AN ADVERTISING ADVENTURERoffers 16 years' experience(scarred by a few notable defeats and a thorough knowledge edge of what NOT to do) to a manufacturer, for whom he will SAVE more than his wages; a bad man, who does not drink, never was out of work, is married and proud of it; age 32; would rather work than eat. Address: Alert.
AN ADVERTISING ADVENTURERoffers 16 years' experience
(scarred by a few notable defeats and a thorough knowledge edge of what NOT to do) to a manufacturer, for whom he will SAVE more than his wages; a bad man, who does not drink, never was out of work, is married and proud of it; age 32; would rather work than eat. Address: Alert.
Then there is the Challenge Not to Be Denied. Here is a sample: "Accountant.—Are you one ofthe progressive firms? If you are, you want——" etc. Frequently one comes across the Facetious Advertiser. He runs some such headline as this: "Editor for Rent." Or perhaps he says: "'Secretarial Services' For Sale." In contrast to him is the advertiser with the Tremulous Appeal. He may begin: "Who Wants My Services?" And go on to say: "I am hard worker and steady, and willing to go anywhere. Salary about $12 a week." Or perhaps he says: "Privilegeof meeting man who can utilize my services." Or maybe it is thus: "$15 per Week and an Opportunity." Such a very human ad as this is likely to continue somewhat like this:
Can you use a young man of twenty-one—one of really serious purpose? I have had enough business experience and training to know that to be of help I must do well whatever I am given to do. Of course I am looking for a future—but I know that it does not matter so much what I do as how I do it. Therefore, I believe any reputable business holds a future. I am from Kansas, in New York on my own resources and so must have $15 per week to start. I have a high school education, and have read a great deal, and have attended Business School.
Can you use a young man of twenty-one—one of really serious purpose? I have had enough business experience and training to know that to be of help I must do well whatever I am given to do. Of course I am looking for a future—but I know that it does not matter so much what I do as how I do it. Therefore, I believe any reputable business holds a future. I am from Kansas, in New York on my own resources and so must have $15 per week to start. I have a high school education, and have read a great deal, and have attended Business School.
Next is the Poignant ad. The purest example of this which in my studies I have discovered is headed: "Who Will Talk With Me?" A stepbeyond this we come upon the Altogether Pitiful. I mean like the one I here copy out:
WILL you please find or give office employment to an educated, with physical defect, young man; just a chance to work two weeks without salary desired?
WILL you please find or give office employment to an educated, with physical defect, young man; just a chance to work two weeks without salary desired?
Akin to the poignant situation-wanted advertisement is the Urgent: "Advertising Writer, college man (Princeton), urgently needs situation." Or: "Proofreader, educated young man, requires positionimmediately." It is, such is the inference, defective philanthropy in an employer to delay. A touching figure, too (because he does not suspect that he is a touching figure), is the Cheery and Hopeful. We have him here: "Ambitiousyoung American (28) desires position; will try anything; moderate salary to start."
A wily fellow is the Ingratiating advertiser. Sometimes he is a "Spanish young man" who offers to work altogether without salary as Spanish correspondent in some export house "where he could practice English." Occasionally he is a "copy writer" who, wishing a position with an agency or mercantile firm, is "willing to demonstrate ability for two weeks before drawing salary." Now and then a still more positivecharacter baits the hook with the offer of gratis services. In this morning's paper a stenographer releases the seductive declaration that "one trial will demonstrate my value to you."
A rôle played on the stage of the "Situations Wanted" page which I have always much admired is that of the Highly Dignified. The Bold and Confident Man, the Ingenious, the Tremulous, the Poignant, the Hopeful, the Ingratiating—the voices of all these figures touch one with a sense of the harsh clash of life, its trickiness, its vicissitudes, its pathos and its tragedy. But "A Gentlemanof 50," who, "having a considerable private income, desires dignified occupation; salary unimportant," revives the poetic idea that (at any rate, now and then) God's in His heaven and all's right with the world. The highly dignified advertiser certainly is a very enviable character. It must be very nice to be able to say, as in this advertisement before us: "Light Occupation of an Important Natureis sought by middle-aged gentleman capable of assuming control and conducting any normal business enterprise."
A very colorful feature of the "Situations Wanted" page is the interesting qualificationsfrequently set forth. Glancing at the paper in hand I find a young man of twenty-five who seeks a "permanent position" with a publisher recommending himself as being "affable." Also here is a "refined gentleman" who desires a "compatible" position and lists among his accomplishments skill in the art of "tasty drawing." A "keen discreet American" looking for a job with a "corporation" mentions his "suave manners." A butler unemployed regards himself as "very nice." A college graduate of twenty-eight who wants to "begin at the bottom" asserts that he is a "fluent talker." A "young man with literary ability" flings out the intimation that he "desires position where it will be of some use." A dressmaker states that in her calling she is "perfect." A clerk is "very smart at figures." A nurse puts forward her asset as a "plain writer." You are pleased to discover that so many people have a "pleasing personality." And that among stenographers there are so many who may be described (they say) as an "attractive young girl." Here is one who introduces herself as both "prepossessing" and "brainy." A "woman of education" who seeks occupation at "anything useful if there is friendliness" givesas her leading characteristic a "sense of humor." Now and then the recommendations offered somewhat mystify me, as in the advertisement of the lady, "age 29, fine personality (widow of P. M. of F. and A. M.)." Then there is that great company who have but one merit to display. They may be represented in the "Female" column by the "Respectableyoung woman" who "wishes day's work." And in the "Male" column by the "Soberman" who (simply) "desires position." Sometimes here it is difficult to determine the degree of sobriety maintained, as in the frequent advertisement of the chauffeur who discreetly states that he is "temperate."
In case you should write down your idea of your own "appearance," what would you say? I confess that such a problem would puzzle me. It does not puzzle some. "Situation Wanted" ads record that there are numerous young men of "exceptional appearance." Though occasionally we come upon a young man of almost painful conscientiousness who feels that he should not go further than to say that he is of "fair appearance."
The queer dissimilarity of human aspirations echoes through the "Situations Wanted" page.Here is a "Gentleman, excellent education and personality, linguist," who wants a position as a companion, or "courier, &c." A "Highlyeducated French lady would gladly take a child for walks every day from 10 to 12." A "Lady, 27, of literary bent desires position as companion around the world." It is remarkable, the number of persons there are in the world of "literary" tendency. Remarkable, too, how many people with an inclination to travel. Here is a "Cornell Graduate" who has, apparently, no aversion whatever to spending the winter in "a warm climate." There are "Twoyoung men, partners," who "wish to join an expedition, any destination." But there are home-keeping souls, too. A "Culturedelderly man, neat," craves "household duties." And so on.
What a rich variety of characters throng the populous scene of the "Situations Wanted" page! Here, in today's paper, following the advertisement of a "sculptor" comes that of a "former policeman." A "Physician, practicing twenty years in Paris, speaking English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, seeking situation," is cheek by jowl with a "Plumber, good all round man." A young man who has "put 9 years at sea as steward"nonchalantly asks "What have you?" A "Former College Professor, 30, seeks field of occupation in advertising." And a "Cavalryman, excellent record, wishes position at anything." A "Cultured Visiting Governessof good family, social position, trains ladies, English, grammar, literature, elegant correspondence, art of conversation, current events, social etiquette." A remarkable "gentleman" presents himself as "qualified to do most anything." And a "Christian, age 38," wishes a position as "manager of a laundry."
A strategic device frequently employed by the humble is that of getting someone whose position has weight to present them. For instance, "Rev. Dr. Moffett recommends a colored man for janitor of a loft building." And numerous are the gentlemen who, laying up their cars, are interested in placing their chauffeurs elsewhere.
"Boy" is perhaps the word which dominates the page. Most boys, apparently, are not particular in their choice of a calling. They are "willing to do anything." Now and then one declares that he is a "good fighter," or something like that. Here is one who demands a "position where mental ability will be necessary." Hereis another who is very specific, thus: "15½ years old, 5 feet 8¼ inches tall."
Sometimes one meets a very extraordinary character in these columns. The other day no less a distinguished person than this put in an ad:
I am compelled, through severe strain, to discontinue my work (involving the mental faculties) with which I have puzzled the scientific world for several years, and which has netted me a weekly income of over $200; I have no other source for a livelihood and consequently appeal to the business world for an opportunity to grow up in a new endeavor.WHY NOT MEET ME AND TALK IT OVER?
I am compelled, through severe strain, to discontinue my work (involving the mental faculties) with which I have puzzled the scientific world for several years, and which has netted me a weekly income of over $200; I have no other source for a livelihood and consequently appeal to the business world for an opportunity to grow up in a new endeavor.WHY NOT MEET ME AND TALK IT OVER?
A genuinely touching ad, sensible and obviously quite sincere, in which you hear the appealing voice of a fellow being in trouble, but an ad which I fear is rather futile, is one like this:
Am 43 years old; defective hearing prevents continuation of salesman's career; I want situation where this impairment does not prevent satisfactory discharge of required duties.
Am 43 years old; defective hearing prevents continuation of salesman's career; I want situation where this impairment does not prevent satisfactory discharge of required duties.
A great, and a grave, lesson may be learned from the "Situations Wanted" page. And that is to be found mainly in the section where the first word of each advertisement is simply "MAN." Men there are in it of every age. I mean in considering the plight of the world one should ponder that great army whose business is "anything."
"MY God!" exclaimed the old lady in the railway carriage to Mr. Le Gallienne, "Tennyson is dead!"
Have not many of us as we have turned the daily papers these last several years frequently experienced the sensations of this dear old lady? Whistler, Swinburne, Meredith, Henry James, Howells. They are dead. Walt Whitman (wasn't it?), when he heard that Carlyle was dead, went out, and looked up at the stars, and said he didn't believe it.
We have been stirred to these emotional reflections by chancing to come early this afternoon in the Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library upon what would commonly be called a well-known book of reference. We had no intention of doing more than peer into it. Night found us there—the book still open before us.
The excellent Solomon Eagle (otherwise known as J. C. Squire), in one of his delightfully gossipy, though erudite, papers contributed toThe New Statesmanof London (collected, many of them, into a volume, bearing the title "Books in General"), remarks of works of reference that they "are extremely useful; but they resemble Virgil's Hell in that they are easy things to get into and very difficult to escape from." He continues:
Take the Encyclopædia. I imagine that my experience with it is universal. I have only to dip my toe into this tempting morass and down I am sucked, limbs, trunk and all, to remain embedded until sleep or a visitor comes to haul me out. A man will read things in the Encyclopædia that he would never dream of looking at elsewhere—things in which normally he does not take the faintest interest...."Who's Who" takes me in the same way. Ordinarily I have no particular thirst for it. I should not dream of carrying it about in my waistcoat pocket for perusal on the Underground Railway. But once I have allowed myself to open it, I am a slave to it for hours. This has just happened to me with the new volume, upon which I have wasted a valuable afternoon. I began by looking up a man's address; I then read the compressed life-story of the gentleman next above him (a major-general), wondering, somewhat idly, whether they read of each other's performances and whether either of them resented the possession by the other of a similar, and unusual, surname. Then I was in the thick of it.
Take the Encyclopædia. I imagine that my experience with it is universal. I have only to dip my toe into this tempting morass and down I am sucked, limbs, trunk and all, to remain embedded until sleep or a visitor comes to haul me out. A man will read things in the Encyclopædia that he would never dream of looking at elsewhere—things in which normally he does not take the faintest interest....
"Who's Who" takes me in the same way. Ordinarily I have no particular thirst for it. I should not dream of carrying it about in my waistcoat pocket for perusal on the Underground Railway. But once I have allowed myself to open it, I am a slave to it for hours. This has just happened to me with the new volume, upon which I have wasted a valuable afternoon. I began by looking up a man's address; I then read the compressed life-story of the gentleman next above him (a major-general), wondering, somewhat idly, whether they read of each other's performances and whether either of them resented the possession by the other of a similar, and unusual, surname. Then I was in the thick of it.
Even so. But an afternoon spent in reading, straight along, the work of reference we have inmind could not be called wasted. Indeed, quite the contrary; such an afternoon could be nothing less than one of those spiritual experiences which suddenly give a measure of growth to the soul.
The work which we came upon, in the circumstances indicated, was "The Dictionary of National Biography"; and the volumes which, by chance, we took down were Volumes II. and III. of the Second Supplement of the Dictionary. They contain, these volumes, memoirs of 1,135 noteworthy English persons dying between January 22, 1901, and December 31, 1911. The alphabet extends from John Faed, artist, to George, Lord Young, Scottish Judge. The contributors number 357; the list of these names is a roll of the most distinguished, in all departments, in the English Nation of our day. This publication, we should say, is the most interesting to English-speaking people, as in all probability it is the most important, generally, issued within at any rate the year of its publication. And though we cannot rid ourselves of a melancholy feeling in contemplating this survey of the great stream of brilliant life ended, we feel there is more good reading for the money in these pagesthan in any other book one is likely to come across at random.
The toll these ten years have taken! The chronicle is here of some born to greatness, like Queen Victoria; of those, like Cecil Rhodes, who have achieved it. And the stories are told of some whom the world's fame found but within the last hour, then dead: John Millington Synge (contributed by John Masefield), and Francis Thompson (by Everard Meynell).
The proportion of biographies of men of letters predominates in considerable measure. Science follows in the list, then art. The least but one, sport, is the law. Among the names of women, forty-six in number, are Florence Nightingale, Kate Greenaway, Charlotte Mary Yonge, and Mrs. Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes).
Three illustrious lives entered the twentieth century in England as full of years as of honors. Meredith, Whistler, and Swinburne were born in the Spring of the nineteenth century, in 1828, 1834, and 1837 respectively, and the bloom of their days was with the giants, now legends, of the Victorian reign. The Kings in the history of art and letters have been—have they not?—gallant men. We suspect that it takes a gallant manto be a King in these callings. Of these three—two wished to be soldiers—the most gallant spirit was the great-grandson of a rather grand tailor.
He won what men can and he bore what men must, is some ancient line.
The most extensive article in these volumes is the "Meredith," by Thomas Seccombe. It is the richest. Twelve pages is its compass. As a biography we are disposed to rank it with—let's see?—-Froude's "Carlyle" (4 vols. 8vo.). Perhaps, on the whole, it is better. To go into any detail in our notice of the appearance of these books, and maintain any perspective, would carry us to a vast length. The bibliographer is deeply impressed with the character of Meredith, as a man, throughout his life, of noble aspect. His critical verdict reduced to one word is: "Thoroughly tonic in quality, his writings are [as Lamb said of Shakespeare] essentially manly." This is one of the pictures which most brightly sticks in our head:
On the terrace in front of the chalet, whence he descended to meals, he was often to be heard carrying on dialogues with his characters, and singing with unrestrained voice. Whimsical and sometimes Rabelaisian fabrications accompanied the process of quickening the blood by a spin [a favorite word with him] overSurrey hills. Then he wrote his master works, ... and welcomed his friends, often reading aloud to them in magnificent recitative, unpublished prose or verse.
On the terrace in front of the chalet, whence he descended to meals, he was often to be heard carrying on dialogues with his characters, and singing with unrestrained voice. Whimsical and sometimes Rabelaisian fabrications accompanied the process of quickening the blood by a spin [a favorite word with him] overSurrey hills. Then he wrote his master works, ... and welcomed his friends, often reading aloud to them in magnificent recitative, unpublished prose or verse.
If there is anything upon which an article could be "based" not included in Mr. Seccombe's list of sources, it's a queer thing.
The "Swinburne" is furnished by Edmund Gosse, whose adequate equipment for the task includes "personal recollections extending over more than forty years." Passages of his portrait of the radiant poet are the most colorful in these volumes of the Dictionary. By way of critical discussion the writer says: "It is a very remarkable circumstance, which must be omitted in no outline of his intellectual life, that his opinions, on politics, on literature, on art, on life itself, were formed in boyhood, and that though he expanded he scarcely advanced in any single direction after he was twenty. If growth had continued as it began, he must have been the prodigy of the world. Even his art was at its height when he was five and twenty." The Whistler article is by Sir Walter Armstrong (who writes also on Holman Hunt) and is, one feels, the most judicial summary that has appeared on the most controversial subject, one can readilyrecall, of the epoch closed. A very clear statement of a principle of the art of painting is this: "For years his work bore much the same relation to Japanese art as all fine painting does to nature. He took from Japanese ideals the beauties he admired, and re-created them as expressions of his own personality."
There is one delightful anecdote, in E. V. Lucas's sketch of Phil May. His Punch editor, Sir Francis Burnand, tells a story to the effect that on being asked at a club for a loan of fifty pounds, May produced all he had—half that amount—and then abstained from the club for some time for fear of meeting the borrower, because he felt that "he still owed him twenty-five pounds."
Sensible persons will read with satisfaction the just article by T. F. Henderson on that fine figure Henley, "one of the main supports," said Meredith, "of good literature in our time." Many good folks will like to look up Leslie Stephen, the first editor of this Dictionary, "who enjoyed the affectionate admiration of his most enlightened contemporaries." The article is by the present editor, Sir Sidney Lee. Æsthetically minded persons may read about WilliamSharpe. Among the painters are Watts (biographer, Sir Sidney Colvin) and Orchardson. The "Seymour Haden" is furnished by A. M. Hind. Memoirs of Sir Henry Irving, Sir Theodore Martin, and Herbert Spencer come in this supplement. And so on. A piece of American history is related here, too, in the account of Edward Lawrence Godkin, founder ofThe Nation.
A subject of emotional literary controversy at the present moment is treated by Thomas Seccombe in his article on George Gissing. The general qualities of the Dictionary may be clearly observed in this notice. When the first volume of this second supplement—A to Evans—was issued not long ago rumors reached us of some agitation occasioned in England by the unepitaphical character of the memoirs of Edward VII. Well, discrimination was not made against a King. The frankness of this high tribunal in its calm recital of facts is striking.
After some steady reading of the great Dictionary we wonder if printed forms had been sent to the contributors, upon which they composed, in answer to the questions there, their articles: the order of progress of all the memoirsis, in effect, so uniform. Each says at (it appeared) about the same point: His appearance was this. Each seems to conclude with a list of the portraits.
And this idea recalled to us a story. A foreigner entering our country's gates, upon being asked to fill out papers setting forth his nationality, age, color, and so on, wrote beside the query, "Business?"—"Rotten." In this intelligent interpretation of the question, the "business" of many whose lives are recorded in honor here was "rotten" for many a long year.
The story of literature has not ceased to be a sorry story; still, as was said on a time, comparable to the annals of Newgate. A tale it continues, in a large measure, of outcast experience, of destitution, "seeking a few pence by selling matches or newspapers," or development through suffering, of hospital sojourns, of contemplated suicide, of unfortunate "amorous propensities," of "ill-considered" marriage, of that immemorial "besetting weakness," of "a curious inability to do the sane, secure thing in the ordinary affairs of life," of "ordering his life with extreme carelessness in financial matters," of the weariness of reward for work of high character longdeferred, of charitable legacies "from a great-aunt."
Mr. Wells speaks somewhere of the amazing persistency of the instinct for self-expression. Where it exists, one reflects in musing on these biographies, you can't kill it with a club.
Very imposing we felt the literary style of this Dictionary to be. It treats of a man much as if he were a word, say, in the Century Dictionary. This is the sort of biographical writing, we said, that a man with whiskers can read. It does sound something like a court calendar. Its tone is omniscient, indeed. But the Recording Angel here does not drop a tear upon the oath of any Uncle Toby and blot it out forever. No. He says, of one we tremble to name, "his language was often beyond the reach of apology." Fine is the dignity with which sordid things are related. "The return journey he was under the necessity of performing on foot." Almost grotesque is the neglect of the caressing touch of sentiment. "His own wish was to be a jockey." The treatment of the theme of love is entertaining. "At the age of nineteen he married."
August is the passivity in the presence of the Reaper who mows the golden grain. Withoutpoetry, oh, Death, where is thy sting! In these volumes, of none is it sighed: At twilight his spirit fled. Had he but lived ...! It is: He died December 14, 1908. He left no issue. A fair portrait of him by Charles Ricketts is in the possession of Mr. Edmund Gosse.
We arose after several hours' reading with a sense of having perused for a space two recent volumes of the Book of Judgment. We were full of emotion. We felt the mystery of the destiny of man. How admirable he is and how pitiful! Throbbing, we went forth into the throbbing city.
THERE is a young woman I thought of taking there for luncheon the other day, but when I called for her it did not seem to me that she had used her lip-stick that morning—and so we went somewhere else.
She is pretty good-looking and was dressed not at all unfashionably. She would have done all right at the Waldorf, or at the Vanderbilt, or Biltmore, or Ritz-Carlton, or Ambassador. Indeed, I don't know but that at some such place as that I should have been rather proud of her.
But, you see, for the place I had in mind her skirt was a little too long—it came almost halfway to her ankles. Her bosom was quite covered. She moves with fair grace, but without striking sinuousness. And I suddenly recollected that she does not smoke much.
No; I saved myself just in time; I should have been chagrined, embarrassed, most decidedlyuncomfortable; she would have been conspicuous. I should probably have lost caste with the waiters, too; and not again have been able to get a table after the plush rope had been thrown across the entrance to the dining-room; which, so keen is competition for places there, is shortly before one o'clock.
If you know where this place is, why, of course, all right. But nobody has any business to go shouting all over the housetops exactly where it is. People who aren't just naturally by temperament a part of the picture oughtn't to know how to find it. Though it is a perfectly good bet that bunches of them would like to know.
But that's just the way so many of these havens of the elect get ruined. A lot of curious "visitors" go piling in right along; the scene soon loses all its authenticity; and shortly becomes bogus altogether. Why, I can remember when artists—painters and writers—lived in Greenwich Village. There, in those days.... But all that was years ago.
This much only will I tell you about the location of the mostdistinguéplace there is in which to have luncheon. The centre of the inhabited world is, of course, Longacre Square, thatwidened curving stretch of Broadway looking north several blocks from the narrow stern of the gracefully towering Times Building, rising from its site of a bit of an island surrounded by four surging currents of traffic. A few miles away (from Longacre Square) the provinces begin. But there, the most gleaming spot on this our globe under the canopy of the purple night, is the quintessence, the apex of human life.... I am here speaking, of course, in the spirit of those of that nomad race whose hopes for gold and fame lie through the "stage entrance"—I mean the ladies and gentlemen of the theatre.
To the east just off Longacre Square along the crosstown streets is a medley of offices of divers theatrical and screen journals, chop-houses, and innumerable band-box hotels whose names doubtless only a district messenger boy could recite in any number. The particular one for which we are headed is famous enough to those familiar with fame of this character. Here the "Uncle Jack" of the American stage, Mr. Drew, for some time made his residence. It is always the stopping place in New York of perhaps the finest of our novelists, Joseph Hergesheimer. That mystical Indian gentleman, Mr.Rabindranath Tagore, has found it a not unworthy tent on his western pilgrimages. And so on.
You cannot be long in its rich little lobby without overhearing struck the high note of its distinctive clientele. "Where do you open?" asks someone of someone else. And the answer is not unlikely to be: "At Stamford. When do you close?" In the subdued light bare satin arms and enspiriting lengths of colorful stocking flash from the deep chairs where feminine forms are waiting. A graceful hand opens a telephone booth to expel a smoking cigarette.
Here enters Walter Prichard Eaton, come down from his Berkshire farm for the height of the theatrical season. A tall, leisurely, very New Englandish, smooth-shaven young man, now coming decidedly grey just over the ears. Entering the dining-room we come plump against our old friend Meredith Nicholson lunching with a bevy of friends. A youthful fifty perhaps now, the author of one of the best sellers of any day, "The House of a Thousand Candles." Clean-shaven, with a physiognomy suggesting that of a Roman senator. What has brought him just now from Indiana? Well, he is revolving in his mind the idea of writing a new play, assoon, he adds, as he "can find the right ink." Hasn't been able to get hold of any that just suited him.
But much more important to his mind, apparently, than this play is another mission in which he has become involved. He is going to have himself "mapped," that is, have his horoscope cast. Yes, by one of the ladies of his party, who, it appears, is eminent as a professor of this science, now rapidly coming into a period of great vogue. When he has supplied her with the data concerning his birth she will reveal to him the course of his career through 1922.
On a number of the tables are cards marked "Reserved." Around two sides of the room upholstered seats running the length of the wall seat couples in greater intimacy of tête-à-tête side by side before their little tables. Most of the young women present—but could you really call many of them young women?... Their most striking feature, after the dizziness of their beauty, and the ravishing audacity of their clothes, is the bewitching tenderness of their years. More than several of these dainty, artfully rose-cheeked smokers look to be hardly past seventeen. Their foppishly dressed male companionsfrequently are in effect far from anything like such youth; and in a number of cases are much more likely to remind you of Bacchus than of Apollo.
Two of these misses nearby are discussing with one another their "doorman." "Isn't he," exclaims one, "the very dearest old doorman you have ever seen in all of your whole life!" Yes, it would seem that, peering down the long vista of the past, from out of their experience of hundreds of theatres, neither of these buds of womanhood could recall any doorman so "dear" as their present one.
The dominant group in the room is a gay and populous party about a large round table in the centre. And undoubtedly the dominant figure of this party is, you recognize, Alexander Woollcott, dramatic critic of the New YorkTimes, invariably at this same table at this same hour, a very spirited, a very round plump young man, very dapper to the end of every hair in his trim little black moustache. Next to him who is that? Why, goodness me! if it isn't Edna Ferber, who, though I doubt not she would not want to be counted in the fledgling class of some of our soubrettefriends here, indeed does seem to be getting younger all the while.
Joining this party now is an odd and rather humorous looking figure, tall, amusingly stooping and amusingly ample of girth for a character of such apparently early manhood, an intensely black crop of hair and a very blackish streak of moustache, soft collar, unpressed clothes. Sits down, hooping himself over his plate with a suggestion of considerable shyness. Gives you an impression, perhaps by the brightness of his eyes, of Puckish mirth playing within his mind. Heywood Broun.
At the table on our right we perceive a very popular lady known to us, Miss Margaret Widdemer, or, as she now is, Mrs. Robert Haven Schauffler. Her general air breathing the simplicity of a milkmaid amid this scene. Under her mammoth floppy hat reminding you of an early summer rose. She is discussing with a spectacled person who looks as if he might have something to do with book publishing whether her next book should be a light romance on the order of her "Wishing-Ring Man" and "Rose Garden Husband" or she should come into thenew movement of serious "Main Street" kind of realism.
And there, on our left, certainly is a publisher, Mr. Liveright of the firm of Boni and Liveright. Young fellow, thirty-five perhaps. Maybe he is talking about some of his striking successes, such as "Potterism" and "From Mayfair to Moscow." With him Ludwig Lewisohn, literary and dramatic critic.
Back of us we detect young Burton Rascoe, former literary editor of the Chicago Tribune, newly arrived in New York as managing editor ofMcCall's Magazine, and to whom (by the way) the suppressed novel "Jurgen" was dedicated. You wouldn't think anybody would be so frowning as to want to suppress Mr. Rascoe. He looks as if he might be twin brother to any dewy bud here.
Who is that he is with? Theodore Maynard, I declare. Young English poet, critic and novelist. And the other side of him is a gentleman, Oliver Saylor by name, who at the height of the revolution went to Russia to study the Russian drama, and engrossed in æsthetics lived for a time in quarters midway between the contending military forces. Beyond we see a young ladyrecently come on from Ted Shawn's song and dance studio in Los Angeles.
And yonder you see a young man who is just as dear and sweet as he can be. He served his country during the war by knitting a sweater and a "helmet" for a poet he knew in the army in France. He, this dainty youth, looks pretty much lip-sticked himself. In order not to sin against daintiness this young person has a habit of powdering his nose. A coarse friend of his forbade his doing this, and the next time he met him neatly powdered rebuked him for it. Whereupon the young man replied: "Oh! You wouldn't (would you?) let a little powder come between friends."
And, finally, here most happily we are ourselves.
THERE is a rather frisky looking apartment house there now, a pastry shop and tea room occupying the ground floor—behind it, the other side of a venerable brick wall, a tiny, ancient burying ground. But in days of yester-year here stood a tavern of renown, the Old Grape Vine, which on this site, Sixth Avenue at Eleventh Street, had given cheer since Sixth Avenue was little more than a country road. A sagging, soiled white, two-story frame structure, with great iron grill lamps before the door. Within, the main room was somewhat reminiscent of London's Olde Cheshire Cheese.
The proprietor was a canny Scot, one MacClellan. ("Old Mac"! Whither has he gone?) I was coming along by there the other day, and I asked a man with whom I chanced to walk if he remembered the Old Grape Vine. "Ah! yes;" he said; "they had mutton pies there." Theydid. And excellent ale, also, served in battered pewter mugs. "They" had here, too (some fifteen years ago), excellent society beneath the dingy light. Roaring, roistering George Luks (as he was then) very much to the fore. At the rickety mahogany table where Frans-Halsian George held forth frequently was to be found the painter William J. Glackens and his brother "Lew," humorous draughtsman forPuck. Ernest Lawson sometimes came in. A Mr. Zinzig, a very pleasant soul and an excellent pianist and teacher of the piano, often was of the company. A Mr. FitzGerald, art critic in those days of theSun, sometimes "sat in." And a delightful old cock, Mr. Stephenson, art critic then of theEvening Post. Among the most devoted habitués of the place was an old-school United States army officer turned writer of military stories. (When the proceedings had progressed to a certain stage of mellowness it was his habit to go home and return directly arrayed in his uniform.) There was, too, a queer figure of a derelict journalist associated withTown Topics. There was an inoffensive gentleman of leisure whose distinction was that he was brother to a famous Shakespearean scholar. (As thehour grew late he would begin to whistle softly to himself through his teeth.) There was a rotund being of much reading who perpetually smoked a very old pipe and who was editor of a tobacco journal. There was a man of the sea who continually told stories of Japan. (After eleven he was somewhat given to singing.) There was an illustrator for a tu'penny magazine, who (so as to seem to be a large staff) signed a variety of names to his work. From the land of R. L. S., he. One time while in a doze (somewhere else) he was robbed. His comment upon his misfortune became a classic line. It was: "By heaven! As long as whiskey is sold to lose ten dollars is enough to drive a Scot mad!" (This was long before anybody had ever heard of the now illustrious Mr. Volstead.) And many more there were. Ah, me! ah, me! How the picture has changed!
Well, the point of all this (if it have any point) is that it was in the Old Grape Vine (of tender memory) that I first saw James Gibbons Huneker. I think that, in his promenades as an impressionist, he was there but seldom. Though we know that high among the Seven Arts he rated the fine art of drinking Pilsner. The old placesof Martin's and Lüchow's (headquarters on a time for the musical cognoscenti) were ports of call on his rounds; and he moved freely, I believe, among the places of refreshment along the foreign quarter of lower Fourth Avenue. At the Grape Vine, I understand, he was an especial friend of Luks, and probably of Glackens and Lawson. And, though he was a very famous man, he seemed to like the motley company.
Ten or twelve years ago I was earning a living more honestly than perhaps I have been making one since. I was a clerk in a book store—the retail department, it happened, of the house which publishes Mr. Huneker's books. And there, from my position "on the floor," I frequently saw him moving in and out. Moving rather slowly, with the dignity of bulk. A distinguished figure, quietly but quite neatly dressed, very erect in carriage, head held well back, supporting his portliness with that physical pride of portly men, a physiognomy of Rodinesque modelling—his cane a trim touch to the ensemble. He was, I distinctly remember, held decidedly in regard by the retail staff because he was (what, by a long shot, a good many"authors" were not) exceedingly affable in manner to us clerks.
The moment I have particularly in mind was when Samuel Butler's volume "The Way of All Flesh" first appeared in an American edition. We all know all about Butler now. But, looking back, it certainly is astonishing how innocent most all of us then were of any knowledge of the great author of "Erewhon." Even so searching a student of literature as W. C. Brownell was practically unacquainted with Butler. He was taking home a copy of "The Way of All Flesh" to read. Mr. Huneker was standing by. In some comment on the book he remarked that Butler had been a painter. "A painter!" exclaimed Mr. Brownell, in a manner as though wondering how it came about he knew so little of the man. "But this," said Mr. Huneker, referring to the novel, "is not his best stuff. That is in his note-books." Brownell: "And where are they?" Huneker: "In the British Museum." Mr. Brownell made a fluttering gesture (as though to express that he "gave up") toward Mr. Huneker: "He knows everything!" he ejaculated.
We should, of course, be surprised now thatanybodydid notknow that Butler had been a painter. When, just a short time ago, W. Somerset Maugham adapted for the purposes of his sensational novel "The Moon and Sixpence" the character and career of Paul Gauguin, it was in the pages of Huneker that many first looked for, and found, intelligence concerning the master of the Pont Aven school of painting. Well, Gauguin is now an old story. And Ibsen, Tolstoy, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Rimbaud, De Gourmont, Nietzsche, Meredith, Henry James, William James, Bergson, Barrès, Anatole France, Flaubert, Lemaître, Huysmans, Maeterlinck, Baudelaire, Stirner, Strindberg, Faguet, Shaw, Wilde, George Moore, Yeats, Synge, Schnitzler, Wederkind, Lafargue, Rodin, Cézane, Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh, George Luks, that wondrous "flock of Unicorns"—they all are old stories, too ... now. But it was our Steeplejack, James Huneker, who was our pioneer watcher of the skies. And what in the large sweep of his vision of the whole field of the world's beauty he saw, he reported with infinite gusto. "Gusto," as H. L. Mencken in the Huneker article of his"Book of Prefaces" says, "unquenchable, contagious, inflammatory."
The extent of the personal contact which Mr. Huneker enjoyed and maintained with the first-rate literary men of the world was amazing. While I was with the book shop I speak of, "presentation copies" of each new book of his, to be sent out "with the compliments of the author," were piled up for forwarding literally several feet high. They went to all the great in letters, in every country, that you could think of. Anatole France, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, George Brandes, Edmund Gosse, George Moore—people like that.
Vast was the incoming stream of books to him, presentation copies, review copies, "publicity" copies; so great a flood that it was necessary for him periodically to call in an old book man to clear his shelves by carting away a wagon-load or two of—genuine treasure. A catalogue I one time saw of such volumes "from the library of James Huneker" was sufficient in riches to have been the catalogue of the entire stock of a very fair shop dealing in "association" volumes, first editions, and so forth. And a survey of the books themselves made it quite apparent that a readerwho has read every word that Huneker ever printed (and that would be a person who had read a good deal) may yet (very likely) be a reader who has not read some of the best of Huneker. I refer to "Jimmie's" humorous, pungent marginalia.
Mr. Huneker's close friends have taken occasion since his death to speak warmly of his kindness toward obscure, struggling talent. There was a side to him, akin to this, which I have not seen commented upon. Huneker's fame as a critic had been for years accepted throughout Europe. When his "New Cosmopolis" was published (a book I did not myself think so highly of) Joyce Kilmer, then newly come to journalism, reviewed it for the New YorkTimes, very eulogistically. Mr. Huneker went to the trouble of looking up Kilmer to thank him very simply for his praise.
Mr. Huneker was a loyal and disinterested servant of good literature wherever he found it, and his happily was the power to be an ambassador to success. So short a time as about four years ago very few people had heard of William McFee. "Aliens," his first book, had met with no appreciable success. The manuscriptof "Casuals of the Sea" (or the English "sheets" of the book, I do not recall which) came into the hands of a publishing house at Garden City. A member of the editorial staff of this house at this time was Christopher Morley. And I happened at the moment to have a job as sort of handy man at editorial chores around the premises. Morley immediately became a great "fan" for the book. Undoubtedly a fine book, and it was accepted, but (there was a question) could it be "put across"? It was very long, not of obviously popular character, and the author's name commanded no attention at all.
The first "advance" copy of the book sent out went (at Morley's direction) to Mr. Huneker. He was then writing regularly critical articles for something like a half dozen publications. "Casuals of the Sea" (such things did not turn up every day) was a "find" for his enthusiasm, He "pulled" two columns of brilliant Hunekerean firecrackers about it in the New YorkSun; wrote another article of length on the book for the New YorkTimes; gave the volume a couple of paragraphs of mention in his department on the Seven Arts at that time running inPuck,and perhaps mentioned the book elsewhere also. With the weight of such fervor and authority "Casuals" was most auspiciously launched. It could not now, by any chance, be passed by.
I do not, of course, mean to imply that there was anything artificial or "manufactured" about the "vogue" of "Casuals." First, Mr. Huneker was not a reviewer but a critic, if not thoroughly a great one, certainly a very real one; and about the last man going who could be got to "push" anything he did not whole-heartedly believe was fine. And secondly, "Casuals" had "the goods."
Through my connection with the matter of "Casuals" I suppose it was that a correspondence came about between Mr. Huneker and me. And in all my days I have never seen so energetic a correspondent. It seems to me that I got a letter from him about every other morning. I dropped out of the publishing business and went to Indiana for a time. I let him know when I got there, my motive in this being mainly to notify him that Iwasout of the publishing business and so was no longer in a position to give any business attention to letters relating to books. But letters from him continued to reach me with the same regularity. While, I hardlyneed say, I enjoyed this correspondence enormously, I was decidedly embarrassed by it, as I could not but keenly feel that I was taking up his time to no purpose. Still, of course, I felt that I should answer each letter of his without an impolite delay, and no sooner did he get my reply than he answered back again. Gradually, however, we got the thing slowed down.
His letters were prodigal of witty things. I am afraid I have not kept them; if so I do not know where they are—I move about a good deal. One neat play of words I remember. I do not know whether or not he himself ever used it elsewhere. I did use it in a book, giving due credit to Mr. Huneker. I had told him that I was going in for writing on my own. His comment was: "He that lives by the pen shall perish by the pen." Some of his letters, I recall, were signed, "Jim, the Penman."
And it was no simple trick to read them. He used a pale ink. The handwriting was small, curious, and to me almost illegible. Why compositors did not mob him I do not know. He wrote everything by hand; never would learn to use a typewriter, and declared that he could not acquire the faculty of dictation.
This leads me to the story of one of the articles he contributed toThe Bookman. When, upon my return to New York, I became (for a time) editor of this magazine I pursued him for contributions. Yes, later on he would send us something, but always it was later on, later on. I had about given up hope of ever getting anything from him when a bulky wad of closely-written "copy" on yellow paper arrived. Expecting that it would take me a couple of days to decipher the manuscript, I joyously acknowledged receipt of it at once, without a thought of questioning the nature of the article. When I tried to read the article, after I had held the first page sidewise, next upside down, then examined it in a mirror, I "passed the buck" and sent the copy straight on to the printers. If printers had read him before printers ought to be able to do so again. I advertised the article to appear in the next number of the magazine. When I got the article back in galley proofs—I got a jolt. It wasn't "Bookmanstuff" at all, all about a couple of "old rounders," as Mr. Huneker called them, taking a stroll.
I do not think that Mr. Huneker has as yet since his death, to the time these rambling remarksare being written, received anything like adequate recognition in the press. The "obituary" articles in the newspapers have carried the air that he was hardly more than an excellent "newspaper man"—somewhat older, but something like (dare I say?) Heywood Broun or Alexander Woollcott. Ah! no; James Huneker was a critic and an artist, and a figure, too, in our national life. Though he was all his days until almost his last breath a hard-working journalist with an immediate "copy date" before him. And though he most naturally thought of himself, with common-sense pride in his calling, as a journalist. I remember his one time speaking of Arnold Bennett as "a hard-working journalist as well as a novel writer." Indicating his great esteem for the character of journalist. And he used to speak, too, with fraternal pride and affection in inflection, of young men who had written good books, as being among "our men," meaning associated with the same paper as himself.
At the remarkable funeral service held in the new Town Hall in New York high and touching honor was done his memory by the stage and the musical profession, but literature seemed tobe officially represented by the person of Richard Le Gallienne alone, and painting and sculpture not at all. The articles by Mr. Huneker's colleagues among music critics have seemed very largely to claim him as quite their own. True, no doubt, his most penetrating writing was done in the field of musical criticism. But, also, Huneker was an evangel who belongs to the Seven Arts.
One thing should be added. It is a sad thing, but it is of the nature of life. A good editorial inThe New Republicbegan: "James Huneker named one of his best books 'The Pathos of Distance.' In a single day his own figure is invested with the memorial gentleness there described." No, not altogether in a single day. He had already begun, and more than begun, to recede into the pathos of distance. Hisflairwas for the championship and interpretation of the "new" men. And, for the most part, his new men had become old men. His stoutest admirer must admit that Mr. Huneker's work was "dated."
But where (and this is sadder still) is his like today?
THERE are certain things which must be done, to yield their best, when one is young. For one thing, there is only one time in life to run away to sea. If you did not run away to sea when you were a lad, it is too late now for you to get any sport out of it. 'Tis something the same with living in a garret or in a hall bedroom. If you did not read "Robinson Crusoe" when you were a boy there is no use for you to read it now; you will not understand it. There are some other things you can enjoy when you are old—grandchildren, for instance. But the time to come up to a great city is when one is young. The time to walk up Broadway at night, and feel a gusto about it, and Fifth Avenue by day, is when one is young. That is an enchanted time, when it is a fine dashing thing to be doing, to live at a second-rate boarding house; when discouragement is adventure; when it is worth while evento be poor; when one makes life-long friends at sight; when young love is sipped; when courage is ever stout in one's breast; when one's illusions are virgin yet; and all's right with the world. At that season one can swell with a rich personal pride in "Shanley's" and, almost at the same time, eat one's own theatre supper in a "Dairy Lunch" room, where every customer is his own waiter as well, and where his table is the broadened arm of his chair against the wall.
Richard Day, student at the law, munched his egg sandwich (egg sandwich was the favorite dish at the "Dairy Lunches" until eggs got so high) and drank his coffee from a cup that remarkably resembled in shape a shaving mug and was decorated in similar fashion. The blocks of sugar (two for Richard) for this stimulating beverage (made out of chicory) were taken by the customer with his fingers from a heaping-full sort of great punch-bowl mounted on a pedestal in the middle of the room. It was drawn from a nickel-plated engine with glass tubes by a young man in a white coat like a barber's, who served it, with crullers, piece of pie, or sandwich, across a kind of little bar at the rear end of the long room.
Day scorned the packed, parading trolley cars, and swung vigorously up the street. Far up the thoroughfare an enormous electric sign (in its size suggesting that it had been somehow brought back by Gulliver from the country of Brobdingnag and mounted here upon a sturdy little building for awful exhibition) its gigantic illuminated letters spelling "Arthur Pendennis Ten Cent Cigar," lighted the mist for blocks approaching it, and marked the north boundary of the dominion for revelry. The sidewalks were much quieter now. One of those birds of the urban night deftly wheeled his vehicle alongside our pedestrian and pulled his clattering quadruped violently back upon its haunches until it slid along the slippery pavement. "Cab, sir? Cab?" Then he whisked away again. It was not long before Richard had entered into the district of slumbering residences, and not much longer until he ran up the steps before his own door, or, speaking more literally, his own landlady's door. It is not much to mount three pairs of stairs in the brave days when one is twenty-one, and Day was in the little room, where, rich only in the glory of his rising sun, in his youth, he weathered it so long.
This apartment was the width of the dark hall, which was face to face with it, about fourteen feet long, and furnished in tune, so to speak. An uncommonly small, old-fashioned, wooden bedstead, a bantam-size "dresser," a washstand its shorter brother, a small table or "stand," and two half-grown chairs, mature before their season, were the principal articles of furniture. The room was heated by an oil stove that had passed the age of vanity in one's appearance; it was lighted at night by a gas-jet, without a globe; by day through a single window, which occupied between a half and a third of the wall space of the front end of the room, and which balanced in decorative effect with the door at the other end. A row of books was arranged along the dresser top against the lower part of the small looking-glass. Two pictures (the property of Day), one of Lincoln and one of Roosevelt squinting in the sunlight (this is a land where every young man may hope to be President), were tacked on the walls. In company with these were a combination calendar and fire-insurance advertisement and a card displaying a lithographed upper part and idealistic legs of a blithe young woman wearing, stuck on, a short, bright skirt made ofsandpaper and streaked with match-scratches, who in fancy letters was ingeniously labelled "A Striking Girl." These bits of applied art were properties of Mrs. Knoll's establishment.
Day's dresser had several small drawers and a little square door. He had one day discovered adhering to the back of this door a hardened piece of chewing gum, and from this he had deduced that a former tenant of the room had been a woman, presumably a young one (for surely there is an age after which one knows better). He sometimes speculated on the subject of the former tenant, and he was of three minds about her vocation. Sometimes he thought she had been a school-teacher, sometimes he thought an art student, and again a clerk in a store. He reconstructed her as having had red hair and having been a bit frowsy. But whatever she had been she had slept on a mighty hard little bed, and he felt something like a tenderness for her on that account.
When he had got home from the theatre, Richard sat on the edge of his bed (it seemed always somehow the most natural place in the room to sit), and smoked his pipe. One Christmas Day he and his bosom friend had gone together andbought pipes exactly alike, then each had given his to the other. Years later Day was compelled to give up smoking, and he was never exactly the same again. But when he was young the gods blessed him. He smoked his pipe out, then he slowly pulled off his shoes. That is, he pulled off one shoe and sat abstractedly a considerable while with it in his hand. He had many thoughts, mainly associated with an unknown young lady he had seen that evening at the theatre. He wished he had had on a different style of collar—and he would have had if his laundryman had kept his word. However, he thought rather sadly what booted it to him now. Then he roused himself, slowly undressed, put on his pajamas (his mother had made them for him), turned off his light, pulled up his window curtain (so the morning light would waken him), and got into bed.
Richard fell into a great many adventures in his night's sleep. He fought bandits, with never any cartridges in his gun; he travelled across plains that appeared to be constructed on the principle of a treadmill; he visited sundry peculiar places and did divers queer things with solemnity and without surprise. After a while itseemed to him that he was somewhere talking with, or rather to, the former tenant of his room. But the former tenant did not have red hair; her hair was the loveliest brown; nor was she the least bit frowzy; she was the very opposite extreme to that. Nor clerk nor teacher nor student was she. She was a bright princess. Her complexion had rather more of the rose than of the lily. Her pure and eloquent blood spoke in her cheeks. She and the lady he had seen at the theatre were one and the same person. He could not make out exactly how he came to know she was the former tenant, but that seemed to be considered so very well understood he felt ashamed to speak about it.
He was saying to her some of the cleverest things he had ever heard. He surprised himself as he listened to himself; and he was much elated; for if ever he wished to speak well, now was the time. Now Day was really a very clever fellow, as well as a comely one (this is only a story of his youth, but in after life he became a distinguished man), and, like all very clever fellows, he was never perfectly happy except when his talents were recognized and appreciated. Herein his dream he had come into his own. It was a night to be marked with a white stone. One of the things that particularly impressed him in this dream was his impression that it was not a dream.
In the morning it was always colder in Day's room than at night, and always it seemed somehow lonesomer. It was bare then, and not cozy. To come directly from such an especially comfortable dream into the cold, grey dawn, and find one's window opaque with frost and one's breath like steam in the air, requires a little time for one to adjust oneself to the transition. Richard lay a little time generating courage to get up. He did not immediately shake off his dream entirely; but crumbs of it stuck to his mind, like the last of a fine cake on the face. But it was as if his cake had turned cold in the mouth. He squirmed in bed with embarrassment when he reviewed those clever things, on which he had so plumed himself, that he had said to the former tenant. They were so very poor and flat that he tried to stop his mind against the recollection of them. And even the former tenant herself, as she faded now more into the night, and he came more out into the morning, was like Cinderellaas she fled from the hall back to her kitchen. But Richard caught up the crystal slipper that remained to him and in his bosom bore it forth into the day.
DIRECTLY in the intense emphasis of white light from an arc lamp overhead, and standing about midway in the long, dark, thickly-packed line of people waiting, was a young man decidedly above the middle stature, in a long outer coat. He was broad in the shoulders, formed in excellent proportion, apparently in about the first or second and twentieth year of his age. His forehead was intelligent, his nose exceptionally good, his mouth rather big and lips full, his chin round and with a cleft in the centre. His hair, chestnut, moderately cropped, discovered, what of it was visible below his hat, a decided inclination to curl. He was redolent of health and the unmined masculine vigor pertaining to his time of life. As the earliest ancestor of this kind of historical writing would have said, "He was one of the handsomest young fellows that hath ever been seen"; in short, he was notunlike one Jones, Christian-named Tom. This young man was Richard Day, student of the law, and he had come from his silent "furnished room" to refresh himself, at a minimum cost, at the dramatic presentation of an immortal story of love.
On the occasions when the entertainment to be is of a superior order, the price of admission is doubled or trebled, and the patrons of the theatre gallery are of an exceptional character. They comprise school teachers in abundance, miscellaneous students, matinée girls driven high by the prohibitory prices below, young clerks, and a sprinkling from the usual ranks of the gallery-god, the better sort of them, however, the more wealthy and more aspiring. The original line containing Richard Day had assembled an hour or so before time, to be on the spot at the opening of the doors at a commendable production of "Romeo and Juliet."
There came a sudden jolting, like the coupling of railroad cars, then a denser packing of the line, a being pushed off one's balance and being pressed back into it again, and slowly, jerkily, the crowd began to move forward; then swept toward the entrance. The doors had been opened. As the throng began to move, a woman's voice rose near Day ejaculating breathlessly, "Oh! Oh!" Simultaneously a shrill cry arose, "Oh, there's a sick lady here! a sick lady! Oh, please! Oh, please! Won't you make room for a sick lady!" Day with all his force made what room he could, conceiving that the thing desired was to get the stricken lady out in the open as quickly as possible. A little peaked woman in a light coat took instant advantage of the slight breach then opened, impetuously to advance herself in the line. When the momentary gap had closed again, piteously the crying was resumed, and it continued at intervals almost the entire distance to the box-office, though it was in a slightly different neighborhood and observably proceeded from exactly the point of vantage gained by the little peaked woman; who, it might be inferred, was a dual personality, comprising in the same lady both a sick lady and another who was her good Samaritan and assumed the care of her.
Nothing railed the crowd into a straight line on one side, though on the other a wall held them so. The impatient crowding forward from the rear convexed the outer edge of the line of people, much against the will of those persons who foundthemselves being swept out of the direct way and felt the main current surging past them. What was yet more agitating to these was that ahead of them an iron railing did begin, at the foot of some steps, fencing in a narrow approach to the ticket office. If they should be swept past the mouth of this lane on the outside, their chance of admittance was hopeless. Day stemmed the swerving current himself by the strength of his body and by a kind of determined exercise of his will. But he felt directly behind him someone less strong losing hold with every step of advance; then suddenly this despairing someone, realizing herself pushed quite to one side, with a little scream, caught at his crooked arm; which he instantly, involuntarily clapped firmly against him, hooking on in this manner and towing safely and rapidly along someone frailer than himself. When they had come to the rail he saw that he would get in by so narrow a margin himself that, himself inside, he would then but tow her along outside, which of course would be a less than useless thing for her. So he backed water, so to speak, with all his might, bracing himself against the end of the rail, until he had got a little space before him, around into which he drew her whomhe thought robbed of her place by the frantic selfishness of the crowd.
But in doing this, it seemed he had inadvertently held back for a moment the little peaked woman, who was at his inside elbow. She, finding herself delayed for a brief period almost at the goal in her desperate bargain-counter sort of rush for the ticket-window, blew out into a spitting cat kind of impotent fury. "Ain't you got no semblance of decency! you great big brute!" she screamed in his ear. "Ain't you got no ideas of gentlemanliness at all! If I was a man I'd teach you some shame, tramplin' on a woman, a poor weak woman! a woman!" She fairly writhed with scorn at this depravity. Day attempted to humble himself to her, for her pacification; but another woman's getting in ahead of her at that instant drove her almost mad, and her frenzy interfering for the moment with her articulation she could only glare at him with an expression suggesting some kind of feline hydrophobia. When her breath returned more to her command she continued to revile him as they went along. Although Day had done nothing to merit shame, he squirmed inwardly with something not unlike that feeling, and he blessed the general commotionwhich drowned a vixen's voice. He felt ashamed, too, to be where he was, though he had not thought of it that way before; he should not have brought himself into a crowd more than half of women.
His reflections became rather abstract and levelled themselves somewhat against the feminine temperament in general. He felt the littleness of it (so he saw it), the peevishness of it; its inability to take punishment good-naturedly; its incapacity for being a "good loser"; its lack of the philosophic character which accepts humorously discomforts and injustice, real as well as imagined; its lack of broadness of view; its selfish lack of the sense of fair play; its not-being-square-and-above-board way; its sneakiness, its deceitfulness; the contemptible devices that it will resort to, assuming them to be its natural weapons against a superior strength, both physical and of the understanding. He knew that in a crowd of men if anyone of them had had the despicable disposition of this woman his dread of the hearty, boisterous ridicule of his fellow brutes which would inevitably have followed his meanness would have forced him to stifle his temptation in silence. He knew that there is no placewhere one may better learn to appreciate what may be called the good-natured easy-goingness of the male animal generally than in an uncomfortable crowd of men. He thanked heaven he was of the superior sex. When a young man thanks heaven that he is of the superior sex it may not be uninteresting to observe in what manner he conducts himself subsequently.
As fast as the crowd was served with tickets it ran up the multiplied flights of stairs, moved in single file past the ticket-chopper, then on to come out, high up, into the vast bowl of the theatre. Here from one's seat the impression of the weird, ship-at-sea like effect of the curves of the galleries, balconies, and tiers of boxes, sweeping back from the light in front, dropping away from the vaulted ceiling; the impression of being high up close under a great roof and far from the stage; the impression of the myriads of vague elusive faces in the half-lit, thick, scintillating atmosphere of the hot, crowded place; the impression of the playhouse scheme of decoration, red walls and tinsel in the dusk, cream color and tinsel bas-relief in the highly artificial yellow light, casting purplest shadows, and the heroic mural paintings in blue and yellow and green, the senseof the infinite moving particles of the throng; the sense of its all facing one way, of the low hum of it, and of its respiration—all this is stuff that puts one in the mood for a play. The keen actualities fade and become the shadows; sense of one's own life and vanity and disappointment slips away; one is to enjoy a transmigration of soul for a brief time. "Now for the play!" thought Richard.
A man was climbing up the steps of the aisle, some distance away, flinging an inadequate number of fluttering programs into the crowd. None fell in Day's neighborhood, to the indignant consternation of all there. A chorus of exclamatory sighs went up from a feminine flock just settled at his right, all faces following the disappointing program distributor. A stocky young man at Day's left hand arose, and clambering out between the parallel two rows of seats, occupants getting on their feet to allow him passage, started after the disappearing man of programs.
A full-throated feminine voice burst almost in Day's right ear: "Oh, please tell him to get one for us!" Day lunged after the stocky young man, reaching for his coat-tails, and cried out, "Hey there! Hey! Fellow! Hold on!" untilit was quite hopeless to continue. The sea of people closed in between him and his quest; the stocky young man, his ears plugged with the multitude of voices, shook himself free from the narow, clogged passage, and was gone. Day turned to the owner of the feminine voice, "He will bring a lot, I think; if not I'll get you some," he said. And he caught an elusive impression of cheeks precisely the color of cheeks that had just been smartly slapped, suggesting the idea that if one should press one's finger against them one's finger would leave streaks there when taken away; and he caught an impression of eyes that were like deep, brimming pools reflecting lights; and an impression of a cloud of dusky brown-like hair which reminded him of a host of rich autumn leaves. She of these cheeks and eyes and this hair was, apparently, in a party with two companions, whose peering faces showed indistinctly beyond her. In one significance of the word, she might have been called a girl, or she was a young woman, a miss, a lass, a young lady, as you please; as were they her companions. Merry school-girl spirits lingered in them all, supplemented by the grace and dawning dignity of young womanhood. She was at that sweet nosegay periodwhen young ladies are just, as it is sometimes said, finishing their education. Her age was that enchanted time, holiest of the female seasons, which hangs between mature girlhood and full womanhood. Day felt a suspicion, though without perceptible foundation, that this was the very person he had towed along outside.
The stocky young man returned presently, showing an uncommonly blunt face and with the programs, which proved sufficient in number. There was an interval in which to read them; then the huge place fell suddenly much darker, except directly to the fore, which burst into great light; the immense curtain majestically ascended, and the time was that of the quarrels of the houses of Capulet and Montague in the sixteenth century. Richard Day passed out of his body sitting upright on the seat and lived in this incarnation of the master dramatist.
But unwittingly he had inhaled a liquor, that was even then feeding his blood; he was even then continuing to inhale it; it crept in at the pores of his right side; it was stealing its sweet breath about his brain. This liquor was the magnetism of a powerful pleasant young feminine presence near to him—too near. Too near for aclean-cut young man, in his second and twentieth year, redolent of health, with moderately cropped chestnut hair inclined to curl, intelligent forehead, good nose, rather big mouth, full lips, and round chin with a cleft in the centre—too near for him even to remain in the hands of the master dramatist. A warm glow suffused him. His intellectual perception of the illuminated, noble spectacle before him in a frame of night numbed in his brain and he was conscious only of the rich sensation that circulated through him. Metaphorically, senses and emotions lolled on rich colored divans, spread with thick rugs, in the tropical atmosphere of his head. The magically spoken lines of Shakespeare became as so much unfelt, unrecognized, distant sounding jargon. What he had come to be thrilled by, as the dark, breathless audience like a sea about him was thrilled, was in a moment nothing to him. And yet he had not touched her, nor again spoken with her, nor glanced at her.
Only she was there!