had his tail sideways between his legs and was moving towards me
again.

"Hold on," said Sopley in a stern tone, "let me throw him in."

"Do be careful, Charles," said his wife.

Sopley picked Weejee up by the collar and carried him to the edge of the
water--it was about six inches deep,--and threw him in,--with much the
same force as, let us say, a pen is thrown into ink or a brush dipped
into a pot of varnish.

"That's enough; that's quite enough, Charles," exclaimed Mrs. Sopley. "I
think he'd better not swim. The water in the evening is always a little
cold. Good dog, good doggie, good Weejee!"

Meantime "good Weejee" had come out of the water and was moving again
towards me.

"He goes straight to you," said my hostess. "I think he must have taken
a fancy to you."

He had.

To prove it, Weejee gave himself a rotary whirl like a twirled mop.

"Oh, I'm _so_ sorry," said Mrs. Sopley. "I am. He's wetted you. Weejee,
lie down, down, sir, good dog, bad dog, lie down!"

"It's all right," I said. "I've another white suit in my valise."

"But you must be wet through," said Mrs. Sopley. "Perhaps we'd better go
in. It's getting late, anyway, isn't it?" And then she added to her
husband, "I don't think Weejee ought to sit out here now that he's wet."

So we went in.

"I think you'll find everything you need," said Sopley, as he showed me
to my room, "and, by the way, don't mind if Weejee comes into your room
at night. We like to let him run all over the house and he often sleeps
on this bed."

"All right," I said cheerfully, "I'll look after him."

That night Weejee came.

And when it was far on in the dead of night--so that even the lake and
the trees were hushed in sleep, I took Weejee out and--but there is no
need to give the details of it.

And the Sopleys are still wondering where Weejee has gone to, and
waiting for him to come back, because he is so clever at finding his
way.

But from where Weejee is, no one finds his way back.




_SIDELIGHTS ON THE SUPERMEN_




_XIV--Sidelights on the Supermen. An Interview with General Bernhardi._


He came into my room in that modest, Prussian way that he has, clicking
his heels together, his head very erect, his neck tightly gripped in his
forty-two centimeter collar. He had on a Pickelhaube, or Prussian
helmet, which he removed with a sweeping gesture and laid on the sofa.

So I knew at once that it was General Bernhardi.

In spite of his age he looked--I am bound to admit it--a fine figure of
a man. There was a splendid fullness about his chest and shoulders, and
a suggestion of rugged power all over him. I had not heard him on the
stairs. He seemed to appear suddenly beside me.

"How did you get past the janitor?" I asked. For it was late at night,
and my room at college is three flights up the stairs.

"The janitor," he answered carelessly, "I killed him."

I gave a gasp.

"His resistance," the general went on, "was very slight. Apparently in
this country your janitors are unarmed."

"You killed him?" I asked.

"We Prussians," said Bernhardi, "when we wish an immediate access
anywhere, always kill the janitor. It is quicker: and it makes for
efficiency. It impresses them with a sense of our Furchtbarkeit. You
have no word for that in English, I believe?"

"Not outside of a livery stable," I answered.

There was a pause. I was thinking of the janitor. It seemed in a sort of
way--I admit that I have a sentimental streak in me--a deplorable thing.

"Sit down," I said presently.

"Thank you," answered the General, but remained standing.

"All right," I said, "do it."

"Thank you," he repeated, without moving.

"I forgot," I said. "Perhaps you _can't_ sit down."

"Not very well," he answered; "in fact, we Prussian officers"--here he
drew himself up higher still--"never sit down. Our uniforms do not
permit of it. This inspires us with a kind of Rastlosigkeit." Here his
eyes glittered.

"It must," I said.

"In fact, with an Unsittlichkeit--an Unverschamtheit--with an
Ein-fur-alle-mal-un-dur-chaus--"

"Exactly," I said, for I saw that he was getting excited, "but pray tell
me, General, to what do I owe the honour of this visit?"

The General's manner changed at once.

"Highly learned, and high-well-born-professor," he said, "I come to you
as to a fellow author, known and honoured not merely in England, for
that is nothing, but in Germany herself, and in Turkey, the very home of
Culture."

I knew that it was mere flattery. I knew that in this same way Lord
Haldane had been so captivated as to come out of the Emperor's presence
unable to say anything but "Sittlichkeit" for weeks; that good old John
Burns had been betrayed by a single dinner at Potsdam, and that the
Sultan of Turkey had been told that his Answers to Ultimatums were the
wittiest things written since Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_. Yet I
was pleased in spite of myself.

"What!" I exclaimed, "they know my works of humour in Germany?"

"Do they know them?" said the General. "Ach! Himmel! How they laugh.
That work of yours (I think I see it on the shelf behind you), _The
Elements of Political Science_, how the Kaiser has laughed over it! And
the Crown Prince! It nearly killed him!"

"I will send him the new edition," I said. "But tell me, General, what
is it that you want of me?"

"It is about my own book," he answered. "You have read it?"

I pointed to a copy of _Germany and the Next War_, in its glaring yellow
cover--the very hue of Furchtbarkeit--lying on the table.

"You have read it? You have really read it?" asked the General with
great animation.

"No," I said, "I won't go so far as to say that. But I have _tried_ to
read it. And I talk about it as if I had read it."

The General's face fell.

"You are as the others," he said, "They buy the book, they lay it on the
table, they talk of it at dinner,--they say 'Bernhardi has prophesied
this, Bernhardi foresaw that,' but read it,--nevermore."

"Still," I said, "you get the royalties."

"They are cut off. The perfidious British Government will not allow the
treacherous publisher to pay them. But that is not my complaint."

"What is the matter, then?" I asked.

"My book is misunderstood. You English readers have failed to grasp its
intention. It is not meant as a book of strategy. It is what you call a
work of humour. The book is to laugh. It is one big joke."

"You don't say so!" I said in astonishment.

"Assuredly," answered the General. "Here"--and with this he laid hold of
the copy of the book before me and began rapidly turning over the
leaves--"let me set it out asunder for you, the humour of it. Listen,
though, to this, where I speak of Germany's historical mission on page
73,--'No nation on the face of the globe is so able to grasp and
appropriate all the elements of culture as Germany is?' What do you say
to that? Is it not a joke? Ach, Himmel, how our officers have laughed
over that in Belgium! With their booted feet on the mantelpiece as they
read and with bottles of appropriated champagne beside them as they
laugh."

"You are right, General," I said, "you will forgive my not laughing out
loud, but you are a great humorist."

"Am I not? And listen further still, how I deal with the theme of the
German character,--'Moral obligations such as no nation had ever yet
made the standard of conduct, are laid down by the German
philosophers.'"

"Good," I said, "gloriously funny; read me some more."

"This, then, you will like,--here I deal with the permissible rules of
war. It is on page 236 that I am reading it. I wrote this chiefly to
make laugh our naval men and our Zeppelin crews,--'A surprise attack, in
order to be justified, must be made only on the armed forces of the
state and not on its peaceful inhabitants. Otherwise the attack becomes
a treacherous crime.' Eh, what?"

Here the General broke into roars of laughter.

"Wonderful," I said. "Your book ought to sell well in Scarborough and in
Yarmouth. Read some more."

"I should like to read you what I say about neutrality, and how England
is certain to violate our strategical right by an attack on Belgium and
about the sharp measures that ought to be taken against neutral ships
laden with contraband,--the passages are in Chapters VII and VIII, but
for the moment I fail to lay the thumb on them."

"Give me the book, General," I said. "Now that I understand what you
meant by it, I think I can show you also some very funny passages in it.
These things, for example, that you say about Canada and the
colonies,--yes, here it is, page 148,--'In the event of war the
loosely-joined British Empire will break into pieces, and the colonies
will consult their own interests,'--excellently funny,--and this
again,--'Canada will not permanently retain any trace of the English
spirit,'--and this too,--'the Colonies can be completely ignored so far
as the European theatre of war is concerned,'--and here again,--'Egypt
and South Africa will at once revolt and break away from the empire,'
--really, General, your ideas of the British Colonies are superbly
funny. Mark Twain wasn't a circumstance on you."

"Not at all," said Bernhardi, and his voice reverted to his habitual
Prussian severity, "these are not jokes. They are facts. It is only
through the folly of the Canadians in not reading my book that they are
not more widely known. Even as it is they are exactly the views of your
great leader Heinrich Bauratze----"

"Who?" I said.

"Heinrich Bauratze, your great Canadian leader----"

"Leader of what?"

"That I do not know," said Bernhardi. "Our intelligence office has not
yet heard what he leads. But as soon as he leads anything we shall know
it. Meantime we can see from his speeches that he has read my book. Ach!
if only your other leaders in Canada,--Sir Robert Laurier, Sir Osler
Sifton, Sir Williams Borden,--you smile, you do not realize that in
Germany we have exact information of everything: all that happens, we
know it."

Meantime I had been looking over the leaves of the book.

"Here at least," I said, "is some splendidly humorous stuff,--this about
the navy. 'The completion of the Kiel Canal,' you write in Chapter XII,
'is of great importance as it will enable our largest battleships to
appear unexpectedly in the Baltic and in the North Sea!' Appear
unexpectedly! If they only would! How exquisitely absurd----"

"Sir!" said the General. "That is not to laugh. You err yourself. That
is Furchtbarkeit. I did not say the book is all humour. That would be
false art. Part of it is humour and part is Furchtbarkeit. That passage
is specially designed to frighten Admiral Jellicoe. And he won't read
it! Potztausand, he won't read it!"--repeated the general, his eyes
flashing and his clenched fist striking in the air--"What sort of
combatants are these of the British Navy who refuse to read our
war-books? The Kaiser's Heligoland speech! They never read a word of it.
The Furchtbarkeit-Proklamation of August,--they never looked at it. The
Reichstags-Rede with the printed picture of the Kaiser shaking hands
with everybody,--they used it to wrap up sandwiches! What are they,
then, Jellicoe and his men? They sit there in their ships and they read
nothing! How can we get at them if they refuse to read? How can we
frighten them away if they haven't culture enough to get frightened.
Beim Himmel," shouted the General in great excitement----

But what more he said can never be known. For at this second a sudden
catastrophe happened.

In his frenzy of excitement the General struck with his fist at the
table, missed it, lost his balance and fell over sideways right on the
point of his Pickelhaube which he had laid on the sofa. There was a
sudden sound as of the ripping of cloth and the bursting of pneumatic
cushions and to my amazement the General collapsed on the sofa, his
uniform suddenly punctured in a dozen places.

"Schnapps," he cried, "fetch brandy."

"Great Heavens! General," I said, "what has happened?"

"My uniform!" he moaned, "it has burst! Give me Schnapps!"

He seemed to shrink visibly in size. His magnificent chest was gone. He
was shriveling into a tattered heap. He appeared as he lay there, a very
allegory and illustration of Prussian Furchtbarkeit with the wind going
out of it.

"Fetch Schnapps,"--he moaned.

"There are no Schnapps here," I said, "this is McGill University."

"Then call the janitor," he said.

"You killed him," I said.

"I didn't. I was lying. I gave him a look that should have killed him,
but I don't think it did. Rouse yourself from your chair, and call
him----"

"I will," I said, and started up from my seat.

But as I did so, the form of General Bernhardi, which I could have sworn
had been lying in a tattered heap on the sofa on the other side of the
room, seemed suddenly to vanish from my eyes.

There was nothing before me but the empty room with the fire burned low
in the grate, and in front of me an open copy of Bernhardi's book.

I must,--like many another reader,--have fallen asleep over it.




_THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST_




_XV--The Survival of the Fittest_


A bell tinkled over the door of the little drug store as I entered it;
which seemed strange in a lighted street of a great city.

But the little store itself, dim even in the centre and dark in the
corners was gloomy enough for a country crossroads.

"I have to have the bell," said the man behind the counter, reading my
thought, "I'm alone here just now."

"A toothbrush?" he said in answer to my question. "Yes, I guess I've got
some somewhere round here." He was stooping under and behind his counter
and his voice came up from below. "I've got some somewhere--" And then
as if talking to himself he murmured from behind a pile of cardboard
boxes, "I saw some Tuesday."

Had I gone across the street to the brilliant premises of the Cut Rate
Pharmaceutical where they burn electric light by the meterfull I should
no sooner have said "tooth brush," than one of the ten clerks in white
hospital jackets would have poured a glittering assortment over the
counter--prophylactic, lactic and every other sort.

But I had turned in, I don't know why, to the little store across the
way.

"Here, I guess these must be tooth brushes," he said, reappearing at the
level of the counter with a flat box in his hand. They must have been
presumably, or have once been,--at some time long ago.

"They're tooth brushes all right," he said, and started looking over
them with an owner's interest.

"What is the price of them?" I asked.

"Well," the man said musingly, "I don't--jest--know. I guess it's
written on them likely," and he began to look at the handles.

Over at the Pharmaceutical across the way the words "what price?" would
have precipitated a ready avalanche of figures.

"This one seems to be seventy-five cents," he said and handed me one.

"Is it a good tooth brush?" I asked.

"It ought to be," he said, "you'd think, at that price."

He had no shop talk, no patter whatever.

Then he looked at the brush again, more closely.

"I don't believe it IS seventy-five," he muttered, "I think it must be
fifteen, don't you?"

I took it from his hand and looked and said,--for it is well to take an
occasional step towards the Kingdom of Heaven,--that I was certain it
was seventy-five.

"Well," said the man, "perhaps it is, my sight is not so good now. I've
had too much to do here and the work's been using me up some."

I noticed now as he said this how frail he looked as he bent over his
counter wrapping up the tooth brush.

"I've no sealing wax," he said, "or not handy."

"That doesn't matter," I answered, "just put it in the paper."

Over the way of course the tooth brush would have been done up almost
instantaneously, in white enamel paper, sealed at the end and stamped
with a label, as fast as the money paid for it went rattling along an
automatic carrier to a cashier.

"You've been very busy, eh?" I asked.

"Well, not so much with customers," he said, "but with fixing up the
place,"--here he glanced about him. Heaven only knows what he had fixed.
There were no visible signs of it.

"You see I've only been in here a couple of months. It was a pretty
tough looking place when I came to it. But I've been getting things
fixed. First thing I did I put those two carboys in the window with the
lights behind them. They show up fine, don't they?"

"Fine!" I repeated; so fine indeed that the dim yellow light in them
reached three or four feet from the jar. But for the streaming light
from the great store across the street, the windows of the little shop
would have been invisible.

"It's a good location here," he said. Any one could have told him that
it was the worst location within two miles.

"I'll get it going presently," he went on. "Of course it's uphill just
at first. Being such a good location the rent is high. The first two
weeks I was here I was losing five dollars a day. But I got those lights
in the window and got the stock overhauled a little to make it
attractive and last month I reckon I was only losing three dollars a
day."

"That's better," I said.

"Oh, yes," he went on, and there was a clear glint of purpose in his eye
that contrasted with his sunken cheeks. "I'll get it going. This last
two weeks I'm not losing more than say two and a half a day or something
like that? The custom is bound to come. You get a place fixed up and
made attractive like this and people are sure to come sooner or later."

What it was that was fixed up, and wherein lay the attractiveness I do
not know. It could not be seen with the outward eye. Perhaps after two
months' work of piling dusty boxes now this way, now that, and putting
little candles behind the yellow carboys to try the effect, some inward
vision came that lighted the place up with an attractiveness wanting
even in the glass and marble glitter of the Pharmacy across the way.

"Yes, sir," continued the man, "I mean to stay with it. I'll get things
into shape here, fix it up a little more and soon I'll have it,"--here
his face radiated with a vision of hope--"so that I won't lose a single
cent."

I looked at him in surprise. So humble an ambition it had never been my
lot to encounter.

"All that bothers me," he went on, "is my health. It's a nice business
the drug business: I like it, but it takes it out of you. You've got to
be alert and keen all the time; thinking out plans to please the custom
when it comes. Often I don't sleep well nights for the rush of it."

I looked about the little shop, as gloomy and sleepful as the mausoleum
of an eastern king, and wondered by what alchemy of the mind the little
druggist found it a very vortex of activity.

"But I can fix my health," he returned--"I may have to get some one in
here and go away for a spell. Perhaps I'll do it. The doctor was saying
he thought I might take a spell off and think out a few more wrinkles
while I'm away."

At the word "doctor" I looked at him more warmly, and I saw then what
was plain enough to see but for the dim light of the little place,--the
thin flush on the cheek, the hopeful mind, the contrast of the will to
live and the need to die, God's little irony on man, it was all there
plain enough to read. The "spell" for which the little druggist was
going is that which is written in letters of sorrow over the sunlit
desolation of Arizona and the mountains of Colorado.

       *       *       *       *       *

A month went by before I passed that way again. I looked across at the
little store and I read the story in its drawn blinds and the padlock on
its door.

The little druggist had gone away for a spell. And they told me, on
enquiry, that his journey had been no further than to the cemetery
behind the town where he lies now, musing, if he still can, on the law
of the survival of the fittest in this well-adjusted world.

And they say that the shock of the addition of his whole business to the
great Pharmacy across the way scarcely disturbed a soda siphon.




_THE FIRST NEWSPAPER_




_XVI--The First Newspaper. A Sort of Allegory_


"How likes it you, Master Brenton?" said the brawny journeyman, spreading
out the news sheet on a smooth oaken table where it lay under the light
of a leaded window.

"A Marvelous fair sheet," murmured Brenton Caxton, seventh of the name,
"let me but adjust my glasses and peruse it further lest haply there be
still aught in it that smacks of error."

"It needs not," said the journeyman, "'tis the fourth time already from
the press."

"Nay, nay," answered Master Brenton softly, as he adjusted his great
horn-rimmed spectacles and bent his head over the broad damp news sheet
before him. "Let us grudge no care in this. The venture is a new one
and, meseems, a very parlous thing withal. 'Tis a venture that may
easily fail and carry down our fortunes with it, but at least let it not
be said that it failed for want of brains in the doing."

"Fail quotha!" said a third man, who had not yet spoken, old, tall and
sour of visage and wearing a printer's leather apron. He had moved over
from the further side of the room where a little group of apprentices
stood beside the wooden presses that occupied the corner, and he was
looking over the shoulder of Master Brenton Caxton.

"How can it do aught else? 'Tis a mad folly. Mark you, Master Brenton
and Master Nick, I have said it from the first and let the blame be none
of mine. 'Tis a mad thing you do here. See then," he went on, turning
and waving his hand, "this vast room, these great presses, yonder
benches and tools, all new, yonder vats of ink straight out of Flanders,
how think you you can recover the cost of all this out of yonder poor
sheets? Five and forty years have I followed this mystery of printing,
ever since thy grandfather's day, Master Brenton, and never have I seen
the like. What needed this great chamber when your grandfather and
father were content with but a garret place, and yonder presses that can
turn off four score copies in the compass of a single hour,--'Tis mad
folly, I say."

The moment was an interesting one. The speakers were in a great room
with a tall ceiling traversed by blackened beams. From the street below
there came dimly through the closed casements the sound of rumbling
traffic and the street cries of the London of the seventeenth century.
Two vast presses of such colossal size that their wooden levers would
tax the strength of the stoutest apprentice, were ranged against the
further wall. About the room, spread out on oaken chairs and wooden
benches, were flat boxes filled with leaden type, freshly molten, and a
great pile of paper, larger than a man could lift, stood in a corner.

The first English newspaper in history was going to press. Those who in
later ages,--editors, printers, and workers--have participated in the
same scene, can form some idea of the hopes and fears, the doubts and
the difficulties, with which the first newspaper was ushered into the
world.

Master Brenton Caxton turned upon the last speaker the undisturbed look
of the eye that sees far across the present into the years to come.

"Nay, Edward," he said, "you have laboured over much in the past and see
not into the future. You think this chamber too great for our purpose? I
tell you the time will come when not this room alone but three or four
such will be needed for our task. Already I have it in my mind that I
will divide even this room into portions, with walls shrewdly placed
through its length and breadth, so that each that worketh shall sit as
it were in his own chamber and there shall stand one at the door and
whosoever cometh, to whatever part of our task his business appertains,
he shall forthwith be brought to the room of him that hath charge of it.
Cometh he with a madrigal or other light poesy that he would set out on
the press, he shall find one that has charge of such matters and can
discern their true value. Or, cometh he with news of aught that happens
in the realm, so shall he be brought instant to the room of him that
recordeth such events. Or, if so be, he would write a discourse on what
seemeth him some wise conceit touching the public concerns, he shall
find to his hand a convenient desk with ink and quills and all that he
needeth to set it straightway on paper; thus shall there be a great
abundance of written matter to our hand so that not many days shall
elapse after one of our news sheets goes abroad before there be matter
enough to fill another."

"Days!" said the aged printer, "think you you can fill one of these news
sheets in a few days! Where indeed if you search the whole realm will
you find talk enough in a single week to fill out this great sheet half
an ell wide!"

"Ay, days indeed!" broke in Master Nicholas, the younger journeyman.
"Master Brenton speaks truth, or less than truth. For not days indeed,
but in the compass of a single day, I warrant you, shall we find the
matter withal." Master Nicholas spoke with the same enthusiasm as his
chief, but with less of the dreamer in his voice and eye, and with more
swift eagerness of the practical man.

"Fill it, indeed," he went on. "Why, Gad Zooks! man! who knoweth what
happenings there are and what not till one essays the gathering of them!
And should it chance that there is nothing of greater import, no boar
hunt of his Majesty to record, nor the news of some great entertainment
by one of the Lords of the Court, then will we put in lesser matter, aye
whatever comes to hand, the talk of his Majesty's burgesses in the
Parliament or any such things."

"Hear him!" sneered the printer, "the talk of his Majesty's burgesses in
Westminster, forsooth! And what clerk or learned person would care to
read of such? Or think you that His Majesty's Chamberlain would long
bear that such idle chatter should be bruited abroad. If you can find no
worthier thing for this our news sheet than the talk of the Burgesses,
then shall it fail indeed. Had it been the speech of the King's great
barons and the bishops 'twere different. But dost fancy that the great
barons would allow that their weighty discourses be reduced to common
speech so that even the vulgar may read it and haply here and there
fathom their very thought itself,--and the bishops, the great prelates,
to submit their ideas to the vulgar hand of a common printer, framing
them into mere sentences! 'Tis unthinkable that they would sanction it!"

"Aye," murmured Caxton in his dreaming voice, "the time shall come,
Master Edward, when they will not only sanction it but seek it."

"Look you," broke in Master Nick, "let us have done with this talk?
Whether there be enough happenings or not enough,"--and here he spoke
with a kindling eye and looked about him at the little group of
apprentices and printers, who had drawn near to listen, "if there be not
enough, then will _I make things happen_. What is easier than to tell of
happenings forth of the realm of which no man can know,--some talk of
the Grand Turk and the war that he makes, or some happenings in the New
Land found by Master Columbus. Aye," he went on, warming to his words
and not knowing that he embodied in himself the first birth on earth of
the telegraphic editor,--"and why not. One day we write it out on our
sheet 'The Grand Turk maketh disastrous war on the Bulgars of the North
and hath burnt divers of their villages.' And that hath no sooner gone
forth than we print another sheet saying, 'It would seem that the
villages be not burnt but only scorched, nor doth it appear that the
Turk burnt them but that the Bulgars burnt divers villages of the Turk
and are sitting now in his mosque in the city of Hadrian.' Then shall
all men run to and fro and read the sheet and question and ask, 'Is it
thus?' And, 'Is it thus?' and by very uncertainty of circumstances, they
shall demand the more curiously to see the news sheet and read it."

"Nay, nay, Master Nick," said Brenton, firmly, "that will I never allow.
Let us make it to ourselves a maxim that all that shall be said in this
news sheet, or 'news paper,' as my conceit would fain call it, for be it
not made of paper (here a merry laugh of the apprentices greeted the
quaint fancy of the Master), shall be of ascertained verity and fact
indisputable. Should the Grand Turk make war and should the rumour of it
come to these isles, then will we say 'The Turk maketh war,' and should
the Turk be at peace, then we will say 'The Turk it doth appear is now
at peace.' And should no news come, then shall we say 'In good sooth we
know not whether the Turk destroyeth the Bulgars or whether he doth not,
for while some hold that he harasseth them sorely, others have it that
he harasseth them not, whereby we are sore put to it to know whether
there be war or peace, nor do we desire to vex the patience of those who
read by any further discourse on the matter, other than to say that we
ourselves are in doubt what be and what be not truth, nor will we any
further speak of it other than this.'"

Those about Caxton listened with awe to this speech. They did not,--they
could not know,--that this was the birth of the Leading Article, but
there was something in the strangely fascinating way in which their
chief enlarged upon his own ignorance that foreshowed to the meanest
intelligence the possibilities of the future.

Nicholas shook his head.

"'Tis a poor plan, Master Brenton," he said, "the folk wish news, give
them the news. The more thou givest them, the better pleased they are
and thus doth the news sheet move from hand to hand till it may be said
(if I too may coin a phrase) to increase vastly its 'circulation'----"

"In sooth," said Master Brenton, looking at Nicholas with a quiet
expression that was not exempt from a certain slyness, "there I do hold
thou art in the wrong, even as a matter of craft or policie. For it
seems to me that if our paper speaketh first this and then that but hath
no fixed certainty of truth, sooner or later will all its talk seem
vain, and no man will heed it. But if it speak always the truth, then
sooner or later shall all come to believe it and say of any happening,
'It standeth written in the paper, therefore it is so.' And here I
charge you all that have any part in this new venture," continued Master
Brenton, looking about the room at the listening faces and speaking with
great seriousness, "let us lay it to our hearts that our maxim shall be
truth and truth alone. Let no man set his hand to aught that shall go
upon our presses save only that which is assured truth. In this way
shall our venture ever be pleasing to the Most High, and I do verily
believe,"--and here Caxton's voice sank lower as if he were thinking
aloud,--"in the long run, it will be mighty good for our circulation."

The speaker paused. Then turning to the broad sheet before him, he began
to scan its columns with his eye. The others stood watching him as he
read.

"What is this, Master Edward," he queried presently, "here I see in this
first induct, or column, as one names it, the word King fairly and truly
spelled. Lower down it standeth Kyng, and yet further in the second
induct Kynge, and in the last induct where there is talk of His
Majesty's marvelous skill in the French game of palm or tennis, lo the
word stands Quhyngge! How sayeth thou?"

"Wouldst have it written always in but one and the same way?" asked the
printer in astonishment.

"Aye, truly," said Caxton.

"With never any choice, or variation to suit the fancy of him who reads
so that he who likes it written King may see it so, and yet also he who
would prefer it written in a freer style, or Quhyngge, may also find it
so and thus both be pleased."

"That will I never have!" said Master Brenton firmly, "dost not
remember, friend, the old tale in the fabula of sopus of him who would
please all men. Here will I make another maxim for our newspaper. All
men we cannot please, for in pleasing one belike we run counter to
another. Let us set our hand to write always without fear. Let us seek
favour with none. Always in our news sheet we will seek to speak
dutifully and with all reverence of the King his Majesty: let us also
speak with all respect and commendation of His Majesty's great prelates
and nobles, for are they not the exalted of the land? Also I would have
it that we say nothing harsh against our wealthy merchants and
burgesses, for hath not the Lord prospered them in their substances.
Yea, friends, let us speak ever well of the King, the clergy, the
nobility and of all persons of wealth and substantial holdings. But
beyond this"--here Brenton Coxton's eye flashed,--"let us speak with
utter fearlessness of all men. So shall we be, if I may borrow a mighty
good word from Tacitus his Annals, of a complete independence, hanging
on to no man. In fact our venture shall be an independent newspaper."

The listeners felt an instinctive awe at the words, and again a strange
prescience of the future made itself felt in every mind. Here for the
first time in history was being laid down that fine, fearless creed that
has made the independent press what it is.

Meantime Caxton continued to glance his eye over the news sheet,
murmuring his comments on what he saw,--"Ah! vastly fine, Master
Nicholas,--this of the sailing of His Majesty's ships for Spain,--and
this, too, of the Doge of Venice, his death, 'tis brave reading and
maketh a fair discourse. Here also this likes me, 'tis shrewdly
devised," and here he placed his finger on a particular spot on the news
sheet,--"here in speaking of the strange mishap of my Lord Arundel, thou
useth a great S for strange, and setteth it in a line all by itself
whereby the mind of him that reads is suddenly awakened, alarmed as it
were by a bell in the night. 'Tis good. 'Tis well. But mark you, friend
Nicholas, try it not too often, nor use your great letters too easily.
In the case of my Lord Arundel, it is seemly, but for a mishap to a
lesser person, let it stand in a more modest fashion."

There was a pause. Then suddenly Caxton looked up again.

"What manner of tale is this! What strange thing is here! In faith,
Master Nicholas, whence hast thou so marvelous a thing! The whole world
must know of it. Harken ye all to this!

"'Let all men that be troubled of aches, spavins, rheums, boils,
maladies of the spleen or humours of the blood, come forthwith to the
sign of the Red Lantern in East Cheap. There shall they find one that
hath a marvelous remedy for all such ailments, brought with great
dangers and perils of the journey from a far distant land. This
wonderous balm shall straightway make the sick to be well and the lame
to walk. Rubbed on the eye it restoreth sight and applied to the ear it
reviveth the hearing. 'Tis the sole invention of Doctor Gustavus
Friedman, sometime of Gttingen and brought by him hitherwards out of
the sheer pity of his heart for them that be afflicted, nor shall any
other fee be asked for it save only such a light and tender charge as
shall defray the cost of Doctor Friedman his coming and going.'"

Caxton paused and gazed at Master Nicholas in wonder. "Whence hadst thou
this?"

Master Nicholas smiled.

"I had it of a chapman, or travelling doctor, who was most urgent that
we set it forth straightway on the press."

"And is it true?" asked Caxton; "thou hast it of a full surety of
knowledge?"

Nicholas laughed lightly.

"True or false, I know not," he said, "but the fellow was so curious
that we should print it that he gave me two golden laurels and a new
sovereign on the sole understanding that we should set it forth in
print."

There was deep silence for a moment.

"He _payeth_ to have it printed!" said Caxton, deeply impressed.

"Aye," said Master Nicholas, "he payeth and will pay more. The fellow
hath other balms equally potent. All of these he would admonish, or
shall I say advert, the public."

"So," said Caxton, thoughtfully, "he wishes to make, if I may borrow a
phrase of Albertus Magnus, an advertisement of his goods."

"Even so," said Nicholas.

"I see," said the Master, "he payeth us. We advert the goods. Forthwith
all men buy them. Then hath he more money. He payeth us again. We advert
the goods more and still he payeth us. That would seem to me, friend
Nick, a mighty good busyness for us."

"So it is," rejoined Nicholas, "and after him others will come to advert
other wares until belike a large part of our news sheet,--who knows? the
whole of it, perhaps, shall be made up in the merry guise of
advertisements."

Caxton sat silent in deep thought.

"But Master Caxton"--cried the voice of a young apprentice, a mere
child, as he seemed, with fair hair and blue eyes filled with the native
candour of unsullied youth,--"is this tale true!"

"What sayest thou, Warwick?" said the master printer, almost sternly.

"Good master, is the tale of the wonderous balm true?"

"Boy," said Caxton, "Master Nicholas, hath even said, we know not if it
is true."

"But didst thou not charge us," pleaded the boy, "that all that went
under our hand into the press should be truth and truth alone?"

"I did," said Caxton thoughtfully, "but I spoke perhaps somewhat in
overhaste. I see that we must here distinguish. Whether this is true or
not we cannot tell. But it is _paid for_, and that lifts it, as who
should say, out of the domain of truth. The very fact that it is paid
for giveth it, as it were, a new form of merit, a verity altogether its
own."

"Ay, ay," said Nicholas, with a twinkle in his shrewd eyes, "entirely
its own."

"Indeed so," said Caxton, "and here let us make to ourselves another and
a final maxim of guidance. All things that any man will pay for, these
we will print, whether true or not, for that doth not concern us. But if
one cometh here with any strange tale of a remedy or aught else and
wishes us to make advertisement of it and hath no money to pay for it,
then shall he be cast forth out of this officina, or office, if I may
call it so, neck and crop into the street. Nay, I will have me one of
great strength ever at the door ready for such castings."

A murmur of approval went round the group.

Caxton would have spoken further but at the moment the sound of a bell
was heard booming in the street without.

"'Tis the Great Bell," said Caxton, "ringing out the hour of noon.
Quick, all of you to your task. Lay me the forms on the press and speed
me the work. We start here a great adventure. Mark well the maxims I
have given you, and God speed our task."

And in another hour or so, the prentice boys of the master printer were
calling in the streets the sale of the first English newspaper.




_IN THE GOOD TIME AFTER THE WAR[3]_




_XVII--In the Good Time After the War_

HOUSE OF COMMONS REPORT


The Prime Minister in rising said that he thought the time had now come
when the House might properly turn its attention again to domestic
affairs. The foreign world was so tranquil that there was really nothing
of importance which need be brought to the attention of the House.
Members, however, would, perhaps, be glad to learn incidentally that a
new and more comfortable cage had been supplied for the ex-German
Emperor, and that the ex-Crown Prince was now showing distinct signs of
intelligence, and was even able to eat quite quietly out of his keeper's
hand. Members would be gratified to know that at last the Hohenzollern
family were able to abstain from snapping at the hand that fed them. But
he would now turn to the subject of Home Rule.

Here the House was seen to yawn noticeably, and a general lack of
interest was visible, especially among the Nationalist and Ulster
members. A number of members were seen to rise as if about to move to
the refreshment-room. Mr. John Redmond and Sir Edward Carson were seen
walking arm in arm towards the door.

_The Prime Minister._ "Will the members kindly keep their seats? We are
about to hold a discussion on Home Rule. Members will surely recall that
this form of discussion was one of our favourite exercises only a year
or so ago. I trust that members have not lost interest in the subject."
(_General laughter among the members, and cries of "Cut it out!" "What
is it"?_)

_The Prime Minister (with some asperity)._ "Members are well aware what
Home Rule meant. It was a plan--or rather it was a scheme--that is to
say, it was an act of parliament, or I should say a bill, in fact, Mr.
Speaker, I don't mind confessing that, not having my papers with me, I
am unable to inform the House just what Home Rule was. I think, perhaps,
the Ex-Minister of Munitions has a copy of last year's bill."

_Mr. Lloyd George rising, with evident signs of boredom._ "The House
will excuse me. I am tired. I have been out all day aeroplaning with Mr.
Churchill and Mr. Bonar Law, with a view to inspect the new national
training camp. I had the Home Rule Bill with me along with the Welsh
Disestablishment Bill and the Land Bill, and I am afraid that I lost the
whole bally lot of them; dropped them into the sea or something. I hope
the Speaker will overlook the term 'bally.' It may not be
parliamentary."

_Mr. Speaker (laughing)._ "Tut, tut, never mind a little thing like
that. I am sure that after all that we have gone through together, the
House is quite agreed that a little thing like parliamentary procedure
doesn't matter."

_Mr. Lloyd George (humbly)._ "Still I am sorry for the term. I'd like to
withdraw it. I separate or distinguish in any degree the men of Ulster
from the men of Tipperary, and the heart of Belfast from the heart of
Dublin." (_Loud cheers_.)

_Mr. Redmond (springing forward)._ "And I'll say this: Not I, nor any
man of Ireland, Dublin, Belfast, or Connaught will ever set our hands or
names to any bill that shall separate Ireland in any degree from the
rest of the Empire. Work out, if you like, a new scheme of government.
If the financial clauses are intricate, get one of your treasury clerks
to solve them. If there's trouble in arranging your excise on your
customs, settle it in any way you please. But it is too late now to
separate England and Ireland. We've held the flag of the Empire in our
hand. We mean to hold it in our grasp forever. We have seen its colours
tinged a brighter red with the best of Ireland's blood, and that proud
stain shall stay forever as the symbol of the unity of Irish and the
English people."

(_Loud cheers ring through the House; several members rise in great
excitement, all shouting and speaking together.) There is heard the
voice of Mr. Angus McCluskey, Member for the Hebrides, calling_--"And
ye'll no forget Scotland, me lad, when you talk of unity! Do you mind
the Forty-Second, and the London Scottish in the trenches of the Aisne?
Wha carried the flag of the Empire then? Unity, ma friends, ye'll never
break it. It may involve a wee bit sacrifice for Scotland financially
speaking. I'll no say no to a reveesion of the monetairy terms, if ye
suggest it,--but for unita--Scotland and the Empire, now and forever!"

_A great number of members have risen in their seats. Mr. Open Ap Owen
Glendower is calling: "Aye and Wales! never forget Wales." Mr. Trevelyan
Trendinning of Cornwall has started singing_ "And shall Trelawney
Die?"--_while the deep booming of_ "Rule Britannia" _from five hundred
throats ascends to the very rafters of the House._

_The Speaker laughing and calling for order, while two of the more
elderly clerks are beating with the mace on the table_,--"Gentlemen,
gentlemen, I have a proposal to make. I have just learned that there is
at the Alhambra in Leicester Square, a real fine moving picture show of
the entrance of the Allies into Berlin. Let's all go to it. We can leave
a committee of the three youngest members to stay behind and draw up a
new government for Ireland. Even they can't go wrong now as to what we
want."

_Loud Cheers as the House empties, singing_ "It was a Long Way to
Tipperary, but the way lay through Berlin."


FOOTNOTES:

[3] An extract from a London newspaper of 1916.


THE END


[Transcriber's Note: The last three pages of ads are omitted in
this Text version, but are included in the HTML version.]


[End of _Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy_ by Stephen Leacock]