At a little before midnight on the next night, two motors
filled with muffled human beings might have been perceived,
or seen, moving noiselessly from Riverside Drive to the
steamer wharf where lay the Gloritania.
A night of intense darkness enveloped the Hudson. Outside
the inside of the dockside a dense fog wrapped the Statue
of Liberty. Beside the steamer customs officers and
deportation officials moved silently to and fro in long
black cloaks, carrying little deportation lanterns in
their hands.
To these Mr. Overgold presented in silence his deportation
certificates, granting his party permission to leave the
United States under the imbecility clause of the Interstate
Commerce Act.
No objection was raised.
A few moments later the huge steamer was slipping away
in the darkness.
On its deck a little group of people, standing beside a
pile of first-class cabin luggage, directed a last sad
look through their heavy black disguise at the rapidly
vanishing shore which they could not see.
De Vere, who stood in the midst of them, clasping their
hands, thus stood and gazed his last at America.
"Spoof!" he said.
(We admit that this final panorama, weird in its midnight
mystery, and filling the mind of the reader with a sense
of something like awe, is only appended to Spoof in order
to coax him to read our forthcoming sequel, Spiff!)
II.--The Reading Public. A Book Store Study
"Wish to look about the store? Oh, oh, by all means,
sir," he said. Then as he rubbed his hands together in
an urbane fashion he directed a piercing glance at me
through his spectacles.
"You'll find some things that might interest you," he
said, "in the back of the store on the left. We have
there a series of reprints--Universal Knowledge from
Aristotle to Arthur Balfour--at seventeen cents. Or
perhaps you might like to look over the Pantheon of Dead
Authors at ten cents. Mr. Sparrow," he called, "just show
this gentleman our classical reprints--the ten-cent
series."
With that he waved his hand to an assistant and dismissed
me from his thought.
In other words, he had divined me in a moment. There was
no use in my having bought a sage-green fedora in Broadway,
and a sporting tie done up crosswise with spots as big
as nickels. These little adornments can never hide the
soul within. I was a professor, and he knew it, or at
least, as part of his business, he could divine it on
the instant.
The sales manager of the biggest book store for ten blocks
cannot be deceived in a customer. And he knew, of course,
that, as a professor, I was no good. I had come to the
store, as all professors go to book stores, just as a
wasp comes to an open jar of marmalade. He knew that I
would hang around for two hours, get in everybody's way,
and finally buy a cheap reprint of the Dialogues of Plato,
or the Prose Works of John Milton, or Locke on the Human
Understanding, or some trash of that sort.
As for real taste in literature--the ability to appreciate
at its worth a dollar-fifty novel of last month, in a
spring jacket with a tango frontispiece--I hadn't got it
and he knew it.
He despised me, of course. But it is a maxim of the book
business that a professor standing up in a corner buried
in a book looks well in a store. The real customers like
it.
So it was that even so up-to-date a manager as Mr. Sellyer
tolerated my presence in a back corner of his store: and
so it was that I had an opportunity of noting something
of his methods with his real customers--methods so
successful, I may say, that he is rightly looked upon by
all the publishing business as one of the mainstays of
literature in America.
I had no intention of standing in the place and listening
as a spy. In fact, to tell the truth, I had become
immediately interested in a new translation of the Moral
Discourses of Epictetus. The book was very neatly printed,
quite well bound and was offered at eighteen cents; so
that for the moment I was strongly tempted to buy it,
though it seemed best to take a dip into it first.
I had hardly read more than the first three chapters when
my attention was diverted by a conversation going on in
the front of the store.
"You're quite sure it's his LATEST?" a fashionably dressed
lady was saying to Mr. Sellyer.
"Oh, yes, Mrs. Rasselyer," answered the manager. "I assure
you this is his very latest. In fact, they only came in
yesterday."
As he spoke, he indicated with his hand a huge pile of
books, gayly jacketed in white and blue. I could make
out the title in big gilt lettering--GOLDEN DREAMS.
"Oh, yes," repeated Mr. Sellyer. "This is Mr. Slush's
latest book. It's having a wonderful sale."
"That's all right, then," said the lady. "You see, one
sometimes gets taken in so: I came in here last week and
took two that seemed very nice, and I never noticed till
I got home that they were both old books, published, I
think, six months ago."
"Oh, dear me, Mrs. Rasselyer," said the manager in an
apologetic tone, "I'm extremely sorry. Pray let us send
for them and exchange them for you."
"Oh, it does not matter," said the lady; "of course I
didn't read them. I gave them to my maid. She probably
wouldn't know the difference, anyway."
"I suppose not," said Mr. Sellyer, with a condescending
smile. "But of course, madam," he went on, falling into
the easy chat of the fashionable bookman, "such mistakes
are bound to happen sometimes. We had a very painful case
only yesterday. One of our oldest customers came in in
a great hurry to buy books to take on the steamer, and
before we realised what he had done--selecting the books
I suppose merely by the titles, as some gentlemen are
apt to do--he had taken two of last year's books. We
wired at once to the steamer, but I'm afraid it's too
late."
"But now, this book," said the lady, idly turning over
the leaves, "is it good? What is it about?"
"It's an extremely POWERFUL thing," said Mr. Sellyer,
"in fact, MASTERLY. The critics are saying that it's
perhaps THE most powerful book of the season. It has a--"
and here Mr. Sellyer paused, and somehow his manner
reminded me of my own when I am explaining to a university
class something that I don't know myself--"It has
a--a--POWER, so to speak--a very exceptional power; in
fact, one may say without exaggeration it is the most
POWERFUL book of the month. Indeed," he added, getting
on to easier ground, "it's having a perfectly wonderful
sale."
"You seem to have a great many of them," said the lady.
"Oh, we have to," answered the manager. "There's a
regular rush on the book. Indeed, you know it's a book
that is bound to make a sensation. In fact, in certain
quarters, they are saying that it's a book that ought
not to--" And here Mr. Sellyer's voice became so low and
ingratiating that I couldn't hear the rest of the sentence.
"Oh, really!" said Mrs. Rasselyer. "Well, I think I'll
take it then. One ought to see what these talked-of things
are about, anyway."
She had already begun to button her gloves, and to readjust
her feather boa with which she had been knocking the
Easter cards off the counter. Then she suddenly remembered
something.
"Oh, I was forgetting," she said. "Will you send something
to the house for Mr. Rasselyer at the same time? He's
going down to Virginia for the vacation. You know the
kind of thing he likes, do you not?"
"Oh, perfectly, madam," said the manager. "Mr. Rasselyer
generally reads works of--er--I think he buys mostly
books on--er--"
"Oh, travel and that sort of thing," said the lady.
"Precisely. I think we have here," and he pointed to the
counter on the left, "what Mr. Rasselyer wants."
He indicated a row of handsome books--"Seven Weeks in
the Sahara, seven dollars; Six Months in a Waggon,
six-fifty net; Afternoons in an Oxcart, two volumes,
four-thirty, with twenty off."
"I think he has read those," said Mrs. Rasselyer. "At
least there are a good many at home that seem like that."
"Oh, very possibly--but here, now, Among the Cannibals
of Corfu--yes, that I think he has had--Among the--that,
too, I think--but this I am certain he would like, just
in this morning--Among the Monkeys of New Guinea--ten
dollars, net."
And with this Mr. Sellyer laid his hand on a pile of new
books, apparently as numerous as the huge pile of Golden
Dreams.
"Among the Monkeys," he repeated, almost caressingly.
"It seems rather expensive," said the lady.
"Oh, very much so--a most expensive book," the manager
repeated in a tone of enthusiasm. "You see, Mrs. Rasselyer,
it's the illustrations, actual photographs"--he ran the
leaves over in his fingers--"of actual monkeys, taken
with the camera--and the paper, you notice--in fact,
madam, the book costs, the mere manufacture of it, nine
dollars and ninety cents--of course we make no profit
on it. But it's a book we like to handle."
Everybody likes to be taken into the details of technical
business; and of course everybody likes to know that a
bookseller is losing money. These, I realised, were two
axioms in the methods of Mr. Sellyer.
So very naturally Mrs. Rasselyer bought Among the Monkeys,
and in another moment Mr. Sellyer was directing a clerk
to write down an address on Fifth Avenue, and was bowing
deeply as he showed the lady out of the door.
As he turned back to his counter his manner seemed much
changed.
"That Monkey book," I heard him murmur to his assistant,
"is going to be a pretty stiff proposition."
But he had no time for further speculation.
Another lady entered.
This time even to an eye less trained than Mr. Sellyer's,
the deep, expensive mourning and the pensive face proclaimed
the sentimental widow.
"Something new in fiction," repeated the manager, "yes,
madam--here's a charming thing--Golden Dreams"--he hung
lovingly on the words--"a very sweet story, singularly
sweet; in fact, madam, the critics are saying it is the
sweetest thing that Mr. Slush has done."
"Is it good?" said the lady. I began to realise that all
customers asked this.
"A charming book," said the manager. "It's a love
story--very simple and sweet, yet wonderfully charming.
Indeed, the reviews say it's the most charming book of
the month. My wife was reading it aloud only last night.
She could hardly read for tears."
"I suppose it's quite a safe book, is it?" asked the
widow. "I want it for my little daughter."
"Oh, quite safe," said Mr. Sellyer, with an almost parental
tone, "in fact, written quite in the old style, like the
dear old books of the past--quite like"--here Mr. Sellyer
paused with a certain slight haze of doubt visible in
his eye--"like Dickens and Fielding and Sterne and so
on. We sell a great many to the clergy, madam."
The lady bought Golden Dreams, received it wrapped up in
green enamelled paper, and passed out.
"Have you any good light reading for vacation time?"
called out the next customer in a loud, breezy voice--he
had the air of a stock broker starting on a holiday.
"Yes," said Mr. Sellyer, and his face almost broke into
a laugh as he answered, "here's an excellent thing--Golden
Dreams--quite the most humorous book of the season--simply
screaming--my wife was reading it aloud only yesterday.
She could hardly read for laughing."
"What's the price, one dollar? One-fifty. All right,
wrap it up." There was a clink of money on the counter,
and the customer was gone. I began to see exactly where
professors and college people who want copies of Epictetus
at 18 cents and sections of World Reprints of Literature
at 12 cents a section come in, in the book trade.
"Yes, Judge!" said the manager to the next customer, a
huge, dignified personage in a wide-awake hat, "sea
stories? Certainly. Excellent reading, no doubt, when
the brain is overcharged as yours must be. Here is the
very latest--Among the Monkeys of New Guinea, ten dollars,
reduced to four-fifty. The manufacture alone costs
six-eighty. We're selling it out. Thank you, Judge. Send
it? Yes. Good morning."
After that the customers came and went in a string. I
noticed that though the store was filled with books--ten
thousand of them, at a guess--Mr. Sellyer was apparently
only selling two. Every woman who entered went away with
Golden Dreams: every man was given a copy of the Monkeys
of New Guinea. To one lady Golden Dreams was sold as
exactly the reading for a holiday, to another as the very
book to read AFTER a holiday; another bought it as a book
for a rainy day, and a fourth as the right sort of reading
for a fine day. The Monkeys was sold as a sea story, a
land story, a story of the jungle, and a story of the
mountains, and it was put at a price corresponding to
Mr. Sellyer's estimate of the purchaser.
At last after a busy two hours, the store grew empty for
a moment.
"Wilfred," said Mr. Sellyer, turning to his chief assistant,
"I am going out to lunch. Keep those two books running
as hard as you can. We'll try them for another day and
then cut them right out. And I'll drop round to Dockem
& Discount, the publishers, and make a kick about them,
and see what they'll do."
I felt that I had lingered long enough. I drew near with
the Epictetus in my hand.
"Yes, sir," said Mr. Sellyer, professional again in a
moment. "Epictetus? A charming thing. Eighteen cents.
Thank you. Perhaps we have some other things there that
might interest you. We have a few second-hand things in
the alcove there that you might care to look at. There's
an Aristotle, two volumes--a very fine thing--practically
illegible, that you might like: and a Cicero came in
yesterday--very choice--damaged by damp--and I think we
have a Machiavelli, quite exceptional--practically torn
to pieces, and the covers gone--a very rare old thing,
sir, if you're an expert."
"No, thanks," I said. And then from a curiosity that had
been growing in me and that I couldn't resist, "That
book--Golden Dreams," I said, "you seem to think it a
very wonderful work?"
Mr. Sellyer directed one of his shrewd glances at me. He
knew I didn't want to buy the book, and perhaps, like
lesser people, he had his off moments of confidence.
He shook his head.
"A bad business," he said. "The publishers have unloaded
the thing on us, and we have to do what we can. They're
stuck with it, I understand, and they look to us to help
them. They're advertising it largely and may pull it
off. Of course, there's just a chance. One can't tell.
It's just possible we may get the church people down on
it and if so we're all right. But short of that we'll
never make it. I imagine it's perfectly rotten."
"Haven't you read it?" I asked.
"Dear me, no!" said the manager. His air was that of a
milkman who is offered a glass of his own milk. "A pretty
time I'd have if I tried to READ the new books. It's
quite enough to keep track of them without that."
"But those people," I went on, deeply perplexed, "who
bought the book. Won't they be disappointed?"
Mr. Sellyer shook his head. "Oh, no," he said; "you see,
they won't READ it. They never do."
"But at any rate," I insisted, "your wife thought it a
fine story."
Mr. Sellyer smiled widely.
"I am not married, sir," he said.
AFTERNOON ADVENTURES AT MY CLUB
1.--The Anecdotes of Dr. So and So
That is not really his name. I merely call him that from
his manner of talking.
His specialty is telling me short anecdotes of his
professional life from day to day.
They are told with wonderful dash and power, except for
one slight omission, which is, that you never know what
the doctor is talking about. Beyond this, his little
stories are of unsurpassed interest--but let me illustrate.
. . . . . . .
He came into the semi-silence room of the club the other
day and sat down beside me.
"Have something or other?" he said.
"No, thanks," I answered.
"Smoke anything?" he asked.
"No, thanks."
The doctor turned to me. He evidently wanted to talk.
"I've been having a rather peculiar experience," he said.
"Man came to me the other day--three or four weeks ago--and
said, 'Doctor, I feel out of sorts. I believe I've got
so and so.' 'Ah,' I said, taking a look at him, 'been
eating so and so, eh?' 'Yes,' he said. 'Very good,' I
said, 'take so and so.'
"Well, off the fellow went--I thought nothing of it--simply
wrote such and such in my note-book, such and such a
date, symptoms such and such--prescribed such and such,
and so forth, you understand?"
"Oh, yes, perfectly, doctor," I answered.
"Very good. Three days later--a ring at the bell in the
evening--my servant came to the surgery. 'Mr. So and So
is here. Very anxious to see you.' 'All right!' I went
down. There he was, with every symptom of so and so
written all over him--every symptom of it--this and this
and this--"
"Awful symptoms, doctor," I said, shaking my head.
"Are they not?" he said, quite unaware that he hadn't
named any. "There he was with every symptom, heart so
and so, eyes so and so, pulse this--I looked at him right
in the eye and I said--'Do you want me to tell you the
truth?' 'Yes,' he said. 'Very good,' I answered, 'I will.
You've got so and so.' He fell back as if shot. 'So and
so!' he repeated, dazed. I went to the sideboard and
poured him out a drink of such and such. 'Drink this,'
I said. He drank it. 'Now,' I said, 'listen to what I
say: You've got so and so. There's only one chance,' I
said, 'you must limit your eating and drinking to such
and such, you must sleep such and such, avoid every form
of such and such--I'll give you a cordial, so many drops
every so long, but mind you, unless you do so and so, it
won't help you.' 'All right, very good.' Fellow promised.
Off he went."
The doctor paused a minute and then resumed:
"Would you believe it--two nights later, I saw the
fellow--after the theatre, in a restaurant--whole party
of people--big plate of so and so in front of him--quart
bottle of so and so on ice--such and such and so forth.
I stepped over to him--tapped him on the shoulder: 'See
here,' I said, 'if you won't obey my instructions, you
can't expect me to treat you.' I walked out of the place."
"And what happened to him?" I asked.
"Died," said the doctor, in a satisfied tone. "Died.
I've just been filling in the certificate: So and so,
aged such and such, died of so and so!"
"An awful disease," I murmured.
2.--The Shattered Health of Mr. Podge
"How are you, Podge?" I said, as I sat down in a leather
armchair beside him.
I only meant "How-do-you-do?" but he rolled his big eyes
sideways at me in his flabby face (it was easier than
moving his face) and he answered:
"I'm not as well to-day as I was yesterday afternoon.
Last week I was feeling pretty good part of the time,
but yesterday about four o'clock the air turned humid,
and I don't feel so well."
"Have a cigarette?" I said.
"No, thanks; I find they affect the bronchial toobes."
"Whose?" I asked.
"Mine," he answered.
"Oh, yes," I said, and I lighted one. "So you find the
weather trying," I continued cheerfully.
"Yes, it's too humid. It's up to a saturation of sixty-six.
I'm all right till it passes sixty-four. Yesterday
afternoon it was only about sixty-one, and I felt fine.
But after that it went up. I guess it must be a contraction
of the epidermis pressing on some of the sebaceous glands,
don't you?"
"I'm sure it is," I said. "But why don't you just sleep
it off till it's over?"
"I don't like to sleep too much," he answered. "I'm
afraid of it developing into hypersomnia. There are cases
where it's been known to grow into a sort of lethargy
that pretty well stops all brain action altogether--"
"That would be too bad," I murmured. "What do you do to
prevent it?"
"I generally drink from half to three-quarters of a cup
of black coffee, or nearly black, every morning at from
eleven to five minutes past, so as to keep off hypersomnia.
It's the best thing, the doctor says."
"Aren't you afraid," I said, "of its keeping you awake?"
"I am," answered Podge, and a spasm passed over his big
yellow face. "I'm always afraid of insomnia. That's the
worst thing of all. The other night I went to bed about
half-past ten, or twenty-five minutes after,--I forget
which,--and I simply couldn't sleep. I couldn't. I read
a magazine story, and I still couldn't; and I read another,
and still I couldn't sleep. It scared me bad."
"Oh, pshaw," I said; "I don't think sleep matters as long
as one eats properly and has a good appetite."
He shook his head very dubiously. "I ate a plate of soup
at lunch," he said, "and I feel it still."
"You FEEL it!"
"Yes," repeated Podge, rolling his eyes sideways in a
pathetic fashion that he had, "I still feel it. I oughtn't
to have eaten it. It was some sort of a bean soup, and
of course it was full of nitrogen. I oughtn't to touch
nitrogen," he added, shaking his head.
"Not take any nitrogen?" I repeated.
"No, the doctor--both doctors--have told me that. I can
eat starches, and albumens, all right, but I have to keep
right away from all carbons and nitrogens. I've been
dieting that way for two years, except that now and again
I take a little glucose or phosphates."
"That must be a nice change," I said, cheerfully.
"It is," he answered in a grateful sort of tone.
There was a pause. I looked at his big twitching face,
and listened to the heavy wheezing of his breath, and I
felt sorry for him.
"See here, Podge," I said, "I want to give you some good
advice."
"About what?"
"About your health."
"Yes, yes, do," he said. Advice about his health was
right in his line. He lived on it.
"Well, then, cut out all this fool business of diet and
drugs and nitrogen. Don't bother about anything of the
sort. Forget it. Eat everything you want to, just when
you want it. Drink all you like. Smoke all you can--and
you'll feel a new man in a week."
"Say, do you think so!" he panted, his eyes filled with
a new light.
"I know it," I answered. And as I left him I shook hands
with a warm feeling about my heart of being a benefactor
to the human race.
Next day, sure enough, Podge's usual chair at the club
was empty.
"Out getting some decent exercise," I thought. "Thank
Heaven!"
Nor did he come the next day, nor the next, nor for a
week.
"Leading a rational life at last," I thought. "Out in
the open getting a little air and sunlight, instead of
sitting here howling about his stomach."
The day after that I saw Dr. Slyder in black clothes
glide into the club in that peculiar manner of his, like
an amateur undertaker.
"Hullo, Slyder," I called to him, "you look as solemn as
if you had been to a funeral."
"I have," he said very quietly, and then added, "poor
Podge!"
"What about him?" I asked with sudden apprehension.
"Why, he died on Tuesday," answered the doctor. "Hadn't
you heard? Strangest case I've known in years. Came home
suddenly one day, pitched all his medicines down the
kitchen sink, ordered a couple of cases of champagne and
two hundred havanas, and had his housekeeper cook a dinner
like a Roman banquet! After being under treatment for
two years! Lived, you know, on the narrowest margin
conceivable. I told him and Silk told him--we all told
him--his only chance was to keep away from every form of
nitrogenous ultra-stimulants. I said to him often, 'Podge,
if you touch heavy carbonized food, you're lost.'"
"Dear me," I thought to myself, "there ARE such things
after all!"
"It was a marvel," continued Slyder, "that we kept him
alive at all. And, of course"--here the doctor paused
to ring the bell to order two Manhattan cocktails--"as
soon as he touched alcohol he was done."
So that was the end of the valetudinarianism of Mr. Podge.
I have always considered that I killed him.
But anyway, he was a nuisance at the club.
3.--The Amazing Travels of Mr. Yarner
There was no fault to be found with Mr. Yarner till he
made his trip around the world.
It was that, I think, which disturbed his brain and
unfitted him for membership in the club.
"Well," he would say, as he sat ponderously down with
the air of a man opening an interesting conversation, "I
was just figuring it out that eleven months ago to-day
I was in Pekin."
"That's odd," I said, "I was just reckoning that eleven
days ago I was in Poughkeepsie."
"They don't call it Pekin over there," he said. "It's
sounded Pei-Chang."
"I know," I said, "it's the same way with Poughkeepsie,
they pronounce it P'Keepsie."
"The Chinese," he went on musingly, "are a strange people."
"So are the people in P'Keepsie," I added, "awfully
strange."
That kind of retort would sometimes stop him, but not
always. He was especially dangerous if he was found with
a newspaper in his hand; because that meant that some
item of foreign intelligence had gone to his brain.
Not that I should have objected to Yarner describing his
travels. Any man who has bought a ticket round the world
and paid for it, is entitled to that.
But it was his manner of discussion that I considered
unpermissible.
Last week, for example, in an unguarded moment I fell a
victim. I had been guilty of the imprudence--I forget in
what connection--of speaking of lions. I realized at
once that I had done wrong--lions, giraffes, elephants,
rickshaws and natives of all brands, are topics to avoid
in talking with a traveller.
"Speaking of lions," began Yarner.
He was right, of course; I HAD spoken of lions.
"--I shall never forget," he went on (of course, I knew
he never would), "a rather bad scrape I got into in the
up-country of Uganda. Imagine yourself in a wild, rolling
country covered here and there with kwas along the sides
of the nullahs."
I did so.
"Well," continued Yarner, "we were sitting in our tent
one hot night--too hot to sleep--when all at once we
heard, not ten feet in front of us, the most terrific
roar that ever came from the throat of a lion."
As he said this Yarner paused to take a gulp of bubbling
whiskey and soda and looked at me so ferociously that I
actually shivered.
Then quite suddenly his manner cooled down in the strangest
way, and his voice changed to a commonplace tone as he
said,--
"Perhaps I ought to explain that we hadn't come up to
the up-country looking for big game. In fact, we had
been down in the down country with no idea of going higher
than Mombasa. Indeed, our going even to Mombasa itself
was more or less an afterthought. Our first plan was to
strike across from Aden to Singapore. But our second
plan was to strike direct from Colombo to Karuchi--"
"And what was your THIRD plan?" I asked.
"Our third plan," said Yarner deliberately, feeling that
the talk was now getting really interesting, "let me see,
our third plan was to cut across from Socotra to
Tananarivo."
"Oh, yes," I said.
"However, all that was changed, and changed under the
strangest circumstances. We were sitting, Gallon and I,
on the piazza of the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo--you
know the Galle Face?"
"No, I do not," I said very positively.
"Very good. Well, I was sitting on the piazza watching
a snake charmer who was seated, with a boa, immediately
in front of me.
"Poor Gallon was actually within two feet of the hideous
reptile. All of a sudden the beast whirled itself into
a coil, its eyes fastened with hideous malignity on poor
Gallon, and with its head erect it emitted the most awful
hiss I have heard proceed from the mouth of any living
snake."
Here Yarner paused and took a long, hissing drink of
whiskey and soda: and then as the malignity died out of
his face--
"I should explain," he went on, very quietly, "that Gallon
was not one of our original party. We had come down to
Colombo from Mongolia, going by the Pekin Hankow and the
Nippon Yushen Keisha."
"That, I suppose, is the best way?" I said.
"Yes. And oddly enough but for the accident of Gallon
joining us, we should have gone by the Amoy, Cochin,
Singapore route, which was our first plan. In fact, but
for Gallon we should hardly have got through China at
all. The Boxer insurrection had taken place only fourteen
years before our visit, so you can imagine the awful
state of the country.
"Our meeting with Gallon was thus absolutely providential.
Looking back on it, I think it perhaps saved our lives.
We were in Mongolia (this, you understand, was before we
reached China), and had spent the night at a small Yak
about four versts from Kharbin, when all of a sudden,
just outside the miserable hut that we were in, we heard
a perfect fusillade of shots followed immediately afterwards
by one of the most blood-curdling and terrifying screams
I have ever imagined--"
"Oh, yes," I said, "and that was how you met Gallon.
Well, I must be off."
And as I happened at that very moment to be rescued by
an incoming friend, who took but little interest in lions,
and even less in Yarner, I have still to learn why the
lion howled so when it met Yarner. But surely the lion
had reason enough.
4.--The Spiritual Outlook of Mr. Doomer
One generally saw old Mr. Doomer looking gloomily out of
the windows of the library of the club. If not there, he
was to be found staring sadly into the embers of a dying
fire in a deserted sitting-room.
His gloom always appeared out of place as he was one of
the richest of the members.
But the cause of it,--as I came to know,--was that he
was perpetually concerned with thinking about the next
world. In fact he spent his whole time brooding over it.
I discovered this accidentally by happening to speak to
him of the recent death of Podge, one of our fellow
members.
"Very sad," I said, "Podge's death."
"Ah," returned Mr. Doomer, "very shocking. He was quite
unprepared to die."
"Do you think so?" I said, "I'm awfully sorry to hear
it."
"Quite unprepared," he answered. "I had reason to know
it as one of his executors,--everything is
confusion,--nothing signed,--no proper power of
attorney,--codicils drawn up in blank and never
witnessed,--in short, sir, no sense apparently of the
nearness of his death and of his duty to be prepared.
"I suppose," I said, "poor Podge didn't realise that he
was going to die."
"Ah, that's just it," resumed Mr. Doomer with something
like sternness, "a man OUGHT to realise it. Every man
ought to feel that at any moment,--one can't tell when,--day
or night,--he may be called upon to meet his,"--Mr.
Doomer paused here as if seeking a phrase--"to meet his
Financial Obligations, face to face. At any time, sir,
he may be hurried before the Judge,--or rather his estate
may be,--before the Judge of the probate court. It is
a solemn thought, sir. And yet when I come here I see
about me men laughing, talking, and playing billiards,
as if there would never be a day when their estate would
pass into the hands of their administrators and an account
must be given of every cent."
"But after all," I said, trying to fall in with his mood,
"death and dissolution must come to all of us."
"That's just it," he said solemnly. "They've dissolved
the tobacco people, and they've dissolved the oil people
and you can't tell whose turn it may be next."
Mr. Doomer was silent a moment and then resumed, speaking
in a tone of humility that was almost reverential.
"And yet there is a certain preparedness for death, a
certain fitness to die that we ought all to aim at. Any
man can at least think solemnly of the Inheritance Tax,
and reflect whether by a contract inter vivos drawn in
blank he may not obtain redemption; any man if he thinks
death is near may at least divest himself of his purely
speculative securities and trust himself entirely to
those gold bearing bonds of the great industrial
corporations whose value will not readily diminish or
pass away." Mr. Doomer was speaking with something like
religious rapture.
"And yet what does one see?" he continued. "Men affected
with fatal illness and men stricken in years occupied
still with idle talk and amusements instead of reading
the financial newspapers,--and at the last carried away
with scarcely time perhaps to send for their brokers when
it is already too late."
"It is very sad," I said.
"Very," he repeated, "and saddest of all, perhaps, is
the sense of the irrevocability of death and the changes
that must come after it."
We were silent a moment.
"You think of these things a great deal, Mr. Doomer?"
I said.
"I do," he answered. "It may be that it is something in
my temperament, I suppose one would call it a sort of
spiritual mindedness. But I think of it all constantly.
Often as I stand here beside the window and see these
cars go by"--he indicated a passing street car--"I cannot
but realise that the time will come when I am no longer
a managing director and wonder whether they will keep on
trying to hold the dividend down by improving the rolling
stock or will declare profits to inflate the securities.
These mysteries beyond the grave fascinate me, sir. Death
is a mysterious thing. Who for example will take my seat
on the Exchange? What will happen to my majority control
of the power company? I shudder to think of the changes
that may happen after death in the assessment of my real
estate."
"Yes," I said, "it is all beyond our control, isn't it?"
"Quite," answered Mr. Doomer; "especially of late years
one feels that, all said and done, we are in the hands
of a Higher Power, and that the State Legislature is
after all supreme. It gives one a sense of smallness.
It makes one feel that in these days of drastic legislation
with all one's efforts the individual is lost and absorbed
in the controlling power of the state legislature. Consider
the words that are used in the text of the Income Tax
Case, Folio Two, or the text of the Trans-Missouri Freight
Decision, and think of the revelation they contain."
I left Mr. Doomer still standing beside the window, musing
on the vanity of life and on things, such as the future
control of freight rates, that lay beyond the grave.
I noticed as I left him how broken and aged he had come
to look. It seemed as if the chafings of the spirit were
wearing the body that harboured it.
It was about a month later that I learned of Mr. Doomer's
death.
Dr. Slyder told me of it in the club one afternoon, over
two cocktails in the sitting-room.
"A beautiful bedside," he said, "one of the most edifying
that I have ever attended. I knew that Doomer was failing
and of course the time came when I had to tell him.
"'Mr. Doomer,' I said, 'all that I, all that any medical
can do for you is done; you are going to die. I have to
warn you that it is time for other ministrations than
mine.'
"'Very good,' he said faintly but firmly, 'send for my
broker.'
"They sent out and fetched Jarvis,--you know him I
think,--most sympathetic man and yet most business-like--he
does all the firm's business with the dying,--and we two
sat beside Doomer holding him up while he signed stock
transfers and blank certificates.
"Once he paused and turned his eyes on Jarvis. 'Read me
from the text of the State Inheritance Tax Statute,' he
said. Jarvis took the book and read aloud very quietly
and simply the part at the beginning--'Whenever and
wheresoever it shall appear,' down to the words, 'shall
be no longer a subject of judgment or appeal but shall
remain in perpetual possession.'
"Doomer listened with his eyes closed. The reading seemed
to bring him great comfort. When Jarvis ended he said
with a sign, 'That covers it. I'll put my faith in that.'
After that he was silent a moment and then said: 'I wish
I had already crossed the river. Oh, to have already
crossed the river and be safe on the other side.' We knew
what he meant. He had always planned to move over to New
Jersey. The inheritance tax is so much more liberal.
"Presently it was all done.
"'There,' I said, 'it is finished now.'
"'No,' he answered, 'there is still one thing. Doctor,
you've been very good to me. I should like to pay your
account now without it being a charge on the estate. I
will pay it as'--he paused for a moment and a fit of
coughing seized him, but by an effort of will he found
the power to say--'cash.'
"I took the account from my pocket (I had it with me,
fearing the worst), and we laid his cheque-book before
him on the bed. Jarvis thinking him too faint to write
tried to guide his hand as he filled in the sum. But he
shook his head.
"'The room is getting dim,' he said. 'I can see nothing
but the figures.'
"'Never mind,' said Jarvis,--much moved, 'that's enough.'
"'Is it four hundred and thirty?' he asked faintly.
"'Yes,' I said, and I could feel the tears rising in my
eyes, 'and fifty cents.'
"After signing the cheque his mind wandered for a moment
and he fell to talking, with his eyes closed, of the new
federal banking law, and of the prospect of the reserve
associations being able to maintain an adequate gold
supply.
"Just at the last he rallied.
"'I want,' he said in quite a firm voice, 'to do something
for both of you before I die.'
"'Yes, yes,' we said.
"'You are both interested, are you not,' he murmured,
'in City Traction?'
"'Yes, yes,' we said. We knew of course that he was the
managing director.
"He looked at us faintly and tried to speak.
"'Give him a cordial,' said Jarvis. But he found his
voice.
"'The value of that stock,' he said, 'is going to take
a sudden--'
"His voice grew faint.
"'Yes, yes,' I whispered, bending over him (there were
tears in both our eyes), 'tell me is it going up, or
going down?'
"'It is going'--he murmured,--then his eyes closed--'it
is going--'
"'Yes, yes,' I said, 'which?'
"'It is going'--he repeated feebly and then, quite suddenly
he fell back on the pillows and his soul passed. And we
never knew which way it was going. It was very sad. Later
on, of course, after he was dead, we knew, as everybody
knew, that it went down."
5.--The Reminiscences of Mr. Apricot
"Rather a cold day, isn't it?" I said as I entered the
club.
The man I addressed popped his head out from behind a
newspaper and I saw it was old Mr. Apricot. So I was
sorry that I had spoken.
"Not so cold as the winter of 1866," he said, beaming
with benevolence.
He had an egg-shaped head, bald, with some white hair
fluffed about the sides of it. He had a pink face with
large blue eyes, behind his spectacles, benevolent to
the verge of imbecility.
"Was that a cold winter?" I asked.
"Bitter cold," he said. "I have never told you, have I,
of my early experiences in life?"
"I think I have heard you mention them," I murmured, but
he had already placed a detaining hand on my sleeve. "Sit
down," he said. Then he continued: "Yes, it was a cold
winter. I was going to say that it was the coldest I
have ever experienced, but that might be an exaggeration.
But it was certainly colder than any winter that YOU have
ever seen, or that we ever have now, or are likely to
have. In fact the winters NOW are a mere nothing,"--here
Mr. Apricot looked toward the club window where the driven
snow was beating in eddies against the panes,--"simply
nothing. One doesn't feel them at all,"--here he turned
his eyes towards the glowing fire that flamed in the open
fireplace. "But when I was a boy things were very different.
I have probably never mentioned to you, have I, the
circumstances of my early life?"
He had, many times. But he had turned upon me the full
beam of his benevolent spectacles and I was too weak to
interrupt.
"My father," went on Mr. Apricot, settling back in his
chair and speaking with a far-away look in his eyes, "had
settled on the banks of the Wabash River--"
"Oh, yes, I know it well," I interjected.
"Not as it was THEN," said Mr. Apricot very quickly. "At
present as you, or any other thoughtless tourist sees
it, it appears a broad river pouring its vast flood in
all directions. At the time I speak of it was a mere
stream scarcely more than a few feet in circumference.
The life we led there was one of rugged isolation and of
sturdy self-reliance and effort such as it is, of course,
quite impossible for YOU, or any other member of this
club to understand,--I may give you some idea of what
I mean when I say that at that time there was no town
nearer to Pittsburgh than Chicago, or to St. Paul than
Minneapolis--"
"Impossible!" I said.
Mr. Apricot seemed not to notice the interruption.
"There was no place nearer to Springfield than St. Louis,"
he went on in a peculiar singsong voice, "and there was
nothing nearer to Denver than San Francisco, nor to New
Orleans than Rio Janeiro--"
He seemed as if he would go on indefinitely.
"You were speaking of your father?" I interrupted.
"My father," said Mr. Apricot, "had settled on the banks,
both banks, of the Wabash. He was like so many other
men of his time, a disbanded soldier, a veteran--"
"Of the Mexican War or of the Civil War?" I asked.
"Exactly," answered Mr. Apricot, hardly heeding the
question,--"of the Mexican Civil War."
"Was he under Lincoln?" I asked.
"OVER Lincoln," corrected Mr. Apricot gravely. And he
added,--"It is always strange to me the way in which the
present generation regards Abraham Lincoln. To us, of
course, at the time of which I speak, Lincoln was simply
one of ourselves."
"In 1866?" I asked.
"This was 1856," said Mr. Apricot. "He came often to my
father's cabin, sitting down with us to our humble meal
of potatoes and whiskey (we lived with a simplicity which
of course you could not possibly understand), and would
spend the evening talking with my father over the
interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.
We children used to stand beside them listening open-mouthed
beside the fire in our plain leather night-gowns. I shall
never forget how I was thrilled when I first heard Lincoln
lay down his famous theory of the territorial jurisdiction
of Congress as affected by the Supreme Court decision of
1857. I was only nine years old at the time, but it
thrilled me!"
"Is it possible!" I exclaimed, "how ever could you
understand it?"
"Ah! my friend," said Mr. Apricot, almost sadly, "in
THOSE days the youth of the United States were EDUCATED
in the real sense of the word. We children followed the
decisions of the Supreme Court with breathless interest.
Our books were few but they were GOOD. We had nothing to
read but the law reports, the agriculture reports, the
weather bulletins and the almanacs. But we read them
carefully from cover to cover. How few boys have the
industry to do so now, and yet how many of our greatest
men were educated on practically nothing else except the
law reports and the almanacs. Franklin, Jefferson,
Jackson, Johnson,"--Mr. Apricot had relapsed into his
sing-song voice, and his eye had a sort of misty perplexity
in it as he went on,--"Harrison, Thomson, Peterson,
Emerson--"
I thought it better to stop him.
"But you were speaking," I said, "of the winter of eighteen
fifty-six."
"Of eighteen forty-six," corrected Mr. Apricot. "I shall
never forget it. How distinctly I remember,--I was only
a boy then, in fact a mere lad,--fighting my way to
school. The snow lay in some places as deep as ten feet"--
Mr. Apricot paused--"and in others twenty. But we made
our way to school in spite of it. No boys of to-day,--nor,
for the matter of that, even men such as you,--would
think of attempting it. But we were keen, anxious to
learn. Our school was our delight. Our teacher was our
friend. Our books were our companions. We gladly trudged
five miles to school every morning and seven miles back
at night, did chores till midnight, studied algebra by
candlelight"--here Mr. Apricot's voice had fallen into
its characteristic sing-song, and his eyes were
vacant--"rose before daylight, dressed by lamplight, fed
the hogs by lantern-light, fetched the cows by twilight--"
I thought it best to stop him.
"But you did eventually get off the farm, did you not?"
I asked.
"Yes," he answered, "my opportunity presently came to me
as it came in those days to any boy of industry and
intelligence who knocked at the door of fortune till it
opened. I shall never forget how my first chance in life
came to me. A man, an entire stranger, struck no doubt
with the fact that I looked industrious and willing,
offered me a dollar to drive a load of tan bark to the
nearest market--"
"Where was that?" I asked.
"Minneapolis, seven hundred miles. But I did it. I shall
never forget my feelings when I found myself in Minneapolis
with one dollar in my pocket and with the world all before
me."
"What did you do?" I said.
"First," said Mr. Apricot, "I laid out seventy-five cents
for a suit of clothes (things were cheap in those days);
for fifty cents I bought an overcoat, for twenty-five I
got a hat, for ten cents a pair of boots, and with the
rest of my money I took a room for a month with a Swedish
family, paid a month's board with a German family, arranged
to have my washing done by an Irish family, and--"
"But surely, Mr. Apricot--" I began.
But at this point the young man who is generally in
attendance on old Mr. Apricot when he comes to the club,
appeared on the scene.
"I am afraid," he said to me aside as Mr. Apricot was
gathering up his newspapers and his belongings, "that my
uncle has been rather boring you with his reminiscences."
"Not at all," I said, "he's been telling me all about
his early life in his father's cabin on the Wabash--"
"I was afraid so," said the young man. "Too bad. You see
he wasn't really there at all."
"Not there!" I said.
"No. He only fancies that he was. He was brought up in
New York, and has never been west of Philadelphia. In
fact he has been very well to do all his life. But he
found that it counted against him: it hurt him in politics.
So he got into the way of talking about the Middle West
and early days there, and sometimes he forgets that he
wasn't there."
"I see," I said.
Meantime Mr. Apricot was ready.
"Good-bye, good-bye," he said very cheerily,--"A delightful
chat. We must have another talk over old times soon. I
must tell you about my first trip over the Plains at the
time when I was surveying the line of the Union Pacific.
You who travel nowadays in your Pullman coaches and
observation cars can have no idea--"
"Come along, uncle," said the young man.
6.--The Last Man out of Europe
He came into the club and shook hands with me as if he
hadn't seen me for a year. In reality I had seen him only
eleven months ago, and hadn't thought of him since.
"How are you, Parkins?" I said in a guarded tone, for I
saw at once that there was something special in his
manner.
"Have a cig?" he said as he sat down on the edge of an
arm-chair, dangling his little boot.
Any young man who calls a cigarette a "cig" I despise.
"No, thanks," I said.
"Try one," he went on, "they're Hungarian. They're some
I managed to bring through with me out of the war zone."
As he said "war zone," his face twisted up into a sort
of scowl of self-importance.
I looked at Parkins more closely and I noticed that he
had on some sort of foolish little coat, short in the
back, and the kind of bow-tie that they wear in the
Hungarian bands of the Sixth Avenue restaurants.
Then I knew what the trouble was. He was the last man
out of Europe, that is to say, the latest last man. There
had been about fourteen others in the club that same
afternoon. In fact they were sitting all over it in
Italian suits and Viennese overcoats, striking German
matches on the soles of Dutch boots. These were the "war
zone" men and they had just got out "in the clothes they
stood up in." Naturally they hated to change.
So I knew all that this young man, Parkins, was going to
say, and all about his adventures before he began.
"Yes," he said, "we were caught right in the war zone.
By Jove, I never want to go through again what I went
through."
With that, he sank back into the chair in the pose of a
man musing in silence over the recollection of days of
horror.
I let him muse. In fact I determined to let him muse till
he burst before I would ask him what he had been through.
I knew it, anyway.
Presently he decided to go on talking.
"We were at Izzl," he said, "in the Carpathians, Loo
Jones and I. We'd just made a walking tour from Izzl to
Fryzzl and back again."
"Why did you come back?" I asked.
"Back where?"
"Back to Izzl," I explained, "after you'd once got to
Fryzzl. It seems unnecessary, but, never mind, go on."
"That was in July," he continued. "There wasn't a sign
of war, not a sign. We heard that Russia was beginning
to mobilize," (at this word be blew a puff from his
cigarette and then repeated "beginning to mobilize") "but
we thought nothing of it."
"Of course not," I said.
"Then we heard that Hungary was calling out the Honveds,
but we still thought nothing of it."
"Certainly not," I said.
"And then we heard--"
"Yes, I know," I said, "you heard that Italy was calling
out the Trombonari, and that Germany was calling in all
the Landesgeschutzshaft."
He looked at me.
"How did you know that?" he said.
"We heard it over here," I answered.
"Well," he went on, "next thing we knew we heard that
the Russians were at Fryzzl."
"Great Heavens!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, at Fryzzl, not a hundred miles away. The very
place we'd been at only two weeks before."
"Think of it!" I said. "If you'd been where you were two
weeks after you were there, or if the Russians had been
a hundred miles away from where they were, or even if
Fryzzl had been a hundred miles nearer to Izzl--"
We both shuddered.
"It was a close call," said Parkins. "However, I said to
Loo Jones, 'Loo, it's time to clear out.' And then, I
tell you, our trouble began. First of all we couldn't
get any money. We went to the bank at Izzl and tried to
get them to give us American dollars for Hungarian paper
money; we had nothing else."
"And wouldn't they?"
"Absolutely refused. They said they hadn't any."
"By George," I exclaimed. "Isn't war dreadful? What on
earth did you do?"
"Took a chance," said Parkins. "Went across to the railway
station to buy our tickets with the Hungarian money."
"Did you get them?" I said.
"Yes," assented Parkins. "They said they'd sell us tickets.
But they questioned us mighty closely; asked where we
wanted to go to, what class we meant to travel by, how
much luggage we had to register and so on. I tell you
the fellow looked at us mighty closely."
"Were you in those clothes?" I asked.
"Yes," said Parkins, "but I guess he suspected we weren't
Hungarians. You see, we couldn't either of us speak
Hungarian. In fact we spoke nothing but English."
"That would give him a clue," I said.
"However," he went on, "he was civil enough in a way. We
asked when was the next train to the sea coast, and he
said there wasn't any."
"No trains?" I repeated.
"Not to the coast. The man said the reason was because
there wasn't any railway to the coast. But he offered to
sell us tickets to Vienna. We asked when the train would
go and he said there wouldn't be one for two hours. So
there we were waiting on that wretched little platform,--no
place to sit down, no shade, unless one went into the
waiting room itself,--for two mortal hours. And even then
the train was an hour and a half late!"
"An hour and a half late!" I repeated.
"Yep!" said Parkins, "that's what things were like over
there. So when we got on board the train we asked a man
when it was due to get to Vienna, and he said he hadn't
the faintest idea!"
"Good heavens!"
"Not the faintest idea. He told us to ask the conductor
or one of the porters. No, sir, I'll never forget that
journey through to Vienna,--nine mortal hours! Nothing
to eat, not a bite, except just in the middle of the day
when they managed to hitch on a dining-car for a while.
And they warned everybody that the dining-car was only
on for an hour and a half. Commandeered, I guess after
that," added Parkins, puffing his cigarette.
"Well," he continued, "we got to Vienna at last. I'll
never forget the scene there, station full of people,
trains coming and going, men, even women, buying tickets,
big piles of luggage being shoved on trucks. It gave one
a great idea of the reality of things."
"It must have," I said.
"Poor old Loo Jones was getting pretty well used up with
it all. However, we determined to see it through somehow."
"What did you do next?"
"Tried again to get money: couldn't--they changed our
Hungarian paper into Italian gold, but they refused to
give us American money."
"Hoarding it?" I hinted.
"Exactly," said Parkins, "hoarding it all for the war.
Well anyhow we got on a train for Italy and there our
troubles began all over again:--train stopped at the
frontier,--officials (fellows in Italian uniforms) went
all through it, opening hand baggage--"
"Not hand baggage!" I gasped.
"Yes, sir, even the hand baggage. Opened it all, or a
lot of it anyway, and scribbled chalk marks over it. Yes,
and worse than that,--I saw them take two fellows and
sling them clear off the train,--they slung them right
out on to the platform."
"What for?" I asked.
"Heaven knows," said Parkins,--"they said they had no
tickets. In war time you know, when they're mobilizing,
they won't let a soul ride on a train without a ticket."
"Infernal tyranny," I murmured.
"Isn't it? However, we got to Genoa at last, only to find
that not a single one of our trunks had come with us!"
"Confiscated?" I asked.
"I don't know," said Parkins, "the head baggage man (he
wears a uniform, you know, in Italy just like a soldier)
said it was because we'd forgotten to check them in
Vienna. However there we were waiting for twenty-four
hours with nothing but our valises."
"Right at the station?" I asked.
"No, at a hotel. We got the trunks later. They telegraphed
to Vienna for them and managed to get them through
somehow,--in a baggage car, I believe."
"And after that, I suppose, you had no more trouble."
"Trouble," said Parkins, "I should say we had. Couldn't
get a steamer! They said there was none sailing out of
Genoa for New York for three days! All cancelled, I guess,
or else rigged up as cruisers."
"What on earth did you do?"
"Stuck it out as best we could: stayed right there in
the hotel. Poor old Jones was pretty well collapsed!
Couldn't do anything but sleep and eat, and sit on the
piazza of the hotel."
"But you got your steamer at last?" I asked.
"Yes," he admitted, "we got it. But I never want to go
through another voyage like that again, no sir!"
"What was wrong with it?" I asked, "bad weather?"
"No, calm, but a peculiar calm, glassy, with little
ripples on the water,--uncanny sort of feeling."
"What was wrong with the voyage?"
"Oh, just the feeling of it,--everything under strict
rule you know--no lights anywhere except just the electric
lights,--smoking-room closed tight at eleven o'clock,--decks
all washed down every night--officers up on the bridge
all day looking out over the sea,--no, sir, I want no
more of it. Poor old Loo Jones, I guess he's quite used
up: he can't speak of it at all: just sits and broods,
in fact I doubt..."
At this moment Parkins's conversation was interrupted by
the entry of two newcomers into the room. One of them
had on a little Hungarian suit like the one Parkins wore,
and was talking loudly as they came in.
"Yes," he was saying, "we were caught there fair and
square right in the war zone. We were at Izzl in the
Carpathians, poor old Parkins and I--"
We looked round.
It was Loo Jones, describing his escape from Europe.
7.--The War Mania of Mr. Jinks and Mr. Blinks
They were sitting face to face at a lunch table at the
club so near to me that I couldn't avoid hearing what
they said. In any case they are both stout men with
gurgling voices which carry.
"What Kitchener ought to do,"--Jinks was saying in a loud
voice.
So I knew at once that he had the prevailing hallucination.
He thought he was commanding armies in Europe.
After which I watched him show with three bits of bread
and two olives and a dessert knife the way in which the
German army could be destroyed.
Blinks looked at Jinks' diagram with a stern impassive
face, modelled on the Sunday supplement photogravures of
Lord Kitchener.
"Your flank would be too much exposed," he said, pointing
to Jinks' bread. He spoke with the hard taciturnity of
a Joffre.
"My reserves cover it," said Jinks, moving two pepper
pots to the support of the bread.
"Mind you," Jinks went on, "I don't say Kitchener WILL
do this: I say this is what he OUGHT to do: it's exactly
the tactics of Kuropatkin outside of Mukden and it's
precisely the same turning movement that Grant used before
Richmond."
Blinks nodded gravely. Anybody who has seen the Grand
Duke Nicholoevitch quietly accepting the advice of General
Ruski under heavy artillery fire, will realize Blinks'
manner to a nicety.
And, oddly enough, neither of them, I am certain, has
ever had any larger ideas about the history of the Civil
War than what can be got from reading Uncle Tom's Cabin
and seeing Gillette play Secret Service. But this is part
of the mania. Jinks and Blinks had suddenly developed
the hallucination that they knew the history of all wars
by a sort of instinct.
They rose soon after that, dusted off their waistcoats
with their napkins and waddled heavily towards the door.
I could hear them as they went talking eagerly of the
need of keeping the troops in hard training. They were
almost brutal in their severity. As they passed out of
the door,--one at a time to avoid crowding,--they were
still talking about it. Jinks was saying that our whole
generation is overfed and soft. If he had his way he
would take every man in the United States up to forty-
seven years of age (Jinks is forty-eight) and train him
to a shadow. Blinks went further. He said they should
be trained hard up to fifty. He is fifty-one.
After that I used to notice Jinks and Blinks always
together in the club, and always carrying on the European
War.
I never knew which side they were on. They seemed to be
on both. One day they commanded huge armies of Russians,
and there was one week when Blinks and Jinks at the head
of vast levies of Cossacks threatened to overrun the
whole of Western Europe. It was dreadful to watch them
burning churches and monasteries and to see Jinks throw
whole convents full of white robed nuns into the flames
like so much waste paper.
For a time I feared they would obliterate civilization
itself. Then suddenly Blinks decided that Jinks' Cossacks
were no good, not properly trained. He converted himself
on the spot into a Prussian Field Marshal, declared
himself organised to a pitch of organisation of which
Jinks could form no idea, and swept Jinks' army off the
earth, without using any men at all, by sheer organisation.
In this way they moved to and fro all winter over the
map of Europe, carrying death and destruction everywhere
and revelling in it.
But I think I liked best the wild excitement of their
naval battles.
Jinks generally fancied himself a submarine and Blinks
acted the part of a first-class battleship. Jinks would
pop his periscope out of the water, take a look at Blinks
merely for the fraction of a second, and then, like a
flash, would dive under water again and start firing his
torpedoes. He explained that he carried six.
But he was never quick enough for Blinks. One glimpse
of his periscope miles and miles away was enough. Blinks
landed him a contact shell in the side, sunk him with
all hands, and then lined his yards with men and cheered.
I have known Blinks sink Jinks at two miles, six miles--and
once--in the club billiard room just after the battle of
the Falkland Islands,--he got him fair and square at
ten nautical miles.
Jinks of course claimed that he was not sunk. He had
dived. He was two hundred feet under water quietly smiling
at Blinks through his periscope. In fact the number of
things that Jinks has learned to do through his periscope
passes imagination.
Whenever I see him looking across at Blinks with his eyes
half closed and with a baffling, quizzical expression in
them, I know that he is looking at him through his
periscope. Now is the time for Blinks to watch out. If
he relaxes his vigilance for a moment he'll be torpedoed
as he sits, and sent flying, whiskey and soda and all,
through the roof of the club, while Jinks dives into the
basement.
Indeed it has come about of late, I don't know just how,
that Jinks has more or less got command of the sea. A
sort of tacit understanding has been reached that Blinks,
whichever army he happens at the moment to command, is
invincible on land. But Jinks, whether as a submarine or
a battleship, controls the sea. No doubt this grew up in
the natural evolution of their conversation. It makes
things easier for both. Jinks even asks Blinks how many
men there are in an army division, and what a sotnia of
Cossacks is and what the Army Service Corps means. And
Jinks in return has become a recognized expert in torpedoes
and has taken to wearing a blue serge suit and referring
to Lord Beresford as Charley.
But what I noticed chiefly about the war mania of Jinks
and Blinks was their splendid indifference to slaughter.
They had gone into the war with a grim resolution to
fight it out to a finish. If Blinks thought to terrify
Jinks by threatening to burn London, he little knew his
man. "All right," said Jinks, taking a fresh light for
his cigar, "burn it! By doing so, you destroy, let us
say, two million of my women and children? Very good. Am
I injured by that? No. You merely stimulate me to
recruiting."
There was something awful in the grimness of the struggle
as carried on by Blinks and Jinks.
The rights of neutrals and non-combatants, Red Cross
nurses, and regimental clergymen they laughed to scorn.
As for moving-picture men and newspaper correspondents,
Jinks and Blinks hanged them on every tree in Belgium
and Poland.
With combatants in this frame of mind the war I suppose
might have lasted forever.
But it came to an end accidentally,--fortuitously, as
all great wars are apt to. And by accident also, I happened
to see the end of it.
It was late one evening. Jinks and Blinks were coming
down the steps of the club, and as they came they were
speaking with some vehemence on their favourite topic.
"I tell you," Jinks was saying, "war is a great thing.
We needed it, Blinks. We were all getting too soft, too
scared of suffering and pain. We wilt at a bayonet charge,
we shudder at the thought of wounds. Bah!" he continued,
"what does it matter if a few hundred thousands of human
beings are cut to pieces. We need to get back again to
the old Viking standard, the old pagan ideas of suffering--"
And as he spoke he got it.
The steps of the club were slippery with the evening's
rain,--not so slippery as the frozen lakes of East Prussia
or the hills where Jinks and Blinks had been campaigning
all winter, but slippery enough for a stout man whose
nation has neglected his training. As Jinks waved his
stick in the air to illustrate the glory of a bayonet
charge, he slipped and fell sideways on the stone steps.
His shin bone smacked against the edge of the stone in
a way that was pretty well up to the old Viking standard
of such things. Blinks with the shock of the collision
fell also,--backwards on the top step, his head striking
first. He lay, to all appearance, as dead as the most
insignificant casualty in Servia.
I watched the waiters carrying them into the club, with
that new field ambulance attitude towards pain which is
getting so popular. They had evidently acquired precisely
the old pagan attitude that Blinks and Jinks desired.
And the evening after that I saw Blinks and Jinks, both
more or less bandaged, sitting in a corner of the club
beneath a rubber tree, making peace.
Jinks was moving out of Montenegro and Blinks was foregoing
all claims to Polish Prussia; Jinks was offering
Alsace-Lorraine to Blinks, and Blinks in a fit of chivalrous
enthusiasm was refusing to take it. They were disbanding
troops, blowing up fortresses, sinking their warships
and offering indemnities which they both refused to take.
Then as they talked, Jinks leaned forward and said
something to Blinks in a low voice,--a final proposal of
terms evidently.
Blinks nodded, and Jinks turned and beckoned to a waiter,
with the words,--
"One Scotch whiskey and soda, and one stein of Wurtemburger
Bier--"
And when I heard this, I knew that the war was over.
8.--The Ground Floor
I hadn't seen Ellesworth since our college days, twenty
years before, at the time when he used to borrow two
dollars and a half from the professor of Public Finance
to tide him over the week end.
Then quite suddenly he turned up at the club one day and
had afternoon tea with me.
His big clean shaven face had lost nothing of its
impressiveness, and his spectacles had the same glittering
magnetism as in the days when he used to get the college
bursar to accept his note of hand for his fees.
And he was still talking European politics just as he
used to in the days of our earlier acquaintance.
"Mark my words," he said across the little tea-table,
with one of the most piercing glances I have ever seen,
"the whole Balkan situation was only a beginning. We are
on the eve of a great pan-Slavonic upheaval." And then
he added, in a very quiet, casual tone: "By the way,
could you let me have twenty-five dollars till to-morrow?"
"A pan-Slavonic movement!" I ejaculated. "Do you really
think it possible? No, I couldn't."
"You must remember," Ellesworth went on, "Russia means
to reach out and take all she can get;" and he added,
"how about fifteen till Friday?"
"She may reach for it," I said, "but I doubt if she'll
get anything. I'm sorry. I haven't got it."
"You're forgetting the Bulgarian element," he continued,
his animation just as eager as before. "The Slavs never
forget what they owe to one another."
Here Ellesworth drank a sip of tea and then said quietly,
"Could you make it ten till Saturday at twelve?"
I looked at him more closely. I noticed now his frayed
cuffs and the dinginess of his over-brushed clothes. Not
even the magnetism of his spectacles could conceal it.
Perhaps I had been forgetting something, whether the
Bulgarian element or not.
I compromised at ten dollars till Saturday.
"The Slav," said Ellesworth, as he pocketed the money,
"is peculiar. He never forgets."
"What are you doing now?" I asked him. "Are you still
in insurance?" I had a vague recollection of him as
employed in that business.
"No," he answered. "I gave it up. I didn't like the
outlook. It was too narrow. The atmosphere cramped me.
I want," he said, "a bigger horizon."
"Quite so," I answered quietly. I had known men before
who had lost their jobs. It is generally the cramping of
the atmosphere that does it. Some of them can use up a
tremendous lot of horizon.
"At present," Ellesworth went on, "I am in finance. I'm
promoting companies."
"Oh, yes," I said. I had seen companies promoted before.
"Just now," continued Ellesworth, "I'm working on a thing
that I think will be rather a big thing. I shouldn't want
it talked about outside, but it's a matter of taking hold
of the cod fisheries of the Grand Banks,--practically
amalgamating them--and perhaps combining with them the
entire herring output, and the whole of the sardine catch
of the Mediterranean. If it goes through," he added, "I
shall be in a position to let you in on the ground floor."
I knew the ground floor of old. I have already many
friends sitting on it; and others who have fallen through
it into the basement.
I said, "thank you," and he left me.
"That was Ellesworth, wasn't it?" said a friend of mine
who was near me. "Poor devil. I knew him slightly,--always
full of some new and wild idea of making money. He was
talking to me the other day of the possibility of cornering
all the huckleberry crop and making refined sugar. Isn't
it amazing what fool ideas fellows like him are always
putting up to business men?"
We both laughed.
After that I didn't see Ellesworth for some weeks.
Then I met him in the club again. How he paid his fees
there I do not know.
This time he was seated among a litter of foreign newspapers
with a cup of tea and a ten-cent package of cigarettes
beside him.
"Have one of these cigarettes," he said. "I get them
specially. They are milder than what we have in the club
here."
They certainly were.
"Note what I say," Ellesworth went on. "The French
Republic is going to gain from now on a stability that
it never had." He seemed greatly excited about it. But
his voice changed to a quiet tone as he added, "Could
you, without inconvenience, let me have five dollars?"
So I knew that the cod-fish and the sardines were still
unamalgamated.
"What about the fisheries thing?" I asked. "Did it go
through?"
"The fisheries? No, I gave it up. I refused to go forward
with it. The New York people concerned were too shy, too
timid to tackle it. I finally had to put it to them very
straight that they must either stop shilly-shallying and
declare themselves, or the whole business was off."
"Did they declare themselves?" I questioned.
"They did," said Ellesworth, "but I don't regret it. I'm
working now on a much bigger thing,--something with
greater possibilities in it. When the right moment comes
I'll let you in on the ground floor."
I thanked him and we parted.
The next time I saw Ellesworth he told me at once that
he regarded Albania as unable to stand by itself. So I
gave him five dollars on the spot and left him.
A few days after that he called me up on the telephone
to tell me that the whole of Asia Minor would have to be
redistributed. The redistribution cost me five dollars
more.
Then I met him on the street, and he said that Persia
was disintegrating, and took from me a dollar and a half.
When I passed him next in the street he was very busy
amalgamating Chinese tramways. It appeared that there
was a ground floor in China, but I kept off it.
Each time I saw Ellesworth he looked a little shabbier
than the last. Then one day he called me up on the
telephone, and made an appointment.
His manner when I joined him was full of importance.
"I want you at once," he said in a commanding tone, "to
write me your cheque for a hundred dollars."
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"I am now able," said Ellesworth, "to put you in on the
ground floor of one of the biggest things in years."
"Thanks," I said, "the ground floor is no place for me."
"Don't misunderstand me," said Ellesworth. "This is a
big thing. It's an idea I've been working on for some
time,--making refined sugar from the huckleberry crop.
It's a certainty. I can get you shares now at five
dollars. They'll go to five hundred when we put them on
the market,--and I can run you in for a block of stock
for promotion services as well. All you have to do is
to give me right now a hundred dollars,--cash or your
cheque,--and I can arrange the whole thing for you."
I smiled.
"My dear Ellesworth," I said, "I hope you won't mind if
I give you a little bit of good advice. Why not drop all
this idea of quick money? There's nothing in it. The
business world has grown too shrewd for it. Take an
ordinary decent job and stick to it. Let me use my
influence," I added, "to try and get you into something
with a steady salary, and with your brains you're bound
to get on in time."
Ellesworth looked pained. A "steady job" sounded to him
like a "ground floor" to me.
After that I saw nothing of him for weeks. But I didn't
forget him. I looked about and secured for him a job as
a canvassing agent for a book firm at a salary of five
dollars a week, and a commission of one-tenth of one per
cent.
I was waiting to tell him of his good luck, when I chanced
to see him at the club again.
But he looked transformed.
He had on a long frock coat that reached nearly to his
knees. He was leading a little procession of very heavy
men in morning coats, upstairs towards the private luncheon
rooms. They moved like a funeral, puffing as they went.
I had seen company directors before and I knew what they
were at sight.
"It's a small club and rather inconvenient," Ellesworth
was saying, "and the horizon of some of its members rather
narrow," here he nodded to me as he passed,--"but I can
give you a fairly decent lunch."
I watched them as they disappeared upstairs.
"That's Ellesworth, isn't it?" said a man near me. It
was the same man who had asked about him before.
"Yes," I answered.
"Giving a lunch to his directors, I suppose," said my
friend; "lucky dog."
"His directors?" I asked.
"Yes, hadn't you heard? He's just cleaned up half a
million or more,--some new scheme for making refined
sugar out of huckleberries. Isn't it amazing what shrewd
ideas these big business men get hold of? They say they're
unloading the stock at five hundred dollars. It only cost
them about five to organize. If only one could get on to
one of these things early enough, eh?"
I assented sadly.
And the next time I am offered a chance on the ground
floor I am going to take it, even if it's only the barley
floor of a brewery.
It appears that there is such a place after all.
9.--The Hallucination of Mr. Butt
It is the hallucination of Mr. Butt's life that he lives
to do good. At whatever cost of time or trouble to himself,
he does it. Whether people appear to desire it or not,
he insists on helping them along.
His time, his company and his advice are at the service
not only of those who seek them but of those who, in the
mere appearances of things, are not asking for them.
You may see the beaming face of Mr. Butt appear at the
door of all those of his friends who are stricken with
the minor troubles of life. Whenever Mr. Butt learns that
any of his friends are moving house, buying furniture,
selling furniture, looking for a maid, dismissing a maid,
seeking a chauffeur, suing a plumber or buying a piano,--he
is at their side in a moment.
So when I met him one night in the cloak room of the club
putting on his raincoat and his galoshes with a peculiar
beaming look on his face, I knew that he was up to some
sort of benevolence.
"Come upstairs," I said, "and play billiards." I saw from
his general appearance that it was a perfectly safe offer.
"My dear fellow," said Mr. Butt, "I only wish I could.
I wish I had the time. I am sure it would cheer you up
immensely if I could. But I'm just going out."
"Where are you off to?" I asked, for I knew he wanted me
to say it.
"I'm going out to see the Everleigh-Joneses,--you know
them? no?--just come to the city, you know, moving into
their new house, out on Seldom Avenue."
"But," I said, "that's away out in the suburbs, is it
not, a mile or so beyond the car tracks?"
"Something like that," answered Mr. Butt.
"And it's going on for ten o'clock and it's starting to
rain--"
"Pooh, pooh," said Mr. Butt, cheerfully, adjusting his
galoshes. "I never mind the rain,--does one good. As to
their house. I've not been there yet but I can easily
find it. I've a very simple system for finding a house
at night by merely knocking at the doors in the neighborhood
till I get it."
"Isn't it rather late to go there?" I protested.
"My dear fellow," said Mr. Butt warmly, "I don't mind
that a bit. The way I look at it is, here are these two
young people, only married a few weeks, just moving into
their new house, everything probably upside down, no one
there but themselves, no one to cheer them up,"--he was
wriggling into his raincoat as he spoke and working
himself into a frenzy of benevolence,--"good gracious,
I only learned at dinner time that they had come to town,
or I'd have been out there days ago,--days ago--"
And with that Mr. Butt went bursting forth into the rain,
his face shining with good will under the street lamps.
The next day I saw him again at the club at lunch time.
"Well," I asked, "did you find the Joneses?"
"I did," said Mr. Butt, "and by George I was glad that
I'd gone--quite a lot of trouble to find the house (though
I didn't mind that; I expected it)--had to knock at twenty
houses at least to get it,--very dark and wet out there,
--no street lights yet,--however I simply pounded at the
doors until some one showed a light--at every house I
called out the same things, 'Do you know where the
Everleigh Joneses live?' They didn't. 'All right,' I
said, 'go back to bed. Don't bother to come down.'
"But I got to the right spot at last. I found the house
all dark. Jones put his head out of an upper window.
'Hullo,' I called out; 'it's Butt.' 'I'm awfully sorry,'
he said, 'we've gone to bed.' 'My dear boy,' I called
back, 'don't apologize at all. Throw me down the key and
I'll wait while you dress. I don't mind a bit.'
"Just think of it," continued Mr. Butt, "those two poor
souls going to bed at half past ten, through sheer
dullness! By George, I was glad I'd come. 'Now then,' I
said to myself, 'let's cheer them up a little, let's make
things a little brighter here.'
"Well, down they came and we sat there on furniture cases
and things and had a chat. Mrs. Jones wanted to make me
some coffee. 'My dear girl,' I said (I knew them both
when they were children) 'I absolutely refuse. Let ME
make it.' They protested. I insisted. I went at it,--kitchen
all upset--had to open at least twenty tins to get the
coffee. However, I made it at last. 'Now,' I said, 'drink
it.' They said they had some an hour or so ago. 'Nonsense,'
I said, 'drink it.' Well, we sat and chatted away till
midnight. They were dull at first and I had to do all
the talking. But I set myself to it. I can talk, you
know, when I try. Presently about midnight they seemed
to brighten up a little. Jones looked at his watch. 'By
Jove,' he said, in an animated way, 'it's after midnight.'
I think he was pleased at the way the evening was going;
after that we chatted away more comfortably. Every little
while Jones would say, 'By Jove, it's half past twelve,'
or 'it's one o'clock,' and so on.
"I took care, of course, not to stay too late. But when
I left them I promised that I'd come back to-day to help
straighten things up. They protested, but I insisted."
That same day Mr. Butt went out to the suburbs and put
the Joneses' furniture to rights.
"I worked all afternoon," he told me afterwards,--"hard
at it with my coat off--got the pictures up first--they'd
been trying to put them up by themselves in the morning.
I had to take down every one of them--not a single one
right,--'Down they come,' I said, and went at it with a
will."
A few days later Mr. Butt gave me a further report. "Yes,"
he said, "the furniture is all unpacked and straightened
out but I don't like it. There's a lot of it I don't
quite like. I half feel like advising Jones to sell it
and get some more. But I don't want to do that till I'm
quite certain about it."
After that Mr. Butt seemed much occupied and I didn't
see him at the club for some time.
"How about the Everleigh-Joneses?" I asked. "Are they
comfortable in their new house?"
Mr. Butt shook his head. "It won't do," he said. "I was
afraid of it from the first. I'm moving Jones in nearer
to town. I've been out all morning looking for an apartment;
when I get the right one I shall move him. I like an
apartment far better than a house."
So the Joneses in due course of time were moved. After
that Mr. Butt was very busy selecting a piano, and advising
them on wall paper and woodwork.
They were hardly settled in their new home when fresh
trouble came to them.
"Have you heard about Everleigh-Jones?" said Mr. Butt
one day with an anxious face.
"No," I answered.
"He's ill--some sort of fever--poor chap--been ill three
days, and they never told me or sent for me--just like
their grit--meant to fight it out alone. I'm going out
there at once."
From day to day I had reports from Mr. Butt of the
progress of Jones's illness.
"I sit with him every day," he said. "Poor chap,--he was
very bad yesterday for a while,--mind wandered--quite
delirious--I could hear him from the next room--seemed
to think some one was hunting him--'Is that damn old fool
gone,' I heard him say.
"I went in and soothed him. 'There is no one here, my
dear boy,' I said, 'no one, only Butt.' He turned over
and groaned. Mrs. Jones begged me to leave him. 'You
look quite used up,' she said. 'Go out into the open
air.' 'My dear Mrs. Jones,' I said, 'what DOES it matter
about me?'"
Eventually, thanks no doubt to Mr. Butt's assiduous care,
Everleigh-Jones got well.
"Yes," said Mr. Butt to me a few weeks later, "Jones is
all right again now, but his illness has been a long hard
pull. I haven't had an evening to myself since it began.
But I'm paid, sir, now, more than paid for anything I've
done,--the gratitude of those two people--it's unbelievable
--you ought to see it. Why do you know that dear little
woman is so worried for fear that my strength has been
overtaxed that she wants me to take a complete rest and
go on a long trip somewhere--suggested first that I should
go south. 'My dear Mrs. Jones,' I said laughing, 'that's
the ONE place I will not go. Heat is the one thing I
CAN'T stand.' She wasn't nonplussed for a moment. 'Then
go north,' she said. 'Go up to Canada, or better still
go to Labrador,'--and in a minute that kind little woman
was hunting up railway maps to see how far north I could
get by rail. 'After that,' she said, 'you can go on
snowshoes.' She's found that there's a steamer to Ungava
every spring and she wants me to run up there on one
steamer and come back on the next."
"It must be very gratifying," I said.
"Oh, it is, it is," said Mr. Butt warmly. "It's well
worth anything I do. It more than repays me. I'm alone
in the world and my friends are all I have. I can't tell
you how it goes to my heart when I think of all my friends,
here in the club and in the town, always glad to see me,
always protesting against my little kindnesses and yet
never quite satisfied about anything unless they can get
my advice and hear what I have to say.
"Take Jones for instance," he continued--"do you know,
really now as a fact,--the hall porter assures me of
it,--every time Everleigh-Jones enters the club here
the first thing he does is to sing out, 'Is Mr. Butt in
the club?' It warms me to think of it." Mr. Butt paused,
one would have said there were tears in his eyes. But if
so the kindly beam of his spectacles shone through them
like the sun through April rain. He left me and passed
into the cloak room.
He had just left the hall when a stranger entered, a
narrow, meek man with a hunted face. He came in with a
furtive step and looked about him apprehensively.
"Is Mr. Butt in the club?" he whispered to the hall
porter.
"Yes, sir, he's just gone into the cloak room, sir, shall
I--"
But the man had turned and made a dive for the front door
and had vanished.
"Who is that?" I asked.
"That's a new member, sir, Mr. Everleigh-Jones," said
the hall porter.
IV-Ram Spudd The New World Singer. Is He Divinely Inspired?
Or Is He Not? At Any Rate We Discovered Him.
[Footnote: Mr. Spudd was discovered by the author for
the New York Life. He is already recognized as superior
to Tennyson and second only, as a writer of imagination,
to the Sultan of Turkey.]
The discovery of a new poet is always a joy to the
cultivated world. It is therefore with the greatest
pleasure that we are able to announce that we ourselves,
acting quite independently and without aid from any of
the English reviews of the day, have discovered one. In
the person of Mr. Ram Spudd, of whose work we give
specimens below, we feel that we reveal to our readers
a genius of the first order. Unlike one of the most
recently discovered English poets who is a Bengalee, and
another who is a full-blooded Yak, Mr. Spudd is, we
believe, a Navajo Indian. We believe this from the
character of his verse. Mr. Spudd himself we have not
seen. But when he forwarded his poems to our office and
offered with characteristic modesty to sell us his entire
works for seventy-five cents, we felt in closing with
his offer that we were dealing not only with a poet, but
with one of nature's gentlemen.
Mr. Spudd, we understand, has had no education. Other
newly discovered poets have had, apparently, some. Mr.
Spudd has had, evidently, none. We lay stress on this
point. Without it we claim it is impossible to understand
his work.
What we particularly like about Ram Spudd, and we do not
say this because we discovered him but because we believe
it and must say it, is that he belongs not to one school
but to all of them. As a nature poet we doubt very much
if he has his equal; as a psychologist, we are sure he
has not. As a clear lucid thinker he is undoubtedly in
the first rank; while as a mystic he is a long way in
front of it. The specimens of Mr. Spudd's verse which we
append herewith were selected, we are happy to assure
our readers, purely at random from his work. We first
blindfolded ourselves and then, standing with our feet
in warm water and having one hand tied behind our back,
we groped among the papers on our desk before us and
selected for our purpose whatever specimens first came
to hand.
As we have said, or did we say it, it is perhaps as a
nature poet that Ram Spudd excels. Others of our modern
school have carried the observation of natural objects
to a high degree of very nice precision, but with Mr.
Spudd the observation of nature becomes an almost scientific
process. Nothing escapes him. The green of the grass he
detects as in an instant. The sky is no sooner blue than
he remarks it with unerring certainty. Every bird note,
every bee call, is familiar to his trained ear. Perhaps
we cannot do better than quote the opening lines of a
singularly beautiful sample of Ram Spudd's genius which
seems to us the last word in nature poetry. It is called,
with characteristic daintiness--
SPRING THAW IN THE
AHUNTSIC WOODS, NEAR PASPEBIAC,
PASSAMOQUODDY COUNTY
(We would like to say that, to our ears at least, there
is a music in this title like the sound of falling water,
or of chopped ice. But we must not interrupt ourselves.
We now begin. Listen.)
The thermometer is standing this morning at thirty-
three decimal one.
As a consequence it is freezing in the shade, but
it is thawing in the sun.
There is a certain amount of snow on the ground,
but of course not too much.
The air is what you would call humid, but not
disagreeable to the touch.
Where I am standing I find myself practically
surrounded by trees,
It is simply astonishing the number of the different
varieties one sees.
I've grown so wise I can tell each different tree
by seeing it glisten,
But if that test fails I simply put my ear to the
tree and listen,
And, well, I suppose it is only a silly fancy of
mine perhaps,
But do you know I'm getting to tell different trees
by the sound of their saps.
After I have noticed all the trees, and named those
I know in words,
I stand quite still and look all round to see if
there are any birds,
And yesterday, close where I was standing, sitting
in some brush on the snow,
I saw what I was practically absolutely certain was
an early crow.
I sneaked up ever so close and was nearly beside
it, when say!
It turned and took one look at me, and flew away.
But we should not wish our readers to think that Ram
Spudd is always and only the contemplative poet of the
softer aspects of nature. Oh, by no means. There are
times when waves of passion sweep over him in such
prodigious volume as to roll him to and fro like a pebble
in the surf. Gusts of emotion blow over him with such
violence as to hurl him pro and con with inconceivable
fury. In such moods, if it were not for the relief offered
by writing verse we really do not know what would happen
to him. His verse written under the impulse of such
emotions marks him as one of the greatest masters of
passion, wild and yet restrained, objectionable and yet
printable, that have appeared on this side of the Atlantic.
We append herewith a portion, or half portion, of his
little gem entitled
YOU
You!
With your warm, full, rich, red, ripe lips,
And your beautifully manicured finger-tips!
You!
With your heaving, panting, rapidly expanding and
contracting chest,
Lying against my perfectly ordinary shirt-front and
dinner-jacket vest.
It is too much
Your touch
As such.
It and
Your hand,
Can you not understand?
Last night an ostrich feather from your fragrant hair
Unnoticed fell.
I guard it
Well.
Yestere'en
From your tiara I have slid,
Unseen,
A single diamond,
And I keep it
Hid.
Last night you left inside the vestibule upon the sill
A quarter dollar,
And I have it
Still.
But even those who know Ram Spudd as the poet of nature
or of passion still only know a part of his genius. Some
of his highest flights rise from an entirely different
inspiration, and deal with the public affairs of the
nation. They are in every sense comparable to the best
work of the poets laureate of England dealing with similar
themes. As soon as we had seen Ram Spudd's work of this
kind, we cried, that is we said to our stenographer,
"What a pity that in this republic we have no laureateship.
Here is a man who might truly fill it." Of the poem of
this kind we should wish to quote, if our limits of space
did not prevent it, Mr. Spudd's exquisite
ODE ON THE REDUCTION OF THE
UNITED STATES TARIFF
It is a matter of the very gravest concern to at least
nine-tenths of the business interests in the
United States,
Whether an all-round reduction of the present tariff
either on an ad valorem or a specific basis
Could be effected without a serious disturbance of the
general industrial situation of the country.
But, no, we must not quote any more. No we really mustn't.
Yet we cannot refrain from inserting a reference to the
latest of these laureate poems of Ram Spudd. It appears
to us to be a matchless specimen of its class, and to
settle once and for all the vexed question (though we
ourselves never vexed it) of whether true poetry can deal
with national occasions as they arise. It is entitled:
THE BANKER'S EUTHANASIA: OR,
THE FEDERAL RESERVE CURRENCY
ACT OF 1914,
and, though we do not propose to reproduce it here, our
distinct feeling is that it will take its rank beside
Mr. Spudd's Elegy on the Interstate Commerce Act, and
his Thoughts on the Proposal of a Uniform Pure Food Law.
But our space does not allow us to present Ram Spudd in
what is after all his greatest aspect, that of a profound
psychologist, a questioner of the very meaning of life
itself. His poem Death and Gloom, from which we must
refrain from quoting at large, contains such striking
passages as the following:
Why do I breathe, or do I?
What am I for, and whither do I go?
What skills it if I live, and if I die,
What boots it?
Any one knowing Ram Spudd as we do will realize that
these questions, especially the last, are practically
unanswerable.
V.--Aristocratic Anecdotes or Little Stories of Great
People
I have been much struck lately by the many excellent
little anecdotes of celebrated people that have appeared
in recent memoirs and found their way thence into the
columns of the daily press. There is something about them
so deliciously pointed, their humour is so exquisite,
that I think we ought to have more of them. To this end
I am trying to circulate on my own account a few anecdotes
which seem somehow to have been overlooked.