Click! Click!
Goes my typewriter,
Transcribing letters
That the Boss dictates around
His chew
After he has discussed the weather,
And the squeak in his car,
And his young hopeful's latest,
And the L. of N.
Click! Click!
While he writes impudent
Things
For the Line
About the Stenos,
And asks me how to spell
The words.
Hark!
To the death rattle of
The cuspidor
Upset,
As he departs at two o'clock
To golf,
While I type on
Till five.
Agnes.
* * *
Mr. Gompers advises labor to accomplish its desires at the polls,
instead of chasing after the red gods of political theory. This is
excellently gomped, and will make as deep an impression as an autumn
leaf falling on a rock.
* * *
Since the so-called working classes are unable or unwilling to do so
simple a sum as dividing the total wealth of a nation by the number of
its inhabitants; since they cannot or will not understand that if the
profits of an industry are exceeded by the wages paid, the industry must
stop; since they only reason _a posteriori_ when that is well kicked,
and by themselves--it is fortunate that the United States has the
opportunity to watch the progress of the experiment now making in
England.
* * *
Nowadays the buying and dispatching of Christmas gifts is scientifically
made. One merely selects this or that and orders it sent to So-and So.
One turns in to a book store a list of titles and a list of names and
addresses, and the book store does the rest.
Consequently one misses the pleasant labor of tying up the gift, of
journeying to the post-office, to have it weighed and stamped, and of
dropping it through the slot and wondering whether the string will
break, or whether the package will go astray.
* * *
We were engaged in dropping newly-minted double-eagles into the
Christmas stockings of our contributors when an auto truck got mired
near our chamber window, and the roar of it woke us up.
* * *
Japanese, Chinese, Hindus, and other Orientals are disliked, not because
of race or color, but because they are willing to work. Anyone who is
willing to work in these times is, like the needy knife-grinder, a
wretch whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance.
* * *
Washladies get more money for less work than any other members of the
leisure class, with the exception of the persons who work on putting
greens. In addition to their wage, they get car-fare and two or three
meals. Why? Because it is not generally known that a mere man, with a
washing machine and a bucket of solution, can do more washing in three
hours than a washlady does in three days.
* * *
What do they mean "industrial unrest"? Industry never rested so
frequently or for such protracted periods.
* * *
The natives of Salvador can neither read nor write, but their happy days
are numbered. The Baptist church is going to spend three millions on
their conversion. Their capacity for resistance is not so great as that
of the Chinese. Do you remember what Henry Ward Beecher said of the
Chinese? "We have clubbed them, stoned them, burned their houses, and
murdered some of them, yet they refuse to be converted. I do not know
any way except to blow them up with nitroglycerine, if we are ever to
get them to heaven."
* * *
"Do you not know," writes Persephone, "that with the coming of all this
water, all imagination and adventure have fled the world?" Just what we
were thinking t'other evening, when we dissipated a few hours with our
good gossip the Doctor. "I am," said he, pouring out a meditative
three-fingers, "in favor of prohibition; and I believe that some
substitute for this stuff will be found."
We pursued that lane of thought a while, until it debouched into a
desert. The Doctor then took down the works of Byron, and read
aloud--touching the high spots in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,"
"Don Juan," "Childe Harold," "The Prisoner of Chillon"--pausing ever and
anon to replenish the glasses. It was midnight ere the book was returned
to its shelf.
It was a delightful evening. And we wondered whether, without the
excellent bourbon and the cigars, we should not have had enough of
Byron by 10:30.
* * *
An English publisher binds all his books in red because, having watched
women choosing books in the libraries, he found that they looked first
at the red-bound ones. Does that coincide with your experience, my dear?
* * *
Our interest in Mr. Wells' "Outline of History" has been practically
ruined by learning from a geologist that Mr. Wells' story of creation is
frightfully out of date. Should he not have given another twenty-four
hours to so large an opus?
* * *
Visiting English authors have a delightful trick of diagramming their
literary allusions. Only the few are irritated by it.
* * *
"And as I am in no sense a lecturer..."--Mr. Chesterton.
Seemingly the knowledge of one's limitations as a public entertainer
does not preclude one from accepting a fee five or ten times larger than
one would receive in London. We are languidly curieux de savoir how far
the American equivalent would get in the English capital.
* * *
You cannot "make Chicago literary" by moving the magazine market to that
city. Authors lay the scenes of their stories in New York rather than in
Chicago, because readers prefer to have the scene New York, just as
English readers prefer London to Manchester or Liverpool. If a story is
unusually interesting it is of no consequence where the scene is laid,
but most stories are only so-so and have to borrow interest from
geography.
* * *