A
Atraveler is a person who escorts baggage. He may think he is taking a trip for business or pleasure, but, whether he be journeying from Brooklyn to Hoboken with one trunk, or touring Europe with a bevy of handbags, his real occupation consists in chaperoning impedimenta.
There is something almost touching about the way in which he looks after his little flock—seeing that they are properly tagged,counting them anxiously to be sure that none are missing, defending them from the cruelty of expressmen, pleading for them at the feet of customs inspectors. He has care for the humblest satchel. If it be lost he will set down three full suitcases and seek after it until he finds it.
Not that he is actuallyfondof his luggage. But he has packed it and brought it with him, and therefore he is under obligation to it; is responsible for its well-being.
He knows in his heart that many of the clothes he has brought will never be worn, and that most of the books he has stowed away—dry looking volumes which he long ago decided he ought to read but which somehow he has never got 'round to—will not be opened. Nevertheless, he has these things with him, and it is his duty to cherish them and see them safely back home again.
As he unpacks his belongings at the first stop, he wonders what his state of mind could have been when he packed them. Why had he deemed his shaving brushde trop? And why, oh why, had he abandoned his faithful slippers?Had he imagined that two left-hand rubbers constituted a pair? Five hats and caps are all very nice, but why did he put in only four handkerchiefs? And even an array of fifty-seven neckties affords poor consolation for the total absence of socks. As for the bathing-suit, the morning tub would be the only place where he could use that, and even there it would hardly seem appropriate.
Anybody with the price of a ticket can travel from one city to another, but it takes a real genius to pack a trunk. The art must be practiced in its purity; there must be no mixing of the pancake (or roll-'em-up) style with the flapjack (or spread-'em-out-flat) style. Such eclecticism is pernicious.
Considered from another point of view, packing is a fascinating game. You put all sorts of objects in a trunk, the baggage man churns them thoroughly, and then you take them out again and try to guess what they are. You meet with a hundred different surprises. For instance, you never would have dreamed that a derby hat could turn inside out, or that a single suit could acquire ninety-threeseparate and distinct creases, or that a book could swallow a mirror and have indigestion from it, or that a bottle of ink inside seven wrappings could break and assert itself over a pile of shirts and a month's supply of collars.
But the great paradox of packing is that a trunk is always full when you close it and always three-quarters empty when you open it. The trunk that nothing but violent stamping will shut is the very trunk that, a few hours later, bounces your possessions about like beans in a rattle; so that when you lift the lid again you find them huddled forlornly in a corner, exhausted and battered from their shuttle-istics.
Another peculiarity is that nothing that you want is where you think it is. The garment that you clearly remember putting in the right-hand front corner of the top tray is sure to turn up at last in the opposite part of the bottom. Indeed, sooner will the Sphinx give up her secret than the trunk give up the thing you are looking for. To dig upde profundisa shoehorn that you need is a more remarkableachievement than to unearth a new Pompeii.
Rooting is a science. Suppose, for instance, you wish to locate a pair of scissors without disturbing the general order. You begin by classifying the scissors in your mind, in order that you may calculate their position in the trunk. You consider them with reference to the following scheme of arrangement, which you recite as if you were an elevator boy in a department store:
1.Main Tray.Shirts, collars, hats, handkerchiefs,andtoilet articles.2.Mezzanine Tray.Dress clothes, neckwear, art goods,andbric-a-brac.3.Basement.Shoes, hardware, suits, underwear, books, medicines,andsporting goods.
1.Main Tray.Shirts, collars, hats, handkerchiefs,andtoilet articles.
2.Mezzanine Tray.Dress clothes, neckwear, art goods,andbric-a-brac.
3.Basement.Shoes, hardware, suits, underwear, books, medicines,andsporting goods.
Concluding, after due deliberation, that the scissors are equally appropriate to all of these, you start in on the main tray, sliding your palms around the edge as though you were easing ice-cream out of a mold.
No scissors.
No scissors.
You delve deeper, using the back of your hand as a plow-share.
No scissors.
No scissors.
Refusing to be baffled, you leave no garment unturned.
No scissors.
No scissors.
Growing a trifle impatient, you take out the main tray and tackle the mezzanine. This will be a simple matter, because it is so shallow that you have only to feel around the edges.
No scissors.
No scissors.
Perhaps they got shaken into the middle. You burrow there, making considerable work for the clothes-presser.
No scissors.
No scissors.
Now you are genuinely angry. You toss the mezzanine upon the arms of a chair. It is a rocking-chair, and it slides the tray gently forward and deposits it face downward on the floor.
Pretending to ignore this, you plunge both arms into the basement so violently that the lid unclicks and gives you a cowardly blow on the back of the head.
You rise up and vow that this your chattel shall flout you no longer. Seizing it fiercely,you turn it upside down—you dump its contents about the room.
No scissors!
No scissors!
Then there steals into your mind a vision of the above-mentioned cutlery lying on a chiffonier in a room hundreds of miles away—and the realization that they are probably lying there still.
Man and family reading.
The usual package of seeds has not arrived. Is the Hon.——, my Representative in Congress, neglecting me? The uncertainty appals.
Year after year this eminent legislator has favored me with floral tributes in kernel form, so that I have come to think of them as my inalienable rights as a constituent. True, as is the case with the thousands of other voters inthis urban district which he represents, I have no facilities for horticulture. Living in a New York apartment seven stories up and unequipped with arable soil (the nondescript substance which deposits on my window sills from outshaken mops above would scarcely qualify as loam), I have been at a loss as to what disposition to make of said seeds.
"My dear friend," writes the benevolent legislator, "I am inclosing a list issued by the Department of Agriculture showing bulletins available for free distribution, which contain very valuable information for all classes of readers." And he invites me to choose any six, by number, that he may promptly send them to me.
Only six! To select that limited allotment from so alluring a galaxy is difficult, not to say bewildering.
No. 73 catches my eye—"Fly Traps and Their Operation". I simply must have that one. It seems to promise an insight into the mysteries of oratory. Perhaps it may enable me the better to appreciate my M. C.
Nor can I hope to live a rounded life if Ifail to assimilate No. 940, "Common White Grubs," and No. 920, "Milk Goats," and No. 788, "The Windbreak as a Farm Asset".
That makes four already; to which I must certainly add the kindly No. 1105, "Care of Mature Fowls," and the arrestingly realistic No. 1085, "Hog Lice and Hog Mange".
Thus my six choices are used up, and I am but at the threshold of this new world of knowledge that lies tantalizingly before me. What of No. 685, celebrating that splendidly uncompromising American growth, "The Native Persimmon," and the intriguingly cryptic Nos. 515 and 1143, revealing the secrets of "Vetches" and "Lespedeza as a Forage Crop"? Surely this coveted information should not be withheld from me.
Why should I be deprived of the privilege of reading aloud to my family No. 762, "False Cinch Bug—Measures for Control," and No. 1127, "Peanut Growing for Profit," and No. 948, "The Rag-Doll Seed Tester"? If such romances were available for every one there would be less senseless gadding about on the part of our young folks. Let the flapper fillher mind, not her flask, with No. 767, "Goose Raising," or No. 757, "Commercial Varieties of Alfalfa". And let her heed the warning against short skirts in No. 1135, "The Beef Calf".
It has been said that there is in America insufficient appreciation of architecture. Ah, true, my friends. Let the multitude con No. 438, "Hog Houses," and, as examples of chaste suppression of meaningless ornamentation, Nos. 966 and 682—"A Simple Hog-Breeding Crate" and "Simple Trap Nest for Poultry".
Included in this invaluable list are to be found not only the frankly practical but also the vividly dramatic. Offsetting such everyday but significant matters as No. 1189, "The Handling of Spinach for Shipment"; No. 1153, "Cowpea Utilization"; No. 1161, "Dodder," and No. 978, "Barnyard Manure in Eastern Pennsylvania," there are offered imagination stirring themes like No. 835, "How to Detect Outbreaks of Insects"; No. 874, "Swine Management," and No. 1003 (one that should be especially prized by the impecunious), "How to Control Billbugs".
Until I read this list I had no idea that spiritualism had entomological phases which Conan Doyle seems to have overlooked. Again and again there is mention of strange creatures and their psychic "controls": No. 1074, "The Bean Ladybird and Its Control"; No. 1060, "Harlequin Cabbage Bug and Its Control"; No. 897, "Fleas and Their Control," and No. 975 (presumably throwing light upon the immigration problem), "The Control of European Foulbrood".
More comprehensible to me are the following. Anent home life and pets: No. 1014, "Wintering Bees in Cellars"; No. 1104, "Book Lice," and No. 846, "Tobacco Beetle and How to Prevent Loss". (Does one keep the beetle on a leash, I wonder?) Bolshevism: No. 1054, "The Loco Weed". Chambers of Commerce, Get-Together Clubs, etc.: No. 993, "Cooperative Bull Associations". Prohibitionists: No. 1220, "Insect and Fungus Enemies of the Grape".
All in all, there are at least thirty bulletins which every citizen of this metropolis needs to make him an intelligent voter. And myM. C. allows me but six!
"My allotment being limited," he explains. But why should his allotment be thus limited? Since he grants that the bulletins are indispensable to my enlightenment, it is not for him to apologize, but to see that I am fully supplied with them. To protest that the Department of Agriculture cramps his largess is no excuse, for does not almighty Congress rule the Department of Agriculture and run it in the interests of the People and not for the sake of a lot of rubes? No; let him spur the department to greater efforts, press the presses to greater output.
When my little son looks up into my eyes and asks, "Daddy, tell me about the flat-headed apple tree borer," am I to answer him:
"Sorry, my boy, but Bulletin No. 1065 was denied me by a niggardly government?"
My M. C. will not have done his complete duty till every home in this city boasts a five-foot shelf of bulletins and the head of every family can gather his dear ones about the radiator in the evening with a cheery:
"Ah! now we take up No. 956, 'The SpottedGarden Slug.' Every one who pays strict attention gets a hollyhock seed."
Only then will the true function of government be realized.
Meanwhile....The seeds have come!
Meanwhile....
The seeds have come!
At the risk of seeming churlish, a veritable outcast from society, I confess that I have no great fondness for snowy bosoms. I realize that they are generally considered beautiful, and that their virgin whiteness is the embodiment of unyielding purity; and yet I cannot but prefer the more comfortablenegligéeshirt.
If only they could be soft-boiled. I would so appreciate a three-minute one. (I know it would sit better on the stomach.) The white could be firm enough to hold together, and yet not so much so as to require a knife to break into it.
Gala chemises that approached this ideal did appear several seasons ago. Their frontispieces were encrusted with a swarm of very young tucks, which rendered them quite docile. But these gentle, easy-going garments, with their pliant pleats and amenable button holes, could not survive. They were, alas, too soft. They lacked the stoicism of starch. Theycould not hold their own against the sterner-fibred armored breastworks.
And so we men of today when we go to perform our evening devotions to the ladies have upon us the same old white plague.
I might find some consolation in the fact that my aversion to it is shared by all laundries. Yes, the laundry is my avenger. With Machiavellian guile it invites shirts, seeks them, welcomes them, professes a yearning passion for them; and then subtly destroys them in secret. Commit an insufferable new stud-smasher to a laundry and note the fate that overtakes it. See what happens to its bold front. A week later it will be brought back to you with its spirit quite broken, and its tail between its sleeves, and held in subjection by a squad of menacing pins.
The moment you rend the veil of wax paper with which they have discreetly concealed its destitution, you are amazed to find how it has aged in one short week. It has become like the sear and yellow leaf. There are crow's feet at the corners of its buttonholes. It is so weak that they have had to send it on a paste-boardstretcher to keep it from going all to pieces.
Your erstwhile festive buckler now looks more like the bosom of Abraham.
It is easy nowadays to get advice on how to arrange your home. The Woman's Page in any newspaper will tell you just how your living-room ought to look, just how your hallway may be beautified, and just how your kitchen may be transformed into a scientific laboratory. Scores of books by experts on the subject undertake to instruct you how to change your home from a place to live in to a work of art.
Realizing that my abode needed a little toning-up along modern æsthetic lines, I consulted a book called "The Dwelling Beautiful," which I had been informed would give me just the help I needed. "It is not necessary that your furniture, rugs, hangings, and pictures beexpensive," says the author, reassuringly. "The only essential is that they be beautiful in themselves and in restful accord with each other."
Pray, gentle writer, did you ever see my belongings? Did you ever see the marble-and-walnutparlor table that Aunt Jessamine gave me; or the streakily-stained Mission piano, with mottled glass panels and gew-gawy candle-brackets, that my wife won in the guessing contest and is therefore inordinately proud of; or the case of stuffed birds which Uncle Lemuel left me in his will? How am I to make these things "beautiful in themselves and in restful accord with each other?"
The truth is, none of our furnishings are gregarious. From the green rug whose acrid hue assaults every other color in the room, to the wonderfully and fearfully made "ornamental" lamp, each thing is what the advertisement writers would call "different". Rabid in their nonconformity, how am I to make a happy family of them?
The main feud is between our heirlooms and our wedding presents—the former being atrocities in oak, walnut and plush of the Victorian era, and the latter, present-day garishnesses; so that the general effect might be likened to a colon: one period on top of another.
The author of "The Dwelling Beautiful"would probably suggest that I get rid of some of these incumbrances. The lamentable fact is that Ican't. My relatives would disown me. For my whole family connection—not to mention my wife's (about which much might be said)—takes upon itself to police my belongings. Every visit of a relative, even the casual call of my most distant cousin, means a critical inspection, a careful stock-taking of heirlooms and wedding presents.
A person who gives you anything as a wedding present never forgets it. His taste may be erratic, but his memory is inexorable. Because a thing happened to catch his fancy in an off-moment, it is anchored in your home forever. And the feeling of self-appreciation for his generosity, which he experiences whenever he beholds his gift in after years, prevents him from admitting, even to himself, that he was out of his mind when he bought it. Hence, you are doomed to be its perpetual curator, with the obligation to display it prominently, so that whenever he chooses to enter your house he may see it and claim it with his eye.
An heirloom is still worse. Each one thatyou have in your possession might have gone to somebody else, and that somebody else feels that he or she would have appreciated it more than you do. Nevertheless, for you to disburden yourself of a single heirloom by presenting it to the person who coveted it most, would be to precipitate a family crisis.
Take, for instance, that case of stuffed birds. Every time Uncle Lemuel's daughter sees it she tells me how much it always meant to her, and how the old house seems empty without it. Yet whenever I offer to make her a present of it she bursts into tears, and sobs that her dear father wanted me to have it, because I had once told him I liked birds, and that therefore she would be the last person in the world to deprive me of it.
So, along with all the rest of the harmony-killers, I am saddled for life with this ornithological incubus. It is true, as Cousin Ophelia says, that I like birds; but my fondness for them does not continue after they are defunct and stuffed; neither does it includeowls, whether alive or dead, and there are no less than three owls in that cabinet—gloomy, dusty,evil-looking fowls, their big yellow glass eyes wide open and staring. I'll wager they had their eyes closed when Uncle Lemuel shot them. He never was much of a sport.
Be that as it may, these lugubrious specimens are on my hands. I kept them in the living-room till I couldn't stand them there any longer. (Strangers would ask me how I happened to take up taxidermy.) Then I removed them to the dining-room, where they promptly took away my appetite. Transferred subsequently to the nursery, they caused Mamma's Pet to go into convulsions of terror. I offered the cook an increase in wages if she would take the cursed things intoherroom; she threatened to leave. I made a pathetic appeal to my wife to take them into hers; she reminded me coolly that Uncle Lemuel wasmyuncle. Now they are inmyroom, in the corner where I used to keep my favorite chair.
But something tells me that they may not endure there forever. I am a mild-dispositioned man, long-suffering, and tractable; but that cabinet of birds is too much.
Some day you may see clouds of smoke pouringout of my windows and fire-engines pulling up at my door. If you do, don't feel sorry for me or censure me. A burning need will be satisfied. It will be a case of sponsored combustion.
Being interested in human nature in all its manifestations, I have lately made a study of handwriting as it is shown in the moving pictures. I undertook this research because I had been given to understand that chirography, when scientifically analyzed, revealed every nuance of human character; and because the personages in moving-pictures, being intensely dramatic, could not fail to have striking individualities as penmen.
Let me give some of the interesting examples which I found. Here, for instance, is a confidential communication from a great financier to one of his associates:
Handwritten text
Observe in what a firm, steady hand this is written. It shows that the great financier can be cool even in a crisis. No wonder he is successful.He always looks ahead; he never crosses a T until he comes to it. Clear-visioned he is; his I's have their specks on straight. Such a man will go far without being missed.
The next specimen is a letter written by the dashing young hero to the heroine. It reads:
Handwritten text
Stanch and dependable. His passion is intense, yet he is too loyal to betray it. Note the uncompromising uprightness of his L's. You just can't help trusting him, because, as he says, he hasn't any money.
Here is a letter penned by a wayward wife. Fraught with tense emotion, it is indeed a moving human document. She writes:
Handwritten text
What a wealth of sorrow this handwriting displays! Poor, unfortunate woman, tearful and yet volatile! Her M's are bowed with grief, and yet they have an arch look. Out of touching deference to her first love she makes a desperate effort to be neat; she is not willing that her husband's last memento of her should be a sloppy one. Even when about to commit a sin, she still retains that refinement of nature which he has always reverenced, that indescribable feminine delicacy which was wont to reveal itself in such little acts as shrinking visibly at the touch of unclean overshoes.
There are innumerable other examples which might be cited, handwritings of every conceivable kind; but the endless variety of them would merely tend to bewilder. Therefore I shall give only two more and without extended comment; for, indeed, their characteristics jut out quite protuberantly.
The little six-year-old child raises her face wistfully from her piece of angel food and scrawls:
Handwritten text
Truly a revelation of the artistic nature. In contrast to this, let us examine what Jimmie the Dope, escaped convict, scribbles to his confederate:
Handwritten text
This particular specimen has a tragic interest for us. It demonstrates the failure of our modern institutions. Here is a man forced by society into a felon's trade who was capable of earning an honest living as an instructor in penmanship.
Woman eating.
Of all strivers after the Ideal none have so kindly a method as the architects responsible for those pleasing structures termed French pastry. Whatever they create is delicate, delectable, imbued with sweetness. Putting aside the thought of future fame, these gentle artificers devote their labor to works as perishable as they are exquisite: meringues, sculptured in ambrosial stucco, that melt to nothing; roseate cakelets of which the crimson splendor endures no longer than a sunset;kisses that are all too brief; tarts which, frail as flowers, succumb quickly to hunger in the dessert. These crust craftsmen pour forth richness as song-birds do, creating rapture for but a precious moment. If ordinary architecture is "frozen music," then surely this Gallic refinement of it is "musique glacée".
There are many styles, ranging from Perpendicular Gothic to Powdered Rococo—so many, in fact, that one could scarcely hope to masticate them all at a single sitting. (Two or three is the most I have ever been able to account for.) Yet each style, if found in its purity, merits attention as an embodiment of good taste. For even the humblest cream puff, despite the looseness of its design and the unpretentiousness of its exterior, has an interior well worth investigating.
Perhaps the most important landmark in all the realm of pastry is the tradition-hallowed and chocolate-roofed éclair, whose long nave affords sanctuary for whipped cream or custard. (Not necessarilychocolate-roofed, however: the eaves may be tinged instead with a soft patina ofcafé au lait.) This mellow-huedpile, eminently edible, is cherished by multitudes of devotees.
Another structure beautiful in ruin is the massive patty that serves as donjon-keep for oysters. Upon its crumbling ramparts parsley has found root, and encircling its fissured base is a broad moat of gravy. Gaunt, sugarless; no oyster can hope to escape.
An equally notable tower is the stately white charlotte russe. Its impenetrable wall of cardboard, re-enforced inside with a doughty thickness of cake, rises sheer from the glacis of the plate and terminates in crenelated battlements over the edge of which hang masses of cream, ready for the invader. Upon the topmost pinnacle is posted a sentinel cherry.
Of contrastingly mild aspect are the various crisp terraces—those luxuriant Hanging Gardens, where fruits of every sort are spread out in gorgeous profusion: rows of gold-gleaming apricots; neat hedges of orange plugs; happy pears and orderly better-halves of peaches; a bed of sugar-fed strawberries, each tucked in snugly; grapes chaliced in fluted pie crust;jocund apple chips and banana checkers, cuddled cosily slice against slice. Truly a paradise in pastry!
And there are a host of other fair shapes: the pantheon-like Kossuth cake, beneath the low dome of which is a votive offering of cream; the amazing custard skyscraper, with its innumerable floors, no walls, and gaily iced roof; the Byzantinebaba au rhum, inlaid with tutti-frutti mosaics and steeped in subtle enchantment; and countless others—fanes, kiosks, minarets, pavilions, reliquaries of jam—baffling description or digestion.
Frail, ephemeral, created with no thought of permanence; and yet we should hardly enjoy them more if they were built of everlasting marble. The craftsmen who design them, scorning personal glory, do not sign their works. For theirs is the true æsthetic spirit, so rare in this commercial age. Their handiwork faithfully bears out the precept "Tart for Tart's Sake".
The average young wife is regrettably inexperienced in the matter of husbands. Unless it has been her fortune to have a wise mother or a divorce, she is likely to be quite ignorant of how to care for and train the "big stranger" who comes into her life. Therefore these precepts of friendly counsel may not seem to the matrimonial novice altogether amiss. The advice I would give is simple (in the fullest sense of the word); so that after the young wife has had a few husbands, she can dispense with it, if not sooner.
Feeding.—This is the most important problem a wife has to face. The husband must be made to feel that he is well fed. Otherwise he will not be contented and docile.
During the first week after marriage, when he is still quite infantile and tender to the point of mushiness, he may be fed from the hand or spoon. This method will be found especially satisfactory in cases where the husband shows symptoms of sickly sentimentality.
Throughout the entire first month he will be so demanding of care, so bewildered by the strange new world in which he finds himself, as to be barely able to maintain sanity; in short, he will be so soso that she will have to prepare all the food herself, or at least make him think she does.
But later a change of diet will be found necessary. He will demand scientifically prepared foods. If the change is managed in the right way, it can be accomplished with only slight upset to his disposition. Simply alter the feeding formula so that the total quantity is lessened and the proportion of sugar and burnt materials is increased. It will soon take effect. In a day or two he will say, with a worried look, "Darling, I'm afraid the cooking is too much for you." And you know what he really means. After that the transition to avowedly professional cooking will be quite painless.
Outings and Play.—During the first few months the husband will not need many outings. He will be happy and contented if allowed to romp about the house. Such toys ashammers, picture wire, curtain rods, etc., will keep him occupied.
Later, however, there will come a period of restlessness. Then you must take him out more and more, and let him run and play with other husbands—after you have made sure, of course, that they are good, well-behaved husbands. The companionship of these innocent sports will tend to make him one himself.
When, as time goes by, he reaches the stage where he begins to take notice, the wife must be very careful, for he is highly impressionable. At this time a wife will do well to look out for her husband herself, instead of entrusting him to some empty-headed girl, whom she may not really know at all. If he needs amusement let her divert him with brightly-colored silks and baubles which she wears and he pays for. Let her take him to see the pretty theater, and show him the beautiful mountains and the big blue ocean, and tell him fairy stories about economy, and teach him to draw nice big cheques in his little cheque book.
Discipline cannot begin too early. The husband must be taught that he can only have thethings that his wife decides are best for him, and that no protesting on his part will do any good. If he proves fretful, chide him by threatening to go live with your mother. If, after that, he is still unruly, threaten to have your mother come live with you.
In this way he will soon learn to mind. Indeed, before long you will be able to show him off before company with the assurance that he will behave just as you have trained him to; and you will have the satisfaction of hearing your friends declare he does you credit.
Awakening his mind.—This is one of the chief duties and responsibilities of wifehood. It cannot be shirked. For while no husband is expected to know anything at marriage (the fact that he got married attests that), he is expected a year or so later to look intelligent when the lady next to him at dinner discusses Coué and Scriabine, and to know that Gauguin is not something to be got from a bootlegger. For him not to know these things would be a reflection on his home training, or, in other words, his wife. She will be considered negligentunless she has instilled into his rudimentary mind a smattering of whatever is accounted smart. For every wife is judged by the way she brings up her husband.
Note.—If in the above treatise I have borrowed from the learned doctors who have written concerning the Care of the Baby, I am sorry; for I see no prospect of ever being able to pay them back. Even this small note of mine will be discounted.
Note.—If in the above treatise I have borrowed from the learned doctors who have written concerning the Care of the Baby, I am sorry; for I see no prospect of ever being able to pay them back. Even this small note of mine will be discounted.
Our late demented newspapers are in a plight. They are no longer afflicted with a shortage of paper, but they are still cramped by a dearth of names for their afternoon editions. All the stand-by titles have been exhausted. By midday the "Home Edition," "Night Edition," and "Special Extra" have come and gone, and there is still the whole afternoon with nothing left to tempt the tired business man but various grades of "Finals". New nomenclature is needed, names that will stir the imagination and summon the cents.
Desirous of doing what I can toward alleviating this distressing situation, I venture to suggest the following schedule:
8a. m.—Late Edition—One star9a. m.—Extremely Late Edition—Two stars10a. m.—Inexcusably Late Edition—Three stars11a. m.—Hopelessly Late Edition—One constellation12m.—Midnight Edition—Two constellations1p. m.—Tomorrow Morning Edition—Group of planets2p. m.—Tomorrow Afternoon Edition—Complete solar system3p. m.—Day-After-Tomorrow Edition—Comet4p. m.—Next-Week Edition—Large comet5p. m.—Next-Month Edition—Unusually large comet6p. m.—Next-Year Edition—Complete zodiac7p. m.—Special Doomsday Extra—Milky way and nebulae
8a. m.—Late Edition—One star
9a. m.—Extremely Late Edition—Two stars
10a. m.—Inexcusably Late Edition—Three stars
11a. m.—Hopelessly Late Edition—One constellation
12m.—Midnight Edition—Two constellations
1p. m.—Tomorrow Morning Edition—Group of planets
2p. m.—Tomorrow Afternoon Edition—Complete solar system
3p. m.—Day-After-Tomorrow Edition—Comet
4p. m.—Next-Week Edition—Large comet
5p. m.—Next-Month Edition—Unusually large comet
6p. m.—Next-Year Edition—Complete zodiac
7p. m.—Special Doomsday Extra—Milky way and nebulae
I am not afraid of bloated bondholders. I suspect that they are just humans like myself, only that they have money.
But I am afraid of their servants.Theyare not human. No one ever saw them eat or sleep or smile.
My millionaire host may overlook the fact that I am using the salad-fork for the fish; not so his English butler. This austere personage takes note of my error in silence, and, when the salad course arrives, steals up behind me like Nemesis, and lays by my plate the fork that correct form demands. I feel chastened.
His eye is always upon me. I can't even take a sip of water without his calling attention to it by stealthily refilling my glass.
If he didn't watch me so closely when I am helping myself, I wouldn't be so nervous. As it is, my hand trembles under his grueling stare. Just at the critical moment when my tongful of asparagus, conveyed like a hot coal, is poised in mid-air between the serving-dishand my plate, I flinch, and there is a green-and-white avalanche. I make a frantic slap at it as it falls, and by good luck it lands on the plate. To be sure, some of the stalks are craning their necks perilously over the edge, but that is a small matter compared with what might have happened. I rake them into the middle of the plate, sit gasping at the thought of my narrow escape.
Formal dining tableMy host may overlook the fact that I am using the salad fork for fish; not so his English butler.
My host may overlook the fact that I am using the salad fork for fish; not so his English butler.
There is an awkward pause. The bon mot I was about to utter apropos of an opera I had never heard has left my mind entirely. I can't think of anything to say. Finally, in desperation, I remark idiotically to the dowager at my left, "I love asparagus; don't you?"
The next time he passes a dish, I lose my nerve. I lift my hand to help myself, and then, as I catch his eye, draw back, shaking my head. No, I won't take any chances.
After that I keep to a strict diet, eating only the things that appear on my plate when it is put down in front of me. If the plate arrives naked and empty, naked and empty it remains, even though the course consist of my favorite delicacy. I suffer the pangs of Tantalus.
Alligator-pear salad—more to be desired than gold, yea, than much fine gold—is offered to me. I covet it. Everything gastronomic in my nature craves it, but cowardly fear restrains me (it looks slippery), and I refuse it. I could almost weep.
As the dinner proceeds and my modified hunger-strike continues, I begin to regain confidence. I feel that my abstemiousness, implying as it does a jaded palate and an aristocratic indigestion, is highly fashionable. I fancy that in refusing ambrosia I am showing a godlike superiority.
I expand with self-assurance. Just watch me startle these plutocrats with my scorn of their costly food. I'll make myself the lion of the evening.
"May I help you to shortcake, sir?" asks a low, ironically respectful voice.
My pride collapses. The butler has seen through me to the cowardice in my heart. From his lofty pinnacle he stoops to succor me. But I rebel.
"I'll help myself, thank you," I retort, for I am on my mettle now, and boldly prizeoff a towering segment of the dessert. WouldIlet a menial reveal to the whole table that I was afraid to help myself? Never! Why, I'd sooner—
Dizzily the creamy thing totters, keels over, and falls with a sickening flop, a mushy sound, as of the impact of a wet sponge. Juicy red berries gambol hither and thither.
For a moment the shortcake lies helplessly on its side like a jellyfish that the tide has left. But only for a moment; for a wrecking-crew, made up of the butler and his assistant, comes hurrying on the scene. With emergency plate and scraper they remove the debris, while I turn purple and clutch at my collar for air. Then, after a mortifying amount of crumb-gleaning and cream-mopping, they spread a napkin before me in the presence of my swell friends, as if to shield the cloth from further depredations. I draw back to allow them to put it there, and in so doing squash a hidden strawberry against my waistcoat. As a final humiliation, a fresh piece of shortcake is brought to mealready on a plate.
If there is anything more formidable thanan English butler, it is an English valet. Somebody else's valet, I mean; for I suppose that if a person had one long enough, he could get so that he wouldn't be afraid of him. But as for a perfectly strange English valet!
"Your key, please, sir," demands Hawkins upon my arrival at my friend's summer palace. He bows slightly.
"What key?" I ask uneasily.
"The key to your traveling-bag, sir."
I am just stopping overnight on my way home from a house party in the woods, and all my spare raiment is soiled and bedraggled.
"So I can unpack your things, sir," threatens the Great Mogul.
"Never mind, thank you," I stammer. "I've lost the key."
"Very good, sir," he replies and goes.
But not permanently. When I return to my room at midnight, elated over having trounced my host in countless games of billiards, I am met at the door by my oppressor. In his hand is a small object.
"I fetched a locksmith out from the city,sir, and 'ad 'im make this for you, sir. It fits quite correctly, sir."
And one glance about the room—from the snaggle-tooth comb on the dresser to the frayed pajamas the mussiness of which no festive laying out can hide—makes me aware of my utter ignominy.
Since when I have confined my week-end visiting exclusively to lumber camps.
There is much well-meaning propaganda in progress for the preservation of professors. Alumni are appealed to, bankers are buttonholed, and in every college club the diagram showing the Big Game play by play has been replaced by a dial showing how many millions have been garnered to date for the fund; all this in order that the saying "Live and learn" may be reversible as "Be learned and yet live".
Wouldn't it be more humane (instead of giving the professors money, to which they are not accustomed) to teach them how to "sell" themselves? Today every one is paid according to how completely the public or the plutocrats are "sold" on him. Only salesmanship can save the scholars.
The time is ripe for some gilt-edged grad such as Morton K. Mung, President of the Newark Noodle Corporation, to announce, when stalked by the subscription squad: "No, gentlemen of the Adopt a Professor Committee,your suggestion that by donating seven cents a day I keep an instructor in paleontology from starvation, or be godfather to an authority on Sanscrit at eight cents, strikes me as impractical. With the cost of living rising again, next year they will want nine and ten cents—and you see the position that would put us in.
"No, gentlemen, I'll do better. I'll solve this situation once for all by loaning my general sales manager, Mr. Blat, to dear old Weehawken for two months, and he will give the members of the Faculty the same tutoring course he gives the men we send out on the road. Within a year after they leave his hands these same profs you've mentioned will be writing 'Success Through Sanscrit' and 'How I made My Pile with Paleontology' for theAmerican Magazine."
At the conclusion of this loyal speech the committee would give a long cheer and depart checkless but with a new vision.
And, sure enough, the pale pedagogues would emerge from Mr. Blat's snappy seminar simply exuding system. They would possessthe Power to Meet Men, the Personality that Wins. Laboratory recluses would burst forth primed to impress with Bigger Biology—Contains More Bunk.
The Sanscrit savant, formerly threadbare, but now a nifty dresser, would immediately hop a train for New York and breeze into the office of Hugh G. Wads, senior member of Wads & Wads and Chairman of the Trustees of Weehawken University.
"Good morning, Mr. Wads," he would say aggressively. "I've come here this morning to talk Vedas."
"Vedas? I don't get you. Never heard of such a stock. It isn't listed on the big board, and if it's traded in on the Curb, the dealings must be pretty small. Besides, I thought you were a professor at Weehawken."
"Right. I am a professor, if you choose to put it that way. Technically, though, I'm a promoter, and my proposition is VEDAS (Trade mark copyrighted 2000 B. C.)."
"Vedas? I still don't get you."
"Ah, that is precisely why I am here. I was sure you would want to know—Cigar?—Well,Vedas are the wisdom songs of India. Mellowed by forty centuries in the parchment. One hundred per cent Hindu. Classy yet conservative; noble yet nobby. You know what caste is among the Brahmins?—well, that's how exclusive these are!"
"Indeed."
"Yes, and I'm offering them for immediate delivery to students."
"But how does this concern me?"
"I was just getting to that. This is a proposition which requires considerable capital for its development. At the present time only seven students have asked for Vedas, yet I have estimated that the supply of Vedas now mellowing out in India is enough for at least 180,000 students. Which means that if we created the demand—why, think of the business we could do! When you come right down to it, a Veda, when presented in the right way, can be as catchy as a Kewpie."
"Hm. How much money would you need to start with?"
"Fifty thousand dollars. Besides my salary, which would be $15,000 outright, plus a bonusof one and one-half cents per Veda per student, there would be the cost of advertising in the college catalogue, the conducting of a circularizing campaign to a selected list of student prospects and the publication of a promotion organ to be entitled 'India Ink.' Then, too, of course, I would have to have a commission on gross tuition receipts and text book sales and an ample expense account for entertaining in the class-room and in my home. Now will you kindly put your name here on the dotted line?"
"Before I guarantee you all this money, tell me one thing. What is the real value of these Vedas?"
"They are the quaint quintessence of conservatism, and will occupy youthful minds menaced by modernism."
"I'll sign."
Succored by the science of salesmanship, any professor would be able to achieve affluence. Fortunes would rise from footnotes; and there would be big money made in bibliography.