indoors. But Mrs. Harrington is a fervent naturalist, and she insisted
on taking me out to look at the wild flowers and listen to the
bird-calls. Both of these branches of nature-study, I am convinced, call
for an intensity of sympathetic imagination that I am incapable of
developing; and especially the bird-calls. Concerning the latter, I
feel sure that a great deal of humbug is being said and written. I mean
to cast no reflections upon Harrington or his wife. The only occasions
on which I have known Harrington to deviate from the truth have been, as
I have already pointed out, in connection with his train-schedules. And
as Mrs. Harrington does not travel to the city, even this charge will
not hold against her. And yet I cannot help feeling that neither of the
two really hears the catbird say "miaow" or the robin "cheer up," as
they pretend to. At the first twitter or chirp from some invisible
source Mrs. Harrington stops and with radiant face asks me whether I do
not distinctly catch the "pit-pit-pity-me" of the meadow-lark. I say
yes; but I really don't, and I don't believe she does. My explanation is
that Mrs. Harrington is a woman and consequently ready to hear what she
has been led to expect she would hear. As for Harrington, he is a
devoted husband.
For let us look at the matter with an open mind. Our alphabetical
representations of animal sounds are at best only rough approximations.
Most often they are not even that. They are mere arbitrary symbols. We
use consonants where the bird uses none, as when we give the name cuckoo
to a bird whose cry is really "ooh, ooh." Or else we put in the wrong
consonants, which is shown by the fact that different nations assign
different consonantal sounds to the same bird. We do not even agree on
the vowel sounds. What is there in common between our English
"Cock-a-doodle-doo" and M. Rostand's "cocorico"? And we need not go as
far as the animal world. See how the nations differ in spelling out that
elementary human sound which is the expression of pain or surprise, and
which in this country we hear as "Oh," and the Germans hear as "Ach,"
and the Greeks heard as "Ai, Ai." If the human vocal chords can be so
imperfectly imitated, what shall we say of birds speaking after a manner
all their own? For myself I confess that in congenial company I can hear
birds say anything, but that left to myself I am sometimes puzzled by a
parrot. And that is the reason why I am sceptical concerning Mrs.
Harrington's accomplishments in this field.
But while the birds about the Harringtons' home simply offend my regard
for the truth, the Harringtons' dog causes me acute bodily and mental
discomfort. He is of a spotted white, with a disreputable black patch
over one eye, and weighs, I should imagine, between eighty and ninety
pounds. During luncheon he takes his place under the table, and from
there emits blood-curdling howls with sufficient frequency to make
conversation extremely difficult. This he varies by nosing about the
visitor's legs and growling. I am not fond of dogs under the best of
circumstances. I always labour under the presumption that they will
bite. Their habit of suddenly dashing across the floor, in furious
pursuit of nothing in particular, upsets me. But an invisible dog under
a dining-room table is a dreadful experience. It is true that I managed
to give Mrs. Harrington a fairly rational account of the woman's
suffrage parade. But was she aware, as I sat there smiling
spasmodically, what agonies of fear were mine as I waited for those
white fangs under the table to sink into my flesh? If, under the
circumstances, I confused Harriet Beecher Stowe with Julia Ward Howe,
and made a bad blunder about woman's rights in Finland, am I so very
much to blame?
Not that the Harringtons are the worst offenders in this respect. There
is an old classmate, and a very dear friend, indeed, who lives on
Flushing Bay, and has a pair of hopelessly ferocious dogs that hold the
neighbourhood in terror. The only occasion on which they have been known
to show indifference to strangers was one night when burglars broke in
and stole some silver and a revolver. When I go out to Flushing, I
stipulate that the dogs shall be locked up in the cellar from ten
minutes before my train is due until ten minutes after I have left the
house. But it would be foolhardy to omit additional precautions. Hence I
always carry an umbrella with the ferrule sharpened to a point, and when
I am within a block of the house I stoop and pick up a large stone, and
go on my way, with all my senses acute, whistling cheerfully. It is odd
how people will put themselves out to keep a harmless, poor relation out
of the way of visitors, and never think of the much greater discomfort
attendant upon the constant presence of an active bull-terrier.
I may have produced the impression that life in the country makes no
appeal to me. Nothing could be further from my intentions. Whatever
doubts I may have entertained on this point vanish completely as the
Harringtons escort me to the station in the cool of the evening, the dog
having been left at home at my request. We pass by low, white-pillared
houses behind hedges, and the scent of hay comes up from the lawns, and
laughter comes from the dark of the verandas. The city at such a time
seems a very undesirable place to return to; a place to lose one's self
in--yes, and that is all. The Harringtons never were in the city what
they are here. They have taken root, they have developed local pride
which is only the sense of home. As we walk they point out the
residences of the leading citizens. Here lives the owner of one of the
largest factories of mechanical pianos in the country. This Japanese
temple belongs to a man who writes for some of the best-known magazines.
That colonial dwelling is occupied by the lawyer who defended Mrs. Dower
when she was tried for poisoning her husband. I reflect, in genuine
humility, that in the city I never think of taking strangers to see Mr.
William Dean Howells's house or Mr. Joseph H. Choate's. And with real
regret and admiration, I say good-night to the Harringtons.
XXVII
HEADLINES
After Stephane Dubost, editor of the Paris _Réveil_, had been ten days
in this country, and had collected all his material for a series of
volumes on the American Woman, Yankee and Yellow Peril, Democracy
Décolleté, and Football _versus_ the Fine Arts--to name only a few--he
was asked what single feature of our life had impressed him as most
characteristically American. He replied, "The headlines in your daily
press." Just what M. Dubost did think of our achievements in that
department of journalism may be gathered from a letter he addressed the
very same day to his friend, Marcel Complans, director of the Bureau of
Cipher Codes in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
"In nothing, my dear Marcel, is the American genius for saving time so
strikingly exemplified as in their newspaper headlines. Think of our
_Figaro_ or _Temps_ with its dreary columns of solid type introduced by
a minute solitary heading, and then pick up one of Uncle Sam's great
dailies. It may be only an item of four or five inches, what they call
here a stickful or two, but are you left to make your way unassisted
through the brief account? No. Your eye immediately catches a
time-saving headline like this:
DESERTED GIRL WIFE
TO HOLD UP MAN.
Having that concise legend before you, all you need to do, my dear
Marcel, is simply to decide for yourself whether our story deals with an
unscrupulous wretch who abandons his young wife to engage on a career of
highway robbery; or whether it is the history of a deserted girl who
becomes the wife of a professional outlaw; or whether it is a betrayed
young wife who gives herself up to the cause of elevating the human
race. A French reader, under the circumstances, would be compelled to go
through as much as thirty or forty lines of small print before he
secured the desired information. Thus it requires but a brief experience
with American headlines to recognise that when the Chicago _Evening
Post_ says
FINDS ENGLISH FOOD
FOR LAND TAX FAITH
it means that an American single-taxer, who has just returned from Great
Britain, believes that the English people is ready to listen to the
principles of the single-tax theory. And when the New York _Sun_ says
LA FOLLETTE TALKING BOLT
it does not mean that the Senator from Wisconsin is a manifestation of
crashing, celestial eloquence, but that he is advocating a secession
from the Republican party. Can you not see, my friend, what magnificent
economies of time are effected by headlines like
WATCH SPRINGS TRAP
FOR JAPANESE SPY
over a story dealing with the capture of an Oriental suspect by a
sentinel at one of the Pacific Coast forts, or
SCREAMING FRIARS TORTURED
CHILD MOTHER FAINTS
which does not mean that a society of howling friars have been guilty of
an atrocious crime upon an infant in the presence of its mother; or that
a band of religionists are driven by torture to cries of pain, while a
young mother faints at the sight. It only means that a poor mother, who
has suddenly gone insane, breaks into a house of refuge, where her
little boy is being cared for by a religious fraternity, accuses,
without warrant, the brothers of torturing her child, and faints. Or
take
FRENCH RACE WORN OUT
ENGLISH TO TRIUMPH.
These lines are not the summary of a study in national growth and decay,
but expressive of the fact that a French bicycle team wins a signal
victory over a group of exhausted English competitors. Do you see now
how far towards the art of simplified story-telling these Americans have
gone?
"I can only express my profound admiration, as I pass, for the genius of
those men who almost automatically will dig the heart out of a 'story,'
and blazon it before the reader not only with marvellous brevity and
meaning, but with extraordinary appropriateness of characterisation.
Can you seize, for instance, the full relevancy of a headline like
PRESBYTERIAN FALLS
TWENTY FEET
or,
PROFESSOR THRICE MARRIED
DENIES AUTHENTICITY OF BIBLE
or see how the essential point is caught when a 'head' writer places
FLORODORA GIRL EXPELLED
FROM CZAR'S CAPITAL
over an account of the latest ukase which banishes from St. Petersburg
two hundred members of the Duma, twelve professors, fifty-five Jewish
bankers and artists, all the labour delegates, as well as the agent of
the American Plough Corporation, whose wife was one of the original
sextette?
"I will conclude with what to me is an example of the art of headline
writing carried almost to perfection. Suppose that at Paris a
long-distance foot-race between one of our countrymen and a foreign
athlete had been won by our compatriot. The _Réveil_ would probably say,
'Armand Wins at Auteuil,' and go on to give the details. But observe
what they do here. I cite the article complete, headline and text:
HAYES WINS
VICTOR IN DUAL MATCH OVER DORANDO
AMERICAN LEADS ITALIAN TO THE TAPE,
AND CARRIES OFF PRIZE
DORANDO CAN DO NOTHING BETTER THAN
SECOND
ONE MORE VICTORY ADDED TO GREAT
RUNNER'S STRING
TEN THOUSAND CHEERING SPECTATORS
SEE THE AMERICAN RUNNER REPEAT
HIS VICTORY AT THE OLYMPIC GAMES
"New York, November 26.--The race between Hayes and Dorando this
afternoon was won by the former."
XXVIII
USAGE
... _a certain class of verbal critics who can never free themselves
from the impression that man was made for language and not language for
man._--Professor Lounsbury.
From a large number of readers we have received requests for a ruling on
disputed cases of English usage. We now proceed to answer these
inquiries in accordance with the liberal standard for which Professor
Lounsbury pleads. One man writes:
_Question:_ Which is right, "To-morrow is Sunday and we are going out,"
or "To-morrow will be Sunday and we shall go out?" _Answer:_ Both forms
are right, but as a matter of fact, if to-morrow is like other Sundays,
it will probably rain all day, and your chances of going out are not
bright.
_Q._ Must a sentence always have coherence? What is the practice of our
great writers on this point? _A._ Coherence is not essential. Thus:
"Conquests! Thousands! Don Bolaro Fizzgig--Grandee--only daughter--Donna
Christina--Splendid creature--loved me to distraction--jealous
father--high-souled daughter--handsome Englishman--Donna Christina in
despair--prussic acid--stomach pump in my portmanteau--operation
performed--old Bolaro in ecstasies--consent to our union--join hands and
floods of tears--romantic story--very." (Charles Dickens.)
_Q._ Must a sentence always have a predicate? _A._ No. For example: (1)
"The Universe smiles to me. The World smiles to me. Everything. Man.
Woman. Children. Presidential Candidates. Trolley Cars. Everything
smiles to me." (_The Complete Whitmanite_) (2) "From the frowning tower
of Babel on which the insectile impotence of man dared to contend with
the awful wrath of the Almighty, through the granite bulk of the
beetling Pyramids lifting their audacious crests to the star-meshed
skies that bend down to kiss the blue waters of Father Nile and the
gracious nymphs laving their blithesome limbs in the pools that stud the
sides of Pentelicus, down to our own Washington, throned like an empress
on the banks of the beautiful Potomac, waiting for the end which we
trust may never come." (From the _Congressional Record_.)
_Q._ Is "ivrybody" a permissible variant for "everybody"? _A._ It is.
For instance, "His dinners [our ambassador's at St. Petersburg] were th'
most sumchuse ever known in that ancient capital; th' carredge of state
that bore him fr'm his stately palace to th' comparatively squalid
quarters of th' Czar was such that _ivrybody_ expicted to hear th'
sthrains iv a calliope burst fr'm it at anny moment." (Mr. Dooley.)
_Q._ Is there good authority for saying, "He was given a hat," "He was
shown the door," etc.? _A._ The form is common, and therefore correct.
As, "The Senator _was paid_ twenty thousand dollars for voting against
the Governor"; "He _was offered_ a third term, but declined"; "The
coloured delegates _were handed_ a lemon." (From the contemporary
press.)
_Q._ The use of "who" and "whom" puzzles me. Must "who" always be used
in the nominative case and "whom" in the objective? _A._ Not
necessarily. Thus, "I told him who I wanted to see and that it wasn't
none of his business" (W. S. Devery); "That's the first guy whom he said
put him into the cooler." (Battery Dan Finn.)
_Q._ I am told that it is wrong to place a preposition at the end of a
sentence. Why can't I say, "Mr. Roosevelt is a man whom I should enjoy
talking _with_"? _A._ Your example is unfortunate. You should say, "Mr.
Roosevelt is a man whom I should enjoy talking _after_."
_Q._ Is it wrong to split infinitives? Is a phrase like "to seriously
complain" really objectionable? _A._ We hasten to most emphatically say
"Yes!"
_Q._ Is there a rigid rule with regard to the use of the preterite
tense? When do you say "hung" and when do you say "hanged"? _A._ Two
examples from a universally recognised authority will illustrate the
flexibility of our language in the general use of tenses: (1) "'I know a
gen'l'man, sir,' said Mr. Weller, 'as did that, and _begun_ at two
yards; but he never tried it on ag'in; for he _blowed_ the bird right
clean away at the first fire, and nobody ever _seed_ a feather on him
arterwards.'" (2) "So I take the privilidge of the day, Mary, my
dear--as the gen'lem'n in difficulties did, ven he valked out of a
Sunday--to tell you that the first and only time I _see_ you your
likeness was _took_ on my hart in much quicker time and brighter colours
than ever a likeness was took by the profeel macheens (wich p'r'aps you
may have _heerd_ on Mary my dear) altho it does finish a portrait and
put the frame and glass on complete with a hook at the end to hang it up
by and all in two minutes and a quarter." (Charles Dickens.)
_Q._ What is "elegance" in style? I know it does not mean long words and
many of them; but just what does it mean? _A._ Elegance is
appropriateness. Long and circumlocutory terms are just as elegant in
the mouth of a fashionable preacher as shorter and uglier words in the
mouth of some one else. Hamlet's "Angels and ministers of grace defend
us!" and Chuck Connors's "Wouldn't it bend your Merry Widow?" are
equally elegant.
_Q._ What is force in style? _A._ We may illustrate with a quotation
from Hall Caine's unannounced book: "He drew her to him and kissed her
as men and women have kissed through the æons, since the first star
hymned to the first moonrise." Now, as a matter of fact, kissing is only
about two thousand years old, and is still unknown to the Chinese, the
native Africans, the Hindus, the Australians, the Indians of South
America, the Polynesians, and the Eskimos; but the sentence is
nevertheless a very forcible one.
XXIX
60 H.P.
For the purpose of getting one's name into the papers, the acquisition
of a high-powered automobile may be recommended to the man who has never
given a monkey dinner; whose son was never married to a show-girl in a
balloon at 2.30 A.M.; whose son-in-law is neither a count, a duke, nor a
prince, and does not beat his wife; who has never paid $100,000 for a
Velasquez painted in 1897, or for a mediæval Florentine altar-piece made
in Dayton, Ohio. The press, like the public, does not brim over with
affection for the motorist. From the newspapers it may be gathered that
when a man has been seen in the front seat of an automobile his family
prefers not to allude to the subject. Good men occasionally ride, but
as a rule only on errands of mercy, and always in a friend's machine. A
candidate for mayor will laugh when you accuse him of owning an opium
den, taking $10,000 a month from Mr. Morgan, or experimenting freely in
polygamy; but he throws up his hands when some one proves that he has
been seen in a garage.
To me this seems absurd. If people admit that the automobile is here to
stay, they must also admit that it is here to move from place to place
occasionally. Automobiles that did nothing but stay would obviously fail
in one of their principal aims. Not that the auto has no other important
functions. It is evident that motor-cars were intended for little boys
who squeeze the signal bulb and stick nails into the tires; for
Republican orators to cite as evidence that the American farmer does not
want the tariff revised; for foreign observers to prove that we are
developing an aristocracy; and for Tammany office-holders to snatch a
bit of relaxation after the day's long grind.
Motoring is not unmitigated bliss. The common belief that a body may be
in only one place at one time can be easily refuted by a woman with a
baby-carriage. Experience shows that such a woman, if she be put five
feet from a sidewalk, with forty feet of open road behind her for an
auto to pass through, will cover the forty feet backward with incredible
speed and propel herself right in front of the car. What would happen if
two cars came in opposite directions on opposite sides of a hundred-foot
avenue cannot be predicted. Either the woman would be accompanied by
another woman with a baby-carriage, or else, having propelled her own
carriage in front of the machine going north, she would proceed to give
her personal attention to the car going south.
It is difficult to start on a short spin in town, under doctor's orders,
without immediately beginning to wonder why house rents and office rents
should be going up steadily in face of the fact that the population of
New York transacts its business and pursues its pleasures entirely in
the middle of the road. German citizens, as a rule, stop to light their
pipes on a street crossing. When you give them the horn, they are seized
with the belief that you are trying to play the prelude to "Lohengrin,"
and they run up and down in front of the car in extreme agitation. You
frustrate their plans for a beautiful death by rasping your tires
against the curb, together with your nerves. At Seventy-second Street
two women are saying good-bye in the middle of the street. You swerve to
one side and they pursue. You snap your spinal column as you shoot the
car straight about, but when you get there they are there. "Ladies,"
you say, "I am not leading a cotillion. I am an old man out for a bit of
fresh air." Thereupon one calls you a brute and the other discerns from
the colour of your nose that you have been drinking. At Forty-second
Street you catch sight of your doctor. "Have you killed any one?" he
says, after the cheerful manner of doctors. "No," you say, "but if you
will kindly step into the car, I will."
Of the American farmer it may be said that, Mr. Roosevelt to the
contrary notwithstanding, he is not an unimaginative, overworked being.
It can be demonstrated that the contemplative life is on the increase in
the rural districts. Apparently, there is nothing more peaceful, nothing
more restful, nothing more soothing, nothing more permeated with the
spirit of _dolce far niente_, than the American farmer on his wagon in a
narrow road with an auto behind him. The grunt of the horn invariably
stirs in him memories of his aged grandmother, dead these twenty years,
and he falls a wondering whether he was really as kind to her as he
might have been. If the road is just wide enough for one vehicle, he
moves along pensively. If it is wide enough for two vehicles, he throws
his horses straight across the road and enters upon a prolonged
examination of his rear axle. If the road is wide enough for three
vehicles, he drives zigzag. The necessity of conserving our natural
resources would seem to be a meaningless phrase when we consider the
natural resources of an American farmer in front of an automobile.
The law and the courts press hard on the autoist. Since the invention of
the automobile fine, the position of justice of the peace has become one
of the highest offices in the gift of the nation. The city magistrate is
a kindred soul. "Your Honour," says the prosecuting officer, "the
question is whether the city's boulevards shall be given over to the
owners of these destructive vehicles or whether they shall be held clear
for the use of Marathon runners, suffragette meetings, baseball teams,
and 'crap' games. The streets, your Honour, are for the benefit of the
majority; yet only the other day on Fifth Avenue I saw two ash-carts and
an ice wagon held up by a continuous stream of automobiles." "Right,"
says the judge, and he turns to the victim: "What were you doing in the
middle of the street when defendant ran you down wantonly and without
cause?" "I was sleeping, your Honour," says the complainant, "having
been overtaken with drowsiness on my way home from a select social
affair." "Outrageous," says the magistrate. "Think of running into a
sleeping man. One hundred dollars."
Such incidents make it clear that the automobile as an annihilator of
space has established its reputation. In the days before the auto a
drive of fifteen or twenty miles constituted a good Sunday's outing.
To-day a man can leave New Rochelle at eight o'clock in the morning and
pay a fine at Poughkeepsie at one in the afternoon, or he can leave
Poughkeepsie at eight in the morning and at one in the afternoon be in
the lock-up at New Rochelle.