cliffside with lots of signs
Thanks to the roadside advertisements, driving a car has become as easy as playing a pianola. You just watch the instructions that appear along the edge, and regulate your levers and pedals accordingly. Thus, when you see:
DANGEROUSCURVE
Sound Raspon
—you reach instinctively for the button of your electric horn. Later, seeing:
SHARP DESCENT
Apply Eureka Non-Slip-able Brake
—you comply gracefully. A mere twist of thewrist or dislocation of the ankle does the trick.
He that reads may run. Any man who has ever watched an organist pull out stops and push them in again can become a motor virtuoso. Any woman accustomed to following instructions in cutting out a dress pattern, can grasp the idea as easily as, when told to, she grasps the lever which operatesBingo's Northpolean Radiator Cooler. It is so simple that it is imbecile.
Every peculiarity of the route is heralded. All its little irregularities, its deviations from straightness, its bad declines and sudden uppishnesses, even the small faults which an easy-going person would overlook, are held up sternly in warning.
GUSTY CORNER
Raise Breez-o Extension Wind-Shield
SANDY STRETCH
Spray Gears With Anti-Grit
PUDDLES
Apply Splashol Emergency Mud-Guard
RAILROAD CROSSING
Put Ear To Locomotive Detectaphone
DANGEROUS BOULDER
Before Ramming This Make SureAchilles Collision Buffer IsProperly Adjusted
VILLAGE SPEED TRAP
Apply Backfire With Ready Constable Exterminator
Occasionally, as a relief from the faults of the road, its favorable points are dwelt on. Thus,
MOUNTAIN VIEW
Enjoy it Through Auto-Flex Non-Refractory Goggles
In general, however, the emphasis is upon the perils of the way, as—
Only 1 Mile to
HOTEL SOAKUM
(Here no specific instructions are given, it being understood that the accessory involvedis one's pocketbook and that the directions are: "Open All the Way.")
The system has one drawback. The signs never fail, yet there is such a thing as trusting them too implicity. I knew a man who, as the result of trying to obey seven signs telling him to "Be Sure to Dine At" as many different inns, stripped the lining of his esophagus. And I knew of another man—a timid, earnest, nervous old gentleman—who depended on signs so completely that one day, at a dangerous part of the road, being suddenly confronted with the command:
USE PLEXO
he fell into a panic. "Plexo, plexo!" he muttered in bewilderment. "Whereisthe plexo lever? I can't find the plexo button! Something terrible will happen unless I find it."
It did. As, with trembling fingers, he fumbled through the entire outfit of attachments, he forgot to steer, and unluckily ran off the edge of a precipice; so that he did not live to learn that plexo was a massage cream.
T
There is no constancy so affecting as that of a faithful button. Friends may be devoted; yet they seek your company partly for the pleasure of it. Dogs may show the uttermost fidelity; but you feed them. But the attachment of buttons is without taint of self: it is pure, spontaneous.
This loyalty is the more remarkable when you consider how empty their lives are. The outlook through their buttonholes is but a narrow one. Their daily labor, a mere mechanical buttoning into and out of an uncongenial flap, is deadeningly monotonous. (I have seldom known a button whose heart wasreally in its work.) In surroundings so little adapted to the building up of character, they display a stanchness that is akin to stoicism. Indeed, many a button will stick doggedly to an old weatherbeaten garment long after the perfidious nap has fled.
There are, unfortunately, buttons wanting in probity, deceitful buttons that pretend to be strongly attached to you when detained by but a single thread, irresponsible buttons that fly off at a tangent, immodest buttons (of the cloth-covered variety) that disrobe in public. But deliberately vicious buttons are rare. The fact is, few buttons would go to the bad, were it not for the heartless indifference of their owners. Too often a headstrong young button, that might easily have been saved had it been brought up short the moment it showed signs of looseness, is allowed to reach the end of its rope, fall, and be utterly lost.
And the dereliction of one may mean the ruin of its family. I was told of a sad case, once, where an entire clan of brown buttons, dwelling happily together on the front of a coat and waistcoat—polished, distinctive buttonsthey were, not be matched anywhere—were cruelly banished, because of a single erring member.
While to neglect buttons is most reprehensible, there is such a thing as showing them too much indulgence. For buttons must not be coddled: when toyed with, they droop.
Tender-hearted women, actuated by sympathy and not realizing the consequences of what they were doing, have been known topamperbuttons. Because a button has a pleasant, open countenance, one of these misguided persons will support it on her costume in idleness. She may even surround herself with a retinue of glittering sycophants that never knew a buttonhole—great saucerlike hangers-on, lolling on their stems; brazen braggadocios, flashing with insolent militarism; and puny silken pettinesses, mere pills of buttons. Often I have been shocked to see a swarm of these drones perched indolently on the show part of a garment while, underneath, a squadron of industrious hooks and eyes grappled with the work to be done.
Such sights are, to thoughtful people, almostas depressing as the massacre of helpless shirt buttons by a baleful flatiron. Are buttons to become effete? Will they, in the course of generations ofdolce far niente, lose their stamina? The signs are ominous.
Man consulting female psychologist
I am laying an ego. With the assistance of a soako-analyst I am overhauling my instincts, liberating my innate masterfulness. Just wait till you see my rebuilt personality.
It's wonderful what the right soako-analyst can do to your complexes and your finances. My soako is a woman, of course. Male soakos are best for feminine mind-patients; but any man who needs to have his psychic self revamped should hand over his unconscious to a sympathetic lady soako. The attunement islovelier. She can more understandingly separate him from his inhibitions and his dollars.
My soako and I, we have talks by the hour. At fifty dollars per. We talk about criminals and insane people and how everybody's crazy if they only knew it. She explains how that dream I had after eating that stringy Welch rarebit—that dream about throwing the size twelve overshoes at the canary—proves that I secretly desire to murder Uncle Alfred and elope with Mary Garden. If I could just commit that homicide and meet Mary, these annoying conflicts would clear and leave my unconscious as serenely blank as my conscious. So far, Uncle and Mary are still having it out atavistically in my foreconscious. I must eat some more Welch rarebit.
Before I went to this nerve therapeutist I had fears. But she has cured me. She is all nerve. I thought there were some things one could not mention to a lady. I thought that when visiting a lady, even by appointment (office hours: 9—5) one could hardly make certain allusions without incurring a "Sir! Leave this house instantly and never let me hear your conversation again!"
But now that I have been initiated into the New Freedom, I know that the automatic prehensile response is another fifty on my bill.
So I am learning, progressing. A new mental day is breaking and so is my bank account. The dun is near.
But when I get my mind—what'll I do with it?
I think I'll become a soako myself and take in lady patients.
T
This world would be a far different place if there were peace among pens. As it is, however, every pen wears a drop of ink on its shoulder.
Not even the tender ministrations of chamois cloth will soothe its savage heart. It is deaf to sweet reasonableness. Returning drunk from the inkwell, it will smutch the hand that fed it, cast blots upon the fairest names, and ravish virgin sheets of paper. And when you try to force it to a more civilized way of behaving, you discover it has its points crossed.
A pen thus divided against itself will not write. There must be freedom for the black fluid. There must be perfect harmony—twoprongs with but a single point, two parts that meet as one. Disunion is a sign of weakness.
I had a pen once whose prongs became estranged. They were egoists: each followed his individual bent, and was determined to make his own mark in his own field. For the sake of appearances, they took their meals of ink together, but immediately afterward, when pressure was brought to bear upon them, they separated. Yet when one of them, striving too hard after originality, broke under the strain, his widow was left desolate.
More domestic in an old-fashioned way is that staunch, blunt family, the Stubbs. They are firm and substantial sort of pens. By people who dislike them they are called phlegmatic, stodgy, close, stiffnibbed; and it must be admitted, they do lack the sprightliness of the Sharps; but, after all, these unyielding puritans, with their heavy touch, are more trustworthy than their acute but volatile cousins. For temperament in a pen finds vent in sudden splutterings.
The difference in their natures is evidenced by the way they meet obstacles. The Stubbs,plodding along doggedly, overcome all hazards in the paper; whereas the Sharps, tripping nonchalantly, come to grief at the first bunker, and before they get started again, waste several strokes and gouge the course. And when the Sharps attempt to run the gauntlet of expensive linen stationery (the higher the price, the higher the ridges), they get held up at every cable crossing. But there is a kind of paper—smooth, slippery, insidious—that prompts both the Sharps and the Stubbs to evil ways. They know they are doing wrong, however; for they are ashamed, and conceal their tracks, rendering all tracing impossible.
It is a great pity that pens are not more consistent about their ink giving. One moment they are stingy, and the next lavish. Perhaps this may be due to absent-mindedness.
Beginning a letter to a crabbed old relative, you say to your pen, "Give me a little ink for 'Dear Uncle Jonathan.'"
It ignores the request. You urge again. Still it is thinking of something else. "Here, wake up, now!" (You shake it violently.) "Give me some ink!"
"Why, certainly," it replies effusively. "Take a blot."
And "Dear Uncle Jonathan" is buried with deep mourning.
Haphazard as their outgivings appear to be, I have a theory that they are in reality quite logical; for I have noticed thatpens spend most ink on things that are worth most. Thus, a pen that would grudge to disburse a single minim on a cheap sheet of a pad, will gladly expend all it has upon a costly embroidered tablecloth. And it finds the flyleaf of a handsome book (which if separate from the volume it would regard as a mere scrap of paper) amazingly absorbing. If it take a fancy to something large and sumptuous, such as an oriental rug, and yet not have on hand sufficient ink for such an outlay, it will appropriate it with a deposit of spot splash.
However little aptitude a pen may have for writing, it is sure to display rare skill as a fisherman. In the most unpromising inkwell it will catch deep sea monsters that astound you. It will spear great flounders of blotting paper and wriggly eels of string. It will dragup from the bottom wreckage of forgotten times, prehistoric flora and fauna—an antique rubber band, a female tress (perhaps of some ink-nymph long dead or discharged), a tack bent with age, a perfectly preserved shoe button, a less perfectly preserved mummy of a fly.
The perseverance of this follower of Izaak Walton is admirable. It will cast patiently again and again without a single dribble, and then, all at once, it will come struggling triumphantly to the surface with a whale of a June bug it has harpooned. Whereupon, as is the custom with fishermen who write, it will make a grand splurge of its catch on paper.
In order to prevent such piscatorial dippiness, pen fanciers have bred thefountainspecies, the latest variety of which is self-spilling. Pens of this artificially produced species are very nervous. They have to be handled with extreme care. For example, if one of them is held upside down, all the ink runs to its head, and there is danger of a hemorrhage. Its digestive system is poor: it regurgitates and bubbles at the mouth. The least thing upsetsits stomach. If you forget to put its cap on, even in mild weather, it contracts a serious congestion of the throat; with the result that the next letter you write proves dry-point etching.
Taken all in all, pens have a great deal to answer for. The record they have left on the pages of history is a black one. Many a person who has sat down to write something bright and optimistic, has been so disillusioned and embittered by his pen, that he has ended by hacking a hymn of hate or drooling a dirge of despair. Which accounts for most of the world's harsh diplomacy and morbid literature.
Even this essay was originally intended to be cheerful.
At last I have found out the awful truth about humanity. I never even suspected it. Till last evening I went along my way cheerfully, blindly, never guessing that my fellow-men were steeped in evil.
But now I know. My eyes have been opened. For last night I went to one of those enlightening film dramas that reveal life as it is. It was called "Her Blackest Sin," and it comprised nine reels of terrible truth.
It was one of those fine moral sermons to which every mother ought to take her son, and every niece ought to take her uncle, and every stepaunt ought to take her Pekingese.
I only wish my daughter could have seen it; but as I haven't any daughter, she couldn't have.
Man and woman.She never really intended to become steeped in sin: she was scenarioed into it
She never really intended to become steeped in sin: she was scenarioed into it
This drama shows how a handsome but thoughtless woman may sink in sin without ever meaning to. Yes, the strange and pitiful part about it is that she really never intended to be a fallen, crime-seared creature. She sins witlessly: she is scenarioed into it. Perhapsshe is too anxious to please. She appears at wild cabarets and wears gowns that are cut to the quick, not because she desires to of her own accord, but because it is expected of her by the audience. Lack of firmness leads to her undoing: she is first pliant, then supple, then sinuous. She displays too little backbone, and too much.
Poor woman, what chance has she amid so many dress suits? Only too late does she learn that stiff bosoms cover none but hard hearts, and that there is no gleam so sinister as that of a silk hat, covering as it does baldness of the baldest sort.
Innocent at first, hardly a reel passes before she begins to stop and work her face, just the way the villains stop and work their faces. (Of course, being still a modest woman, she does this only in the privacy of a close-up.) By the seventh reel even her high-minded husband has become afflicted with the taint, and is stopping and workinghisface.
And so the drama progresses, growing blacker and more enlightening every minute. I can't be too grateful to the producers of this film for the unflinching way in which theyaccepted the responsibility of my innocence and warned me. If they had not, I should probably have gone to the end of my days without ever knowing that people were at bottom only smiling criminals.
But now, thank goodness, I'm warned and on my guard. I'm posted on sin. When a man comes up to me and shakes my hand, I'll know he's a hawk looking for a home to break up; and when a woman smiles at me, I'll know she's a vampire.
They won't catchme! I'll just watch them surreptitiously when they are off their guard until I see them working their faces, andthenI'll have them!
For now I am an expert on evil. That film showed me the thrilling seductions of a life of vice; so that if I am ever confronted by them I shall be able to recognize them at once and say how do you do. And at the end there was one of those solemn moral warnings, such as everybody thinks everybody else is supposed to need; so in future I shall know what to avoid inthatline.
And this entire transformation of my life cost me only thirty-three cents.
When, on Christmas night, I take a private view of the collection of presents I have received, I realize that I am a much misunderstood person.
I sit down sadly and wonder what I could have done to create such an impression. Is there somethingqueerabout me? If so, then wouldn't it have been more tactful, more kind, to have come to me and told me of it, instead of thus brutally proclaiming it to the world?But that is the way people are: they will serenelyassumethings they wouldn't have the face to mention.
Those morbid socks!—half hose and half a disease. The loom that made them must have been degenerate. It is plain that they were never intended to be put on, because the paste-board document that lurks in the bottom of the box declares they are "guaranteed against any sort of wear." And these were esteemed suitable associates for my feet!
I have no recollection of sniffling, in public; yet here are nine dozen handkerchiefs, an outfit for someone with chronic coryza. As for the assemblage of pocketbooks, purses, wallets, coin holders, etc., I only hope that after I have paid my holiday bills there will be enough money left to half-way fill the pocketbook I have already.
But the crowd that seems most oppressive is that of the calendars. Am I really so absent-minded as to require seven engagement pads? Am I so lax about settling my accounts that my butcher and grocer and milkman feel called upon to supply me the means of knowing what day of the month it is?
Anything may pass for a calendar, so long as it complies with the law by having a little batch of months attached to the bottom like an appendix:—a snapshot of Cousin Gertrude's baby (oh, the deuce! I suppose I was expected to give that kid something for Christmas!); a pastoral chromo, entitled "Shearing the Lambs," sent me by a firm of brokers; a picture of a child in a nightie saying its prayers, with the compliments of the Schweinler Beef Packing Co.; a hand-tinted but feebly glued print of Paul and Virginia, inscribed, "Jones and Bergfeldt, Plumbers."
One calendar, consisting of a sheaf of large placards, each purporting to exhibit a specimen of female beauty, is so throttled by its silken cord that when February 1st arrives and I attempt to give one of the beauties the flop-over in order that I may gaze on the next for a while, the situation proves too tense. The eyelet suddenly splits into an outlet, and the jilted maiden, cast off by her sisters, collapses upon the floor.
All of which is most distressing; but no more so than the notion that women seem tohave of what a man likes. I shall never forget the pair of slippers that Aunt Josephine bestowed upon me last year. They were what are technically known asmules, but in reality they were a couple of long rafts, each with an arching toe-cabin that would have accommodated both feet. The low racing sterns extended so far aft of my heels that the latter stood almost amidships.
Slipper into goldfish bowl.
Navigation was difficult. They kept running afoul of each other; so that I would suddenly find my starboard foot partly on the port slipper and mostly on the floor. Sometimes one of them would dart ahead several lengths and capsize, obliging me to turn skipper. No matter how earnestly I lifted their bows, their sterns always dragged. A landsman would have said that my progress resembled pumping a rhapsody on a pianola, or skiing in the Alps.
The unreasonableness of these mules reached a climax one morning while I was visiting the Cholmondeley-Browdens. I encountered my hostess unexpectedly as I was returning from my bath. In the excitement of the moment, both slippers bolted, one of them performinga spectacular flip-flap, and the other skidding through the balustrade of the stairway and landing below in a globe of goldfish; while I made my escape in a state of pedal nudity.
As for the neckties I have received—truly, Love is blind!
Nowadays when it is hard for the casual observer to distinguish Somebody's Mother from Somebody's Jazz Baby, it is not to be wondered at that houses as well as humans are disguising their age. Victorian brownstone mansions that later sank to boarding-house seediness now renew their youth as the "Rubens Studios" or "Haddon Chambers"; drab office buildings, yielding to a sudden access of sand, take on new complexions as talcumy white as those of the flappers passing by.
He would be a tactless and cruel man who would say, "I know when that one's corner stone was laid." Or, "My great uncle knew that one when it was only three stories high." Or, "It didn't have that cornice until its gables began to fall off." Or, "You ought to have seen the stoop it had before they put in the steel braces."
Beauty doctoring to buildings must have becomequite an art. It takes skill to know how to eliminate the dark lines under tired window sills, lift the sagging balconies, reduce protuberant bay windows. Only a trained chisel can remove a superfluous ornament in a way that will guarantee against its reappearance.
We are shocked, though, at the brazenly commercial character that certain sedate houses have taken on in the giddier part of town. Buildings that were formerly quiet residences, keeping themselves retiringly back from the bustle, and modestly shielding themselves with brown balustrades, now shamelessly come forward as close to the line as they dare, meeting the idle stroller half-way, not with lowered shades, but with broad plate-glass assurance, and even displaying scandalous lingerie.
We cannot but feel that buildings thus bedizened in the effort to keep from being neglected, will not command the same reverence that used to be inspired by the mossy old manse or the messy old mill. Theirs is hardly the Age of Innocence.
Would the old home seem as homely to you,after it had been exterior decorated? Would it be as dear?
Oh, much dearer!—as the real estate agent will tell you, or your own broker.
Man with collection of auto. sprares
I called her Plury. That is to say, I would speak of her by that endearing appellation when she was running along smoothly and seldom missing in either cylinder. Her real name, however, was E. Pluribus Unum.
You see, I had wanted an automobile, but found that no single make was within my means. So I bought Plury—just as a person who cannot afford beef, veal, chicken, turkey, lamb or pork, orders hash. IndividuallyFords, Buicks, Overlands, Peerlesses, Simplexes, Pierce-Arrows, etc., were too expensive for me; but collectively, combined in the form of second-hand Plury, I could afford them all, at $132.50.
Plury was a cosmopolitan. Her rear axle was Italian, her steering-wheel was French, her magneto was Austrian, and her mudguards were Belgian. It was hard to maintain her neutrality. For example, a German cogwheel that clutched with an English one—scarred veterans, both of them—kept the gear box in a constant state of friction. (When such international clashes occurred, it was always difficult to find out which one had started the trouble.) Then, too, among the American-made parts there was much jealousy between those that had come from rival factories. The tires were of four different makes, each boasting a surface specially patented against skidding; but each strove so hard to shove the other three into the gutter, that all four cavorted about the road in a most unseemly fashion.
Many were the heartburnings, the incompatibilities of temperament, of the parts thusyoked together. Whenever these dissentions brought matters to a standstill, I would have to get out and apply the monkey-wrench of peace.
Plury was hardly anoblecar in either appearance or speed, yet I was genuinely fond of her. Her lamps had a wistful look—a look as innocent and helpless as that with which poached eggs gaze up at you before they die. As for her slowness, that made little difference; because her speedometer, geared presumably for a racing car, exaggerated. And, after all, what is speed but a number on a dial? While I saw "71" registered there I was not disturbed by the fact that bicyclists were passing me.
I admired her pluck. She would chunk along stoically, accepting other people's dust without complaint, when in a condition of health that would have prostrated any other machine. (Thoroughbreds do not show the greatest endurance.) Bravely she would drag herself home, after a hard afternoon's work, with a leak in her radiator and congestion in all her bearings.
I used to practice vivisection on her, takingher apart and putting her together in new ways. It was a fascinating kind of solitaire, solving the problem of what to do on rainy Sundays. In a few hours' time I could shuffle the parts and deal out an entirely new model. Under my care Plury changed her shape with ultrafashionable frequency. A model that I was particularly interested in trying out was number nine (i. e., the eighth transformation). This was such a daring rearrangement that it seemed too wonderful to be true. But it worked, and thrillingly. In this form Plury exceeded all her previous speed records. The speedometer dial registered 87, and a swarm of gnats had hard work keeping up with us.
Proceeding at this reckless pace, we approached a hilly curve marked "DANGER: DRIVE SLOWLY." I changed gear. The cogs emitted a grating, crunching sound, as of quartz in a stone-crusher, and then subsided. I got out to view their death grapple.
But I had no sooner set foot upon the ground than the roar of an infuriated claxon startled me so that I leaped clear aside into the ditch.In that instant a huge Fiat, armed with a brazen fender, swung around the curve and rammed Plury in the radiator.
Plurysplatteredlike a charlotte russe hit by a sledgehammer. The road and neighboring fields were full of her.
The liveried chauffeur of the Fiat got out and began to brush the dust from the front of his car. A frightened fat man picked himself up from the floor of the tonneau and called to me, "Are you badly hurt?"
"No," I replied. "I'm all right, I think."
"Good!" he said, in a tone of great relief. "Then let's settle the damages at once, for I don't want this thing to get into the papers." With a shaky hand he drew out a checkbook. "What was the value of your car?"
I hesitated.
"Would you considerfive thousandsufficient indemnity to close the whole matter—personal injuries, property damages, and everything?"
I considered it!
And after he had gone, I fondly stooped and kissed Plury's tin remains.
Man on rocking chair.
AS a person who frequently sits, I should like to know why there are so many uncomfortable chairs. Why is it that people who are apparently mild and kind-hearted will foster in their homes, at their very firesides, chairs of the most insidious cruelty? Why will dear old ladies cherish these household monsters, festooning them with ribbons and fancywork?
Of course I realize that every chair represents some furniture-maker's theory of beautyand comfort, that every lump, ridge, and crook is supposed to have its aesthetic or anatomic reason; what I object to is being tortured for heresy just because I am physically unable to agree with these theories. An innocent-looking willow rocker that stands invitingly on my aunt's veranda is built on the assumption that the human back is in the shape of an S. Perhaps the Apollo Belvedere may have a back like that; but not I. Mine, sitting in that rocker, feels more like the Dying Gladiator's.
I am fond of Nature and I have the greatest respect for her, but my joy in things sylvan does not extend to rustic chairs. As parlor editions of the woodpile they are certainly ingenious, but their surface, which resembles that of a corduroy road, is hardly adapted to sitting purposes. Then, too, there are always a few nails in evidence. And I can never resist picking at the loose shreds of bark on the arms, with the result that, before I know it, I am sure to skin quite a large place, and then feel mortified.
The city cousin of the rustic chair is thehigh-backed carved seat. This has a lion's head that catches you at the nape of the neck, and a couple of scrolls for your shoulder-blades. The seat itself is a huge slab of wood that feels like adamant. This chair looks best against the wall, and the fact that it weighs about fifty pounds is one reason why it generally stays there.
Another massive chair is the Morris. It indeed took the imagination of a poet to conceive of sitting on a folding-bed that was only half folded. When I get into one of these contrivances its bedlike quality makes me so drowsy that I almost fall asleep, yet its chair-like quality keeps me awake—with the result that I remain in a semi-comatose condition, from which I rouse myself occasionally to climb out and shift the rod to another notch.
A variety that is not to be relied on—much less, sat on—is the loop-the-loop species, which is found in cheap restaurants and at amateur theatricals. This consists of a four-legged tambourine, backed by two loops of wood, the outer one in the shape of a Moorish arch and the inner one in the shape of a tennis racket.Exactly half of these chairs in existence have racks under them to hold your hat and gloves, whereas the other half have no such racks; so that exactly half the times I sit on one of these chairs and put my hat and gloves under the seat those articles fall disconcertingly to the floor.
A kind of rocker much in vogue is a medley of young banisters, a sort of improvisation on a turning-lathe. When new this chair emits a peculiar creaking sound. In the course of a few weeks it loosens up till quite supple, so that, in rocking, the various rods perform a complicated piston motion. This process continues till gradually the chair reaches the stage where at every rock it comes apart and puts itself together again—or almost together.
Best-parlor chairs run to extremes of fatness and leanness. They are either pampered, slender, gilded things—mere wisps of chairs—that offer a most precarious support, or fat, puffy, tufted affairs, satin feather-beds on sticks—no, not feather-beds, either, for they have twanging springs that tune up every time you sit on them. The colors of this latter varietymay be endured in winter, but when summer comes it is necessary to suppress them with linen slips.
One interesting species, the elevated rocker, is nearly extinct. This curious chair, able to skid on rollers like any other, has a little rocking department upstairs, so that it can wobble to and fro on its track without doing the least harm in the world.
I could speak of the personal idiosyncrasies of chairs, such as the trick some of them have of shedding their castors at the slightest provocation; I could tell of the rocker that insisted on sidling away from a reading-lamp; or the chair that, while not supposed to be a rocker at all, teetered diagonally on its northeast and southwest legs—but the chair I am now sitting on has given me such a cramp that I shall have to get up and take a walk.
Wimley was the mildest man living. Consequently, when Molly said, in her most decisive tone, "Nonsense! I won't hear of your going back tonight, before you've even seen our new tennis-court," he realized that he would have to stay over the week-end.
Not that he didn't want to, in one way; for he liked Molly, and admired the way she bossed the servants and ran the house for her mother. Then, too, the weather, which seemed to be growing hotter every minute, would be far more endurable out here in Avondale Manor than in the city. What troubled him was the fact that he had not brought a handbag.
"I'll lend you some of Father's things," she went on. "It will be no bother at all."
When the evening drew to a close and bed-ward migration began, he was shown to the guest-room.
"I hope you will find everything all right," said his hostess as she bid him good night.
He replied that he was sure he would. Then he opened the door. The heat met him like a solid wall. Throwing off his coat, he went to the two windows to see if they could really be open. Yes, they were; but the thick fly-screening kept out any air that might have desired to enter. He glanced at the bed. There was something blue and white lying folded on it. As he drew nearer, he could see that this something was fuzzy. Picking it up, he discovered it to be a pair of woolen pajamas. Horrors! Not even in the bitterest winter could his skin endure the feel of wool. He wondered if Molly's father ever really wore such things. Perhaps his wife had given them to him, and perhaps that was why the old gentleman was staying so long in South America.
Midnight found Wimley still looking the pajamas squarely in the fuzz. An awful thought was in his mind: What would Molly and her mother think of him if they found them unrumpled and therefore unused?
He slid one leg into the proper section: the flannel drew like a mild mustard-plaster. Thenhe pulled on the other: he was engulfed. A hippopotamus would have felt comfortable in them at the north pole.
He drew the fuzzy cord several feet before he tied it, then put on the ulster. It had a huge pocket, capable of containing a tablecloth, that hung over the spot where his appendix would have been if he had been internally left-handed. Noting that his feet had disappeared, he turned up the bottoms of the trousers four times, so that each ankle was neatly encircled with a doughnut-shaped buffer.
Then, after throwing back all the covers, he snapped out the light and got into bed. It had one of those patent soft mattresses that, sinking in, hold the body in bas-relief. He rolled and floundered on the thing, but at every flounder he sank deeper. It was a quicksand of a bed.
He recalled Victor Hugo's account of the unfortunate traveler who perished in just such a way: how first his feet disappeared, then his knees, then his waist, till at last there was nothing but a waving hand, and then that went.
He was just preparing to wave when his attention was distracted by the realization that his whole body was tingling with the heat. He seized the jacket by the middle button and pumped it in and out, trying to pump in some cool air. There was none to pump. Gasping for breath, he crawled to a window. Still no air.
He decided to remove the fly-screening. There was a little groove in the side of the frame where you were supposed to put in your fingers and pull. He put in his fingers and pulled. Nothing happened. Then he did so again, considerably harder, and the screen went sailing out of the window. He leaned out just in time to see it crash upon a row of potted plants. His heart stood still. Had any one heard the noise? He listened for several minutes in agonizing suspense.
Here at the window it was a little cooler than in the bed. Why not emulate the Japanese and sleep on the floor? Splendid! No more squashy, clinging mattress for him! Fetching a pillow, he stretched out in true oriental style.
Quite right, the floor did not sink or yield in any manner. It even gave prominence to certain bony places which the bed had kindly overlooked. Resisting the thick woolen anklets, it complicated the disposal of his lower limbs. Finally, however, a gentle sleep "slid into his soul."
But about an hour later the slippery thing slid out again at the mere announcement by a rooster that dawn had arrived. Other roosters, wishing to remove all doubts on the subject, repeated with emphasis that joyous day was at hand. Then a large fly buzzed in through the window to say good morning. It perched sociably on his left temple, and began rubbing its two front legs together in a jovial manner.
But Wimley was in no mood for holding a levee. He brushed the fly away. It executed a boomerang trajectory, lit again on the same spot, and began rubbing its legs as before. He brushed it away again. It perched again in exactly the same spot. He was indignant: washeto be at the mercy of a miserable littlefly? It seemed he was.
He got up and paced the floor. Happeningto catch a glimpse of his face in the mirror, he beheld a flourishing crop of black bristles. His whiskers stood ready to be harvested, and his faithful razor was fifty miles away! Panic seized him. He thought of the window-screen catastrophe, of the quicksand bed, of the hard floor; his heart sank. But when he thought of a day in those whiskers, another night in those pajamas, and thentomorrow'swhiskers, he felt that instant flight was the only thing possible.
Hastily he pulled on his clothes, which felt sticky and moldy and spoke eloquently of yesterday's dust and heat. Then he opened the door and peered out into the hall. No one was in sight; but other doors were open, and out of one of these came a rumbling snore. Could it be Molly's? This ominous sound was more than he could bear; he retreated.
Back in the room once more, he tiptoed over to the screenless window to see what his chances would be in that quarter. Ah, there, close by, was a vine-covered trellis that reached down to the ground! With palpitating heart he swung himself over to it. Itoscillated slightly as it received his weight.