Oswald, there, is a sad case. He knows too much and that, you know, is
very dangerous. He always wears his hair that way. It would be such
nice hair if it were properly cared for. His clothing is quite modest
too, but look how sloppy it is. Really he is a nice fellow, though.
You will find if you talk to him for any length of time that he really
hasn’t much time for this sort of thing but thinks he must do it for
relaxation.
That is where he makes his first sad mistake. All of us resent people
who throw themselves into play because they think they should. Their
sense of well being tells them that they must do it; they must, they
must. We want people who do this sort of thing because they really
enjoy doing it. Spontaneity is everything to the pleasures of life.
But that is not the only thing that Oswald does to insult. He
insists on bringing his laboratory with him. He is a firm believer
in bio-chemistry and looks at each girl while dancing with her as if
she were some sort of elementary plant or animal organism. When some
flapper or other becomes quite ecstatic over a strain of music or a
nice looking fellow (the latter is bad technique on her part) he will
invariably tell her that her reaction had nothing to do with her soul
at all but was just chemical. I forgot to say that Oswald has probably
informed her before that she is nothing but a sort of animated test
tube and that all this stuff she has been saying about her thrills and
her spirit and her soul are utter hooey.
Need I explain to you why it is that we don’t like to dance with
Oswald. Of course, he is amusing for a while but when you get past that
part of him and find that he is really a very bad dancer, where are you
and what have you?
Of course, we don’t mind hobbies being aired in public. We have those
ourselves. And there is another thing, if you can talk quite amusingly
about your work, that’s fine, but if you cannot, let there be silence.