BIZARRE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
SCRAMBLED EGGS
[Illustration: _His symphony depicted the sorrows of Russia, the height
of the steppes, and the agonies of indigestion._]
BIZARRE
By
LAWTON MACKALL
With 26 Drawings
By LAUREN STOUT
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
LIEBER & LEWIS
1922
Copyright 1922
By LIEBER & LEWIS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_To my favorite poet_
VIRGINIA WOODS MACKALL
_The author thanks_ LIFE, JUDGE, THE CENTURY, THE QUILL, THE NEW YORK
TIMES, THE LITERARY REVIEW, _and_ THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE _for kind
permission to include in this volume certain contributions to those
publications. He hopes he has remembered to ask such permission in each
case._
PREFACE
As good form requires that an author mention in his preface the persons
to whom he is chiefly indebted, I take this opportunity of stating that
during the preparation of this book I became appreciably indebted to Dr.
Warren S. Holder, my dentist, Mr. William Vroom, my tailor, Mr. M.
Tesshow, my stationer and tobacconist, and Messrs. Acker, Merrall &
Condit, my grocers.
Although these gentlemen neither "corrected the proofs" of my book nor
"saw it through the press," nor allowed me access to rare documents and
family letters, nor treated me to intimate accounts of their fathers and
great uncles as they knew them; though they did none of these customary
things, nevertheless I became decidedly their debtor--and still am.
Indeed, without their stimulus this book might never have been written.
L. M.
_ENCLOSED PLEASE FIND_
WHAT-NOTS
Unsolicited Personal Adornments
Shelf Culture
Portable Pigeonholes
Simile
The Beatified Race
Jouez Balle
The Art of Packing
Agriculture Indoors
Snowy Bosoms
Interior Desperation
The Writing on the Screen
Musique Glacée
The Care of the Husband
Terminology of Tardiness
Oppressors of the Meek
Putting Pedagogy Across
Coaching From the Sidelines
Fast and Loose
Primrose Pathology
Fightier Than the Sword
Enlightment
Holiday Misgivings
All, All Are Gone
My Museum
On Chairs--and off
MINIMS
The Night of the Fleece
Black Jitney
Light Breakfast
The Man Opposite
Lucy the Literary Agent
The Creeping Fingers
The Man With the Hose
JANGLES
Those Symphony Concert Programs
How to Know the Instruments
Notes on Pianos
The Life Drama of a Musical Critic
The Survival of the Fattest
WHAT-NOTS
UNSOLICITED PERSONAL ADORNMENTS
[Illustration: Decorative letter "H"]
Have you ever, on returning home from a round of calls, discovered upon your
coat a large, obtrusive spot?
Stricken with horror, you wonder how long it has been there. Did you
have this adjunct when you appeared before your wealthy aunt? That
severe female has never quite approved of you, and now this will finish
you as far as she is concerned. Did you exhibit yourself thus disgraced
at the Brumleighs'? You recollect that the maid eyed you queerly when
she opened the door, and that Mrs. B. had frequent recourse to her
lorgnettes. Then, too, both the Greens and the Worthingtons seemed a
little stiffer than usual.
How did you acquire it, anyhow? It looks and feels like ice cream of a
very rich quality; ice cream that has drippled merrily in leaps and
bounds. But you had no ice cream today. Neither did you talk to anyone
who was having ice cream.
Perhaps you have been struck by ice cream, just as people are struck by
lightning. The weather does such peculiar things nowadays.
I have a gray suit that is a constant prey to spots. Its frail color--a
sickly, betwixt-and-between shade, chosen in haste and repented of at
leisure--puts it utterly at their mercy. And they flock to it.
Things sticky and glutinous pounce avidly upon it; nor is its seat
reserved from paints and varnishes. Sauces afflict it. Oils take
advantage of its helplessness. Grass bedizens it with garish green.
I try my best to protect it--but what can I do? What am I against so
many? While I am rescuing my left elbow from the machinations of a
passing dish, I unwittingly suffer my right cuff to be enticed by the
gravy in my plate. As I walk discreetly in the middle of the sidewalk,
an automobile out in the street salutes me with a volley of mud.
And the most notable spots happen mysteriously. They appear out of the
air, as it were, like the pictures that frost makes on window panes. I
submit the phenomenon of their strange origin to the scientific world as
an instance of spontaneous generation.
This spotability of my gray suit is surpassed only by the achievements
of my blue serge. (I shall not here discuss my English tweeds, nor my
Scotch cheviots, nor the braided cutaway and the lounge suit that I had
made for me in Bond Street, for fear the reader might divine that I
never possessed those garments.) This suit is not a victim to spots--it
deliberately invites them. It is a connoisseur, a discriminating
collector.
Scorning such vulgarities as paint and pitch, it seeks the exotic, the
outré--amazing stickinesses, bewildering viscosities, undreamed of
goos.
Although delighting in intricacy of design and delicate nuances of
shading, it prefers durability to all other qualities. Some of its
antiques--particularly a brownish white one, resembling an octopus, over
the front pocket--have stood the test of time and clothes brushes.
On three occasions this remarkable collection has been almost entirely
destroyed by benzine, but each time the principal specimens have
survived intact. These cleanings divide the history of the suit into
four epochs.
Spots of the fourth (or present) epoch are of small consequence; spots
of the third and second epochs are more interesting; while spots which
antedate the first great deluge are quite rare. Among these last are the
octopus and other gems of the collection.
Once, when I had become exceedingly irked at having to go about clad in
pseudo-tapestry, I handed the suit over to a desperado of a ladies' and
gents' tailor--a man who had the reputation of being capable of getting
anything out of anything or anybody--and besought him to raze the
frescoes.
He attacked them after the manner customary to cleaners; that is to
say, he drove out the spots with smells. Only, he used smells that were
nothing short of brutal. The rout was complete.
When he brought the suit to my room on Saturday night, I could hardly
believe my eyes. Being forced, however, to believe my nose, I hastily
opened the window. I could understand why the spots had departed. I even
felt sorry for them.
Not daring to put the suit away, for fear of contaminating the rest of
my apparel, I hung it over the back of a chair by the window.
But the incoming breeze, instead of carrying the aroma away, wafted it
directly toward me. It was certainly strong. It fairly assaulted the
nostrils. One good whiff of that vicious chemical was almost enough to
make you dizzy.
It treated me as if I were a spot.
I picked up a book and tried to read, but could not concentrate my
attention.
The spot-destroyer was continually interrupting. My head was spinning so
that I could hardly see.
I realized that the life of a spot was not a happy one.
Thinking that smoking might help, I was about to light a cigarette when
I remembered reading in the papers of people who struck matches in
fume-filled rooms and then were blown blocks and blocks without knowing
what hit them. So I gave that up, and sat a while dejected.
Then another scary thought came into my mind. What if I should be
asphyxiated? I pictured myself being found dead in bed, having been
extinct for hours and hours, and the mournfulness of it broke me all up.
Overcome with emotion and spot-destroyer, I gathered a few things into a
suitcase and went out to spend the night at a hotel.
When I returned to my room on the following evening the aroma had gone,
and the rays of the setting sun, illuminating the old blue suit as it
hung there on the back of the chair, showed me a host of familiar
faces--particularly that of an especially offensive brownish-white
octopus over the pocket. They had come back every one; not a design was
missing.
SHELF CULTURE
[Illustration: Decorative letter "A"]
"A man of education and refinement like you needs books befitting your
culture--your place in the world," said my visitor. He spoke as though
he were a revered friend of the family. But actually he was not just
that. I had never seen him before. He was honoring me with a call at my
room on Freshman Row.
I had come to college to get in touch with Belles-Lettres, and, lo,
Belles-Lettres were seeking me out! Recognition had come far sooner than
I had hoped.
To appreciate what I felt, you must know that Belles-Lettres'
ambassador was no ordinary person. He had the clothes of a clubman, the
benignity of a clergyman, and the dignity of an undertaker. There was
scholarliness in the droop of the pinch glasses on his aquiline nose and
as he talked he kept lifting his curiously arched eyebrows in a manner
that fascinated the beholder.
From the subject of my culture in its broader aspects he progressed by
easy gradations to my culture in its relation to the works of Hawthorne
and Irving, the two authors indispensable to a man of discerning taste,
the authors whose writings constituted the logical nucleus of the
well-bred student's library. He was happy to be able to tell me of the
rare opportunity that now lay in my grasp of acquiring the immortal and
exhilarating works of _both_ these masters at one and the same time--in
one and the same set.
The urgency of my need for Hawthorne and Irving being thus established
beyond the shadow of a hesitance, the only thing for me to decide fairly
and squarely was whether they should come to me in blue half-morocco or
in red buckram. The splendid showing that either set would make in my
bookcase was attested by the accordion-plaited binding sample which at
the proper moment he produced and unfolded. Nearly a yard of titled
book-backs!
I signed on the dotted line and accepted his congratulations, while he
accepted my two dollar deposit.
About a week later the box arrived. Eagerly I lifted forth the magic
volumes which were to put me on a new intellectual plane. Somehow the
bindings seemed to need breaking in. They creaked and cracked at the
hinges and the pages clung together in little groups clannishly. The
gluing of the backs was queer, yet casual. The "hand" that had tinted
the "elegant colored frontispieces" was evidently a heavy one.
No matter: Hawthorne and Irving were mine. I had been taken into the
higher circles of culture.
That very evening I plunged into "Mosses from an Old Manse." I stuck at
it. Each day I balanced my morning's Shredded Wheat with Hawthorne
Mosses at night, till the entire volume had been systematically
consumed. Then, having created my new literary universe, I rested.
Today no one can stump me on Mosses. Mention the Old Manse to me and my
whole manner changes. My face lights up with intelligence. My eyes
sparkle. My nostrils dilate like those of an old fire engine horse at
the clang of an alarm gong. Yes, right this minute I can give you moss
for moss.
If only I had gone on and read all the other volumes of the set.... Who
knows? I might now be dean of a college or a second Dr. Frank Crane.
Alas, I continued to rest on my Mosses, arguing sophistically with my
conscience that these books, the nucleus of my ultimate library, were
precious possessions not necessarily for immediate perusal. Time-defying
classics like Hawthorne and Irving would keep and be equally enjoyable
years hence, if not more so; in fact, it would be almost extravagant to
use them all up in the beginning. So it was tacitly decided that we
three--Nathaniel, Washington, and I (the first two in red buckram, the
latter in invisible yet palpable Freshman green)--should grow old
together.
The fourth member of our little group, he who had introduced us, had
dropped out. I neither saw nor heard from him again. It would seem that
he worked like lightning, striking in the same place only once. Not so
his firm, however. They struck me by mail each month with awful
iteration.
But before a year had passed there descended upon me another emissary of
intellectualism. This personage expounded to me the doctrine of the De
Luxe. I learned that an edition of any author, no matter how reputable
that author may be, was mere dross if published for the public at large.
Only as a subscriber, possessing a numbered set of a limited edition,
could one obtain the quintessence of literature. _Fiat de lux._ Let
there be e-lite.
The fact that this prophet of almost-vellum exclusiveness was physically
a fat and florid Irishman whom a wiser man than I might have mistaken
for a saloon keeper in his Sunday clothes, did not hamper his spirit.
Enthrallingly yet confidentially he discoursed on Selected Literature
for the Serene Few. I could be one of those Serene Few.
I could. I did. I signed.
In his display room, to which this rotund spider lured me, I examined,
enraptured, sets of all the leading _de luxe_ writers. There was Pepys
with pasted labels, Smollett and Fielding with special illustrations,
twelve volumes of the World's Best Oratory, a bobtailed set of
Stevenson, the inevitable Plutarch in fool morocco that was very like
shellacked paper, and many more. But the _magnum opus_ of them all was a
green buckram affair in thirty tall tomes calling itself "The
Bibliophile Library of Literature, Art and Rare Manuscripts." To
emphasize the word Art in the title there was, as an adjunct, a
three-foot portfolio of reproductions from paintings. Here was something
that cast Hawthorne and Irving into the shade. It was world-wide,
wonderful. (Later I came to know it as the "Hash"!)
As in a trance, I said yes to the "Bibliophile Library," to the Great
Orations, to the much-shorter R. L. S. Later I took on a few more.
My finances grew groggy. Indeed, Europe's difficulties over paying her
war indebtedness are as naught in comparison. Then at last the miracle
happened: the book concern mislaid their record of my indiscretions--and
all scowls ceased.
For three years. Then rediscovery. Collectors, collectors,
collectors--not the sort that A. Edward Newton writes about. They came
faster than I could insult them. Litigation. Cash compromise. Formal
return of books.
Such is the story of "My Life With Great Authors; or, The Horrors of
Dunning Street."
But I shall not allow it to "take its place among the successful
biographies and intimate journals of the season." Distinctly not. It is
for the _élite_ alone. It is to be published on sugar-cured oilskin, the
edition to be limited to two numbered copies--one for me and one for the
ashcan.
[Illustration]
PORTABLE PIGEONHOLES
Aside from a few unimportant physical distinctions, the chief difference
between man and woman is that his pockets are in his clothes, whereas
her solitary one dangles fitfully from her hand. Man is girded about
with these little repositories for the safekeeping of his belongings;
while woman, less interested in conservation than in cosmetics, holds
her booty ever accessible, so as to be able at any moment to dispose of
$3.98 or powder her nose. The ding of her husband's cash register and
the click of her dangle bag mark the systole and diastole of married
life.
Man delights in multiplicity of pockets. He must have clusters of them,
layers of them, pockets within pockets. Otherwise his search for
anything he has hidden on his person would be uninterestingly simple.
Fancy, for example, the monotony of traveling, if, at the call "All
tickets, please!" there were but a single pocket to excavate. And how
difficult it would be, when riding on a street car, for one to put up an
appearance of searching madly for his purse while he allowed his
companion to pay the fare.
The instinct for stowing away things in pockets, manifested in childhood
by a proneness for smuggling home from parties such contraband as
strawberry tarts and layer-cake with soft icing, continues throughout
life. But as one grows older the reason for these caches is less and
less obvious. The delectable but adhesive loot in the boy's pocket is
soon separated (as much as possible) from the lining, and devoured in
rapture; but the dry accumulations of the middle-aged man, such as
useless ticket stubs, old newspaper clippings, business cards thrust
upon him by salesmen or accepted absentmindedly when handed to him on
the street, unposted letters which he promised three days ago to drop
into the first mail box--all these lie buried and forgotten until
resurrected on suit-pressing day. He secretes them with the infatuation
of a dog interring bones. Only, unlike the sagacious hound, instead of
getting rid of them by this process, he merely turns them into
encumbrances.
A pocket that has long suffered from congestion will sometimes take
matters into its own hands and empty itself. Without bothering to give
any warning of its intention, it acquires a hole in one corner and then
quietly disposes of its contents. In this way small but useful change
departs, in company with your latch-key, via your trouser leg. And your
unfortunate fountain pen, let down suddenly as though by the springing
of a trapdoor, falls clear to the bottom of the inside of your waist
coat, where it lies prostrate, gasping out its last spurt of ink.
There is a treacherous kind of pocket, inhabiting a vertical slit in the
side of an overcoat, that simulates openness when it is actually closed;
so that the unwary owner, imagining himself to be putting a thing into a
safe nook, is really poking it through a hole and dropping it upon the
ground.
The average tailor has an unpleasant sense of humor. He allows you
fifteen pockets, and then proceeds to fit your suit so closely that not
a single one of them can be used. Unless you take the precaution of
stuffing each pocket with cotton batting when he tries the suit on you,
he will systematically take in all seams and buttons, in such a way that
a post-card inserted in the breast-pocket would be sufficient wadding to
throw the entire coat out of shape. (Perhaps he goes on the assumption
that when you have paid his bill you won't have anything left to put
there.) Every pocket is a latent distortion--put something into it and
you have a swelling, a tumor. Utilize your hip pocket as an oasis and
you have a bustle.
These cares and tribulations are, as we stated at the beginning of this
treatise, the lot of man alone. For woman, while accepting the
responsibility of the vote, has thus far avoided the responsibility of
the pocket--preferring to let her husband be a walking warehouse for
two. It is her method of maintaining him in subjection. If she, too,
were bepocketed, she could not keep him on the jump picking up things
she has dropped and trotting back for things she has left behind. Nor,
if she were not in the habit of making him dutifully store her gloves,
fan, handkerchief, etc., on his person, could she put him in the wrong
by taking him to task for forgetting to return them.
No, woman is too wise. She talks very blandly about equality, but so far
the only representative of her sex to wear a real pocket is the female
kangaroo.
SIMILE
Mortimer was as bold as orange-and-pink hosiery, and Simile was as
elusive as a cake of castile soap. When, at the appointed hour, he
repaired to her house, as punctual as a bill collector, she tried, like
a street-car conductor, to put him off.
But his mind, like the face of a cutie, was made up. Becoming as
eloquent as a man in a telephone booth which you are waiting to use, he
said: "Simile, I love you!"
Her lips quivered like a ford, but the look in her eyes was as far away
as Brooklyn.
"Ah, marry me" he pleaded, his voice sounding as hollow as a campaign
pledge, "--or I shall be as wretched as porous custard."
He edged nearer to her, till he was almost as close as the air in the
subway. He gazed anxiously at her face, the way a person in a taxicab
gazes at the face of the meter. Her skin was smooth as a confidence man
and clear as boarding-house soup. He put his arm about her slender
waist, which was slim as a librarian's salary.
Yielding suddenly, like a treacherous garter, she murmured, in a voice
as soft as stale crackers, while tears rushed to her eyes like shoppers
to a bargain counter, "I am yours". And she clung to him like barbed
wire.
A thrill of joy went through Mortimer like a highwayman. "Ah!" he cried.
"Then I am as happy as a coincidence!"
THE BEATIFIED RACE
It is wrong to assert that our fiction magazines have lost their power
to inspire, to uplift. High romance and whole-hearted cheerfulness have
not deserted them. These qualities have merely migrated to the
advertising pages. The morbid, unpleasant fiction is only a short
interlude between the innocent joys of Nabiscos and fireless cookers,
and the wholesomeness of Mellin's Food. After sin and adulteration comes
99-44/100 per cent pure.
The people in the advertisements help us to forget those in the stories.
These pictured endorsers display a generosity that I have not met with
elsewhere. They offer me, a total stranger to them, the most delicious
refreshments, costly gifts in silverware, whole suites of furniture;
they make me aware of "long-felt" wants; they volunteer to teach me
Spanish or osteopathy or plumbing in ten lessons; they propose to send
me immediately a portable house in many pieces, or a new lease of life
in many doses. They take a most personal interest in me, enquiring
sympathetically, "Are you bilious?"
Here, I confess, I sometimes feel embarrassed. When my old family doctor
asks me, in the privacy of his office, questions of this sort, I am
prepared to answer them; but when, as I am turning over the pages of a
magazine at a public news-stand, someone bobs out from behind a
respectful soap advertisement and accosts me brusquely with, "How is
your liver?" or "Are you bowlegged?"--I feel positively uncomfortable.
This forwardness, due to the bad influence of the fiction characters,
is, I regret to say, a trait of some of the women. (How sad it is that
editors should wilfully allow them to be contaminated! I have seen a
little Campbell Soup girl of quite a tender age, placed on the same page
with a heroine whose only topic of conversation was _unmoral love_.)
Luxuriant creatures, as unabashed as they are beautiful, invite my
approval of their stays, and make disclosures of the most sensational
kind. All of this may be in accordance with the modern ideas of
frankness, may be part of the sex-education campaign--but somehow I
can't get used to it. I am still old-fashioned enough to believe that
woman's place is in the home, especially when she is undressing.
However, while the behavior of these people toward me is occasionally a
bit disconcerting, their deportment toward each other is uniformly
admirable. In their own sphere they lead model lives.
Their family devotion, for example, is a treat to behold. Just see Mama
and Papa and Susie and Marian and little Jack, all seated around the
dining-table! From their happy smiles it is easy to tell that they love
each other and Jell-O. After dinner, dear kind Papa will not bury
himself in the evening paper, as selfish, inconsiderate papas do--he
will give Mama and the good, rosy-cheeked children each a stick of
Spearmint. Then all the family will gather 'round the fire in peaceful
attitudes and listen to the phonograph, which protects the atmosphere of
their home; and Susie will sit on the arm of Papa's chair and fondly
compare their Holeproofs.
Later, when Susie's bright young man, dressed in a nobby Kuppenheimer
suit, comes to win her heart with a box of Huyler's, Mama whom Papa
still adores because her complexion is youthified with Pompeiian, will
take Marian and little Jack upstairs and show her maternal tenderness by
teaching them how to make Colgate's Dental Cream lie flat on a
Pro-phy-lac-tic. They learn gladly, for they love Mama and wear garters
and union suits just like hers.
Even more remarkable than the family devotion of these people is their
supreme capability. They never do anything without brilliant success.
Papa can, whenever he feels the inclination, build a launch, or become a
magnetic speaker, or earn eighty dollars a week in his spare time, or
evolve a thriving chicken farm from two eggs. When he goes fishing, you
see him in the act of reeling in a six-pound trout; when he goes duck
hunting, you see him casually bringing down a bird with each barrel; and
when he plays billiards, you see him, in a backhand position and a
Donchester shirt, executing a shot that would make the reputation of
even a professional.
Look at him now, seated at his desk in his office, directing a great
business, without the least worry or effort. See the respect on his
employes' faces! At this very moment he is concluding a deal that
involves millions. And yet how calm he is! All because he wears B. V.
D.'s.
In short, the race of endorsers, produced by the eugenics of
advertising, is not subject to the ills that ordinary flesh is heir to.
They are the heroes of the present age, deified, like Greek Orion, in
the realms of "space"--long-legged, serene, divinely handsome. We, poor
mortals, humbly try to imitate them, and lay our wealth at their
shrines, as did the Ancients at the altars of their gods. Our Ceres is
Aunt Jemima; our Mercury is Phoebe Snow; our Adonis is the Arrow Collar
youth; our Venus is the Physical Culture lady; and our Romulus and Remus
are the Gold Dust Twins.
JOUEZ BALLE!
[Illustration: _Le plus grand tournoyeur sud-patte._]
New and better ideas of child education are steadily making their way.
Nearly every one now acknowledges that the school room should be
primarily a place of entertainment, that the true vocation of the
teacher is to amuse in an instructive manner, and that study is really a
scientific form of play. Also, it is quite generally admitted that
methods which involve mental effort on the part of the child are not to
be tolerated.
So much progress has already been made. But now there has just appeared
a book which bids fair to carry the educational advance as far ahead
again. This book, entitled "A Baseball Primer of French," substitutes
for the conventional pedantry of conjugations, syntax, etc., a vivid
account in French of an imaginary world's series. Any boy who studies it
will understand it instinctively; for if the foreign text prove obscure,
he has only to read the English translation underneath.
The author, Speed Stevens--who, it may be remembered, was captain of
his college nine,--shows a profound knowledge of baseball. Indeed, it is
on account of his ability as athletic coach that he holds his position
of instructor in French at Croton.
The following extract gives an inkling of the rare pedagogical value of
the book:
Dans le dixième point, avec deux hommes
In the tenth period, with two men
sur bases et un sorti, Harburg éventa. Alors
on bases and one out, Harburg fanned. Then
Bill le Rosseur ramassa sa chauve-souris et
Bill the Walloper picked up his bat and
marcha à grands pas à l'assiette. Hank
strode to the plate. Hank
Harrigan, vrai à ses lauriers de plus grand
Harrigan, true to his laurels as the greatest
vivant tournoyeur sud-patte, partit avec un
living southpaw twirler, started off with a
tirer-dedans qui faisait zip-zip, entaillant une
zipping in-shoot, scoring a
frappe. Le suivant fut un bal. Dugan, au
strike. The next a ball. Dugan, on
premier, descendit avec son bras et vola la
first went down with his arm and stole
deuxième base, mais Brown fut mis en dehors
second base, but Brown was put out
au troisième. Alors la cruche mis en dessus
at third. Then the pitcher put over
un bal saliveux: frappe deux. Puis, vinrent
a spit-ball: strike two. Then came
encore deux bals. Le comte était maintenant
two more balls. The count was now
trois à deux, et les éventails s'asseyaient sans haleine.
three to two, and the fans sat breathless.
Bill assomma une longue mouche qui tomba
Bill knocked out a long fly which fell
volaille. Il suiva celle-ci avec une volaille
foul. He followed this with a pop
poppeuse, qui l'aurait fini n'eut été un
fly, that would have finished him,
manchon stupide de la part de l'attrappeur.
but for a stupid muff by the catcher.
Harrigan devenait grincé, et Cathaway,
Harrigan was becoming rattled, and Cathaway,
voiturant de la ligne de côté, lui criait, "Bras
coaching from the side-line, yelled at him, "Glass
de verre! Il monte! Il monte!" La
arm! He's going up! He's going up!" The
cruche envoya une goutte facile; Bill débarqua
pitcher sent an easy drop; Bill landed
là-dessus carrément, le menant par-dessus la
on it squarely, driving it over the
tête de l'arrête-court, loin dans le champ
short-stop's head, far into left
gauche. C'était un oiseau d'une frappe. Dugan
field. It was a bird of a hit. Dugan
entailla, et puis Bill, gaiement circlant les
scored, and then Bill, gaily circling the
sacs, glissa sauf chez soi, pendant que les
bags, slid safe home, as the
blanchisseurs allaient sauvages.
bleachers went wild.
THE ART OF PACKING
_With a Disquisition on the Science of Rooting for What You Have Packed_
[Illustration: Decorative letter "A"]
A traveler is a person who escorts baggage. He may think he is taking a
trip for business or pleasure, but, whether he be journeying from
Brooklyn to Hoboken with one trunk, or touring Europe with a bevy of
handbags, his real occupation consists in chaperoning impedimenta.
There is something almost touching about the way in which he looks after
his little flock--seeing that they are properly tagged, counting them
anxiously to be sure that none are missing, defending them from the
cruelty of expressmen, pleading for them at the feet of customs
inspectors. He has care for the humblest satchel. If it be lost he will
set down three full suitcases and seek after it until he finds it.
Not that he is actually _fond_ of his luggage. But he has packed it and
brought it with him, and therefore he is under obligation to it; is
responsible for its well-being.
He knows in his heart that many of the clothes he has brought will never
be worn, and that most of the books he has stowed away--dry looking
volumes which he long ago decided he ought to read but which somehow he
has never got 'round to--will not be opened. Nevertheless, he has these
things with him, and it is his duty to cherish them and see them safely
back home again.
As he unpacks his belongings at the first stop, he wonders what his
state of mind could have been when he packed them. Why had he deemed his
shaving brush _de trop_? And why, oh why, had he abandoned his faithful
slippers? Had he imagined that two left-hand rubbers constituted a
pair? Five hats and caps are all very nice, but why did he put in only
four handkerchiefs? And even an array of fifty-seven neckties affords
poor consolation for the total absence of socks. As for the
bathing-suit, the morning tub would be the only place where he could use
that, and even there it would hardly seem appropriate.
Anybody with the price of a ticket can travel from one city to another,
but it takes a real genius to pack a trunk. The art must be practiced in
its purity; there must be no mixing of the pancake (or roll-'em-up)
style with the flapjack (or spread-'em-out-flat) style. Such eclecticism
is pernicious.
Considered from another point of view, packing is a fascinating game.
You put all sorts of objects in a trunk, the baggage man churns them
thoroughly, and then you take them out again and try to guess what they
are. You meet with a hundred different surprises. For instance, you
never would have dreamed that a derby hat could turn inside out, or that
a single suit could acquire ninety-three separate and distinct creases,
or that a book could swallow a mirror and have indigestion from it, or
that a bottle of ink inside seven wrappings could break and assert
itself over a pile of shirts and a month's supply of collars.
But the great paradox of packing is that a trunk is always full when you
close it and always three-quarters empty when you open it. The trunk
that nothing but violent stamping will shut is the very trunk that, a
few hours later, bounces your possessions about like beans in a rattle;
so that when you lift the lid again you find them huddled forlornly in a
corner, exhausted and battered from their shuttle-istics.
Another peculiarity is that nothing that you want is where you think it
is. The garment that you clearly remember putting in the right-hand
front corner of the top tray is sure to turn up at last in the opposite
part of the bottom. Indeed, sooner will the Sphinx give up her secret
than the trunk give up the thing you are looking for. To dig up _de
profundis_ a shoehorn that you need is a more remarkable achievement
than to unearth a new Pompeii.
Rooting is a science. Suppose, for instance, you wish to locate a pair
of scissors without disturbing the general order. You begin by
classifying the scissors in your mind, in order that you may calculate
their position in the trunk. You consider them with reference to the
following scheme of arrangement, which you recite as if you were an
elevator boy in a department store:
1. _Main Tray._ Shirts, collars, hats, handkerchiefs, _and_ toilet
articles.
2. _Mezzanine Tray._ Dress clothes, neckwear, art goods, _and_
bric-a-brac.
3. _Basement._ Shoes, hardware, suits, underwear, books, medicines,
_and_ sporting goods.
Concluding, after due deliberation, that the scissors are equally
appropriate to all of these, you start in on the main tray, sliding your
palms around the edge as though you were easing ice-cream out of a mold.
No scissors.
You delve deeper, using the back of your hand as a plow-share.
No scissors.
Refusing to be baffled, you leave no garment unturned.
No scissors.
Growing a trifle impatient, you take out the main tray and tackle the
mezzanine. This will be a simple matter, because it is so shallow that
you have only to feel around the edges.
No scissors.
Perhaps they got shaken into the middle. You burrow there, making
considerable work for the clothes-presser.
No scissors.
Now you are genuinely angry. You toss the mezzanine upon the arms of a
chair. It is a rocking-chair, and it slides the tray gently forward and
deposits it face downward on the floor.
Pretending to ignore this, you plunge both arms into the basement so
violently that the lid unclicks and gives you a cowardly blow on the
back of the head.
You rise up and vow that this your chattel shall flout you no longer.
Seizing it fiercely, you turn it upside down--you dump its contents
about the room.
No scissors!
Then there steals into your mind a vision of the above-mentioned cutlery
lying on a chiffonier in a room hundreds of miles away--and the
realization that they are probably lying there still.
AGRICULTURE INDOORS
[Illustration]
The usual package of seeds has not arrived. Is the Hon. ----, my
Representative in Congress, neglecting me? The uncertainty appals.
Year after year this eminent legislator has favored me with floral
tributes in kernel form, so that I have come to think of them as my
inalienable rights as a constituent. True, as is the case with the
thousands of other voters in this urban district which he represents, I
have no facilities for horticulture. Living in a New York apartment
seven stories up and unequipped with arable soil (the nondescript
substance which deposits on my window sills from outshaken mops above
would scarcely qualify as loam), I have been at a loss as to what
disposition to make of said seeds.
"My dear friend," writes the benevolent legislator, "I am inclosing a
list issued by the Department of Agriculture showing bulletins available
for free distribution, which contain very valuable information for all
classes of readers." And he invites me to choose any six, by number,
that he may promptly send them to me.
Only six! To select that limited allotment from so alluring a galaxy is
difficult, not to say bewildering.
No. 73 catches my eye--"Fly Traps and Their Operation." I simply must
have that one. It seems to promise an insight into the mysteries of
oratory. Perhaps it may enable me the better to appreciate my M. C.
Nor can I hope to live a rounded life if I fail to assimilate No. 940,
"Common White Grubs," and No. 920, "Milk Goats," and No. 788, "The
Windbreak as a Farm Asset."
That makes four already; to which I must certainly add the kindly No.
1105, "Care of Mature Fowls," and the arrestingly realistic No. 1085,
"Hog Lice and Hog Mange."
Thus my six choices are used up, and I am but at the threshold of this
new world of knowledge that lies tantalizingly before me. What of No.
685, celebrating that splendidly uncompromising American growth, "The
Native Persimmon," and the intriguingly cryptic Nos. 515 and 1143,
revealing the secrets of "Vetches" and "Lespedeza as a Forage Crop"?
Surely this coveted information should not be withheld from me.
Why should I be deprived of the privilege of reading aloud to my family
No. 762, "False Cinch Bug--Measures for Control," and No. 1127, "Peanut
Growing for Profit," and No. 948, "The Rag-Doll Seed Tester"? If such
romances were available for every one there would be less senseless
gadding about on the part of our young folks. Let the flapper fill her
mind, not her flask, with No. 767, "Goose Raising," or No. 757,
"Commercial Varieties of Alfalfa." And let her heed the warning against
short skirts in No. 1135, "The Beef Calf."
It has been said that there is in America insufficient appreciation of
architecture. Ah, true, my friends. Let the multitude con No. 438, "Hog
Houses," and, as examples of chaste suppression of meaningless
ornamentation, Nos. 966 and 682--"A Simple Hog-Breeding Crate" and
"Simple Trap Nest for Poultry."
Included in this invaluable list are to be found not only the frankly
practical but also the vividly dramatic. Offsetting such everyday but
significant matters as No. 1189, "The Handling of Spinach for Shipment";
No. 1153, "Cowpea Utilization"; No. 1161, "Dodder," and No. 978,
"Barnyard Manure in Eastern Pennsylvania," there are offered imagination
stirring themes like No. 835, "How to Detect Outbreaks of Insects"; No.
874, "Swine Management," and No. 1003 (one that should be especially
prized by the impecunious), "How to Control Billbugs."
Until I read this list I had no idea that spiritualism had entomological
phases which Conan Doyle seems to have overlooked. Again and again there
is mention of strange creatures and their psychic "controls": No. 1074,
"The Bean Ladybird and Its Control"; No. 1060, "Harlequin Cabbage Bug
and Its Control"; No. 897, "Fleas and Their Control," and No. 975
(presumably throwing light upon the immigration problem), "The Control
of European Foulbrood."
More comprehensible to me are the following. Anent home life and pets:
No. 1014, "Wintering Bees in Cellars"; No. 1104, "Book Lice," and No.
846, "Tobacco Beetle and How to Prevent Loss." (Does one keep the beetle
on a leash, I wonder?) Bolshevism: No. 1054, "The Loco Weed." Chambers
of Commerce, Get-Together Clubs, etc.: No. 993, "Cooperative Bull
Associations." Prohibitionists: No. 1220, "Insect and Fungus Enemies of
the Grape."
All in all, there are at least thirty bulletins which every citizen of
this metropolis needs to make him an intelligent voter. And my M. C.
allows me but six!
"My allotment being limited," he explains. But why should his allotment
be thus limited? Since he grants that the bulletins are indispensable to
my enlightenment, it is not for him to apologize, but to see that I am
fully supplied with them. To protest that the Department of Agriculture
cramps his largess is no excuse, for does not almighty Congress rule the
Department of Agriculture and run it in the interests of the People and
not for the sake of a lot of rubes? No; let him spur the department to
greater efforts, press the presses to greater output.
When my little son looks up into my eyes and asks, "Daddy, tell me about
the flat-headed apple tree borer," am I to answer him:
"Sorry, my boy, but Bulletin No. 1065 was denied me by a niggardly
government?"
My M. C. will not have done his complete duty till every home in this
city boasts a five-foot shelf of bulletins and the head of every family
can gather his dear ones about the radiator in the evening with a
cheery:
"Ah! now we take up No. 956, 'The Spotted Garden Slug.' Every one who
pays strict attention gets a hollyhock seed."
Only then will the true function of government be realized.
* * * * *
Meanwhile....
The seeds have come!
SNOWY BOSOMS
At the risk of seeming churlish, a veritable outcast from society, I
confess that I have no great fondness for snowy bosoms. I realize that
they are generally considered beautiful, and that their virgin whiteness
is the embodiment of unyielding purity; and yet I cannot but prefer the
more comfortable _negligée_ shirt.
If only they could be soft-boiled. I would so appreciate a three-minute
one. (I know it would sit better on the stomach.) The white could be
firm enough to hold together, and yet not so much so as to require a
knife to break into it.
Gala chemises that approached this ideal did appear several seasons ago.
Their frontispieces were encrusted with a swarm of very young tucks,
which rendered them quite docile. But these gentle, easy-going garments,
with their pliant pleats and amenable button holes, could not survive.
They were, alas, too soft. They lacked the stoicism of starch. They
could not hold their own against the sterner-fibred armored breastworks.
And so we men of today when we go to perform our evening devotions to
the ladies have upon us the same old white plague.
I might find some consolation in the fact that my aversion to it is
shared by all laundries. Yes, the laundry is my avenger. With
Machiavellian guile it invites shirts, seeks them, welcomes them,
professes a yearning passion for them; and then subtly destroys them in
secret. Commit an insufferable new stud-smasher to a laundry and note
the fate that overtakes it. See what happens to its bold front. A week
later it will be brought back to you with its spirit quite broken, and
its tail between its sleeves, and held in subjection by a squad of
menacing pins.
The moment you rend the veil of wax paper with which they have
discreetly concealed its destitution, you are amazed to find how it has
aged in one short week. It has become like the sear and yellow leaf.
There are crow's feet at the corners of its buttonholes. It is so weak
that they have had to send it on a paste-board stretcher to keep it
from going all to pieces.
Your erstwhile festive buckler now looks more like the bosom of
Abraham.
INTERIOR DESPERATION
It is easy nowadays to get advice on how to arrange your home. The
Woman's Page in any newspaper will tell you just how your living-room
ought to look, just how your hallway may be beautified, and just how
your kitchen may be transformed into a scientific laboratory. Scores of
books by experts on the subject undertake to instruct you how to change
your home from a place to live in to a work of art.
Realizing that my abode needed a little toning-up along modern æsthetic
lines, I consulted a book called "The Dwelling Beautiful," which I had
been informed would give me just the help I needed. "It is not necessary
that your furniture, rugs, hangings, and pictures be _expensive_," says
the author, reassuringly. "The only essential is that they be beautiful
in themselves and in restful accord with each other."
Pray, gentle writer, did you ever see my belongings? Did you ever see
the marble-and-walnut parlor table that Aunt Jessamine gave me; or the
streakily-stained Mission piano, with mottled glass panels and gew-gawy
candle-brackets, that my wife won in the guessing contest and is
therefore inordinately proud of; or the case of stuffed birds which
Uncle Lemuel left me in his will? How am I to make these things
"beautiful in themselves and in restful accord with each other?"
The truth is, none of our furnishings are gregarious. From the green rug
whose acrid hue assaults every other color in the room, to the
wonderfully and fearfully made "ornamental" lamp, each thing is what the
advertisement writers would call "_different_." Rabid in their
nonconformity, how am I to make a happy family of them?
The main feud is between our heirlooms and our wedding presents--the
former being atrocities in oak, walnut and plush of the Victorian era,
and the latter, present-day garishnesses; so that the general effect
might be likened to a colon: one period on top of another.
The author of "The Dwelling Beautiful" would probably suggest that I
get rid of some of these incumbrances. The lamentable fact is that I
_can't_. My relatives would disown me. For my whole family
connection--not to mention my wife's (about which much might be
said)--takes upon itself to police my belongings. Every visit of a
relative, even the casual call of my most distant cousin, means a
critical inspection, a careful stock-taking of heirlooms and wedding
presents.
A person who gives you anything as a wedding present never forgets it.
His taste may be erratic, but his memory is inexorable. Because a thing
happened to catch his fancy in an off-moment, it is anchored in your
home forever. And the feeling of self-appreciation for his generosity,
which he experiences whenever he beholds his gift in after years,
prevents him from admitting, even to himself, that he was out of his
mind when he bought it. Hence, you are doomed to be its perpetual
curator, with the obligation to display it prominently, so that whenever
he chooses to enter your house he may see it and claim it with his eye.
An heirloom is still worse. Each one that you have in your possession
might have gone to somebody else, and that somebody else feels that he
or she would have appreciated it more than you do. Nevertheless, for you
to disburden yourself of a single heirloom by presenting it to the
person who coveted it most, would be to precipitate a family crisis.
Take, for instance, that case of stuffed birds. Every time Uncle
Lemuel's daughter sees it she tells me how much it always meant to her,
and how the old house seems empty without it. Yet whenever I offer to
make her a present of it she bursts into tears, and sobs that her dear
father wanted me to have it, because I had once told him I liked birds,
and that therefore she would be the last person in the world to deprive
me of it.
So, along with all the rest of the harmony-killers, I am saddled for
life with this ornithological incubus. It is true, as Cousin Ophelia
says, that I like birds; but my fondness for them does not continue
after they are defunct and stuffed; neither does it include _owls_,
whether alive or dead, and there are no less than three owls in that
cabinet--gloomy, dusty, evil-looking fowls, their big yellow glass eyes
wide open and staring. I'll wager they had their eyes closed when Uncle
Lemuel shot them. He never was much of a sport.
Be that as it may, these lugubrious specimens are on my hands. I kept
them in the living-room till I couldn't stand them there any longer.
(Strangers would ask me how I happened to take up taxidermy.) Then I
removed them to the dining-room, where they promptly took away my
appetite. Transferred subsequently to the nursery, they caused Mamma's
Pet to go into convulsions of terror. I offered the cook an increase in
wages if she would take the cursed things into _her_ room; she
threatened to leave. I made a pathetic appeal to my wife to take them
into hers; she reminded me coolly that Uncle Lemuel was _my_ uncle. Now
they are in _my_ room, in the corner where I used to keep my favorite
chair.
But something tells me that they may not endure there forever. I am a
mild-dispositioned man, long-suffering, and tractable; but that cabinet
of birds is too much.
Some day you may see clouds of smoke pouring out of my windows and
fire-engines pulling up at my door. If you do, don't feel sorry for me
or censure me. A burning need will be satisfied. It will be a case of
sponsored combustion.
THE WRITING ON THE SCREEN