lately made a study of handwriting as it is shown in the moving
pictures. I undertook this research because I had been given to
understand that chirography, when scientifically analyzed, revealed
every nuance of human character; and because the personages in
moving-pictures, being intensely dramatic, could not fail to have
striking individualities as penmen.
Let me give some of the interesting examples which I found. Here, for
instance, is a confidential communication from a great financier to one
of his associates:
Dear Buggenheim,
Buy 30,000 shares of B V D immediately We must foil Stockfeller if
it takes our last million
J P Mormon
Observe in what a firm, steady hand this is written. It shows that the
great financier can be cool even in a crisis. No wonder he is
successful. He always looks ahead; he never crosses a T until he comes
to it. Clear-visioned he is; his I's have their specks on straight. Such
a man will go far without being missed.
The next specimen is a letter written by the dashing young hero to the
heroine. It reads:
Dear Bosnia
I love you madly. Your father despises me because I am poor but
honest. Elope with me at midnight in my racing machine.
Beverly
Stanch and dependable. His passion is intense, yet he is too loyal to
betray it. Note the uncompromising uprightness of his L's. You just
can't help trusting him, because, as he says, he hasn't any money.
Here is a letter penned by a wayward wife. Fraught with tense emotion,
it is indeed a moving human document. She writes:
Dear Bertram:
I am leaving you tonight for ever. Try to understand--and forgive
me. My hand trembles so that I can scarcely write. I hope you will
be happy. Goodbye!
Arnica.
What a wealth of sorrow this handwriting displays! Poor, unfortunate
woman, tearful and yet volatile! Her M's are bowed with grief, and yet
they have an arch look. Out of touching deference to her first love she
makes a desperate effort to be neat; she is not willing that her
husband's last memento of her should be a sloppy one. Even when about to
commit a sin, she still retains that refinement of nature which he has
always reverenced, that indescribable feminine delicacy which was wont
to reveal itself in such little acts as shrinking visibly at the touch
of unclean overshoes.
There are innumerable other examples which might be cited, handwritings
of every conceivable kind; but the endless variety of them would merely
tend to bewilder. Therefore I shall give only two more and without
extended comment; for, indeed, their characteristics jut out quite
protuberantly.
The little six-year-old child raises her face wistfully from her piece
of angel food and scrawls:
Dear Daddy:
Mama and me wish you would come home.
Melba.
Truly a revelation of the artistic nature. In contrast to this, let us
examine what Jimmie the Dope, escaped convict, scribbles to his
confederate:
Steve:
Be there wit yer tools at one o'clock tonight ready to do the job.
But look out fer that Italian named Isaac McTavish, he's a
"stool-pigeon"
Jimmie.
This particular specimen has a tragic interest for us. It demonstrates
the failure of our modern institutions. Here is a man forced by society
into a felon's trade who was capable of earning an honest living as an
instructor in penmanship.
MUSIQUE GLACÉE
[Illustration]
Of all strivers after the Ideal none have so kindly a method as the
architects responsible for those pleasing structures termed French
pastry. Whatever they create is delicate, delectable, imbued with
sweetness. Putting aside the thought of future fame, these gentle
artificers devote their labor to works as perishable as they are
exquisite: meringues, sculptured in ambrosial stucco, that melt to
nothing; roseate cakelets of which the crimson splendor endures no
longer than a sunset; kisses that are all too brief; tarts which, frail
as flowers, succumb quickly to hunger in the dessert. These crust
craftsmen pour forth richness as song-birds do, creating rapture for but
a precious moment. If ordinary architecture is "frozen music," then
surely this Gallic refinement of it is "_musique glacée_."
There are many styles, ranging from Perpendicular Gothic to Powdered
Rococo--so many, in fact, that one could scarcely hope to masticate them
all at a single sitting. (Two or three is the most I have ever been able
to account for.) Yet each style, if found in its purity, merits
attention as an embodiment of good taste. For even the humblest cream
puff, despite the looseness of its design and the unpretentiousness of
its exterior, has an interior well worth investigating.
Perhaps the most important landmark in all the realm of pastry is the
tradition-hallowed and chocolate-roofed éclair, whose long nave affords
sanctuary for whipped cream or custard. (Not necessarily
_chocolate_-roofed, however: the eaves may be tinged instead with a soft
patina of _café au lait_.) This mellow-hued pile, eminently edible, is
cherished by multitudes of devotees.
Another structure beautiful in ruin is the massive patty that serves as
donjon-keep for oysters. Upon its crumbling ramparts parsley has found
root, and encircling its fissured base is a broad moat of gravy. Gaunt,
sugarless; no oyster can hope to escape.
An equally notable tower is the stately white charlotte russe. Its
impenetrable wall of cardboard, re-enforced inside with a doughty
thickness of cake, rises sheer from the glacis of the plate and
terminates in crenelated battlements over the edge of which hang masses
of cream, ready for the invader. Upon the topmost pinnacle is posted a
sentinel cherry.
Of contrastingly mild aspect are the various crisp terraces--those
luxuriant Hanging Gardens, where fruits of every sort are spread out in
gorgeous profusion: rows of gold-gleaming apricots; neat hedges of
orange plugs; happy pears and orderly better-halves of peaches; a bed of
sugar-fed strawberries, each tucked in snugly; grapes chaliced in fluted
pie crust; jocund apple chips and banana checkers, cuddled cosily slice
against slice. Truly a paradise in pastry!
And there are a host of other fair shapes: the pantheon-like Kossuth
cake, beneath the low dome of which is a votive offering of cream; the
amazing custard skyscraper, with its innumerable floors, no walls, and
gaily iced roof; the Byzantine _baba au rhum_, inlaid with tutti-frutti
mosaics and steeped in subtle enchantment; and countless others--fanes,
kiosks, minarets, pavilions, reliquaries of jam--baffling description or
digestion.
Frail, ephemeral, created with no thought of permanence; and yet we
should hardly enjoy them more if they were built of everlasting marble.
The craftsmen who design them, scorning personal glory, do not sign
their works. For theirs is the true æsthetic spirit, so rare in this
commercial age. Their handiwork faithfully bears out the precept "Tart
for Tart's Sake."
THE CARE OF THE HUSBAND
The average young wife is regrettably inexperienced in the matter of
husbands. Unless it has been her fortune to have a wise mother or a
divorce, she is likely to be quite ignorant of how to care for and train
the "big stranger" who comes into her life. Therefore these precepts of
friendly counsel may not seem to the matrimonial novice altogether
amiss. The advice I would give is simple (in the fullest sense of the
word); so that after the young wife has had a few husbands, she can
dispense with it, if not sooner.
_Feeding._--This is the most important problem a wife has to face. The
husband must be made to feel that he is well fed. Otherwise he will not
be contented and docile.
During the first week after marriage, when he is still quite infantile
and tender to the point of mushiness, he may be fed from the hand or
spoon. This method will be found especially satisfactory in cases where
the husband shows symptoms of sickly sentimentality.
Throughout the entire first month he will be so demanding of care, so
bewildered by the strange new world in which he finds himself, as to be
barely able to maintain sanity; in short, he will be so soso that she
will have to prepare all the food herself, or at least make him think
she does.
But later a change of diet will be found necessary. He will demand
scientifically prepared foods. If the change is managed in the right
way, it can be accomplished with only slight upset to his disposition.
Simply alter the feeding formula so that the total quantity is lessened
and the proportion of sugar and burnt materials is increased. It will
soon take effect. In a day or two he will say, with a worried look,
"Darling, I'm afraid the cooking is too much for you." And you know what
he really means. After that the transition to avowedly professional
cooking will be quite painless.
_Outings and Play._--During the first few months the husband will not
need many outings. He will be happy and contented if allowed to romp
about the house. Such toys as hammers, picture wire, curtain rods,
etc., will keep him occupied.
Later, however, there will come a period of restlessness. Then you must
take him out more and more, and let him run and play with other
husbands--after you have made sure, of course, that they are good,
well-behaved husbands. The companionship of these innocent sports will
tend to make him one himself.
When, as time goes by, he reaches the stage where he begins to take
notice, the wife must be very careful, for he is highly impressionable.
At this time a wife will do well to look out for her husband herself,
instead of entrusting him to some empty-headed girl, whom she may not
really know at all. If he needs amusement let her divert him with
brightly-colored silks and baubles which she wears and he pays for. Let
her take him to see the pretty theater, and show him the beautiful
mountains and the big blue ocean, and tell him fairy stories about
economy, and teach him to draw nice big cheques in his little cheque
book.
Discipline cannot begin too early. The husband must be taught that he
can only have the things that his wife decides are best for him, and
that no protesting on his part will do any good. If he proves fretful,
chide him by threatening to go live with your mother. If, after that, he
is still unruly, threaten to have your mother come live with you.
In this way he will soon learn to mind. Indeed, before long you will be
able to show him off before company with the assurance that he will
behave just as you have trained him to; and you will have the
satisfaction of hearing your friends declare he does you credit.
_Awakening his mind._--This is one of the chief duties and
responsibilities of wifehood. It cannot be shirked. For while no husband
is expected to know anything at marriage (the fact that he got married
attests that), he is expected a year or so later to look intelligent
when the lady next to him at dinner discusses Coué and Scriabine, and to
know that Gauguin is not something to be got from a bootlegger. For him
not to know these things would be a reflection on his home training, or,
in other words, his wife. She will be considered negligent unless she
has instilled into his rudimentary mind a smattering of whatever is
accounted smart. For every wife is judged by the way she brings up her
husband.
Note.--If in the above treatise I have borrowed from the learned
doctors who have written concerning the Care of the Baby, I am
sorry; for I see no prospect of ever being able to pay them back.
Even this small note of mine will be discounted.
TERMINOLOGY OF TARDINESS
Our late demented newspapers are in a plight. They are no longer
afflicted with a shortage of paper, but they are still cramped by a
dearth of names for their afternoon editions. All the stand-by titles
have been exhausted. By midday the "Home Edition," "Night Edition," and
"Special Extra" have come and gone, and there is still the whole
afternoon with nothing left to tempt the tired business man but various
grades of "Finals." New nomenclature is needed, names that will stir the
imagination and summon the cents.
Desirous of doing what I can toward alleviating this distressing
situation, I venture to suggest the following schedule:
8 A. M.--Late Edition--_One star_
9 A. M.--Extremely Late Edition--_Two stars_
10 A. M.--Inexcusably Late Edition--_Three stars_
11 A. M.--Hopelessly Late Edition--_One constellation_
12 M.--Midnight Edition--_Two constellations_
1 P. M.--Tomorrow Morning Edition--_Group of planets_
2 P. M.--Tomorrow Afternoon Edition--_Complete solar system_
3 P. M.--Day-After-Tomorrow Edition--_Comet_
4 P. M.--Next-Week Edition--_Large comet_
5 P. M.--Next-Month Edition--_Unusually large comet_
6 P. M.--Next-Year Edition--_Complete zodiac_
7 P. M.--Special Doomsday Extra--_Milky way and nebulae_
OPPRESSORS OF THE MEEK
I am not afraid of bloated bondholders. I suspect that they are just
humans like myself, only that they have money.
But I am afraid of their servants. _They_ are not human. No one ever saw
them eat or sleep or smile.
My millionaire host may overlook the fact that I am using the salad-fork
for the fish; not so his English butler. This austere personage takes
note of my error in silence, and, when the salad course arrives, steals
up behind me like Nemesis, and lays by my plate the fork that correct
form demands. I feel chastened.
[Illustration: _My host may overlook the fact that I am using the salad
fork for fish; not so his English butler._]
His eye is always upon me. I can't even take a sip of water without his
calling attention to it by stealthily refilling my glass.
If he didn't watch me so closely when I am helping myself, I wouldn't be
so nervous. As it is, my hand trembles under his grueling stare. Just at
the critical moment when my tongful of asparagus, conveyed like a hot
coal, is poised in mid-air between the serving-dish and my plate, I
flinch, and there is a green-and-white avalanche. I make a frantic slap
at it as it falls, and by good luck it lands on the plate. To be sure,
some of the stalks are craning their necks perilously over the edge, but
that is a small matter compared with what might have happened. I rake
them into the middle of the plate, sit gasping at the thought of my
narrow escape.
There is an awkward pause. The bon mot I was about to utter apropos of
an opera I had never heard has left my mind entirely. I can't think of
anything to say. Finally, in desperation, I remark idiotically to the
dowager at my left, "I love asparagus; don't you?"
The next time he passes a dish, I lose my nerve. I lift my hand to help
myself, and then, as I catch his eye, draw back, shaking my head. No, I
won't take any chances.
After that I keep to a strict diet, eating only the things that appear
on my plate when it is put down in front of me. If the plate arrives
naked and empty, naked and empty it remains, even though the course
consist of my favorite delicacy. I suffer the pangs of Tantalus.
Alligator-pear salad--more to be desired than gold, yea, than much fine
gold--is offered to me. I covet it. Everything gastronomic in my nature
craves it, but cowardly fear restrains me (it looks slippery), and I
refuse it. I could almost weep.
As the dinner proceeds and my modified hunger-strike continues, I begin
to regain confidence. I feel that my abstemiousness, implying as it does
a jaded palate and an aristocratic indigestion, is highly fashionable. I
fancy that in refusing ambrosia I am showing a godlike superiority.
I expand with self-assurance. Just watch me startle these plutocrats
with my scorn of their costly food. I'll make myself the lion of the
evening.
"May I help you to shortcake, sir?" asks a low, ironically respectful
voice.
My pride collapses. The butler has seen through me to the cowardice in
my heart. From his lofty pinnacle he stoops to succor me. But I rebel.
"I'll help myself, thank you," I retort, for I am on my mettle now, and
boldly prize off a towering segment of the dessert. Would _I_ let a
menial reveal to the whole table that I was afraid to help myself?
Never! Why, I'd sooner--
Dizzily the creamy thing totters, keels over, and falls with a sickening
flop, a mushy sound, as of the impact of a wet sponge. Juicy red berries
gambol hither and thither.
For a moment the shortcake lies helplessly on its side like a jellyfish
that the tide has left. But only for a moment; for a wrecking-crew, made
up of the butler and his assistant, comes hurrying on the scene. With
emergency plate and scraper they remove the debris, while I turn purple
and clutch at my collar for air. Then, after a mortifying amount of
crumb-gleaning and cream-mopping, they spread a napkin before me in the
presence of my swell friends, as if to shield the cloth from further
depredations. I draw back to allow them to put it there, and in so doing
squash a hidden strawberry against my waistcoat. As a final humiliation,
a fresh piece of shortcake is brought to me _already on a plate_.
If there is anything more formidable than an English butler, it is an
English valet. Somebody else's valet, I mean; for I suppose that if a
person had one long enough, he could get so that he wouldn't be afraid
of him. But as for a perfectly strange English valet!
"Your key, please, sir," demands Hawkins upon my arrival at my friend's
summer palace. He bows slightly.
"What key?" I ask uneasily.
"The key to your traveling-bag, sir."
I am just stopping overnight on my way home from a house party in the
woods, and all my spare raiment is soiled and bedraggled.
"So I can unpack your things, sir," threatens the Great Mogul.
"Never mind, thank you," I stammer. "I've lost the key."
"Very good, sir," he replies and goes.
But not permanently. When I return to my room at midnight, elated over
having trounced my host in countless games of billiards, I am met at the
door by my oppressor. In his hand is a small object.
"I fetched a locksmith out from the city, sir, and 'ad 'im make this
for you, sir. It fits quite correctly, sir."
And one glance about the room--from the snaggle-tooth comb on the
dresser to the frayed pajamas the mussiness of which no festive laying
out can hide--makes me aware of my utter ignominy.
Since when I have confined my week-end visiting exclusively to lumber
camps.
PUTTING PEDAGOGY ACROSS
There is much well-meaning propaganda in progress for the preservation
of professors. Alumni are appealed to, bankers are buttonholed, and in
every college club the diagram showing the Big Game play by play has
been replaced by a dial showing how many millions have been garnered to
date for the fund; all this in order that the saying "Live and learn"
may be reversible as "Be learned and yet live."
Wouldn't it be more humane (instead of giving the professors money, to
which they are not accustomed) to teach them how to "sell" themselves?
Today every one is paid according to how completely the public or the
plutocrats are "sold" on him. Only salesmanship can save the scholars.
The time is ripe for some gilt-edged grad such as Morton K. Mung,
President of the Newark Noodle Corporation, to announce, when stalked by
the subscription squad: "No, gentlemen of the Adopt a Professor
Committee, your suggestion that by donating seven cents a day I keep an
instructor in paleontology from starvation, or be godfather to an
authority on Sanscrit at eight cents, strikes me as impractical. With
the cost of living rising again, next year they will want nine and ten
cents--and you see the position that would put us in.
"No, gentlemen, I'll do better. I'll solve this situation once for all
by loaning my general sales manager, Mr. Blat, to dear old Weehawken for
two months, and he will give the members of the Faculty the same
tutoring course he gives the men we send out on the road. Within a year
after they leave his hands these same profs you've mentioned will be
writing 'Success Through Sanscrit' and 'How I made My Pile with
Paleontology' for the _American Magazine_."
At the conclusion of this loyal speech the committee would give a long
cheer and depart checkless but with a new vision.
And, sure enough, the pale pedagogues would emerge from Mr. Blat's
snappy seminar simply exuding system. They would possess the Power to
Meet Men, the Personality that Wins. Laboratory recluses would burst
forth primed to impress with Bigger Biology--Contains More Bunk.
The Sanscrit savant, formerly threadbare, but now a nifty dresser, would
immediately hop a train for New York and breeze into the office of Hugh
G. Wads, senior member of Wads & Wads and Chairman of the Trustees of
Weehawken University.
"Good morning, Mr. Wads," he would say aggressively. "I've come here
this morning to talk Vedas."
"Vedas? I don't get you. Never heard of such a stock. It isn't listed on
the big board, and if it's traded in on the Curb, the dealings must be
pretty small. Besides, I thought you were a professor at Weehawken."
"Right. I am a professor, if you choose to put it that way. Technically,
though, I'm a promoter, and my proposition is VEDAS (Trade mark
copyrighted 2000 B. C.)."
"Vedas? I still don't get you."
"Ah, that is precisely why I am here. I was sure you would want to
know--Cigar?--Well, Vedas are the wisdom songs of India. Mellowed by
forty centuries in the parchment. One hundred per cent Hindu. Classy yet
conservative; noble yet nobby. You know what caste is among the
Brahmins?--well, that's how exclusive these are!"
"Indeed."
"Yes, and I'm offering them for immediate delivery to students."
"But how does this concern me?"
"I was just getting to that. This is a proposition which requires
considerable capital for its development. At the present time only seven
students have asked for Vedas, yet I have estimated that the supply of
Vedas now mellowing out in India is enough for at least 180,000
students. Which means that if we created the demand--why, think of the
business we could do! When you come right down to it, a Veda, when
presented in the right way, can be as catchy as a Kewpie."
"Hm. How much money would you need to start with?"
"Fifty thousand dollars. Besides my salary, which would be $15,000
outright, plus a bonus of one and one-half cents per Veda per student,
there would be the cost of advertising in the college catalogue, the
conducting of a circularizing campaign to a selected list of student
prospects and the publication of a promotion organ to be entitled 'India
Ink.' Then, too, of course, I would have to have a commission on gross
tuition receipts and text book sales and an ample expense account for
entertaining in the class-room and in my home. Now will you kindly put
your name here on the dotted line?"
"Before I guarantee you all this money, tell me one thing. What is the
real value of these Vedas?"
"They are the quaint quintessence of conservatism, and will occupy
youthful minds menaced by modernism."
"I'll sign."
Succored by the science of salesmanship, any professor would be able to
achieve affluence. Fortunes would rise from footnotes; and there would
be big money made in bibliography.
COACHING FROM THE SIDE-LINES
[Illustration]
Thanks to the roadside advertisements, driving a car has become as easy
as playing a pianola. You just watch the instructions that appear along
the edge, and regulate your levers and pedals accordingly. Thus, when
you see:
DANGEROUS CURVE
SOUND RASPON
--you reach instinctively for the button of your electric horn. Later,
seeing:
SHARP DESCENT
APPLY EUREKA NON-SLIP-ABLE BRAKE
--you comply gracefully. A mere twist of the wrist or dislocation of
the ankle does the trick.
He that reads may run. Any man who has ever watched an organist pull out
stops and push them in again can become a motor virtuoso. Any woman
accustomed to following instructions in cutting out a dress pattern, can
grasp the idea as easily as, when told to, she grasps the lever which
operates BINGO'S NORTHPOLEAN RADIATOR COOLER. It is so simple that it is
imbecile.
Every peculiarity of the route is heralded. All its little
irregularities, its deviations from straightness, its bad declines and
sudden uppishnesses, even the small faults which an easy-going person
would overlook, are held up sternly in warning.
GUSTY CORNER
RAISE BREEZ-O EXTENSION WIND-SHIELD
SANDY STRETCH
SPRAY GEARS WITH ANTI-GRIT
PUDDLES
APPLY SPLASHOL EMERGENCY MUD-GUARD
RAILROAD CROSSING
PUT EAR TO LOCOMOTIVE DETECTAPHONE
DANGEROUS BOULDER
BEFORE RAMMING THIS MAKE SURE ACHILLES COLLISION BUFFER IS
PROPERLY ADJUSTED
VILLAGE SPEED TRAP
APPLY BACKFIRE WITH READY CONSTABLE EXTERMINATOR
Occasionally, as a relief from the faults of the road, its favorable
points are dwelt on. Thus,