and announce to an astonished London that it is Art that imitates Nature;
nevertheless, Nature _does_ imitate Art.
Is it possible that there is method in all this magazine madness? Is it
possible that these magazines being devoted (among other devotions) to
ladies’ attire, fear that too great an improvement in the female of
our species would divert her thoughts from the imbecilities of dress to
higher—and less profitable—things?
Allah forbid!
[Illustration]
SECOND CHILDHOOD’S HAPPY HOUR
I sometimes ask myself (when there is no one else to pester) whether
the present tendency toward Primitivism, in Art, Religion, Government,
Conduct and Costume (everything in fact) may not be a sign that the world
is coming, if not already come, to its second childhood, and I invariably
answer myself in the affirmative.
Second Childhood, as of course you know, is the “happy hour” of an old
age whose faculties have diminished to the exact degree that marks the
undeveloped mental and physical attributes of infancy.
Take any baby—not your own, dear reader, yours is an exception I know,
but any common ordinary baby—and I think when you have examined it you
will agree with me that, judged by ultra-modern standards of culture, it
is the most decadent being on earth.
To begin with, the baby’s sociological viewpoint is a mixture of
passionate pessimism and pure unmitigated Anarchism.
Its musical output is a hysterical cacophony with all the exasperating
disregard of consonance and key characteristic of the up-to-date
composition.
Its Plastic and Graphic Art (achieved through the accident of
the inverted Porridge bowl or the overturned inkwell) is the
Post-Impressionism of Matisse and Picasso, whose law is the Law of
Moses—“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of
any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or
that is in the water under the earth.”
The Literary Message of the baby is a combination of the styles of
Gertrude Stein, Carl Sandberg and an unassisted Ouija board and is only
to be interpreted through the medium of maternal intuition.
And as for the Art Sartorial, are not the fashions feminine venturing
each successive season a little nearer to that of the newborn babe?
“Well,” says I to myself, “supposing we admit that Modern Culture and
Infancy are identical in expression, and that the World is entering upon
its second childhood; what does it mean⸺ Is it the end of all things or
only a fresh start?”
There you have me! I reply. There are some questions that even I cannot
answer. I give it up.
If, as Dr. Einstein asserts, our planet has been receiving crooked
light-rays all this time, it is a very serious matter and there is no
knowing _what_ may come of it; certainly the Cosmic Light Company ought
to be investigated. But don’t be down-hearted, dear Reader, some day the
Einstein Amendment to the Law of Gravitation may be repealed, and made
retroactive into the bargain; it is all a matter of Relativity and it may
turn out that the Relativity-shoe is on the other foot and that it is the
Earth’s orbit that is on the blink and not the light rays at all.
Perhaps Mr. G. B. Shaw will enlighten us—as a projector of crooked
light-rays, he ought to know something about it.
[Illustration]
PITY THE POOR GUEST OF HONOR
Once when marooned on a small island in the midst of a turbulent sea of
traffic, latitude Fifth Avenue, longitude Forty-second Street, I asked
the governor of the island, a man of great stature and kingly mien, what
he thought was the origin of the institution known as the Complimentary
Banquet. Checking with an imperious gesture a monstrous traffic wave that
seemed like to engulf us both the next moment, his voice came to me calm
and reassuring above the tumult that surged and roared about us. “If it’s
a wake you do be meaning, sorr, sure it’s as old as Ireland itself, it
is!”
And the Traffic Cop was right.
Nearly two thousand years ago Strabo, the Greek geographer, describing
the natives of Ivernia, wrote: “They are more savage than the English,
and enormous eaters, deeming it commendable to devour their deceased
relatives.”
In this, probably the first reference in literature to the Irish wake,
the suggestion that the departed one contributed anything more than the
honor of his company must be taken with a grain of salt. Strabo was an
awful liar, and whole barrels of salt might be used on his “Geography”
without perceptibly affecting its flavor. In all probability the cannibal
touch was nothing more than an unseemly concession to the yellow taste of
the Attic metropolis.
Nevertheless, though he never appeared on the menu, the “departed
relative,” the _sine qua non_ of all festive gatherings, was (as the
social instinct developed among the savage tribes) ever in increasing
demand, and it is to be feared that in smart Ivernian circles it was not
unusual to speed the departing relative in promoting the gaiety of an
otherwise dull season.
Under such conditions it is hardly to be wondered at that in Ivernia, at
that period, personal popularity was the most unpopular thing imaginable,
and what more thinkable than that the reluctant candidate for a
complimentary dinner should feign for the occasion the grewsome condition
necessary for qualification.
With the spread of Christianity, this irksome feat of mimicry on the part
of the Guest of Honor, at first a protective subterfuge, grew to be a
social convention. And irksome indeed it was.
To feign at a banquet by the exercise of self-control a state of
unconsciousness, joyfully achieved by one’s fellow guests through more
convivial channels, was no task for the amateur. Then it was that, puffed
up, comatose, obese, along came the Professional Diner Out. And now,
after nearly two thousand years, what have we to show?
Could the savage rite, described by Strabo, depressing as it must
have been, by any possibility be as gloomy as the Testimonial Banquet
of today? Is the Guest of Honor, sitting at the High Table feigning
unconsciousness, the miserable target for asphyxiating bombs of wit,
of anecdote, and of reminiscence—is he any less to be pitied than
the deceased relative of the Ivernian dinner? Yet we call ourselves
civilized; we think it barbaric to hang a fellow being for anything short
of murder. Why have we not equal consideration for the innocent Guest of
Honor? Why do we not dine him in effigy?
Few of us have forgotten the outrage of 1912 when William Dean Howells
was dragged from his comfortable fireside by Col. Harvey, then the editor
of Harper’s Magazine, who deaf to his cries and entreaties, dined, wined
and flashlighted in the presence of a frenzied mob armed to the teeth
with knives, and forks and spoons.
How much more humane to have dined Mr. Howells in effigy! A waxen image
simulating as far as possible the kindly features of the Great Novelist,
sitting in the place of honor, bowing, even smiling by means of some
ingenious mechanism! This, with a phonograph record of the graceful
speech of acknowledgment, and the ravening public would have gone home
happy and none the wiser. Thus with the dawn of a new era of Humanity,
one more chapter of the ponderous book of martyrs would be closed
forever.
[Illustration]
A NEW MONROE DOCTRINE
When Old Doctor Monroe discovered and patented his famous
anti-monarchical specific, warranted to prevent the spread of Effete
Despotism, Imperialitis and Throne Trouble, why didn’t he invent some
equally Reliable Nostrum to check the epidemic of Old World names that
was spreading like a blight of infantile paralysis among the thousands of
husky young cities then springing up all over the United States? Rome,
Syracuse, Troy, Thebes, Memphis, Ithaca, and a host of others, names dark
and ill ominous to chubby young cities with no evil traditions to live
down to, staining their bright banners with bloody blots and black bars
of sinister tradition where should only be the golden stars and crimson
bars of freedom.
Indian names such as Oshkosh and Kankakee were to be had ready-made for
the asking; but they were few and for the most part too grotesque and
Asiatic sounding for the liking of a serious-minded young republic just
starting out in the city-raising business.
But it is no easy task to find new names for cities, above all names that
are euphonious, and the last place one would expect to find them is the
Medical Dictionary. The names of diseases? And why should that deter us?
If a Rose by any other name will smell as sweet, surely a Rose with any
other smell will at least look and sound as pretty. Good Doctor Watts (or
was it Mr. Wesley?)[2] when adapting tunes for his new hymn-book answered
his critics by exclaiming, “Why should the devil have all the best
tunes!”
Why, indeed! And by the same token, why should the Diseases have all the
prettiest sounding names?
Try one on your city and see if you don’t like it.
Has not Dyspepsia, Maine, an austere dignity about it that no old-world
city name could possibly confer?
Neurasthenia, Kansas, on the other hand, brings up visions of shady
sidewalks, pleasant gardens, and glimpses through slender trees, of a
sun-kissed river. If your doctor should prescribe for you mountain air
and outdoor exercise would you not instantly buy a ticket to Colic,
Vermont? What more catchy name than Measles, Illinois, or Diphtheria,
Wisconsin? Stripped of medical association there is scarcely a name in
all the _materia medica_ that is wholly lacking in euphonistic charm.
Why not bring the matter before a Special Session of Congress? Anything
is better than Persepolis and Pekin—even Tonsilitis, Missouri.
[2] It was Martin Luther.
[Illustration]
DO CATS COME BACK?
Certain it is that Cats are disappearing; that is to say the common
friendly Tabbies and Tommies of the town we used to see doing their
morning marketing in the ash cans, or with whom we were wont to pass the
time of day in the neighboring door-yards.
In the last week I have seen only two street cats and only one to speak
to, and that one was a stray orphan kitten who had been adopted by a
kind-hearted bookbinder; the other when I would have accosted her gave me
one strange look and vanished.
I glanced hurriedly down at my shoes as my hands flew instinctively to
my necktie and hat, but the foot-gear were mates (of long standing) and
the hat and tie were each in its proper place; nothing was there about my
attire to shock the sensibilities of the most fastidious feline!
What did it mean? No cat had ever treated me with such discourtesy
before. Then it was that I bethought me of how few of the feline
brotherhood or sisterhood I had seen abroad of late.
Have they been carried off by an epidemic? Do cats catch influenza? or
catalepsy? Has the scrap-market been affected by the high cost of living?
Has the percentage of nutriment in the garbage can diminished to the
vanishing point? Have the mice struck for shorter hours?
As I pondered thus at the corner of a lowly street, there tripped past my
line of vision a fur coat whose opulence and sheen made its background of
untidy brick and stone seem doubly dull and dingy. The motive power of
this unlikely pelt was (as far as could be seen) lisle thread and oxford
ties but I made no further note of the girl; my mind was fixed on the
coat—it was the third of its kind I had observed in as many minutes in
that mean street.
A shiver ran through me; I had seen a ghost, a procession of ghosts. It
was as if a ouija board had suddenly screamed miaou!
And they say cats come back.
[Illustration]
THE RUTHLESSNESS OF MR. COBB
One by one the idols of tradition go by the board. William Tell’s
Apple and Paul Revere’s Ride were long ago cast into the trash-basket
of Fiction; even Joan of Arc has been received into the mythology of
Sainthood, and now that hero of our happy childhood, Casablanca, the boy
who stood on the burning deck, is about to be snatched from us by that
reckless iconoclast, Mr. Irvin Cobb.
Like the ruthless Woodman in the poem, Mr. Cobb has struck his axe into
the very roots of this revered tree of our childish belief⸺
According to Cobb, the Casabianca-tree is only a nut tree and a
horsechestnut tree at that. Writing in the _Saturday Evening Post_,
he tells us that Casabianca was nothing more than a “feeble-minded
leatherhead.” If that be so then Barbara Frietchie was a leatherhead,
and Edith Cavell, and all the host of those who gave up or were ready to
give up their lives for that purely imaginary thing, an ideal, and what
_could_ the blessed Evangelist have been thinking of when he wrote “_He
that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal._”
John 12:25.
Exactly two thousand years ago when the city of Pompeii was destroyed
by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, a Roman sentinel, another idol of
tradition just such a leatherhead as Casablanca, refused to desert his
post and was burned to death for the very foolish reason that he was “on
duty.” He is there to this day, standing “at attention,” in the shape of
a cast made from the matrix of molten lava that enveloped his living
body and you may call him a leatherhead if you like, but the memory of
his leatherheadedness will endure when sensible people like you, dear
reader, and me and Mr. Cobb are forgotten.
* * * * *
Nevertheless there are two sides to every question, and it is quite
possible that Casabianca may have been a perfectly sensible lad, whose
only thought was to disobey his captain and desert his post, but the tar
melting from the heat in the seams of the deck, and adhering to his feet
caused him to stick to the ship. Be that as it may, _I_ shall stick to
Casabianca!
[Illustration]
MY LAKE
Mr. Finchsifter has compared my Lake to a gleaming sapphire reposing on a
corsage of emerald green plush.
I have never seen Mr. Finchsifter’s wife—I do not even know that
Finchsifter is married, but since the emerald plush bosom of his poetic
fancy, stands for miles and miles of heaving Pines and fluttering Laurels
and Finchsifter stands barely four feet six in his stockings, by all the
laws of natural selection the human embodiment of his Brobdingnagian
simile, must be either Mrs. Finchsifter or some not impossible Eve of a
Finchsifter dream Paradise. A colossal counterpart (I picture her), of
the waxen Demi-Goddess in the Finchsifter show window displaying with
revolving impartiality on a faultless neck and bosom the glittering
treasures of India, Africa, Peru, Mexico and Maiden Lane.
To be strictly truthful, I do not know that Mr. Finchsifter’s show window
can boast such a waxen deity as I have described; indeed for all I know
he possesses neither a show window nor the merchandise to advertise
in such a window, but I have as the saying is, a “hunch” that Mr.
Finchsifter’s imagery as applied to my Lake is based on something more
than a mere academic interest in the adornment, textile or lapidarious of
the human form.
And my Lake—in the first place it is not my Lake (but of that later),
neither does it resemble a sapphire any more than the Pines and Laurels
on its bank (save that when agitated they heave or flutter) resemble a
green plush corsage.
If I were asked for an image, I should compare my Lake to an
India-rubber band rather than to a sapphire. In form an elongated
ellipse, it possesses an elasticity of circumference that is little short
of miraculous.
The boastful pedestrian, glowing from his early morning trot around its
shore will tell you it is a good ten miles.
The persistent swain, scheming to lure his Heart’s Desire, high heeled
and reluctant, to the amorous shades of “Lover’s Landing,” tells her,
upon his honor, that it is not more than a mile all the way round. To be
precise, the distance round my Lake is something between a stroll and a
“constitutional”—or to put it relatively about what the circumambulation
of an ocean liner’s deck would be to an athletic inch worm.
As I said before, my Lake is not my Lake. It is nobody’s Lake. Not a
human habitation profanes its bosky shores. The only beings that make
even a pretense of ownership are five starch-white swans that patrol
it from morning till night, turning fitfully this way and that and
probing its depths and shallows with their yellow bills as if seeking
for the missing Deed of title. On certain days when the diamond Lake
is still, and the Pine and Laurel corsage is untroubled by a tremor,
the starch-white company is doubled by five ghostly “understudies” who
reflect their whiteness curve for curve and feather for feather with a
fidelity of inversion that may find its match only in the art of a Shaw
or a Chesterton.
It was on such a day as this that I met Mr. Finchsifter. I had completed
the circuit of the Lake and leaving the wooded path that skirts its
shore ascended through the woods to the level ground above, where on the
further side of a well kept automobile road rises the lofty iron grille
that engirdles for miles the country seat of Barabbas Wolfe, the Sausage
King, typifying at once, by the safe deposit-like thickness of its bars
and the view-inviting openness of its scrollwork, the innate love of
show, tempered by newly acquired exclusiveness of a lord not to the
manor born.
Gazing, in beady eyed appraisal at the neat but somewhat constricted
Italian garden to which the railing at this point invited the eye—stood
Finchsifter.
In this crowded jungle of spotless stone Lions, tomblike seats and
arches backed by California privet and immature cypresses there was an
irreverent suggestion of the Villa D’Este done into American slang.
He turned hearing my step, “Where is it I have seen it—before?”
“In the movies perhaps”—I ventured.
“That’s it! Thank you very much!” he exclaimed. “I knew I had seen it
somewhere!”
After ascertaining my name in reluctant payment for the unsolicited
tender of his own he continued, “but the Lions show better in the
‘pictures’ don’t they? Why didn’t they get them with moss already.”
“With moss?” I queried.
“Sure!” said Finchsifter. “Didn’t you know such a stone Lion comes also
with the moss, the same as the genuine old antique furniture comes with
the real hand-made worm-holes!”
I remembered guiltily how on the occasion of my last visit to Lake towers
when asked by Mrs. Barabbas Wolfe, what I thought of her marble Lions, I
had exclaimed with truthful enthusiasm “Wonderful! But my dear lady _how_
do you keep them so clean?”
We walked on together, and though avoiding as we did so the physical
proximity of my Lake we could not exclude it wholly from our conversation.
It was a passing glitter of the water caught through the pines below us
at a turn in the road that inspired the Diamond-plush simile from which
try as I may, I shall never be able to dissociate the image of my Lake.
Greatly to my surprise I found myself becoming interested in Finchsifter,
and during the luncheon which followed our return to my Bungalow and
the dinner that evening at his hotel, we laid what promised to be the
foundation of a lasting friendship.
To be sure he was a man of many words, but the words of Finchsifter were
well trained words, old family servants that knew their places and never
presumed, or took liberties with the listener.
If a reply or comment were imperative—an adjective caught at random gave
instant clue to what had gone before—even as a single toe joint restores
to the naturalist the forgotten form of the Iohippus.
Finchsifter was a mental rest cure, his talk was soothing as a verbal
brain massage. I conceived that one might form the Finchsifter habit,
in time even become a slave to it as men become slaves to cocaine,
Psychoanalysis, or Taxicabs.
But this was not to be.
As a would-be suicide has been turned from his purpose by the chill of
the water into which he has plunged—so it was by Finchsifter himself
that I was cured of the Finchsifter habit.
It was on the occasion of our second meeting, appointed at the suggestion
of Finchsifter that we take our matutinal walk around the Lake in each
others company.
He greeted me with a delighted smile, exclaiming as he took my hand in
both of his very new saffron gloves.
“I have a great idea found—!—You are a poet? yes? Then you know all about
this Free Verse which I read always about in the magazines? Perhaps you
can yourself make it? Yes?” His face fairly shone with the inner flame of
his project.
I found myself harkening against my will. What possible interest could
Finchsifter have in verse of any kind—let alone free verse. “This will
never do,” I reflected. “If he compels me to listen—then we shall cease
to be friends—I came here to rest. I might as well take the first train
back to New York!” Finchsifter was still talking. Eyeing me keenly as if
mentally debating my trustworthiness—he continued: “If it is sure enough
Free, then it don’t cost nothing.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, recalled abruptly from my own
thoughts.
“Free verse!” cried Finchsifter. “That’s my scheme!—but don’t you tell
it—It is between only ourselves—fifty-fifty—we split everything—_we_
create the demand—we corner the supply, you and me together corner all
the free verse in the United States—in this world for that matter and
sell it for—” Again he hesitated—“If I might ask it—about what does a
Poet get for such a little piece of poetry? The kind that is not free. A
piece so long I mean.”—He measured a sonnet’s width of air between his
thumb and fore-finger—“what do you get for that much?” I told him what
the magazines pay me.
“What! A dollar a line! Gott in Himmel! we make a fortune! That’s what
I tell Rebecca—If we corner all the free verse in the United States
and sell it for no more as five cents a line—we make our fortune! but
a dollar a line!—Himmel!”—he fairly danced for ecstasy and then it
was I made the discovery, by which I lost if not a Fortune at least a
Finchsifter.
I stood still as the tide of words with its flotsam of tossing gestures,
continued—I heard nothing. I only waited for Finchsifter to subside.
“Am I right!” He gasped at length with what by every law of supply and
demand should have been his latest breath.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about”—I replied angrily. “All I know
is we’re walking the wrong way.”
“What do you mean the wrong way?” said Finchsifter.
“The wrong way round the Lake that’s what I mean!”
* * * * *
I don’t know how long we stood there arguing the question, I only know
that his mind was inaccessible to reason, persuasion—even bribery, for,
as a last resort, I offered to give him a list of all the best free
verse writers in America if he would only listen to reason—nothing would
move him—Finchsifter had always walked round the lake from right to left
and always would—and what I said about his rubbing its precious plush
corsage the wrong way of the nap was all rot.
I turned on my heel and left him. Half an hour later when we met at
Lover’s Landing which is exactly half way round the Lake we passed
without speaking.
And now I must wait each day until Finchsifter has taken his walk from
right to left round my Lake, taking my walk (from left to right) in the
chill of the evening to pacify the tutelary Goddess by smoothing back her
green plush corsage, which has been rubbed the wrong way by Finchsifter.
[Illustration]
THE HUNDREDTH AMENDMENT
After the passage of the Ninety-eighth Amendment making it a misdemeanor
to “_manufacture, sell, own, possess, purchase, nurse, dandle or
otherwise caress or display that effigy of the infant form commonly
known as a Doll_” … the abolition of that feathered symbol of vicarious
maternity, the Stork, followed as a matter of course.
The passage of the Anti-Stork Bill or, to be more accurate, the
Ninety-ninth Amendment, thanks to the tenacity and tact of President
John Quincy Epstein, was the most expeditious piece of legislation put
through by the hundred and fifth Congress.
It must not be forgotten, however, that the introduction of lectures on
obstetrics into the curriculum of the kindergartens had done much to
educate the child vote and that at the time the fate of the Stork was
hanging in the balance, that once esteemed Bird of Prurient Evasion was
already becoming unpopular and well on its way to join the Dodo.