Whenever we go to England we learn that we "caun't" speak the language. We are told very frankly that we can't. And we very quickly perceive that, whatever it is that we speak, it certainly is not "the language."
Let us consider this matter. A somewhat clever and an amusingly ill-natured English journalist, T. W. H. Crosland, not long ago wrote a book "knocking" us, in which he says "that having inherited, borrowed or stolen a beautiful language, they (that is, we Americans) wilfully and of set purpose distort and misspell it." Crosland's ignorance of all things American, ingeniously revealed in this lively bit of writing, is interesting in a person of, presumably, ordinary intelligence, and his credulity in the matter of what he has heard about us is apparently boundless.
However, he does not much concern us. Well-behaved Englishmen would doubtless consider as impolite his manner of expression regarding the "best thing imported in the Mayflower." But however unamiably, he does voice a feeling very general, if not universal, in England. You never get around—an Englishman would say "round"—the fact over there that we do not speak the English language.
Well, to use an Americanism, they,—the English,—certainly do have the drop on us in the matter of beauty. Mr. Chesterton somewhere says that a thing always to be borne in mind in considering England is that it is an island, that its people are insulated. An excellent thing to remember, too, in this connection, is that England is a flower garden. In ordinary times, after an Englishman is provided with a roof and four meals a day, the next thing he must have is a garden, even if it is but a flowerpot. They are continually talking about loveliness over there: it is a lovely day; it is lovely on the river now; it is a lovely spot. And so there are primroses in their speech. And then they have inherited over there, or borrowed or stolen, a beautiful literary language, worn soft in colour, like their black-streaked, grey-stone buildings, by time; and, as Whistler's Greeks did their drinking vessels, they use it because, perforce, they have no other. The humblest Londoner will innocently shame you by talking perpetually like a storybook.
One day on an omnibus I asked the conductor where I should get off to reach a certain place. "Oh, that's the journey's end, sir," he replied. Now that is poetry. It sounds like Christina Rossetti. What would an American car conductor have said? "Why, that's the end of the line." "Could you spare me a trifle, sir?" asks the London beggar. A pretty manner of requesting alms. Little boys in England are very fond of cigarette pictures, little cards there reproducing "old English flowers." I used to save them to give to children. Once I gave a number to the ringleader of a group. I was about to tell him to divide them up. "Oh, we'll share them, sir," he said. At home such a boy might have said to the others: "G'wan, these're fer me." Again, when I inquired my way of a tiny, ragged mite, he directed me to "go as straight as ever you can go, sir, across the cricket field; then take your first right; go straight through the copse, sir," he called after me. The copse? Perhaps I was thinking of the "cops" of New York. Then I understood that the urchin was speaking of a small wood.
Of course he, this small boy, sang his sentences, with the rising and falling inflection of the lower classes. "Top of the street, bottom of the road, over the way"—so it goes. And, by the way, how does an Englishman know which is the top and which is the bottom of every street?
Naturally, the English caun't understand us. "When is it that you are going 'ome?" asked my friend, the policeman in King's Road.
"Oh, some time in the fall," I told him.
"In the fall?" he inquired, puzzled.
"Yes, September or October."
"Oh!" he exclaimed, "in the autumn, yes, yes. At the fall of the leaves," I heard him murmur meditatively. Meeting him later in the company of another policeman, "He," he said to his friend, nodding at me, "is going back in the fall." Deliciously humorous to him was my speech. Now it may be mentioned as an interesting point that many of the words imported in theMayflower, or in ships following it, have been quite forgotten in England. Fall, as in the fall of the year, I think, was among them. Quite so, quite so, as they say in England.
Yes, in the King's Road. For, it is an odd thing, Charles Scribner's Sons are on Fifth Avenue, but Selfridge's is in Oxford Street. Here we meet a man on the street; we kick him into it. And in England it is a very different thing, indeed, whether you meet a lady in the street or on the street. You, for instance, wouldn't meet a lady on the street at all. In fact, in England, to our mind, things are so turned around that it is as good as being in China. Just as traffic there keeps to the left kerb, instead of to the right curb, so whereas here I call you up on the telephone, there you phone me down. It would be awkward, wouldn't it, for me to say to you that I called you down?
England is an island; and though the British government controls one fifth, or something like that, of the habitable globe, England is a very small place. Most of the things there are small. A freight car is a goods van, and it certainly is a goods van and not a freight car. So when you ask what little stream this is, you are told that that is the river Lea, or the river Arun, as the case may be, although they look, indeed, except that they are far more lovely, like what we call "cricks" in our country. And the Englishman is fond of speaking in diminutives. He calls for a "drop of ale," to receive a pint tankard. He asks for a "bite of bread," when he wants half a loaf. His "bit of green" is a bowl of cabbage. He likes a "bit of cheese," in the way of a hearty slice, now and then. One overhearing him from another room might think that his copious repast was a microscopic meal. About this peculiarity in the homely use of the language there was a joke inPunchnot long ago. Said the village worthy in the picture: "Ah, I used to be as fond of a drop o' beer as any one, but nowadays if I do take two or dree gallons it do knock I over!"
Into the matter of the quaint features of the speech of the English countryside, or the wonders of the Cockney dialect, the unlearned foreigner hardly dare venture. It is sufficient for us to wonder why a railroad should be a railway. When it becomes a "rilewie" we are inclined, in our speculation, "to pass," as we say over here. And ale, when it is "ile," brings to mind a pleasant story. A humble Londoner, speaking of an oil painting of an island, referred to it as "a painting in ile of an oil."
An American friend of mine, resident in London, insists that where there is an English word for a thing other than the American word for it, the English word is in every case better because it is shorter. He points to tram, for surface-car; and to lift, for elevator. Still though it may be a finer word, hoarding is not shorter than billboard; nor is "dailybreader" shorter than commuter. I think we break about even on that score.
This, however, would seem to be true: where the same words are employed in a somewhat different way the English are usually closer to the original meaning of the word. Saloon bar, for instance, is intended to designate a rather aristocratic place, above the public bar; while the lowest "gin mill" in the United States would be called a "saloon." I know an American youth who has thought all the while that Piccadilly Circus was a show, like Barnum and Bailey's. With every thing that is round in London called a circus, he must have imagined it a, rather hilarious place.
The English "go on" a good deal about our slang. They used to be fond of quoting in superior derision in their papers our, to them, utterly unintelligible baseball news. Mr. Crosland, to drag him in again, to illustrate our abuse of "the language," quotes from some tenth-rate American author—which is a way they have had in England of judging our literature—with the comment that "that is not the way John Milton wrote." Not long ago Mr. Crosland became involved in a trial in the courts in connection with Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas and Robert Ross. He defended himself with much spirit and considerable cleverness. Among other things he said, as reported in the press: "What is this game? This gang are trying to do me down. Here I am a poor man up against two hundred quid (or some such amount) of counsel."
Well, that wasn't the way John Milton talked, either.
The English slang for money is a pleasant thing: thick'uns and thin'uns; two quid, five bob; tanners and coppers. And they have a good body of expressive and colourful speech. "On the rocks" is a neat and poetic way of saying "down and out." It is really not necessary to add the word "resources" to the expression "on his own." A "tripper" is a well-defined character, and so is a "flapper," a "nipper," and a "bounder." There had to be some word for the English "nut," as no amount of the language of John Milton would describe him; and while the connotation of this word as humour is different with us, the appellation of the English, when you have come to see it in their light, hits off the personage very crisply. To say that such a one "talks like a ha'penny book" is, as the English say, "a jolly good job." And a hotel certainly is presented as full when it is pronounced "full up." A "topper" would be only one kind of a hat. Very well, then it is quite possible, we see, to be "all fed up," as they say in England, with English slang.
Humorous Englishmen sometimes rather fancy our slang; and make naive attempts at the use of it. In England, for instance, a man "gets the sack" when he is "bounced" from his job. So I heard a lively Englishman attracted by the word say that so and so should "get the bounce."
In writing, the Englishman usually employs "the language." He has his yellow journals, indeed, which he calls "Americanised" newspapers. But crude and slovenly writing certainly is not a thing that sticks out on him. What a gentlemanly book reviewer he is always! We have here in the United States perhaps a half dozen gentlemen who review books. Is it not true that you would get tired counting up the young English novelists who are as accomplished writers as our few men of letters? The Englishman has a basketful of excellent periodicals to every one of ours. And in passing it is interesting to note this. When we are literary we become a little dull. See our high-brow journals! When we frolic we are a little, well, rough. The Englishman can be funny, even hilarious, and unconsciously, confoundedly well bred at the same time. But he does have a rotten lot of popular illustrated magazines over there compared to ours.
When you return from a sojourn of several months in the land of "the language" you are immediately struck very forcibly by the vast number of Americanisms, by the richness of our popular speech, by the "punch" it has, and by the place it holds in the printed page at home. In a journey from New York I turned over in the smoking-car a number of papers I had not seen for some time, among them the New YorkEvening Post,Collier's,Harper's,Puck, and the IndianapolisNews. Here, generally without quotation marks and frequently in the editorial pages, I came across these among innumerable racy phrases: nothing doing, hot stuff, Right O!, strong-arm work, some celebration, has 'em all skinned, mad at him, this got him in bad, scared of, skiddoo, beat it, a peach of a place, get away with the job, been stung by the party, got by on his bluff, sore at that fact, and always on the job. I learned that the weather man had put over his first frost last night, that a town we passed had come across with a sixteen-year-old burglar, and that a discredited politician was attempting to get out from under. Perhaps it is not to be wondered at that the Englishman frequently fails to get us.
You note a change in the whole atmosphere of language. A pronounced instance of this difference is found in public signs. You have been seeing in English conveyances the placards in neat type posted about which kindly request the traveller not to expectorate upon the floor of this vehicle, as to do so may cause inconvenience to other passengers or spread disease, and so forth and so on. Over here:
Don't Spit?This means You!
This is about the way our signs of this kind go. Now what about all this? I used to think many person just returned from England ridiculously affected in their speech. And many of them are—those who say caun't when they can't do it unconsciously. That is, over here. In Britain, perhaps, it is just as well to make a stagger at speaking the way the Britains do. When you accidently step on an Englishman's toe, it is better to say "I'm sorry!" or simply "sorry," than to beg his pardon or ask him to excuse you. This makes you less conspicuous, and so more comfortable. And when you stay any length of time you fall naturally into English ways. Then when you come back you seem to us, to use one of the Englishman's most delightful words, to "swank" dreadfully. And in that is the whole story.
Mr. James declares that in the work of two equally good writers you could still tell by the writing which was that of the Englishman and which that of the American. The assumption of course is that where they differed the American would be the inferior writer. Mr. James prefers the English atmosphere. And the Englishman is inclined to regard us in our deviation as a sort of imperfect reproduction of himself. What is his is ours, it is true; but what's ours is our own. That is, we have inherited a noble literature in common. But we write less and less like an Englishman all the while. Our legacy of language brought over in the Mayflower has become adapted to our own environment, been fused in the "melting-pot," and quickened by our own life to-day. Whether for better or for worse—it may be either—the literary touch is rapidly going by the board in modern American writing. One of the newer English writers remarks: "A few carefully selected American phrases can very swiftly kill a great deal of dignity and tradition."
Why should we speak the very excellent language spoken in the tight little isle across the sea? In Surrey they speak of the "broad Sussex" of their neighbours in the adjoining county. Is it exactly that we caun't? Or that we just don't? Because we have an article more to our purpose, made largely from English material, but made in the United States?
Some people say that it is the most awful trial.
But it isn't so at all.
One of the most entertaining things that can be done in the world, so full of interesting things, is to go hunting lodgings. Also, it is one of the most enlightening things that can be done, for, pursued with intelligence and energy, it gives one an excellent view of humankind; that is, of a particularly human kind of humankind. It is a confoundly Christian thing to do—hunting lodgings—because it opens the heart to the queer ways, and speech, and customs of the world.
Now, I myself hunt lodgings as some men hunt wild game.
Nothing is better when one is out of sorts, somewhat run down, and peevish with the world generally than to go out one fine afternoon and hunt lodgings In some remote part of town.
When in a foreign city, especially, the first thing I myself do, as soon as I am comfortably settled somewhere—and after, of course, having looked up the celebrated sights of the place, the Abbey, the Louvre, Grant's Tomb—-is to put in a day or so hunting lodgings.
Even to read in the papers of lodgings to let is refreshing and educational. All lodgings are "sunny"—in the papers. They are let mainly by "refined" persons, and are wonderfully "quiet." I remember last summer in London there was "a small sitting to let to a young lady." Lodgings, by the way, are usually "apartments" in England, as you know. Though, indeed, it is true that when a gentleman rents over there what we call a "furnished room" he is commonly said to "go into lodgings." A fine phrase, that; it is like to that fine old expression "commencing author." And that reminds me: the most fascinating lodgings to hunt, perhaps, anywhere, are called "chambers." These which I mean are in the old Inns of Court in London. And the most charming of these remaining is Staple Inn, off Holborn. I used frequently to hunt chambers in "the fayrest Inne of Chancerie." There are no "modern conveniences" there. You draw your own water at a pump in the venerable quadrangle, and you "find" your own light. But to return:
There was also last summer an apartment to let to a "respectable man" or, the announcement said, it "might do for friends." One of the reasons why many people are bored by hunting lodgings is that they are not humble in spirit. They seek proud lodgings.
As to apartment houses, which are a very different matter: the newspapers publish at various seasons of the year copious Apartment-House Directories, with innumerable half-tone illustrations of these more or less sumptious places. And these directories are competent commentaries on their subject. George Moore remarked, "With business I have nothing to do—my concern is with art." Except that I live in one, with apartment houses I have nothing to do—my concern is with lodgings.
There is only one philosophical observation to be made upon apartment houses. And that is this: How can all these people afford to live in them? When you go to look at apartments you are shown a place that you don't like particularly. You don't think, Oh, how I'd just love to live here if I could only afford it! But you ask the rental as a matter of form. And you learn that this apartment rents for a sum greater (in all likelihood) than your entire salary. And yet, there are miles and miles of apartment houses even better than that. And goodness knows how many thousand people live in them! People whose names you never see in the newspapers as ones important in business, in society, art, literature, or anything else. Obscure people! Very ordinary people! Now where do they get all that money? But about lodgings:
I one time went to look at lodgings in Patchin Place. I had heard that Patchin Place was America's Latin Quarter. I thought it would be well to examine it. Patchin Place is a cul-de-sac behind Jefferson Market. A bizarre female person admitted me to the house there. It was not unreasonable to suppose that she had a certain failing. She slip-slod before me along a remarkably dark, rough-floored and dusty hall, and up a rickety stair. The lodging which she had to let was interesting but not attractive. The tenant, it seemed, who had just moved away had many faults trying to his landlady. He was very delinquent, for one thing, in the payment of his rent. And he was somewhat addicted to drink. This unfortunate propensity led him to keep very late hours, and caused him habitually to fall upstairs.
Well, I told her, by way of making talk, that I believed I was held to be a reasonably honest person, and that I was frequently sober.
"Oh," she said, "I can see that you are a gentleman—in your way," she added, in a murmur.
So, you see, in hunting lodgings you not only see how others live, but how you seem to others.
It is certainly curious, the places in which to dwell which one is shown in hunting lodgings. Once I was given to view a room in which was a strange table-like affair constructed of metal. "You wouldn't mind, I suppose," said the lady of the lodging, "if this remained in the room?"
"Oh, not at all," I replied. "But what is it?"
"Why, it's an operating table," she explained. "Of course, you know," she added, "that I'm a physician. And," she continued, "of course I should want to make use of it now and then, but not regularly, not every day."
To a lady with a patch over her eye with lodgings to let in Broome Street I one time stated, by way of being communicative, that I was often in my room a good deal doing some work there. Ah! With many ogles and grimaces, she whispered hoarsely, with an effort at a sly effect, that "that was all right here. She understood," she said. Perfectly "safe place for that," it was. "The gentlemen who had the room before were something of the same kind."
As you know, "references" frequently are demanded of one hunting lodgings. To get into a really nice place one must really be a very nice person. "You know, I have a daughter," sighs the really nice landlady.
To obtain lodgings in Kensington one must be very well-to-do, particularly if one would be on the "drawing room floor." "I like these rooms very much," I said to a prim person there, and I hesitated.
"But I suppose they are too dear for you," she said.
How careful one must be hunting lodgings in England about "extras." Lodgings made in the U.S.A. are all ready to live in, when you have paid your rent. But over on the other side, you recall, the rent, so amazingly cheap, is merely an item. Light, "coals," linen, and "attendance" are all "extra."
I met an interesting person letting lodgings in Whitechapel. She was not attractive physically. Her chief drapery was an apron. This, indeed, was fairly adequate before. But—I think she was like the ostrich who sticks his head in the sand.
My sister-in-law, a highly intelligent woman——— There are, by the way, people who will think anything. Some may say that I am ending this article rather abruptly.
My sister-in-law, a highly intelligent woman, used to say, in compositions at school when stumped by material too much for her, that she had in her eye, so to say, things "too numerous to mention."
Anybody who would chronicle his adventures in hunting lodgings is confronted by incidents, humorous, wild, bizarre, queer, strange, peculiar, sentimental, touching, tragic, weird, and so on and so forth, "too numerous to mention."
To the best of my knowledge and belief (as a popular phrase has it), I am the only person in the United States who corresponds with a London policeman. About all you know about the London policeman is that he is a trim and well-set-up figure and an efficient-looking officer. When you have asked him your way he has replied somewhat thus: "Straight up the road, sir, take your first turning to the right, sir, the second left, sir, and then at the top of the street you will find it directly before you, sir." You have, perhaps, heard that the London police force offers something like an honourable career to a young man, that "Bobbies" are decently paid, that they are advanced systematically, may retire early on a fair pension, and that frequently they come from the country, as their innocent English faces and fresh complexions indicate. Sometimes also you have observed that in directing you they find it necessary to consult a pocket map of the town. Your general impression doubtless is that they are rather nice fellows.
It was in Cheyne Walk that I met my policeman. I had got off the 'bus at Battersea Bridge, and was seeking my way to Oakley Street, where I had been directed to lodgings described as excellent. He was a large, fat man, with a heavy black moustache; and he had a very pleasant manner. When I came out that evening for a walk along the Embankment I came across him on Albert Bridge, at the "bottom," as they say over there, of my street.
"You're still here, sir," he remarked cheerfully. I asked him how long Mr. Whistler's Battersea Bridge had been gone, and he told me I forget how many years. He had seen it and had been here all the while. In the course of time he directed me a good deal about in Chelsea, and so it was that I came to chat with him frequently in the evenings, for he "came on" at six and was "off" some time early in the morning.
I was a source of some considerable interest to him with my odd foreign ways. "When are you going 'ome?" he asked me one day when our friendship had ripened.
"Oh, some time in the fall," I replied.
"In the fall?" he queried in a puzzled way.
"Why, yes," I said; "September or October."
"Oh," he remarked, "in the autumn." And I heard him murmur musingly,"In the fall of the leaves."
Sometimes I met him in the company of his colleague, the "big un," or "baby," as I learned he was familiarly called, a very tall man with enormous feet clad in boots that glistened like great mirrors, who rocked as he walked, like a ship. My friend had very bright eyes. They sparkled with merriment one day when he said to the big un, nodding toward me, "He's going 'ome in the fall."
It was a warm evening along the side of old Father Thames. My friend, with much graceful delicacy, made it known to me that a drop of "ile" now and then did not go bad with one tried by the cares of a policeman. So we set out for the nearby "King's Head and Eight Bells." When we came to this public house I discovered that it was apparently absolutely impossible for my friend to go in. He instructed me then in this way: I was to go in alone and order for my friend outside a pint of "mull and bitter, in a tankard." The potman, he informed me, would bring it out to him. The expense of this refreshment was not heavy; it came to one penny ha'penny. The services of the obliging potman were gratuitous. I found my friend in the pathway outside with the tankard between his hearty face and the sky. When he had concluded his draught, he thanked me, smacked his lips, wiped his mouth with a large handkerchief, and hurried away, as, he said, "the inspector" would be along presently. Just why the inspector would regard "ile" in the open air in view of the whole world less an evil than a tankard of mull and bitter in a public house I cannot say. But it may be that as long as one is in the open one can still keep one eye on one's duty.
I was hailed several days after this by my friend, who approached rapidly. Well, I thought, he has been very useful to me, and three ha'pennies are not much.
"I have something for you," said my friend, somewhat heated by his haste.
"You have?" I said. "What is it?"
"It's a rose," replied my friend.
"A what?" I asked.
"A flower," said my friend, recognising that we did not speak exactly the same language. "You know what that is?"
"Oh, yes. I know what a flower is," I said. "Where have you got it?"
"I have secreted it in the churchyard, sir," he replied. "I'll fetch it directly?" he added, and was off.
When he returned through the gloaming he put the flower through my buttonhole. "A lady dropped it out of her carriage," he said; "and I thought of you when I picked it up." He stooped and smelled it. "Hasn't it," he said, "a lovely scent?"
I had lived in New York a good while and I had somehow come to think of policemen rather as men of action than as poets. But then in New York we do not dwell in a flower garden; we are not filled with a love of horses, dogs, and blossoms; and we do not all speak unconsciously a literary language.
My friend was very eager that I should let him "hear from" me upon my return to the States, and he particularly desired a postcard picturing a skyscraper. So he gave me his address, which was:
"W. C. Buckington, P. C. B. Deyersan, Chelsea Police Station, King'sRoad, Chelsea, S.W."
In acknowledgment of my postcard I received a letter, which I think should not remain in the obscurity of my coat pocket. I wish to submit it to public attention as a model of all that a letter from a good friend should be, and so seldom is! There is an engaging modesty in so large a man's referring to himself continually with a little letter "i." My correspondent tells me of himself, he gives me intimate news of the place of my recent sojourn, he touches with taste and feeling upon the great subject of our time, he conveys to me patently sincere sentiments of his good will, and he leaves me with much appreciation of his excellent nature and honest heart. Occasional personal peculiarities in his style, deviations in unessential things from the common form, give a close personal touch to his message. This is my friend's letter:
"It is with Great pleasure for to answer your post Card that i received this morning i was very pleased to receive it and to know that you are still in the land of the Living i have often thought about you and as i had not seen you i thought you had Gone home i have shown the Card to Jenkens and the tall one and also a nother Policeman you know and they all wish me to Remember them Verry kindly to you they was surprised to think you had taken the trouble to write to me they said he is a Good old sort not forgetting the little drops we had at the six bells and Kings Head.
"P. H. What do you think of this terrable war it is shocking i have just Got the news that a cousin of mine is wounded and he is at Clacton on sea he is a Sergt in the 1th Coldstreams Gds got a wife and 4 Children i have been on the sick list this Last 17 days suffering from Rumitism but i am better London is very quiet Especially at Night the Pubs Close at 11 m. and half the Lights in the streets are out surch Lights flashing all round 2 on hyde Park Corner 2 Lambert Bridge 2 War office dear Friend i hope i shall have the Pleasure to receive a Letter from you before long Now i think that this is all i have to say at present so will close with my best respects to you your
"Sincere friend"WILLIAM CHARLES BUCKINGTON."
The letter which later I sent him was returned to me by the Post Office. And that is all that I know of my friend, man of ardent nature and gentle feeling, lover of flowers, London policeman, gone, perhaps, to the wars. Cheyne Walk would not be Cheyne Walk again to me without him.
The people who (because they think they don't need to) do not read the "Help Wanted" "ads" in the newspapers really ought to do this, anyway for a week or so in every year. They are the people, above all others, that would be most benefited by this department of journalism.
Now, there is nobody who more than myself objects in his spirit to the very common practice of this one's saying to that one that he, or she, "ought to" do this or that thing. Nobody knows all the circumstances in which another is placed. Some people insist upon saying "under the circumstances." But that is wrong. One is surrounded by circumstances; one is not under them, as though they were an umbrella. Nobody ought to say "under the circumstances." However, this is merely by the by.
It's a queer thing, though, that Mr. Hilaire Belloc, who certainly writes some of the best English going, says that "under the" and so forth is all right. Certainly it is not. But, as I said before, this is not a point about which we are talking.
One ought to read want "ads" for many reasons. For instance, you can thus become completely mixed up as to whether or not you are still young. "Young man wanted," you will read, "about sixteen years of age, in an office." Goodness gracious! It does seem that this is an age of young, very young, men. What chance does one of your years have now? On the other hand, you read: "Wanted, young man, about thirty-five." So! Well, this is an age, too (you reflect) in which people remain young. There are no old folks any more; they are out of fashion. Witness, "Boy wanted, strong, about eighteen."
They (want "ads") ought, particularly, to be read at times when you have a very good job. It is then especially that the reading of them is best for you. They do (or they ought to) soften your arrogance.
If—like Mr. Rockefeller, jr.—I were a teacher of a Sunday school class (which, as Mr. Dooley used to say, I am not). I would say: "The best religious teaching is to be found in the help-wanted advertisements in the newspapers. We will take up this morning these columns in this morning's papers."
As a matter of fact, if you are out of a job I should strongly advise against your reading advertisements for help wanted. In the first place, nobody ever got a job through one of these advertisements. I know this, as the phrase is, of my own knowledge. Then, the influence of suggestion is very powerful in these announcements. If you are without a position, it is depressingly plain to you that you are totally unqualified to obtain one again, of any account. If you have a berth paying a living wage, you perceive that some mysterious good fortune attends you, and you are made humble by fear for yourself, and compassionate towards others. For who are you, in heaven's name, and what the devil do you know, that you should make a living in this world! In this world where there is wanted: "Highly educated man, having extensive business and social connection. Must be fluent correspondent in Arabic, Japanese, and Swedish, and an expert accountant. Knowledge of Russian and the broadsword essential. Acquaintance with the subject of mining engineering expected. Experience in the diplomatic service desired. Gentleman of impressive presence required. Highest credentials demanded. Salary, to begin, seven dollars." Knowledge, undoubtedly, is power!
Still, one seeking a position through want "ads" need not altogether despair. A little further down these very catholic columns you will find that: "Any person of ordinary intelligence, common-school education not necessary, can make $1000 a week writing for newspapers, by our system, taught by mail. Only ten minutes a day before going to bed required to learn."
One thing stands out above all others in advertisements for help wanted. This is the land of hustle. Tinker, tailor, candlestick-maker; lawyer, merchant, priest; if you are not a "live-wire" you are not "help wanted"—"Cook wanted. On dairy farm, twelve miles from town. White, industrious. Must be a live-wire! One that can get results. No stick-in-the-muds need apply!"
Uplifters and governments do not deal a more telling blow at the demon rum than do want "ads." There is no longer any job for the drinker. "Bartender wanted. In a very low place. Must be strict teetotaler!" The student of the help-wanted columns will come to regard it as a very great mystery who floats all our "public-houses."
Persons whose outlook on life is restricted to the dull round of one occupation and to one class of society will find a decidedly broadening influence in the perusal of help-wanted "ads," a liberal and a humane education in the subject of the variety and picaresque quality of humanity's manifold activities. And such persons will be made aware of their dark ignorance of many matters. What, for instance (they will say) is a "bushelman"? A great many bushelmen are continually "wanted." It might be well to be one so much in constant demand as a bushelman. Has this welcome character something to do with the delectable grocery trade? No, my dears (for though I never saw a bushelman, I'd rather see than be one), he engages in the tailoring business, in the sweatshop way (as well as I can make out).
There are people wanted in help-wanted "ads" (but not in real life) to do nothing but travel in pleasant and historic places as companions to wealthy, "refined" persons in delicate health. There are people wanted (in want "ads") to share attractive homes in fashionable country places whose duties will be to smoke excellent cigars and take naps in the afternoon.
And there are as romantic things to be found among help-wanted "ads" as there are in the most romantic romances. Now, lest it may be thought that some of the help-wanted "ads" which I have written right out of my head to illustrate the type of each are somewhat fanciful, I will copy out of yesterday's paper an advertisement which "Robinson Crusoe" hasn't anything on, to put it thusly. Here you are.
"WANTED—A man (or woman) to live alone on an island, eight miles from shore; food, shelter, clothing furnished; no work, no compensation. Summer time, Box G, 532 Times, Downtown."
I knew a man once who got several replies to advertisements for help wanted. He bought ten New York papers one Sunday and a dollar's worth of two cent stamps. At ten o'clock in the evening he went out and stuffed the ballot-box, I mean the letter box. He said in his own handwriting that he was an excellent man to be manager of "the upper floors of an apartment house"; that he was uncommonly experienced in the moving-picture business and knew "the screen" from A to izzard; that he had edited trade journals from the time he could talk; that he had an admirable figure for a clothing model; that he was very successful in interviewing bankers and brokers; that he was fond of children; that he would like to add a side line of metal polisher to his list; and that he certainly knew more about Bolivera than anybody else in the world, and would be prepared to head an expedition there by half-past two the following day.
That man already had a job that he had got from a want "ad." He had been "copying letters" at home, "light, genteel work for one of artistic tastes." But he found that one could not make any money out of it. Because, after one had bought the "outfit" necessary one discovered that it was humanly impossible to copy the bloomin' letters in the somewhat eccentric fashion required.
He got several replies, as I said, to his replies to want "ads," this man. One was a postcard which read: "Call to-morrow morning about work, Room 954, Horseshoe Building, X. Y. Z. Co." Considering himself a gentleman, and being touchy about such things, he was annoyed at this manner of addressing him on a postcard. However he went to the Horseshoe Building. Room 954 had a great many names on the door, names there stated to be those of "attorneys," "syndicates," and "corporations, limited." Among these names was that of the X. Y. Z. Co. Within, one side of Room 954 was partitioned off into many little alcoves. An antique, though youthfully dressed, typist, by the railing near the door, showed our friend to the X. Y. Z. Co., who was seated at a bleak-looking desk in one of the little alcoves. The alcove contained, besides the "Co." (a little whiskered man, wearing his hat and overcoat) and the desk, an empty waste basket, and one unoccupied chair.
It was a "demonstrator" that was wanted, on a commission basis, for a fluid to cleanse silver. This alcove, it developed, was merely one of many thousand branch offices of the "Co." scattered across the country. The "Co's." "factory," he said, was over in New Jersey, a very large affair.
Mr. Bivens, that is the name of the gentleman of whom I have just been speaking, was invited, too, this time in a letter politely beginning "My Dear Sir," to call at the offices of a moving-picture "corporation." Asking to see "M. T. Cummings," who had signed the letter, he was presented to an efficient-looking person, evidently an elderly, retired show-girl, who directly proved him wofully deficient in knowledge of "the screen."
His next experience was with a portly, prosperous-looking gentleman who had elaborate offices in a very swell skyscraper. This man wrote an excellent business-like letter; he unfolded to H. T. (I always affectionately call Bivens "H. T.") admiration-compelling plans for large business enterprises, which included a project of taking five hundred American business men on a trip through Europe after the war at a cost to each one of only four dollars and a half, the balance of the expenses of each to be paid for in local business co-operation.
Bivens was taken right into this energetic and enterprising man's confidence. He did considerable outside work for his employer for ten days. On the eleventh day, reporting at the office, he found the promoter's secretary and office boy awaiting him, in company with his office furniture, outside the locked door.
Bivens next answered an advertisement for a strike-breaker to light street lamps, and for a person to distribute handbills at a pay of seventy-five cents a day. But his luck had changed; he never got another reply to any answer to a help-wanted "ad."
He thinks this is strange, because he believes (and I know this is true) that he writes a letter which would instantly mark him as a man of high merit among the multitude.
But I once knew a man who put a help-wanted "ad" in the paper. He ran a hotel, and he advertised for a clerk. I was stopping at his place at the time, I and my three brothers. And the five of us, Mr. Snuvel (the hotel man), I, and my three brothers, used to bring up from the village every night for a week (the place was in the country) the mail, which consisted of replies to this help-wanted advertisement. We used large sacks for this purpose.
A literary adventurer not long since found himself, by one of the exigencies incident to his precarious career, turning over in the process of cataloguing a kind of literature in which up to that time he had been very little read, a public collection of published municipal documents. This gentleman had had a notion for a good many years that municipal documents were entirely for very serious people engaged in some useful undertakings. He had never conceived of them as works of humour and objects of art. But his disinclination to this department of pure literature was dissolved, as most prejudices may be, by acquaintance with the subject.
Municipal documents are human documents. They are the autobiographies of communities. The personalities of Topeka, Kansas, of Limoges, France, and of Heidelberg, Germany, rise before the impressionable student of municipal documents like the figures of personal autobiography, like Benvenuto Cellini, Marie Bashkirtsev, Benjamin Franklin, Miss Mary Maclane, Mr. George Moore.
A very touching quality in municipal documents is their naivete—that unavoidable and unconscious self-revelation which is much of the great charm and value of all autobiographies. By the way, do statisticians really understand municipal documents, or do they think them valuable simply because they are full of statements of fact?
Our literary gentleman, at all events, found his task very engaging, though as a cataloguer he was much perplexed by the extraordinary informality, in one respect, of formal public papers, a curious provinciality, as he could but take it to be, of municipalities. A very common neglect, he found, in such publications is to make any mention anywhere of the relation to geography of the community chronicling its history.
He would read, for instance, that the pamphlet in his hand was the "Auditor's Report of Receipts and Expenditures for the Financial Year Ending February 10, 1875, for the Town of Andover." Where, he asked, with absolute certainty, was the town of Andover here referred to? He examined the printer's imprint, which was explicit—personally: "Printed by Warren F. Draper, 1875." There was something very friendly about this. Printers of public documents seem to be an amiable, neighbourly lot: "Printed at the Enterprise Office," one mentions casually in a large, warm-hearted fashion. Another imprint reads, "Auburn, Printed by Charles Ferris,Daily AdvertiserOffice, 1848," Mr. Ferris, in his lifetime, was evidently a very pleasant man, but a little careless of what to him, no doubt, were inessential details. He was thoughtless of the dark ignorance in places remote from Auburn of theDaily Advertiser. Another prominent Auburnian of the same craft, one W. S. Morse, it may be learned from some of the products of his press, flourished in 1886. But, the puzzled cataloguer inquires, was Mr. Morse successor to Mr. Ferris, or was he official printer to the Government of Auburn, Maine, far from the scene of Mr. Ferris's public services, possibly in Auburn, New York? To these picayune points the breezy gentlemen make no reference.
The worker with public documents turns from the title pages to search the documents themselves. Are these the "Proceedings of the Board of Chosen Freeholders" of the City of Albany, Missouri, or of Albany, New Hampshire? (A cataloguer has a faint impression that there is an Albany, too, somewhere in the State of New York.) Is this a "Copy of Warrant for Annual Town Meeting" of Lancaster, Massachusetts, or New Hampshire, or Pennsylvania? Impossible, he thinks, that there should be no internal evidence.
He reads on and on. He notes the intimate nature of an Article 19: "To see if the town will accept a gift from Hannah E. Bigelow, with conditions." He peruses "Selectman's Accounts" of expenditures, how there was "Paid on account of Grammar School" such or such an amount; he learns the cost of "Hay Scales," the expenses of "Fire Dep't, Cemetery, Street Lamps." He peers behind the official scenes at Decoration Day: monies paid out of the public treasury for "Brass Band, Address ($20.00), flowers, flags, tuning piano." He goes over appropriations for "Repairs at Almshouse." He sits with the "Trustees of Memorial Hall," and informs himself concerning conditions at the "Lunatic Hospital." He follows with feeling municipal accessions, "purchase of a Road-scraper, which we find a very useful machine, and probably money judiciously expended." But more and more amazed at the circumstance as he continues he is left totally in the dark as to where he is all the while.
Sometimes the mention, made necessary in connection with plans for some public improvement, of a well-known river, say, revealed the town's location. Occasionally the comparative antiquity of the civilisation supplied inspiration for a good guess as to its situation—that it was the town of that name in New England rather than the one in Oklahoma. Multiplied clues of identity, again, built up a case: "Official Ballot" (ran the title) "for Precinct W. Attleburough, Tuesday. Nov. 3, 1896." The name "Wm. M. Olin" was given as that of the "Secretary of the Commonwealth." Of the first page that was all. In heaven's name! exclaimed the cataloguer, what commonwealth? A study of the list of candidates on this ballot, giving their places of residence, however, fortified one's natural supposition—"of Worcester, of Lynn, of Haverhill, of Amherst, of Pittsfield" (ah!), "of Boston." It is a reasonable surmise that this Ballot pertains to the commonwealth of Massachusetts.
It is not here stated that the name of its native State is never discovered in the whole of any American municipal document. Often, in some indirect allusion, somewhere in the text it may be found. Frequently, too, it is true, the State seal is printed upon the title page or cover of the volume. And in instances the name of the State stands out clearly enough upon the page of title. But in case after case, in the occupation giving rise to this paper, the only expedient was recourse to a file of city directories, collating names of streets in these with those mentioned in the documents.
Another curious idiosyncrasy of one branch of public document—which informs the labour of cataloguing them with something of the alluring fascination of putting together jig-saw picture puzzles ("spoke," in the words of Artemas Ward, "sarcastic") is the extraordinary variety of names that can be found by municipalities to entitle the Mayor's annual eloquence. This versatile character may deliver himself of an Annual Address, Message, Communication, Statement, or of "Remarks."
A cataloguer was surprised to discover, in "An Act to Incorporate and Vest Certain Powers in the Freeholders and Inhabitants of the village of Brooklyn, in the County of Kings," the prophetic enlightenment of the Inhabitants of that village in the year 1816. The voice of Andrew Carnegie, Colonel Roosevelt, and Prof. Brander Matthews speaks in the following passage: "That the section of the town of Brooklyn, commonly known as 'The Fire District,' and contained within the following bounds, viz.: Beginning at the public landing south of Pierpont's distillery, formerly the property of Philip Livingston, deceased, on the East River, thence running along the public road leading from said landing to its intersection with Redhook lane, thence along Redhook lane to where it intersects Jamaica turnpike road, thence a North East course to the head of the Wallabaght mill-pond, thence thro the centre of said mill pond to the East river, and thence down the East river to the place of beginning, shall continue to be known and distinguished by the Name of the Village of Brooklyn." "Thro" certainly is phonetic spelling.
It was the sterling character of these villagers that then laid the foundation for the better half of a mighty city to come. The "act" concludes: "And then and there proceed to elect Five discreet freeholders, resident within said village, to be trustees thereof." So witness is borne to this vernacular quality of discretion in the twilight of Brooklyn history.
The aesthetic consideration of municipal documents has not received much attention. The format of a municipal document, however, is in itself a delightful essay in unconscious self-characterisation. Those of the United States express a plain democratic people. They have, in fact, all the commonness of the job printer. "Printed at theJournalOffice," is, indeed, their physical character.
The municipal documents of Great Britain are usually bound, in good English book-cloth, that peculiar fabric to which the connoisseur of books is so sensitive, and which, for some inexplicable reason, it is, apparently, impossible to manufacture in this country; or in neat boards, with cloth backs. Or if in paper it is of an interesting colour and texture. A noble heraldic device, the coat of arms of the city or borough, is stamped in gold above, or below, the title. This is repeated upon the title-page, the typography of which is not without distinction. The paper has more refinement than that used in such American publications. The effect, in fine, is of something aristocratic. The "Mayoral Minutes" of Kensington is rather a handsome quarto volume.
An added touch of distinction is given these British volumes by the presentation card, tipped in after the front cover. A really exquisite little thing is this one: it bears, placed with great nicety, its coat of arms above, delicately reduced in size; across the middle, in beautiful sensitive type, it reads: "With the City Accountant's Compliments"; in the lower left corner, in two lines, "Guildhall, Gloucester."
The municipal documents of Germany are very German. Verwaltungsbericht is one of those extraordinary words which are so long that when you look at one end of the word you cannot see the other end. These volumes sometimes might possibly be mistaken, by a foreigner, for "gift books." Often they are bound, in pronounced German taste, in several strong colours in a striking combination. Buttressing the decorative German letters, on cover and title page, appears some one of various conventionalisations of the German eagle, made very black, and wearing a crown and carrying a sceptre. In "Verwaltungsbericht des Magistrats der Koniglichen Haupt- und Residenzstadt Hanover, 1906-7," the frontispiece, the armorial bearings, "Wappen der Koniglichen" and so forth is a powerfully coloured lithograph, a very ornate affair, of lions (of egg-yolk yellow), armour, and leaves and castles. These German publications are filled with excellent photographs of public places and buildings, and extensive unfolding coloured maps and diagrams. A gentleman with a taste for art viewed with much admiration a handsome plate of "des Dresdener Wassenwerks." They contain, too, these volumes, multitudes of pictures of distinguished citizens, often photogravures from official paintings; these gentlemen sometimes appear decorated with massive orders, or again decorated simply with very German expressions of countenance. The "Chronik der Haupt- und Reisdenzstadt Stuttgart, 1902," somewhat suggests bound volumes of "Jugend," with its heavy pen and ink head and tail pieces, of women marketing, of a bride and groom kneeling at the altar, and one, an excellent little drawing of a horse mounting with a heavily laden wagon a rise of ground, the driver beside him, and a street lamp behind protruding from below (remember this is a municipal document).
A quaint little duodecimo is the "Jaarbockie voor de Stad Delft," with little headpieces pictorially representing the seasons and a curiously wood-cut astrologer introducing "den Almanak." A rather square-toed kind of a little volume, neatly bound in grey boards, and very nicely printed, having altogether an effect of housewifely cleanliness, is the "Verslag van den Toestand der Gemeente Haarlem over het jaar 1894. Door Burgemeester en Wethouders Uitgebracht aan den Gemeenteraad; imprint Gedrukt bij Gebr Nobels, te Haarlem."
The language of Great Britain's municipal documents is lofty: "The Royal Burrough of Kensington, Minute of His Worship the Mayor (Sir H. Seymour King, K.C.I.E., M.P.) for the year ending November, 1901." (Here is imprinted the design of a quartered shield containing a crown, a Papal hat, and two crosses, and, beneath, the motto: "Quid Nobis Ardui.") "Printed" (continues the reading) "by order of the Council, 30th, October, 1901. Jas. Truscott and Son, Printer, Suffolk Lane, E.C." And in the following there is something of the rumble of the history of England:
"AddressesPresented from theCourt of Common Councilto theKing.
On his Majesty's Accession to the Throne,And on various other Occasions, and his Answers,Resolutions of the Court,Granting the Freedom of the City to severalNoble Personages; with their Answers,Instructions at different Times to theRepresentatives of the City in Parliament.Petitions to Parliament for different Purposes,Resolutions of the Court,On the Memorial of the Livery, to requestthe Lord Mayor to call a Common Hall;For returning Thanks to Lord Chatham,And his Answer;For erecting a Statue in Guildhall,toWilliam Beckford, Esq.; late Lord Mayor,Agreed to between the 23d October, 1760, and the13th. October, 1770Printed by Henry Fenwick, Printer to the HonorableCity of London."
Henry Fenwick, Esq., takes himself with dignity.
But to turn from the pomp of state, to peep for a moment at the intimate life of the people of England a couple of centuries ago, few things could be better than "The Constable's Accounts of the Manor of Manchester," from which a few items of "Disbursements" are cited;
"Pd. Expences apprehending two Felons…. -/1/-"Pd. Expences maintaining them two Nightsin the Dungeon …………………. -/2/-"To Ann Duncan very ill to take her over intoIreland ……………………….. -/4/-"To Straw for the Dungeon …………… -/4/-"To Belman sundry public Cries ………. -/7/6"To three pair of Stockings and dying for theBeedle ………………………… -/9/-"To Wine drinking Royal healths the Prince'sbirthday at his full age ………… 3/16/6"To a distressed Sailor to Leverpoole … -/1/-"Pd. Boonfire on King's Coronation Day .. -/6/6"Gave Nancy Mackeen a Stroller ………. -/-/6"Pd. Musicians at rejoicing for good newsfrom Germany, and on birth of the Princeof Wales ………………………. 2/7/-"Pd. for a Cat with nine Tails ………. -/3/-"To a lame Stranger ………………… -/1/-"Pd. lighting Lamps last Dark ……….. -/2/6"Several Fortune Tellers Indicted, etc… -/12/-"Pd. Lawyer Nagave advising Roger Blomely'sCase bringing Actions agt. the Constablefor putting him in the Dungeon for beingdrunk on Sunday in time of divineService ………………………… l/l/-"
It is interesting to note in this connection that on August 16, 1762, was"Pd." one "Barnard Shaw maintenance of Rioters and Evidence, 1-11-6."
A circumstance of considerable human interest, too, and one possibly little known, is the great aversion to the sight of bears held by the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight, at least in the year 1891. A copy of the "Bye-Laws" of the "Administrative County of the Isle of Wight," issued that year, contains, following articles relating to "Regulating the Sale of Coal" and "Spitting," this:
"As to Bears.
"1. No bear shall be taken along or allowed to be upon any highway, unless such bear shall be securely confined in a vehicle closed so as to completely hide such bear from view.
"2. Any person who shall offend against this Bye-law shall be liable to a fine not exceeding in any case five pounds."
"Atti del Municipale! Atti del Consiglio Comunale di Siena. Bollettino Degli atti Pubblicati Dalla Giunta Municipale di Roma." It is fitting that quartos of such titles as these, containing addresses beginning Signori Consiglieri and Onorevoli Signori, should look something like Italian opera, and be bound in vellum, title and date stamped in gold on bright red and purple labels, with sides of mottled purple boards, and imprints such as "Bologna. Regia Tipografia Fratelli Merlani," and of typography the best. And on genuine paper, far from the woodpulp of American municipal graft contracts.
Once, indeed, municipal documents were august pages. Some of the early Italian and German are on paper that will last as long as the law. And in these times the title pages of municipal documents were Piranesiesque: massive architectural scroll work framing stone tablets, hung with garlands of fruit and grain, and decorated with carved lions, human heads, and histrionic masks. And initial letters throughout to correspond.
Now who but France would bind her municipal documents in heavily tooled, full levant morocco, with grained silk inside covers?
It is a very pleasant thing to go about in the world and see all the people.
Among the finest people in the world to talk with are scrubwomen. Bartenders, particularly those in very low places, are not without considerable merit in this respect. Policemen and trolley-car conductors have great social value. Rustic ferry-men are very attractive intellectually. But for a feast of reason and a flow of soul I know of no society at all comparable to that of scrubwomen.
It is possible that you do not cultivate scrubwomen. That is your misfortune. Let me tell you about my scrubwoman. I know only this one, I regret to say, but she, I take it, is representative.
Her name—ah, what does it matter, her name? The thing beyond price is her mind. There is stored, in opulence, all the ready-made language, the tag-ends of expression, coined by modern man. But she does not use this rich dross as others do. She touches nothing that she does not adorn. She turns the familiar into the unexpected, which is precisely what great writers do. To employ her own expression, she's "a hot sketch, all right."
She did not like the former occupant of my office. No; she told me that she "could not bear a hair of his head." It seems that some altercation occurred between them. And whatever it was she had to say, she declares that she "told it to him in black and white." This gentleman, it seems, was "the very Old Boy." Though my scrubwoman admits that she herself is "a sarcastic piece of goods." By way of emphasis she invariably adds to her assertions, "Believeme!"
Her son—she has a son—has much trouble with his feet. His mother says that if he has gone to one "shoeopodist" he has gone to a dozen. My scrubwoman tells me that she is "the only fair one" of her family. Her people, it appears, "are all olive." My scrubwoman is a widow. She has told me a number of times of the last days of her husband. It is a touching story. She realised that the end was near, and humoured him in his idea of returning before it was too late to "the old country." One day when he had asked her again if she had got the tickets, and then turned his face to the wall to cough, she said to herself, "Good-night—shirt."
But most of the discourse of my scrubwoman is cheerful. She is a valiant figure, a brave being very fond of the society of her friends (of whom I hold myself to be one), who works late at night, and talks continually. I know that if you would contrive to find favour with your scrubwoman you would often be like that person told of by mine who "laughed until she thought his heart would break."
The most brotherly car-conductors, naturally, are those with not over much business, those on lines in remote places. I remember the loss I suffered not long ago on a suburban car, which results, I am sorry to say, in your loss also.
The bell signalling to stop rang, and a vivaciously got-up woman with an extremely broad-at-the-base, pear-shaped torse, arose and got herself carefully off the car. The conductor went forward to assist her. When he returned aft he came inside the car and sat on the last seat with two of us who were his passengers. The restlessness was in him which betrays that a man will presently unbosom himself of something. This finally culminated in his remarking, as if simply for something to say to be friendly, "You noticed that lady that just got off back there? Well," he continued, leaning forward, having received a look intended to be not discouraging, "that's the mother of Cora Splitts, the little actress;—that lady's the mother of Cora Splitts, the little actress."
"Is that so!" exclaimed one who was his passenger, not wishing to deny him the pleasure he expected of having excited astonishment. A car conductor leads a hard life, poor fellow, and one should not begrudge him a little pleasure like that.
The conductor twisted away his face for an instant while he spat tobacco-juice. Thus cleared for action, he returned to the subject of his thoughts. "That's the mother of Cora Splitts," he repeated again. "She's at White Plains tonight, Cora is. Cora and me," he said, as one that says, "ah, me, what a world it is!"—"Cora and me was chums once. Yes, sir; we was chums and went to school together." Some valuable reminiscences of the distinguished woman, dating back to days before the world dreamed of what she would become, by one who played with her as a child, doubtless would have been told, but the conductor was interrupted; a great many people got off, some others got on the car just then, and he went forward to collect fares from these, and the thread was broken.
At my journey's end, I recollect, I went into a public-house. There was a person there whose presence made a deep impression upon my memory. A fine stocky lad, with a great square jaw, heavy beery jowls, and a blue-black, bearded chin; in a blue striped collar. He put both hands firmly on the bar-rail at a good distance apart; straightened his arms taut and his body at right angles with them, so that he resembled a huge carpenter's square; then curled his back finely in, and said, with a significant look at the man behind the bar, "Gimme one o' them shells." A thin glass of beer was set before him; he relaxed, straightened up, and drank off its contents. Then, apparently, feeling that he was observed, he looked very unconcernedly all about the room and appeared to be bored. He then examined very attentively a picture on the wall, and his neck seemed to be temporarily stiff. I can see him now, I am happy to say, as plain as print.
One's mind is, indeed, a grand photograph album. How precious to one it will be when one is old and may sit all day in a house by the sea and, so to say, turn the leaves. That is why one should be going about all the while in one's vigour with an alert and an open mind.
Wives are picturesque characters, too. I mind me of my friend Billy Henderson's new wife. Billy Henderson's wife looks like a balloon. She's so fat that she has busted down the arches of her feet. In order to "fight flesh" she walks a great deal. She walks a mile every day, and then takes a car back home. Her father comes over from Philadelphia once every week to see her, because she is so homesick. For months after she was married she just cried all the time, she was so homesick. She never goes to the movies. The movies make her cry. One time she saw at the movies a hospital scene. It horrified her for days. A friend of hers is about to be married. But she has told her friend that she cannot go to the wedding. Weddings always make her cry so. She just can't read the war news; it is too terrible; it affects her so that she can't sleep a bit. She hasn't read any of it at all, and, she says, she has no idea who is winning the war. She takes some kind of capsules to reduce flesh, which cost six dollars for fifty. She has taken twenty-five. The extension of the draft age being spoken of, she said to Billy:
"Dearie, I'll put you under the bed where they won't get you." She doesn't want to vote, and she can't understand why any one should want to go to poles and vote and all that kind of thing.
Billy Henderson's wife is handsome; she is rich; she is an excellent cook; she loves Billy Henderson.