Mansions—Bathtubs! With hot and cold water, and Dr. Owen does not stop at
bathtubs; he assures us there are also—don’t faint—_water nymphs_! Can’t
you see all Israel clamoring for the picture rights!
Imagine the angelic shade of St. Anthony or Mr. Spurgeon coming
unexpectedly upon a school of water nymphs!
And how is this for a motion-picture “fade out”?
“_As we knelt the whole summit of the hill seemed to become
transparent—we saw right through it and a part of the regions below was
brought out with distinctness. The scene we saw was a dry and barren
plain in semi-darkness and standing, leaning against a rock, was a man of
large stature._”
I strongly suspect that the Reverend Mr. Vale Owen is, like myself (to my
shame confess it), a motion-picture fan!
[Illustration]
ANOTHER LOST ART
These are mournful days for the Polite Arts. One by one they are passing
away—the Art of Conversation, the Art of Paying Calls, the Art of Letter
Writing.
The Art of Conversation is no longer even a subject for conversation. No
one so much as remembers of what it died. Did it languish and fade away
into an Eternal Pause as such a dignified gentleman of the old school as
the Art of Conversation would be expected to do—or was it murdered?
The mystery surrounding the death of the Art of Conversation has never
been properly cleared up. Some think it died of heart failure induced
by the killing modern pace. Others say it starved to death. Others
again, that it was done to death by the chewing-gum trust. For my part,
I believe the Art of Conversation talked itself to death. It died of
obesity—it grew and grew and grew until, when all the world talked there
was nobody left to listen. Then it burst.
No such mystery hangs about the death of the Art of Paying Calls. Here it
was a case of plain every-day murder—and what is more, the murderer still
lives. Millions of electric volts are pumped into him every day, but he
still lives—the more electricity we give him the livelier he grows. He is
the Telephone, and the Telephone is the murderer of the Art of Calling.
Poor old Art of Calling! We shake our heads and murmur perfunctory
regrets—“good old chap,” and all that sort of thing, but really in our
heart of hearts, let me whisper it very low—we don’t really miss him very
much; to tell the truth, we are rather, that is to say, _quite_ glad he
is dead. If anyone of us had had the courage of his conviction he would
have killed him long ago. To speak plainly, the Art of Calling was a
pestiferous tyrant—and he only got what he deserved.
[Illustration]
MR. CHESTERTON AND THE SOLILOQUY
“I often talk to myself,” says Mr. G. K. Chesterton, speaking in defense
of the stage soliloquy. “If a man does not talk to himself it is because
he is not worth talking to.”
The deduction is obvious, but it is based upon false premises. If Mr.
Chesterton is worth talking to, it is certainly not because he talks to
himself. It is impossible to imagine a more foolish waste of energy than
that expended in talking to one’s self. The man who talks to himself is
twice damned (as a fool). First, for wasting speech on an auditor who
knows in advance every word he will utter. Second, for listening to a
speaker whose every word he can foretell before it is uttered.
Mr. Chesterton’s argument, failing as it does to prove that he is worth
talking to, is still less happy as a defense of the stage soliloquy.
A character in a play talks to himself not, as Mr. Chesterton would have
us believe, because he is worth talking to, but to enlighten the audience
on points which the inexpert playwright has otherwise failed to make
plain.
The stage soliloquy is only permissible as an indication of the character
of one who talks to himself in real life. For instance, if I wished to
dramatize G. K. Chesterton, since he often talks to himself, I should
have him soliloquize upon the stage. I might make it a double part
with two Mr. Chestertons dressed as the two Dromios. As a stage device
the soliloquy is only a confession of weakness on the part of the
playwright, and has been justly sentenced to death.
Its only hope for a reprieve is to retain (at great expense) an
ex-president or an eminent K. C. who might argue that since the “fourth
wall” of a stage interior is removed in order that the audience may view
the actions of the players, it is therefore permissible to remove the
“fourth wall” of the players’ heads so that the audience may view the
action of their brains.
And the ex-president or the eminent K. C. would probably “get away with
it.”
[Illustration]
BUNK
When Alexander the Great cut with his sword the Gordian Knot, which had
baffled all his efforts to untie with honest fingers, it goes without
saying that his impudent performance received the applause of the
onlookers.
As he stood there, his heavy sword still swaying from the impetus of the
stroke and exclaimed with a challenging glare at those before him (and
belike an apprehensive glance over his shoulder), “Did I or did I not
untie that knot?”—whatever might—nay, must have been the unspoken comment
that passed from eye to eye, the answer shouted in unison, was without a
shadow of a doubt the Phrygian equivalent of “You sure did!”
For the Great God Bunk (whose worshipers are born at the rate of one
a minute) is as old as the world itself; and since we have it on good
authority that the world is a stage, even though we do not suspect him
of a hand in its making, we know the old rogue assisted at the first
dress rehearsal famous for all time for the smallness of the cast and the
inexpensiveness of the costuming.
King Gordius, whose genius contrived the unpickable knot, is now
comfortably forgotten, while Alexander who destroyed what he could not
understand, still enjoys uneasy immortality; for what is immortality at
best but the suspended sentence of Oblivion?
And the knot? The hempen hieroglyph that was never solved. When oblivion
has overtaken Alexander and even the name of Gordius is forgotten, the
world, which is surprisingly young for its age, will still babble
wonderingly of the knot that never was and never will be untied.
Another high priest of the Great God Bunk was Christopher Columbus, and
on how frail a foundation rests his immortal fame—nothing more than the
fragile, calcareous container, (and fractured at that) of an unborn
domestic fowl.
Unquestionably the fame of Columbus rests upon his impudent pretense
of balancing an egg by crushing it violently upon the table. To be
sure, Columbus also discovered America, but in that he was only one of
a multitude. At that moment in the world’s history the discovering of
America was, like golf, something between a sport and an obsession,
everybody was discovering America. So common was it, that only a few
of the discoverers are remembered by name, and had it not been for his
famous egg-balancing fraud the name of Christopher Columbus would surely
be among the forgotten ones.
To balance an egg on its apex—though not impossible, is a tedious and
dispiriting task; and even if Columbus had accomplished it honestly
without fracturing the shell, so far from adding to his laurels he might
have lost them altogether. Queen Isabella would never have had the
patience to sit through so long and boresome a performance, and when the
Queen leaves, you know the performance is over.
Indeed, it is quite thinkable that it was the dread of just such an
ending to his audience and the resultant stage fright reacting upon an
excitable sea-faring nature that caused Columbus to break the egg.
The question now asks itself: Has Christopher Columbus, posing as a
clever impostor when in reality only a stage-frightened bungler, obtained
his fame under false pretenses? In unmasking his clandestine honesty do
we but prove him the greater fraud? Bunk only knows!
Queen Dido of Carthage, on the other hand, came by her dishonesty quite
honestly—she inherited it from her royal father’s sister Jezebel.
Yes, Jezebel, the patron sinner of half a world of womankind, was Queen
Dido’s aunt. Good or bad, what was her Aunt Jezebel’s was also Dido’s by
right of inheritance. And none of all the prophets of the Great God Bunk
was greater than this prophetess.
Did she not for certain moneys receive the title to so much land as might
be compassed by the bigness of a bull’s hide.
She did.
Did she not then carve said bull’s hide into fine strips and therewith
enclose enough real estate for the foundation of the city of Carthage?
She did.
[Illustration]
THE COST OF A PYRAMID
If you were suddenly asked, by way of a mental test, what particular
thing or person was most closely associated in your mind with the word
_strong_, you would probably say a giant or an ox unless you had been
listening to a sermon whose text was the sixteenth chapter of Judges,
thirtieth verse, in which case you would be more likely to say Samson,
but the typical example of physical strength, would hardly be an Onion.
And yet the Onion, although, like the proverbial Prophet, it may be
without honor among its fellow vegetables, is regarded by at least one
human outsider as the giant and ox and Samson combined of the vegetable
world.
Whatever your gastronomic leanings may be, let you not be tempted to
think lightly of the Onion.
Though its name be unhallowed when it appears in vulgar consort with
Tripe, and its reek abhorrent in the habitations of the lowly, though it
be viewed with contempt as a poor relation by its kinsman the lily, the
Onion has a glorious past; it has a record of achievement that is second
to none; it was, as I shall presently show, chiefly due to the strength
of Onions that at least one of the great Egyptian Pyramids owed its
existence. Even Samson might envy the record of the Onion!
* * * * *
When I tell you that the Pyramids of Egypt, at any rate one of them, was
built by sheer vegetable strength, you may not believe me, but perhaps
you may believe the historian Herodotus.
Herodotus found engraved on one of the Pyramids a complete record of the
exact number of onions, radishes and leeks supplied and consumed by the
workmen who piled its monstrous stones one upon the other.[1]
And how were the Pyramids erected? By some forgotten mechanical farce? No.
According to the late Cope Whitehouse, Engineer and Egyptologist, the
Pyramids were built from the apex downward over the conical hills that
abound in the locality, the interior of the hill being afterwards dug
away to form chambers and galleries. All of which was accomplished by the
unaided physical power of human muscles and sinews.
And whence came this power?
It was derived mainly from the vegetable energy of Onions, leeks and
radishes transmuted by the chemistry of digestion and assimilation to the
muscles and sinews of the slaves employed in building the Pyramid.
Furthermore, Herodotus tells us that with the engraved record of the
onions, leeks and radishes consumed by the slaves, was also the
computation of their cost which amounted to 1,600 talents of silver,
this being the total cost of the vegetable fuel for operating the human
machinery employed in the construction of the Pyramid.
And now let me ask you—what it is, this thing we call Scent, this
mysterious emanation which is the Love Message of the Rose, the Call of
the Sea, the Strength of the Onion?
You don’t know? Neither do I, no more does anybody.
Of all the five recording faculties which we human creatures share
with other animals, the sense of Smell is the most elusive, the most
penetrating. It apprises us of impending peril when all our other wires
of sensation are “busy” or “out of order” and incapable of giving us
warning. It has the mysterious power of reproducing through the “flash
back” we call memory the forgotten records of all of the other four
sense-films, and yet the scientists who can tell us all about light waves
and sound waves, and even make pictures of them, have very little to
say about the movement of the invisible bodies whose impact upon our
consciousness produces the sensation of smell.
The terrific scent-energy hurled forth from the seemingly inexhaustible
storage battery of an Onion or a Tuberose is more of a mystery to our
men of science than is the composition of the crooked light waves from
the planet Mars or the height of the flames of the Corona, measured in a
solar eclipse.
Even Dr. Einstein, to whom the movements of the heavenly bodies are as
simple as is a game of baseball to the average intellect, cannot tell us
whether the scent-atoms hurled from the Onion rush forth in an impeccable
tangent or are pitched in a hyperbolic curve.
[1] _Herod._: 11, 125.
[Illustration]
WALTZING MICE AND DANCING MEN
“On some men the Gods bestow Fortitude,
On others a disposition for Dancing.”
Thus the poet Hesiod, three thousand years ago, scored with vitriolic
antithesis the Dancing man of his day⸺
And of all the days, for like the poor (and no less deplorable) the
Dancing man is always with us.
The gods had much to answer for in the days of Hesiod, and man had much
to put up with. Anything, good or evil, that befell him, from the measles
to melancholia—from fortitude to dancing—was a gift of the gods, wished
on him as a token of their high esteem, or otherwise. All man had to do
was to accept the gift, and, if it chanced to be boils, as in the case of
Job, he might be thankful it was nothing worse.
Today we view a gift of the gods with distrust. Before giving thanks we
inspect it in the light of Science. We examine it (as a gift horse) in
the mouth. If it is a good gift, such as patience, or an aptitude for
cooking, we nurture and encourage it; if it is an undesirable gift, like
the measles, we eradicate it, or give it to someone else as quickly as
possible.
Without knowing it, Hesiod uttered a scientific truth.
That Fortitude and a Disposition to Dance are gifts of the gods is just
as true physiologically as it is poetically speaking.
The Dancing man dances, the man of Fortitude faces a cannon—or a musical
comedy—because he is built that way. In other words, his behavior is due
to certain pathological structural conditions which are inherited.
The behavior of the man of Fortitude is due to the poverty of cerebral
tissue in that part of the brain whose function it is to stimulate the
activity known as imagination. That is to say, he faces the cannon
without the least concern, because he can not imagine what it will be
like to have a cannon explode right in his face.
What then are the pathological conditions in the brain of the Dancing
man that cause him to dance? Unfortunately for the cause of Science, the
brain of the true Dancing man is almost as rare a commodity as Radium.
In the United States alone there is scarcely more than a fraction of an
ounce of this elusive gray tissue. To procure even the minute quantity
necessary for experimental purposes would require the sacrifice of
thousands of Dancing men. This in these days of Antivivisection Hysteria,
is out of the question.
Luckily for Science, there exists in the animal Kingdom another creature
afflicted with the same peculiar tendency to perpetual rotation as the
Dancing man.
It is but one alliterative step from the Dancing man to the Dancing mouse.
The restlessness and almost incessant movement in circles and the
peculiar excitability of the Dancing mouse is attributed by Rawitz,
the famous physiologist, to the _lack of certain senses which compels
the animal to strive through varied movements to use to the greatest
advantage those senses which it does possess_.
Comparative physiologists have discovered that the ability of animals
to regulate the position of the body with respect to external objects
is dependent in a large measure upon the groups of sense organs which
collectively are called the ear.
To quote Rawitz again:
_The waltzing mouse has only one normal canal and that is the anterior
vertical. The horizontal and posterior vertical canals are crippled and
frequently they are grown together._
Panse, on the other hand, expresses his belief that there are unusual
structural conditions in the brain, perhaps in the cerebellum, to which
are due the dance movements.
When the doctors disagree what are we going to do about it?
For my part I am willing to leave it to Cicero—
“_Nemo fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit._”
[Illustration]
THE HOBGOBLIN
There is a Hobgoblin that stalks in the path of the athletic young
writers of the day and frightens them almost out of their wits.
The Hobgoblin is the third person singular, past tense, of the verb
“Say,” and his name is SAID.
The Hobgoblin SAID does not stalk alone; with him stalk his sisters and
his cousins and his aunts, indeed, all the SAID family except old Gran’ma
QUOTH. Old Gran’ma QUOTH, who is much too old to stalk, stays at home and
dreams of the good old days when she was a verb of fashion, honored and
courted by all the greatest writers of the day.
And when her grandchildren come home in the evening and tell how they
frightened the athletic young writers almost out of their wits, she
nearly bursts her old-fashioned stays, laughing at the drollery of it.
“Egad!” she cries. “An’ I were an hundred years younger, I’d like nought
better than to take a hand myself, and lay my stick about their backs,
the young whippersnappers!”
And I for one, would like to see her do it.
How the SAID family ever became professional Hobgoblins, I can not say.
All I know is that, once a hardworking and highly respected family,
suddenly they found themselves shunned. There was nothing left for them
but to become HOBGOBLINS. Now their only pleasure in life is to see what
funny antics they can make the athletic young writers perform in trying
to escape from them.
And funny they certainly are.
Here are a few specimens from some of our leading “best sellers”:
“To think I have fallen to that!” _grated_ Gilstar with clenched teeth.
“I get rather a good price,” Gilstar _dared_.
“I’ll give you twenty-five dollars,” he _offered_ wildly.
“What are your terms?” he _clucked_.
But why bother about “best sellers,” when you can make almost as funny
ones at home? Here is a home-brewed one:
“Where are you going to, my pretty maid?”
“I’m going to the Doctor’s, to ask his aid,
I caught a cold when I slept in the loft,”
“Sir,” she coughed,
“Sir,” she coughed,
“I’m going to the Doctor’s sir,” she coughed.
“May I go with you, my pretty maid?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, if you’re not afraid
Of catching my cold, I shall be pleased,”
“Sir,” she sneezed,
“Sir,” she sneezed,
“Oh, yes, if you please, kind sir,” she sneezed.
“Of catching your cold I have no fear,
For I’ll take no chances, my pretty dear!”
At this the maiden was sorely ruffled,
“Sir?” she snuffled,
“Sir?” she snuffled,
“What do you mean, kind sir,” she snuffled.
“I mean I won’t kiss you, my pretty maid!”
“Nobody asked you, my smart young Blade!”
In her pocket-handkerchief, large and new,
“Sir!” she blew,
“Sir!” she blew,
“Nobody asked you, sir!” she blew.
[Illustration]
THE VOICE OF THE PUSSY-WILLOW
On the first of May I took a day off and used the telephone. It is best
to take a day off if you want to get a number these times, and the
number asked for was Spring one, nine, two, two—yes, Spring, Nineteen
Twenty-Two. “There’s no such number,” said Central; “what you want is
Winter 1921.” I assured her that was the last number in the world I
desired, and after a wait of an hour or so she gave me Blizzard 1888 on
a busy wire, comparing notes with Winter 1920, and I began to despair of
ever getting my number.
I rang off and waited. I am a patient person, I waited a whole hour to
allow the wire to cool off. Then I called again and this time I was
rewarded by hearing at the other end of the wire a faint far-off, fuzzy,
mewing sound.
It was the voice of the Pussy-Willow!
It was Lawrence Sterne, wasn’t it? who wrote, “God tempers the wind to
the shorn lamb,” and it is quite a happy thought that the gentle airs
that succeed the blustering winds of March, are a Providential concession
to the tender nurslings of the April fields.
But the Pussy-Willow comes in February and early March and it would
be asking too much to expect Providence to temper the wholesome and
necessary rigors of these months for the sake of the venturesome kittens
of the Willow bough.
Who but Providence (or Mr. Hoover) could ever have thought of the happy
expedient of providing each and every Pussy-Willow, not only in the
United States but also in England, France, Belgium and even Germany, with
a warm fur overcoat!
And I verily believe that if the Pussy-Willows were lodged on the cold
wet ground instead of perched on the high and dry branches, Providence
(or Mr. Hoover) would have seen to it that in addition to fur coats they
were provided with galoshes.
[Illustration]
PERNICIOUS PEACHES
The Pernicious Peaches whereof we speak are never out of season. They
may be seen almost any month of the year on the covers of magazines,
devoted to the moral and social uplift of young girls in general, and the
American young girl in particular.
The February magazine peach crop is usually most abundant—All through the
merry month of Saint Valentine they hang on the news-stands, singly or
in clusters, and Peaches they are to be sure—Peaches in the stupidest,
cheapest, slangiest nonsense of the word.
There they hang to quote the redundant Dr. Roget, F. R. S.—“_simpering,
smirking, sniggling, giggling, ogling, tittering, prinking, preening,
flaunting, flirting, mincing, coquetting, frivoling, attitudinizing,
self-conscious artificial, smug, namby-pamby, sentimental, unnatural,
stagy, shallow, weak, wanting, soft, sappy, spoony, fatuous, idiotic,
imbecile, driveling, blatant, babbling, vacant, foolish, silly,
senseless, addle-pated, giddy, childish, chuckle-headed, puerile_,” and,
what is above all else inexcusable in a peach—mushy.
And these (in journals that set the fashions moral, mental, social and
sartorial) for our young American sister at the most impressionable age
of her life—the age when, whatever may be her dormant possibilities,
she is by her nature irresistibly impelled to pattern herself after
the favorite girl of her class in school, or the favorite actress on
the stage—to copy her coiffure, her dress, her deportment, even the
expression of her face.
And how, you ask, can a young girl be harmed by imitating what, however
vacuous or silly, is after all only an expression?
The answer is, that just as a persistent bend of thought modifies and in
time fixes the expression of the face, so a habitual expression (or lack
of expression) of face influences the bend of thought and, in time, fixes
the character.
If you don’t believe this, dear girl, stand before your looking-glass and
smirk at yourself as hard as you can, until you look (as much as it is
possible for a human girl to look) like a magazine-cover Peach. Then try
to hold the “Peach” look while you recite:
_The stars of midnight shall be dear_
_To her; and she shall lean her ear_
_In many a secret place_
_Where rivulets dance their wayward round_
_And beauty born of murmuring sound_
_Shall pass into her face._
You see it’s impossible! You can’t do it, any more than you can stroke
your head up and down at the same time as you stroke your chest
sideways. Your mouth has come out of curl—the foolish light has gone out
of your eyes. Perhaps (if you really feel what you were reciting) you
look just the least bit solemn. If so, try to hold the solemn look while
you recite the following by a popular song writer:
_Call me pet names dearest—_
_Call me a bird_
_That flies to my breast_
_At one cherishing word,_
_That folds its wild wings there_
_Ne’er dreaming of flight,_
_That tenderly sings there in loving delight._
_Oh my sad heart keeps pining_
_For one fond word,_
_Call me pet names dearest,_
_Call me a bird!_
By the time you have finished, your solemn reflection in the glass
will have changed to something almost as idiotic as the “peach” on the
magazine cover.
Without question, the vulgar standards of expression these simpering
sirens are setting for the impressionable young girl of today will
degrade her just as surely as the wholesome, high-bred type of womanhood
evolved by Charles Dana Gibson improved and developed all that was best
in her sister of twenty years ago.
* * * * *
The theory that nature imitates art is much older than Oscar Wilde,
who (owing to the carelessness of Mr. Whistler) is supposed to have
originated it.