more than does MacKeene. He reads newspapers with a relish that is
positively amazing; he smacks his lips over them; their contents are to
him the headiest romance. MacKeene goes to the finest theater in the
world every evening when he reads his penny paper. The anxiety with
which he awaits the account of each new murder, swindle, election,
disaster, marriage, or divorce of a special publicity, the mental
agility with which he pounces upon it, the astonishing variety of points
of view he can take of the thing, and the application with which he
follows through successive installments the story to the very end, are
delightful to behold.
He invariably winds up his observations upon life with the comment that
"it is a funny world; such funny people in it."
True, or, rare MacKeene! It _is_ a funny world, and there _are_ such
funny people in it! Everybody is queer but thee and us.
The other evening, after he had devoured his newspaper and sat staring
at the wall, we started him going by the remark:
"Well, what's in the paper to-night, MacKeene?"
"What's in the paper to-night?" cried he.
[Illustration]
"Everything is in the paper, everything--worlds of it--plays, skits,
comedies, farces, tragedies, burlesques: material for the student, the
historian, the author, the poet, the moralist, the humorist, much matter
to be fast applauded for its slapstick good nature, and some bowed with
leaden-eyed despair, some replete with rosy schemes, some of waxing
hopes and sweet, unprofitable pipe dreams, some of many moneys, births,
deaths, marriages and giving in marriages, loves, hatreds, wisdoms,
follies, crimes, vices and virtues, heroisms, hypocrisies, arts,
commercialism, surprises, bacchanals, hard exigencies, and poor resorts
and petty contrivances. _Life_--ah! that's the boy--life and all its
train of consequences, ringing in my ears, dancing before my eyes,
crowding on the senses, a three-ringed circus in full blast, a roary,
noisy, bloomin' spectacle, a mammoth aggregation of prodigious
eye-openers and unparalleled splendors, with gorgeous hippodrome under
perfect subjection, and a Casino Wonderland Musee of queer, peculiar,
wild, domestic, instructing, funny, beautiful, horrible, and revolting
curios and monstrosities of land, air, and sea."
XXII
SNAPSHOTS IN X-RAY
[Illustration]
What a terrible thing is the X-ray!
Terrible?
Listen. Contemplate the prospect of this invention's being brought into
popular use, so that, say, anybody might have such an attachment to his
kodak. In such case, science, which has been so powerful a force in
refining the civilization of man, would by one stroke lay waste the
whole of her handiwork. Civilized society would collapse.
A German professor at one time went pretty well into the subject of
clothes and the philosophy thereof, and reasoned among other things
that society would instantly dissolve without them. Nothing could more
vividly bear out this gentleman than contemplation of the possibilities
of the Roentgen ray. It is an exciting prospect. A press of the button,
and there would be Herr Teufelsdrockh's "straddling Parliament." But a
thousand times more grotesque: gentlemen stripped not only of the
tailored habiliment of the bodies, the symbols of their gentility, as it
were, but of the fleshly garments of their frame, laying bare their
mortality. And humorously, witheringly, for among the other distinctions
man is said to possess above his brethren the beasts, being the only
animal that laughs, and so forth, it is certainly true that of all
creation he has the funniest skeleton. It would be the end. No candidate
for public office would dare to come forth upon the platform. What stout
lady could give a party?
Unless, indeed, as would probably result, for the preservation of
society the use and carrying of kodaks would be regulated, like the
carrying of revolvers, by statute. To photograph a gentleman or lady on
the street would be a criminal deed carrying a penalty of twenty years'
imprisonment. For though ladies blessed by nature might not, in this
lingerie-less, tube-skirt age, shrink from further perception of their
loveliness, it is doubtful if any man could make love to a woman after
having seen an effigy of her skeleton. To snap the President would be
equivalent, in the eyes of the law, to assassinating him. To take an
X-ray photograph of a fashionable assembly would be, like discharging a
dynamite bomb in the midst, punishable with death.
XXIII
BACHELOR REMINISCENCES
Sometimes my thoughts carry me away from my solitary strife with the
world; back to my boyhood, when all men were not thieves and scoundrels,
as they are now; back to my old home and my family, where we loved one
another and did not, lynx-eyed, watch for a grip upon our neighbors'
throats nor count our every friend as a possibility of our own
advancement, and every favor we did another a business investment.
[Illustration]
In one such mood as this, on an evening, I was pleased, upon answering
the knock at my door, to usher in my neighboring lodger Harrison. In
reminiscence we would renew our youth; and to that purpose I started him
off upon the desired track.
Harrison poses as something of a philosopher, and he began with some of
his customary rot.
"Well," said he, "I have never known a man that talked at all upon the
subject who did not follow a calling which was the most trying of all
those at which men labor in this world, who did not have a most
remarkably hard time in early life, and who did not fondly imagine that
he was a very bad boy in his youth. These, I take it, are the three most
familiar hallucinations in life. I am a victim to them myself. But I
shall not regale you with them to-night. I was thinking of my own
boyhood, the wickedness of it, and the happiness. Ah! boyhood, that is
the happy time; girlhood may be, too--but I doubt it.
"These many years have I been like poor Joe in 'Bleak House,' I must
keep moving along; but when I was a boy I had a home. A strange word it
is to me now. I am reminded of the old vaudeville 'stunt': Any old place
I hang my hat is home, sweet home, to me. I follow a trunk about the
world, and a devil of a globe-trotter of a trunk it is.
"But when I was a boy," continued Harrison, the lines in his face
softened--and he somehow just now looked very like a boy--"I had a home;
there the board was always paid." The lines came back in his face for an
instant, then faded away again. "There in the winter it was always
warm," he said, looking very hard at my small fire. "There we had great
feasting and drinking." I could not but notice how spare he was now.
"There were noise and romping," and the softness of his voice now
emphasized the extreme desertedness of my chambers. "There were brothers
and sisters. Did you ever have a brother?" he asked me rather suddenly.
I replied that I never did.
"Or a sister?" he inquired.
I said "No."
He looked at me with a sort of annoying pity.
"I hope," he said rather irritatedly, "that you had a mother?"
I replied that I had had, but I did not see why we should fight about
it.
"Now, don't lose your temper, old man," said Harrison. "You're such an
incorrigible old dope, you know, such a cynical, confirmed old bachelor
of a bohemian, I mean; so contented with this lonesome, vagabond life,
that I hardly think you ever had a real, happy, wholesome boyhood home.
By the way, did you ever have a boyhood?" he asked with something very
near to a sneer.
[Illustration]
"Now, look here," I said, "if you had such an insufferable home, why
didn't you stay there and make your own family miserable instead of
wandering about the world bemoaning your fate, wishing yourself back
there, and insulting people who are not moved by ties of relationship to
be tolerant with your spleen? And who won't be," I added, rising.
"You're a fool," said Harrison, as he banged the door.
XXIV
A TESTIMONIAL
[Illustration]
For years I was a great sufferer from insomnia. At one time this dread
scourge had so fastened its terrible fangs upon me that I could scarcely
walk. My body became one mass of sleeplessness; I tried many remedies,
but without avail, and my friends had all given me up for dead when by
chance from a mere acquaintance I heard of this great cure which I would
recommend to all who are afflicted as I was.
I remember with horror the tortures I used to endure in agony as I
tossed to and fro on the hot pillow, going over in my fevered mind
interminably the formulas of the so-called reliefs from this peerless
disease. An unconscionable number of times I numbered a round of sheep
over a stile. I counted up to ten, over and over again; and then up to
fifteen, and then twenty, twenty-five, thirty, fifty, only to craze
myself with the thought of the futility of this lunacy. I heard my
dollar watch tick on the dresser, until in madness I arose and placed it
on the restraining pad of a clothes-brush. I heard the clock in the next
room relentlessly tell the passing hours; I heard a neighboring public
clock follow it through the watches of the night. I heard my happy
neighbor snore. I heard the sound of rats near by, and the creaking of
floors, and the voice of the wind. I tried bathing my feet before going
to bed. I tried eating a light lunch. I tried intoxicating liquors. But
always I stared through the blackness of the fearful night until an
eerie color tinged my window, and then the dawn came up like thunder
across the bay.
It was when my spirit had become worn through my body like elbows
through the sleeve of an old coat that I heard the remarkable recipe for
insomnia: Think of the top of your head. That is what I was told to do.
"Think of the top of your head," I said to myself with some disdain in
the awful grip of the night; "now how in thunder do you think of the top
of your head?"
"Do you think of your hair?" I asked, turning my eyeballs upward in
their sockets. "Do you think of that lightly hidden baldness?" striving
to put my mind, so to say, on the top of my head. "How the
Dickens-can-you-think-of----" but a drowsy numbness pained my sense as
though of hemlock I had drunk, or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
one minute past, and Lethewards had sunk. And I dreamed that quite
plainly, as though it were some other fellow's, I saw the top of my
head.
XXV
FRAGRANT WITH PERFUME
Mr. Duff is the tenant of the second floor front. His wife has been
away. Mr. Duff himself may be encountered about in the halls. He is a
large man with a considerable girth and a face that one knows to be
youthful for his age; he cannot be under thirty.
Recently the second floor hall became fragrant with the odor of perfume.
Mrs. Duff, presumably, had returned. Yes, Mrs. Duff was at the
telephone. She calls, "Hello!" very sweetly, in two syllables. Mr.
Duff's first name, it appears, is Walter, pronounced by his doting wife
also in two syllables, "Wal-ter." Mrs. Duff bleats, it seems, in two
syllables. Mr. Duff's middle name evidently is "Hon-ey."
Mrs. Duff said over the telephone that she "had been ba-ad." She said
it, or, so sweetly. She had, she said, taken a little walk and had
stayed "too long" and she had been away when he had called her up. But
she had had the "best little time." She was going to work now, "oh! so
ha-rd." She was going to clean out the bureau drawers and "that little
box," and unpack her trunk and put away her things. No, she would be
careful not to overwork herself. She would see him, Walter Honey Duff,
when he came home from work. "Good-by, little boy," she said.
[Illustration]
Then she called up a creamery. She wanted the creamery to send her,
please, a pint of milk, and the smallest jar it had of cream cheese. How
soon could those be sent, please? Oh-h! not till then? Well, she
supposed she would have to wait.
The second floor hall is fragrant with the odor of perfume.
XXVI
WOULDN'T LOOK AT HIM
[Illustration]
"They say," remarked the portly man with several double chins on the
back of his neck, "that the Duke is over in the Library."
"I wouldn't walk across the street to see him," said a shabby
individual, helping himself to a cracker.
"He's no better than any other man," said the bar-boy.
"I wouldn't look at him if they brought him in to me," announced an
aggressive-looking character.
Now this was a remark rich in pictorial suggestion. It was eloquent
with dramatic evocation. One instantly imagines the striking scene; the
duke is dragged in; the aggressive-looking character is called upon to
look at him; this he refuses to do.
"He breathes the same kind of air we do, don't he?" pointedly inquired
the shabby individual.
"I guess that's right enough, too!" exclaimed the bar-boy.
XXVII
CONNUBIAL FELICITY
I've got a fine wife, too. I tell you, Bob, there's nothin' better can
happen to a feller than to get the right woman. I don't care for battin'
around any more now. Nothin' I like any better than to go home to my
flat at night, take off my shoes and put on my slippers, and listen to
my wife play the piano. My wife is musical, vocal and instrumental. Her
vocal is on a par with her instrumental. I like music. I always said if
ever I got married I'd marry, a wife that was musical. I ain't educated
in music, exactly, but I've an ear. A feller told me,--Doc. Hoff, a
mighty smart man, I'd like you to know him, his talk sometimes it would
take a college professor to understand it,--he says to me, "I'm no
phrenologist but I can see you've got an ear for music."
My wife is an aristocrat. When I married her, Thunder! I had no polish,
that is to speak of. You know that, Bob. My talk was the vernacular. My
wife's an Episcopalian. She asked me if I had any objection to the
Episcopal ceremony for marrying. I said I didn't have no religion;
anything would suit me so long as it was legal. I had fifteen hundred
dollars to the good. I don't know how I come to have it. I oughtn't to
have, by rights. Some of these book makers ought to have had it,
accordin' to the life I led. But I did have it, anyhow. I took three
hundred dollars and got a sweet of drawing room furniture--Louie
fourteenth, or fifteenth, they call it, I forget which. Then I got a
mahogany table, solid parts through, for our dining room, and some what
they call Chippendale chairs. I got a darn good library up there, too.
My wife don't say "and so forth"; she says "and caetera."
XXVIII
A FRIEND, INDEED
He was a sturdy-looking little man, with a square, honest face, and an
upright manner, to put it so. He seemed to be a Swede. His companion had
something the look of Mr. Heep, and he wore a cap.
"Yes, sir, Will," said his companion, "I'd like to see you own that
piece of property. I would. If you owned that piece of property, Will,
then you see you'd have something. You'd have something, Will. Something
you could always call your own, Will."
"Do you think it's good land?" said Will.
"Oh, yes," said his companion; "that's a very fine piece of land, Will.
I know every bit of it. I've worked up there, Will."
"Rocky?" asked Will.
"Oh, no, Will; there's hardly a rock on it."
"How far now does it come down this way?" inquired Will musingly.
"Down the hill, Will?" asked his companion, with great attention.
"Yes," said Will.
"Well, now as to that," said the other, casting his face upward in
thought, "I couldn't just exactly say."
"Down to the oak tree, don't it?" said Will.
"That's right, Will!" exclaimed the other, in delighted recognition of
the fact. "Down to the oak tree, Will. You're right, Will."
"And how far would you say," asked Will thoughtfully, "does it run back
in?"
"Run back in, Will?" said the other as though in surprise. "Well, now
you know, Will," shaking his head in doubt, "it's been some time since I
was up there, Will."
"It goes back as far as the big rock, don't you think?" said Will,
thinking hard.
"Back to the big rock, Will!" cried the other eagerly. "That's right,
Will. You're right! Back to the big rock, Will!"
"What's the name of those people who own the land just this way?" Will
asked, looking hard into his mind.
"Well, now, Will, I can't just bring to mind the name of those people,"
answered the other, looking equally hard, apparently, into his own
mind.
"Smithers, ain't it?" said Will, gropingly.
"Smithers is the name!" ejaculated the other. "You're right, Will!
That's it! Smithers! You're right, Will! Nice people, too, Will!"
"Well, I don't think though that I'll get that land, after all," said
Will, in the manner of a man who has at length arrived at a decision.
"Well, of course, Will," said his companion, nodding his head up and
down, "property is a great care. I don't know that you're not right,
Will. Property's a great care, Will; you're right about that, Will. You
can do better, Will. You're right about that!"
End of Project Gutenberg's Peeps at People, by Robert Cortes Holliday