Taking dinner with an old friend who has just been married is an experience I regard with apprehension. In the first place, it is always awkward to be introduced to a woman who begins by being jealous of you because you knew her husband long before she did. She may be a nice woman; in fact, from the air of almost imbecile happiness that invests young Hobson, you are sure she is. But since it is natural to hate those whom we have injured, it is natural for young wives to dislike their husband's friends.
People say that a woman begins to prepare for marriage at the age of five. Judging from the absolutely spontaneous way in which theHobsons have taken to it, marriage is a career that calls for no preparation whatever. I am not referring, of course, to the outward aspects of early housekeeping. The little difficulties that beset the newly married are there. I can see that my hostess is more anxious about the creamed potatoes than she will be five years hence. Her attitude to the maid who waits on us is by turns excessively severe and excessively timid. I learn that the dining-room table has been sent back twice to the store, and is still not the one originally ordered. But these are trifles. It is with the Hobsons' souls I am concerned; and their souls are perfectly at ease in their new estate.
The first few minutes, like all introductions, go stiffly. The bride smiles and says that Jack has often spoken to her about you. Whereupon you remember that there are not many secrets a young husband keeps from his wife.Jack is no sieve, but he would be more than human if he has failed to dissect your little weaknesses and humours for his new wife. He has probably emphasized the two or three particular little failings of character which have prevented you from realising the brilliant promise you showed at college. At bottom, Jack thinks, you have the capacity for being almost as happy as he, Jack, is. But then, again, if Mrs. Hobson does know you thoroughly well, it strikes you that there is that much trouble saved, and you sit down to chat with a fair sense of intimacy.
Toward such conversation you and the man of the house are the principal contributors. You speak of college days and contemporary politics, and other things that the wife is not interested in, but she smiles graciously, and now and then takes sides with you against her husband. At one point in the conversation youlook up and find her quietly scrutinising you. And you recall what you have heard concerning the match-making propensities of young wives, and you wonder uneasily if to herself she is running over a list of girl friends and trying to decide which one will suit you best. You even suspect that she inclined toward a Marjorie or an Edith, who is plain, but clever, a good manager, and of an affectionate disposition. Happily, at that moment the bride thanks you for your handsome wedding gift.
At table the visitor begins to be more at ease. For one thing, there is the traditional hazing process to which the bride must be subjected. Jack takes the lead. Admitting that to-night's repast is an unqualified success, he hints that there have been occasions when, if he only would, there might be a different tale to tell. The visitor protests; yet in the extravagant praise he resorts to there is a suggestion of mild banterwhich is considered the proper thing. The wife professes to enter into the joke; but in her heart she laughs to see the two men go solemnly through the stupid and outworn ceremonial. Young wives nowadays are excellent cooks. This one has secretly pursued a three months' course in domestic science and has a diploma hidden away somewhere. But she pretends to be properly outraged by our foolish satire, and insists on both being helped a second time to the custard. Jack, in fact, eats all that remains. It makes dish-washing easier, he says.
And as the visitor steers his way pleasantly through the meal, he makes the acquaintance of an extraordinary number of relatives. The spoons, he finds, are from Aunt Amy. Aunt Amy lives in Syracuse and at first objected to the match. The salt cellar is from a male cousin who (you learn this from Jack), it was thought at one time, would be the fortunateman himself—that is, until Jack appeared on the scene. Poor fellow, he sought consolation by marrying, only two months later, a nice girl from Alexandria, Va. The cut-glass salad dish is from the bride's dearest friend at boarding-school, a charming girl, who paints and sings and is now studying music in Berlin.
When the coffee is brought in, Jack asks if you will smoke. This is, in a way, the most dangerous situation of the entire evening. If you say yes, Jack is apt to pass the cigars and and say, "Go right ahead.Ihave given it up, you know, and I feel all the better for it." But if you are expert in reading faces, and decide that the bride probably has conscientious scruples against the habit, and you reply "No," Jack is likely to say, "Sorry, but Alice allowsmeone cigar a day after dinner," and you are left to suffer the torments of the lost, and have lied into the bargain. Nor is it possibleto lay down any rule for arriving at the correct reply under such circumstances. A hurried glance about the house will not help one. A handsome bronze ash-tray may be only a paperweight. Young wives are in the habit of buying their husbands the most ornate smoking apparatus, with the understanding that it shall never be used.
It is after dinner that reflection comes; and with it comes a touch of sorrowful wonder. Jack bears himself with great equanimity in his new condition; but it is apparent, nevertheless, that he has changed from what you knew him. In the first place, he has built up a comprehensive system of domestic serfdom to which he cheerfully submits. He glories in his enslavement; he rattles his chains. He actually boasts of the habit he has acquired of dropping in at the grocer's every morning on his way to the office. When it is the maid's day out, Jack insistson helping with the dishes and he tells you with pride that, given plenty of hot water, there is nothing in that line which he would hesitate to undertake. He makes it a point to visit Washington Market at least twice a week, and he comes home with cuts, joints, steaks, rounds, poultry, fish, game, and fruits in dazzling variety. He carries these things conspicuously in the Subway. And Jack's wife is appreciative of his kind intentions, and lets him bring, from long distances, meats which she can purchase at several cents a pound less from her butcher two blocks away.
The passion for acquiring food commodities is only one phase of Jack's new character. You begin to see now that all these years you have never suspected what capacities for home-building he had in him. In the presence of any kind of article offered for sale his overmastering passion is to buy the thing and take it home.Instinct apparently impels him to store up quite useless supplies against a future emergency. He haunts hardware stores, he rummages in antique furniture shops, and you may see him any day during the lunch hour flattening his nose against windowfuls of copper and brass ware. He buys patent hammers by the quarter dozen, as well as nails, tacks, screws, bolts, casters, brackets, and curtain poles. He brings home Japanese vases from the auction rooms. One day he acquired a step-ladder; it came by wagon because they refused to let him take it into the Subway.
And Jack's wife acquiesces in his self-imposed servitude. She does not demand it; she is even a good deal incommoded by it. But her woman's instinct tells her that the thing is a disease, which a man must catch, like the measles. Until the husband's passion for home-building quiets down, she is content to acceptthe unnatural situation; she is even proud to have inspired it.
But as Jack prattles on, and Jack's wife smiles over her embroidery frame, it comes over you that, despite all the kindly communion of the evening, you are an outsider there. You ask yourself bitterly whether there is such a thing as constancy in man, whether there is such a thing as true comradeship or affection. For fifteen years, from your freshman year at high school, you and Jack have been what the world calls friends. What are you now? Jack still calls you friend; apparently that is the reason why you have just dined with him and his wife. But in reality you are not there as his friend. You are there as the guest of this newly-constituted social unit, this new family. You are there not as a person, but as part of an institution.
And just when you are ready to accept thenew situation you are swept away by the unreality of the entire arrangement. It is inconceivable that Jack should have thrown you over for this alien person whom he calls wife. Your habits and Jack's are so much alike; your tastes, your outlook upon life. You used to play the same games at college, sing the same songs, smoke the same tobacco, wear each other's clothes, and now Jack has thrown you over for one with whom in the nature of things he can have none of those habits in common. It is not merely puzzling; it grows almost absurd. You shake your head over it some time after you have said good-night, and the bride has told you that as a dear friend of Jack's, they always will be pleased to have you call.
I have never had the slightest reason to doubt Harding's truthfulness. The following episode, I remember, was told with more than Harding's usual gravity. I can do nothing better than to give it here in Harding's own words so far as I can recall them:
On the third day after his arrival, my guest, Muhammad Abu Nozeyr, said to me, "O Harding Effendi, I desire greatly to witness a presentation of what you and the wife of your bosom, on whom both be peace, have often referred to as Grand Opera."
I replied, with involuntary astonishment. "Son of a hundred sheiks, forgive my seemingly derelict hospitality. But I should have askedyou before this to go to the opera with us, if I had not thought that the principles of your faith were opposed thereto. For you must know, O Father of the Defenceless, that our women go there unveiled even as the women of the people that you see on our streets, and that on the stage, singers of both sexes indulge in open exaltation of that thing called love, which your prophet has confined within the walls of theharemlik."
Abu Nozeyr laughed. "Your knowledge of our customs, Harding Effendi, is fifty years behind the times. True, I come from the desert, and have never heard your singing women of the stage. But did not one of the learned muftis at yesterday's evening repast declare that 'Aïda' was written for the Khedewi Ismail Pasha, may his soul rest in peace?"
"Yes," I said; "but you will understand, Dispenser of a Thousand Mercies, why at firstblush Islam and the lyric stage should strike me as somewhat incompatible."
"Not modern Islam," he replied. "Take us not too literally. I am told that your people, like others of the Feringhi, have succeeded in building battleships which are really instruments of peace; that you have trust companies in which you place no confidence, and Open Doors which you close against people from my part of the world; you have legislators who speak but do not legislate, and a Speaker who legislates but does not speak; you have had men in your White House who always saw red, and you have red-emblazoned newspapers which are yellow; you call your politicians public servants who are your masters, and you call your women the masters, but will not let them vote. Why, then, should you be so surprised at any seeming incongruity in others?"
"I am convinced, Abu Nozeyr," I said, "andto-morrow we will go to see 'Tristan und Isolde.' But shall I attempt to describe for you, in a few words, just what Grand Opera is?"
"My ear is open to your words, Harding Effendi."
"Know, then, Protector of the Fatherless, that the music-drama is a perfect blending of all the arts. It calls to its aid the resources of sculpture, painting, dancing, together with numerous mechanical agencies, and to a minor extent, music and the drama. For observe, O Abu Nozeyr, that each art aims to awake its own specific emotion. Sculpture appeals to our sense of form, painting to our delight in colour, dancing to the pleasure of rhythmic motion, the mechanic arts to our liking for sudden action, while music and the uttered word represent the union of the clearest and vaguest modes of expressing thought. It follows thereforethat the highest phase of human emotion can only be expressed by that art which gives us simultaneously the living form of a Venus de Milo with the colouring of a Titian, the grace of a Nautch girl, the miracle-working powers of a Hindu fakir, the elocution of a Demosthenes, and the voice of a Malibran."
"By the beard of the Prophet," exclaimed Abu Nozeyr, "I thought such bliss was to be had only in the Paradise of the Faithful; and that is Grand Opera, Harding Effendi?"
"With certain modifications," I replied. "Nothing human is perfect, Abu Nozeyr. It is a regrettable circumstance that the human voice attains its perfect development many years after the human form. Hence our heroes on the lyric stage are all middle-aged and our heroines somewhat heavy in movement. I have seen a pair of starving lovers in an operatic garret, who would surely not have passed thescrutiny of a United Charities investigator. It is also to be regretted that adequate voice-production leaves no breath for dancing or other forms of active effort. Hence the dance with which Carmen fascinates poor Don José, argues an intense readiness to be pleased on the part of the latter, and Telramund's defeat at the hands of Lohengrin is never quite free from a certain degree of contributory negligence."
"But tell me this, Harding Effendi, are there composers who have carried the union of the arts to a higher point than others?"
"There are, O Grandson of the Wild Ass. There are operas in which at certain moments the libretto speaks of a leaping fire, the music plays leaping fire, and the fire actually leaps and blazes on the stage. But unfortunately it always happens that the words cannot be heard because of the orchestra, and the fire sinks when the orchestral swell rises, and rises whenthe orchestral surge subsides. I have caught the orchestral sound of hammer on anvil long before the two have come into contact, and have heard Spring described as entering through a door which persists in staying closed. I have seen boats being pushed by human hands, Rhine maidens suspended on a wire, and harvest moons moving in orbits unknown to Herschel and Pickering."
"And are there people who still persist in taking their sculpture, painting, drama, and music separately, Harding Effendi?"
"There are; but that is because they fail to recognise that opera is a perfect union of all the arts. To-morrow, Abu Nozeyr, we go to hear 'Tristan und Isolde.' It appeals to every one of our senses. To enjoy it completely, however, it is often wise to close one's eyes and just hear the singer sing."
After dinner I asked Herr Grundschnitt what headway he was making in his studies of American life. The professor was in more than his usually mellow mood. He had enjoyed his dinner. He liked his cigar. He confided to me that he was hard at work on a volume of sketches dealing with the career of representative successful Americans, and he offered to read me one of his early chapters. If the following summary of Herr Grundschnitt's account of the life of Wallabout Smith can even suggest the extraordinary impression which the original produced upon me, I am content.
Wallabout Smith did not attain recognition until late in life. I gather that he must havebeen well over fifty when a former President of the United States declared that Wallabout Smith, by raising a family of four sons and two daughters, had done more for his country than all the laws enacted by the Legislatures of all the New England and Middle Atlantic States since the Spanish-American War. Fame came rapidly after this. The college professors repeated what the former President said. The newspapers repeated what the college professors said. The playwrights repeated what the newspapers said. The pulpit repeated what the playwrights said. Interviewers descended upon Wallabout Smith. They wore out his front lawn, the hall carpet, and the maid-servant's temper; but they always found Smith himself patient, affable, ready to say whatever they wished him to say.
The reporters would usually begin by asking Wallabout Smith what were his lighter interestsin life. "I find my greatest pleasure," Smith would reply, "in common things. For instance, I have never ceased to be intensely interested in the cost of shoes and stockings. The subject is fascinating and inexhaustible. One gets tired of most things, but there has never been a time in which the cost of shoes and stockings has failed to appeal with peculiar force to me. My odd moments on the train have as a rule been taken up with that question. If you have ever thought upon this subject, you must have been struck with the fact that, putting food aside, shoes and stockings constitute the most permanent and persistent human need. They begin with the first few weeks of our life, and they continue to the end; the size alone changes. It is a subject, too, that opens up such wide horizons. For while a man of comparatively little leisure can confine himself to the simple topic of shoes andstockings, he may, if he so desires, widen the field of his interests so as to include the allied subjects of frocks, jackets, blouses, caps, and collars, until he has covered the entire range of children's apparel. Nor is that all. I have spent many an absorbing hour figuring out the annual rate of increase in servants' wages and rent. Of late years I have been in the habit of putting in part of my lunch hour in a study of college fees and tailors' bills. In moments of extreme physical lassitude, when nothing else appeals to me, I think about the next quarterly premium on my insurance policy."
How well-known men do their work has always interested the public. Few newspaper men omitted to question Wallabout Smith on this subject. From the large number of interviews cited by Herr Grundschnitt we may build up a very fair picture of Wallabout Smith's daily routine. It was his habit to spend a goodpart of his day in New York City. He would rise about six o'clock every week-day in the year, and, snatching a hasty breakfast, would make his way to the railroad station, pausing now and then in perplexity as he tried to recall what it was his wife had asked him to bring home from town. Sometimes he would catch his train and sometimes he would not. Arrived at his office, he would remove his coat, and, putting on a black alpaca jacket to which he was greatly attached, he would proceed to glance over, check, and transcribe the contents of a large number of bills and vouchers representing the daily transactions of a very prosperous commercial enterprise in which he had no proprietary interest. The day's work would be pleasantly broken up by frequent inquiries from the general manager's office. Every now and then a fellow-worker would take a moment from his duties to ask Wallabout Smith howhis lawn was getting on. Sometimes he would be summoned to the telephone, only to learn that Central had called the wrong number. Lunch was a matter of a few minutes. At 5.30 every afternoon Wallabout Smith exchanged his alpaca jacket for his street coat with a fine sense of weariness, and the secure conviction that the next morning would find the same task waiting for him on his table. "I have no hesitation in stating," Smith would frequently say, "that some of the busiest hours of my life have been spent at my office desk."
Walking was his favourite form of exercise. When he lived in the city during the first few years after his marriage, he used to walk the floor with the baby. Later when the children began to grow up and he moved out into the country, he walked to and from the station. His gait was a free, manly stride, bordering close upon a run, in the morning, and a moredeliberate, sliding pace, somewhat suggestive of a shuffle, in the evening. He was at his best when tramping the country roads with a congenial companion or two on a Sunday afternoon. On such occasions he would pour forth a continuous stream of light-hearted talk on everything under the sun—the new board of village trustees, the shameful condition of the village streets, the prospects of a new roof for the railway station. Good-nature was the keynote of his character, but he would frequently sum up a situation or a person with a sly touch of irony or a trenchant word or two. He once described the village streets as being paved chiefly with good intentions. Another time he characterised the minister of a rival church as having the courage of his wife's convictions. But such flashes of satire went and left no rancour behind them. His high spirits were proof against everything but automobiles.These he detested, not because they made walking unpleasant and even dangerous, but because they were run by men who mortgaged their homes to buy motor cars, and thus threatened the stability of business conditions.
Wallabout Smith would often be asked to lay down a few rules for those who wished to emulate his success. He would invariably reply that the secret of bringing up children was the same double secret that underlay success in every other field—enthusiasm and patience. "It has always been my belief," he would say, "that the head of a family should spend at least as much time with his children as he does at his barber's or his lodge, and, if possible, a little more. Children undoubtedly stand in need of supervision. In the beginning, it is a question largely of keeping them away from the matches and the laudanum. Fortunately, we live at some distance from a trolley-line andthere is no well in our back-yard. As my children grew up, I made it a point to know what books they were reading out of school and whether the boys were addicted to the filthy cigarette habit. On the subjects of breakfast foods and corporal punishment, I have always kept an open mind."
The experiment of living upon a basis of comradeship with one's children which we see so frequently recommended was not a success in the case of Wallabout Smith. "Although my boys are fond of me," he once told a reporter, "they usually regard my presence as a bore. When I find time to go out walking with them, they do their best to lose me, and whenever we divide off into teams for a game of ball, each side insists on my going with the other side. I have made up my mind that there is a time for being with one's children and a time for letting them alone, and that the propertime for being with them is when they are in trouble and want you, and the proper time for letting them alone is when they are happy and wish to be let alone. This I admit is the reverse of the common practice, and probably there is something to be said for parents who grow fond of their children's society when they, the parents, have nothing else to do. As a rule, I have never obtruded myself on my boys, being confident that natural affection and the recurrent need of pocket-money would constitute a sufficient bond between us."
There was, in conclusion, one factor in his success upon which Wallabout Smith would never fail to lay the most emphatic stress, and to which Herr Grundschnitt attached equal importance. "Such fame," he would say, "as has fallen to my share must be attributed in the very largest measure to my wife. Many is the time she gave up her meetings at theBrowning Club to watch with me beside the sick-bed of one of our little ones. And she would do this so uncomplainingly, so cheerfully, that it almost made one oblivious to the extent of her sacrifice. There must have been occasions, I feel sure, when it cost her a pang to find her photograph omitted from the local paper's account of a club meeting or a church bazaar; but if she ever suffered on that score, she never let it be known. I can truly say that, without her, my life work would have spelt failure."
I had scarcely exchanged a half-dozen sentences with Howard King before we knew ourselves for kindred spirits. I was in a roomful of people who were talking about new books I had not read, new plays I had not seen, and new singers I had not heard, and I was exceedingly lonesome. There was one youngish middle-aged lady in pink, who asked me what was the best novel I had read of late, and when I said "Robert Elsmere," she looked at me rather grimly and asked whether I lived in New York. When I said yes, she turned away and began chatting with a young man on her right, who looked like the advertisement for a new linen collar. It was this reply of mine thatattracted Howard King's attention. He had been sitting in one corner of the room quite as disconsolate as I was. But now he walked over and shook hands and told me that in his opinion "Robert Elsmere" was not so good a book as "Trilby," which he was just reading.
Howard King and I belong to the comparatively small class of men whom nature, or fate, or whatever you please, has decreed to be always a certain interval behind the times; it might be years or months or days, according to the rate of speed at which a particular fashion happened to be moving forward. King told me, for instance, that of late he has been possessed with a passionate desire to learn the game of ping-pong. When all the world was playing table-tennis eight or ten years ago, King viewed the game with disgust. He thought it utterly childish, uninteresting, and admirably illustrative of all the idiotic qualities that go to make up a fad. But for the last six months, King said, he frequently wakes at night and sits up in bed and yearns with all his soul for a ping-pong set. He was, of course, ashamed to speak to others about it. But if he could find some one who shared his feelings on the subject, he had a large library with a square table in it. Would I come to-morrow night? I said I should be very glad, indeed.
I told Howard King what my attitude is toward clothes. It is my fate always to grow fond of a fashion just as it is passing out. I recalled the exaggerated military styles for men that came in with the Spanish-American and the South African wars. Those enormously padded shoulders and tight-shaped waists and swelling trouser legs, and the strut and the stoop that went with the whole uglyensemble, roused my anger. My feelings remained unchangeduntil some time after the Russo-Japanese War, and then one day it came to me that I must have a suit of military cut. It was like the sudden awakening of the unregenerate to grace, it was as irresistible as first love. And when the tailor said that only sloping shoulders were now being worn, that what I wanted was hopelessly out of date, the sense of loss was overpowering. I confessed to King that in my opinion nothing uglier in men's apparel was conceivable than the green plush hats that are just beginning to go out of style. And I told him that I was as certain as I am certain of anything in this world that some day in the very near future I shall be seized with an uncontrollable longing to wear a green plush hat, and I shall enter a shop and ask for one, and the man behind the counter will look at me quizzically, and, after a long search, bring me the only plush hat in his shop, and I shall carryit home in shame, and put it away in my closet, and mourn over the resolution that came too late.
You must not imagine that Howard King and I are conservatives. We do not hold fast to one thing, or even hold fast to the old. We move forward, but at a pace so curiously regulated as to bring us to the front door just when most people are leaving by the back. I have worn every shape of linen collar that the best-dressed men have worn during the last fifteen years; but I have worn them from three to six months late. I became passionately fond of bicycling shortly after all the bicycle factories began the exclusive production of automobiles. I am not very fond of automobiles, but I shall be, I know, when aëroplanes come into extensive use. It is only in the last few months that I have discovered how amusing a toy the Teddy bear makes. And this is true of fashions in games and of fashions in language.I have no fundamental objections to slang, but I always pick up the bit of slang that most people are just discarding.
I recall, for instance, how, up in the hills last summer, the woods and glens were echoing to the sound, half a howl and half a screech, of "Oh, you!" addressed at quarter-minute intervals to every object, animate or inanimate, that came within the howler's vision or thought. This particular bit of gutter-slang induced a peculiar irritation. It seemed to me utter desecration that this quickening beauty of hill and sky and river and green woods, which should have stirred young hearts to madrigals and chorals, should resound to the blatant, shrieking vulgarity of Lobster Square. I do not mind confessing that at times my feelings towards the innocent young barbarians bordered close on murder. Until—until, alas! one September morning, after all the guests were goneand I alone remained; that morning I woke with the poison in my soul, and I walked down to the river for my bath, and, coming across the farmer's herd of cows halfway down the hillside, saluted them, before I knew what I was doing, with that horrid, that unspeakable—I blush now to think of it. When I told Howard King, he admitted humbly that after holding out for years he has just begun to say, "It's me," and that he feels morally convinced that within the next year or two he will be saying "Between you and I."
But you must not think that this peculiarity in Howard King and myself is an acquired habit or a pose in which we take any measure of pride. Our attitude towards those happy people who are always in fashion is one of sincere and profound envy. I think there is nothing more wonderful under the sun than the unknown force that impels the great majority tobegin doing the same new thing at the same time. It must be a precious gift to feel instinctively what the right new thing is to do. A mysterious fiat goes forth and a million women simultaneously put on black straw hats surmounted by a cock in his pride. Another mysterious order goes forth and two million women simultaneously begin reading the latest novel by Robert W. Chambers. Pitiable are those in whom this instinct is wanting and who must tag timidly behind, venturing only where a million others have gone before. Perhaps it is, with such people, a case of arrested development. Boys of sixteen and girls of fourteen have supplied the poets with their greatest love stories and direst tragedies. And there are men and women well gone into middle age who balk and stammer in the presence of the most elementary sensation. Perhaps at bottom it is simply a question of courage and cowardice.
In any case, being behind the times is a peculiarly unfortunate trait in a man, who, like myself, is condemned to earn his bread in the sweat of his fountain-pen. In what other profession must a man be so emphatically up to the minute as in this scribbling profession of ours? Only yesterday I walked into an editor's office and suggested a three-thousand word review of "The Rise of Silas Lapham," which I told him was one of the greatest novels in any language. He stared at me and asked if I hadn't some fresher book in mind, and I, somewhat taken aback, told him that I was just finishing Frank Norris's "McTeague" and was about to begin on Mrs. Wharton's "House of Mirth." With a brutality characteristic of editors he asked me whether I didn't care to write a review of Homer's Iliad and the book of Deuteronomy. I told him that I might very well do so if it were a question of writing somethinghe would find personally instructive, and rose to go, with the intention of slamming the door behind me.
But he called me back and insisted that he meant no offence, that he simply must have live, up-to-date copy or nothing at all. He proposed a popular article on art, and wondered if I could write something about the Dutch masters, with special reference to the recent notable exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum. I was obliged to confess that I had missed the exhibition by two weeks. "Well," he said, patiently, "there is opera. You might do something about the singers. You have heard Mary Garden, of course?" I told him no. Only the other day I had irrevocably decided to hear Mary Garden in "Thaïs" next season; and the next morning I learned that Mr. Hammerstein had gone out of business.
He continued to be patient with me."There's 'Chantecler,' to be sure, although that is ancient history by this time. Have you read the play?" I had not, but just here an inspiration came. "You sneered at Homer just now," I said. "Well, there was another Greek who wrote a bird play 2,300 years before Rostand. I mean Aristophanes——" The editor leaped from his chair. "Great, great!" he cried. "We'll call it 'Chantecler 400b.c.'" I caught the infection of his enthusiasm. "And Aristophanes had another play on woman's rights," I told him. "You might call it 'An Athenian Suffragette.'" "Splendid!" he cried; "splendid; we can make a whole series, and Goulden will do the pictures in colours. It's the most novel thing I have heard of for a long time. It will beat the others by a mile." And he sent me away happy.
There are three things that puzzle me; yes, four things that I cannot explain: Why street clocks never show the right time; why thermometers hanging outside of drug stores never indicate the right temperature; why slot machines on a railway platform never give the right weight; and why weather-vanes always point in the wrong direction. At bottom, I imagine, these are really not four things, but one. For it must be the same mysterious and malicious principle that takes each of these contrivances, set up to be a public guide to truth, and turns it into an instrument for the dissemination of error.
What makes me think that there is some animateprinciple behind such clocks is that they are so like a good many people one meets. There are persons who are packed with the most curiously inaccurate information on the most abstruse subjects, and they insist on imparting it to you. I have no ground to complain if I ask Jones what is the capital of Illinois and he says Chicago. The initiative was mine, and taken at my own peril, and it is fair that I should pay the penalty. But frequently Jones will break in upon me in the middle of a column of figures and tell me that the largest ranch in the world is situated in the State of Sonora, Mexico. "Yes?" I say, hoping that he will go away. "Yes," he assures me. "It is so large that the proprietor can ride 200 days on horseback without leaving his own grounds. He has 2,000,000 men working for him and he lives in a marble palace of 700 rooms. No one can be elected President of Mexico against his will."
Now obviously it would have been better for me to remain altogether unacquainted with Mexican conditions than to share Jones's distorted view of affairs in that interesting republic. But Jones insists on taking the innocent blank spaces in my knowledge of the world and filling them up with the most incorrect data. He tells me, for instance, that Mme. Finisterra once sang the mad scene from "Lucia" before the late Sultan of Morocco, who wept so bitterly that the performance was interrupted lest the monarch should go into convulsions. At the age of eight Mme. Finisterra knew twelve operatic soprano rôles by heart, and when she was ten she played Juliet to Tamagno's Romeo. She now gets $10,000 a night, in addition to the service of a maid, a chef, and two private secretaries. In private life she is very stout. All this, needless to say, is not true.
But I must not forget the clocks. Theworst of the class, oddly enough, are those found in front of watchmakers' and opticians' shops. I sometimes think that such clocks are purposely put out of order by the shop-keeper. The object is apparently to induce irascible old gentlemen to enter the store, watch in hand, in order to protest against the maintenance of a public nuisance. It is then a comparatively easy task to sell them a pair of solid gold spectacles with double lenses at a handsome profit. I, for one, would not blame the old gentleman who should pick up a stone and hurl it at one of these Tartuffes and Chadbands of the street-corner with their chubby, gilded hands reposing on their prosperous stomachs, sleek and smug and ultra-respectable, but unconscionable liars for all that. They are not content with their own success in cheating, they throw discredit upon honest folk. How many a faithful pocket-piece has been pulled out by its disappointedowner and actually set wrong to make it agree with one of these rubicund old sinners? Such is the overpowering effect of impudent assurance on the ordinary man.
The difference between the typical public clock and a watch out of order is obvious. Every prudent man knows the peculiarities of his own watch, just as he knows the peculiarities of his own wife and children; and he is consequently prepared to make allowances. But the clock on the street corner persists in thrusting false information upon you. The man who consults his watch does so with a purpose, and is naturally on the alert. But the cheating clock confronts him in moments of unsuspecting security, and throws him into a condition of the wildest alarm. It is peculiarly active on bright spring days, when people rise early and look forward to being at their desks half an hour before their usual time. On such occasions theyinvariably come upon a clock which points to a quarter of ten, and sends them scurrying breathless up four flights of stairs, to find the janitor engaged in cleaning out the baskets.
Church clocks are not so bad as jewellers' clocks; but they are bad enough, and, in the nature of things, we have a right to expect more from a church clock than from any other kind. For the same reason the weathercock on a church steeple is to be judged by a higher standard than the one over a carpenter's shop or the ordinary dwelling. I cannot, for instance, imagine a more dangerous moralensemblethan a church with a clergyman preaching bad doctrine in the pulpit, a clock indicating the wrong time on the tower, and, over all, a clogged weather vane pointing to the south when the wind blows from the east.
With reference to denominations I have observed that Presbyterian clocks are apt to bemore reliable than any other kind, although the truest clock I have ever come across is on a little Dutch Reformed Church in Orange County. One of the most unprincipled clocks I can think of is just outside my window. I use unprincipled with intention, for this clock is not vicious, but giddy. If it were consistently late or consistently early, one might get used to it. But to look out of the window at 9:30 and find this clock pointing to eleven, and to look out ten minutes later and find it pointing to 9:35, is extremely disconcerting. One is inclined to expect something more restrained in a clock connected with the most prosperous parish of one of our most conservative denominations.
What I have said of clocks is largely true of the weighing-machine. Like the public clock, it thrusts itself upon us, and like the clock it betrays the confidence which it invites. I feel convinced that no one would ever think of usinga weighing-machine if it did not constitute the most characteristically national piece of furniture in our railway stations. All weighing-machines cheat, but, if cheat they must, give me the machine that flatly refuses to budge from zero after it has swallowed your coin. I prefer that kind to the spasmodic machine on which the indicator moves forward one hundred pounds every two minutes and leaves a person utterly uncertain as to whether he should immediately begin dieting or purchase a bottle of codliver oil. Yet even this mockery of a weighing-machine is preferable to the emotional type of scales which simultaneously gives you a false weight, tells your fortune in utter disregard of age and sex, and plays a tune that cannot be recognised. When such a machine has registered a German matron's weight at 115 pounds and informed her that she will some day be President of the United States, it is ludicrous tohave it break into a tinkle of self-appreciation, like a spaniel barking his own approval after walking across the room on his hind legs.
As for the ordinary street thermometer, there is this to be said for it: It may deceive, but it gives pleasure in deceiving. When a person is sagging beneath the heat of an August midday, it is a distinct source of comfort and pride to have the thermometer register 98 degrees. Even when we are fully aware that the mercury is too high by three or four degrees, it is easy enough to make one's self believe for the moment in the higher figure. If it were not for this spiritual stimulus, I should be inclined to regard all thermometers as a nuisance. Translating Fahrenheit into Centigrade andvice versa, is one of the most painful mental processes I can think of. I know that I cannot perform the operation, and I cannot help trying. I remember how a certain European monarch once lay seriouslyill and my evening newspaper reported that his temperature was 38.3 degrees C. On my way home I attempted to put 38.3 degrees C. into terms of F., and it speaks well for the constitution of that European monarch that he should have survived the violent fluctuations of temperature to which I subjected him. At Grand Central Station he was literally burning up under a blazing heat of 142 degrees. At Ninety-sixth Street he was down to 74. As I walked home from the station I was forced to admit that I was not sure whether one should multiply by five-ninths or nine-fifths.
I would not be misunderstood. I am no enemy of the public institutions I have criticised. Far from it; clocks, thermometers, weather-vanes, and weighing-machines—they are but the remnants of the fine old communal life of which our urban and Anglo-Saxon civilisation has kept only too little. We do notlounge about and take our meals in the public squares as people used to do in Athens and still do in Sicily. We no longer fill our pitchers at a common fountain or dance on the village green or regulate the life of an entire city to the same signal from a campanile. Ours is an age of exaggerated privacy, where every one works behind closed doors and glances furtively at his watch. But precisely because it is a precious survival the public clock ought to keep itself above reproach and above suspicion.
Cooper's museum of Proverbial Realities had proven such a source of delight to himself and his friends that the news of its destruction by fire came with a shock to all who knew him. Of all his treasures he succeeded in saving only part of his priceless collection of straws—the straw that showed which way the wind blew, the straw grasped at by a drowning man, the straw that does not enter into the manufacture of bricks, and the last straw that broke the camel's back. How would Cooper stand the blow, his friends wondered. He took it very well. Within a week he had set to work on a new fad, the collection of Statistical Realities, and in a half-year he had filled three good-sizedlofts and a large back-yard with his treasures. Yesterday he took me through his galleries.
"What do you make of this?" he said, stopping before a glass jar some four feet high, in which, to the peril of one's nerves, you could distinctly see the upper two-thirds of a child's body. Head, trunk, and arms were beautifully fashioned, but there was no vestige of growth below the knee-caps. I could only show my astonishment. "Well," he went on, "you must have seen the statement by the president of Bryn Mawr that the average number of children among college-bred mothers is 3-6/10. This is the six-tenths of a child. Here," he said, pointing to another and somewhat larger jar, "you see three-fifths of a woman; 1-3/5 women to one man is the ratio in some parts of Ireland. Here, in adjoining bottles, are three-tenths of a physician, seven-eighths of a lawyer, and four-fifths of a clergyman, the latest census having shown that we have 23-3/10 physicians, 29-7/8 lawyers, and 17-4/5 physicians for every 1,000 of our population."
Stopping before a glass case containing little heaps of ordinary copper coins, Harrington pointed out that these were the odd cents which the scrupulous science of statistics insists on leaving attached to vast sums of money. He showed me the 27 cents which, added to $3,469,746,854 represented the value of the foreign commerce of the United States in 1910; he showed me the twopence ha'penny which, increased by £788,990,187, constitutes the total funded debt of Great Britain; and he laid special emphasis on the eleven pennies which Tammany's most vigorous efforts at economy could not pare off from New York City's budget of $166,246,729.11 for the year 1909.
Another row of glass cases contained whatappeared at first sight a collection of comic dolls. Cooper pointed to a sturdy little mannikin in boots and a Russian blouse, who, with mouth fearfully distended, was endeavouring to swallow an iron bar four or five times his own size. "You may have read," said Cooper, "that the annual consumption of pig-iron in Russia is 3.7 tons per capita. This figure shows the fact concretely. Here," indicating the figure of an infant apparently a week or two old, "is a French baby. You may observe that she is engaged in counting her share of the national wealth, which is estimated in France at 1,254 francs 63 centimes for every man, woman, and child. She is wondering whether she ought to invest her capital in Russian treasury bonds or in Steel Common. This," pointing to a group of seven or eight dolls riding on a perfectly modelled brindled cow, "represents the proportions of domesticatedcattle to the total population of the United States."
The fire which flashes up in the eye of every amateur when he contemplates the gem of his collection, was visible as Cooper led the way to a good-sized platform of polished mahogany and brass on which was set up what I took to be a beautiful reproduction of the planetary system in miniature. I was right. "But observe," said Cooper, "the details of construction. The sun is made up of infinitely small eggs, since we know that the weight of all the hen's eggs consumed by the human race since the beginning of the Christian era is equal to one-billionth the weight of the sun. The planets are fashioned in the same way. Jupiter you see is made up of little, squirming animal-like units; that is because Jupiter occupies the same amount of space that would be filled by the descendants of a single pair of Australian rabbitsin five hundred years, if left unchecked. Observe the orbit of the earth. It is marked out in twopenny postage stamps, for statisticians assure us that the path of the earth around the sun is equivalent in length to all the postage stamps consumed since the beginning of the nineteenth century, if laid end to end. In the same way the seven rings of Saturn are made up of copper pennies, obtained by reducing the world's annual output of gold to coins of that denomination."
We passed into a cosy little alcove lined to the ceiling with books. There seemed nothing out of the ordinary about them at first sight, but my host soon undeceived me. "These," he said, "are the books that might have been written in the last hundred years, if the time and energy that are spent on smoking, drinking, whist, bridge, and out-door games were devoted to the cultivation of literature. Here, for instance,are three plays quite as good as 'Hamlet,' written by two million men named Smith, who gave up the use of tobacco. Here is a philosophical poem which shows on every page an inspiration higher than Goethe ever attained; it embodies the concentrated ideas produced by twenty-five thousand former golf players, thinking half an hour a day for three days in the week. Here is a poetic version of the future life which completely outclasses the 'Divina Commedia.' It is compounded out of the experiences of forty-three thousand moderate drinkers who became total abstainers, seventy disbanded croquet associations, and 1,125 obsolete euchre clubs.
"Perhaps," concluded Cooper, "you should see this before you go," and he pointed to a single shelf of books with a curious mechanical arrangement at one side. "This shelf," he said, "is exactly five feet long. This littleelectric motor at the side is so constructed that it gets into motion every day for twenty minutes, and stops. By a system of cogs and levers the motor propels a fine steel needle straight through the five feet of books. A glance at this brass dial shows at once how far the needle point has reached. At the present moment, for instance, it is halfway through the front cover of the 'Journal of John Woolman.' And while the dial is recording the distance covered on the five-foot shelf, the blue liquid in this glass tube measures the rising level of culture. It is a very ingenious application of President Eliot's idea, don't you think?"
Whenever Harrington urges me to go to live in the country, his place is only forty-three minutes from City Hall. But when he asked me last week to spend Saturday afternoon with him, he told me that some trains are slower than others and that I had better allow ten minutes for the ferry. I have never known a commuter who told the truth about the time it takes him to cover the distance from his office-door to his front lawn. If he is exceptionally conscientious he will take into account the preliminary ride on the Subway and possibly even the walk from his office to the Subway station. But no commuter ever alludes to the fifteen minutes' walk at the otherend. I did know one man who never under-estimated the length of his daily trips, but he was a cynic who hated the country and lived there because his wife's mother owned the house, and he multiplied by two the time it really took him to get into town. The exact truth I have never had.
As a matter of fact, sitting there in a rather stuffy car which made its way through much unlovely landscape, I reflected that there are really three different schedules on which suburban traffic is conducted. One is the time it takes a commuter's friends to come out to see him. Another is the time he claims it takes him to come into town every day. The third, and incomparably the shortest of the three, is the time your friend says it will take him to come into town after the completion of some very extensive railway improvements which, in practice, I have found are never completed. Iam quite aware that great bridges have been built, and that railway tunnels have been opened into Long Island and other railway tunnels into New Jersey, and that steam is being rapidly replaced by electricity. But it is my firm belief that such of my suburban friends as live within the zone affected by these improvements will move away before the change for the better actually comes. I am no pessimist. I base this expectation on the simple fact that every commuter I know, for as long a period as I have known him, has been looking forward to the completion of railway improvements involving the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars. The march of progress apparently finds the suburban resident always a little in advance.
Harrington met me at the station and asked me if that was not a very good train I had come down on. The suburban virus was in me.I lied and said yes. As we sat at our luncheon I felt how peculiarly a vital factor in out-of-town existence the railroad constitutes. Both Harrington and his wife spoke of trains as of living, breathing people. Some trains, with all their faults, the Harringtons evidently loved. Others they detested, and made no attempt to conceal the fact. I had just finished telling Mrs. Harrington about the latest woman's suffrage parade when Harrington said: "Do you know, my dear, the 8.13 is getting worse all the time." I was still thinking of my own story, and I failed to catch just who or what it was that was getting worse all the time to an extent so inimical to Harrington's peace of mind. But Mrs. Harrington looked up, frowning slightly, and said: "Can't anything be done?" Harrington shook his head. "It's hopeless." By this time I was convinced that it must be some family skeleton that Harringtonhad rather oddly chosen to bring out before a stranger; some scapegrace cousin, I suspected, who probably got drunk and came to Harrington's office and demanded money. I looked discreetly into my plate as Mrs. Harrington suggested: "You might write to the superintendent." "We have," replied Harrington, "and he threatened to take it off altogether. Not that it would mean any loss. I can make just as good time now by the 8:35."
After luncheon we walked. I have never found the walking in the suburbs very good. There is a regrettable lack of elbow-room. A short stroll brings one either to a railway-siding, which is bad enough, or to a promising growth of trees, which is worse. From the road these trees look like the beginning of a primeval jungle sweeping on to far horizons. Plunge into that timber growth and in five minutes you emerge on a sewered road with concrete sidewalksand ornamental lamp posts and a crew of Italian labourers drinking beer in the shadow of a steam-roller. It is a gash of civilisation across the face of the wilderness, and, like most deformities, it is displeasing to the eye. Walking under such conditions is not stimulative. I miss the sense of space and freedom I get in the streets of New York, where I know that I can walk twenty miles north or twenty miles east without interference or inconvenience. Give me either a mountain-top or Broadway. Suburban vistas are pitifully cramped.
That day it had rained, and I should have been additionally glad to stay indoors. But Mrs. Harrington is a fervent naturalist, and she insisted on taking me out to look at the wild flowers and listen to the bird-calls. Both of these branches of nature-study, I am convinced, call for an intensity of sympathetic imagination that I am incapable of developing;and especially the bird-calls. Concerning the latter, I feel sure that a great deal of humbug is being said and written. I mean to cast no reflections upon Harrington or his wife. The only occasions on which I have known Harrington to deviate from the truth have been, as I have already pointed out, in connection with his train-schedules. And as Mrs. Harrington does not travel to the city, even this charge will not hold against her. And yet I cannot help feeling that neither of the two really hears the catbird say "miaow" or the robin "cheer up," as they pretend to. At the first twitter or chirp from some invisible source Mrs. Harrington stops and with radiant face asks me whether I do not distinctly catch the "pit-pit-pity-me" of the meadow-lark. I say yes; but I really don't, and I don't believe she does. My explanation is that Mrs. Harrington is a woman and consequently ready to hear what she hasbeen led to expect she would hear. As for Harrington, he is a devoted husband.
For let us look at the matter with an open mind. Our alphabetical representations of animal sounds are at best only rough approximations. Most often they are not even that. They are mere arbitrary symbols. We use consonants where the bird uses none, as when we give the name cuckoo to a bird whose cry is really "ooh, ooh." Or else we put in the wrong consonants, which is shown by the fact that different nations assign different consonantal sounds to the same bird. We do not even agree on the vowel sounds. What is there in common between our English "Cock-a-doodle-doo" and M. Rostand's "cocorico"? And we need not go as far as the animal world. See how the nations differ in spelling out that elementary human sound which is the expression of pain or surprise, and which in this country we hearas "Oh," and the Germans hear as "Ach," and the Greeks heard as "Ai, Ai." If the human vocal chords can be so imperfectly imitated, what shall we say of birds speaking after a manner all their own? For myself I confess that in congenial company I can hear birds say anything, but that left to myself I am sometimes puzzled by a parrot. And that is the reason why I am sceptical concerning Mrs. Harrington's accomplishments in this field.
But while the birds about the Harringtons' home simply offend my regard for the truth, the Harringtons' dog causes me acute bodily and mental discomfort. He is of a spotted white, with a disreputable black patch over one eye, and weighs, I should imagine, between eighty and ninety pounds. During luncheon he takes his place under the table, and from there emits blood-curdling howls with sufficient frequency to make conversation extremely difficult.This he varies by nosing about the visitor's legs and growling. I am not fond of dogs under the best of circumstances. I always labour under the presumption that they will bite. Their habit of suddenly dashing across the floor, in furious pursuit of nothing in particular, upsets me. But an invisible dog under a dining-room table is a dreadful experience. It is true that I managed to give Mrs. Harrington a fairly rational account of the woman's suffrage parade. But was she aware, as I sat there smiling spasmodically, what agonies of fear were mine as I waited for those white fangs under the table to sink into my flesh? If, under the circumstances, I confused Harriet Beecher Stowe with Julia Ward Howe, and made a bad blunder about woman's rights in Finland, am I so very much to blame?
Not that the Harringtons are the worst offenders in this respect. There is an old classmate,and a very dear friend, indeed, who lives on Flushing Bay, and has a pair of hopelessly ferocious dogs that hold the neighbourhood in terror. The only occasion on which they have been known to show indifference to strangers was one night when burglars broke in and stole some silver and a revolver. When I go out to Flushing, I stipulate that the dogs shall be locked up in the cellar from ten minutes before my train is due until ten minutes after I have left the house. But it would be foolhardy to omit additional precautions. Hence I always carry an umbrella with the ferrule sharpened to a point, and when I am within a block of the house I stoop and pick up a large stone, and go on my way, with all my senses acute, whistling cheerfully. It is odd how people will put themselves out to keep a harmless, poor relation out of the way of visitors, and never think of the much greater discomfort attendantupon the constant presence of an active bull-terrier.
I may have produced the impression that life in the country makes no appeal to me. Nothing could be further from my intentions. Whatever doubts I may have entertained on this point vanish completely as the Harringtons escort me to the station in the cool of the evening, the dog having been left at home at my request. We pass by low, white-pillared houses behind hedges, and the scent of hay comes up from the lawns, and laughter comes from the dark of the verandas. The city at such a time seems a very undesirable place to return to; a place to lose one's self in—yes, and that is all. The Harringtons never were in the city what they are here. They have taken root, they have developed local pride which is only the sense of home. As we walk they point out the residences of the leading citizens. Here lives theowner of one of the largest factories of mechanical pianos in the country. This Japanese temple belongs to a man who writes for some of the best-known magazines. That colonial dwelling is occupied by the lawyer who defended Mrs. Dower when she was tried for poisoning her husband. I reflect, in genuine humility, that in the city I never think of taking strangers to see Mr. William Dean Howells's house or Mr. Joseph H. Choate's. And with real regret and admiration, I say good-night to the Harringtons.