MINCE PIE

CHRISTOPHER MORLEY

TO

F. M. AND L. J. M. 

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INSTRUCTIONS

This book is intended to be read in bed. Please do not attempt to readit anywhere else. 

In order to obtain the best results for all concerned do not read aborrowed copy, but buy one. If the bed is a double bed, buy two. 

Do not lend a copy under any circumstances, but refer your friends tothe nearest bookshop, where they may expiate their curiosity. 

Most of these sketches were first printed in the Philadelphia _EveningPublic Ledger_; others appeared in _The Bookman_, the Boston _EveningTranscript_, _Life_, and _The Smart Set_. To all these publications I amindebted for permission to reprint. 

If one asks what excuse there can be for prolonging the existence ofthese trifles, my answer is that there is no excuse. But a copy on thebedside shelf may possibly pave the way to easy slumber. Only a mind"debauched by learning" (in Doctor Johnson's phrase) will scrutinizethem too anxiously. 

It seems to me, on reading the proofs, that the skit entitled "Trials ofa President Travelling Abroad" is a faint and subconscious echo of apassage in a favorite of my early youth, _Happy Thoughts_, by the lateF. C. Burnand. If this acknowledgment should move anyone to read thatdelicious classic of pleasantry, the innocent plunder may be pardonable. 

And now a word of obeisance. I take this opportunity of thanking severalgentle overseers and magistrates who have been too generously friendlyto these eccentric gestures. These are Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday, editor of _The Bookman_ and victim of the novelette herein entitled "OwdBob"; Mr. Edwin F. Edgett, literary editor of The Boston _Transcript_, who has often permitted me to cut outrageous capers in his hospitablecolumns; and Mr. Thomas L. Masson, of _Life_, who allows me to reprintseveral of the shorter pieces. But most of all I thank Mr. David E. Smiley, editor of the Philadelphia _Evening Public Ledger_, for whomthe majority of these sketches were written, and whose patience andkindness have been a frequent amazement to

THE AUTHOR. 

PHILADELPHIA _September, 1919_

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CONTENTS

 PAGE

ON FILLING AN INK-WELL 17

OLD THOUGHTS FOR CHRISTMAS 24

CHRISTMAS CARDS 31

ON UNANSWERING LETTERS 35

A LETTER TO FATHER TIME 41

WHAT MEN LIVE BY 48

THE UNNATURAL NATURALIST 54

SITTING IN THE BARBER'S CHAIR 60

BROWN EYES AND EQUINOXES 64

163 INNOCENT OLD MEN 69

A TRAGIC SMELL IN MARATHON 75

BULLIED BY THE BIRDS 81

A MESSAGE FOR BOONVILLE 87

MAKING MARATHON SAFE FOR THE URCHIN 92

THE SMELL OF SMELLS 98

A JAPANESE BACHELOR 102

TWO DAYS WE CELEBRATE 117

THE URCHIN AT THE ZOO 132

FELLOW CRAFTSMEN 139

THE KEY RING 144

"OWD BOB" 150

THE APPLE THAT NO ONE ATE 167

AS TO RUMORS 174

OUR MOTHERS 181

GREETING TO AMERICAN ANGLERS 186

MRS. IZAAK WALTON WRITES A LETTER TO HER MOTHER 190

TRUTH 193

THE TRAGEDY OF WASHINGTON SQUARE 195

IF MR. WILSON WERE THE WEATHER MAN 202

SYNTAX FOR CYNICS 205

THE TRUTH AT LAST 209

FIXED IDEAS 211

TRIALS OF A PRESIDENT TRAVELLING ABROAD 215

DIARY OF A PUBLISHER'S OFFICE BOY 217

THE DOG'S COMMANDMENTS 219

THE VALUE OF CRITICISM 221

A MARRIAGE SERVICE FOR COMMUTERS 224

THE SUNNY SIDE OF GRUB STREET 226

BURIAL SERVICE FOR A NEWSPAPER JOKE 236

ADVICE TO THOSE VISITING A BABY 238

ABOU BEN WOODROW 240

MY MAGNIFICENT SYSTEM 242

LETTERS TO CYNTHIA

 1 IN PRAISE OF BOOBS 245

 2 SIMPLIFICATION 250

TO AN UNKNOWN DAMSEL 256

THOUGHTS ON SETTING AN ALARM CLOCK 258

SONGS IN A SHOWER BATH 259

ON DEDICATING A NEW TEAPOT 261

THE UNFORGIVABLE SYNTAX 263

VISITING POETS 264

A GOOD HOME IN THE SUBURBS 270

WALT WHITMAN MINIATURES 272

ON DOORS 292

MINCE PIE

ON FILLING AN INK-WELL

Those who buy their ink in little stone jugs may prefer to do so becausethe pottle reminds them of cruiskeen lawn or ginger beer (with itswire-bound cork), but they miss a noble delight. Ink should be bought inthe tall, blue glass, quart bottle (with the ingenious non-drip spout), and once every three weeks or so, when you fill your ink-well, it isyour privilege to elevate the flask against the brightness of a window, and meditate (with a breath of sadness) on the joys and problems thatsacred fluid holds in solution. 

How blue it shines toward the light! Blue as lupin or larkspur, orcornflower--aye, and even so blue art thou, my scriven, to think how farthe written page falls short of the bright ecstasy of thy dream! In thebottle, what magnificence of unpenned stuff lies cool and liquid: whatfluency of essay, what fonts of song. As the bottle glints, blue as asquill or a hyacinth, blue as the meadows of Elysium or the eyes ofgirls loved by young poets, meseems the racing pen might almost gainupon the thoughts that are turning the bend in the road. A jolly throng, those thoughts: I can see them talking and laughing together. But whenpen reaches the road's turning, the thoughts are gone far ahead: theirdelicate figures are silhouettes against the sky. 

It is a sacramental matter, this filling the ink-well. Is there awriter, however humble, who has not poured into his writing pot, withthe ink, some wistful hopes or prayers for what may emerge from thatdark source? Is there not some particular reverence due the ink-well, some form of propitiation to humbug the powers of evil and constraintthat devil the journalist? Satan hovers near the ink-pot. Luther solvedthe matter by throwing the well itself at the apparition. That savors tome too much of homeopathy. If Satan ever puts his face over my desk, Ishall hurl a volume of Harold Bell Wright at him. 

But what becomes of the ink-pots of glory? The conduit from whichBoswell drew, for Charles Dilly in The Poultry, the great river of hisJohnson? The well (was it of blue china?) whence flowed _Dream Children:a Revery_? (It was written on folio ledger sheets from the East IndiaHouse--I saw the manuscript only yesterday in a room at Daylesford, Pennsylvania, where much of the richest ink of the last two centuries islovingly laid away. ) The pot of chuckling fluid where Harry Fieldingdipped his pen to tell the history of a certain foundling; the ink-wellsof the Café de la Source on the Boul' Mich'--do they by any chanceremember which it was that R. L. S. Used? One of the happiest tremors ofmy life was when I went to that café and called for a bock and writingmaterial, just because R. L. S. Had once written letters there. And theink-well Poe used at that boarding-house in Greenwich Street, New York(April, 1844), when he wrote to his dear Muddy (his mother-in-law) todescribe how he and Virginia had reached a haven of square meals. Thathopeful letter, so perfect now in pathos--

 For breakfast we had excellent-flavored coffee, hot and strong--not very clear and no great deal of cream--veal cutlets, elegant ham and eggs and nice bread and butter. I never sat down to a more plentiful or a nicer breakfast. I wish you could have seen the eggs--and the great dishes of meat. Sis [his wife] is delighted, and we are both in excellent spirits. She has coughed hardly any and had no night sweat. She is now busy mending my pants, which I tore against a nail. I went out last night and bought a skein of silk, a skein of thread, two buttons, a pair of slippers, and a tin pan for the stove. The fire kept in all night. We have now got four dollars and a half left. To-morrow I am going to try and borrow three dollars, so that I may have a fortnight to go upon. I feel in excellent spirits, and haven't drank a drop--so that I hope soon to get out of trouble. 

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Yes, let us clear the typewriter off the table: an ink-well is a sacredthing. 

Do you ever stop to think, when you see the grimy spattered desks of apublic post-office, how many eager or puzzled human hearts have tried, in those dingy little ink-cups, to set themselves right with fortune?What blissful meetings have been appointed, what scribblings of pain andsorrow, out of those founts of common speech. And the ink-wells on hotelcounters--does not the public dipping place of the Bellevue Hotel, Boston, win a new dignity in my memory when I know (as I learned lately)that Rupert Brooke registered there in the spring of 1914? I remember, too, a certain pleasant vibration when, signing my name one day in theBellevue's book, I found Miss Agnes Repplier's autograph a little aboveon the same page. 

Among our younger friends, Vachel Lindsay comes to mind as one who hasdone honor to the ink-well. His _Apology for the Bottle Volcanic_ is inhis best flow of secret smiling (save an unfortunate dilution of Riley):

 Sometimes I dip my pen and find the bottle full of fire, The salamanders flying forth I cannot but admire.... O sad deceiving ink, as bad as liquor in its way-- All demons of a bottle size have pranced from you to-day, And seized my pen for hobby-horse as witches ride a broom, And left a trail of brimstone words and blots and gobs of gloom. And yet when I am extra good ... [_here I omit the transfusion of Riley_] My bottle spreads a rainbow mist, and from the vapor fine Ten thousand troops from fairyland come riding in a line. 

I suppose it is the mark of a trifling mind, yet I like to hear of thelittle particulars that surrounded those whose pens struck sparks. Itis Boswell that leads us into that habit of thought. I like to know whatthe author wore, how he sat, what the furniture of his desk and chamber, who cooked his meals for him, and with what appetite he approached them. "The mind soars by an effort to the grand and lofty" (so dipped Hazlittin some favored ink-bottle)--"it is at home in the groveling, thedisagreeable, and the little. "

I like to think, as I look along book shelves, that every one of thesefavorites was born out of an ink-well. I imagine the hopes and visionsthat thronged the author's mind as he filled his pot and sliced thequill. What various fruits have flowed from those ink-wells of the past:for some, comfort and honor, quiet homes and plenteousness; for others, bitterness and disappointment. I have seen a copy of Poe's poems, published in 1845 by Putnam, inscribed by the author. The volume hadbeen bought for $2, 500. Think what that would have meant to Poe himself. 

Some such thoughts as these twinkled in my head as I held up the Pierianbottle against the light, admired the deep blue of it, and filled myink-well. And then I took up my pen, which wrote:

A GRACE BEFORE WRITING

On Filling an Ink-well

 This is a sacrament, I think! Holding the bottle toward the light, As blue as lupin gleams the ink: May Truth be with me as I write!

 That small dark cistern may afford Reunion with some vanished friend, -- And with this ink I have just poured May none but honest words be penned!

OLD THOUGHTS FOR CHRISTMAS

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A new thought for Christmas? Who ever wanted a new thought forChristmas? That man should be shot who would try to brain one. It is animpertinence even to write about Christmas. Christmas is a matter thathumanity has taken so deeply to heart that we will not have our festivalmeddled with by bungling hands. No efficiency expert would dare tell usthat Christmas is inefficient; that the clockwork toys will soon bebroken; that no one can eat a peppermint cane a yard long; that thecurves on our chart of kindness should be ironed out so that the "peakload" of December would be evenly distributed through the year. Nosourface dare tell us that we drive postmen and shopgirls intoBolshevism by overtaxing them with our frenzied purchasing or that it isabsurd to send to a friend in a steam-heated apartment in a prohibitionrepublic a bright little picture card of a gentleman in Georgian costumedrinking ale by a roaring fire of logs. None in his senses, I say, wouldemit such sophistries, for Christmas is a law unto itself and is notconducted by card-index. Even the postmen and shopgirls, severe thoughtheir labors, would not have matters altered. There is none of us who doesnot enjoy hardship and bustle that contribute to the happiness ofothers. 

There is an efficiency of the heart that transcends and contradicts thatof the head. Things of the spirit differ from things material in thatthe more you give the more you have. The comedian has an immenselybetter time than the audience. To modernize the adage, to give is morefun than to receive. Especially if you have wit enough to give to thosewho don't expect it. Surprise is the most primitive joy of humanity. Surprise is the first reason for a baby's laughter. And at Christmastime, when we are all a little childish I hope, surprise is the flavorof our keenest joys. We all remember the thrill with which we onceheard, behind some closed door, the rustle and crackle of paper parcelsbeing tied up. We knew that we were going to be surprised--a deliciousrefinement and luxuriant seasoning of the emotion!

Christmas, then, conforms to this deeper efficiency of the heart. We arenot methodical in kindness; we do not "fill orders" for consignments ofaffection. We let our kindness ramble and explore; old forgottenfriendships pop up in our minds and we mail a card to Harry Hunt, ofMinneapolis (from whom we have not heard for half a dozen years), "justto surprise him. " A business man who shipped a carload of goods to acustomer, just to surprise him, would soon perish of abuse. But no oneever refuses a shipment of kindness, because no one ever feelsoverstocked with it. It is coin of the realm, current everywhere. And wedo not try to measure our kindnesses to the capacity of our friends. Friendship is not measurable in calories. How many times this year haveyou "turned" your stock of kindness?

It is the gradual approach to the Great Surprise that lends full savorto the experience. It has been thought by some that Christmas would gainin excitement if no one knew when it was to be; if (keeping the festivalwithin the winter months) some public functionary (say, Mr. Burleson)were to announce some unexpected morning, "A week from to-day will beChristmas!" Then what a scurrying and joyful frenzy--what a festooningof shops and mad purchasing of presents! But it would not be half thefun of the slow approach of the familiar date. All through November andDecember we watch it drawing nearer; we see the shop windows begin toglow with red and green and lively colors; we note the altered demeanorof bellboys and janitors as the Date flows quietly toward us; we passthrough the haggard perplexity of "Only Four Days More" when we suddenlyrealize it is too late to make our shopping the display of lucidaffectionate reasoning we had contemplated, and clutch wildly atgrotesque tokens--and then (sweetest of all) comes the quiet calmness ofChristmas Eve. Then, while we decorate the tree or carry parcels oftissue paper and red ribbon to a carefully prepared list of aunts andgodmothers, or reckon up a little pile of bright quarters on thedining-room table in preparation for to-morrow's largesse--then it isthat the brief, poignant and precious sweetness of the experience claimsus at the full. Then we can see that all our careful wisdom andshrewdness were folly and stupidity; and we can understand the meaningof that Great Surprise--that where we planned wealth we found ourselvespoor; that where we thought to be impoverished we were enriched. Theworld is built upon a lovely plan if we take time to study theblue-prints of the heart. 

Humanity must be forgiven much for having invented Christmas. What doesit matter that a great poet and philosopher urges "the abandonment ofthe masculine pronoun in allusions to the First or Fundamental Energy"?Theology is not saddled upon pronouns; the best doctrine is but threewords, God is Love. Love, or kindness, is fundamental energy enough tosatisfy any brooder. And Christmas Day means the birth of a child; thatis to say, the triumph of life and hope over suffering. 

Just for a few hours on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day the stupid, harsh mechanism of the world runs down and we permit ourselves to liveaccording to untrammeled common sense, the unconquerable efficiency ofgood will. We grant ourselves the complete and selfish pleasure ofloving others better than ourselves. How odd it seems, how unnaturallyhappy we are! We feel there must be some mistake, and rather yearn forthe familiar frictions and distresses. Just for a few hours we "purgeout of every heart the lurking grudge. " We know then that hatred is aform of illness; that suspicion and pride are only fear; that therascally acts of others are perhaps, in the queer webwork of humanrelations, due to some calousness of our own. Who knows? Some man mayhave robbed a bank in Nashville or fired a gun in Louvain because welooked so intolerably smug in Philadelphia!

So at Christmas we tap that vast reservoir of wisdom and strength--callit efficiency or the fundamental energy if you will--Kindness. And ourkindness, thank heaven, is not the placid kindness of angels; it isveined with human blood; it is full of absurdities, irritations, frustrations. A man 100 per cent. Kind would be intolerable. As a wiseteacher said, the milk of human kindness easily curdles into cheese. Welike our friends' affections because we know the tincture of mortal acidis in them. We remember the satirist who remarked that to love one'sself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. We know this lifelongromance will resume its sway; we shall lose our tempers, be obstinate, peevish and crank. We shall fidget and fume while waiting our turn inthe barber's chair; we shall argue and muddle and mope. And yet, for afew hours, what a happy vision that was! And we turn, on Christmas Eve, to pages which those who speak our tongue immortally associate with theseason--the pages of Charles Dickens. Love of humanity endures as longas the thing it loves, and those pages are packed as full of it as apound cake is full of fruit. A pound cake will keep moist three years; asponge cake is dry in three days. 

And now humanity has its most beautiful and most appropriate Christmasgift--Peace. The Magi of Versailles and Washington having unwound for usthe tissue paper and red ribbon (or red tape) from this greatest of allgifts, let us in days to come measure up to what has been born throughsuch anguish and horror. If war is illness and peace is health, let usremember also that health is not merely a blessing to be received intactonce and for all. It is not a substance but a condition, to bemaintained only by sound régime, self-discipline and simplicity. Let theWise Men not be too wise; let them remember those other Wise Men who, after their long journey and their sage surmisings, found only a Child. On this evening it serves us nothing to pile up filing cases and rolltopdesks toward the stars, for in our city square the Star itself hasfallen, and shines upon the Tree. 

CHRISTMAS CARDS

By a stroke of good luck we found a little shop where a large overstockof Christmas cards was selling at two for five. The original 5's and10's were still penciled on them, and while we were debating whether torub them off a thought occurred to us. When will artists and printersdesign us some Christmas cards that will be honest and appropriate tothe time we live in? Never was the Day of Peace and Good Will so full ofmeaning as this year; and never did the little cards, charming as theywere, seem so formal, so merely pretty, so devoid of imagination, soinadequate to the festival. 

This is an age of strange and stirring beauty, of extraordinary romanceand adventure, of new joys and pains. And yet our Christmas artists havenothing more to offer us than the old formalism of Yuletide convention. After a considerable amount of searching in the bazaars we have foundnot one Christmas card that showed even a glimmering of the trueromance, which is to see the beauty or wonder or peril that lies aroundus. Most of the cards hark back to the stage-coach up to its hubs insnow, or the blue bird, with which Maeterlinck penalized us (what has ablue bird got to do with Christmas?), or the open fireplace and jug ofmulled claret. Now these things are merry enough in their way, or theywere once upon a time; but we plead for an honest romanticism inChristmas cards that will express something of the entrancing color andcircumstance that surround us to-day. Is not a commuter's train, stalledin a drift, far more lively to our hearts than the mythical stage-coach?Or an inter-urban trolley winging its way through the dusk like a casketof golden light? Or even a country flivver, loaded down with parcels andholly and the Yuletide keg of root beer? Root beer may be but meagerflaggonage compared to mulled claret, but at any rate 'tis honest, 'tisactual, 'tis tangible and potable. And where, among all the Christmascards, is the airplane, that most marvelous and heart-seizing of all ourtriumphs? Where is the stately apartment house, looming like Gibraltaragainst a sunset sky? Must we, even at Christmas time, fool ourselveswith a picturesqueness that is gone, seeing nothing of what is aroundus?

It is said that man's material achievements have outrun his imagination;that poets and painters are too puny to grapple with the world as itis. Certainly a visitor from another sphere, looking on our fantasticand exciting civilization, would find little reflection of it in theChristmas card. He would find us clinging desperately to what we havebeen taught to believe was picturesque and jolly, and afraid to assertthat the things of to-day are comely too. Even on the basis ofdiscomfort (an acknowledged criterion of picturesqueness) surely atrolley car jammed with parcel-laden passengers is just as satisfying aspectacle as any stage coach? Surely the steam radiator, if not solovely as a flame-gilded hearth, is more real to most of us? And insteadof the customary picture of shivering subjects of George III held up bya highwayman on Hampstead Heath, why not a deftly delineated sketch ofvictims in a steam-heated lobby submitting to the plunder of thehat-check bandit? Come, let us be honest! The romance of to-day is asgood as any!

Many must have felt this same uneasiness in trying to find Christmascards that would really say something of what is in their hearts. Thesentiment behind the card is as lovely and as true as ever, but thecards themselves are outmoded bottles for the new wine. It seems a cruelthing to say, but we are impatient with the mottoes and pictures we seein the shops because they are a conventional echo of a beauty that ispast. What could be more absurd than to send to a friend in a cityapartment a rhyme such as this:

 As round the Christmas fire you sit And hear the bells with frosty chime, Think, friendship that long love has knit Grows sweeter still at Christmas time!

If that is sent to the janitor or the elevator boy we have no cavil, forthese gentlemen do actually see a fire and hear bells ring; but theapartment tenant hears naught but the hissing of the steam in theradiator, and counts himself lucky to hear that. Why not be honest andsay to him:

 I hope the janitor has shipped You steam, to keep the cold away; And if the hallboys have been tipped, Then joy be thine on Christmas Day!

We had not meant to introduce this jocular note into our meditation, forwe are honestly aggrieved that so many of the Christmas cards hark backto an old tradition that is gone, and never attempt to express any ofthe romance of to-day. You may protest that Christmas is the oldestthing in the world, which is true; yet it is also new every year, andnever newer than now. 

ON UNANSWERING LETTERS

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There are a great many people who really believe in answering lettersthe day they are received, just as there are people who go to the moviesat 9 o'clock in the morning; but these people are stunted and queer. 

It is a great mistake. Such crass and breathless promptness takes away agreat deal of the pleasure of correspondence. 

The psychological didoes involved in receiving letters and making upone's mind to answer them are very complex. If the tangled process couldbe clearly analyzed and its component involutions isolated forinspection we might reach a clearer comprehension of that curious bag oftricks, the efficient Masculine Mind. 

Take Bill F. , for instance, a man so delightful that even tocontemplate his existence puts us in good humor and makes us think wellof a world that can exhibit an individual equally comely in mind, bodyand estate. Every now and then we get a letter from Bill, andimmediately we pass into a kind of trance, in which our mind rapidlyenunciates the ideas, thoughts, surmises and contradictions that wewould like to write to him in reply. We think what fun it would be tosit right down and churn the ink-well, spreading speculation andcynicism over a number of sheets of foolscap to be wafted Billward. 

Sternly we repress the impulse for we know that the shock to Bill ofgetting so immediate a retort would surely unhinge the well-fittedpanels of his intellect. 

We add his letter to the large delta of unanswered mail on our desk, taking occasion to turn the mass over once or twice and run through itin a brisk, smiling mood, thinking of all the jolly letters we shallwrite some day. 

After Bill's letter has lain on the pile for a fortnight or so it hasbeen gently silted over by about twenty other pleasantly postponedmanuscripts. Coming upon it by chance, we reflect that any specificproblems raised by Bill in that manifesto will by this time have settledthemselves. And his random speculations upon household management andhuman destiny will probably have taken a new slant by now, so that toanswer his letter in its own tune will not be congruent with his presentfevers. We had better bide a wee until we really have something ofcircumstance to impart. 

We wait a week. 

By this time a certain sense of shame has begun to invade the privacy ofour brain. We feel that to answer that letter now would be anindelicacy. Better to pretend that we never got it. By and by Bill willwrite again and then we will answer promptly. We put the letter back inthe middle of the heap and think what a fine chap Bill is. But he knowswe love him, so it doesn't really matter whether we write or not. 

Another week passes by, and no further communication from Bill. Wewonder whether he does love us as much as we thought. Still--we are tooproud to write and ask. 

A few days later a new thought strikes us. Perhaps Bill thinks we havedied and he is annoyed because he wasn't invited to the funeral. Oughtwe to wire him? No, because after all we are not dead, and even if hethinks we are, his subsequent relief at hearing the good news of oursurvival will outweigh his bitterness during the interval. One of thesedays we will write him a letter that will really express our heart, filled with all the grindings and gear-work of our mind, rich inaffection and fallacy. But we had better let it ripen and mellow for awhile. Letters, like wines, accumulate bright fumes and bubblings ifkept under cork. 

Presently we turn over that pile of letters again. We find in the leesof the heap two or three that have gone for six months and can safely bedestroyed. Bill is still on our mind, but in a pleasant, dreamy kind ofway. He does not ache or twinge us as he did a month ago. It is fine tohave old friends like that and keep in touch with them. We wonder how heis and whether he has two children or three. Splendid old Bill!

By this time we have written Bill several letters in imagination andenjoyed doing so, but the matter of sending him an actual letter hasbegun to pall. The thought no longer has the savor and vivid sparkle ithad once. When one feels like that it is unwise to write. Letters shouldbe spontaneous outpourings: they should never be undertaken merely froma sense of duty. We know that Bill wouldn't want to get a letter thatwas dictated by a feeling of obligation. 

Another fortnight or so elapsing, it occurs to us that we have entirelyforgotten what Bill said to us in that letter. We take it out and con itover. Delightful fellow! It is full of his own felicitous kinks of whim, though some of it sounds a little old-fashioned by now. It seems a bitstale, has lost some of its freshness and surprise. Better not answer itjust yet, for Christmas will soon be here and we shall have to writethen anyway. We wonder, can Bill hold out until Christmas without aletter?

We have been rereading some of those imaginary letters to Bill that havebeen dancing in our head. They are full of all sorts of fine stuff. IfBill ever gets them he will know how we love him. To use O. Henry'simmortal joke, we have days of Damon and Knights of Pythias writingthose uninked letters to Bill. A curious thought has come to us. Perhapsit would be better if we never saw Bill again. It is very difficult totalk to a man when you like him so much. It is much easier to write inthe sweet fantastic strain. We are so inarticulate when face to face. IfBill comes to town we will leave word that we have gone away. Good oldBill! He will always be a precious memory. 

A few days later a sudden frenzy sweeps over us, and though we have manypressing matters on hand, we mobilize pen and paper and literary shocktroops and prepare to hurl several battalions at Bill. But, strangelyenough, our utterance seems stilted and stiff. We have nothing to say. _My dear Bill_, we begin, _it seems a long time since we heard from you. Why don't you write? We still love you, in spite of all yourshortcomings_. 

That doesn't seem very cordial. We muse over the pen and nothing comes. Bursting with affection, we are unable to say a word. 

Just then the phone rings. "Hello?" we say. 

It is Bill, come to town unexpectedly. 

"Good old fish!" we cry, ecstatic. "Meet you at the corner of Tenth andChestnut in five minutes. "

We tear up the unfinished letter. Bill will never know how much we lovehim. Perhaps it is just as well. It is very embarrassing to have yourfriends know how you feel about them. When we meet him we will be alittle bit on our guard. It would not be well to be betrayed into anyextravagance of cordiality. 

And perhaps a not altogether false little story could be written about aman who never visited those most dear to him, because it panged him soto say good-bye when he had to leave. 

A LETTER TO FATHER TIME

(NEW YEAR'S EVE)

Dear Father Time--This is your night of triumph, and it seems only fairto pay you a little tribute. Some people, in a noble mood of bravado, consider New Year's Eve an occasion of festivity. Long, long in advancethey reserve a table at their favorite café; and becomingly habited inboiled shirts or gowns of the lowest visibility, and well armed with acommodity which is said to be synonymous with yourself--money--they seekto outwit you by crowding a month of merriment into half a dozen hours. Yet their victory is brief and fallacious, for if hours spin too fast bynight they will move grindingly on the axle the next morning. None of uscan beat you in the end. Even the hat-check boy grows old, becomes grayand dies at last babbling of greenbacks. 

To my own taste, old Time, it is more agreeable to make this evening aseason of gruesome brooding. Morosely I survey the faults and folliesof my last year. I am grown too canny to pour the new wine of goodresolution into the old bottles of my imperfect humors. But I get acertain grim satisfaction in thinking how we all--every human being ofus--share alike in bondage to your oppression. There is the only trueand complete democracy, the only absolute brotherhood of man. The greatones of the earth--Charley Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, GeneralPershing and Miss Amy Lowell--all these are in service to the sametyranny. Day after day slips or jolts past, joins the Great Majority;suddenly we wake with a start to find that the best of it is gone by. Surely it seems but a day ago that Stevenson set out to write a littlebook that was to be called "Life at Twenty-five"--before he got itwritten he was long past the delectable age--and now we rub our eyes andsee he has been dead longer than the span of life he then sodelightfully contemplated. If there is one meditation common to everyadult on this globe it is this, so variously phrased, "Well, bo, Timesure does hustle. "

Some of them have scurvily entreated you, old Time! The thief of youth, they have called you; a highwayman, a gipsy, a grim reaper. It seems alittle unfair. For you have your kindly moods, too. Without your gentlepassage where were Memory, the sweetest of lesser pleasures? You arethe only medicine for many a woe, many a sore heart. And surely you havea right to reap where you alone have sown? Our strength, our wit, ourcomeliness, all those virtues and graces that you pilfer with suchgentle hand, did you not give them to us in the first place? Give, do Isay? Nay, we knew, even as we clutched them, they were but a loan. Andthe great immortality of the race endures, for every day that we seetaken away from ourselves we see added to our children or ourgrandchildren. It was Shakespeare, who thought a great deal about you, who put it best:

 Nativity, once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned, Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight And Time that gave doth now his gift confound--

It is to be hoped, my dear Time, that you have read Shakespeare'ssonnets, because they will teach you a deal about the dignity of yourcareer, and also suggest to you the only way we have of keeping up withyou. There is no way of outwitting Time, Shakespeare tells his youngfriend, "Save breed to brave him when he takes thee hence. " Or, as apoor bungling parodist revamped it:

 Pep is the stuff to put Old Time on skids-- Pep in your copy, yes, and lots of kids. 

It is true that Shakespeare hints another way of doing you in, which isto write sonnets as good as his. This way, needless to add, is open tofew. 

Well, my dear Time, you are not going to fool me into making myselfridiculous this New Year's Eve with a lot of bonny but impossibleresolutions. I know that you are playing with me just as a cat playswith a mouse; yet even the most piteous mousekin sometimes causes histormentor surprise or disappointment by getting under a bureau or behindthe stove, where, for the moment, she cannot paw him. Every now andthen, with a little luck, I shall pull off just such a scurry intotemporary immortality. It may come by reading Dickens or by seeing asunset, or by lunching with friends, or by forgetting to wind the alarmclock, or by contemplating the rosy little pate of my daughter, who isstill only a nine days' wonder--so young that she doesn't even know whatyou are doing to her. But you are not going to have the laugh on me byluring me into resolutions. I know my weaknesses. I know that I shallprobably continue to annoy newsdealers by reading the magazines on thestalls instead of buying them; that I shall put off having my hair cut;drop tobacco cinders on my waistcoat; feel bored at the idea of havingto shave and get dressed; be nervous when the gas burner pops whenturned off; buy more Liberty Bonds than I can afford and have to hockthem at a grievous loss. I shall continue to be pleasant to insuranceagents, from sheer lack of manhood; and to keep library books out overthe date and so incur a fine. My only hope, you see, is resolutely todetermine to persist in these failings. Then, by sheer perversity, I maygrow out of them. 

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What avail, indeed, for any of us to make good resolutions when onecontemplates the grand pageant of human frailty? Observe what I noticedthe other day in the Lost and Found column of the New York _Times_:

 LOST--Hotel Imperial lavatory, set of teeth. Call or communicate Flint, 134 East 43d street. Reward. 

Surely, if Mr. Flint could not remember to keep his teeth in his mouth, or if any one else was so basely whimsical as to juggle them away fromhim, it may well teach us to be chary of extravagant hopes for thefuture. Even the League of Nations, when one contemplates the sad caseof Mr. Flint, becomes a rather anemic safeguard. We had better keep Mr. Flint in mind through the New Year as a symbol of human error anddisappointment. And the best of it is, my dear Time, that you, too, maybe a little careless. Perhaps one of these days you may doze a littleand we shall steal a few hours of timeless bliss. Shall we see a littlead in the papers:

 LOST--Sixty valuable minutes, said to have been stolen by the unworthy human race. If found, please return to Father Time, and no questions asked. 

Well, my dear Time, we approach the Zero Hour. I hope you will have aHappy New Year, and conduct yourself with becoming restraint. So live, my dear fellow, that we may say, "A good Time was enjoyed by all. " Asthe hands of the clock go over the top and into the No Man's Land ofthe New Year, good luck to you!

Your obedient servant!

WHAT MEN LIVE BY

What a delicate and rare and gracious art is the art of conversation!With what a dexterity and skill the bubble of speech must be maneuveredif mind is to meet and mingle with mind. 

There is no sadder disappointment than to realize that a conversationhas been a complete failure. By which we mean that it has failed inblending or isolating for contrast the ideas, opinions and surmises oftwo eager minds. So often a conversation is shipwrecked by the veryeagerness of one member to contribute. There must be give and take, parry and thrust, patience to hear and judgment to utter. How uneasy isthe qualm as one looks back on an hour's talk and sees that theopportunity was wasted; the precious instant of intercourse goneforever: the secrets of the heart still incommunicate! Perhaps we weretoo anxious to hurry the moment, to enforce our own theory, to adduceinstance from our own experience. Perhaps we were not patient enough towait until our friend could express himself with ease and happiness. Perhaps we squandered the dialogue in tangent topics, in a multitude ofirrelevances. 

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How few, how few are those gifted for real talk! There are fine merryfellows, full of mirth and shrewdly minted observation, who will notabide by one topic, who must always be lashing out upon some new byroad, snatching at every bush they pass. They are too excitable, tooungoverned for the joys of patient intercourse. Talk is so solemn a riteit should be approached with prayer and must be conducted with nicetyand forbearance. What steadiness and sympathy are needed if the threadof thought is to be unwound without tangles or snapping! Whatforbearance, while each of the pair, after tentative gropings here andyonder, feels his way toward truth as he sees it. So often two in talkare like men standing back to back, each trying to describe to the otherwhat he sees and disputing because their visions do not tally. It takesa little time for minds to turn face to face. 

Very often conversations are better among three than between two, forthe reason that then one of the trio is always, unconsciously, acting asumpire, interposing fair play, recalling wandering wits to the nub ofthe argument, seeing that the aggressiveness of one does no foul to thereticence of another. Talk in twos may, alas! fall into speaker andlistener: talk in threes rarely does so. 

It is little realized how slowly, how painfully, we approach theexpression of truth. We are so variable, so anxious to be polite, andalternately swayed by caution or anger. Our mind oscillates like apendulum: it takes some time for it to come to rest. And then, theproper allowance and correction has to be made for our individualvibrations that prevent accuracy. Even the compass needle doesn't pointthe true north, but only the magnetic north. Similarly our minds at bestcan but indicate magnetic truth, and are distorted by many things thatact as iron filings do on the compass. The necessity of holding one'sjob: what an iron filing that is on the compass card of a man's brain!

We are all afraid of truth: we keep a battalion of our pet prejudicesand precautions ready to throw into the argument as shock troops, rather than let our fortress of Truth be stormed. We have smoke bombsand decoy ships and all manner of cunning colorizations by which weconceal our innards from our friends, and even from ourselves. How wefume and fidget, how we bustle and dodge rather than commit ourselves. 

In days of hurry and complication, in the incessant pressure of humanproblems that thrust our days behind us, does one never dream of a wayof life in which talk would be honored and exalted to its proper placein the sun? What a zest there is in that intimate unreserved exchange ofthought, in the pursuit of the magical blue bird of joy and humansatisfaction that may be seen flitting distantly through the branches oflife. It was a sad thing for the world when it grew so busy that men hadno time to talk. There are such treasures of knowledge and compassion inthe minds of our friends, could we only have time to talk them out oftheir shy quarries. If we had our way, we would set aside one day a weekfor talking. In fact, we would reorganize the week altogether. We wouldhave one day for Worship (let each man devote it to worship of whateverhe holds dearest); one day for Work; one day for Play (probablyfishing); one day for Talking; one day for Reading, and one day forSmoking and Thinking. That would leave one day for Resting, and(incidentally) interviewing employers. 

The best week of our life was one in which we did nothing but talk. Wespent it with a delightful gentleman who has a little bungalow on theshore of a lake in Pike County. He had a great many books and cigars, both of which are conversational stimulants. We used to lie out on theedge of the lake, in our oldest trousers, and talk. We discussed ever somany subjects; in all of them he knew immensely more than we did. Webuilt up a complete philosophy of indolence and good will, according toFood and Sleep and Swimming their proper share of homage. We rose at 10in the morning and began talking; we talked all day and until 3 o'clockat night. Then we went to bed and regained strength and combativenessfor the coming day. Never was a week better spent. We committed nocrimes, planned no secret treaties, devised no annexations orindemnities. We envied no one. We examined the entire world and found itworth while. Meanwhile our wives, who were watching (perhaps with alittle quiet indignation) from the veranda, kept on asking us, "What onearth do you talk about?"

Bless their hearts, men don't have to have anything to talk _about_. They just talk. 

And there is only one rule for being a good talker: learn how to listen. 

THE UNNATURAL NATURALIST

It gives us a great deal of pleasure to announce, officially, thatspring has arrived. 

Our statement is not based on any irrelevant data as to equinoxes orbluebirds or bock-beer signs, but is derived from the deepest authoritywe know anything about, our subconscious self. We remember that somephilosopher, perhaps it was Professor James, suggested that individualsare simply peaks of self-consciousness rising out of the vast ocean ofcollective human Mind in which we all swim, and are, at bottom, one. Whenever we have to decide any important matter, such as when to get ourhair cut and whether to pay a bill or not, and whether to call for thecheck or let the other fellow do so, we don't attempt to harass ourconscious volition with these decisions. We rely on our subconscious andinstinctive person, and for better or worse we have to trust to itsrighteousness and good sense. We just find ourself doing something andwe carry on and hope it is for the best. 

From this deep abyss of subconsciousness we learn that it is spring. The mottled goosebone of the Allentown prophet is no moremeteorologically accurate than our subconscience. And this is how itworks. 

Once a year, about the approach of the vernal equinox or the seedsman'scatalogue, we wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning. This is an immediatewarning and apprisement that something is adrift. Three hundred andsixty-four days in the year we wake, placidly enough, at seven-ten, tenminutes after the alarm clock has jangled. But on this particular day, whether it be the end of February or the middle of March, we wake withthe old recognizable nostalgia. It is the last polyp or vestige of ouranthropomorphic and primal self, trailing its pathetic little wisp ofglory for the one day of the whole calendar. All the rest of the year weare the plodding percheron of commerce, patiently tugging our wain; buton that morning there wambles back, for the nonce, the pang of Eden. Wewake at 6 o'clock; it is a blue and golden morning and we feel itimperative to get outdoors as quickly as possible. Not for an instant dowe feel the customary respectable and sanctioned desire to kiss thesheets yet an hour or so. The traipsing, trolloping humor of spring isin our veins; we feel that we must be about felling an aurochs or anarwhal for breakfast. We leap into our clothes and hurry downstairs andout of the front door and skirmish round the house to see and smell andfeel. 

It is spring. It is unmistakably spring, because the pewit bushes arebudding and on yonder aspen we can hear a forsythia bursting into song. It is spring, when the feet of the floorwalker pain him and smoking-carwindows have to be pried open with chisels. We skip lightheartedly roundthe house to see if those bobolink bulbs we planted are showing anysigns yet, and discover the whisk brush that fell out of the window lastNovember. And then the newsboy comes along the street and sees usprancing about and we feel sheepish and ashamed and hurry indoors again. 

There may still be blizzards and frozen plumbings and tumbles on icypavements, but when that morning of annunciation has come to us we knowthat winter is truly dead, even though his ghost may walk and gibberonce or twice. The sweet urge of the new season has rippled up throughthe oceanic depths of our subconsciousness, and we are aware of therising tide. Like Mr. Wordsworth we feel that we are wiser than we know. (Perhaps we have misquoted that, but let it stand. )

There are other troubles that spring brings us. We are pitifullyashamed of our ignorance Of nature, and though we try to hide it we keepgetting tripped up. About this time of year inquisitive persons arealways asking us: "Have you heard any song sparrows yet?" or "Are thereany robins out your way?" or "When do the laburnums begin to nest out inMarathon?" Now we really can't tell these people our true feeling, whichis that we do not believe in peeking in on the privacy of the laburnumsor any other songsters. It seems to us really immodest to keep on spyingon the birds in that way. And as for the bushes and trees, what we wantto know is, How does one ever get to know them? How do you find outwhich is an alder and what is an elm? Or a narcissus and a hyacinth, does any one really know them apart? We think it's all a bluff. Andjonquils. There was a nest of them on our porch, we are told, but wedidn't think it any business of ours to bother them. Let nature aloneand she'll let you alone. 

[Illustration]

But there is a pettifogging cult about that says you ought to know thesethings; moreover, children keep on asking one. We always answer atrandom and say it's a wagtail or a flowering shrike or a femalemagnolia. We were brought up in the country and learned that firstprinciple of good manners, which is to let birds and flowers and animalsgo on about their own affairs without pestering them by asking themtheir names and addresses. Surely that's what Shakespeare meant bysaying a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. We can enjoy a rosejust as much as any one, even if we may think it's a hydrangea. 

And then we are much too busy to worry about robins and bluebirds andother poultry of that sort. Of course, if we see one hanging about thelawn and it looks hungry we have decency enough to throw out a bone orsomething for it, but after all we have a lot of troubles of our own tobother about. We are short-sighted, too, and if we try to get nearenough to see if it is a robin or only a bandanna some one has dropped, why either it flies away before we get there or it does turn out to be abandanna or a clothespin. One of our friends kept on talking about aBaltimore oriole she had seen near our house, and described it as abeautiful yellowish fowl. We felt quite ashamed to be so ignorant, andwhen one day we thought we saw one near the front porch we left what wewere doing, which was writing a check for the coal man, and went out tostalk it. After much maneuvering we got near, made a dash--and it was abanana peel! The oriole had gone back to Baltimore the day before. 

We love to read about the birds and flowers and shrubs and insects inpoetry, and it makes us very happy to know they are all round us, innocent little things like mice and centipedes and goldenrods (untilhay fever time), but as for prying into their affairs we simply won't doit. 

SITTING IN THE BARBER'S CHAIR

Once every ten weeks or so we get our hair cut. 

We are not generally parsimonious of our employer's time, but somehow wedo hate to squander that thirty-three minutes, which is the exactchronicide involved in despoiling our skull of a ten weeks' garner. Ifwe were to have our hair cut at the end of eight weeks the shearingwould take only thirty-one minutes; but we can never bring ourselves torob our employer of that much time until we reckon he is really losingprestige by our unkempt appearance. Of course, we believe in having ourhair cut during office hours. That is the only device we know to makethe hateful operation tolerable. 

To the times mentioned above should be added fifteen seconds, which isthe slice of eternity needed to trim, prune and chasten our mustache, which is not a large group of foliage. 

We knew a traveling man who never got his hair cut except when he was onthe road, which permitted him to include the transaction in his expenseaccount; but somehow it seems to us more ethical to steal time than tosteal money. 

We like to view this whole matter in a philosophical and ultra-pragmaticway. Some observers have hazarded that our postponement of haircuts isdue to mere lethargy and inertia, but that is not so. Every time we getour locks shorn our wife tells us that we have got them too short. Shesays that our head has a very homely and bourgeois bullet shape, a sortof pithecanthropoid contour, which is revealed by a close trim. Afterfive weeks' growth, however, we begin to look quite distinguished. Thedifficulty then is to ascertain just when the law of diminishing returnscomes into play. When do we cease to look distinguished and begin toappear merely slovenly? Careful study has taught us that this begins totake place at the end of sixty-five days, in warm weather. Add five daysor so for natural procrastination and devilment, and we have seventydays interval, which we have posited as the ideal orbit for ourtonsorial ecstasies. 

When at last we have hounded ourself into robbing our employer of thosethirty-three minutes, plus fifteen seconds for you know what, we findourself in the barber's chair. Despairingly we gaze about at the littleblue flasks with flowers enameled on them; at the piles of cleantowels; at the bottles of mandrake essence which we shall presentlyhave to affirm or deny. Under any other circumstances we should deeplyenjoy a half hour spent in a comfortable chair, with nothing to do butdo nothing. Our barber is a delightful fellow; he looks benign and doesnot prattle; he respects the lobes of our ears and other vulnerabilia. But for some inscrutable reason we feel strangely ill at ease in hischair. We can't think of anything to think about. Blankly we brood inthe hope of catching the hem of some intimation of immortality. But no, there is nothing to do but sit there, useless as an incubator with noeggs in it. The processes of wasting and decay are hurrying us rapidlyto a pauperish grave, every instant brings us closer to a notice in theobit column, and yet we sit and sit without two worthy thoughts to rubagainst each other. 

Oh, the poverty of mortal mind, the sad meagerness of the human soul!Here we are, a vital, breathing entity, transformed to a mere chemicalcarcass by the bleak magic of the barber's chair. In our anatomy ofmelancholy there are no such atrabiliar moments as those thirty-three(and a quarter) minutes once every ten weeks. Roughly speaking, we spendthree hours of this living death every year. 

And yet, perhaps it is worth it, for what a jocund and pantheisticmerriment possesses us when we escape from the shop! Bay-rummed, powdered, shorn, brisk and perfumed, we fare down the street exhalingthe syrups of Cathay. Once more we can take our rightful place amongaggressive and well-groomed men; we can look in the face withoutblenching those human leviathans who are ever creased, razored, andwhite-margined as to vest. We are a man among men and our untetheredmind jostles the stars. We have had our hair cut, and no matter whatgross contours our cropped skull may display to wives or ethnologists, we are a free man for ten dear weeks. 

BROWN EYES AND EQUINOXES

"What is an equinox?" said Titania. 

I pretended not to hear her and prayed fervently that the inquiry wouldpass from her mind. Sometimes her questions, if ignored, are effaced bysome other thought that possesses her active brain. I rattled my paperbriskly and kept well behind it. 

"Yes, " I murmured husbandly, "delicious, delicious! My dear, youcertainly plan the most delightful meals. " Meanwhile I was glancingfeverishly at the daily Quiz column to see if that noble cascade ofpopular information might give any help. It did not. 

Clear brown eyes looked across the table gravely. I could feel themthrough the spring overcoat ads. 

"What is an equinox?"

"I think I must have left my matches upstairs, " I said, and went up tolook for them. I stayed aloft ten minutes and hoped that by that timeshe would have passed on to some other topic. I did not waste my time, however; I looked everywhere for the "Children's Book of a MillionReasons, " until I remembered it was under the dining-room table takingthe place of a missing caster. 

When I slunk into the living room again I hastily suggested a game ofdouble Canfield, but Titania's brow was still perplexed. Looking acrossat me with that direct brown gaze that would compel even a milliner torelent, she asked:

"What is an equinox?"

I tried to pass it off flippantly. 

"A kind of alarm clock, " I said, "that lets the bulbs and bushes knowit's time to get up. "

"No; but honestly, Bob, " she said, "I want to know. It's something aboutan equal day and an equal night, isn't it?"

"At the equinox, " I said sternly, hoping to overawe her, "the day andthe night are of equal duration. But only for one night. On thefollowing day the sun, declining in perihelion, produces the customaryinequality. The usual working day is much longer than the night ofrelaxation that follows it, as every toiler knows. "

"Yes, " she said thoughtfully, "but how does it work? It says somethingin this article about the days getting longer in the NorthernHemisphere, while they are getting shorter in the Southern. "

"Of course, " I agreed, "conditions are totally different south of Masonand Dixon's line. But as far as we are concerned here, the sun, revolving round the earth, casts a beneficent shadow, which is generallyregarded as the time to quit work. This shadow--"

"I thought the earth revolved round the sun, " she said. "Wasn't thatwhat Galileo proved?"

"He was afterward discovered to be mistaken, " I said. "That was whatcaused all the trouble. "

"What trouble?" she asked, much interested. 

"Why, he and Socrates had to take hemlock or they were drowned in a buttof malmsey, I really forget which. "

"Well, after the equinox, " said Titania, "do the days get longer?"

"They do, " I said; "in order to permit the double-headers. And now thatdaylight saving is to go into effect, equinoxes won't be necessary anymore. Very likely the pan-Russian Soviets, or President Wilson, orsomebody, will abolish them. "

"June 21 is the longest day in the year, isn't it?"

"The day before pay-day is always the longest day. "

"And the night the cook goes out is always the longest night, " sheretorted, catching the spirit of the game. 

"Some day, " I threatened her, "the earth will stop rotating on itsorbit, or its axis, or whatever it is, and then we will be like themoon, divided into two hostile hemispheres, one perpetual day and theother eternal night. "

She did not seem alarmed. "Yes, and I bet I know which one you'llemigrate to, " she said. "But how about the equinoctial gales? Why shouldthere be gales just then?"

I had forgot about the equinoctial gales, and this caught me unawares. 

"That was an old tradition of the Phoenician mariners, " I said, "but theinvention of latitude and longitude made them unnecessary. They havefallen into disrepute. Dead reckoning killed them. "

"And the precession of the equinoxes?" she asked, turning back to hermagazine. 

This was a poser, but I rallied stoutly. "Well, " I said, "you see, thereare two equinoxes a year, the vernal and the autumnal. They are wellknown by coal dealers. The first one is when he delivers the coal andthe second is when he gets paid. Two of them a year, you see, in thecourse of a million years or so, makes quite a majestic series. That iswhy they call it a procession. "

Titania looked at me and gradually her face broke up into a charmingaurora borealis of laughter. 

"I don't believe you know any more about the old things than I do, " shesaid. 

And the worst of it is, I think she was right. 

163 INNOCENT OLD MEN

I found Titania looking severely at her watch, which is a queer littlegold disk about the size of a waistcoat button, swinging under her chinby a thin golden chain. Titania's methods of winding, setting andregulating that watch have always been a mystery to me. She frequentlyknows what the right time is, but how she deduces it from the data givenby the hands of her timepiece I can't guess. It's something like this:She looks at the watch and notes what it says. Then she deducts tenminutes, because she remembers it is ten minutes fast. Then she performssome complicated calculation connected with when the baby had his bath, and how long ago she heard the church bells chime; to this result sheadds five minutes to allow for leeway. Then she goes to the phone andasks Central the time. 

"Hullo, " I said; "what's wrong?"

"I'm wondering about this daylight-saving business, " she said. "Youknow, I think it's all a piece of Bolshevik propaganda to get usconfused and encourage anarchy. All the women in Marathon are talkingabout it and neglecting their knitting. Junior's bath was half an hourlate today because Mrs. Benvenuto called me up to talk about daylightsaving. She says her cook has threatened to leave if she has to get upan hour earlier in the morning. I was just wondering how to adjust mywatch to the new conditions. "

"It's perfectly simple, " I said. "Put your watch ahead one hour, andthen go through the same logarithms you always do. "

"Put it ahead?" asked Titania. "Mrs. Borgia says we have to put theclock _back_ an hour. She is fearfully worried about it. She sayssuppose she has something in the oven when the clock is put back, itwill be an hour overdone and burned to a crisp when the kitchen clockcatches up again. "

"Mrs. Borgia is wrong, " I said. "The clocks are to be put ahead onehour. At 2 o'clock on Easter morning they are to be turned on to 3o'clock. Mrs. Borgia certainly won't have anything in the oven at thattime of night. You see, we are to pretend that 2 o'clock is really 3o'clock, and when we get up at 7 o'clock it will really be 6 o'clock. Weare deliberately fooling ourselves in order to get an hour more ofdaylight. "

"I have an idea, " she said, "that you won't get up at 7 that morning. "

"It is quite possible, " I said, "because I intend to stay up until 2a. M. That morning in order to be exactly correct in changing ourtimepieces. No one shall accuse me of being a time slacker. "

Titania was wrinkling her brow. "But how about that lost hour?" shesaid. "What happens to it? I don't see how we can just throw an houraway like that. Time goes on just the same. How can we afford to shortenour lives so ruthlessly? It's murder, that's what it is! I told you itwas a Bolshevik plot. Just think; there are a hundred million Americans. Moving on the clock that way brings each of us one hour nearer ourgraves. That is to say, we are throwing away 100, 000, 000 hours. "

She seized a pencil and a sheet of paper and went through somecalculations. 

"There are 8, 760 hours in a year, " she said. "Reckoning seventy years alifetime, there are 613, 200 hours in each person's life. Now, will youplease divide that into a hundred million for me? I'm not good at longdivision. "

With docility I did so, and reported the result. 

"About 163, " I said. 

"There you are!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "Throwing away all thatperfectly good time amounts simply to murdering 163 harmless old men ofseventy, or 326 able-bodied men of thirty-five, or 1, 630 innocent littlechildren of seven. If that isn't atrocity, what is? I think Mr. Hooveror Admiral Grayson, or somebody, ought to be prosecuted. "

I was aghast at this awful result. Then an idea struck me, and I tookthe pencil and began to figure on my own account. 

"Look here, Titania, " I said. "Not so fast. Moving the clock aheaddoesn't really bring those people any nearer their graves. What it doesdo is bring the ratification of the Peace Treaty sooner, which is a finething. By deleting a hundred million hours we shorten Senator Borah'sspeeches against the League by 11, 410 years. That's very encouraging. "

"According to that way of reckoning, " she said with sarcasm, "Mr. Borah's term must have expired about 11, 000 years ago. "

"My dear Titania, " I said, "the ways of the Government may seeminscrutable, but we have got to follow them with faith. If Mr. Wilsontells us to murder 163 fine old men in elastic-sided boots we mustsimply do it, that's all. Peace is a dreadful thing. We have got to meetthe Germans on their own ground. They adopted this daylight-savingmeasure years ago. They call it Sonnenuntergangverderbenpraxis, Ibelieve. After all, it is only a temporary measure, because in the fall, when the daylight hours get shorter, we shall have to turn the clocksback a couple of hours in order to compensate the gas and electric lightcompanies for all the money they will have lost. That will bring those163 old gentlemen to life again and double their remaining term of yearsto make up for their temporary effacement. They are patriotic hostagesto Time for the summer only. You must remember that time is only aphilosophical abstraction, with no real or tangible existence, and wehave a right to do whatever we want with it. "

"I will remind you of that, " she said, "at getting-up time on Sundaymorning. I still think that if we are going to monkey with the clocks atall it would be better to turn them backward instead of forward. Certainly that would bring you home from the club a little earlier. "

"My dear, " I said, "we are in the Government's hands. A little later wemay be put on time rations, just as we are on food rations. We may havetime cards to encourage thrift in saving time. Every time we save anhour we will get a little stamp to show for it. When we fill out a wholecard we will be entitled to call ourselves a month younger than we are. Tell that to Mrs. Borgia; it will reconcile her. "

A lusty uproar made itself heard upstairs and Titania gave a littlescream. "Heavens!" she cried. "Here I am talking with you and Junior'sbottle is half an hour late. I don't care what Mr. Wilson does to theclocks; he won't be able to fool Junior. He knows when it's, time formeals. Won't you call up Central and find out the exact time?"

A TRAGIC SMELL IN MARATHON

Marathon, Pa. , April 2. 

This is a very embarrassing time of year for us. Every morning when weget on the 8:13 train at Marathon Bill Stites or Fred Myers or HankHarris or some other groundsel philosopher on the Cinder and Bloodshotbegins to chivvy us about our garden. "Have you planted anything yet?"they say. "Have you put litmus paper in the soil to test it for lime, potash and phosphorus? Have you got a harrow?"

That sort of thing bothers us, because our ideas of cultivation are veryprimitive. We did go to the newsstand at the Reading Terminal and try tobuy a Litmus paper, but the agent didn't have any. He says he doesn'tcarry the Jersey papers. So we buried some old copies of the_Philistine_ in the garden, thinking that would strengthen up the soil abit. This business of nourishing the soil seems grotesque. It's hardenough to feed the family, let alone throwing away good money on feedingthe land. Our idea about soil is that it ought to feed itself. 

Our garden ought to be lusty enough to raise the few beans and beetsand blisters we aspire to. We have been out looking at the soil. Itlooks fairly potent and certainly it goes a long way down. There arequite a lot of broken magnesia bottles and old shinbones scatteredthrough it, and they ought to help along. The topsoil and the humus maybe a little mixed, but we are not going to sort them out by hand. 

Our method is to go out at twilight the first Sunday in April, about thetime the cutworms go to roost, and take a sharp-pointed stick. We drawlines in the ground with this stick, preferably in a pleasantgeometrical pattern that will confuse the birds and other observers. Itis important not to do this until twilight, so that no robins or insectscan watch you. Then we go back in the house and put on our old trousers, the pair that has holes in each pocket. We fill the pockets with theseed, we want to plant and loiter slowly along the grooves we have madein the earth. The seed sifts down the trousers legs and spreads itselfin the furrow far better than any mechanical drill could do it. Thesecret of gardening is to stick to nature's old appointed ways. Then weread a chapter of Bernard Shaw aloud, by candle light or lantern light. As soon as they hear the voice of Shaw all the vegetables digthemselves in. This saves going all along the rows with a shingle topat down the topsoil or the humus or the magnesia bottles or whateverelse is uppermost. 

Fred says that certain vegetables--kohl-rabi and colanders, wethink--extract nitrogen from the air and give it back to the soil. Itmay be so, but what has that to do with us? If our soil can't keepitself supplied with nitrogen, that's its lookout. We don't need thenitrogen in the air. The baby isn't old enough to have warts yet. 

[Illustration]

Hank says it's no use watering the garden from above. He says thatwatering from above lures the roots toward the surface and next day thehot sun kills them. The answer to that is that the rain comes fromabove, doesn't it? Roots have learned certain habits in the past millionyears and we haven't time to teach them to duck when it rains. Hank hassome irrigation plan which involves sinking tomato cans in the groundand filling them with water. 

Bill says it's dangerous to put arsenic on the plants, because it maykill the cook. He says nicotine or tobacco dust is far better. Theanswer to that is that we never put fertilizers on our garden, anyway. If we want to kill the cook there is a more direct method, and wereserve the tobacco for ourself. No cutworm shall get a blighty one fromour cherished baccy pouch. 

Fred says we ought to have a wheel-barrow; Hank swears by a mulchingiron; Bill is all for cold frames. All three say that hellebore is thebest thing for sucking insects. We echo the expletive, with a differentapplication. 

You see, we have no instinct for gardening. Some fellows, like BillStites, have a divinely implanted zest for the propagation of chard andrhubarb and self-blanching celery and kohl-rabi; they are kohl-rabid, wemight say. They know, just what to do when they see a weed; they canassassinate a weevil by just looking at it. But weevils and cabbageworms are unterrified by us. We can't tell a weed from a young onion. Wenever mulched anything in our life; we wouldn't know how to begin. 

But the deuce of it is, public opinion says that we must raise a garden. It is no use to hire a man to do it for us. However badly we may do it, patriotism demands that we monkey around with a garden of our own. Wemay get bitten by a snapping bean or routed by a rutabaga or infected bya parsnip. But with Bill and those fellows at our heels we have just gotto face it. Hellebore!

What we want to know is, How do you ever find out all these things aboutvegetables? We bought an ounce of tomato seeds in desperation, and nowFred says "one ounce of tomato seeds will produce 3, 000 plants. Youshould have bought two dozen plants instead of the seed. " How does heknow those things? Hank says beans are very delicate and must not behandled while they are wet or they may get rusty. Again we ask, how doeshe know? Where do they learn these matters? Bill says that stones drawout the moisture from the soil and every stone in the garden should beremoved by hand before we plant. We offered him twenty cents an hour todo it. 

The most tragic odor in the world hangs over Marathon these days; thesmell of freshly spaded earth. It is extolled by the poets and allthose happy sons of the pavement who know nothing about it. But here arewe, who hardly know a loam from a lentil, breaking our back over seedcatalogues. Public opinion may compel us to raise vegetables, but we aregoing to go about it our own way. If the stones are going to act likewerewolves and suck the moisture from our soil, let them do so. We don'tbelieve in thwarting nature. Maybe it will be a very wet summer and weshall have the laugh on Bill, who has carted away all his stones. 

And we should just like to see Bill Stites write a poem. We bet itwouldn't look as much like a poem as our beans look like beans. And asfor Hank and Fred, they wouldn't even know how to begin to plant a poem!

BULLIED BY THE BIRDS

Marathon, Pa. , May 2. 

I insist that the place for birds is in the air or on the bushy tops oftrees or on smooth-shaven lawns. Let them twitter and strut on thegreens of golf courses and intimidate the tired business men. Let thempeck cinders along the railroad track and keep the trains waiting. Butreally they have no right to take possession of a man's house as theyhave mine. 

The nesting season is a time of tyranny and oppression for those wholive in Marathon. The birds are upon us like Hindenburg in Belgium. Wego about on tiptoe, speaking in whispers, for fear of annoying them. Itis all the fault of the Marathon Bird Club, which has offered all sortsof inducements to the fowls of the air to come and live in our suburb, quite forgetting that humble commuters have to live there, too. Birdshave moved all the way from Wynnewood and Ambler and Chestnut Hill toenjoy the congenial air of Marathon and the informing little pamphletsof our club, telling them just what to eat and which houses offer thebest hospitality. All our dwellings are girt about with little villasmade of condensed milk boxes, but the feathered tyrants have grown toopernickety to inhabit these. They come closer still, and make our homestheir own. They take the grossest liberties. 

I am fond of birds, but I think the line must be drawn somewhere. Theclothes-line, for instance. The other day Titania sent me out to put upa new clothesline; I found that a shrike or a barn swallow or some otherveery had built a nest in the clothespin basket. That means we won't beable to hang out our laundry in the fresh Monday air and equally freshMonday sunshine until the nesting season is over. 

Then there is a gross, fat, indiscreet robin that has taken a home in anevergreen or mimosa or banyan tree just under our veranda railing. It isan absurdly exposed, almost indecently exposed position, for theconfidential family business she intends to carry on. The iceman and thebutcher and the boy who brings up the Sunday ice cream from theapothecary can't help seeing those three big blue eggs she has laid. But, because she has nested there for the last three springs, while thehouse was unoccupied, she thinks she has a perpetual lease on thatbush. She hotly resents the iceman and the butcher and the apothecary'sboy, to say nothing of me. So these worthy merchants have to trail rounda circuitous route, violating the neutral ground of a neighbor, in orderto reach the house from behind and deliver their wares through thecellar. We none of us dare use the veranda at all for fear offrightening her, and I have given up having the morning paper deliveredat the house because she made such shrill protest. 

[Illustration]

Frightening her, do I say? Nay, it is _we_ who are frightened. I goround to the side of the house to prune my benzine bushes or to plant amess of spinach and a profane starling or woodpecker bustles off hernest with shrewish outcry and lingers nearby to rail at me. Abashed, Istealthily scuffle back to get a spade out of the tool bin and againthat shrill scream of anger and outraged motherhood. A throstle or awhippoorwill is raising a family in the gutter spout over the backkitchen. I go into the bathroom to shave and Titania whispers sharply, "You mustn't shave in there. There's a tomtit nesting in the shutterhinge and the light from your shaving mirror will make the poor littlebirds crosseyed when they're hatched. " I try to shave in the dining-roomand I find a sparrow's nest on the window sill. Finally I do my toiletin the coal bin, even though there is a young squeaking bat down there. A bat is half mouse anyway, so Titania has less compassion for itsfeelings. Even if that bat grows up bow-legged on account of prematureexcitement, I have to shave somewhere. 

We can't play croquet at this time of year, because the lawn must bekept clear for the robins to quarry out worms. The sound of mallet andball frightens the worms and sends them underground, and then it'sharder for the robins to find them. I suppose we really ought to keep astringed orchestra playing in the garden to entice the worms to thesurface. We have given up frying onions because the mother robins don'tlike the odor while they're raising a family. I love my toast crusts, but Titania takes them away from me for the blackbirds. "Now, " she says, "they're raising a family. You must be generous. "

If my garden doesn't amount to anything this year the birds will be myalibi. Titania makes me do my gardening in rubber-soled shoes so as notto disturb the birds when they are going to bed. (They begin yelping at4 a. M. Right outside the window and never think of my slumbers. ) Theother evening I put on my planting trousers and was about to sow aspecially fine pea I had brought home from town when Titania made signsfrom the window. "You simply mustn't wear those trousers around thehouse in nesting season. Don't you know the birds are very sensitivejust now?" And we have been paying board for our cat on Long Island fora whole year because the birds wouldn't like his society and plebeianways. 

Marathon has come to a pretty pass, indeed, when the commuters are to bedispossessed in this way by a lot of birds, orioles and tomtits andyellow-bellied nuthatches. Some of these days a wren will take it intoits head to build a nest on the railroad track and we'll all have towalk to town. Or a chicken hawk will settle in our icebox and we'llstarve to death. 

As I have said before, I believe in keeping nature in its proper place. Birds belong in trees. I don't go twittering and fluffing about in oaksand chestnuts, perching on the birds' nest steps and getting in theirway. And why should some swarthy robin, be she never so matronly, swearat me if I set foot on my own front porch?

A MESSAGE FOR BOONVILLE

When corncob pipes went up from a nickel to six cents, smokingtraditions tottered. That was a year or more ago, but one can stillrecall the indignation written on the faces of nicotine-soaked gafferswho had been buying cobs at a jitney ever since Washington used one tokeep warm at Valley Forge. It was the supreme test of our determinationto win the war: the price of Missouri meerschaums went up 20 per centand there was no insurrection. 

Yesterday we went out to buy our annual corncob, and were agreeablysurprised to learn that the price is still six cents; but our friend thetobacconist said that it may go up again soon. We took the treasure, gleaming yellow with fresh varnish, back to our kennel, and we aresmoking it as we set down these words. A corncob is sadly hot and rawuntil it is well sooted, but the ultimate flavor is worth persecution. 

The corncob pipes we always buy come from Boonville, Mo. , and we don'tsee why we shouldn't blow a little whiff of affection and gratitudetoward that excellent town. Moreover, Boonville celebrated itscentennial recently: it was founded in 1818. If the map is to bebelieved, it is on the southern bank of the Missouri River, which isthere spanned by a very fine bridge; it is reached by two railroads(Missouri Pacific and M. , K. And T. ) and stands on a bluff 100 feetabove the water. According to the two works of reference nearest to ourdesk, its population is either 4252 or 4377. Perhaps the former censusomits the 125 men of the town who are so benighted as to smoke briars orclays. 

Delightful town of Boonville, seat of Cooper County, you are well named. How great a boon you have conferred upon a troubled world! Long aftermore ambitious towns have faded in the memory of man your quiet andsoothing gift to humanity will make your name blessed. I like to imagineyour shady streets, drowsing in the summer sun, and the ruralphilosophers sitting on the verandas of your hotels or on the benches ofHarley Park ("comprising fifteen acres"--New InternationalEncyclopedia), looking out across the brown river and puffing clouds ofsweet gray reek. Down by the livery stable on Main street (there must bea livery stable on Main street) I can see the old creaky, cane-bottomedchairs (with seats punctured by too much philosophy) tilted against thesycamore trees, ready for the afternoon gossip and shag tobacco. I canimagine the small boys of Boonville fishing for catfish from the piersof the bridge or bathing down by the steamboat dock (if there is one), and yearning for the day when they, too, will be grown up and old enoughto smoke corncobs. 

[Illustration]

What is the subtle magic of a corncob pipe? It is never as sweet or asmellow as a well-seasoned briar, and yet it has a fascination all itsown. It is equally dear to those who work hard and those who loaf withintensity. When you put your nose to the blackened mouth of the hot cobits odor is quite different from that fragrance of the crusted woodenbowl. There is a faint bitterness in it, a sour, plaintive aroma. It isa pipe that seems to call aloud for the accompaniment of beer andearnest argument on factional political matters. It is also the pipefor solitary vigils of hard and concentrated work. It is the pipe that aman keeps in the drawer of his desk for savage hours of extra toil afterthe stenographer has powdered her nose and gone home. 

A corncob pipe is a humble badge of philosophy, an evidence of toleranceand even humor. It requires patience and good cheer, for it is slow to"break in. " Those who meditate bestial and brutal designs against theweak and innocent do not smoke it. Probably Hindenburg never saw one. Missouri's reputation for incredulity may be due to the corncob habit. One who is accustomed to consider an argument over a burning nest oftobacco, with the smoke fuming upward in a placid haze, will not acceptany dogma too immediately. 

There is a singular affinity among those who smoke corncobs. A Missourimeerschaum whose bowl is browned and whose fiber stem is frayed andstringy with biting betrays a meditative and reasonable owner. He willhave pondered all aspects of life and be equally ready to denounce anyof them, but without bitterness. If you see a man on a street cornersmoking a cob it will be safe to ask him to watch the baby a minutewhile you slip around the corner. You would even be safe in asking himto lend you a five. He will be safe, too, because he won't have it. 

Think, therefore, of the charm of a town where corncob pipes are thechief industry. Think of them stacked up in bright yellow piles in thewarehouse. Think of the warm sun and the wholesome sweetness of broadacres that have grown into the pith of the cob. Think of the bright-eyedMissouri maidens who have turned and scooped and varnished and packedthem. Think of the airy streets and wide pavements of Boonville, and thecorner drug stores with their shining soda fountains and grape-juicebottles. Think of sitting out on that bluff on a warm evening, watchingthe broad shimmer of the river slipping down from the sunset, andsmoking a serene pipe while the local flappers walk in the coolnesswearing crisp, swaying gingham dresses. That's the kind of town we liketo think about. 

MAKING MARATHON SAFE FOR THE URCHIN

The Urchin and I have been strolling about Marathon on Sunday morningsfor more than a year, but not until the gasolineless Sabbaths supervenedwere we really able to examine the village and see what it is like. Previously we had been kept busy either dodging motors or admiring themas they sped by. Their rich dazzle of burnished enamel, the purring humof their great tires, evokes applause from the Urchin. He is learning, as he watches those flashing chariots, that life truly is almost asvivid as the advertisements in the _Ladies' Home Journal_, where theshimmer of earthly pageant first was presented to him. 

Marathon is a village so genteel and comely that the Urchin and I wouldlike to have some pictures of it for future generations, particularly aswe see it on an autumn morning when, as I say, the motors are kenneledand the landscape has ceased to vibrate. In the douce benignance ofequinoctial sunshine we gaze about us with eyes of inventory. Where myobservation errs by too much sentiment the Urchin checks me by hiscooler power of ratiocination. 

Marathon is a suburban Xanadu gently caressed by the train service ofthe Cinder and Bloodshot. It may be recognized as an aristocratic andpatrician stronghold by the fact that while luxuries are readilyobtainable (for instance, banana splits, or the latest novel by Enoch A. Bennett), necessaries are had only by prayer and advowson. The drugstore will deliver ice cream to your very refrigerator, but it isimpossible to get your garbage collected. The cook goes off for herThursday evening in a taxi, but you will have to mend the roof, stanchthe plumbing and curry the furnace with your own hands. There are tentrains to take you to town of an evening, but only two to bring youhome. Yet going to town is a luxury, coming home is a necessity. Thesupply of grape juice seems almost unlimited, yet coal is to be hadcatch-as-catch-can. 

Another proof that Marathon is patrician at heart is that nothing isknown by its right name! The drug store is a "pharmacy, " Sunday is "theSabbath, " a house is a "residence, " a debt is a "balance due on billrendered. " A girls' school is a "young ladies' seminary, " A Marathon manis not drafted, he is "inducted into selective service. " And therailway station has a porte cochère (with the correct accent) instead ofa carriage entrance. A furnace is (how erroneously!) called a "heater. "Marathon people do not die--they "pass away. " Even the cobbler, goodfellow, has caught the trick; he calls his shop the "Italo-American ShoeHospital. "

This is an innocent masquerade! If Marathon prefers not to call aflivver a flivver, I shall not expostulate. And yet this quaintsubterfuge should not be carried quite so far. Stone walls are made forsunny lounging; yet stone walls in Marathon are built with unevenvertical projections to discourage the sedentary. Nothing is moredelightful than a dog; but there are no dogs in Marathon. They are allairedales or spaniels or mastiffs. If an ordinary dog should wag histail up our street the airedales would cut him dead. Bless me, Natureherself has taken to the same insincerity. The landscape round Marathonis lovely, but it has itself well in hand. The hills all pretend to begentle declivities. There is a beautiful little sheet of water, reflecting the trailery of willows, a green salute to the eye. In arobuster community it would be a swimming hole--but with us, anornamental lake. Only in one spot has Nature forgotten herself and beenso brusque and rough as to jut up a very sizable cliff. This is theloveliest thing in Marathon: sunlight and shadow break and angle incubist magnificence among the oddly veined knobs and prisms of brownstone. Yet this cliff or quarry is by common consent taboo among us. Itis our indelicacy, our indecency. Such "residences" as are near modestlyturn their kitchens toward it. Only the blacksmith and the gas tanks arehardy enough to face this nakedness of Mother Earth--they, and excellentPat Lemon, Marathon's humblest and blackest citizen, who contemplatesthat rugged and honest beauty as he tills his garden on the landabandoned by squeamish burghers. That is our Aceldama, our Potter'sField, only approached by the athletic, who keep their eyes fromNature's indiscretion by vigorous sets of tennis in the purple shadow ofthe cliff. 

Life is queerly inverted in Marathon. Nature has been so bullied andrepressed that she fawns about us timidly. No well-conducted suburbanshrubbery would think of assuming autumn tints before the ladies havegot into their fall fashions. Indeed none of our chaste trees will evenshed their leaves while any one is watching; and they crouch modestly inthe shade of our massive garages. They have been taught their place. InMarathon it is a worse sin to have your lawn uncut than to have yourbooks or your hair uncut. I have been aware of indignant eyes because Ilet my back garden run wild. And yet I flatter myself it was not meresloth. No! I want the Urchin to see what this savage, tempestuous worldis like. What preparation for life is a village where Nature comes toheel like a spaniel? When a thunderstorm disorganizes our electriclights for an hour or so we feel it a personal affront. Let my rearwardplot be a deep-tangled wild-wood where the happy Urchin may imaginesomething more ferocious lurking than a posse of radishes. Indeed, Ihardly know whether Marathon is a safe place to bring up a child. Howcan he learn the horrors of drink in a village where there is no saloon?Or the sadness of the seven deadly sins where there is no movie? Ordeference to his betters where the chauffeurs, in their withered leatherlegs, drive limousines to the drug store to buy expensive cigars, whiletheir employers walk to the station puffing briar pipes?

I had been hoping that the war would knock some of this topsy-turvynonsense out of us. Maybe it has. Sometimes I see on the faces of ourcommuters the unaccustomed agitation of thought. At least we still havethe grace to call ourselves a suburb, and not (what we fancy ourselves)a superurb. But I don't like the pretense that runs like a jarring notethrough the music of our life. Why is it that those who are doing thework must pretend they are not doing it; and those not doing the workpretend that they are? I see that the motor messenger girls who drivehigh-powered cars wear Sam Browne belts and heavy-soled boots, whereasthe stalwart colored wenches who labor along the tracks of the Cinderand Bloodshot console themselves with flimsy waists and light slippers. (A fact!) By and by the Urchin will notice these things. And I don'twant him to grow up the kind of chap who, instead of running to catch atrain, loiters gracefully to the station and waits to be caught. 

THE SMELL OF SMELLS

I Smelt it this morning--I wonder if you know the smell I mean?

It had rained hard during the night, and trees and bushes twinkled inthe sharp early sunshine like ballroom chandeliers. As soon as I steppedout of doors I caught that faint but unmistakable musk in the air; thatdim, warm sweetness. It was the smell of summer, so wholly differentfrom the crisp tang of spring. 

It is a drowsy, magical waft of warmth and fragrance. It comes only whenthe leaves and vegetation have grown to a certain fullness and juice, and when the sun bends in his orbit near enough to draw out all thesubtle vapors of field and woodland. It is a smell that rarely if evercan be discerned in the city. It needs the wider air of the unhamperedearth for its circulation and play. 

I don't know just why, but I associate that peculiar aroma of summerwith woodpiles and barnyards. Perhaps because in the area of a farmyardthe sunlight is caught and focused and glows with its fullest heat andradiance. And it is in the grasp of the relentless sun that growingthings yield up their innermost vitality and emanate their fragrantessence. I have seen fields of tobacco under a hot sun that smelt asblithe as a room thick with blue Havana smoke. I remember a pile ofbirch logs, heaped up behind a barn in Pike County, where that mellowrichness of summer flowed and quivered like a visible exhalation in theair. It is the goodly soul of earth, rendering her health and sweetnessto her master, the sun. 

[Illustration]

Every one, I suppose, who is a fancier of smells, knows this blitheperfume of the summer air that is so pleasant to the nostril almost anyfine forenoon from mid-June until August. It steals pungently throughthe blue sparkle of the morning, fading away toward noon when themoistness is dried out. But when one first issues from the house atbreakfast time it is at its highest savor. Irresistibly it suggestsworms and a tin can with the lid jaggedly bent back and a pitchforkturning up the earth behind the cow stable. Fishing was first inventedwhen Adam smelt that odor in the air. 

The first fishing morning--can't you imagine it! Has no one evercelebrated it in verse or oils? The world all young and full ofunmitigated sweetness; the Garden of Eden bespangled with the early dew;Adam scrabbling up a fistful of worm's and hooking them on a bent thornand a line of twisted pampas grass; hurrying down to the branch or thecreek or the bayou or whatever it may have been; sitting down on abrand-new stump that the devil had put there to tempt him; throwing outhis line; sitting there in the sun dreaming and brooding.... 

And then a tug, a twitch, a flurry in the clear water of Eden, a pull, asplash, and the First Fish lay on the grass at Adam's foot. Can youimagine his sensations? How he yelled to Eve to come--look--see, and, how annoyed he was because she called out she was busy.... 

Probably it was in that moment that all the bickerings and back-talk ofhusbands and wives originated; when Adam called to Eve to come and lookat his First Fish while it was still silver and vivid in its livingcolors; and Eve answered she was busy. In that moment were born themen's clubs and the women's clubs and the pinochle parties and beingdetained at the office and Kelly pool and all the other devices andstratagems that keep men and women from taking their amusementstogether. 

Well, I didn't mean to go back to the Garden of Eden; I just wanted tosay that summer is here again, even though the almanac doesn't vouch forit until the 21st. Those of you who are fond of smells, spread yournostrils about breakfast time tomorrow morning and see if you detect it. 

A JAPANESE BACHELOR

The first obligation of one who lives by writing is to write whateditors will buy. In so doing, how often one laments that one cannotwrite exactly what happens. Suppose I were to try it--for once!

I have been lying on the bed--where the landlady has put a dark bluespread, instead of the white one, because I drop my tobaccoashes--smoking, and thinking about a new friend I met today. His name isKenko, a Japanese bachelor of the fourteenth century, who wrote a littlebook of musings which has been translated under the title "TheMiscellany of a Japanese Priest. " His candid reflections are those of ashrewd, learned, humane and somewhat misogynist mind. I have been lyingon the bed because his book, like all books that make one ponder deeplyon human destiny, causes that feeling of mind-sickness, that swimmingpain of the mental faculties--or is it caused by too much strongtobacco?

My acquaintance with Kenko began only last night, when I sat in bedreading Mr. Raymond Weaver's very pleasant article about him in arecent _Bookman_. My last act before turning out the light was to laythe magazine on the table, open at Mr. Weaver's essay, to remind me toget a copy of Kenko the first thing this morning. Happily to-day wasSaturday. I don't know what I should have done if it had been Sunday. Ifelt that I could not wait another day without owning that book. Isuspected it was a good deal in the mood of another bachelor, anAnglo-American Caleb of to-day--Mr. Logan Pearsall Smith, whosewhimsical "Trivia" belongs on the same shelf. 

This morning I tried to argue myself out of the decision. It may be avery expensive book, I thought; it may cost two or three dollars; I havebeen spending a lot of money lately, and I certainly ought to buy somenew undershirts. Moreover, this has been a bad week; I have neverwritten those paragraphs I promised a certain editor, and I haven't paidthe rent yet. Why not try to find the book at a library? But I knew theonly library where I would have any chance of finding Kenko would be thebig pile at Fifth avenue and Forty-second street, and I could not bearthe thought of having to read that book without smoking. I feltinstinctively (from what Mr. Weaver had written) that it was the kindof book that requires a pipe. 

Well, I thought, I won't decide this too hastily; I'll walk down to thepost office (four blocks) and make up my mind on the way. I knewalready, however, that if I didn't go downtown for that book it wouldbother me all day and ruin my work. 

I walked down to the post office (to mail to an editor a sonnet Ithought fairly well of) saying to myself: That book is imported fromEngland, it may be a big book, it may even cost four dollars. How muchbetter to exhibit the stoic tenacity of all great men, go back to myhall bedroom (which I was temporarily occupying) and concentrate onmatters in hand. What right, I said, has a Buddhist recluse, born eitherin 1281 or 1283, to harass me so? But I knew in my heart that the matterwas already decided. I walked back to the corner of Hallbedroom street, and stood vacillating at the newsstand, pretending to glance over thepapers. But across six centuries the insistent ghost of Kenko had me inits grip. Annoyed, and with a sense of chagrin, I hurried to the subway. 

In the dimly lit vestibule of the subway car, a boy of sixteen or so saton an up-ended suitcase, plunged in a book. I can never resist thetemptation to try to see what books other people are reading. Thisinnocent curiosity has led me into many rudenesses, for I amshort-sighted and have to stare very close to make out the titles. Andusually the people who read books on trolleys, subways and ferries arewomen. How often I have stalked them warily, trying to identify thevolume without seeming too intrusive. That weakness deserves an essay initself. It has led me into surprising adventures. But in this case myquarry was easy. The lad--I judged him a boarding school boy going backto school after the holidays--was so absorbed in his reading that it waseasy to thrust my face over his shoulder and see the running head on thepage--"The Light That Failed. "

I left the subway at Pennsylvania Station. Just to appease myconscience, I stopped in at the agreeable Cadmus bookshop onThirty-third street to see if by any chance they might have asecond-hand copy of Kenko. But I know they wouldn't; it is not the kindof book at all likely to be found second-hand. I tarried here longenough to smoke one cigarette and pay my devoirs to the noble professionof second-hand bookselling. I even thought, a little wildly, of buying acopy of "The Monk" by M. G. Lewis, which I saw there. So does the frenzyrage when once you unleash it. But I decided to be content with payingmy devoirs to the proprietor, a friend of mine, and not go on (as thesoldier does in Hood's lovely pun) to devour my pay. I hurried off tothe office of the Oxford University Press, Kenko's publishers. 

It should be stated, however, that owing to some confusion of doors Igot by mistake into the reception room of the Brunswick-Balke-CollenderBilliard Table Company, which is on the same corridor as the salesroomof the Oxford Press. It was a pleasant reception room, not very bookishin aspect, but in my agitation I was too eager to feel surprised by thelarge billiard table in the offing. I somewhat startled a young man atan adding machine by demanding, in a husky voice, a copy of "TheMiscellanies of a Japanese Priest. " I was rather nervous by this time, lest for some reason I should not be able to buy a copy of Kenko. Ifeared the publishers might be angry with me for not having made a roundof the bookstores first. The young man saw that I was chalking the wrongcue, and forwarded me. 

In the office of the Oxford Press I met a very genial reception. I hadbeen, as I say, apprehensive lest they should refuse to sell me thebook; or perhaps they might not have a copy. I wondered what credentialsI could offer to override their scruples. I had made up my mind to tellthem, if they demurred, that I had once published an essay to prove thatthe best book for reading in bed is the General Catalogue of the OxfordUniversity Press. This is quite true. It is a delightful compilation ofseveral thousand pages, on India paper. But to my pleasant surprise theOxonians seemed not at all surprised at the sudden appearance of oneasking, in a voice a little shaken with emotion, for a copy of the"Miscellanies. " Mr. Campion and Mr. Krause, who greeted me, werekindness itself. 

"Oh, yes, " they said, "we have a copy. " And in a minute it lay beforeme. One of those little green and gold volumes in the Oxford Library ofProse and Poetry. "How much?" I said. "A dollar forty. " I paid itjoyfully. It is a good price for a book. Once I wrote a book myself thatsells (when it does sell) at that figure. When I was at Oxford I used tobuy the O. L. P. P. Books for (I think) half a crown. In 1917 they werelisted at a dollar. Now $1. 40. But I fear Kenko's estate doesn't get theadvantage of increased royalties. 

The first thing to do was to find a place to read the book. My club wasfifteen blocks away. The smoking room of the Pennsylvania Station, whereI have done much reading, was three long blocks. But I must dip intoKenko immediately. Down in the hallway I found a shoe-shining stand, with a bowl of indirect light above it. The artist was busy in thebarber shop near-by. Admirable opportunity. I mounted the throne andfell to. The first thing I saw was a quaint Japanese woodcut of a buxommaiden washing garments in a rapidly purling stream. She was treadingout a petticoat with her bare feet, presumably on a flat stone. In ablack storm-cloud above a willow tree a bearded supernatural being, withhands spread in humorous deprecation, gazes down half pleased, halfhorrified. And the caption is, "Did not the fairy Kumé lose hissupernatural powers when he saw the white legs of a girl washingclothes?" Yet be not dismayed. Kenko is no George Moore. 

By and bye the shoeshiner came out and found me reading. He wasapologetic. "I didn't know you were here, " he said. "Sorry to keep youwaiting. " Fortunately my shoes needed shining, as they generally do. Heshined them, and I still sat reading. He was puzzled, and tried to makeout the title of the book. At that moment I was reading:

One morning after a beautiful snowfall I sent a letter to a friend'shouse about something I wished to say, but said nothing at all aboutthe snow. And in his reply he wrote: "How can I listen to a man so basethat his pen in writing did not make the least reference to the snow!Your honorable way of expressing yourself I exceedingly regret. " Howamusing was this answer!

The shoeshiner was now asking me whether anything was wrong with thepolish he had put on my boots, so I thought it best to leave. 

In the earlier pages of Kenko's book there are a number of allusions tothe agreeableness of intercourse with friends, so I went into a nearbyrestaurant to telephone to a man whom I wished to know better. He saidthat he would be happy to meet me at ten minutes after twelve. That leftover half an hour. I felt an immediate necessity to tell some one aboutKenko, so I made my way to Mr. Nichols's delightful bookshop (which hasan open fire) on Thirty-third Street. I showed the book to Mr. Nichols, and we had a pleasant talk, in the course of which she showed me thefive facsimile volumes of Dickens's Christmas books, which he hadissued. In particular, he read aloud to me the magnificent descriptionof the boiling kettle in the first "Chirp" of "The Cricket on theHearth, " and pointed out to me how Dickens fell into rhyme in describingthe song of the kettle. This passage Mr. Nichols read to me, standingin front of his fire, in a very musical and sympathetic tone of voicewhich pleased me exceedingly. I was strongly tempted to buy the fivelittle books, and wished I had known of them before Christmas. With abrutal effort at last I pulled out my watch, and found it was a quarterafter twelve. 

I met my friend at his office, and we walked up Fourth Avenue in a flushof sunshine. From Twenty-fourth to Forty-second Street we discussed thehabits of English poets visiting this country. At the club we got ontoBolshevism, and he told me how a bookseller on Lexington Avenue, whoseshop is frequented by very outspoken radicals, had told him that one ofthese had said, "The time is coming, and not far away, when the guttersin front of your shop will run with blood as they did in Petrograd. " Ithought of some recent bomb outrages in Philadelphia and did not laugh. With such current problems before us, I felt a little embarrassed aboutturning the talk back to so many centuries to Kenko, but finally I gotit there. My friend ate chicken hash and tea; I had kidneys and bacon, and cocoa with whipped cream. We both had a coffee éclair. We partedwith mutual regret, and I went back to the Hallbedroom street, intendingto do some work. 

Of course you know that I didn't do it. I lit the gas stove, and satdown to read Kenko. I wished I were a recluse, living somewhere near aplum tree and a clear running water, leisurely penning maxims forposterity. I read about his frugality, his love of the moon and a littlemusic, his somewhat embittered complaints against the folly of men whospend their lives in rushing about swamped in petty affairs, and the sadstory of the old priest who was attacked by a goblin-cat when he camehome late at night from a pleasant evening spent in capping verses. Iread with special pleasure his seven Self-Congratulations, in which herecords seven occasions when he felt that he had really done himselfjustice. The first of these was when he watched a man riding horsebackin a reckless fashion; he predicted that the man would come a cropper, and he did so. The next four self-congratulations refer to times whenhis knowledge of literary and artistic matters enabled him to place anunfamiliar quotation or assign a painted tablet to the right artist. Onetells how he was able to find a man in a crowd when everyone else hadfailed. And the last and most amusing is an anecdote of a court lady whotried to inveigle him into a flirtation with her maid by sending thelatter, richly dressed and perfumed, to sit very close to him when hewas at the temple. Kenko congratulates himself on having been adamant. He was no Pepys. 

I thought of trying to set down a similar list of self-congratulationsfor myself. Alas, the only two I could think of were having remembered atelephone number, the memorandum of which I had lost; and havingpersuaded a publisher to issue a novel which was a great success. (Notwritten by me, let me add. )

I found my friend Kenko a rather disturbing companion. His condemnationof our busy, racketing life is so damned conclusive! Having recentlyadded to my family, I was distressed by his section "Against Leaving AnyDescendants. " He seems to be devoid of the sentiment of ancestor worshipand sacredness of family continuity which we have been taught toassociate with the Oriental. And yet there is always a current ofsuspicion in one's mind that he is not really revealing his inmostheart. When a bachelor in his late fifties tells us how glad he is neverto have had a son, we begin to taste sour grapes. 

I went out about six o'clock, and was thrilled by a shaving of shiningnew moon in the cold blue winter sky--"the sky with its terribly coldclear moon, which none care to watch, is simply heart-breaking, " saysKenko. As I walked up Broadway I turned back for another look at themoon, and found it hidden by the vast bulk of a hotel. Kenko would havehad some caustic remark for that. I went into the Milwaukee Lunch forsupper. They had just baked some of their delicious fresh bran muffins, still hot from the oven. I had two of them, sliced and buttered, with apot of tea. Kenko lay on the table, and the red-headed philosopher whoruns the lunchroom spotted him. I have always noticed that "plain men"are vastly curious about books. They seem to suspect that there is someoccult power in them, some mystery that they would like to grasp. Myfriend, who has the bearing of a prizefighter, but the heart of anamiable child, came over and picked up the book. He sat down at thetable with me and looked at it. I was a little doubtful how to explainmatters, for I felt that it was the kind of book he would not be likelyto care for. He began spelling it out loud, rather laboriously--

 Section 1. Well! Being born into this world there are, I suppose, many aims which we may strive to attain. 

To my surprise he showed the greatest enthusiasm. So much so that Iordered another pair of bran muffins, which I did not really want, sothat he might have more time for reading Kenko. 

"Who was this fellow?" he asked. 

"He was a Jap, " I said, "lived a long time ago. He was mighty thick withthe Emperor, and after the Emperor died he went to live by himself inthe country, and became a priest, and wrote down his thoughts. "

"I see, " said my friend. "Just put down whatever came into his head, eh?"

"That's it. All his ideas about the queer things a fellow runs into inlife, you know, little bits of philosophy. "

I was a little afraid of using that word "philosophy, " but I couldn'tthink of anything else to say. It struck my friend very pleasantly. 

"That's it, " he said, "philosophy. Just as you say, now, he went off byhimself and put things down the way they come to him. Philosophy. Sure. Say, that's a good kind of book. I like that kind of thing. I have a lotof books at home, you know. I get home about nine o'clock, and I mostalways read a bit before I go to bed. "

How I yearned to know what books they were, but it seemed rude toquestion him. 

He dipped into Kenko again, and I wondered whether courtesy demandedthat I should order another pot of tea. 

"Say, would you like to do me a favor?"

"Sure thing, " I said. 

"When you get through with that book, pass it over, will you? That's thekind of thing I've been wanting. Just some little thoughts, you know, something short. I've got a lot of books at home. "

His big florid face gleamed with friendly earnestness. 

"Sure thing, " I said. "Just as soon as I've finished it you shall haveit. " I wanted to ask whether he would reciprocate by lending me one ofhis own books, which would give me some clue to his tastes; but again Ifelt obscurely that he would not understand my curiosity. 

As I went out he called to me again from where he stood by the shiningcoffee boiler. "Don't forget, will you?" he said. "When you're through, just pass it over. "

I promised faithfully, and tomorrow evening I shall take the book in tohim. I honestly hope he'll enjoy it. I walked up the bright wintrystreet, and wondered what Kenko would have said to the endless flow oftaxicabs, the elevators and subways, the telephones, and telegraphoffices, the newsstands and especially the plate-glass windows offlorists. He would have had some urbane, cynical and delightfullydisillusioning remarks to offer. And, as Mr. Weaver so shrewdly says, how he would enjoy "The Way of All Flesh!"

I came back to Hallbedroom street, and set down these few meditations. There is much more I would like to say, but the partitions in hallbedrooms are thin, and the lady in the next room thumps on the wall if Ikeep the typewriter going after ten o'clock. 

TWO DAYS WE CELEBRATE

[Illustration]

If we were asked (we have not been asked) to name a day the world oughtto celebrate and does not, we would name the 16th of May. For on thatday, in the year 1763, James Boswell first met Dr. Samuel Johnson. 

This great event, which enriched the world with one of the most vividpanoramas of human nature known to man, happened in Tom Davies'sbookshop in Covent Garden. Mr. And Mrs. Davies were friends of theDoctor, who frequently visited their shop. Of them Boswell remarksquaintly that though they had been on the stage for many years, they"maintained an uniform decency of character. " The shop seems to havebeen a charming place: one went there not merely to buy books, but alsoto have a cup of tea in the back parlor. It is sad to think that thoughwe have been hanging round bookshops for a number of years, we havenever yet met a bookseller who invited us into the private office for aquiet cup. Wait a moment, though, we are forgetting Dr. Rosenbach, thefamous bookseller of Philadelphia. But his collations, held in amazedmemory by many editioneers, rarely descend to anything so humble as tea. One recalls a confused glamor of ortolans, trussed guinea-hens, strawberries reclining in a bowl carved out of solid ice, and what usedto be known as vintages. It is a pity that Dr. Johnson died too soon totake lunch with Dr. Rosenbach. 

"At last, on Monday, the 16th of May, " says Boswell, "when I was sittingin Mr. Davies's back parlor, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies, havingperceived him through the glass door, announced his awful approach tome. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him. I was much agitated. " The volatile Boswell may be forgiven hisagitation. We also would have trembled not a little. Boswell was onlytwenty-two, and probably felt that his whole life and career hung uponthe great man's mood. But embarrassment is a comely emotion for a youngman in the face of greatness; and the Doctor was speedily put in a goodhumor by an opportunity to utter his favorite pleasantry at the expenseof the Scotch. "I do, indeed, come from Scotland, " cried Boswell, afterDavies had let the cat out of the bag; "but I cannot help it. " "That, sir, " said Doctor Johnson, "is what a great many of your countrymencannot help. "

The great book that dated from that meeting in Davies's back parlor hasbecome one of the most intimately cherished possessions of the race. Onefinds its admirers and students scattered over the globe. No man wholoves human nature in all its quirks and pangs, seasoned with bluffhonesty and the genuineness of a cliff or a tree, can afford to stepinto a hearse until he has made it his own. And it is a noteworthyillustration of the biblical saying that whosoever will rule, let him bea servant. Boswell made himself the servant of Johnson, and became oneof the masters of English literature. 

It used to annoy us to hear Karl Rosner referred to as "the Kaiser'sBoswell. " For to _boswellize_ (which is a verb that has gone into ourdictionaries) means not merely to transcribe faithfully the acts andmoods and import of a man's life; it implies also that the man sodelineated be a good man and a great. Horace Traubel was perhaps aBoswell; but Rosner never. 

It is pleasant to know that Boswell was not merely a kind of animatednote-book. He was a droll, vain, erring, bibulous, warm-heartedcreature, a good deal of a Pepys, in fact, with all the Pepysian vicesand virtues. Mr. A. Edward Newton's "Amenities of Book Collecting" makesBoswell very human to us. How jolly it is to learn that Jamie (like manylesser fry since) wrote press notices about himself. Here is one of hisown blurbs, which we quote from Mr. Newton's book:

 Boswell, the author, is a most excellent man: he is of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a little. At his nativity there appeared omens of his future greatness. His parts are bright, and his education has been good. He has traveled in post chaises miles without number. He is fond of seeing much of the world. He eats of every good dish, especially apple pie. He drinks Old Hock. He has a very fine temper. He is somewhat of a humorist and a little tinctured with pride. He has a good manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous. He has infinite vivacity, yet is observed at times to have a melancholy cast. He is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather young than old. His shoes are neatly made, and he never wears spectacles. 

This brings the excellent Boswell very close to us indeed: he mightalmost be a member of the Authors' League. "Especially apple pie, blesshis heart!"

When we said that Boswell was a kind of Pepys, we fell by chance into ahappy comparison. Not only by his volatile errors was he of the tribe ofSamuel, but in his outstanding character by which he becomes ofimportance to posterity--that of one of the great diarists. Now there isno human failing upon which we look with more affectionate lenience thanthat of keeping a diary. All of us, in our pilgrimage through thedifficult thickets of this world, have moods and moments when we have tofall back on ourselves for the only complete understanding andabsolution we will ever find. In such times, how pleasant it is torecord our emotions and misgivings in the sure and secret pages of someprivy notebook; and how entertaining to read them again in later years!Dr. Johnson himself advised Bozzy to keep a journal, though he littlesuspected to what use it would be put. The cynical will say that he didso in order that Bozzy would have less time to pester him, but webelieve his advice was sincere. It must have been, for the Doctor keptone himself, of which more in a moment. 

"He recommended to me, " Boswell says, "to keep a journal of my life, full and unreserved. He said it would be a very good exercise and wouldyield me great satisfaction when the particulars were faded from myremembrance. He counselled me to keep it private, and said I mightsurely have a friend who would burn it in case of my death. "

Happily it was not burned. The Great Doctor never seemed so near to meas the other day when I saw a little notebook, bound in soft brownleather and interleaved with blotting paper, in which Bozzy's busy penhad jotted down memoranda of his talks with his friend, while they werestill echoing in his mind. From this notebook (which must have been oneof many) the paragraphs were transferred practically unaltered into theLife. This superb treasure, now owned by Mr. Adam of Buffalo, almostmakes one hear the Doctor's voice; and one imagines Boswell sitting upat night with his candle, methodically recording the remarks of the day. The first entry was dated September 22, 1777, so Bozzy must have carriedit in his pocket when Dr. Johnson and he were visiting Dr. Taylor inAshbourne. It was during this junket that Dr. Johnson tried to pole thelarge dead cat over Dr. Taylor's dam, an incident that Boswell recordedas part of his "Flemish picture of my friend. " It was then also thatMrs. Killingley, mistress of Ashbourne's leading inn, The Green Man, begged Boswell "to name the house to his extensive acquaintance. "Certainly Bozzy's acquaintance was to be far more extensive than goodMrs. Killingley ever dreamed. It was he who "named the house" to me, andfor this reason The Green Man profited in fourpence worth of cider, 134years later. 

There is another day we have vowed to commemorate, by drinking greatflaggonage of tea, and that is the 18th of September, Dr. Johnson'sbirthday. The Great Cham needs no champion; his speech and person havebecome part of our common heritage. Yet the extraordinary scenario inwhich Boswell filmed him for us has attained that curious estate ofgreat literature the characteristic of which is that every man imagineshe has read it, though he may never have opened its pages. It is likethe historic landmark of one's home town, which foreigners from overseascome to study, but which the denizen has hardly entered. It is likeNiagara Falls: we have a very fair mental picture of the spectacle andlittle zeal to visit the uproar itself. And so, though we all useDoctor Johnson's sharply stamped coinages, we generally are too laxabout visiting the mint. 

But we will never cease to pray that every honest man should studyBoswell. There are many who have topped the rise of human felicity inthat book: when reading it they feel the tide of intellect brim the mindwith a unique fullness of satisfaction. It is not a mere commentary onlife: it _is_ life--it fills and floods every channel of the brain. Itis a book that men make a hobby of, as golf or billiards. To know it isa liberal education. I could have understood Germany yearning to invadeEngland in order to annex Boswell's Johnson. There would have been somesense in that. 

What is the average man's conception of Doctor Johnson? We think of ahuge ungainly creature, slovenly of dress, addicted to tea, the authorof a dictionary and the center of a tavern coterie. We think of himprefacing bluff and vehement remarks with "Sir, " and having a knack fordemolishing opponents in boisterous argument. All of which is passingtrue, just as is our picture of the Niagara we have never seen; but howit misses the inner tenderness and tormented virtue of the man!

So it is refreshing sometimes to turn away from Boswell to thosepassages where the good old Doctor has revealed himself with his ownhand. The letter to Chesterfield is too well known for comment. But noless noble, and not nearly so well known, is the preface to theDictionary. How moving it is in its sturdy courage, its strong grasp ofthe tools of expression. In every line one feels the weight and push ofa mind that had behind it the full reservoir of language, particularlythe Latin. There is the same sense of urgent pressure that one feels inwatching a strong stream backed up behind a dam:

 I look with pleasure on my book, however defective, and deliver it to the world with the spirit of a man that has endeavored well. That it will immediately become popular I have not promised to myself: a few wild blunders, and risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance in contempt, but useful diligence will at last prevail, and there never can be wanting some who distinguish desert; who will consider that no dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since while it is hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some falling away; that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life would not be sufficient; that he, whose design includes whatever language can express, must often speak of what he does not understand; that a writer will sometimes be tarried by eagerness to the end, and sometimes faint with weariness under a task, which Scaliger compares to the labors of the anvil and the mine; that what is obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in vain trace his memory at the moment of need, for that which yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow. 

I know no better way of celebrating Doctor Johnson's birthday than byquoting a few passages from his "Prayers and Meditations, " jotted downduring his life in small note-books and given shortly before his deathto a friend. No one understands the dear old doctor unless he remembersthat his spirit was greatly perplexed and harassed by sad and disorderedbroodings. The bodily twitchings and odd gestures which attracted somuch attention as he rolled about the streets were symptoms of painfultwitchings and gestures within. A great part of his intense delight inconvivial gatherings, in conversation and the dinner table, was due tohis eagerness to be taken out of himself. One fears that his solitaryhours were very often tragic. 

There were certain dates which Doctor Johnson almost always commemoratedin his private notebook--his birthday, the date of his wife's death, the Easter season and New Year's. In these pathetic little entries onesees the spirit that was dogmatic and proud among men abasing itself inhumility and pouring out the generous tenderness of an affectionatenature. In these moments of contrition small peccadilloes took on tragicimportance in his mind. Rising late in the morning and the untidy stateof his papers seemed unforgivable sins. There is hardly any more movingpicture in the history of mankind than that of the rugged old doctorpouring out his innocent petitions for greater strength in ordering hislife and bewailing his faults of sluggishness, indulgence at table anddisorderly thoughts. Let us begin with his entry on September 18, 1760, his fifty-second birthday:

 RESOLVED, D. J. 

 To combat notions of obligation. 

 To apply to study. 

 To reclaim imaginations. 

 To consult the resolves on Tetty's [his wife's] coffin. 

 To rise early. 

 To study religion. 

 To go to church. 

 To drink less strong liquors. 

 To keep a journal. 

 To oppose laziness by doing what is to be done to-morrow. 

 Rise as early as I can. 

 Send for books for history of war. 

 Put books in order. 

 Scheme of life. 

The very human feature of these little notes is that the same goodresolutions appear year after year. Thus, four years after the above, wefind him writing:

Sept. 18, 1764. 

This is my 56th birthday, the day on which I have concluded 55 years. 

I have outlived many friends, I have felt many sorrows. I have made fewimprovements. Since my resolution formed last Easter, I have made noadvancement in knowledge or in goodness; nor do I recollect that I haveendeavored it. I am dejected, but not hopeless. 

I resolve, To study the Scriptures; I hope, in the original languages. Six hundredand forty verses every Sunday will nearly comprise the Scriptures in ayear. 

To read good books; to study theology. 

To treasure in my mind passages for recollection. 

To rise early; not later than six, if I can; I hope sooner, but as soonas I can. 

To keep a journal, both of employment and of expenses. To keep accounts. 

To take care of my health by such means as I have designed. 

To set down at night some plan for the morrow. 

To-morrow I purpose to regulate my room. 

 * * * * *

At Easter, 1765, he confesses sadly that he often lies abed until two inthe afternoon; which, after all, was not so deplorable, for he usuallywent to bed very late. Boswell has spoken of "the unseasonable hour atwhich he had habituated himself to expect the oblivion of repose. " OnNew Year's Day, 1767, he prays: "Enable me, O Lord, to use allenjoyments with due temperance, preserve me from unseasonable andimmoderate sleep. " Two years later than this he writes:

"I am not yet in a state to form many resolutions; I purpose and hope torise early in the morning at eight, and by degrees at six; eight beingthe latest hour to which bedtime can be properly extended; and six theearliest that the present system of life requires. "

One of the most pathetic of his entries is the following, on September18, 1768:

"This day it came into my mind to write the history of my melancholy. On this I purpose to deliberate; I know not whether it may not too muchdisturb me. "

From time to time there have been stupid or malicious people who havesaid that Johnson's marriage with a homely woman twenty years older thanhimself was not a love match. For instance, Mr. E. W. Howe, of Atchison, Kan. , in most respects an amiable and well-conducted philosopher, uttered in _Howe's Monthly_ (May, 1918) the following words, which (Ihope) he will forever regret:

"I have heard that when a young man he (Johnson) married an ugly andvulgar old woman for her money, and that his taste was so bad that heworshiped her. "

Against this let us set what Johnson wrote in his notebook on March 28, 1770:

 This is the day on which, in 1752, I was deprived of poor dear Tetty. When I recollect the time in which we lived together, my grief of her departure is not abated; and I have less pleasure in any good that befalls me, because she does not partake it. On many occasions, I think what she would have said or done. When I saw the sea at Brighthelmstone, I wished for her to have seen it with me. But with respect to her, no rational wish is now left but that we may meet at last where the mercy of God shall make us happy, and perhaps make us instrumental to the happiness of each other. It is now 18 years. 

Let us end the memorandum with a less solemn note. On Good Friday, 1779, he and Boswell went to church together. When they returned the good olddoctor sat down to read the Bible, and he says, "I gave Boswell LesPensées de Pascal, that he might not interrupt me. " Of this very copyBoswell says: "I preserve the book with reverence. " I wonder who has itnow?

So let us wish Doctor Johnson many happy returns of the day, sure thatas long as paper and ink and eyesight preserve their virtue he will bideamong us, real and living and endlessly loved. 

THE URCHIN AT THE ZOO

I don't know just what urchins think about; neither do they, perhaps;but presumably by the time they're twenty-eight months old they musthave formed some ideas as to what is possible and what isn't. Andtherefore it seemed to the Urchin's curators sound and advisable to takehim out to the Zoo one Sunday afternoon just to suggest to hisdelightful mind that nothing is impossible in this curious world. 

Of course, the amusing feature of such expeditions is that it is alwaysthe adult who is astounded, while the child takes things blandly forgranted. You or I can watch a tiger for hours and not make head or tailof it--in a spiritual sense, that is--whereas an urchin simply smileswith rapture, isn't the least amazed, and wants to stroke the "nicepussy. "

It was a soft spring afternoon, the garden was thronged with visitorsand all the indoor animals seemed to be wondering how soon they would belet out into their open-air inclosures. We filed through the wicket gateand the Urchin disdained the little green go-carts ranked for hire. Hepreferred to navigate the Zoo on his own white-gaitered legs. You mightas well have expected Adam on his first tour of Eden to ride in apalanquin. 

The Urchin entered the Zoo much in the frame of mind that must have beenAdam's on that original tour of inspection. He had been told he wasgoing to the Zoo, but that meant nothing to him. He saw by the aspect ofhis curators that he was to have a good time, and loyally he wasprepared to exult over whatever might come his way. The first thing hesaw was a large boulder--it is set up as a memorial to a former curatorof the garden. "Ah, " thought the Urchin, "this is what I have beenbrought here to admire. " With a shout of glee he ran to it. "See stone, "he cried. He is an enthusiast concerning stones. He has a smallcardboard box of pebbles, gathered from the walks of a city square, which is very precious to him. And this magnificent big pebble, heevidently thought, was the marvelous thing he had come to examine. Hiscustodians, far more anxious than he to feast their eyes upon lions andtigers, had hard work to lure him away. He crouched by the boulder, appraising its hugeness, and left it with the gratified air of one whohas extracted the heart out of a surprising and significant experience. 

The next adventure was a robin, hopping on the lawn. Every child isfamiliar with robins which play a leading part in so much Mother Goosemythology, so the Urchin felt himself greeting an old friend. "See RobinRed-breast!" he exclaimed, and tried to climb the low wire fence thatbordered the path. The robin hopped discreetly underneath a bush, uncertain of our motives. 

Now, as I have no motive but to attempt to record the truth, it is myduty to set down quite frankly that I believe the Urchin showed moreenthusiasm over the stone and the robin than over any of the amazementsthat succeeded them. I suppose the reason for that is plain. These twoobjects had some understandable relation with his daily life. His smallmind--we call a child's mind "small" simply by habit; perhaps it islarger than ours, for it can take in almost anything withouteffort--possessed well-known classifications into which the big stoneand the robin fitted comfortably and naturally. But what can a child sayto an ostrich or an elephant? It simply smiles and passes on. Therebyshowing its superiority to some of our most eminent thinkers. They, confronted by something the like of which they have never seenbefore--shall we say a League of Nations or Bolshevism?--burst intoshrill screams of panic abuse and flee the precinct! How much wiser thelevel-headed Urchin! Confronting the elephant, certainly an appallingsight to so small a mortal, he looked at the curator, who was carryinghim on one shoulder, and said with an air of one seeking gently toreassure himself, "Elphunt won't come after Junior. " Which is somethingof the mood to which the Senate is moving. 

It was delightful to see the Urchin endeavor to bring some sense oforder into this amazing place by his classification of the strangesights that surrounded him. He would not confess himself staggered byanything. At his first glimpse of the emu he cried ecstatic, "Look, there's a--, " and paused, not knowing what on earth to call it. Thenrapidly to cover up his ignorance he pointed confidently to a somewhatsimilar fowl and said sagely, "And there's another!" The curiousmoth-eaten and shabby appearance that captive camels always exhibit wasaccurately recorded in his addressing one of them as "poor old horsie. "And after watching the llamas in silence, when he saw them nibble atsome grass he was satisfied. "Moo-cow, " he stated positively, and turnedaway. The bears did not seem to interest him until he was reminded ofGoldylocks. Then he remembered the pictures of the bears in that storyand began to take stock of them. 

The Zoo is a pleasant place to wander on a Sunday afternoon. The willowtrees, down by the brook where the otters were plunging, were a cloud ofdelicate green. Shrubs everywhere were bursting into bud. The Tasmaniandevils those odd little swine that look like small pigs in a high fever, were lying sprawled out, belly to the sun-warmed earth, in the samewhimsical posture that dogs adopt when trying to express how jolly theyfeel. The Urchin's curators were at a loss to know what the Tasmaniandevils were and at first were led astray by a sign on a tree in thedevils' inclosure. "Look, they're Norway maples, " cried one curator. Inthe same way we thought at first that a llama was a Chinese ginkgo. These errors lead to a decent humility. 

There is something about a Zoo that always makes one hungry, so we saton a bench in the sun, watched the stately swans ruffling likesquare-rigged ships on the sparkling pond, and ate biscuits, while theUrchin was given a mandate over some very small morsels. He was muchentertained by the monkeys in the open-air cages. In the upper story ofone cage a lady baboon was embracing an urchin of her own, whileunderneath her husband was turning over a pile of straw in a persistentsearch for small deer. It was a sad day for the monkeys at the Zoo whenthe rule was made that no peanuts can be brought into the park. I shouldhave thought that peanuts were an inalienable right for captive monkeys. The order posted everywhere that one must not give the animals tobaccoseems almost unnecessary nowadays, with the weed at present prices. TheUrchin was greatly interested in the baboon rummaging in his straw. "Mokey kicking the grass away, " he observed thoughtfully. 

Down in the grizzly-bear pit one of the bears squatted himself in thepool and sat there, grinning complacently at the crowd. We explainedthat the bear was taking a bath. This presented a familiar train ofthought to the Urchin and he watched the grizzly climb out of his tankand scatter the water over the stone floor. As we walked away the Urchinobserved thoughtfully, "He's dying. " This somewhat shocked the curators, who did not know that their offspring had even heard of death. "Whatdoes he mean?" we asked ourselves. "He's dying, " repeated the Urchin ina tone of happy conviction. Then the explanation struck us. "He'sdrying!" "Quite right, " we said. "After his bath he has to dry himself. "

We went home on a crowded Girard Avenue car, thinking impatiently thatit will be some time before we can read "The Jungle Book" to the Urchin. In the summer, when the elephants take their bath outdoors, we'll goagain. And the last thing the Urchin said that night as he fell asleepwas, "Mokey kicking the grass away. "

FELLOW CRAFTSMEN

Robert Urwick, the author, was not yet so calloused by success that hewas immune from flattery. And so when he received the following letterhe was rather pleased:

Mr. Robt. Urwick, dear sir I seen your story in this weeks Saturday EvnCudgel, not that I can afford to buy journals of that stamp but I pickup the copy on a bench in the park. Now Mr. Urwick I am a poor man but Iwas brought up a patron of the arts and I am bound to say that story ofyours called Brass Nuckles was a fine story and I am proud to complimentyou upon it. Mr. Urwick that brings me to another matter upon which Ihave been intending to write you upon for a long time but did not liketo risk an intrusion. I used to dable in literature to some littleextent myself if that will lend a fellow feeling for a craftsman indistress. I am a poor man, out of work through no fault of mine but onaccount of the illness of my wife and my sitting up with her at nightsfor weeks and weeks I could not hold my job whch required mentleconcentration of a vigorous sort. Now Mr. Urwick I have a sick wife andseven children to support, and the rent shortly due and the landlordthreatens to eject us if I don't pay what I owe. As it happens my wifeand I are hoping to be blessed again soon, with our eighth. Owing to mylove and devotion for the fine arts we have named all the earlierchildren for noted authors or writers Rudyard Kipling, W. J. Bryan, MarkTwain, Debs, Irvin Cobb, Walt Mason and Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Now Mr. Urwick I thought that I would name the next one after you, seeing youhave done so much for literature Robert if a boy or Roberta if a girlwith Urwick for a middle name thus making you a godfather in a manner ofspeaking. I was wondering whether you would not feel like making alittle godfathers gift for this innocent babe now about to come into theworld and to bare your name. Say twenty dollars, but not a check if itcan be avoided as owing to tempry ambarrassment I am not holding anybank account, and currency would be easier for me to convert into thenecesity of life. 

I wrote this letter once before but tore it up fearing to intrude, butnow my need compels me to be frank. I hope you will adorn ourliterature with many more beautiful compositions similiar to BrassNuckles. 

Yours truly

Mr Henry Phillips 454 East 34 St. 

Mr. Urwick, after reading this remarkable tribute twice, laughedheartily and looked in his bill-folder. Finding there a crisp ten-dollarnote, he folded it into an envelope and mailed it to his admirer, inclosing with it a friendly letter wishing success to the coming infantwho was to carry his name. 

A fortnight later he found on his breakfast table a very soiled postalcard with this message:

Dear and kind friend, the babe arrived and to the joy of all is a boyand has been cristened Robert Urwick Phillips. Unfortunately he is asicly infant and the doctor says he must have port wine at once or hemay not survive. His mother and I were overjoyed at your munificant giftand hope some day to tell the boy of his beanefactor, Mr. Kipling onlysent five spot to his namesake. Do you think you could spare fivedollars to help pay for port wine Yours gratefully

Henry Phillips?

Mr. Urwick was a little surprised at the thought of port wine for one soyoung, but happening to be bound down town that morning he thought itmight be interesting to look in at Mr. Phillips' residence and find outhow his godchild was faring. If the child were really in distress hemight perhaps contribute a small sum to insure proper medical care. 

The address proved to be a shabby tenement house hedged by saloons. Aragged little girl (he wondered whether she were Ella Wheeler WilcoxPhillips) pointed him to Mr. Phillips's door. Meeting no answer, heentered. 

The room was empty--a single room, with a cot bed, an oil stove and atable littered with stationery and stamps. Of Mrs. Phillips, hisnamesake or the other seven he saw no signs. He advanced to the table. 

Evidently Mr. Phillips was not a ready writer and his letters cost himsome pains. Several lay open on the table in different stages ofcomposition. They were all exactly the same in wording as the first oneUrwick had received. They were addressed to Booth Tarkington, DonMarquis, Ellen Glasgow, Edna Ferber, Agnes Repplier, Holworthy Hall andFannie Hurst. Each letter offered to name some coming child after theseParnassians. Near by lay a pile of old magazines from which theindustrious Mr. Phillips evidently culled the names of his literaryfavorites. 

Urwick smiled grimly and tiptoed from the room. On the stairs he met afat charwoman. He asked her if Mr. Phillips were married. "Whisky is hiswife and child, " she replied. 

A month later Urwick put Phillips into a story which he sold to the_Saturday Evening Cudgel_ for $500. When it was published he sent amarked copy of the magazine to the father of Robert Urwick Phillips withthe following note:

"Dear Mr. Phillips--I owe you about $490. Come around some day and I'llblow you to lunch. "

THE KEY RING

[Illustration]

I know a man who carries in his left-leg trouser pocket a large heavykey ring, on which there are a dozen or more keys of all shapes andsizes. There is a latchkey, and the key of his private office, and thekey of his roll-top desk, and the key of his safe deposit box, and a keyto the little mail box at the front door of his flat (he lives in whatis known as a pushbutton apartment house), and a key that does somethingto his motor car (not being an automobilist, I don't know just what), and a key to his locker at the golf club, and keys of various travelingbags and trunks and filing cases, and all the other keys with which abusy man burdens himself. They make a noble clanking against his thighwhen he walks (he is usually in a hurry), and he draws them out of hispocket with something of an imposing gesture when he approaches theground glass door of his office at ten past nine every morning. Yetsometimes he takes them out and looks at them sadly. They are a mark andsymbol of servitude, just as surely as if they had been heated red-hotand branded on his skin. 

Not necessarily an unhappy servitude, I hasten to remark, for servitudeis not always an unhappy condition. It may be the happiest ofconditions, and each of those little metal strips may be regarded as amedal of honor. In fact, my friend does so regard them. He does notthink of the key of his roll-top desk as a reminder of hateful tasksthat must be done willy-nilly, but rather as an emblem of hard work thathe enjoys and that is worth doing. He does not think of the latchkey asa mandate that he must be home by seven o'clock, rain or shine; nor doeshe think of it as a souvenir of the landlord who must be infallibly paidon the first of the month next ensuing. No, he thinks of the latchkey asa magic wand that admits him to a realm of kindness "whose service isperfect freedom, " as say the fine old words in the prayer book. And hedoes not think of his safe deposit box as a hateful little casket ofleases and life insurance policies and contracts and wills, but ratheras the place where he has put some of his own past life into voluntarybondage--into Liberty Bondage--at four and a quarter per cent. Yet, however blithely he may psychologize these matters, he is wise enough toknow that he is not a free man. However content in servitude, he doesnot blink the fact that it is servitude. 

"Upon his will he binds a radiant chain, " said Joyce Kilmer in a finesonnet. However radiant, it is still a chain. 

So it is that sometimes, in the lulls of telephoning and signingcontracts and talking to salesmen and preparing estimates and dictatingletters "that must get off to-night" and trying to wriggle out ofserving on the golf club's house committee, my friend flings away hiscigar, gets a corncob pipe out of his desk drawer, and contemplates hiskey ring a trifle wistfully. This nubby little tyrant that he carriesabout with him always makes him think of a river in the far Canadiannorth, a river that he visited once, long ago, before he had built upall the barbed wire of life about his spirit. It was a green lucid riverthat ran in a purposeful way between long fringes of pine trees. Therewere sandy shelves where he and a fellow canoeist with the good gift ofsilence built campfires and fried bacon, or fish of their own wooing. The name of that little river (his voice is grave as he recalls it), wasthe Peace; and it was not necessary to paddle if you didn't feel likeit. "The current ran" (it is pathetic to hear him say it) "from four toseven miles an hour. "

The tobacco smoke sifts and eddies into the carefully labeledpigeonholes of his desk, and his stenographer wonders whether she dareinterrupt him to ask whether that word was "priority" or "minority" inthe second paragraph of the memo to Mr. Ebbsmith. He smells that baconagain; he remembers stretching out on the cool sand to watch the duskseep up from the valley and flood the great clear arch of green-bluesky. He remembers that there were no key rings in his pocket then, nopapers, no letters, no engagements to meet Mr. Fonseca at a luncheon ofthe Rotary Club to discuss demurrage. He remembers the clear sparkle ofthe Peace water in the sunshine, its downward swell and slant over manya boulder, its milky vexation where it slid among stones. He rememberswhat he had said to himself then, but had since forgotten, that nomatter what wounds and perplexities the world offers, it also offers acure for each one if we know where to seek it. Suddenly he gets a visionof the whole race of men, campers out on a swinging ball, brothers inthe common motherhood of earth. Born out of the same inexplicable soilbred to the same problems of star and wind and sun, what absurdity ofcivilization is it that has robbed men of this sense of kinship? Why hehimself, he feels, could enter a Bedouin tent or an Eskimo snow-hut andfind some bond of union with the inmates. The other night, he reflects, he saw moving pictures of some Fiji natives, and could read in theirgenial grinning faces the same human impulses he knew in himself. Whathave men done to cheat themselves of the enjoyment of this amazingworld? "We've been cheated!" he cries, to the stenographer's horror. 

He thinks of his friends, his partners, his employees, of conductors ontrains and waiters in lunchrooms and drivers of taxicabs. He thinks, inone amazing flash of realization, of all the men and women he has everseen or heard of--how each one nourishes secretly some little rebellion, some dream of a wider, freer life, a life less hampered, less mean, lessmaterial. He thinks how all men yearn to cross salt water, to scalepeaks, to tramp until weary under a hot sun. He hears the Peace, in itsfar northern valley, brawling among stones, and his heart is very low. 

"Mr. Edwards to see you, " says the stenographer. 

"I'm sorry, sir, " says Edwards, "but I've had the offer of another joband I think I shall accept it. It's a good thing for a chap to get achance----"

My friend slips the key ring back in his pocket. 

"What's this?" he says. "Nonsense! When you've got a good job, the thingto do is to keep it. Stick to it, my boy. There's a great future for youhere. Don't get any of those fool ideas about changing around from onething to another. "

"OWD BOB"

CHAPTER I

(INTRODUCES OUR HERO)

Loitering perchance on the western pavement of Madison avenue, betweenthe streets numbered 38 and 39, and gazing with an observant eye uponthe pedestrians passing southward, you would be likely to see, about8:40 o'clock of the morning, a gentleman of remarkable presenceapproaching with no bird-like tread. This creature, clad in a suit ofsubfuse respectable weave, bearing in his hand a cane of stout timberwith a right-angled hornblende grip, and upon his head a hat of richtexture, would probably also carry in one hand (the left) a leather casefilled with valuable papers, and in the other hand (the right, whichalso held the cane) a cigarette, lit upon leaving the Grand Centralsubway station. This cigarette the person of our tale wouldfrequentatively apply to his lips, and then withdraw with a quick, swooping motion. With a rapid, somewhat sidelong gait (at first somehowclumsy, yet upon closer observation a mode of motion seen to embracecertain elements of harmony) this gentleman would converge upon thesouthwest corner of Madison avenue and 38th street; and the intentobserver, noting the menacing contours of the face, would conclude thathe was going to work. 

[Illustration]

This gentleman, beneath his sober but excellently haberdashered surtout, was plainly a man of large frame, of a Sam Johnsonian mould, but, to thesurprise of the calculating observer, it would be noted that his volume(or mass) was not what his bony structure implied. Spiritually, in deed, this interesting individual conveyed to the world a sensation ofstoutness, of bulk and solidity, which (upon scrutiny) was not (or wouldnot be) verified by measurement. Evidently, you will conclude, a stoutman grown thin; or, at any rate, grown less stout. His molded depth, one might assess at 20 inches between the eaves; his longitude, say, five feet eleven; his registered tonnage, 170; his cargo, literary; andhis destination, the editorial sancta of a well-known publishing house. 

This gentleman, in brief, is Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday (but not the"stout Cortes" of the poet), the editor of _The Bookman_. 

CHAPTER II

(OUR HERO BEGINS A CAREER)

"It would seem that whenever Nature had a man of letters up her sleeve, the first gift with which she has felt necessary to dower him has been apreacher sire. "

R. C. H. Of N. B. Tarkington. 

Mr. Holliday was born in Indianapolis on July 18, 1880. It is evidentthat ink, piety and copious speech circulated in the veins of his clan, for at least two of his grandfathers were parsons, and one of them, Dr. Ferdinand Cortez Holliday, was the author of a volume called "IndianaMethodism" in which he was the biographer of the Rev. Joseph Tarkington, the grandfather of Newton B. Tarkington, sometimes heard of as BoothTarkington, a novelist. Thus the hand of Robert C. Holliday was linkedby the manacle of destiny to the hand of Newton B. Tarkington, and it isa quaint satisfaction to note that Mr. Holliday's first book was thatvolume "Booth Tarkington, " one of the liveliest and soundest criticalmemoirs it has been our fortune to enjoy. 

Like all denizens of Indianapolis--"Tarkingtonapolis, " Mr. Hollidaycalls it--our subject will discourse at considerable volume of his youthin that high-spirited city. His recollections, both sacred and profane, are, however, not in our present channel. After a reputable schoolingyoung Robert proceeded to New York in 1899 to study art at the ArtStudents' League, and later became a pupil of Twachtman. The presentcommentator is not in a position to say how severely either art or Mr. Holliday suffered in the mutual embrace. I have seen some of his blackand white posters which seemed to me robust and considerably lively. Atany rate, Mr. Holliday exhibited drawings on Fifth avenue and hadillustrative work published by _Scribner's Magazine_. He did commercialdesigns and comic pictures for juvenile readers. At this time he livedin a rural community of artists in Connecticut, and did his own cooking. Also, he is proud of having lived in a garret on Broome street. Thisphase of his career is not to be slurred over, for it is a clue to muchof his later work. His writing often displays the keen eye of thepainter, and his familiarity with the technique of pencil and brush hasmuch enriched his capacity to see and to make his reader see with him. Such essays as "Going to Art Exhibitions, " and the one-third dedicationof "Walking-Stick Papers" to Royal Cortissoz are due to his interest inthe world as pictures. 

While we think of it, then, let us put down our first memorandum uponthe art of Mr. Holliday:

First Memo--Mr. Holliday's stuff is distilled from life!

CHAPTER III

(IN WHICH OUR HERO DARTS OFF AT A TANGENT)

It is not said why our hero abandoned bristol board and india ink, andit is no duty of this inquirendo to offer surmise. The fact is that hedisappeared from Broome street, and after the appropriate interval mighthave been observed (odd as it seems) on the campus of the University ofKansas. This vault into the petals of the sunflower seems so quaint thatI once attempted to find out from Mr. Holliday just when it was that heattended courses at that institution. He frankly said that he could notremember. Now he has no memory at all for dates, I will vouch; yet itseems odd (I say) that he did not even remember the numerals of theclass in which he was enrolled. A "queer feller, " indeed, as Mr. Tarkington has called him. So I cannot attest, with hand on Book, thathe really was at Kansas University. He may have been a footpad duringthat period. I have often thought to write to the dean of the universityand check the matter up. It may be that entertaining anecdotes of ourhero's college career could be spaded up. 

Just why this remote atheneum was sconce for Mr. Holliday's candle I donot hazard. It seems I have heard him say that his cousin, ProfessorWilbur Cortez Abbott (of Yale) was then teaching at the Kansas college, and this was the reason. It doesn't matter now; fifty years hence it maybe of considerable importance. 

However, we must press on a little faster. From Kansas he returned toNew York and became a salesman in the book store of Charles Scribner'sSons, then on Fifth avenue below Twenty-third street. Here he wasemployed for about five years. From this experience may he traced threeof the most delightful of the "Walking-Stick Papers. " It was while atScribner's that he met Joyce Kilmer, who also served as a Scribnerbook-clerk for two weeks in 1909. This friendship meant more to BobHolliday than any other. The two men were united by intimate adhesionsof temperament and worldly situation. Those who know what friendshipmeans among men who have stood on the bottom rung together will ask nofurther comment. Kilmer was Holliday's best man in 1913; Holliday stoodgodfather to Kilmer's daughter Rose. On Aug. 22, 1918, Mrs. Kilmerappointed Mr. Holliday her husband's literary executor. His memoir ofJoyce Kilmer is a fitting token of the manly affection that sweetenslife and enriches him who even sees it from a distance. 

Just when Holliday's connection with the Scribner store ceased I do notknow. My guess is, about 1911. He did some work for the New York PublicLibrary (tucking away in his files the material for the essay "HumanMunicipal Documents") and also dabbled in eleemosynary science for theRussell Sage Foundation; though the details of the latter enterprise Icannot even conjecture. Somehow or other he fell into the most richlyamusing post that a belletristic journalist ever adorned, as generalfactotum of _The Fishing Gazette_, a trade journal. This is laid barefor the world in "The Fish Reporter. "

About 1911 he began to contribute humorous sketches to the SaturdayMagazine of the New York _Evening Post_. In 1912-13 he was writingsigned reviews for the New York _Times_ Review of Books. 1913-14 he wasassistant literary editor of the New York _Tribune_. His meditations onthe reviewing job are embalmed in "That Reviewer Cuss. " In 1914 the wearand tear of continual hard work on Grub Street rather got the better ofhim: he packed a bag and spent the summer in England. Four charmingessays record his adventures there, where we may leave him for themoment while we warm up to another aspect of the problem. Let us justset down our second memorandum:

[Illustration]

Second Memo--Mr. Holliday knows the Literary Game from All Angles!

CHAPTER IV

(OUR HERO'S BOOK AND HEART SHALL NEVER PART)

Perhaps I should apologize for treating Mr. Holliday's "Walking-StickPapers" in this biographical fashion. And yet I cannot resist it forthis book is Mr. Holliday himself. It is mellow, odd, aromatic andtender, just as he is. It is (as he said of something else) "saturatedwith a distinguished, humane tradition of letters. "

The book is exciting reading because you can trace in it the growth andfelicitous toughening of a very remarkable talent. Mr. Holliday has beenthrough a lively and gruelling mill. Like every sensitive journalist, hehas been mangled at Ephesus. Slight and debonair as some of his piecesare, there is not one that is not an authentic fiber from life. That isthe beauty of this sort of writing--the personal essay--it admits us tothe very pulse of the machine. We see this man: selling books atScribner's, pacing New York streets at night gloating on the yellowwindows and the random ring of words, fattening his spirit on hundredsof books, concocting his own theory of the niceties of prose. We seethat volatile humor which is native in him flickering like burningbrandy round the rich plum pudding of his theme. With all hisplayfulness, when he sets out to achieve a certain effect he buildscunningly, with sure and skillful art. See (for instance) in his "As toPeople, " his superbly satisfying picture (how careless it seems!) of hisscrubwoman, closing with the précis of Billy Henderson's wife, whichdrives the nail through and turns it on the under side--

 Billy Henderson's wife is handsome; she is rich; she is an excellent cook; she loves Billy Henderson. 

See "My friend the Policeman, " or "On Going a Journey, " or "TheDeceased"--this last is perhaps the high-water mark of the book. To varythe figure, this essay dips its Plimsoll-mark full under. It isfreighted with far more than a dozen pages might be expected to carrysafely. So quietly, so quaintly told, what a wealth of humanity is init! Am I wrong in thinking that those fellow-artists who know the thrillof a great thing greatly done will catch breath when they read this, ofthe minor obits in the press--

 We go into the feature headed "Died, " a department similar to that on the literary page headed "Books Received. " ... We are set in small type, with lines following the name line indented. It is difficult for me to tell with certainty from the printed page, but I think we are set without leads. 

In such passages, where the easy sporting-tweed fabric of Mr. Holliday'smerry and liberal style fits his theme as snugly as the burr its nut, one feels tempted to cry joyously (as he says in some other connection), "it seems as if it were a book you had written yourself in a dream. "And follow him, for sheer fun, in the "Going a Journey" essay. Grantedthat it would never have been written but for Hazlitt and Stevenson andBelloc. Yet it is fresh distilled, it has its own sparkle. Beginningwith an even pace, how it falls into a swinging stride, drugs you withhilltops and blue air! Crisp, metrical, with a steady drum of feet, itlifts, purges and sustains. "This is the religious side" of reading anessay!

Mr. Holliday, then, gives us in generous measure the "certain jollyhumors" which R. L. S. Says we voyage to find. He throws off flashes ofimaginative felicity--as where he says of canes, "They are the light toblind men. " Where he describes Mr. Oliver Herford "listing to starboard, like a postman. " Where he says of the English who use colloquiallyphrases known to us only in great literature--"There are primroses intheir speech. " And where he begins his "Memoirs of a Manuscript, " "I wasborn in Indiana. "

We are now ready to let fall our third memorandum:

Third Memo--Behind his colloquial, easygoing (apparently careless)utterance, Mr. Holliday conceals a high quality of literary art. 

CHAPTER V

(FURTHER OSCILLATIONS OF OUR HERO)

Mr. Holliday was driven home from England and Police ConstableBuckington by the war, which broke out while he was living in Chelsea. My chronology is a bit mixed here; just what he was doing from autumn, 1914, to February, 1916, I don't know. Was it then that he held the fishreporter job? Come to think of it, I believe it was. Anyway, inFebruary, 1916, he turned up in Garden City, Long Island, where I firsthad the excitement of clapping eyes on him. Some of the adventures ofthat spring and summer may be inferred from "Memories of a Manuscript. "Others took place in the austere lunch cathedral known at the press ofDoubleday, Page & Company as the "garage, " or on walks that summerbetween the Country Life Press and the neighboring champaigns ofHempstead. The full story of the Porrier's Corner Club, of which Mr. Holliday and myself are the only members, is yet to be told. As far as Iwas concerned it was love at first sight. This burly soul, rumblingJohnsonianly upon lettered topics, puffing unending Virginia cigarettes, gazing with shy humor through thick-paned spectacles--well, on Friday, June 23, 1916, Bob and I decided to collaborate in writing a farcicalnovel. It is still unwritten, save the first few chapters. I onlyinstance this to show how fast passion proceeded. 

It would not surprise me if at some future time Mrs. Bedell's boardinghouse, on Jackson Street in Hempstead, becomes a place of pilgrimage forlovers of the essay. They will want to see the dark little front room onthe ground floor where Owd Bob used to scatter the sheets of his essaysas he was retyping them from a huge scrapbook and grooming them for acanter among publishers' sanhedrim. They will want to see (but will not, I fear) the cool barrel-room at the back of George D. Smith's tavern, anale-house that was blithe to our fancy because the publican bore thesame name as that of a very famous dealer in rare books. Along thatpleasant bar, with its shining brass scuppers, Bob and I consumed manybeakers of well-chilled amber during that warm summer. His urbanolatroussoul pined for the city, and he used in those days to expound thedoctrine that the suburbanite really has to go to town in order to getfresh air. 

In September, 1916, Holliday's health broke down. He had been feelingpoorly most of the summer, and continuous hard work induced a spell ofnervous depression. Very wisely he went back to Indianapolis to rest. After a good lay-off he tackled the Tarkington book, which was writtenin Indianapolis the following winter and spring. And "Walking-StickPapers" began to go the rounds. 

I have alluded more than once to Mr. Holliday's book on Tarkington. Thisoriginal, mellow, convivial, informal and yet soundly argued critiquehas been overlooked by many who have delighted to honor Holliday as anessayist. But it is vastly worth reading. It is a brilliant study, fullof "onion atoms" as Sydney Smith's famous salad, and we flaunt itmerrily in the face of those who are frequently crapehanging and dirgingthat we have no sparkling young Chestertons and Rebecca Wests and J. C. Squires this side of Queenstown harbor. Rarely have creator and criticbeen joined in so felicitous a marriage. And indeed the union wasappointed in heaven and smiles in the blood, for (as I have noted) Mr. Holliday's grandfather was the biographer of Tarkington's grandsire, also a pioneer preacher of the metaphysical commonwealth of Indiana. Mr. Holliday traces with a good deal of humor and circumstance the variousways in which the gods gave Mr. Tarkington just the right kind ofancestry, upbringing, boyhood and college career to produce a talentedwriter. But the fates that catered to Tarkington with such generous handnever dealt him a better run of cards than when Holliday wrote thisbook. 

The study is one of surpassing interest, not merely as a service tonative criticism but as a revelation of Holliday's ability to followthrough a sustained intellectual task with the same grasp and grace thathe afterward showed in the memoir of Kilmer in which his heart was sodeeply engaged. Of a truth, Mr. Holliday's success in putting himselfwithin Tarkington's dashing checked kuppenheimers is a fine achievementof projected psychology. He knows Tarkington so well that if the latterwere unhappily deleted by some "wilful convulsion of brute nature" Ithink it undoubtable that his biographer could reconstruct a veryplausible automaton, and would know just what ingredients to blend. Adash of Miss Austen, Joseph Conrad, Henry James and Daudet; flavoredperhaps with coal smoke from Indianapolis, spindrift from the Mainecoast and a few twanging chords from the Princeton Glee Club. 

Fourth Memo--Mr. Holliday is critic as well as essayist. 

CHAPTER VI

(OUR HERO FINDS A STEADY JOB)

It was the summer of 1917 when Owd Bob came back to New York. Just atthat juncture I happened to hear that a certain publisher needed aneditorial man, and when Bob and I were at Browne's discussing the fateof "Walking-Stick Papers" over a jug of shandygaff, I told him thisnews. He hurried to the office in question through a drenchingrain-gust, and has been there ever since. The publisher performed an actof perspicuity rare indeed. He not only accepted the manuscript, but itsauthor as well. 

So that is the story of "Walking-Stick Papers, " and it does not cause meto droop if you say I talk of matters of not such great moment. What ajoy it would have been if some friend had jotted down memoranda of thissort concerning some of Elia's doings. The book is a garner of some ofthe most racy, vigorous and genuinely flavored essays that this countryhas produced for some time. Dear to me, every one of them, as clean-cutblazes by a sincere workman along a trail full of perplexity andstruggle, as Grub Street always will be for the man who dips an honestpen that will not stoop to conquer. And if you should require anaccurate portrait of their author I cannot do better than quote whatGrote said of Socrates:

 Nothing could be more public, perpetual, and indiscriminate as to persons than his conversation. But as it was engaging, curious, and instructive to hear, certain persons made it their habit to attend him as companions and listeners. 

Owd Bob has long been the object of extreme attachment and high spiritsamong his intimates. The earlier books have been followed by "BroomeStreet Straws" and "Peeps at People, " vividly personal collections thatwill arouse immediate affection and amusement among his readers. And ofthese books will be said (once more in Grote's words about Socrates):

 Not only his conversation reached the minds of a much wider circle, but he became more abundantly known as a person. 

Let us add, then, our final memorandum:

Fifth Memo--These essays are the sort of thing you cannot afford tomiss. In them you sit down to warm your wits at the glow of a droll, delightful, unique mind. 

So much (at the moment) for Bob Holliday. 

THE APPLE THAT NO ONE ATE

[Illustration]

The other evening we went to dinner with a gentleman whom it pleases ourfancy to call the Caliph. 

Now a Caliph, according to our notion, is a Haroun-al-Raschid kind ofperson; one who governs a large empire of hearts with a genial andwhimsical sway; circulating secretly among his fellow-men, doingkindnesses often not even suspected by their beneficiaries. He is thesort of person of whom the trained observer may think, when he hears anunexpected kindness-grenade exploding somewhere down the line, "I'll betthat came from the Caliph's dugout!" A Caliph's heart is not surroundedby barbed wire entanglements or a strip of No Man's Land. Also, andrightly, he is stern to malefactors and fakers of all sorts. 

It would have been sad if any one so un-Caliphlike as WilliamHohenzollern had got his eisenbahn through to Bagdad, the city sacred tothe memory of a genial despot who spent his cabarabian nights in anexcellent fashion. That, however, has nothing to do with the story. 

Mr. And Mrs. Caliph are people so delightful that they leave in one'smind a warm afterglow of benevolent sociability. They have an infiniteinterest and curiosity in the hubbub of human moods and crotchets thatsurrounds us all. And when one leaves their doorsill one has a genialmomentum of the spirit that carries one on rapidly and cheerfully. Onehas an irresistible impulse to give something away, to stroke the nosesof horses, to write a kind letter to the fuel administrator or do almostanything gentle and gratuitous. The Caliphs of the world don't know it, but that is the effect they produce on their subjects. 

As we left, Mr. And Mrs. Caliph pressed upon us an apple. One of thosegorgeous apples that seem to grow wrapped up in tissue paper, and aredisplayed behind plate glass windows. A huge apple, tinted with gold andcrimson and pale yellow shading off to pink. The kind of apple whosecolors are overlaid with a curious mist until you polish it on yourcoat, when it gleams like a decanter of claret. An apple so large andweighty that if it had dropped on Sir Isaac Newton it would havefractured his skull. The kind of apple that would have made the gardenof Eden safe for democracy, because it is so beautiful no one would havethought of eating it. 

That was the kind of apple the Caliph gave us. 

It was a cold night, and we walked down Chestnut street dangling thatapple, rubbing it on our sleeve, throwing it up and down and catching itagain. We stopped at a cigar store to buy some pipe tobacco. Stillrunning on Caliph, by which we mean still beguiled by his geniality, wefell into talk with the tobacconist. "That's a fine apple you havethere, " said he. For an instant we thought of giving it to him, but thenwe reflected that a man whose days are spent surrounded by rich cigarsand smokables is dangerously felicitous already, and a sudden joy mightblast his blood vessels. 

The shining of the street lamps was reflected on the polished skin ofour fruit as we went our way. As we held it in our arms it glowed like ahuge ruby. We passed a blind man selling pencils, and thought of givingit to him. Then we reflected that a blind man would lose half thepleasure of the adventure because he couldn't see the colors. We boughta pencil instead. Still running on Caliph, you see. 

In our excitement we did what we always do in moments of stress--wentinto a restaurant and ordered a piece of hot mince pie. Then weremembered that we had just dined. Never mind, we sat there andcontemplated the apple as it lay ruddily on the white porcelaintabletop. Should we give it to the waitress? No, because apples were acommonplace to her. The window of the restaurant held a great pyramid ofbeauties. To her, an apple was merely something to be eaten, instead ofthe symbol of a grand escapade. Instead, we gave her a little medallionof a buffalo that happened to be in our pocket. 

Already the best possible destination for that apple had come to ourmind. Hastening zealously up a long flight of stairs in a certain largebuilding we went to a corner where sits a friend of ours, a nightwatchman. Under a drop light he sits through long and tedious hours, beguiling his vigil with a book. He is a great reader. He eats booksalive. Lately he has become much absorbed in Saint Francis of Assisi, and was deep in the "Little Flowers" when we found him. 

"We've brought you something, " we said, and held the apple where theelectric light brought out all its brilliance. 

He was delighted and his gentle elderly face shone with awe at theamazing vividness of the fruit. 

"I tell you what I'll do, " he said. "That apple's much too fine for me. I'll take it home to the wife. "

Of course his wife will say the same thing. She will be embarrassed bythe surpassing splendor of that apple and will give it to some friend ofhers whom she thinks more worthy than herself. And that friend will giveit to some one else, and so it will go rolling on down the ages, passingfrom hand to hand, conferring delight, and never getting eaten. Ultimately some one, trying to think of a recipient really worthy of itsdeliciousness, will give it to Mr. And Mrs. Caliph. And they, blessedinnocents, will innocently exclaim, "Why we never saw such a magnificentapple in all our lives. "

And it will be true, for by that time the apple will gleam with anunearthly brightness, enhanced and burnished by all the kind thoughtsthat have surrounded it for so long. 

As we walked homeward under a frosty sparkle of sky we mused upon allthe different kinds of apples we have encountered. There are big glossygreen apples and bright red apples and yellow apples and also thatparticularly delicious kind (whose name we forget) that is the palestpossible cream color--almost white. We have seen apples of strangeshapes, something like a pear (sheepnoses, they call them), and theMaiden Blush apples with their delicate shading of yellow and debutantepink. And what a poetry in the names--Winesap, Pippin, Northern Spy, Baldwin, Ben Davis, York Imperial, Wolf River, Jonathan, Smokehouse, Summer Rambo, Rome Beauty, Golden Grimes, Shenango Strawberry, Benoni!

We suppose there is hardly a man who has not an apple orchard tuckedaway in his heart somewhere. There must be some deep reason for the oldsuspicion that the Garden of Eden was an apple orchard. Why is it that aman can sleep and smoke better under an apple tree than in any otherkind of shade? Sir Isaac Newton was a wise man, and he chose an appletree to sit beneath. (We have often wondered, by the way, how it is thatno one has ever named an apple the Woolsthorpe after Newton's home inLincolnshire, where the famous apple incident occurred. )

An apple orchard, if it is to fill the heart of man to the full withaffectionate satisfaction, should straggle down a hillside toward a lakeand a white road where the sun shines hotly. Some of its branches shouldtrail over an old, lichened and weather-stained stone wall, droppingtheir fruit into the highway for thirsty pedestrians. There should be alittle path running athwart it, down toward the lake and the oldflat-bottomed boat, whose bilge is scattered with the black andshriveled remains of angleworms used for bait. In warm August afternoonsthe sweet savor of ripening drifts warmly on the air, and there risesthe drowsy hum of wasps exploring the windfalls that are already rottingon the grass. There you may lie watching the sky through the chinks ofthe leaves, and imagining the cool, golden tang of this autumn's cidervats. 

You see what it is to have Caliphs in the world. 

AS TO RUMORS

MADRID, Jan. 17. --Nikolai Lenine was among the Russians who landed atBarcelona recently, according to newspapers here. --News item. 

It is rather important to understand the technique of rumors. The wiseman does not scoff at them, for while they are often absurd, they arerarely baseless. People do not go about inventing rumors, except forpurposes of hoax; and even a practical joke is never (to parody theproverb) hoax et præterea nihil. There is always a reason for wanting toperpetrate the hoax, or a reason for believing it will be believed. 

Rumors are a kind of exhalation or intellectual perfume thrown off bythe news of the day. Some events are more aromatic than others; they canbe detected by the trained pointer long before they happen. When thingsare going on that have a strong vibration--what foreign correspondentslove to call a "repercussion"--they cause a good deal of mind-quaking. An event getting ready to happen is one of the most interesting thingsto watch. By a sort of mental radiation it fills men's minds withsurmises and conjectures. Curiously enough, due perhaps to the innateperversity of man, most of the rumors suggest the exact opposite of whatis going to happen. Yet a rumor, while it may be wholly misleading as tofact, is always a proof that something is going to happen. For instance, last summer when the news was full of repeated reports of Hindenburg'sdeath, any sane man could foresee that what these reports really meantwas not necessarily Hindenburg's death at all, but Germany's approachingmilitary collapse. Some German prisoners had probably said "Hindenburgist kaput, " meaning "Hindenburg is done for, " i. E. , "The great offensivehas failed. " This was taken to mean that he was literally dead. 

In the same way, while probably no one seriously believes that Lenine isin Barcelona, the mere fact that Madrid thinks it possible shows veryplainly that something is going on. It shows either that the Bolshevikexperiment in Petrograd has been such a gorgeous success that Lenine canturn his attention to foreign campaigning, or that it has been such agorgeous failure that he has had to skip. It does not prove, since therumor is "unconfirmed, " that Lenine has gone anywhere yet; but itcertainly does prove that he is going somewhere soon, even if only tothe fortress of Peter and Paul. There may be some very simpleexplanation of the rumor. "You go to Barcelona!" may be a jocularMuscovite catchword, similar to our old saying about going to Halifax, and Trotzky may have said it to Lenine. At any rate it shows that thegold dust twins are not inseparable. It shows that Bolshevism in Russiais either very strong or very near downfall. 

When we were told not long ago that Berlin was strangely gay for thecapital of a prostrate nation and that all the cafés were crowded withdancers at night, many readers were amazed and tried to console theirsense of probability by remarking that the Germans are crazy anyway. Andyet this rumor of the dancing mania was an authentic premonition of thebloodier dance of death led by the Spartacus group. If Berlin did danceit was a cotillon of despair, caused by infinite war weariness, infinitehunger to forget humiliation for a few moments, and foreboding oftroubles to come. Whether true or not, no one read the news withoutthinking it an ominous whisper. 

Coming events cast their rumors before. From a careful study of rumorsthe discerning may learn a good deal, providing always that they nevertake them at face value but try to read beneath the surface. Peoplesometimes criticize the newspapers for printing rumors, but it is anessential part of their function to do so, provided they plainly markthem as such. Shakespeare speaks of rumors as "stuffing the ears of menwith false reports, " yet if so this is not the fault of the rumoritself, but of the too credible listener. The prosperity of a rumor isin the ear that hears it. The sagacious listener will take the troubleto sift and winnow his rumors, set them in perspective with what heknows of the facts and from them he will then deduce exceedinglyvaluable considerations. Rumor is the living atmosphere of men's minds, the most fascinating and significant problem with which we have to deal. The Fact, the Truth, may shine like the sun, but after all it is theclouds that make the sunset beautiful. Keep your eye on the rumors, fora sufficient number of rumors can compel an event to happen, evenagainst its will. 

No one can set down any hard and fast rules for reading the rumors. Theprocess is partly instinctive and partly the result of trainedobservation. It is as complicated as the calculation by which a womantells time by her watch which she knows to be wrong--she adds seventeenminutes, subtracts three, divides by two and then looks at the churchsteeple. It is as exhilarating as trying to deduce what there is goingto be for supper by the pervasive fragrance of onions in the front hall. And sometimes a very small event, like a very small onion, can cast itsrumors a long way. Destiny is unlike the hen in that she cackles beforeshe lays the egg. 

The first rule to observe about rumors is that they are often exactlyopposite in tendency to the coming fact. For instance, the rumors ofsecrecy at the Peace Conference were the one thing necessary toguarantee complete publicity. Just before any important event occurs itseems to discharge both positive and negative currents, just as a magnetis polarized by an electric coil. Some people by mental habit catch thenegative vibrations, others the positive. Every one can remember themilitary critics last March who were so certain that there would be noGerman offensive. Their very certainty was to many others a proof thatthe offensive was likely. They were full of the negative vibrations. 

An interesting case of positive vibrations was the repeated rumor of theKaiser's abdication. The fact that those rumors were premature wasinsignificant compared with the fact that they were current at all. Thefact that there were such rumors showed that it was only a matter oftime. 

It is entertaining, if disconcerting, to watch a rumor on its travels. A classic example of this during the recent war is exhibited by thefollowing clippings which were collected, I believe, by Norman Hapgood:

From the _Koelnische-Zeitung_:

"When the fall of Antwerp became known the church bells were rung. "(Meaning in Germany. )

[Illustration]

From the Paris _Matin_:

"According to the _Koelnische-Zeitung_, the clergy of Antwerp werecompelled to ring the church bells when the fortress was taken. "

From the London _Times_:

"According to what the _Matin_ has heard from Cologne, the Belgianpriests, who refused to ring the church bells when Antwerp was taken, have been driven away from their places. "

From the _Corriere Della Sera_, of Milan:

"According to what the _Times_ has heard from Cologne, via Paris, theunfortunate Belgian priests, who refused to ring the church bells whenAntwerp was taken, have been sentenced to hard labor. "

From the _Matin_ again:

"According to information received by the _Corriere Della Sera_, fromCologne, via London, it is confirmed that the barbaric conquerors ofAntwerp punished the unfortunate Belgian priests for their heroicrefusal to ring the church bells by hanging them as living clappers tothe bells with their heads down. "

Be hospitable to rumors, for however grotesque they are, they alwayshave some reason for existence. The Sixth Sense is the sense of news, the sense that something is going to happen. And just as every orchestrautters queer and discordant sounds while it is tuning up itsinstruments, so does the great orchestra of Human Events (in otherwords, The News) offer shrill and perhaps misleading notes before theconductor waves his baton and leads off the concerted crash of Truth. Keep your senses alert to examine the odd scraps of hearsay that youwill often see in the news, for it is in just those eavesdroppings atthe heart of humanity that the press often fulfills its highestfunction. 

OUR MOTHERS

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When one becomes a father, then first one becomes a son. Standing by thecrib of one's own baby, with that world-old pang of compassion andprotectiveness toward this so little creature that has all its course torun, the heart flies back in yearning and gratitude to those who feltjust so toward one's self. Then for the first time one understands thehomely succession of sacrifices and pains by which life is transmittedand fostered down the stumbling generations of men. 

Every man is privileged to believe all his life that his own mother isthe best and dearest that a child ever had. By some strange racialinstinct of taciturnity and repression most of us lack utterance to sayour thoughts in this close matter. A man's mother is so tissued andwoven into his life and brain that he can no more describe her thandescribe the air and sunlight that bless his days. It is only when someBarrie comes along that he can say for all of us what fills the eye withinstant tears of gentleness. Is there a mother, is there a son, who hasnot read Barrie's "Margaret Ogilvy?" Turn to that first chapter, "How MyMother Got Her Soft Face, " and draw aside the veils that years andperplexity weave over the inner sanctuaries of our hearts. 

Our mothers understand us so well! Speech and companionship with themare so easy, so unobstructed by the thousand teasing barriers that barsoul from eager soul! To walk and talk with them is like slipping on anold coat. To hear their voices is like the shake of music in a soberevening hush. 

There is a harmony and beauty in the life of mother and son that brimsthe mind's cup of satisfaction. So well we remember when she was all inall; strength, tenderness, law and life itself. Her arms were the world:her soft cheek our sun and stars. And now it is we who are strong andself-sufficing; it is she who leans on us. Is there anything soprecious, so complete, so that return of life's pendulum?

And it is as grandmothers that our mothers come into the fullness oftheir grace. When a man's mother holds his child in her gladdened armshe is aware (with some instinctive sense of propriety) of the roundnessof life's cycle; of the mystic harmony of life's ways. There speakshumanity in its chord of three notes: its little capture of completenessand joy, sounding for a moment against the silent flux of time. Then theperfect span is shredded away and is but a holy memory. 

The world, as we tread its puzzling paths, shows many profiles andglimpses of wonder and loveliness; many shapes and symbols to entranceand astound. Yet it will offer us nothing more beautiful than ourmother's face; no memory more dear than her encircling tenderness. Themountain tops of her love rise as high in ether as any sun-stained alp. Lakes are no deeper and no purer blue than her bottomless charity. Weneed not fare further than her immortal eyes to know that life is good. 

How strangely fragmentary our memories of her are, and yet (when wepiece them together) how they erect a comfortable background for all weare and dream. She built the earth about us and arched us over with sky. She created our world, taught us to dwell therein. The passion of herlove compelled the rude laws of life to stand back while we were softand helpless. She defied gravity that we might not fall. She set asidehunger, sleep and fear that we might have plenty. She tamed her ownspirit and crushed her own weakness that we might be strong. And when wepassed down the laughing street of childhood and turned that corner thatall must pass, it was her hand that waved good-bye. Then, smothering theache, with one look into the secret corner where the old keepsakes liehid, she set about waiting the day when the long-lost baby would comeback anew. The grandchild--is he not her own boy returned to her arms?

Who can lean over a crib at night, marveling upon that infiniteinnocence and candor swathed in the silk cocoon of childish sleep, without guessing the throb of fierce gentleness that runs in maternalblood? The earth is none too rich in compassion these days: let us begrateful to the mothers for what remains. It was not they who filled theworld with spies and quakings. It was not a cabal of mothers that met todecree blood and anguish for the races of men. They know that life isbuilt at too dear a price to be so lathered in corruption and woe. Thosewho create life, who know its humility, its tender fabric and itsinfinite price, who have cherished and warmed and fed it, do not lightlycast it into the pit. 

Mothers are great in the eyes of their sons because they are knit inour minds with all the littlenesses of life, the unspeakably deartrifles and odds of existence. The other day I found in my desk a littlestrip of tape on which my name was marked a dozen times in drawing ink, in my mother's familiar script. My mind ran back to the time when thatlittle band of humble linen was a kind of passport into manhood. It waswhen I went away from home and she could no longer mark my garments withmy name, for the confusion of rapacious laundries. I was to cut off theautographed sections of this tape and sew them on such new vestments ascame my way. Of course I did not do so; what boy would be faithful to sofeminine a trust? But now the little tape, soiled by a dozen years ofwandering, lies in my desk drawer as a symbol and souvenir of thatendless forethought and loving kindness. 

They love us not wisely but too well, it is sometimes said. Ah, in aworld where so many love us not well but too wisely, how tremulously ourhearts turn back to bathe in that running river of their love andceaseless charm!

GREETING TO AMERICAN ANGLERS

_From Master Isaak Walton_

My Good Friends--As I have said afore time, sitting by a river's side isthe quietest and fittest place for contemplation, and being out andalong the bank of Styx with my tackle this sweet April morning, it cameinto my humor to send a word of greeting to you American anglers. Someof your fellows, who have come by this way these past years, tell menotable tales of the sport that may he had in your bright streams, whereof the name of Pocono lingers in my memory. Sad it is to me torecall that when writing my little book on the recreation of acontemplative man I had made no mention of your rivers as delightsomeplaces where our noble art might be carried to a brave perfection, butindeed in that day when I wrote--more years ago than I like to thinkon--your far country was esteemed a wild and wanton land. Some worthyPennsylvania anglers with whom I have fished this water of Styx haveeven told me of thirty and forty-inch trouts they have brought tobasket in that same Pocono stream, from the which fables I know that themanners of our ancient sport have altered not a whit. I myself couldtell you of a notable catch I had the other morning, when I took somehalf dozen brace of trouts before breakfast, not one less thantwenty-two inches, with bellies as yellow as marigold and as white as alily in parts. That I account quite excellent taking for these times, when this stream hath been so roiled and troubled by the passage ofMaster Charon's barges, he having been so pressed with traffic that hehath discarded his ancient vessel as incommodious and hasteneth to andfro with a fleet of ferryboats. 

[Illustration]

My Good Friends, I wish you all the comely sport that may be found alongthose crystal rivers whereof your fellows have told me, and a goodhonest alehouse wherein to take your civil cup of barley wine when thereariseth too violent a shower of rain. I have ever believed that a pipeof tobacco sweeteneth sport, and I was never above hiding a bottle ofsomewhat in the hollow root of a sycamore against chilly seizures. Butcome, what is this I hear that you honest anglers shall no longer pledgefortune in a cup of mild beverage? Meseemeth this is an odd thing andcontrary to our tradition. I look for some explanation of the matter. Mayhap I have been misled by some waggishness. In my days along mybeloved little river Dove, where my friend Mr. Cotton erected hisfishing house, we were wont to take our pleasure on the bowling green ofan evening, with a cup of ale handy. And our sheets used to smellpassing sweet of lavender, which is a pleasant fragrance, indeed. 

One matter lies somewhat heavy on my heart and damps my mirth, that inmy little book I said of our noble fish the trout that his name was of aGerman offspring. I am happy to confess to you that I was at fault, formy good friend Master Charon (who doth sometimes lighten his labors witha little casting and trolling from the poop of his vessel) hathexplained to me that the name trout deriveth from the antique Latin word_tructa_, signifying a gnawer. This is a gladsome thing for me to know, and moreover I am bounden to tell you that the house committee of ourlittle angling club along Styx hath blackballed all German membershenceforward. These riparian pleasures are justly to be reserved forgentles of the true sportsman blood, and not such as have defiled thefair rivers of France. 

And so, good friends, my love and blessing upon all such as lovequietness and go angling. 

IZAAK WALTON. 

MRS. IZAAK WALTON WRITES A LETTER TO HER MOTHER

CHANCERY LANE, LONDON, April 28, 1639. 

My Dearest Mother: Matters indeed pass from badd to worse, and I fearmee that with Izaak spending all hys tyme angling along riversydes andneglecting the millinery shoppe (wych is our onlie supporte, for canbodye and soule be keppt in one by a few paltrie brace of trouts aweeke?) wee shall soone come to a sorrye ende. How many tymes, deareMother, have I bewailed my follye in wedding this creature who seemethto mee more a fysh than a man, not mearly by reason of hys madnesse forthe gracelesse practice of water-dabbling, but eke for hys passion forswimming in barley wine, ale, malmsey and other infuriatyng liquours. What manner of companye doth this dotard keepe on his fyshing pastimes, God wot! Lo he is wonte to come home at some grievous houre of yenyghte, bearing but a smalle catche but plentyful aroma of drinke, andofttimes alsoe hys rybalde freinds do accompany hym. Nothing will servebut they must arouse our kytchen-maide and have some paltry chubb orgudgeon fryed in greese, filling ye house wyth nauseous odoures, andwyth their ill prattle of fyshing tackle, not to say the comelymilke-maides they have seen along some wanton meadowside, soe that I ammoste distraught. You knowe, my deare, I never colde abyde fyssche beingcolde clammy cretures, and loe onlye last nyghte this Monster dyd cometo my beddside where I laye asleepyng and wake me fromm a sweet drowseby dangling a string of loathsome queasy trouts, still dryppinge, against my nose. Lo, says he, are these not beuties? And his reek ofbarley wine did fille the chamber. Worste of alle, deare Mother, thisall-advised wretche doth spend alle his vacant houres in compiling abooke on the art (as he calleth it) of angling, surely a trifling pettywanton taske that will

[Illustration]

make hym the laughing-stocke of all sober men. God forbidd that ourelittel son sholde be brought uppe in this nastye squanderinge of tyme, wych doth breede nought (meseems) but ale-bibbing and ye disregarde oftruth. Oure house, wych is but small as thou knowest, is all clutteredwyth his slimye tackle, and loe but yesterdaye I loste a customer frommye millinery shoppe, shee averring (and I trow ryghtly) that ye shoppedyd stinke of fysshe. Ande soe if thys thyng do continue longer I shallripp uppe and leave, for I thoght to wed a man and not a paddler ofdytches. O howe I longe for those happy dayes with thee, before I everknew such a thyng as a fysshe existed! Sad too it is that he dothjustifye his vain idle wanton pasttyme by misquoting scriptures. SaintPeter, and soe on. Three kytchen maides have lefte us latelye forbarbyng themselves upon hydden hookes that doe scatter our shelves anddrawers. 

Thy persecuted daughter, ANNE WALTON. 

TRUTH

Our mind is dreadfully active sometimes, and the other day we began tospeculate on Truth. 

Our friends are still avoiding us. 

Every man knows what Truth is, but it is impossible to utter it. Theface of your listener, his eyes mirthful or sorry, his eager expectanceor his churlish disdain insensibly distort your message. You findyourself saying what you know he expects you to say, or (more often)what he expects you not to say. You may not be aware of this, but thatis what happens. In order that the world may go on and human beingsthrive, nature has contrived that the Truth may not often be uttered. 

And how is one to know what is Truth? He thinks one thing before lunch;after a stirring bout with corned beef and onions the shining vision isstrangely altered. Which is Truth?

Truth can only be attained by those whose systems are untainted bysecret influences, such as love, envy, ambition, food, college educationand moonlight in spring. 

If a man lived in a desert for six months without food, drink orcompanionship he would be reasonably free from prejudice and would be ina condition to enunciate great truths. 

But even then his vision of reality would have been warped by so muchsand and so many sunsets. 

Even if he survived and brought us his Truth with all the gravity andlong night-gown of a Hindu faker, as soon as any one listened to him hismessage would no longer be Truth. The complexion of his audience, thevery shape of their noses, would subtly undermine his magnificentaloofness. 

Women have learned the secret. Truth must never be uttered, and never belistened to. 

Truth is the ricochet of a prejudice bouncing off a fact. 

Truth is what every man sees lurking at the bottom of his own soul, likethe oyster shell housewives put in the kitchen kettle to collect thelime from the water. By and by each man's iridescent oyster shell ofTruth becomes coated with the lime of prejudice and hearsay. 

All the above is probably untrue. 

THE TRAGEDY OF WASHINGTON SQUARE

One of our favorite amusements at lunch-time is to walk down to HenryRosa's pastry shop, and buy a slab of cinnamon bun. Then we walk roundWashington Square, musing, and gradually walking round and engulfing thecinnamon bun at the same time. It is surprising what a largecircumference those buns of Henry's have. By the time we have gnashedour way through one of those warm and mystic phenomena we don't want toeat again for a month. 

The real reason for the cinnamon bun is to fortify us for thecontemplation and onslaught upon a tragic problem that Washington Squarepresents to our pondering soul. 

Washington Square is a delightful place. There are trees there, andpublishing houses and warm green grass and a fire engine station. Thereare children playing about on the broad pavements that criss-cross thesward; there is a fine roof of blue sky, kept from falling down by theenormous building at the north side of the Square. But these thingspresent no problems. To our simple philosophy a tree is a vegetable, achild is an animal, a building is a mineral and this classificationneeds no further scrutiny or analysis. But there is one thing inWashington Square that embodies an intellectual problem, a grappling ofthe soul, a matter for continual anguish and decision. 

On the west side of the Square is the Swiss consulate, and, it is thisthat weighs upon our brooding spirit. How many times we have pausedbefore that quiet little house and gazed upon the little red cross, aMaltese Cross, or a Cross of St. Hieronymus; or whatever the heraldicterm is, that represents and symbolizes the diplomatic and spiritualpresence of the Swiss republic. We have stood there and thought aboutWilliam Tell and the Berne Convention and the St. Gothard Tunnel and St. Bernard dogs and winter sports and alpenstocks and edelweiss and theJungfrau and all the other trappings and trappists that make Switzerlandnotable. We have mused upon the Swiss military system, which is soperfect that it has never had to be tested by war; and we have wonderedwhat is the name of the President of Switzerland and how he keeps it outof the papers so successfully. One day we lugged an encyclopedia and theStatesman's Year Book out to the Square with us and sat down on a benchfacing the consulate and read up about the Swiss cabinet and thenational bank of Switzerland and her child labor problems. Accidentallywe discovered the name of the Swiss President, but as he has kept it sodark we are not going to give away his secret. 

Our dilemma is quite simple. Where there is a consulate there must be aconsul, and it seems to us a dreadful thing that inside that buildingthere lurks a Swiss envoy who does not know that we, here, we who arewalking round the Square with our mouth full of Henry Rosa's bun, oncespent a night in Switzerland. We want him to know that; we think heought to know it; we think it is part of his diplomatic duty to know it. And yet how can we burst in on him and tell him that apparentlyirrelevant piece of information?

We have thought of various ways of breaking it to him, or should we saybreaking him to it?

Should we rush in and say the Swiss national debt is $----, or ----kopecks, and then lead on to other topics such as the comparativeheights of mountain peaks, letting the consul gradually grasp the factthat we have been in Switzerland? Or should we call him up on thetelephone and make a mysterious appointment with him, when we couldblurt it out brutally?

We are a modest and diffident man, and this little problem, which wouldbe so trifling to many, presents inscrutable hardships to us. 

Another aspect of the matter is this. We think the consul ought to knowthat we spent one night in Switzerland once; we think he ought to knowwhat we were doing that night; but we also think he ought to know justwhy it was that we spent only one night in his beautiful country. Wedon't want him to think we hurried away because we were annoyed byanything, or because the national debt was so many rupees or piasters, or because child labor in Switzerland is----. It is the thought that theconsul and all his staff are in total ignorance of our existence thatgalls us. Here we are, walking round and round the Square, bursting withinformation and enthusiasm about Swiss republicanism, and the consulnever heard of us. How can we summon up courage enough to tell him thetruth? That is the tragedy of Washington Square. 

It was a dark, rainy night when we bicycled into Basel. We hid beenriding all day long, coming down from the dark clefts of the BlackForest, and we and our knapsack were wet through. We had been bicyclingfor six weeks with no more luggage than a rucksack could hold. We neversaw such rain as fell that day we slithered and sloshed on the ruggedslopes that tumble down to the Rhine at Basel. (The annual rainfall inSwitzerland is----. ) When we got to the little hotel at Basel we sat inthe dining room with water running off us in trickles, until the headwaiter glared. And so all we saw of Switzerland was the interior of thetobacconist's where we tried, unsuccessfully, to get some English baccy. Then he went to bed while our garments were dried. We stayed in bed forten hours, reading, fairy tales and smoking and answering modestlythrough the transom when any one asked us questions. 

The next morning we overhauled our wardrobe. We will not particularize, but we decided that one change of duds, after six weeks' bicycling, wasnot enough of a wardrobe to face the Jungfrau and the national debt andthe child-labor problenm, not to speak of the anonymous President andthe other sights that matter (such as the Matterhorn). Also, our stockof tobacco had run out, and German or French tobacco we simply cannotsmoke. Even if we could get along on substitute fumigants the issue ofgarments was imperative. The nearest place where we could get anyclothes of the kind that we are accustomed to, the kind of clothes thatare familiarly symbolized by three well-known initials, was London. Andthe only way we had to get to London was on our bicycle. We thought wehad better get busy. It's a long bike ride from Basel to London. So wejust went as far as the Basel Cathedral, so as not to seem toounappreciative of all the treasures that Switzerland had been saving forus for countless centuries; then we got on board our patient steed andtrundled off through Alsace. 

That was in August, 1912, and we firmly intended to go back toSwitzerland the next year to have another look at, the rainfall and therest of the statistics and status quos. But the opportunity has notcome. 

So that is why we wander disconsolately about Washington Square, tryingto make up our mind to unburden our bosom to the Swiss consul and tellhim the worst. But how can one go and interrupt a consul to tell himthat sort of thing? Perhaps he wouldn't understand it at all; he wouldmisunderstand our pathetic little story and be angry that we took up histime. He wouldn't think that a shortage of tobacco and clothing was asufficient excuse for slighting William Tell and the Jungfrau. Hewouldn't appreciate the frustrated emotion and longing with which wewatch the little red cross at his front door, and think of all it meansto us and all it might have meant. 

We took another turn around Washington Square, trying to emboldenourself enough to go in and tell the consul all this. And then our heartfailed us. We decided to write a piece for the paper about it, and ifthe consul ever sees it he will be generous and understand. He will knowwhy, behind the humble façade of his consulate on Washington Square, wesee the heaven-piercing summits of Switzerland rising like a dream, blueand silvery and tantalizing. 

P. S. Since the above we have definitely decided not to go to call on theSwiss consul. Suppose he were only a vice-consul, a Philadelphia Swiss, who had never been to Switzerland in his life!

IF MR. WILSON WERE THE WEATHER MAN

My Fellow Citizens: It is very delightful to be here, if I may bepermitted to say so, and I consider it a distinguished privilege to openthe discussion as to the probable weather to-morrow not only, but duringthe days to come. I can easily conceive that many of our forecasts willneed subsequent reconsideration, for if I may judge by my own study ofthese matters, the climate is not susceptible of confident judgments atpresent. 

An overwhelming majority of the American people is in favor of fineweather. This underlying community of purpose warms my heart. If we donot guarantee them fine weather, cannot you see the picture of whatwould come to pass? Your hearts have instructed you where the rainfalls. It falls upon senators and congressmen not only--and for that weneed not feel so much chagrin--it falls upon humble homes everywhere, upon plain men, and women, and children. If I were to disappoint theunited expectation of my fellow citizens for fine weather to-morrow Iwould incur their merited scorn. 

I suppose no more delicate task is given any man than to interpret thefeelings and purposes of a great climate. It is not a task in which anyman can find much exhilaration, and I confess I have been puzzled bysome of the criticisms leveled at my office. But they do not make anyimpression on me, because I know that the sentiment of the country atlarge will be more generous. I call my fellow countrymen to witness thatat no stage of the recent period of low barometric pressure have Ijudged the purposes of the climate intemperately. I should be ashamed touse the weak language of vindictive protest. 

I have tried once and again, my fellow citizens, to say to you in allfrankness what seems to be the prospect of fine weather. There is acompulsion upon one in my position to exercise every effort to see thatas little as possible of the hope of mankind is disappointed. Yet thisis a hope which cannot, in the very nature of things, be realized in itsperfection. The utmost that can be done by way of accommodation andcompromise has been performed without stint or limit. I am sure it willnot be necessary to remind you that you cannot throw off the habits ofthe climate immediately, any more than you can throw off the habits ofthe individual immediately. But however unpromising the immediateoutlook may be, I am the more happy to offer my observations on thestate of the weather for to-morrow because this is not a party issue. What a delightful thought that is! Whatever the condition of sunshine orprecipitation vouchsafed to us, may I not hope that we shall all meet itwith quickened temper and purpose, happy in the thought that it is ourcommon fortune?

For to-morrow there is every prospect of heavy and continuous rain. 

SYNTAX FOR CYNICS

A GRAMMAR OF THE FEMININE LANGUAGE

The feminine language consists of words placed one after another withextreme rapidity, with intervals for matinees. The purpose of thislanguage is (1) to conceal, and (2) to induce, thought. Very often, after the use of a deal of language, a thought will appear in thespeaker's mind. This, while desirable, is by no means necessary. 

[Illustration]

THOUGHT cannot be defined, but it is instinctively recognized even bythose unaccustomed to it. 

PARTS OF SPEECH: There are five parts of feminine speech--noun, pronoun, adjective, verb and interjection. 

THE NOUN is the name of something to wear, or somebody who furnishessomething to wear, or a place where something is to be worn. E. G. , _hat, husband, opera_. Feminine nouns are always singular. 

THE PRONOUN is _I_. 

ADJECTIVES: There are only four feminine adjectives--_adorable, cute, sweet, horrid_. These are all modified on occasion by the adverb_perfectly_. 

THE VERBS are of two kinds--active and passive. Active verbs expressaction; passive verbs express passion. All feminine verbs are irregularand imperative. 

INTERJECTIONS: There are two interjections--_Heavens_! and _Gracious_!The masculine language is much richer in interjections. 

DECLENSION: There are three ways of feminine declining, (1) to say No;(2) to say Yes and mean No; (3) to say nothing. 

CONJUGATION: This is what happens to a verb in the course ofconversation or shopping. A verb begins the day quite innocently, as theverb _go_ in the phrase _to go to town_. When it gets to the city thisverb becomes _look_, as, for instance, to _look at the shop windows. _Thereafter its descent is rapid into the form _purchase_ or _charge_. This conjugation is often assisted by the auxiliary expression _abargain_. About the first of the following month the verb reappears inthe masculine vocabulary in a parallel or perverted form, modified by aninterjection. 

CONVERSATION in the feminine language consists of language rapidlyvibrating or oscillating between two persons. The object of anyconversation is always accusative, e. G. , "_Mrs. Edwards has no taste inhats_. " Most conversations consist of an indeterminate number ofsentences, but sometimes it is difficult to tell where one sentence endsand the next begins. It is even possible for two sentences to overlap. When this occurs the conversation is known as a dialogue. A sentence maybe of any length, and is concluded only by the physiological necessityof taking breath. 

SENTENCES: A sentence may be defined as a group of words, uttered insequence, but without logical connection, to express an opinion or anemotion. A number of sentences if emitted without interruption becomes aconversation. A conversation prolonged over an hour or more becomes agossip. A gossip, when shared by several persons, is known as a secret. A secret is anything known by a large and constantly increasing numberof persons. 

LETTERS: The feminine language, when committed to paper, with a stub penand backhanded chirography, is known as a letter. A letter should ifpossible, be written on rose or lemon colored paper of a rough andflannely texture, with scalloped edges and initials embossed in gilt. Itshould be written with great rapidity, containing not less than tenexclamation points per page and three underlined adjectives perparagraph. The verb may be reserved until the postscript. 

Generally speaking, students of the feminine language are agreed thatrules of grammar and syntax are subject to individual caprice and whim, and it is very difficult to lay down fixed canons. The extreme rapiditywith which the language is used and the charm and personal magnetism ofits users have disconcerted even the most careful and scientificobservers. A glossary of technical terms and idioms in the femininelanguage would be a work of great value to the whole husband world, butit is doubtful if any such volume will ever be published. 

THE TRUTH AT LAST

AN EXTRACT FROM MARTHA WASHINGTON'S DIARY

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Feb. 22, 1772. A grate Company of Guests assembled at Mt Vernon tocelebrate Gen'l Washington's Birthdaye. In the Morning the Gentlemennwent a Fox hunting, but their Sport was marred by the Pertinacity ofsome Motion Picture menn who persewd them to take Fillums and catchd theGeneral falling off his Horse at a Ditch. In the Evening some of theCompanye tooke Occasion to rally the General upon the old Fable of theCherrye Tree, w'ch hath ever been imputed an Evidence of hys exceedingVeracity, though to saye sooth I never did believe the legend my self. "Well, " sayes the General with a Twinkle, "it wolde not be Politick todenye a Romance w'ch is soe profitable to my Reputation, but to beCandid, Gentlemenn, I have no certain recollection of the Affaire. MyBrother Lawrence was wont to say that the Tree or Shrubb in question wasno Cherrye but a Bitter Persimmon; moreover he told me that I stoutlydenyed any Attacke upon it; but being caught with the Goods (as Tullysaith) I was soundly Flogged, and walked stiffly for three dayes. "

I was glad to heare the Truth in this matter as I have never seen anyCorroboration of this surpassing Virtue in George's private Life. Theevening broke up in some Disorder as Col Fairfax and others hadd Drunktoo freely of the Cock's Taile as they dub the new and very biting Toddyintroduced by the military. Wee hadd to call a chirurgeon to lett Bloodfor some of the Guests before they coulde be gott to Bedd, whither theywere conveyed on stretchers. 

FIXED IDEAS

It is said that a Fixed Idea is the beginning of madness. 

Yet we are often worried because we have so few Fixed Ideas. We do notseem to have any really definite Theory about Life. 

 * * * * *

We find, on the other hand, that a great many of those we know have someGuiding Principle that excuses and explains all their conduct. 

 * * * * *

If you have some Theory about Life, and are thoroughly devoted to it, you may come to a bad end, but you will enjoy yourself heartily. 

 * * * * *

These theories may be of many different kinds. One of our friends restshis career and hope of salvation on the doctrine that eating plenty offish and going without an overcoat whenever possible constitute supremehappiness. 

 * * * * *

Another prides himself on not being able to roll a cigarette. If he wereforced, at the point of the bayonet, to roll a fag, it would wreck hislife. 

 * * * * *

Another is convinced that the Lost and Found ads in the papers allcontain anarchist code messages, and sits up late at night trying tounriddle them. 

 * * * * *

How delightful it must be to be possessed by one of these Theories! Allthe experiences of the theorist's life tend to confirm his Theory. Thisis always so. Did you ever hear of a Theory being confuted?

 * * * * *

Facts are quite helpless in the face of Theories. For after all, mostFacts are insufficiently encouraged with applause. When a Fact comesalong, the people in charge are generally looking the other way. This iswhat is meant by Not Facing the Facts. 

 * * * * *

Therefore all argument is quite useless, for it only results instiffening your friend's belief in his (presumably wrong) Theory. 

 * * * * *

When any one tries to argue with you, say, "You are nothing if notaccurate, and you are not accurate. " Then escape from the room. 

 * * * * *

When we hear our friends diligently expounding the ideas which ExplainEverything, we are wistful. We go off and say to ourself, We really mustdig up some kind of Theory about Life. 

 * * * * *

We read once of a great man that he never said, "Well, possibly so. "This gave us an uneasy pang. 

 * * * * *

It is a mistake to be Open to Conviction on so many topics, because allone's friends try to convince one. This is very painful. 

 * * * * *

And it is embarrassing if, for the sake of a quiet life, one pretends tobe convinced. At the corner of Tenth and Chestnut we allowed ourself toagree with A. B. , who said that the German colonies should beinternationalized. Then we had to turn down Ninth Street because we sawC. D. Coming, with whom we had previously agreed that Great Britainshould have German Africa. And in a moment we had to dodge into SansomStreet to avoid E. F. , having already assented to his proposition thatthe German colonies should have self-determination. This kind of thingmakes it impossible to see one's friends more than one at a time. 

 * * * * *

Perhaps our Fixed Idea is that we have no Fixed Ideas. 

Well, possibly so. 

TRIALS OF A PRESIDENT TRAVELING ABROAD

10 a. M. --Arrive at railway station. Welcomed by King and Queen. Hat onhead. Umbrella left hand. Gloves on. 

10:01--Right glove off (hastily) into left hand. Hat off (right hand). Umbrella hanging on left arm. 

10:02--Right glove into left pocket. Hat to left hand. Shake hands withKing. 

10:03--Shake hands with Queen. Left glove off to receive flowers. Umbrella to right hand. 

10:04--Shake hands with Prime Minister. Left glove in left hand. Umbrella back to left hand. Flowers in left hand. Hat in left hand. 

10:05--Enter King's carriage. Try to drop flowers under carriageunobserved. Foreign Minister picks them up with gallant remark. 

10:06--Shake hands with Foreign Minister. In his emotional foreignmanner he insists on taking both hands. Quick work: Umbrella to rightelbow, gloves left pocket, hat under right arm, flowers to right pocket. 

10:08--Received by Lord Mayor, who offers freedom of the city in goldencasket. Casket in left hand, Lord Mayor in right hand Queen on left arm, umbrella on right arm flowers and gloves bursting from pockets hat(momentarily) on head. 

10:10--Delegation of statesmen. Statesmen in right hand. Hat, umbrella, gloves, King, flowers, casket in left hand. Situation gettingcomplicated. 

10:15--Ceremonial reception by Queen Mother. Getting confused. QueenMother in left pocket, umbrella on head, gloves on right hand, hat inleft hand, King on head, flowers in trousers pocket. Casket under leftarm. 

10:17--Complete collapse. Failure of the League of Nations. 

DIARY OF A PUBLISHER'S OFFICE BOY

Jan. 7, 1600. Thys daye ye Bosse bade mee remaine in ye Outer Office tokeepe Callers from Hinderyng Hym in Hys affaires. There came an oldeBumme (ye same wch hath beene heare before) wth ye Scrypte of a Playe, dubbed Roumio ande Julia. Hys name was Shake a Speare or somethynge lykethatt. Ye Bosse bade mee reade ye maunuscripp myselfe, as hee was Bussy. I dyd. Ande of alle foulishnesse, thys playe dyd beare away ye prize. Conceive ye Absuerditye of laying ye Sceane in Italy, it ys welle knownethat Awdiences will not abear nothyng that is not sett neare at Home. Butt woarse stille, thys fellowe presumes to kille offe Boath Heroe andeHeroine in ye Laste Acte, wch is Intolerabble toe ye Publicke. Suerleynoe chaunce of Success in thys. Ye awthour dyd reappeare in yeaufternoone, and dyd seeke to borrowe a crowne from mee, but I sente hympacking. Ye Bosse hath heartilye given me Styx forr admitting suchVagabones to ye Office. I tolde maister Shake a Speare that unlesse heecolde learne to wryte Beste Sellers such as Master Spenser's FaeryeQuene (wch wee have put through six editions) there was suerly noe Hopefor hym. Hee tooke thys advyse in goode parte, and wente. Hys jerkinwolde have beene ye better for a patchinge. 

THE DOG'S COMMANDMENTS

[Illustration]

From a witless puppy I brought thee up: gave thee fire and food, andtaught thee the self-respect of an honest dog. Hear, then, mycommandments:

I am thy master: thou shalt have no other masters before me. Where I go, shalt thou follow; where I abide, tarry thou also. 

My house is thy castle; thou shalt honor it; guard it with thy life ifneed be. 

By daylight, suffer all that approach peaceably to enter withoutprotest. But after nightfall thou shalt give tongue when men draw near. 

Use not thy teeth on any man without good cause and intolerableprovocation; and never on women or children. 

Honor thy master and thy mistress, that thy days may be long in theland. 

Thou shalt not consort with mongrels, nor with dogs that are common orunclean. 

Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not feed upon refuse or stray bits: thymeat waits thee regularly in the kitchen. 

Thou shalt not bury bones in the flower beds. 

Cats are to be chased, but in sport only; seek not to devour them: theirteeth and claws are deadly. 

Thou shalt not snap at my neighbor, nor at his wife, nor his child, norhis manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor doharm to aught that is his. 

The drawing-room rug is not for thee, nor the sofa, nor the bestarmchair. Thou hast the porch and thy own kennel. But for the love Ibear thee, there is always a corner for thee by the winter fire. 

Meditate on these commandments day and night; so shalt thou be a dog ofgood breeding and an honor to thy master. 

THE VALUE OF CRITICISM

Our friend Dove Dulcet, the well-known sub-caliber poet, has recentlyissued a slender volume of verses called _Peanut Butter_. He thinks wemay be interested to see the comment of the press on his book. We don'tknow why he should think so, but anyway here are some of the reviews:

Buffalo _Lens_: Mr. Dulcet is a sweet singer, and we could only wishthere were twice as many of these delicately rhymed fancies. There isnot a poem in the book that does not exhibit a tender grasp of thebeautiful homely emotions. Perhaps the least successful, however, isthat entitled "On Losing a Latchkey. "

Syracuse _Hammer and Tongs_: This little book of savage satires willrather dismay the simple-minded reader. Into the acid vials of his songMr. Dulcet has poured a bitter cynicism. He seems to us to be anirremediable pessimist, a man of brutal and embittered life. In onepoem, however, he does soar to a very fine imaginative height. This isthe ode "On Losing a Latchkey, " which is worth all the rest of thepieces put together. 

New York _Reaping Hook_: It is odd that Mr. Dove Dulcet, of Philadelphiawe believe should have been able to find a publisher for this volume. These queer little doggerels have an instinctive affinity for oblivion, and they will soon coalesce with the driftwood of the literary SargassoSea. Among many bad things we can hardly remember ever to have seenanything worse than "On Losing a Latchkey. "

Philadelphia _Prism_: Our gifted fellow townsman, Mr. Dove Dulcet, hasonce more demonstrated his ability to set humble themes in entrancingmeasures. He calls his book _Peanut Butter_. A title chosen with rarediscernment, for the little volume has all the savor and nourishingproperties of that palatable delicacy. We wish there were space to quote"On Losing a Latchkey, " for it expresses a common human experience inlanguage of haunting melody and witty brevity. How rare it is to find apoet with such metrical skill who is content to handle the minor themesof life in this mood of delicious pleasantry. The only failure in thebook is the banal sonnet entitled "On Raiding the Ice Box. " This wewould be content to forego. 

Pittsburgh _Cylinder_: It is a relief to meet one poet who deals withreally exalted themes. We are profoundly weary of the myriad versifierswho strum the so-called lowly and domestic themes. Mr. Dulcet, however, in his superb free verse, has scaled olympian heights, disdaining thecustomary twaddling topics of the rhymesters. Such an amazing allegoryas "On Raiding the Ice Box, " which deals, of course, with the experienceof a man who attempts to explore the mind of an elderly Boston spinster, marks this powerful poet as a man of unusual satirical and philosophicaldepth. 

Boston _Penseroso_: We find Mr. Dove Dulcet's new book rather baffling. We take his poem "On Raiding the Ice Box" to be a pæan in honor of thediscovery of the North Pole; but such a poem as "On Losing a Latchkey, "is quite inscrutable. Our guess is that it is an intricatepsycho-analysis of a pathological case of amnesia. Our own taste is morefor the verse that deals with the gentler emotions of every day, butthere can be no doubt that Mr. Dulcet is an artist to be reckoned with. 

A MARRIAGE SERVICE FOR COMMUTERS

(_Fill in railroad as required_)

[Illustration]

Wilt thou, Jack, have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live togetherin so far as the ---- Railroad will allow? Wilt thou love her, comforther, honor and keep her, take her to the movies, prevent the furnacefrom going out, and come home regularly on the 5:42 train?"

"I will. "

"Wilt thou, Jill, have this commuter to thy wedded husband, bearing inmind snowdrifts, washouts, lack of servants and all other penalties ofsuburban life? Wilt thou obey him and serve him, love, honor and keephim, and let him smoke a corncob pipe in the house?"

"I will. "

"I, Jack, take thee, Jill, to my wedded wife, from 6 P. M. Until 8 A. M. , as far as permitted by the ---- Railroad, schedule subject to changewithout notice, for better, for worse, for later, for earlier, to loveand to cherish, and I promise to telephone you when I miss the train. "

"I, Jill, take thee, Jack, to my wedded husband, subject to themutability of the suburban service, changing trains at----, to have andto hold, save when the card club meets on Wednesday evenings, andthereto I give thee my troth. "

THE SUNNY SIDE OF GRUB STREET

[Illustration]

I often wonder how many present-day writers keep diaries. I wish _TheBookman_ would conduct a questionnaire on the subject. I have asuspicion that Charley Towne keeps one--probably a grim, tragicparchment wherein that waggish soul sets down its secret musings. I daresay Louis Untermeyer has one (morocco, tooled and goffered, with giltedges), and looks over its nipping paragraphs now and then with acertain relish. It undoubtedly has a large portmanteau pocket with it, to contain clippings of Mr. Untermeyer's letters to the papers takingissue with the reviews of his books. There is no way for the reviewer toescape that backfire. I knew one critic who was determined to reviewone of Louis's books in such a way that the author would have no excusefor writing to the _Times_ about it. He was overwhelminglycomplimentary. But along came the usual letter by return of post. Mr. Untermeyer asked for enough space to "diverge from the critique at onepoint. " He said the review was too fulsome. 

I wish Don Marquis kept a diary, but I am quite sure he doesn't. Don istoo--well, I was going to say he is too--but after all he has a perfectright to be that way. 

It's rather an important thing. Every one knows the fascination exertedby personal details of authors' lives. Every one has hustled to the Caféde la Source in Paris because R. L. S. Once frequented it, or to Allaire'sin New York because O. Henry wrote it up in one of his tales, and thatsort of thing. People like to know all the minutiæ concerning theirfavorite author. It is not sufficient to know (let us say) that MurrayHill or some one of that sort, once belonged to the Porrier's CornerClub. One wants to know where the Porrier's Corner Club was, and whowere the members, and how he got there, and what he got there, and soforth. One wants to know where Murray Hill (I take his name only as asymbol) buys his cigars, and where he eats lunch, and what he eats, whether pigeon potpie with iced tea or hamburg steak and "coffee withplenty. " It is all these intimate details that the public has thirstfor. 

Now the point I want to make is this. Here, all around us, is finedoings (as Murray Hill would put it), the jolliest literary hullabaloogoing. Some of the writers round about--Arthur Guiterman or Tom Massonor Witter Bynner or Tom Daly, or some of these chaps now sitting down tocombination-plate luncheons and getting off all manner of merry quipsand confidential matters--some of these chaps may be famous some day(posterity is so undiscriminating) and all that savory personal stuffwill have evaporated from our memories. The world of bookmen is in greatneed of a new crop of intimists, or whatever you call them. Barbellionchaps. Henry Ryecrofts. We need a chiel taking notes somewhere. 

Now if you really jot down the merry gossip, and make bright little penportraits, and tell just what happens, it will not only afford you adeal of discreet amusement, but the diary you keep will reciprocate. Inyour older years it will keep you. _Harper's Magazine_ will undoubtedlywant to publish it, forty years from now. If that is too late to keepyou, it will help to keep your descendants. So I wish some of theauthors would confess and let us know which of them are doing it. Itwould be jolly to know to whom we might confide the genial little itemsof what-not and don't-let-this-go-farther that come the rounds. Theinside story of the literature of any epoch is best told in the diaries. I'll bet Brander Matthews kept one, and James Huneker. It's a pityProfessor Matthews's was a bit tedious. Crabb Robinson was the man formy money. 

The diarists I would choose for the present generation on Grub Streetwould be Heywood Broun, Franklin Adams, Bob Holliday, William McFee, andmaybe Ben De Casseres (if he would promise not to mention Don Marquisand Walt Whitman more than once per page). McFee might be let off thejob by reason of his ambrosial letters. But it just occurs to me that ofcourse one must not know who is keeping the diary. If it were known, hewould be deluged with letters from people wanting to get their namesinto it. And the really worthwhile folks would be on their guard. 

But if all the writers wait until they are eighty years old and canwrite their memoirs with the beautifully gnarled and chalky old handsJoyce Kilmer loved to contemplate, they will have forgotten the comicalpith of a lot of it. If you want to reproduce the colors and collisionsalong the sunny side of Grub Street, you've got to jot down your databefore they fade. I wish I had time to be diarist of such matters. Howcandid I'd be! I'd put down all about the two young novelists who usedto meet every day in City Hall Park to compare notes while they werehunting for jobs, and make wagers as to whose pair of trousers wouldlast longer. (Quite a desirable essay could he written, by the way, onthe influence of trousers on the fortunes of Grub Street, with the threestages of the Grub Street trouser, viz. : 1, baggy; 2, shiny; 3, trousersthat must not be stooped in on any account. ) There is an uproarious taleabout a pair of trousers and a very well-known writer and a lecture atVassar College, but these things have to be reserved for posterity, thelegatee of all really amusing matters. 

But then there are other topics, too, such as the question whetherIbáñez always wears a polo shirt, as the photos lead one to believe. Thesecret Philip Gibbs told me about the kind of typewriter he used on thewestern front. I would be enormously candid (if I were a diarist). I'dput down that I never can remember whether Vida Scudder is a man or awoman. I'd tell what A. Edward Newton said when he came rushing into theoffice to show me the Severn death-bed portrait of Keats, which he hadjust bought from Rosenbach. I'd tell the story of the unpublished letterof R. L. S. Which a young man sold to buy a wedding present, which hassince vanished (the R. L. S. Letter). I'd tell the amazing story of how apiece of Walt Whitman manuscript was lost in Philadelphia on thememorable night of June 30, 1919. I'd tell just how Vachel Lindsaybehaves when he's off duty. I'd even forsake everything to travel overto England with Vachel on his forthcoming lecture tour, as I'm convincedthat England's comments on Vachel will be worth listening to. 

The ideal man to keep the sort of diary I have in mind would be HilaireBelloc. It was an ancestor of Mr. Belloc, Dr. Joseph Priestley (who diedin Pennsylvania, by the way) who discovered oxygen; and it is Mr. Bellochimself who has discovered how to put oxygen into the modern Englishessay. The gift, together with his love of good eating, probably came tohim from his mother, Bessie Rayner Parkes, who once partook of SamuelRogers's famous literary breakfasts. And this brings us back to our oldfriend Crabb Robinson, another of the Rogers breakfast clan. Robinson isnever wildly exciting, but he gives a perfect panorama of his day. It isnot often that one finds a man who associated with such figures asGoethe, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, and Lamb. He had the true giftfor diarizing. What could be better, for instance, than this littleminiature picture of the rise and fall of teetotalism in one well-lovedperson?--

 Mary Lamb, I am glad to say, is just now very comfortable. She has put herself under Doctor Tuthill, who has prescribed water. Charles, in consequence, resolved to accommodate himself to her, and since Lord-Mayor's day has abstained from all other liquor, as well as from smoking. We shall all rejoice if this experiment succeeds.... His change of habit, though it, on the whole, improves his health, yet when he is low-spirited, leaves him without a remedy or relief. 

 --LETTER OF HENRY CRABB ROBINSON To Miss WORDSWORTH, December 23, 1810. 

 Spent part of the evening with Charles Lamb (unwell) and his sister. 

 --ROBINSON'S DIARY, January 8, 1811. 

 Late in the evening Lamb called, to sit with me while he smoked his pipe. 

 --ROBINSON'S DIARY, December 20, 1814. 

 Lamb was in a happy frame, and I can still recall to my mind the look and tone with which he addressed Moore, when he could not articulate very distinctly: "Mister Moore, will you drink a glass of wine with me?"--suiting the action to the word, and hobnobbing. 

 --ROBINSON'S DIARY, April 4, 1823. 

Now that, I maintain, is just the kind of stuff we need in a diary oftoday. How fascinating that old book Peyrat's "Pastors of the Desert"became when we learned that R. L. S. Had a copy of the second volume of itin his sleeping sack when he camped out with Modestine. Even so it maybe a matter of delicious interest to our grandsons to know what book JoeHergesheimer was reading when he came in town on the local from WestChester recently, and who taught him to shoot craps. It is interestingto know what Will and Stephen Benét (those skiey fraternals) eat whenthey visit a Hartford Lunch; to know whether Gilbert Chesterton isreally fond of dogs (as "The Flying Inn" implies, if you rememberQuoodle), and whether Edwin Meade Robinson and Edwin Arlington Robinson, _arcades ambo_, ever write to each other. It would beinteresting--indeed it would be highly entertaining--to compile a listof the free meals Vachel Lindsay has received, and to ascertain thenumber of times Harry Kemp has been "discovered. " It would beinteresting to know how many people shudder with faint nausea (as I do)when they pick up a Dowson playlet and find it beginning with a list ofcharacters including "A Moon Maiden" and "Pierrot, " scene set in "aglade in the Parc du Petit Trianon--a statue of Cupid--Pierrot enterswith his hands full of lilies. " It would be interesting to resume thenumber of brazen imitations of McCrae's "In Flanders Fields"--here isthe most striking, put out on a highly illuminated card by a New Yorkpublishing firm:

 Rest in peace, ye Flanders's dead, The poppies still blow overhead, The larks ye heard, still singing fly. They sing of the cause which made thee die. 

 And they are heard far down below, Our fight is ended with the foe. The fight for right, which ye begun And which ye died for, we have won. Rest in peace. 

The man who wrote that ought to be the first man mobilized for the nextwar. 

All such matters, with a plentiful bastinado for stupidity and swank, are the privilege of the diarist. He may indulge himself in thedelightful luxury of making post-mortem enemies. He may wonder what theaverage reviewer thinks he means by always referring to singlepublishers in the plural. A note which we often see in the papers runslike this: "Soon to be issued by the Dorans (or Knopfs or Huebsches), "etc. , etc. This is an echo of the old custom when there really were twoor more Harpers. But as long as there is only one Doran, one Huebsch, one Knopf, it is simply idiotic. 

Well, as we go sauntering along the sunny side of Grub Street, meditating an essay on the Mustache in Literature (we have shaved offour own since that man Murray Hill referred to it in the public printsas "a young hay-wagon"), we are wondering whether any of the writing menare keeping the kind of diary we should like our son to read, say in1950. Perhaps Miss Daisy Ashford is keeping one. She has the seeing eye. Alas that Miss Daisy at nine years old was a _puella unius libri_. 

BURIAL SERVICE FOR A NEWSPAPER JOKE

_After the remains have been decently interred, the following remarksshall be uttered by the presiding humorist:_

This joke has been our refuge from one generation to another:

Before the mountains were brought forth this joke was lusty and of goodrepute:

In the life of this joke a thousand years are but as yesterday. 

Blessed, therefore, is this joke, which now resteth from its labors. 

But most of our jokes are of little continuance: though there be some sostrong that they come to fourscore years, yet is their humor then butlabor and sorrow:

For a joke that is born of a humorist hath but a short time to live andis full of misery. It cometh up and is cut down like a flower. It fleethas if it were a shadow and abideth but one edition. 

It is sown in quotation, it is raised in misquotation: We thereforecommit this joke to the files of the country newspapers, where it shallcirculate forever, world without end. 

ADVICE TO THOSE VISITING A BABY

Interview the baby alone if possible. If, however, both parents arepresent, say, "It looks like its mother. " And, as an afterthought, "Ithink it has its father's elbows. "

If uncertain as to the infant's sex, try some such formula as, "He lookslike her grandparents, " or "She has his aunt's sweet disposition. "

When the mother only is present, your situation is critical. Sigh deeplyand admiringly, to imply that you wish _you_ had a child like that. Don't commit yourself at all until she gives a lead. 

When the father only is present, you may be a little reckless. Give thefather a cigar and venture, "Good luck, old man; it looks like yourmother-in-law. "

If possible, find out beforehand how old the child is. Call up theBureau of Vital Statistics. If it is two months old, say to the mother, "Rather large for six months, isn't he?"

If the worst has happened and the child really does look like itsfather, the most tactful thing is to say, "Children change as they growolder. " Or you may suggest that some mistake has been made at thehospital and they have brought home the wrong baby. 

If left alone in the room with the baby, throw a sound-proof rug over itand escape. 

ABOU BEN WOODROW

(IN PARIS)

[Illustration]

 Abou Ben Woodrow (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw, among the gifts piled on the floor (Making the room look like a department store), An Angel writing in a book of gold. Now much applause had made Ben Woodrow bold And to the Presence in the room said he, "_Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça que tu ecris?"_ Or, in plain English, "May I not inquire What writest thou?" The Angel did not tire But kept on scribing. Then it turned its head (All Europe could not turn Ben Woodrow's head!) And with a voice almost as sweet as Creel's Answered: "The names of those who grease the wheels Of progress and have never, never blundered. " Ben Woodrow lay quite still, and sadly wondered. "And is mine one?" he queried. "Nay, not so, " Replied the Angel. Woodrow spoke more low But cheerly still, and in his May I notting Fashion he said: "Of course you may be rotting, But even if you are, may I not then Be writ as one that loves his fellow men? Do that for me, old chap; just that; that merely And I am yours, cordially and sincerely. " The Angel wrote, and vanished like a mouse. Next night returned (accompanied by House) And showed the names whom love of Peace had blest. And lo! Ben Woodrow's name led all the rest!

MY MAGNIFICENT SYSTEM

In these days when the streets are so perilous, every man who goes aboutthe city ought to be sure that his pockets are in good order, so thatwhen he is run down by a roaring motor-truck the police will have notrouble in identifying him and communicating with his creditors. 

I have always been very proud of my pocket system. As others may wish toinstall it, I will describe it briefly. If I am found prostrate andlifeless on the paving, I can quickly be identified by the followingarrangement of my private affairs:

In my right-hand trouser leg is a large hole, partially surrounded bypocket. 

In my left-hand trouser pocket is a complicated bunch of keys. I am notquite sure what they all belong to, as I rarely lock anything. They arevery useful, however, as when I walk rapidly they evolve a shrilljingling which often conveys the impression of minted coinage. One ofthem, I think, unlocks the coffer where I secretly preserve the pair ofspats I bought when I became engaged. 

My right-hand hip pocket is used, in summer, for the handkerchiefreserves (hayfever sufferers, please notice); and, in winter, forstamps. It is tapestried with a sheet of three-cent engravings that gotin there by mistake last July, and adhered. 

My left-hand hip pocket holds my memorandum book, which contains onlyone entry: _Remember not to forget anything_. 

The left-hand upper waistcoat pocket holds a pencil, a commutationticket and a pipe cleaner. 

The left-hand lower waistcoat pocket contains what the ignorant willesteem scraps of paper. This, however, is the hub and nerve center of mymnemonic system. When I want to remember anything I write it down on asmall slip of paper and stick it in that pocket. Before going to bed Iclean out the pocket and see how many things I have forgotten during theday. This promotes tranquil rest. 

The right-hand upper waistcoat pocket is used for wall-paper samples. Here I keep clippings of all the wallpapers at home, so that when buyingshirts, ties, socks or books I can be sure to get something that willharmonize. My taste in these matters has sometimes been aspersed, so Iam playing safe. 

The right-hand lower waistcoat pocket is used for small change. This isa one-way pocket; exit only. 

The inner pocket of my coat is used for railroad timetables, most ofwhich have since been changed. Also a selected assortment of unansweredletters and slips of paper saying, "Call Mr. So-and-so before noon. " Thefirst thing to be done by my heirs after collecting the remains must beto communicate with the writers of those letters, to assure them that Iwas struck down in the fullness of my powers while on the way to thepost office to mail an answer. 

My right-hand coat pocket is for pipes. 

Left-hand coat pocket for tobacco and matches. 

The little tin cup strapped in my left armpit is for Swedish matchesthat failed to ignite. It is an invention of my own. 

I once intended to allocate a pocket especially for greenbacks, butfound it unnecessary. 

LETTERS TO CYNTHIA

I. IN PRAISE OF BOOBS

 _Dear Sir--What is a Boob? Will you please discuss the subject a little? Perhaps I'm a boob for asking--but I'd like to know_. 

 CYNTHIA. 

[Illustration]

BE FRIENDLY WITH BOOBS

The Boob, my dear Cynthia, is Nature's device for mitigating thequaintly blended infelicities of existence. Never be too bitter aboutthe Boob. The Boob is you and me and the man in the elevator. 

THE BOOB IS HUMANITY'S HOPE

As long as the Boob ratio remains high, humanity is safe. The Boob isthe last repository of the stalwart virtues. The Boob is faith, hope andcharity. The Boob is the hope of conservatives, the terror of radicalsand the meal check of cynics. If you are run over on Market Street andleft groaning under the mailed fist of a flivver, the Bolsheviki andI. W. W. Will be watching the shop windows. It will be the Boob who willcome to your aid, even before the cop gets there. 

1653 BOOBS

If you were to dig a deep and terrible pit in the middle of ChestnutStreet, and illuminate it with signs and red lights and placardsreading, _DO NOT WALK INTO THIS PIT_, 1653 Boobs would tumble into itduring the course of the day. Boobs have faith. They are eager to plungein where an angel wouldn't even show his periscope. 

THE BOOB RATIO

But that does not prove anything creditable to human nature. For though1653 people would fall into our pit (which any Rapid Transit Companywill dig for us free of charge) 26, 448 would cautiously andsuspiciously and contemptuously avoid it. The Boob ratio is just about 1to 16. 

HE LOOKS FOR ANGELS

It does not pay to make fun of the Boob. There is no malice in him, noinsolence, no passion to thrive at the expense of his fellows. If hesees some one on a street corner gazing open-mouthed at the sky, he willdo likewise, and stand there for half hour with his apple of Adamexpectantly vibrating. But is that a shameful trait? May not a Boobexpect to see angels in the shimmering blue of heaven? Is he moredisreputable than the knave who frisks his watch meanwhile? And supposehe does see an angel, or even only a blue acre of sky--is that not worthas much as the dial in his poke?

HE SEES THEM

It is the Boob who is always willing to look hopefully for angels whowill see them ultimately. And the man who is only looking for the Boob'stimepiece will do time of his own by and by. 

HE BEARS NO MALICE

The Boob is convinced that the world is conducted on genteel andfriendly principles. He feels in his heart that even the law of gravitywill do him no harm. That is why he steps unabashed into our pit onChestnut Street; and finding himself sprawling in the bottom of it, hebears no ill will to Sir Isaac Newton. He simply knows that the law ofgravity took him for some one else--a street-cleaning contractor, perhaps. 

A DEFINITION

A small boy once defined a Boob as one who always treats other peoplebetter than he does himself. 

HE IS UNSUSPICIOUS

The Boob is hopeful, cheery, more concerned over other people's troublesthan his own. He goes serenely unsuspicious of the brick under the silkhat, even when the silk hat is on the head of a Mayor or CityCouncilman. He will pull every trigger he meets, regardless that thewhole world is loaded and aimed at him. He will keep on running for the5:42 train, even though the timetable was changed the day beforeyesterday. He goes through the revolving doors the wrong way. He forgetsthat the banks close at noon on Saturdays. He asks for oysters on thefirst of June. He will wait for hours at the Chestnut Street door, eventhough his wife told him to meet her at the ribbon counter. 

HIS WIFE

Yes, he has a wife. But if he was not a Boob before marriage he willnever become so after. Women are the natural antidotes of Boobs. 

RECEPTIVE

The Boob is not quarrelsome. He is willing to believe that you know moreabout it than he does. He is always at home for ideas. 

HE IS HAPPY

Of course, what bothers other people is that the Boob is so happy. Heenjoys himself. He falls into that Rapid Transit pit of ours and hasmore fun out of the tumble than the sneering 26, 448 who stand aboveuntumbled. The happy simp prefers a 4 per cent that pays to a 15 percent investment that returns only engraved prospectuses. He stands onthat street corner looking for an imaginary angel parachuting down, andenjoys himself more than the Mephistopheles who is laughing up hissleeve. 

NATURE'S DARLING

Nature must love the Boob, because she is a good deal of a Boob herself. How she has squandered herself upon mountain peaks that are uselessexcept for the Alpenstock Trust; upon violets that can't be eaten; upongiraffes whose backs slope too steeply to carry a pack! Can it be thatthe Boob is Nature's darling, that she intends him to outlive all therest?

A BRIEF MAXIM

Be sure you're a Boob, and then go ahead. 

IN CONCLUSION

But never, dear Cynthia, confuse the Boob with the Poor Fish. The PoorFish, as an Emersonian thinker has observed, is the Boob gone wrong. ThePoor Fish is the cynical, sneering simpleton who, if he did see anangel, would think it was only some one dressed up for the movies. ThePoor Fish is Why Boobs Leave Home. 

II. SIMPLIFICATION

 _Dear Sir--How can life be simplified? In the office where I work the pressure of affairs is very exacting. Often I do not have a moment to think over my own affairs before 4 p. M. There are a great many matters that puzzle me, and I am afraid that if I go on working so hard the sweetest hours of my youth may pass before I have given them proper consideration. It is very irassible. Can you help me?_

 CYNTHIA. 

SALUTATION TO CYNTHIA

Cynthia, my child: How are you? It is very delightful to hear from youagain. During the recent months I have been very lonely indeed withoutyour comradeship and counsel with regard to the great matters which wereunder consideration. 

THINKING IT OVER

Well, Cynthia, when your inquiry reached me I propped my feet on thedesk, got out the corncob pipe and thought things over. How to simplifylife? How, indeed! It is a subject that interests me strangely. Ofcourse, the easiest method is to let one's ancestors do it for one. Ifyou have been lucky enough to choose a simple-minded, quiet-naturedquartet of grandparents, frugal, thrifty and foresighted, who had thegood sense to buy property in an improving neighborhood and keep theirmoney compounding at a fair rate of interest, the problem is greatlyclarified. If they have hung on to the old farmstead, with itshuckleberry pasture and cowbells tankling homeward at sunset and abright brown brook cascading down over ledges of rock into a swimminghole, then again your problem has possible solutions. Just go out to thefarm, with a copy of Matthew Arnold's "Scholar Gipsy" (you remember thepoem, in which he praises the guy who had sense enough to leave town andlive in the suburbs where the Bolsheviki wouldn't bother him), and don'tleave any forwarding address with the postoffice. But if, as I fear froman examination of your pink-scalloped notepaper with its exhalation oflilac essence, the vortex of modern jazz life has swept you in, thecrisis is far more intricate. 

TAKE THE MATTER IN YOUR OWN HANDS

Of course, my dear Cynthia, it is better to simplify your own life thanto have some one else do it for you. The Kaiser, for instance, has hadhis career greatly simplified, but hardly in a way he himself would havechosen. The first thing to do is to come to a clear understanding of(and to let your employer know you understand) the two principles thatunderlie modern business. There are only two kinds of affairs that areattended to in an office. First, things that absolutely must be done. These are often numerous; but remember, that since they _have_ to bedone, if you don't do them some one else will. Second, things that don'thave to be done. And since they don't have to be done, why do them? Thiswill simplify matters a great deal. 

FURTHER SUGGESTIONS

The next thing to do is to stop answering letters. Even the firm's mostpersistent customers will cease troubling you by and bye if you persist. Then, stop answering the telephone. A pair of office shears can sever atelephone wire much faster than any mechanician can keep it repaired. Ifthe matter is really urgent, let the other people telegraph. While youare perfecting this scheme look about, in a dignified way, for anotherjob. Don't take the first thing that offers itself, but wait untilsomething really congenial appears. It is a good thing to choose someoccupation that will keep you a great deal in the open air, preferablysomething that involves looking at shop windows and frequent visits tothe receiving teller at the bank. It is nice to have a job in a tallbuilding overlooking the sea, with office hours from 3 to 5 p. M. 

HOW EASY, AFTER ALL!

Many people, dear Cynthia, are harassed because they do not realize howeasy it is to get out of a job which involves severe and concentratedeffort. My child, you must not allow yourself to become discouraged. Almost any job can be shaken off in time and with perseverance. Lookingout of the window is a great help. There are very few businesses wherewhat goes on in the office is half as interesting as what is happeningon the street outside. If your desk does not happen to be near a window, so much the better. You can watch the sunset admirably from the windowof the advertising manager's office. Call his attention to the rosytints in the afterglow or the glorious pallor of the clouds. Advertisingmanagers are apt to be insufficiently appreciative of these things. Sometimes, when they are closeted with the Boss in conference, open theground-glass door and say, "I think it is going to rain shortly. " Carryyour love of the beautiful into your office life. This will inevitablypave the way to simplification. 

ENVELOPES WITH LOOP HOLES

And never open envelopes with little transparent panes of isinglass intheir fronts. Never keep copies of your correspondence. For, if yourletters are correct, no copy will be necessary. And, if incorrect, it isfar better not to have a copy. If you were to tell me the exact natureof your work I could offer many more specific hints. 

YOUR INQUIRY, CHILD, TOUCHES MY HEART

I am intimately interested in your problem, my child, for I am a greatbeliever in simplification. It is hard to follow out one's own precepts;but the root of happiness is never to contradict any one and never agreewith any one. For if you contradict people, they will try to convinceyou; and if you agree with them, they will enlarge upon their viewsuntil they say something you will feel bound to contradict. Let me hearfrom you again. 

TO AN UNKNOWN DAMSEL

 On Fifth Street, in a small café, Upstairs (our tables were adjacent), I saw you lunching yesterday, And felt a secret thrill complacent. 

 You sat, and, waiting for your meal, You read a book. As I was eating, Dear me, how keen you made me feel To give you just a word of greeting!

 And as your hand the pages turned, I watched you, dumbly contemplating-- O how exceedingly I yearned To ask the girl to keep you waiting. 

 I wished that I could be the maid To serve your meal or crumb your cloth, or Beguile some hazard to my aid To know your verdict on that author!

 And still you read. You dropped your purse, And yet, adorably unheeding, You turned the pages, verse by verse, -- I watched, and worshiped you for reading!

 You know not what restraint it took To mind my etiquette, nor flout it By telling you I know that book, And asking what you thought about it. 

 I cursed myself for being shy-- I longed to make polite advances; Alas! I let the time go by, And Fortune gives no second chances. 

 You read, but still your face was calm-- (I scanned it closely, wretched sinner!) You showed no sign---I felt a qualm-- And then the waitress brought your dinner. 

 Those modest rhymes, you thought them fair? And will you sometimes praise or quote them? And do you ask why I should care? Oh, Lady, it was I who wrote them!

THOUGHTS ON SETTING AN ALARM CLOCK

 Mark the monitory dial, Set the gong for six a. M. -- Then, until the hour of trial, Clock a little sleep, pro tem. 

 As I crank the dread alarum Stern resolve I try to fix: My ideals, shall I mar 'em When the awful moment ticks?

 Heaven strengthen my intention, Grant me grace my vow to keep: Would the law enforced Prevention Of such Cruelty to Sleep!

SONGS IN A SHOWER BATH

[Illustration]

HOT WATER

 Gently, while the drenching dribble Courses down my sweltered form, I am basking like a sybil, Lazy, languorous and warm. I am unambitious, flaccid, Well content to drowse and dream: How I hate life's bitter acid-- Leave me here to stew and steam. Underneath this jet so torrid I forget the world's sad wrath: O activity is horrid! Leave me in my shower-bath!

COLD WATER

 But when I turn the crank O Zeus! A silver ecstasy thrills me! I caper and slap my chilled thighs, I plan to make a card index of all my ideas And feel like an efficiency expert. I tweak Fate by the nose And know I could succeed in _anything_. I throw up my head And glut myself with icy splatter... To-day I will really Begin my career!

ON DEDICATING A NEW TEAPOT

 Boiling water now is poured, Pouches filled with fresh tobacco, Round the hospitable board Fragrant steams Ceylon or Pekoe. 

 Bread and butter is cut thin, Cream and sugar, yes, bring them on; Ginger cookies in their tin, And the dainty slice of lemon. 

 Let the marmalade be brought, Buns of cinnamon adhesive; And, to catch the leaves, you ought To be sure to have the tea-sieve. 

 But, before the cups be filled-- Cups that cause no ebriation-- Let a genial wish be willed Just by way of dedication. 

 Here's your fortune, gentle pot: To our thirst you offer slakeage; Bright blue china, may I not Hope no maid will cause you breakage. 

 Kindest ministrant to man, Long be jocund years before you, And no meaner fortune than Helen's gracious hand to pour you!

THE UNFORGIVABLE SYNTAX

 A certain young man never knew Just when to say _whom_ and when _who_; "The question of choosing, " He said, "is confusing; I wonder if _which_ wouldn't do?"

 Nothing is so illegitimate As a noun when his verbs do not fit him; it Makes him disturbed If not properly verbed-- If he asks for the plural, why git him it!

 _Lie_ and _lay_ offer slips to the pen That have bothered most excellent men: You can say that you lay In bed--yesterday; If you do it to-day, you're a hen!

 A person we met at a play Was cruel to pronouns all day: She would frequently cry "Between you and I, If only us girls had our way--!"

VISITING POETS

We were giving a young English poet a taste of Philadelphia, trying toshow him one or two of the simple beauties that make life agreeable tous. Having just been photographed, he was in high good humor. 

"What a pity, " he said, "that you in America have no literature thatreflects the amazing energy, the humor, the raciness of your life! Iwoke up last night at the hotel and heard a motor fire engine thunderby. There's a symbol of the extraordinary vitality of America! My, if Icould only live over here a couple of years, how I'd like to try my handat it. It's a pity that no one over here is putting down the humor ofyour life. "

"Have you read O. Henry?" we suggested. 

"Extraordinary country, " he went on. "Somebody turned me loose on Mr. Morgan's library in New York. There was a librarian there, but I didn'tlet her bother me. I wanted to see that manuscript of 'Endymion' theyhave there. I supposed they would take me up to a glass case and let megaze at it. Not at all. They put it right in my hands and I spent threequarters of an hour over it. Wonderful stuff. You know, the firstedition of my book is selling at a double premium in London. It's beenout only eighteen months. "

"How do you fellows get away with it?" we asked humbly. 

"I hope Pond isn't going to book me up for too many lectures, " he said. "I've got to get back to England in the spring. There's a painter overthere waiting to do my portrait. But there are so many places I've gotto lecture--everybody seems to want to hear about the young Englishpoets. "

"I hear Philip Gibbs is just arriving in New York, " we said. 

"Is that so? Dear me, he'll quite take the wind out of my sails, won'the? Nice chap, Gibbs. He sent me an awfully cheery note when I went outto the front as a war correspondent. Said he liked my stuff about thesodgers. He'll make a pot of money over here, won't he?"

We skipped across City Hall Square abreast of some trolley cars. 

"I say, these trams keep one moving, don't they?" he said. "You know, Iwas tremendously bucked by that department store you took me to see. That's the sort of place one has to go to see the real art of America. Those paintings in there, by the elevators, they were done by a youngEnglish girl. Friend of mine--in fact, she did the pictures for my firstbook. Pity you have so few poets over here. You mustn't make me lose mytrain; I've got a date with Vachel Lindsay and Edgar Lee Masters in NewYork to-night. Vachel's an amusing bird. I must get him over to Englandand get him started. I've written to Edmund Gosse about him, and I'mgoing to write again. What a pity Irvin Cobb doesn't write poetry! He'sa great writer. What vivacity, what a rich vocabulary!"

"Have you read Mark Twain?" we quavered. 

"Oh, Mark's grand when he's serious; but when he tries to be funny, youknow, it's too obvious. I can always see him feeling for the joke. No, it doesn't come off. You know an artist simply doesn't exist for meunless he has something to say. That's what makes me so annoyed withR. L. S. In 'Weir of Hermiston' and the 'New Arabian Nights' he really hadsomething to say; the rest of the time he was playing the fool on someone else's instrument. You know style isn't something you can borrowfrom some one else; it's the unconscious revelation of a man's ownpersonality. "

We agreed. 

"I wonder if there aren't some clubs around here that would like to hearme talk?" he said. "You know, I'd like to come back to Philadelphia if Icould get some dates of that sort. Just put me wise, old man, if youhear of anything. I was telling some of your poets in New York about thelectures I've been giving. Those chaps are fearfully rough with one. Youknow, they'll just ride over one roughshod if you give them a chance. They hate to see a fellow a success. Awful tripe some of them arewriting. They don't seem to be expressing the spirit, the fineexhilaration, of American life at all. If I had my way, I'd make everyone in America read Rabelais and Madame Bovary. Then they ought to studysome of the old English poets, like Marvell, to give them precision. It's lots of fun telling them these things. They respond famously. Nowover in my country we poets are all so reserved, so shy, so taciturn. 

"You know Pond, the lecture man in New York, was telling me a quaintstory about Masefield. Great friend of mine, old Jan Masefield. Heturned up in New York to talk at some show Pond was running. Had on somehorrible old trench boots. There was only about twenty minutes beforethe show began. 'Well, ' says Pond, hoping Jan was going to change hisclothes, 'are you all ready?' 'Oh, yes, ' says Jan. Pond was graveled;didn't know just what to do. So he says, hoping to give Jan a hint, 'Well, I've just got to get my boots polished. ' Of course, they didn'tneed it--Americans' boots never do--but Pond sits down on aboot-polishing stand and the boy begins to polish for dear life. Jansits down by him, deep in some little book or other, paying noattention. Pond whispers to the boy, 'Quick, polish his boots while he'sreading. ' Jan was deep in his book, never knew what was going on. Thenthey went off to the lecture, Jan in his jolly old sack suit. "

We went up to a private gallery on Walnut Street, where some of the mostremarkable literary treasures in the world are stored, such as theoriginal copy of Elia given by Charles Lamb to the lady he wanted tomarry, Fanny Kelly. There we also saw some remarkable first editions ofShelley. 

"You know, " he said, "Mrs. L---- in New York--I had an introduction toher from Jan--wanted to give me a first edition of Shelley, but Iwouldn't let her. "

"How do you fellows get away with it?" we said again humbly. 

"Well, old man, " he said, "I must be going. Mustn't keep Vachel waiting. Is this where I train? What a ripping station! Some day I must write apoem about all this. What a pity you have so few poets ... "

A GOOD HOME IN THE SUBURBS

There are a number of empty apartments in the suburbs of our mind thatwe shall be glad to rent to any well-behaved ideas. 

These apartments (unfurnished) all have southern exposure and arereasonably well lighted. They have emergency exits. 

We prefer middle-aged, reasonable ideas that have outgrown the diseasesof infancy. No ideas need apply that will lie awake at night and disturbthe neighbors, or will come home very late and wake the other tenants. This is an orderly mind, and no gambling, loud laughter and carnival orPomeranian dogs will be admitted. 

If necessary, the premises can be improved to suit high-class tenants. 

No lease longer than six months can be given to any one idea, unless itcan furnish positive guarantees of good conduct, no bolshevikaffiliations and no children. 

We have an orphanage annex where homeless juvenile ideas may beaccommodated until they grow up. 

The southwestern section of our mind, where these apartments areavailable, is some distance from the bustle and traffic, but all thecentral points can be reached without difficulty. Middle-aged, unsophisticated ideas of domestic tastes will find the surroundingsalmost ideal. 

For terms and blue prints apply janitor on the premises. 

WALT WHITMAN MINIATURES

I

A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that one shouldhave some excuse for being away from the office on a working afternoon. September sunshine and trembling blue air are not sufficient reasons, itseems. Therefore, if any one should brutally ask what I was doing theother day dangling down Chestnut Street toward the river, I should haveto reply, "Looking for the _Wenonah_. " The _Wenonah_, you willimmediately conclude, is a moving picture theater. But be patient amoment. 

Lower Chestnut Street is a delightful place for one who does not getdown there very often. The face of wholesale trade, dingier than theglitter of uptown shops, is far more exciting and romantic. Pavementsare cumbered with vast packing cases; whiffs of tea and spice well upfrom cool cellars. Below Second Street I found a row of enormous sacksacross the curb, with bright red and green wool pushing through holesin the burlap. Such signs as WOOL, NOILS AND WASTE are frequent. Iwonder what noils are? A big sign on Front Street proclaims TEA CADDIES, which has a pleasant grandmotherly flavor. A little brass plate, gleamingly polished, says HONORARY CONSULATE OF JAPAN. Beside immensemotor trucks stood a shabby little horse and buggy, restored to service, perhaps, by the war-time shortage of gasoline. It was a typicalone-horse shay of thirty years ago. 

I crossed over to Camden on the ferryboat _Wildwood_, observing in thecourse of the voyage her sisters, _Bridgeton, Camden, Salem_ and_Hammonton_. It is curious that no matter where one goes, one willalways meet people who are traveling there for the first time. A smallboy next to me was gazing in awe at the stalwart tower of the VictorCompany, and snuffing with pleasure the fragrance of cooking tomatoesthat makes Camden savory at this time of year. Wagonloads of ripe Jerseytomatoes making their way to the soup factory are a jocund sight acrossthe river just now. 

Every ferry passenger is familiar with the rapid tinkling of the ratchetwheel that warps the landing stage up to the level of the boat's deck. Iasked the man who was running the wheel where I would find the_Wenonah_. "She lays over in the old Market Street slip, " he replied, and cheerfully showed me just where to find her. "Is she still used?" Iasked. "Mostly on Saturday nights and holidays, " he said, "when there'sa big crowd going across. "

The _Wenonah_, as all Camden seafarers know, is a ferryboat, one of theold-timers, and I was interested in her because she and her sister, the_Beverly_, were Walt Whitman's favorite ferries. He crossed back andforth on them hundreds of times and has celebrated them in severalparagraphs in _Specimen Days_. Perhaps this is the place to quote hismemorandum dated January 12, 1882, which ought to interest all lovers ofthe Camden ferry:

"Such a show as the Delaware presented an hour before sundown yesterdayevening, all along between Philadelphia and Camden, is worth weavinginto an item. It was full tide, a fair breeze from the southwest, thewater of a pale tawny color, and just enough motion to make thingsfrolicsome and lively. Add to these an approaching sunset of unusualsplendor, a broad tumble of clouds, with much golden haze and profusionof beaming shaft and dazzle. In the midst of all, in the clear drab ofthe afternoon light, there steamed up the river the large new boat, the_Wenonah_, as pretty an object as you could wish to see, lightly andswiftly skimming along, all trim and white, covered with flags, transparent red and blue streaming out in the breeze. Only a newferryboat, and yet in its fitness comparable with the prettiest productof Nature's cunning, and rivaling it. High up in the transparent ethergracefully balanced and circled four or five great sea hawks, while herebelow, mid the pomp and picturesqueness of sky and river, swam thiscreature of artificial beauty and motion and power, in its way no lessperfect. "

You will notice that Walt Whitman describes the _Wenonah_ as beingwhite. The Pennsylvania ferryboats, as we know them, are all thebrick-red color that is familiar to the present generation. Perhapsolder navigators of the Camden crossing can tell us whether the boatswere all painted white in a less smoky era?

The _Wenonah_ and the _Beverly_ were lying in the now unused ferry slipat the foot of Market Street, alongside the great Victor Talking Machineworks. Picking my way through an empty yard where some carpentering wasgoing on, I found a deserted pier that overlooked the two old vesselsand gave a fair prospect on to the river and the profile ofPhiladelphia. Sitting there on a pile of pebbles, I lit a pipe andwatched the busy panorama of the river. I made no effort to disturb thenormal and congenial lassitude that is the highest function of the humanbeing: no Hindoo philosopher could have been more pleasantly at ease. (O. Henry, one remembers, used to insist that what some of his friendscalled laziness was really "dignified repose. ") Two elderly colored menwere loading gravel onto a cart not far away. I was a little worried asto what I could say if they asked what I was doing. In these days casualloungers along docksides may be suspected of depth bombs and hightreason. The only truthful reply to any question would have been that Iwas thinking about Walt Whitman. Such a remark, if uttered inPhiladelphia, would undoubtedly have been answered by a direction to thechocolate factory on Race Street. But in Camden every one knows aboutWalt. Still, the colored men said nothing beyond returning my greeting. Their race, wise in simplicity, knows that loafing needs no explanationand is its own excuse. 

If Walt could revisit the ferries he loved so well, in New York andPhiladelphia, he would find the former strangely altered in aspect. TheNew York skyline wears a very different silhouette against the sky, with its marvelous peaks and summits drawing the eye aloft. ButPhiladelphia's profile is (I imagine) not much changed. I do not knowjust when the City Hall tower was finished: Walt speaks of it as"three-fifths built" in 1879. That, of course, is the dominant unit inthe view from Camden. Otherwise there are few outstanding elements. Thegradual rise in height of the buildings, from Front Street gentlyascending up to Broad, gives no startling contrast of elevation to catchthe gaze. The spires of the older churches stand up like soft bluepencils, and the massive cornices of the Curtis and Drexel buildingscatch the sunlight. Otherwise the outline is even and well-massed in asmooth ascending curve. 

It is curious how a man can stamp his personality upon earthly things. There will always be pilgrims to whom Camden and the Delaware ferriesare full of excitement and meaning because of Walt Whitman. Just asStratford is Shakespeare, so is Camden Whitman. Some superciliousobservers, flashing through on the way to Atlantic City, may only see atown in which there is no delirious and seizing beauty. Let us remindthem of Walt's own words:

 A great city is that which has the greatest men and women, If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world. 

And as I came back across the river, and an airplane hovered over us ata great height, I thought how much we need a Whitman to-day, a poet whocan catch the heart and meaning of these grievous bitter years, who canmake plain the surging hopes that throb in the breasts of men. The worldhas not flung itself into agony without some unexpressed vision thatlights the sacrifice. If Walt Whitman were here he would look on thisnew world of moving pictures and gasoline engines and U-boats and tellus what it means. His great heart, which with all its garrulous fumblinghad caught the deep music of human service and fellowship, would havehad true and fine words for us. And yet he would have found it a hardworld for one of his strolling meditative observancy. A speeding motortruck would have run him down long ago!

As I left the ferry at Market Street I saw that the Norwegian steamer_Taunton_ was unloading bananas at the Ericsson pier. Less than a monthago she picked up the survivors of the schooner _Madrugada_, torpedoedby a U-boat off Winter Bottom Shoal. On the _Madrugada_ was a youngfriend of mine, a Dutch sailor, who told me of the disaster after he waslanded in New York. To come unexpectedly on the ship that had rescuedhim seemed a great adventure. What a poem Walt Whitman could have madeof it!

II

It is a weakness of mine--not a sinful one, I hope--that whenever I seeany one reading a book in public I am agog to find out what it is. Crossing over to Camden this morning a young woman on the ferry wasabsorbed in a volume, and I couldn't resist peeping over her shoulder. It was "Hans Brinker. " On the same boat were several schoolboys carryingcopies of Myers' "History of Greece. " Quaint, isn't it, how our schoolskeep up the same old bunk! What earthly use will a smattering of Greekhistory be to those boys? Surely to our citizens of the cominggeneration the battles of the Marne will be more important than thescuffle at Salamis. 

My errand in Camden was to visit the house on Mickle Street where WaltWhitman lived his last years. It is now occupied by Mrs. Thomas Skymer, a friendly Italian woman, and her family. Mrs. Skymer graciouslyallowed me to go through the downstairs rooms. 

I don't suppose any literary shrine on earth is of more humble anddisregarded aspect than Mickle Street. It is a little cobbled byway, grimed with drifting smoke from the railway yards, littered withwind-blown papers and lined with small wooden and brick houses sootedalmost to blackness. It is curious to think, as one walks along thatbumpy brick pavement, that many pilgrims from afar have looked forwardto visiting Mickle Street as one of the world's most significant altars. As Chesterton wrote once, "We have not yet begun to get to the beginningof Whitman. " But the wayfarer of to-day will find Mickle Street far fromimpressive. 

The little house, a two-story frame cottage, painted dark brown, isnumbered 330. (In Whitman's day it was 328. ) On the pavement in frontstands a white marble stepping-block with the carved initialsW. W. --given to the poet, I dare say, by the same friends who bought hima horse and carriage. A small sign, in English and Italian, says:_Thomas A. Skymer, Automobiles to Hire on Occasions_. It was withsomething of a thrill that I entered the little front parlor where Waltused to sit, surrounded by his litter of papers and holding forth tofaithful listeners. One may safely say that his was a happy old age, for there were those who never jibbed at protracted audience. 

A description of that room as it was in the last days of Whitman's lifemay not be uninteresting. I quote from the article published by thePhiladelphia _Press_ of March 27, 1892, the day after the poet's death:

 Below the windowsill a four-inch pine shelf is swung, on which rests a bottle of ink, two or three pens and a much-rubbed spectacle case. 

(The shelf, I am sorry to say, is no longer there. )

 The table--between which and the wall is the poet's rocker covered with a worsted afghan, presented to him one Christmas by a bevy of college girls who admired his work--is so thickly piled with books and magazines, letters and the raffle of a literary desk that there is scarcely an inch of room upon which he may rest his paper as he writes. A volume of Shakespeare lies on top of a heaping full waste basket that was once used to bring peaches to market, and an ancient copy of Worcester's Dictionary shares places in an adjacent chair with the poet's old and familiar soft gray hat, a newly darned blue woolen sock and a shoe-blacking brush. There is a paste bottle and brush on the table and a pair of scissors, much used by the poet, who writes, for the most part, on small bits of paper and parts of old envelopes and pastes them together in patchwork fashion. 

In spite of a careful examination, I could find nothing in the parlor atall reminiscent of Whitman's tenancy, except the hole for the stovepipeunder the mantel. One of Mrs. Skymer's small boys told me that "He" diedin that room. Evidently small Louis Skymer didn't in the least know who"He" was, but realized that his home was in some vague way connectedwith a mysterious person whose memory occasionally attracts inquirers tothe house. 

Behind the parlor is a dark little bedroom, and then the kitchen. In acorner of the back yard is a curious thing: a large stone or terra cottabust of a bearded man, very much like Whitman himself, but the face isbattered and the nose broken so it would be hard to assert thisdefinitely. One of the boys told me that it was in the yard when theymoved in a year or so ago. The house is a little dark, standing betweentwo taller brick neighbors. At the head of the stairs I noticed a windowwith colored panes, which lets in spots of red, blue and yellow light. Iimagine that this patch of vivid color was a keen satisfaction to Walt'sacute senses. Such is the simple cottage that one associates withAmerica's literary declaration of independence. 

The other Whitman shrine in Camden is the tomb in Harleigh Cemetery, reached by the Haddonfield trolley. Doctor Oberholtzer, in his "LiteraryHistory of Philadelphia, " calls it "tawdry, " to which I fear I mustdemur. Built into a quiet hillside in that beautiful cemetery, ofenormous slabs of rough-hewn granite with a vast stone door standingsymbolically ajar, it seemed to me grotesque, but greatly impressive. Itis a weird pagan cromlech, with a huge triangular boulder above the doorbearing only the words WALT WHITMAN. Palms and rubber plants grow inpots on the little curved path leading up to the tomb; above it is anuncombed hillside and trees flickering in the air. At this tomb, designed (it is said) by Whitman himself, was held that remarkablefuneral ceremony on March 30, 1892, when a circus tent was not largeenough to roof the crowd, and peanut venders did business on theoutskirts of the gathering. Perhaps it is not amiss to recall what BobIngersoll said on that occasion:

"He walked among verbal varnishers and veneerers, among literarymilliners and tailors, with the unconscious dignity of an antique god. He was the poet of that divine democracy that gives equal rights to allthe sons and daughters of men. He uttered the great American voice. "

And though one finds in the words of the naïve Ingersoll the squeakingtimber of the soapbox, yet even a soapbox does lift a man a few inchesabove the level of the clay. 

Well, the Whitman battle is not over yet, nor ever will be. Thoughneither Philadelphia nor Camden has recognized 330 Mickle Street as oneof the authentic shrines of our history (Lord, how trimly dight it wouldbe if it were in New England!), Camden has made a certain amend inputting Walt into the gay mosaic that adorns the portico of the newpublic library in Cooper Park. There, absurdly represented in an austereblack cassock, he stands in the following frieze of great figures:Dante, Whitman, Molière, Gutenberg, Tyndale, Washington, Penn, Columbus, Moses, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Longfellow and Palestrina. I believe that there was some rumpus as to whether Walt should beincluded; but, anyway, there he is. 

You will make a great mistake if you don't ramble over to Camden someday and fleet the golden hours in an observant stroll. Himself theprince of loafers, Walt taught the town to loaf. When they built the newpostoffice over there they put round it a ledge for philosophiclounging, one of the most delightful architectural features I have everseen. And on Third Street, just around the corner from 330 MickleStreet, is the oddest plumber's shop in the world. Mr. George F. Hammond, a Civil War veteran, who knew Whitman and also Lincoln, came toCamden in '69. In 1888 he determined to build a shop that would bedifferent from anything on earth, and well he succeeded. Perhaps it issymbolic of the shy and harassed soul of the plumber, fleeing from theunreasonable demands of his customers, for it is a kind of Gothicfortress. Leaded windows, gargoyles, masculine medusa heads, asallyport, loopholes and a little spire. I stopped in to talk to Mr. Hammond, and he greeted me graciously. He says that people have come allthe way from California to see his shop, and I can believe it. It is thework of a delightful and original spirit who does not care to live in ademure hutch like all the rest of us, and has really had some fun out ofhis whimsical little castle. He says he would rather live in Camden thanin Philadelphia, and I daresay he's right. 

III

Something in his aspect as he leaned over the railing near me drew me onto speak to him. I don't know just how to describe it except by sayingthat he had an understanding look. He gave me the impression of a manwho had spent his life in thinking and would understand me, whatever Imight say. He looked like the kind of man to whom one would find one'sself saying wise and thoughtful things. There are some people, you know, to whom it is impossible to speak wisdom even if you should wish to. Nospirit of kindly philosophy speaks out of their eyes. You find yourselfautomatically saying peevish or futile things that you do not in theleast believe. 

The mood and the place were irresistible for communion. The sun was warmalong the river front and my pipe was trailing a thin whiff of bluevapor out over the gently fluctuating water, which clucked and saggedalong the slimy pilings. Behind us the crash and banging of heavytraffic died away into a dreamy undertone in the mild golden shimmer ofthe noon hour. 

The old man was apparently lost in revery, looking out over the rivertoward Camden. He was plainly dressed in coat and trousers of somecoarse weave. His shirt, partly unbuttoned under the great white sweepof his beard, was of gray flannel. His boots were those of a man muchaccustomed to walking. A weather-stained sombrero was on his head. Beneath it his thick white hair and whiskers wavered in the soft breeze. Just then a boy came out from the near-by ferry house carrying a bigcrate of daffodils, perhaps on their way from some Jersey farm to anuptown florist. We watched them shining and trembling across the street, where he loaded them onto a truck. The old gentleman's eyes, which werea keen gray blue, caught mine as we both turned from admiring theflowers. 

I don't know just why I said it, but they were the first words thatpopped into my head. "And then my heart with pleasure fills and danceswith the daffodils, " I quoted. 

He looked at me a little quizzically. 

"You imported those words on a ship, " he said. "Why don't you use someof your own instead?"

I was considerably taken aback. "Why, I don't know, " I hesitated. "Theyjust came into my head. "

"Well, I call that bad luck, " he said, "when some one else's words comeinto a man's head instead of words of his own. "

He looked about him, watching the scene with rich satisfaction. "It'sgood to see all this again, " he said. "I haven't loafed around here forgoing on thirty years. "

"You've been out of town?" I asked. 

He looked at me with a steady blue eye in which there was something ofhumor and something of sadness. 

"Yes, a long way out. I've just come back to see how the Great Idea isgetting along. I thought maybe I could help a little. "

"The Great Idea?" I queried, puzzled. 

"The value of the individual, " he said. "The necessity for every humanbeing to be able to live, think, act, dream, pray for himself. NowadaysI believe you call it the League of Nations. It's the same thing. Aremen to be free to decide their fate for themselves or are they to be inthe grasp of irresponsible tyrants, the hell of war, the cruelties ofcreeds, executive deeds just or unjust, the power of personality just orunjust? What are your poets, your young Libertads, doing to bring Aboutthe Great Idea of perfect and free individuals?"

I was rather at a loss, but happily he did not stay for an answer. Aboveus an American flag was fluttering on a staff, showing its bright ribsof scarlet clear and vivid against the sky. 

"You see that flag of stars, " he said, "that thick-sprinkled bunting? Ihave seen that flag stagger in the agony of threatened dissolution, inyears that trembled and reeled beneath us. You have only seen it in thedays of its easy, sure triumphs. I tell you, now is the day for Americato show herself, to prove her dreams for the race. But who is chantingthe poem that comes from the soul of America, the carol of victory? Whostrikes up the marches of Libertad that shall free this tortured ship ofearth? Democracy is the destined conqueror, yet I see treacherouslip-smiles everywhere and death and infidelity at every step. I tellyou, now is the time of battle, now the time of striving. I am he whotauntingly compels men, women, nations, crying, 'Leap from your seatsand contend for your lives!' I tell you, produce great Persons; the restfollows. "

"What do you think about the covenant of the League of Nations?" Iasked. He looked out over the river for some moments before replying andthen spoke slowly, with halting utterance that seemed to suffer anguishin putting itself into words. 

"America will be great only if she builds for all mankind, " he said. "This plan of the great Libertad leads the present with friendly handtoward the future. But to hold men together by paper and seal or bycompulsion is no account. That only holds men together which aggregatesall in a living principle, as the hold of the limbs of the body or thefibers of plants. Does this plan answer universal needs? Can it face theopen fields and the seaside? Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my strength, gait, face? Have real employmentscontributed to it--original makers, not mere amanuenses? I think so, and therefore I say to you, now is the day to fight for it. "

"Well, " he said, checking himself, "there's the ferry coming in. I'mgoing over to Camden to have a look around on my way back to Harleigh. "

"I'm afraid you'll find Mickle street somewhat changed, " I said, for bythis time I knew him. 

"I love changes, " he said. 

"Your centennial comes on May 31, " I said, "I hope you won't be annoyedif Philadelphia doesn't pay much attention to it. You know how thingsare around here. "

"My dear boy, " he said, "I am patient. The proof of a poet shall besternly deferred till his country absorbs him as affectionately as hehas absorbed it. I have sung the songs of the Great Idea and that isreward in itself. I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despisedriches, I have given alms to every one that asked, stood up for thestupid and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others, hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence toward thepeople, taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown, gone freely withpowerful uneducated persons and I swear I begin to see the meaning ofthese things--"

"All aboard!" cried the man at the gate of the ferry house. 

He waved his hand with a benign patriarchal gesture and was gone. 

ON DOORS

The opening and closing of doors are the most significant actions ofman's life. What a mystery lies in doors!

No man knows what awaits him when he opens a door. Even the mostfamiliar room, where the clock ticks and the hearth glows red at dusk, may harbor surprises. The plumber may actually have called (while youwere out) and fixed that leaking faucet. The cook may have had a fit ofthe vapors and demanded her passports. The wise man opens his front doorwith humility and a spirit of acceptance. 

Which one of us has not sat in some ante-room and watched theinscrutable panels of a door that was full of meaning? Perhaps you werewaiting to apply for a job; perhaps you had some "deal" you wereambitious to put over. You watched the confidential stenographer flit inand out, carelessly turning that mystic portal which, to you, revolvedon hinges of fate. And then the young woman said, "Mr. Cranberry willsee you now. " As you grasped the knob the thought flashed, "When I openthis door again, what will have happened?"

There are many kinds of doors. Revolving doors for hotels, shops andpublic buildings. These are typical of the brisk, bustling ways ofmodern life. Can you imagine John Milton or William Penn skippingthrough a revolving door? Then there are the curious little slatteddoors that still swing outside denatured bar-rooms and extend only fromshoulder to knee. There are trapdoors, sliding doors, double doors, stage doors, prison doors, glass doors. But the symbol and mystery of adoor resides in its quality of concealment. A glass door is not a doorat all, but a window. The meaning of a door is to hide what lies inside;to keep the heart in suspense. 

Also, there are many ways of opening doors. There is the cheery push ofelbow with which the waiter shoves open the kitchen door when he bearsin your tray of supper. There is the suspicious and tentative withdrawalof a door before the unhappy book agent or peddler. There is the genteeland carefully modulated recession with which footmen swing wide theoaken barriers of the great. There is the sympathetic and awful silenceof the dentist's maid who opens the door into the operating room and, without speaking, implies that the doctor is ready for you. There is thebrisk cataclysmic opening of a door when the nurse comes in, very earlyin the morning--"It's a boy!"

Doors are the symbol of privacy, of retreat, of the mind's escape intoblissful quietude or sad secret struggle. A room without doors is not aroom, but a hallway. No matter where he is, a man can make himself athome behind a closed door. The mind works best behind closed doors. Menare not horses to be herded together. Dogs know the meaning and anguishof doors. Have you ever noticed a puppy yearning at a shut portal? It isa symbol of human life. 

The opening of doors is a mystic act: it has in it some flavor of theunknown, some sense of moving into a new moment, a new pattern of thehuman rigmarole. It includes the highest glimpses of mortal gladness:reunions, reconciliations, the bliss of lovers long parted. Even insadness, the opening of a door may bring relief: it changes andredistributes human forces. But the closing of doors is far moreterrible. It is a confession of finality. Every door closed bringssomething to an end. And there are degrees of sadness in the closing ofdoors. A door slammed is a confession of weakness. A door gently shutis often the most tragic gesture in life. Every one knows the seizure ofanguish that comes just after the closing of a door, when the loved oneis still near, within sound of voice, and yet already far away. 

The opening and closing of doors is a part of the stern fluency of life. Life will not stay still and let us alone. We are continually openingdoors with hope, closing them with despair. Life lasts not much longerthan a pipe of tobacco, and destiny knocks us out like the ashes. 

The closing of a door is irrevocable. It snaps the packthread of theheart. It is no avail to reopen, to go back. Pinero spoke nonsense whenhe made Paula Tanqueray say, "The future is only the past enteredthrough another gate. " Alas, there is no other gate. When the door isshut, it is shut forever. There is no other entrance to that vanishedpulse of time. "The moving finger writes, and having writ"--

There is a certain kind of door-shutting that will come to us all. Thekind of door-shutting that is done very quietly, with the sharp click ofthe latch to break the stillness. They will think then, one hopes, ofour unfulfilled decencies rather than of our pluperfected misdemeanors. Then they will go out and close the door. 

[Illustration]