A MIRROR OF FRIVOLITY
NEITHER HERE
NOR THERE
By
OLIVER HERFORD
_Author of “The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten,” “This Giddy
Globe,” etc._
¶ As a humorous commentator upon morals and manners with
special attention to cats, tutti frutti trees, Bolshevism for
babies and trouser creases. Mr. Herford leaves nothing to
be desired. His book is a mirror of engaging frivolity, an
incisive but good-humored thrust at the follies of the day.
Here and there a very rich and moving note is struck, as in THE
BON DIEU’S BIRTHDAY PARTY where one finds in full flower that
tender fantasy which is the greatest charm of Mr. Herford’s
imagination.
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY _Publishers_ New York
NEITHER HERE NOR THERE
OLIVER HERFORD
_Other Books of_ OLIVER HERFORD
POEMS AND VERSES
ARTFUL ANTICS
THE BASHFUL EARTHQUAKE AND OTHER FABLES AND VERSES
ALPHABET OF CELEBRITIES
OVERHEARD IN A GARDEN
RUBAIYAT OF A PERSIAN KITTEN
THE FAIRY GOD-MOTHER-IN-LAW
KITTEN’S GARDEN OF VERSES
THE LAUGHING WILLOW
THE HERFORD ÆSOP
ANIMAL BOOKS
A CHILD’S PRIMER OF NATURAL HISTORY
MORE ANIMALS
JINGLE JUNGLES
SATIRICAL
THE ASTONISHING TALE OF A PEN AND INK PUPPET
SIMPLE GEOGRAPHY
THE MYTHOLOGICAL ZOO
CONFESSIONS OF A CARICATURIST
THIS GIDDY GLOBE
IN COLLABORATION
_With John Cecil Clay_
HEARTICULTURE
CUPID’S FAIR WEATHER BOOK
CUPID’S ENCYCLOPEDIA
HAPPY DAYS
_With Cleveland Moffett_
THE BISHOP’S PURSE
_With Ethel Watts Mumford_
CYNIC’S CALENDAR
NEITHER HERE
NOR THERE
BY
OLIVER HERFORD
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
[Illustration]
NEITHER HERE NOR THERE. I
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO M. H.
On board S.S. _Carmania_
Lat. 50° N., Long. 30° W.
“NEITHER HERE—NOR THERE”
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE SECRET 9
OUR LEISURE CLASS 13
CONCERNING REVOLVING DOORS 17
BOLSHEVISM FOR BABIES 21
THE TUTTI-FRUTTI TREE 25
THOSE BILL BOARDS 28
THE LURE OF THE “AD” 33
LOOK BEFORE SHE LEAPS 37
THE LOW COST OF CABBING 42
THE GREAT MATCH BOX MYSTERY 45
ARE CATS PEOPLE? 51
MLLE. FAUTEUIL 56
MONEY AND FIREFLIES 60
CONCERNING THE TROUSER-CREASE 63
AN OLD-FASHIONED HEAVEN 68
ANOTHER LOST ART 71
MR. CHESTERTON AND THE SOLILOQUY 74
BUNK 77
THE COST OF A PYRAMID 82
WALTZING MICE AND DANCING MEN 87
THE HOBGOBLIN 92
THE VOICE OF THE PUSSY-WILLOW 96
PERNICIOUS PEACHES 99
SECOND CHILDHOOD’S HAPPY HOUR 105
PITY THE POOR GUEST OF HONOUR 109
A NEW MONROE DOCTRINE 114
DO CATS COME BACK? 117
THE RUTHLESSNESS OF MR. COBB 120
MY LAKE 123
THE HUNDREDTH AMENDMENT 134
SAY IT WITH ASTERISKS 144
NEITHER HERE NOR THERE
[Illustration]
THE SECRET
Eve was bored. She confided the fact to the Serpent.
“Tell me something new!” she wailed, and the Serpent—he had never seen a
lady cry before—was deeply moved (the Serpent has always been misjudged)
and—there being no National Board of Censors—told her everything he knew.
When he had finished, Eve yawned and looked boreder than ever. “Is _that_
all?” she said.
The Dramatic Critic asks the same question on the first night of a new
Play—“Will there never be an end to these Dormitory Farces,” he moans,
pondering darkly the while how he may transmute its leaden dullness to
the precious gold of a scintillating paragraph.
Father Time has nothing to say on the matter. If you ask him to show you
a new thing, he shrugs his wings and growls, “You can search me.” Things
old and things new are all alike to Father Time.
Peradventure, in the uttermost recess of the Great Pyramid lies a hair of
an unknown color, or a blueprint of the fourth dimension, or better still
the ms. of a new play, or a joke that has never been cracked.
When a Roman bath is unearthed in Kent or a milliner’s shop in Pompeii we
wait breathless to hear of the discovery of a new story, or a new dress
pattern, but always it is the same old skull, the same old amphora.
Even the newness of Fashion is a jest of antiquity.
In an Italian book printed in the sixteenth century is a story of a fool
“who went about the streets naked, carrying a piece of cloth upon his
shoulders. He was asked by some one why he did not dress himself, since
he had the materials. ‘Because’ replied he, ‘I wait to see in what manner
the fashions will end. I do not like to use my cloth for a dress which in
a little time will be of no use to me, on account of some new fashion.’”
There may be a newer version of this story in the ashes of the
Alexandrian library or beneath the ruins of Babylon, but this has at
least the freshness and luster of its four-hundred years. Also it throws
a light, a very searchlight, on the translucent demoiselles of today (see
them shyly run to cover at the mere mention of a searchlight.)
Now we know their guilty secret. Each of them has, hoarded away in a
secret drawer (as money in panicky times) a roll of fine silk or voile,
or panne velvet, or crepe de chine which she is sparing from the scissors
till the Wheel of Fashion shall oscillate with less fury. Then she will
put away the skimpy, flimsy makeshift garments of transformed window
curtains and bath towels, converted _robes de nuit_ and remnants of net
or chiffon she has been vainly trying to hide behind—and then—then alas,
we shall see her no more!
[Illustration]
OUR LEISURE CLASS
Once—and not so terribly long ago at that—we used to be very fond of
telling ourselves (and our visitors from Europe) that in America we have
no Leisure Class.
That there were people of leisure in our midst, we could not deny, though
we preferred to call them idle rich, but as for a special class whose
whole business in life was to abstain from all useful activity—oh, no!
Even our idle rich, unblest as they are with the hereditary gift for
idling, and untaught save by a brief generation or two of acquired
experience, find the profession of Leisure a strenuous not to say noisy
task, for while those to the leisure born know by the very feel of it
that the habit of idleness is a perfect fit, the newly-idle must look for
confirmation in the mirror of public admiration; hence Publicity, the
blare of the Sunday Supplement.
But taken as a class our idle rich (though it is being rapidly licked or
lick-spittled into shape) is at best an amateur aristocracy of leisure.
For the real thing, for the genuine hunting, sporting, leisure-loving
American aristocracy, we must go back to the aboriginal Red Man.
And how the busybody Puritan hated the Indian! With his air of well-bred
taciturnity, his love of sport, of rest, of nature, and his belief in
a happy Hereafter, the noble Red Man was in every respect his hateful
opposite, yet if any Pilgrim brother had dared even to hint that the
Indian might have points of superiority it would have been the flaming
woodpile for him, or something equally disagreeable in the purifying way.
How different it might have been!
If only the Puritan had been less stuck up and self-righteous, the Red
Man less reserved! If they could but have understood that Nature intended
them for each other, these opposites, these complements of each other.
Why else had Nature brought them together from the ends of the earth?
But alas, Eugenics had not yet been invented and the Puritan and the
Indian just naturally hated each other at first sight and so (like many
another match-maker) Mother Nature slipped up in her calculations, and a
wonderful flower of racial possibility was forever nipped in the bud.
If the Puritan, with his piety and thrift and domesticity and his
doctrine of election and the Noble Red Man, with his love of paint
and syncopated music and dancing and belief in a happy Hereafter, had
overcome their mutual prejudices and instead of warring with flintlocks
and tomahawks, had pursued each other with engagement rings and marriage
licenses, what a grand and glorious race we might be today!
What a land of freedom might be ours!
[Illustration]
CONCERNING REVOLVING DOORS.
There has been some discussion of late as to the etiquette of the
revolving door. When a man accompanied by a woman is about to be revolved
in it, which should go first? Some think the man should precede the
woman furnishing the motive power, while she follows idly in the next
compartment. Others hold that the rule “Ladies first” can have no
exception, therefore the man must stand aside and let the female of his
species do the rough work of starting the door’s revolution while the
man, coming after, keeps it going and stops it at the right moment.
“Starting something” is perhaps of all pastimes in the world the one most
popular with the sex we are accustomed to call the gentle sex; one might
almost say that “starting something” is Woman’s prerogative; on the other
hand there is nothing on earth so abhorrent to that same gentle sex as
the thing that is called Consistency; and though she may be perfectly
charmed to start a revolution in South America, or in silk pajamas, or
suffrage, or the rearing of children it does not follow that she will
take kindly to the idea of starting the revolution of a revolving door.
As for the rule “Ladies first,” its application to the etiquette of
doors in general (as distinguished from the revolving variety) is purely
a matter of geography. In some European countries it is the custom,
when entering a room, for the man to precede the woman, and if it be a
closed street or office door, the man will open it and following the
door inward, hold the door open while she passes in. If the door opens
outward the woman naturally enters first, since her companion must
remain outside to hold the door open.
The American rule compelling the woman to precede her escort when
entering a room or building doubtless originated with our ancestor the
cave-man.
On returning to his Apartment with his wife after a hunting expedition
Mr. Hairy K. Stoneaxe would say with a persuasive Neolithic smile (and
gentle shove) “After you my dear,” being rewarded for his politeness
by advance information as to whether there were Megatheriums or
Loxolophodons or an ambuscade of jealous rivals lurking in the darkness
of his stone-upholstered sitting-room.
By all means let the lady go first; by so doing we pay the homage
that is due to her sex and even though there are no Megatheriums of
Loxolophodons in these days—there _may_ be burglars! Only in the case of
a door that must be opened inwards would I suggest an amendment. What
more lamentable sight than that of a gentle lady squeezing precariously
through a half-opened door while her escort, determined that though they
both perish in the attempt, she shall go first, reaches awkwardly past
her shoulder in the frantic endeavor to push back the heavy self-closing
door while at the same time contorting the rest of his person into the
smallest possible compass that she may have room to pass without disaster
to her ninety-dollar hat, not to speak of her elbows and shins.
How much happier—and happiness is the mainspring of etiquette—they would
be, this same pair, if (with a possible “allow me” to calm her fears) the
escort should push boldly the door to its widest openness and holding
it thus with one hand behind his back, with the other press his already
removed hat against his heart as the lady grateful and unruffled sweeps
majestically by.
[Illustration]
BOLSHEVISM FOR BABIES
“That babies don’t commit such crimes as forgery is true,
But little sins develop, if you leave them to accrue;
For anything you know, they’ll represent, if you’re alive,
A burglary or murder at the age of thirty-five.”
When W. S. Gilbert wrote these lines, he stated in an amusing way a great
truth, for the doctrine of infant depravity and original sin thus lightly
touched upon is, when stripped of its Calvinistic mummery, a recognized
scientific verity.
I sometimes think that if the “highbrow” mothers who turn to books
by long-haired professors with retreating chins for advice in child
training, should study instead the nonsensical wisdom of Gilbert’s book,
they would derive more benefit therefrom. At least it would do them (and
their children) no harm.
I wish as much as that could be said of a book I have lately come
across entitled “Practical Child Training,” by Ray C. Beery (Parent’s
Association). So far from harmless it is, in my opinion, a more fitting
title for it would be “Bolshevism for Babies.”
Obedience, says the author, “is your corner-stone. Therefore lay it
carefully.” And this is how it is laid: “_While you are teaching the
child the first lessons in correct obedience, do not give any commands
either in the lesson or outside except those which the child will be sure
to obey willingly._”
Obedience is to be taught by wheedling and cajolery, which lessons the
clever child will apply in later life as bribery and corruption. The
author denies this in Book I, p. 130, but his denial is so curious it
deserves quoting: “_You would entirely vitiate its principles if in
giving this lesson you should state it to the child like this: ‘If you
do not do thus and so, I will give you no candy._’” Then on the same
page: “_While the thought of candy in the child’s mind causes him to
obey, yet the lesson is planned in such a way that you are not buying
obedience._”
The “five principles of discipline” are embodied in the following story:
The father of a boy sees him and two other boys throwing apples through
a barn window, two of whose panes had been broken. To make a long story
short, the parent, instead of reproving his offspring, says: “Good shot,
Bob! Do you see that post over there? See if you can hit it two out of
three times.” “It would have been unwise for that father (adds the author
of “Practical Child Training”) to say, ‘I’d rather you’d not throw at
that window opening—can’t you sling at something else?’ The latter remark
would suggest that the window was the best target and the boys would have
been dissatisfied at having to stop throwing at it.”
The inference that the boys only needed the father’s objection to an
act on their part to convince them that it was a desirable act would be
ludicrous if it weren’t so immoral.
If you ask me which disgusts me most, the Father or his sons, I should
reply without a moment’s hesitation—the Author of the book!
[Illustration]
THE TUTTI-FRUTTI TREE
When the author of the most famous Love Song ever written, cried,
“There is no new thing under the sun,” cigarettes, chewing-gum, the
thermos-bottle and the “snapper” for fastening ladies’ frocks—(an
indispensable thing when one has several hundred wives)—were yet to be
invented.
Neither so far as we can learn, had Solomon who knew and could address in
its own language every flower and tree in existence, ever heard of the
Tutti-Frutti Tree.
There is to my certain belief only one tree in existence answering to
that name, and I christened it myself. I am its Godfather.
In the heartmost heart of the fruitful Paradise of New Jersey stands a
small but ancient stone cottage that has come to regard me as its lord,
and on Squire Williams’ estate, whose verdant acres lie just outside my
garden fence, grows the Tutti-Frutti Tree.
Once it was a young Apple Tree. It is still young, but as the result of
a series of sap transfusions it is also several other kinds of tree,
and when it grows up it will bear apples, quinces, two kinds of pears,
peaches and, I believe, plums—almost everything in fact except Water
Melons.
Some day a future Stevenson will immortalize it in verse something after
this fashion,
_The Tutti-Frutti Tree so bright,_
_It gives me fruit with all its might,_
_Apples, peaches, pears and quinces,_
_I’m sure we should all be happy as princes._
It’s quite absurd, of course, but just suppose the Tree of Knowledge in
that First Garden has been a Tutti-Frutti Tree instead of an Apple Tree!
With seven separate kinds of fruit to choose from, all equally forbidden
and, for that reason, equally desirable, how could Eve ever have decided
which one to pluck?
And with Eve’s hesitation Sin would have been lost to the world!
Let us give thanks that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was _not_
a Tutti-Frutti Tree.
[Illustration]
THOSE BILL-BOARDS
Every now and again, generally when the warm weather is upon us, somebody
or other starts a heated discussion about something that is of no
particular interest to anybody.
This time it is Mr. Joseph Pennell, the artist, who wails and gnashes his
pen about the terrible bill-board and advertising pictures that deface
the public buildings and thoroughfares of American cities and the public
scenery of the American countryside.
If my opinion were asked I should be tempted to quote the gentle answer
with which the late William D. Howells was wont to turn away argument,
and say to Mr. Pennell, “I think perhaps you are partly right.”
But since I am not on Mr. Pennell’s list of great American artists, a
list, by the way that contains only two names, I am free to say what
I really think, and that is that if the dear old familiar “Ads” were
suddenly to disappear from the streets and cars, I should miss them very
much.
Perhaps I have acquired a taste for them as the dweller near a street
railroad first endures, then tolerates, and at last becomes so completely
habituated to the roaring of wheels and the clang of metal that he is
unable to sleep without their soothing lullaby.
Soothing—that’s what they are, these advertising pictures. They soften
the underground torment of travel in the Subway, they take the place of
the scenery which beguiles the tedium of ordinary travel, and at least
they are, as a rule, more interesting to contemplate than the people
in the opposite seat. Those people are strangers, the people in the
advertisement panels are, many of them, old friends, friends met in
other cars in other cities. Mr. Pennell no doubt would like to see them
thrown off the train, but I am always glad to meet them again, and to
some of them, with whom I have a sort of informal bowing acquaintance, I
mentally take off my hat.
One amiable gentleman in particular I always look for and hail with
delight when I find myself sitting opposite to him. He is an Italian, I
take it, from his appearance, and from Naples, to judge by his accent,
which, though I have never heard his voice, is depicted as plainly as the
nose on his face.
Neither do I know his name, but I call him Signor Pizzicato, for it is
quite evident that nature intended him for an Operatic career. How he
ever came to be a barber, I cannot imagine. Perhaps he sang in the Barber
of Seville and lost his voice and became a realist, as some painters lose
their sense of form and become cubists or futurists. Whatever he should
have been or might have been or was, a barber is what he is now, and I
gaze upon him in fascination as with a priceless gesture of thumb and
forefinger (as if he should pluck an individual mote from a sunbeam) he
extols to his customer and to you, the bouquet so ravishing of the hair
tonic he holds in his other hand, on the sale of which he presumably
receives a large commission.
Then there is that delightful little Miss clad in airy
next-to-nothings—but no, on second thought I shall not introduce you to
her. I fear she is not to be trusted. The last time I sat opposite to her
in a street-car in Cleveland—(or was it in Buffalo)—she caused me to go
five blocks past my destination which happened to be a railway station,
so that I was two blocks late for my train.
All I will tell you about her, gentle reader, is that she has fringed
gentian eyes with a look in them that says quite plainly nothing would
gratify her more than to play the same trick upon you.
All this chatter, I am aware, has nothing to do with Art, that is to say
the “Art of Painting”; that large, severe-looking female you sometimes
see crouched in an uncomfortable position on a still more uncomfortable
cornice of a public building, wearing a laurel wreath and a granite
peplum, and holding in her hand a huge stone palette.
But sometimes this severe female climbs down from her stone perch and
takes a day off, Coney Island-wise, on the billboards and street cars,
and then if she is not always at her best, she is often very amusing.
And just because a goddess isn’t stuck up it doesn’t prove that she isn’t
a goddess—does it?
[Illustration]
THE LURE OF THE “AD”
Kipling once, when sojourning in a far country, complained bitterly of
the thoughtlessness of his friends at home in sending him a batch of
magazines shorn (to save postage) of all the advertisements. Which shows
that the most grown-up of artists may still have the heart of a child.
For my part, if I were forced to make choice between the advertising
pages and the reading matter (so-called), I should in nine periodicals
out of ten choose the former.
To the grown-up child the advertising section of the magazine takes the
place of the Shop-Window of infancy through which, with bulging eyes and
mouth agape, like some mazed minnow staring at the submerged Rhine-Gold,
he once gazed at the tinsel treasure so bitterly beyond his penny’s reach.
And now, just as far out of reach as ever, in the display-window of the
advertising page, the grown-up child gazes at the miraculous Motor-Car
gliding, velvet shod, through palmy solitudes reflecting the rays of the
setting sun with a splendor out-Solomoning Solomon.
Or the “Home Beautiful,” constructed throughout of selected materials of
distinctive quality, and roofed with spark-proof shingles of the most
refined pastel tints, “_just the home you have dreamed about at a price
that will dumfound you! Enclose this coupon with your order._”
Again it is the magical cabinet that brings into your very lap as it were
the Galli-Curci, the Tetrazzini or any other “ini,” “owski” or “elli”
it may please your fancy to pick from its golden perch in the operatic
aviary.
And what a relief to turn from the magazine pictures of the slick-haired
hero and the slinky heroine of fiction (perpetually _vis-à-vis_
yet always looking past each other)—to turn from these to the very
attractive, intelligent-looking girls of the advertising pages, girls
exquisitely coiffed, gowned and silk-hosed and ever happily employed in
some useful task: this one (in the Paquin “trottoir” of mouse-colored
voile) joyously propelling a vacuum-cleaner, this (in the afternoon
toilette of tricolette) mixing the ingredients for a custard pie in a
forget-me-not-blue Wedgwood bowl, and this, not less lovely than either
of her sisters, polishing a bathtub with some magic powder till it
glistens like a Childs’ restaurant.
Now, any one of these dear girls, on her face alone—not to mention her
graceful carriage and delicately moulded stockings—might without the
least effort in the world have obtained a position as a Star in a Musical
Comedy—with her picture in the _Cosmopolitan_ or _Vanity Fair_ at least
once a fortnight—but she prefers the simple household task, the vacuum
cleaner, the spotless oil-stove, the shining bathtub to the plaudits of
the masses.
And this is only one of the many lessons that are to be learned from the
advertising pages. Who can look at the busy little Dutch lady in the blue
frock and white cap and apron, stick in hand, chasing the Demon Dirt in
street cars, subway and elevated stations, billboards and electric signs,
all over town, all over the continent for that matter—who can look at
the determined back of that fierce little lady (no one has ever seen her
face, save the Demon) without inwardly swearing that wherever Demon Dirt
may show his face, whether it be on the stage, the picture screen or the
printed page of fiction he will do unto him even as doth the Little Dutch
Lady with the big stick—
Or is it a rolling pin?
[Illustration]
LOOK BEFORE SHE LEAPS
The Fourteenth of February in Leap Year is a dread-letter day for the
shrinking bachelor and the shy (wife-shy) grass widower.
The butterfly-winged statue of Femininity that, for three happy leapless
years, he worshiped from a safe distance (at the foot of its pedestal),
has come to life, has climbed down from its vestal perch, changed
fearfully from cool quiet marble to something of the consistency of warm
india rubber—from an adorable image to—the female of the species.
And with all the term implies. The butterfly wings of Psyche, iridescent,
like rainbows reflected on mother-of-pearl, have shrivelled and
blackened into the umbrella-ribbed wings of the vampire and the petalled
lips from which could only be thought to issue the maidenly negative
“yes” or the melting affirmative “no”—are twisted into little scarlet
snakes that hiss, “Kisssss me my fool!”
“Look before she leaps!” is the Leap-Year slogan of the shrinking
Bachelor, and it is a perfectly splendid motto, as mottoes go.
But a motto is like a cure for a cold which is only good to cure a cold
that has not yet been caught, and the shrinking one is already as good as
caught and his perfectly splendid slogan is of no more use than an icebox
to an Esquimaux or a fur coat in Hell.
The Leap-Year Bachelor’s only hope is to feign death. Like the Bear in
Æsop, the Female of the Species Human has no use for any but a “live one.”
If he flees he is lost—(or found, according to whether the speech be
given to the male or the female actor of the scene,)—and if he be a grass
widower, he is made hay while the sun shines.
Now whether Providence intended the instinct of flight for the
preservation of the hunted one or as a stimulus to the hunter, will
never be known. With wolves and tigers it works both ways, but with the
leap-year “Vamp” it works pretty much only one way.
And so the gentle bachelor flees and is caught and is lived upon happily
ever after⸺
* * * * *
To see a statue come to life must be a terrifying spectacle. Ovid’s tale
of Pygmalion and Galatea is only for those who get their ideas about
artists from magazines to the vacuity of whose contents the face of the
girl on the cover may well serve as an index.
I am quite certain that when Pygmalion saw his perfect marble (perfect to
him anyway) turn to imperfect flesh and blood, the completed result of
months of hard work obliterated—undone—as if it had never been—and in its
place “just a girl,” very sweet and lovely and all that—but compared to
his statue—oh no!
And that is looking at it from its brightest “angle” (as the
motion-picture intellectuals say). As a matter of fact, judging from the
agonizing sensation of the human leg (or arm) when rudely awakened from
dreamless slumber, the process of transmutation from senseless stone to
pulsating flesh must be a very painful one indeed. However pleasing the
countenance of the living Galatea might be under normal conditions its
expression of mingled bewilderment, rage and physical anguish must have
been disconcerting, not to say terrifying, to the sensitive soul of the
sculptor, and anything but consoling for the loss of his hard-won and
cherished handiwork.
I can picture Pygmalion fleeing madly from his studio, not even waiting
for the elevator and vowing by all the gods, then administrating human
affairs, never again to make a wish without touching wood or at least
crossing his fingers.
[Illustration]
THE LOW COST OF CABBING
In the last ten years or so all the necessaries and most of the luxuries
of life have more than doubled in cost—all but one—the Cab—or to be more
accurate, the Taxi-cab.
Perhaps it is because a cab is quite as often a necessity as it is a
luxury and so falls between two schools, the Stoic and Epicurean, that it
is an exception to the rule of rising cost.
Did I say rising cost? If I am not very much mistaken the cost of
cabbing, so far from not rising _has actually fallen_ in the last ten
years, and that brings me to my great invention.
It is a scheme for saving money, a Thrift scheme. It is like this—Every
time you take a street-car (what with the dislocated service and the
abolition of transfers) you are paying nearly twice what you used to pay,
and soon you will be paying even more.
On the other hand, a trip that in a hackney cab, fifteen years ago, cost
you a dollar-fifty, today in a taxicab costs you only seventy-five cents.
Now make a swift calculation—
If you take six cars a day you lose thirty cents. A loss of thirty cents
a day doesn’t seem very much, but in a year, it amounts to a loss of
$109.50 which is not to be treated lightly.
Now if you take six Taxis at an average cost of, say two dollars per
trip, you are saving (let me see, six times two) twelve dollars a day
and twelve dollars a day is four thousand three hundred and eighty
dollars a year, which added to the $109.50 you have saved by not riding
in street-cars makes a grand total of $4489.50! And this is only what
you save by taking six cabs a day. If you took twice as many cabs _you
would save twice that amount_, and if you increased your cabbage to one
hundred per diem (a day) your savings for the first year would amount to
$448,950.50—nearly half a million dollars!
Go over my figures carefully with your wife when she returns from
business this evening—It is a live proposition—Think it over!
[Illustration]
THE GREAT MATCH-BOX MYSTERY
PART ONE
I wonder—has any one ever made a psychoanalytical study of the habits of
the Match-box family?
By Match-box family I mean the yellow and black, self-sufficient variety
that arrive from the grocer in packages of a dozen and are at once torn
apart and distributed (like kittens or missionaries) to every point of
the compass.
Each box has its own special territory, and there it should stand, ready
to the last match for any sudden emergency, such as the re-animation of
the just-gone-out pipe, or the finding of the eyeglasses in the dark that
their owner may be able to read the time on his radium-faced wrist-watch,
or a thousand and one things.
There are indeed a thousand and one good and sufficient reasons (apart
from its being its plain duty) why a match-box should always be on the
job, and like the thousand and one cures for rheumatism not one of them
(unless it be a horse-chestnut in the pocket) can be relied upon to work.
I sometimes think “a thousand and one” must be an unlucky number.
The greater the need of its services the less likely is the match-box to
be in that particular place where any number of witnesses will testify
upon oath they had seen it only a moment before.
What is the strikeology of it? Have match-boxes that perverted sense of
humor that finds expression in practical jokes? No, it is nothing like
that. Would that it were! It is something less easy to explain. It is
something sinister—something rather frightening.
* * * * *
I am a devout reader of detective stories and with much study of their
methods have come to regard myself as something of a sleuth, in a purely
theoretic way of course; nevertheless I have always hoped some day to put
my theories to the test, and here was the chance. _I would find out where
the match-boxes go_, I would follow their trail to the bitter end, even
if it led to the door of the White House itself!
* * * * *
First I made a careful blue-print plan of the flat in which I (and
the match-boxes) live, marking plainly in red ink all the doors,
windows, fire-escapes (fire-escapes are most important); dumbwaiters,
closets, trapdoors (there weren’t any but I put them in to make it more
professional); then—but why go into all the thousand and—there’s that
unlucky number again—the thousand and two minute and uninteresting
details? You would only skip them and turn to the last paragraph to end
the horrible suspense and learn at once what I discovered. * * *
PART TWO
_Synopsis of Previous Chapter._ Having observed that
Match-boxes, placed in every room of the house, invariably
disappear in a few hours, the narrator resolves to solve the
mystery even though the trail should lead straight to the White
House in Washington. Accordingly he makes a plan of all the
rooms, closets, etc., and searches every possible hiding-place,
but no trace of the Match-boxes is found.
What can have become of them! I have searched every corner of every
room in the house—Stay! There is one room I have overlooked—the Haunted
Room in the West Corridor, haunted by the ghosts of dead cigarettes,
unfinished poems and murdered ideas. It is my study (or studio, as the
occasion may be). With trembling hand on the porcelain door-knob, I pause
to recall the secret combination.
In vain I rack my brain to remember the secret combination of my study
door. Then suddenly it flashes upon me that long ago I wrote it down in
the address book I carried in my pocket.
There are twelve pockets in the suit I am wearing. Fearfully I go through
the twelve pockets and many are the lost treasures and forgotten-to-mail
letters I find, but no Address Book! Wait! there is still another pocket!
One I never use—THE THIRTEENTH POCKET!
With the deliberation of despair I empty the Thirteenth Pocket of its
contents—a broken cigarette, two amalgamated postage stamps, a device for
cleaning pipe bowls, some box-checks for _The Famous Mrs. Fair_, four
rubber bands, a fragment of an Erie time-table and—the Address Book!
On the last page of the Address Book is the Combination, written in a
pale Greek cipher, but still legible, grasping the porcelain door-knob
firmly between my thumb and four fingers I scan the cipher eagerly.
De-coded, it reads as follows—_Twist knob to the right as far as
possible and push door._
* * * * *
With heart beating like a typewriter I obeyed the directions to the
letter, and to my intense relief the door yielded and in another moment I
was in the room!
And there, scattered over the surface of my desk like surprised
conspirators, feigning ignorance of one another’s presence, were twelve
yellow Match-boxes!
How they mastered the combination of the door and got into the room, I
shall not attempt to explain. I am only an amateur Detective.
All I know is that Match-boxes, though they be scattered to the ends of
the house (or World), always get together in some one place.
Perhaps it is for safety, they get together.
I have always wondered why they are called Safety Matches.
Perhaps that is the reason!
[Illustration]
ARE CATS PEOPLE?
If a fool be sometimes an angel unawares, may not a foolish query be a
momentous question in disguise? For example, the old riddle: “Why is a
hen?” which is thought by many people to be the silliest question ever
asked, is in reality the most profound. It is the riddle of existence.
It has an answer, to be sure, but though all the wisest men and women
in the world _and_ Mr. H. G. Wells have tried to guess it, the riddle
“Why is a hen?” has never been answered and never will be. So, too, the
question: “Are Cats People?” seemingly so trivial, may be, under certain
conditions, a question of vital importance.
Suppose, now, a rich man dies, leaving all his money to his eldest
son, with the proviso that a certain portion of it shall be spent in
the maintenance of his household as it then existed, all its members
to remain under his roof, and receive the same comfort, attention, or
remuneration they had received in his (the testator’s) lifetime. Then
suppose the son, on coming into his money, and being a hater of cats,
made haste to rid himself of a feline pet that had lived in the family
from early kittenhood, and had been an especial favorite of his father’s.
Thereupon, the second son, being a lover of cats and no hater of money,
sues for possession of the estate on the ground that his brother has
failed to carry out the provisions of his father’s will, in refusing to
maintain the household cat.
The decision of the case depends entirely on the social status of the cat.
Shall the cat be considered as a member of the household? What
constitutes a household anyway?
The definition of “Household” in the Standard Dictionary is as follows:
“_A number of persons living under the same roof._”
If cats are people, then the cat in question is a person and a member of
the household, and for failing to maintain her and provide her with the
comfort and attention to which she has been used, the eldest son loses
his inheritance. Having demonstrated that the question “Are Cats People?”
is anything but a trivial one, I now propose a court of inquiry, to
settle once for all and forever, the social status of _felis domesticus_.
And I propose for the office of judge of that court—myself!
In seconding the proposal and appointing myself judge of the court, I
have been careful to follow political precedent by taking no account
whatever of any qualifications I may or may not have for the office.
For witnesses, I summon (from wherever they may be) two great shades,
to wit: King Solomon, the wisest man of his day, and Noah Webster, the
wordiest.
And I say to Mr. Webster, “Mr. Webster, what are the common terms used to
designate a domestic feline whose Christian name chances to be unknown to
the speaker?” and Mr. Webster answers without a moment’s hesitation:
“Cat, puss, pussy and pussy-cat.”
“And what is the grammatical definition of the above terms?”
“They are called nouns.”
“And what, Mr. Webster, is the accepted definition of a noun?”
“A noun is the name of a person, place or thing.”
“Kindly define the word ‘place’.”
“A particular locality.”
“And ‘thing’.”
“An inanimate object.”
“That will do, Mr. Webster.”
So, according to Mr. Noah Webster, the entity for which the noun cat
stands, must, if not a person, be a locality or an inanimate object!
A cat is surely not a locality, and as for being an inanimate object,
her chance of avoiding such a condition is nine times better even than a
king’s.
Then a cat _must_ be a person.
Suppose we consult King Solomon.
In the Book of Proverbs, Chapter XXX, verse 26, Solomon says: “The coneys
are but a feeble folk, yet they make their houses in the rocks.”
A coney is a kind of rabbit; folk, according to Mr. Webster, only another
word for people.
That settles it! If the rabbits are people, cats are people.
Long lives to the cat!
[Illustration]
MLLE. FAUTEUIL
It is harder for a table or chair to behave naturally on the stage than
for a camel to be free and easy in a needle’s eye, or for Mr. Rockefeller
to get into Heaven (or Hell?) with the money.
What can be more pathetic than the spectacle of a helpless young chair or
table or settee starting on a stage career shining with gilt varnish and
high ambition to reflect in art’s mirror the drawing-room manners of the
furniture of real life.
Mlle. Fauteuil (that is her stage name, in private life she is just plain
Sofa) is fresh, charming and of the best manufacture. She appears nightly
in a Broadway theater, yet she has attracted no attention. She has
received no press notices.
Certainly this is from no lack of charm on her part. Her legs are
delightful. In the contemplation of their gilded curves, one scarcely
notices that she has no arms or that her back is slightly curved, and her
upholstery, a brocade of the season before last.
In a hushed papièr-mâché voice the property man told me the story of
Mlle. Fauteuil’s persecution—how, at the first rehearsal with scenery,
she occupied a perfectly proper position between the center table and
the bay window, how the Leading Lady insisted on her being moved as she
obstructed that superior person’s path when, after writing the letter,
she crosses to the window to see if her Husband is in the garden.
Mlle. Fauteuil was then transferred to a station between the table and
the fire-place. This was all right, until the scene between the Husband
and Wife, when the Husband walks back and forth (quickly up stage and
slowly down stage), _between the table and the fire-place_.
This time it was not a case of politely requesting the intervention of
the stage-manager.
* * * * *
Poor mangled Fauteuil! When she was picked up from the orchestra pit
where he had thrown her it was found that two of her rungs were fractured
and her left castor was broken clean off at the ankle.
After half a day in the hospital without either anesthetics, flowers or
press notices, she reappeared on the left side of the stage, between the
center table and the safe. Here she was conspicuous and happy until it
was found that the Erring Son in his voyage from the window to the safe,
was compelled to take a difficult step to one side to avoid the fauteuil.
Bandied from right to left, up stage and down stage, at last Mlle.
Fauteuil landed in her present obscure position, to the right of the
stairway pillar, where, though miserably obscure, she interferes with
nobody’s stage business.
* * * * *
In the interior set as now played there is only one chair with a speaking
part—this is, the Jacobean chair on which the leading man leans when
talking to the ingénue. In the first act, it faces left so that he may
show his favorite profile. In the second act, the chair is reversed
in order that the audience may enjoy his more popular and extensively
photographed left profile.
The moral of this story is that the furniture on the stage must never
appear more intelligent than the actors.
[Illustration]
MONEY AND FIREFLIES
Oh, yes, Money talks. We all know that, and a very noisy talker it is and
very harsh and metallic is its accent. But sometimes money talks in a
whisper, so low that it can hardly be heard.
Then is the time it should be watched, even if spies and dictaphones
must be set upon it. The money whose eloquence, we are told, wished
the shackles of Prohibition on this land of the free, talked with such
a “still small voice” that everybody (except you and me, dear Reader)
mistook it for the voice of conscience.
Speaking of money perhaps you don’t know it, but it is nevertheless true,
that the light given off by one of the many species of Firefly is the
most efficient light known, being produced at about one four-hundredth
part of the cost of the energy which is expended in the candle flame.
That is what William J. Hammer says in his book on Radium, giving as his
authority Professor S. P. Langley and F. W. Very.
And Sir Oliver Lodge says if the secret of the Firefly were known, a
boy turning a crank could furnish sufficient energy to light an entire
electric circuit.
But to the Casual Observer there is only one variety of Firefly.… Like
Wordsworth’s primrose:
The Firefly with fitful glim
Is just a Lightning Bug to him
And it is nothing more.
In reality there are almost as many different kinds of Firefly in the
United States alone as there are varieties of the great American Pickle.
The late Professor Hagen of Harvard College, it is said, when enjoying
the beauties of Nature one night in the company of the Casual Observer,
was aroused from an apparent reverie by the question “Have you noticed
the Fireflies, Professor?”
“Yes,” replied Professor Hagen, “I have already counted thirteen distinct
species.”
Another quite different story is told of a well-known English
actress—Cecilia Loftus, if you insist on knowing her name. It was her
first visit to America and Miss Loftus was sitting with another Casual
Observer on the piazza of a country house whose grounds were separated
from the road by a belt of trees.
“Do you see the Fireflies?” said the Casual Observer, pointing toward the
road.
“Fireflies!” exclaimed Cecilia, “why, I thought they were hansom-cab
lights!”
[Illustration]
CONCERNING THE TROUSER-CREASE
It may perchance be questioned how long Britannia shall continue to rule
the waves, but that she will ever cease to rule the fashions (the male
fashions, I mean) is beyond the dreams of the boldest tailor or the
maddest hatter.
Nevertheless, every rule has its exception and the Rule of Fashion is no
exception to the rule that rules that every rule has its exception.
Every once in a while, since the invention of trousers, one or another
English King has ruled that the human trouser-crease shall crown the
Eastern and Western slope instead of the Northern and Southern exposure
of the trouser-leg.
The law has never been considered by Parliament, for even the most
radical House of Commons would balk at legislation so subversive of
individual freedom, but by word of mouth, by courier, by post, by cable,
by wireless, by airplane the edict has passed through all the nations and
all the tribes to the trousermost ends of the earth.
And with what result?
With no result whatever. As far as it has been possible to push inquiry,
it is safe to say that no trouserian biped bearing the mark of a lateral
crease has been met with in any quarter of the Globe, or, for that
matter, ever will be.
Strange, is it not, that the Tailors (proverbially the most complacent,
not to say timid, of men) should, without any plan or program or fuss
or demonstration of any sort, unite as one man—or rather one tailor—and
refuse to obey the unlimited monarch of the male fashions of the
civilized world. What is the explanation?
There are two explanations. One is Commercialism.
There is no profit to be made out of a change in the geography of a
trouser-crease. It is purely a matter of self-determination on the part
of the inhabitant of the trousers.
If there were no more financial profit to be gained by the remaking of
the creases in the map of Europe than is to be got out of changing the
trouser-crease, there would be no call for a League of Nations.
Should some inventive tailor (_inventive tailor!_) devise a crease that
could be woven into the very being of the Trouser, then it would be a
very different matter. The slightest variation in the location of the
crease would cause an upheaval in the (I’m tired of the word Trouser)—in
the “Pant” market that would mean millions of dollars to the trade.
As it is there is no money in it.
The other explanation is that the story of King Edward or King George
creasing the Royal Pants in any but the usual place is made out of whole
cloth.
But let us suppose for a moment (just for the fun of the thing) that in
some possible scheme or caprice of creation there _were_ such a thing as
an inventive tailor.
And the inventive tailor invented a permanent trouser-crease and planted
it on the Eastern and Western frontiers of the trouser-legs.
What would be the probable effect of the innovation on the
trouser-bearing species of the human race?
In that process of advancing alternate trouser-legs we call locomotion do
we not consciously, or unconsciously, follow in the direction indicated
by the point of the crease?
What then would happen if the crease were transferred from the front to
the sides?
The Crab alone of all living creatures exhibits in its legs a formation
that corresponds to the human trouser-crease.
This ridge-like formation or crease occurs in the _side_ of the Crab’s
legs, not in the front as in the human species!
And the slogan of the Crab (as everyone knows) is, “First make sure
you’re right _and then go sideways_.”
Shall we too go sideways?
* * * * *
Charlie Chaplin is the only human creature whose feet go East and West
as his face travels North and his trouser-creases are so complicated it
would be difficult to classify them.
Perhaps they hold the secret of his centrifugal orientation, his
inexplicable fascination.
Who knows!
[Illustration]
AN OLD-FASHIONED HEAVEN
We have to thank an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. G. Vale Owen, for
the latest description of the Future Life of our species. Impelled by
a “gentle, steady but accumulative force” this good man became the
unwilling amanuensis of the spirit of his mother and “other friends” and
has written a description of the houses, trees, bridges, gardens and
people of the other world and their occupations that could scarcely be
improved upon by the most imaginative motion-picture photographer, or
mechanic or scrub-woman or whoever it may be that writes the scenarios.
We of this world are still, after many thousand years of waiting, eager
for the faintest ray of light that may be thrown on the actual conditions
of what we call “the world to come,” or as the Spiritists love to say,
“behind the veil,” but for the tawdry imaginings of the Reverend Mr.
Owen the “Veil” serves only as an opaque screen upon whose surface
they flicker grotesquely like the disorderly apparitions of a cinema
projection.
As a Seer this reverend gentleman, without for a moment questioning his
sincerity, is a failure; his narrative, is childish in its crudity and
tedious as a dream told at the breakfast table.
One thing, however, is interesting, and that is to trace as we do,
through the transcendental claptrap of “rainbow brides” and white-winged
angels and the pseudo-scientific jargon of “planes,” “vibrations,”
“spheres,” and “fourth dimension,” the—shall I say humanizing—influence
of the cinema.