LINCOLN B. SWEZEY was a high-toned and inquiring American citizen, who
came over to study our Institootions. He carried letters to almost
everybody; Dukes, Radicals, Authors, eminent British Prize-fighters,
Music-hall buffoons, and he prosecuted his examination steadily. He
did not say much, and he never was seen to laugh, but he kept a
note-book, and he seemed to contemplate in his own mind, The Ideal
American, and to try to live up to that standard. When he did speak,
it was in the interrogative, and he pastured his intellect on our
high-class Magazines.
LINCOLN B. discovered many things, and noted them down for his work on
_Social Dry Rot in Europe_, but one matter puzzled him. He read in
papers or reviews, and he vaguely heard talk of a secret institution,
the Society of Souls. They were going to run a newspaper; they were
_not_ going to run a newspaper. There was a poem in connection with
them, which mystified LINCOLN B. SWEZEY not a little; he "allowed it
was darned personal," but further than that his light did not
penetrate. He went to a little Club, of which he was a temporary
member; it was not fashionable, and did not seem to want to be, and
SWEZEY thought it flippant. There he asked, "What _are_ the Souls,
anyhow?" "_Societas omnium animarum_," somebody answered, and SWEZEY
exclaimed "Say!" "They are a congregation of ladies. Their statutes
decree that they are to be _bene natæ, bene vestitæ_, and
_mediocriter_,--I don't remember what."
SWEZEY perceived that he was being trifled with, and turned the
conversation to the superior culture and scholarship of American
politicians, with some thoughts on canvas-backed ducks.
He next applied to a lady, whom he regarded as at once fashionable and
well-informed, and asked her, "Who the Souls were, anyhow?"
"Oh, a horrid, stuck-up set of people," said this Pythoness. "They
have passwords, and wear a silver gridiron."
"Why on earth do they do that?" asked SWEZEY.
"No doubt for some improper, or blasphemous reason. Don't be a
Soul--you had better be a Skate. I am a Skate. We wear a silver skate,
don't you see" (and she showed him a model of an Acme Skate in
silver), "with the motto, _Celer et Audax_--'Fast and Forward.'"
SWEZEY expressed his pride at being admitted to these mysteries--but
still pursued his inquiries.
"What do the Souls _do_?"
"All sorts of horrid things. They have a rule that no Soul is ever to
speak to anybody who is not a Soul, in society, you know. And they
have a rule that no Soul is ever to marry a Soul."
"Exogamy!" said SWEZEY, and began to puzzle out the probable results
and causes of this curious prohibition.
"I don't know what you mean," said the lady, "and I don't know why you
are so curious about them. They all read the same books at the same
time, and they sacrifice wild asses at the altar of the Hyperborean
Apollo, IBSEN, you know."
These particulars were calculated to excite SWEZEY in the highest
degree. He wrote a letter on the subject to the _Chanticleer_, a
newspaper in Troy, Ill., of which he was a correspondent, and it was
copied, with zinco-type illustrations, into all the journals of the
habitable globe, and came back to England like the fabled boomerang.
Meanwhile SWEZEY was cruising about, in town and country, looking
out for persons wearing silver gridirons. He never found any, and the
more he inquired, the more puzzled he became. He was informed that a
treatise on the subject existed, but neither at the British Museum,
nor at any of the newspaper offices, could he obtain an example of
this rare work, which people asserted that they had seen and read.
Finally SWEZEY made the acquaintance of a lady who was rumoured darkly
to be learned in the matter. To her he poured forth expressions of his
consuming desire to be initiated, and to sacrifice at the shrine.
"There is not any shrine," said his acquaintance.
[Illustration: "Then what in the universe is it all about?"]
"Well, I guess I want bad to be a Soul--an honorary one, of course--a
temporary member."
"There are conditions," said the Priestess.
"If there's a subscription"----SWEZEY began.
"There is not any subscription."
"If there's an oath"----
"There is not any oath."
"Well what are the conditions, anyhow?"
"Are you extremely beautiful?"
Among the faults of SWEZEY, personal vanity was not reckoned. He shook
his head sadly, at the same time intimating that he guessed no one
would turn round in Broadway to look at the prettiest Englishwoman
alive.
Afterwards, he reflected that this was hardly the right thing to have
said.
"Are you extremely diverting?"
SWEZEY admitted that gaiety was not his forte. Still, he pined for
information.
"What does the Society _do_?" he asked.
"There is not any Society."
"Then why do they call themselves Souls?"
"But they don't call themselves anything whatever."
"Then why are they called Souls?"
"Because they----but no! That is the Mystery which cannot be divulged
to the profane."
"Then what in the universe is it all about?" asked SWEZEY; but this
was a problem to which no answer was vouchsafed.
SWEZEY is still going around, and still asking questions. But he has
moments of despondency, in which he is inclined to allow that the poor
islanders possess, after all, something akin to that boasted
inheritance of his native land, the Great American Joke. "Guess
they've played it on me," is the burden of his most secret
meditations.
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