ENJOY IT THROUGH AUTO-FLEX NON-REFRACTORY GOGGLES
In general, however, the emphasis is upon the perils of the way, as--
ONLY 1 MILE TO HOTEL SOAKUM
(Here no specific instructions are given, it being understood that the
accessory involved is one's pocketbook and that the directions are:
"OPEN ALL THE WAY.")
The system has one drawback. The signs never fail, yet there is such a
thing as trusting them too implicity. I knew a man who, as the result of
trying to obey seven signs telling him to "BE SURE TO DINE AT" as many
different inns, stripped the lining of his esophagus. And I knew of
another man--a timid, earnest, nervous old gentleman--who depended on
signs so completely that one day, at a dangerous part of the road, being
suddenly confronted with the command:
USE PLEXO
he fell into a panic. "Plexo, plexo!" he muttered in bewilderment.
"Where _is_ the plexo lever? I can't find the plexo button! Something
terrible will happen unless I find it."
It did. As, with trembling fingers, he fumbled through the entire outfit
of attachments, he forgot to steer, and unluckily ran off the edge of a
precipice; so that he did not live to learn that plexo was a massage
cream.
FAST AND LOOSE
[Illustration: Decorative letter "T"]
There is no constancy so affecting as that of a faithful button. Friends
may be devoted; yet they seek your company partly for the pleasure of
it. Dogs may show the uttermost fidelity; but you feed them. But the
attachment of buttons is without taint of self: it is pure, spontaneous.
This loyalty is the more remarkable when you consider how empty their
lives are. The outlook through their buttonholes is but a narrow one.
Their daily labor, a mere mechanical buttoning into and out of an
uncongenial flap, is deadeningly monotonous. (I have seldom known a
button whose heart was really in its work.) In surroundings so little
adapted to the building up of character, they display a stanchness that
is akin to stoicism. Indeed, many a button will stick doggedly to an old
weatherbeaten garment long after the perfidious nap has fled.
There are, unfortunately, buttons wanting in probity, deceitful buttons
that pretend to be strongly attached to you when detained by but a
single thread, irresponsible buttons that fly off at a tangent, immodest
buttons (of the cloth-covered variety) that disrobe in public. But
deliberately vicious buttons are rare. The fact is, few buttons would go
to the bad, were it not for the heartless indifference of their owners.
Too often a headstrong young button, that might easily have been saved
had it been brought up short the moment it showed signs of looseness, is
allowed to reach the end of its rope, fall, and be utterly lost.
And the dereliction of one may mean the ruin of its family. I was told
of a sad case, once, where an entire clan of brown buttons, dwelling
happily together on the front of a coat and waistcoat--polished,
distinctive buttons they were, not be matched anywhere--were cruelly
banished, because of a single erring member.
While to neglect buttons is most reprehensible, there is such a thing as
showing them too much indulgence. For buttons must not be coddled: when
toyed with, they droop.
Tender-hearted women, actuated by sympathy and not realizing the
consequences of what they were doing, have been known to _pamper_
buttons. Because a button has a pleasant, open countenance, one of these
misguided persons will support it on her costume in idleness. She may
even surround herself with a retinue of glittering sycophants that never
knew a buttonhole--great saucerlike hangers-on, lolling on their stems;
brazen braggadocios, flashing with insolent militarism; and puny silken
pettinesses, mere pills of buttons. Often I have been shocked to see a
swarm of these drones perched indolently on the show part of a garment
while, underneath, a squadron of industrious hooks and eyes grappled
with the work to be done.
Such sights are, to thoughtful people, almost as depressing as the
massacre of helpless shirt buttons by a baleful flatiron. Are buttons to
become effete? Will they, in the course of generations of _dolce far
niente_, lose their stamina? The signs are ominous.
THE PRIMROSE PATHOLOGY
[Illustration]
I am laying an ego. With the assistance of a soako-analyst I am
overhauling my instincts, liberating my innate masterfulness. Just wait
till you see my rebuilt personality.
It's wonderful what the right soako-analyst can do to your complexes and
your finances. My soako is a woman, of course. Male soakos are best for
feminine mind-patients; but any man who needs to have his psychic self
revamped should hand over his unconscious to a sympathetic lady soako.
The attunement is lovelier. She can more understandingly separate him
from his inhibitions and his dollars.
My soako and I, we have talks by the hour. At fifty dollars per. We talk
about criminals and insane people and how everybody's crazy if they only
knew it. She explains how that dream I had after eating that stringy
Welch rarebit--that dream about throwing the size twelve overshoes at
the canary--proves that I secretly desire to murder Uncle Alfred and
elope with Mary Garden. If I could just commit that homicide and meet
Mary, these annoying conflicts would clear and leave my unconscious as
serenely blank as my conscious. So far, Uncle and Mary are still having
it out atavistically in my foreconscious. I must eat some more Welch
rarebit.
Before I went to this nerve therapeutist I had fears. But she has cured
me. She is all nerve. I thought there were some things one could not
mention to a lady. I thought that when visiting a lady, even by
appointment (office hours: 9--5) one could hardly make certain allusions
without incurring a "Sir! Leave this house instantly and never let me
hear your conversation again!"
But now that I have been initiated into the New Freedom, I know that the
automatic prehensile response is another fifty on my bill.
So I am learning, progressing. A new mental day is breaking and so is my
bank account. The dun is near.
But when I get my mind--what'll I do with it?
I think I'll become a soako myself and take in lady patients.
FIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD
[Illustration: Decorative letter "T"]
This world would be a far different place if there were peace among
pens. As it is, however, every pen wears a drop of ink on its shoulder.
Not even the tender ministrations of chamois cloth will soothe its
savage heart. It is deaf to sweet reasonableness. Returning drunk from
the inkwell, it will smutch the hand that fed it, cast blots upon the
fairest names, and ravish virgin sheets of paper. And when you try to
force it to a more civilized way of behaving, you discover it has its
points crossed.
A pen thus divided against itself will not write. There must be freedom
for the black fluid. There must be perfect harmony--two prongs with but
a single point, two parts that meet as one. Disunion is a sign of
weakness.
I had a pen once whose prongs became estranged. They were egoists: each
followed his individual bent, and was determined to make his own mark in
his own field. For the sake of appearances, they took their meals of ink
together, but immediately afterward, when pressure was brought to bear
upon them, they separated. Yet when one of them, striving too hard after
originality, broke under the strain, his widow was left desolate.
More domestic in an old-fashioned way is that staunch, blunt family, the
Stubbs. They are firm and substantial sort of pens. By people who
dislike them they are called phlegmatic, stodgy, close, stiffnibbed; and
it must be admitted, they do lack the sprightliness of the Sharps; but,
after all, these unyielding puritans, with their heavy touch, are more
trustworthy than their acute but volatile cousins. For temperament in a
pen finds vent in sudden splutterings.
The difference in their natures is evidenced by the way they meet
obstacles. The Stubbs, plodding along doggedly, overcome all hazards in
the paper; whereas the Sharps, tripping nonchalantly, come to grief at
the first bunker, and before they get started again, waste several
strokes and gouge the course. And when the Sharps attempt to run the
gauntlet of expensive linen stationery (the higher the price, the higher
the ridges), they get held up at every cable crossing. But there is a
kind of paper--smooth, slippery, insidious--that prompts both the Sharps
and the Stubbs to evil ways. They know they are doing wrong, however;
for they are ashamed, and conceal their tracks, rendering all tracing
impossible.
It is a great pity that pens are not more consistent about their ink
giving. One moment they are stingy, and the next lavish. Perhaps this
may be due to absent-mindedness.
Beginning a letter to a crabbed old relative, you say to your pen, "Give
me a little ink for 'Dear Uncle Jonathan.'"
It ignores the request. You urge again. Still it is thinking of
something else. "Here, wake up, now!" (You shake it violently.) "Give me
some ink!"
"Why, certainly," it replies effusively. "Take a blot."
And "Dear Uncle Jonathan" is buried with deep mourning.
Haphazard as their outgivings appear to be, I have a theory that they
are in reality quite logical; for I have noticed that _pens spend most
ink on things that are worth most_. Thus, a pen that would grudge to
disburse a single minim on a cheap sheet of a pad, will gladly expend
all it has upon a costly embroidered tablecloth. And it finds the
flyleaf of a handsome book (which if separate from the volume it would
regard as a mere scrap of paper) amazingly absorbing. If it take a fancy
to something large and sumptuous, such as an oriental rug, and yet not
have on hand sufficient ink for such an outlay, it will appropriate it
with a deposit of spot splash.
However little aptitude a pen may have for writing, it is sure to
display rare skill as a fisherman. In the most unpromising inkwell it
will catch deep sea monsters that astound you. It will spear great
flounders of blotting paper and wriggly eels of string. It will drag up
from the bottom wreckage of forgotten times, prehistoric flora and
fauna--an antique rubber band, a female tress (perhaps of some ink-nymph
long dead or discharged), a tack bent with age, a perfectly preserved
shoe button, a less perfectly preserved mummy of a fly.
The perseverance of this follower of Izaak Walton is admirable. It will
cast patiently again and again without a single dribble, and then, all
at once, it will come struggling triumphantly to the surface with a
whale of a June bug it has harpooned. Whereupon, as is the custom with
fishermen who write, it will make a grand splurge of its catch on paper.
In order to prevent such piscatorial dippiness, pen fanciers have bred
the _fountain_ species, the latest variety of which is self-spilling.
Pens of this artificially produced species are very nervous. They have
to be handled with extreme care. For example, if one of them is held
upside down, all the ink runs to its head, and there is danger of a
hemorrhage. Its digestive system is poor: it regurgitates and bubbles at
the mouth. The least thing upsets its stomach. If you forget to put its
cap on, even in mild weather, it contracts a serious congestion of the
throat; with the result that the next letter you write proves dry-point
etching.
Taken all in all, pens have a great deal to answer for. The record they
have left on the pages of history is a black one. Many a person who has
sat down to write something bright and optimistic, has been so
disillusioned and embittered by his pen, that he has ended by hacking a
hymn of hate or drooling a dirge of despair. Which accounts for most of
the world's harsh diplomacy and morbid literature.
Even this essay was originally intended to be cheerful.
ENLIGHTENMENT
At last I have found out the awful truth about humanity. I never even
suspected it. Till last evening I went along my way cheerfully, blindly,
never guessing that my fellow-men were steeped in evil.
But now I know. My eyes have been opened. For last night I went to one
of those enlightening film dramas that reveal life as it is. It was
called "Her Blackest Sin," and it comprised nine reels of terrible
truth.
It was one of those fine moral sermons to which every mother ought to
take her son, and every niece ought to take her uncle, and every
stepaunt ought to take her Pekingese.
I only wish my daughter could have seen it; but as I haven't any
daughter, she couldn't have.
[Illustration: _She never really intended to become steeped in sin: she
was scenarioed into it_.]
This drama shows how a handsome but thoughtless woman may sink in sin
without ever meaning to. Yes, the strange and pitiful part about it is
that she really never intended to be a fallen, crime-seared creature.
She sins witlessly: she is scenarioed into it. Perhaps she is too
anxious to please. She appears at wild cabarets and wears gowns that are
cut to the quick, not because she desires to of her own accord, but
because it is expected of her by the audience. Lack of firmness leads to
her undoing: she is first pliant, then supple, then sinuous. She
displays too little backbone, and too much.
Poor woman, what chance has she amid so many dress suits? Only too late
does she learn that stiff bosoms cover none but hard hearts, and that
there is no gleam so sinister as that of a silk hat, covering as it does
baldness of the baldest sort.
Innocent at first, hardly a reel passes before she begins to stop and
work her face, just the way the villains stop and work their faces. (Of
course, being still a modest woman, she does this only in the privacy of
a close-up.) By the seventh reel even her high-minded husband has become
afflicted with the taint, and is stopping and working _his_ face.
And so the drama progresses, growing blacker and more enlightening every
minute. I can't be too grateful to the producers of this film for the
unflinching way in which they accepted the responsibility of my
innocence and warned me. If they had not, I should probably have gone to
the end of my days without ever knowing that people were at bottom only
smiling criminals.
But now, thank goodness, I'm warned and on my guard. I'm posted on sin.
When a man comes up to me and shakes my hand, I'll know he's a hawk
looking for a home to break up; and when a woman smiles at me, I'll know
she's a vampire.
They won't catch _me_! I'll just watch them surreptitiously when they
are off their guard until I see them working their faces, and _then_
I'll have them!
For now I am an expert on evil. That film showed me the thrilling
seductions of a life of vice; so that if I am ever confronted by them I
shall be able to recognize them at once and say how do you do. And at
the end there was one of those solemn moral warnings, such as everybody
thinks everybody else is supposed to need; so in future I shall know
what to avoid in _that_ line.
And this entire transformation of my life cost me only thirty-three
cents.
HOLIDAY MISGIVINGS
[Illustration]
When, on Christmas night, I take a private view of the collection of
presents I have received, I realize that I am a much misunderstood
person.
I sit down sadly and wonder what I could have done to create such an
impression. Is there something _queer_ about me? If so, then wouldn't it
have been more tactful, more kind, to have come to me and told me of it,
instead of thus brutally proclaiming it to the world? But that is the
way people are: they will serenely _assume_ things they wouldn't have
the face to mention.
Those morbid socks!--half hose and half a disease. The loom that made
them must have been degenerate. It is plain that they were never
intended to be put on, because the paste-board document that lurks in
the bottom of the box declares they are "guaranteed against any sort of
wear." And these were esteemed suitable associates for my feet!
I have no recollection of sniffling, in public; yet here are nine dozen
handkerchiefs, an outfit for someone with chronic coryza. As for the
assemblage of pocketbooks, purses, wallets, coin holders, etc., I only
hope that after I have paid my holiday bills there will be enough money
left to half-way fill the pocketbook I have already.
But the crowd that seems most oppressive is that of the calendars. Am I
really so absent-minded as to require seven engagement pads? Am I so lax
about settling my accounts that my butcher and grocer and milkman feel
called upon to supply me the means of knowing what day of the month it
is?
Anything may pass for a calendar, so long as it complies with the law by
having a little batch of months attached to the bottom like an
appendix:--a snapshot of Cousin Gertrude's baby (oh, the deuce! I
suppose I was expected to give that kid something for Christmas!); a
pastoral chromo, entitled "Shearing the Lambs," sent me by a firm of
brokers; a picture of a child in a nightie saying its prayers, with the
compliments of the Schweinler Beef Packing Co.; a hand-tinted but feebly
glued print of Paul and Virginia, inscribed, "Jones and Bergfeldt,
Plumbers."
One calendar, consisting of a sheaf of large placards, each purporting
to exhibit a specimen of female beauty, is so throttled by its silken
cord that when February 1st arrives and I attempt to give one of the
beauties the flop-over in order that I may gaze on the next for a while,
the situation proves too tense. The eyelet suddenly splits into an
outlet, and the jilted maiden, cast off by her sisters, collapses upon
the floor.
All of which is most distressing; but no more so than the notion that
women seem to have of what a man likes. I shall never forget the pair
of slippers that Aunt Josephine bestowed upon me last year. They were
what are technically known as _mules_, but in reality they were a couple
of long rafts, each with an arching toe-cabin that would have
accommodated both feet. The low racing sterns extended so far aft of my
heels that the latter stood almost amidships.
Navigation was difficult. They kept running afoul of each other; so that
I would suddenly find my starboard foot partly on the port slipper and
mostly on the floor. Sometimes one of them would dart ahead several
lengths and capsize, obliging me to turn skipper. No matter how
earnestly I lifted their bows, their sterns always dragged. A landsman
would have said that my progress resembled pumping a rhapsody on a
pianola, or skiing in the Alps.
The unreasonableness of these mules reached a climax one morning while I
was visiting the Cholmondeley-Browdens. I encountered my hostess
unexpectedly as I was returning from my bath. In the excitement of the
moment, both slippers bolted, one of them performing a spectacular
flip-flap, and the other skidding through the balustrade of the stairway
and landing below in a globe of goldfish; while I made my escape in a
state of pedal nudity.
As for the neckties I have received--truly, Love is blind!
ALL, ALL ARE GONE, THE OLD FAMILIAR FAÇADES
Nowadays when it is hard for the casual observer to distinguish
Somebody's Mother from Somebody's Jazz Baby, it is not to be wondered at
that houses as well as humans are disguising their age. Victorian
brownstone mansions that later sank to boarding-house seediness now
renew their youth as the "Rubens Studios" or "Haddon Chambers"; drab
office buildings, yielding to a sudden access of sand, take on new
complexions as talcumy white as those of the flappers passing by.
He would be a tactless and cruel man who would say, "I know when that
one's corner stone was laid." Or, "My great uncle knew that one when it
was only three stories high." Or, "It didn't have that cornice until its
gables began to fall off." Or, "You ought to have seen the stoop it had
before they put in the steel braces."
Beauty doctoring to buildings must have become quite an art. It takes
skill to know how to eliminate the dark lines under tired window sills,
lift the sagging balconies, reduce protuberant bay windows. Only a
trained chisel can remove a superfluous ornament in a way that will
guarantee against its reappearance.
We are shocked, though, at the brazenly commercial character that
certain sedate houses have taken on in the giddier part of town.
Buildings that were formerly quiet residences, keeping themselves
retiringly back from the bustle, and modestly shielding themselves with
brown balustrades, now shamelessly come forward as close to the line as
they dare, meeting the idle stroller half-way, not with lowered shades,
but with broad plate-glass assurance, and even displaying scandalous
lingerie.
We cannot but feel that buildings thus bedizened in the effort to keep
from being neglected, will not command the same reverence that used to
be inspired by the mossy old manse or the messy old mill. Theirs is
hardly the Age of Innocence.
Would the old home seem as homely to you, after it had been exterior
decorated? Would it be as dear?
Oh, much dearer!--as the real estate agent will tell you, or your own
broker.
MY MUSEUM
[Illustration]
I called her Plury. That is to say, I would speak of her by that
endearing appellation when she was running along smoothly and seldom
missing in either cylinder. Her real name, however, was E. Pluribus
Unum.
You see, I had wanted an automobile, but found that no single make was
within my means. So I bought Plury--just as a person who cannot afford
beef, veal, chicken, turkey, lamb or pork, orders hash. Individually
Fords, Buicks, Overlands, Peerlesses, Simplexes, Pierce-Arrows, etc.,
were too expensive for me; but collectively, combined in the form of
second-hand Plury, I could afford them all, at $132.50.
Plury was a cosmopolitan. Her rear axle was Italian, her steering-wheel
was French, her magneto was Austrian, and her mudguards were Belgian. It
was hard to maintain her neutrality. For example, a German cogwheel that
clutched with an English one--scarred veterans, both of them--kept the
gear box in a constant state of friction. (When such international
clashes occurred, it was always difficult to find out which one had
started the trouble.) Then, too, among the American-made parts there was
much jealousy between those that had come from rival factories. The
tires were of four different makes, each boasting a surface specially
patented against skidding; but each strove so hard to shove the other
three into the gutter, that all four cavorted about the road in a most
unseemly fashion.
Many were the heartburnings, the incompatibilities of temperament, of
the parts thus yoked together. Whenever these dissentions brought
matters to a standstill, I would have to get out and apply the
monkey-wrench of peace.
Plury was hardly a _noble_ car in either appearance or speed, yet I was
genuinely fond of her. Her lamps had a wistful look--a look as innocent
and helpless as that with which poached eggs gaze up at you before they
die. As for her slowness, that made little difference; because her
speedometer, geared presumably for a racing car, exaggerated. And, after
all, what is speed but a number on a dial? While I saw "71" registered
there I was not disturbed by the fact that bicyclists were passing me.
I admired her pluck. She would chunk along stoically, accepting other
people's dust without complaint, when in a condition of health that
would have prostrated any other machine. (Thoroughbreds do not show the
greatest endurance.) Bravely she would drag herself home, after a hard
afternoon's work, with a leak in her radiator and congestion in all her
bearings.
I used to practice vivisection on her, taking her apart and putting her
together in new ways. It was a fascinating kind of solitaire, solving
the problem of what to do on rainy Sundays. In a few hours' time I could
shuffle the parts and deal out an entirely new model. Under my care
Plury changed her shape with ultrafashionable frequency. A model that I
was particularly interested in trying out was number nine (_i. e._, the
eighth transformation). This was such a daring rearrangement that it
seemed too wonderful to be true. But it worked, and thrillingly. In this
form Plury exceeded all her previous speed records. The speedometer dial
registered 87, and a swarm of gnats had hard work keeping up with us.