LIGHT INTERVIEWS WITH SHADES
ROBERT WEBSTER JONES
LIGHT INTERVIEWS
WITH SHADES
BY
ROBERT WEBSTER JONES
[Illustration]
Publishers DORRANCE Philadelphia
COPYRIGHT 1922
DORRANCE & COMPANY, INC.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
I BLUEBEARD TELLS WHY HE KILLED WIVES 11
II QUEEN ELIZABETH DISCLOSES WHY SHE NEVER MARRIED 20
III JOHN PAUL JONES AND A GROGLESS NAVY 29
IV JOSHUA ADVISES DAYLIGHT SAVING 37
V KING SOLOMON’S FAMILY VACATION TRIP 43
VI BRIGHAM YOUNG ENDORSES WOMAN SUFFRAGE 50
VII HIPPOCRATES ON MODERN DOCTORS 56
VIII METHUSELAH GIVES LONGEVITY SECRETS 66
IX JESSE JAMES TALKS ON TIPPING 75
X SHAKESPEARE MENTIONS MOVIES 80
XI ADAM CONDEMNS PRESENT FASHIONS 88
XII CAPTAIN KIDD SPEAKS ON TAG DAYS 96
XIII ALFRED THE GREAT TRIES TO FIND PROSPEROUS KING 102
XIV OLD KING COLE GIVES VIEWS ON PROHIBITION 111
XV KING HENRY VIII ADMITS SOME MATRIMONIAL MISTAKES 116
XVI DON QUIXOTE SAYS HE “WASN’T SO CRAZY AS SOME MODERN REFORMERS” 123
XVII PHARAOH SOLVES SERVANT PROBLEM 129
XVIII NERO DISCUSSES JAZZ 137
XIX LORD BACON MUSES ON CIPHERS 145
LIGHT INTERVIEWS WITH SHADES
I
BLUEBEARD TELLS WHY HE KILLED WIVES
I drew this assignment to interview the shade of Bluebeard because our
girl reporter backed out at the last minute,—said she had no objection to
a nice, ladylike assignment such as getting Pharaoh’s daughter to talk
about Annette Kellerman or having a chat with Joan of Ark, or whatever
Mrs. Noah’s name was, but she balked at calling on a wife murderer who
had never been introduced.
If I had not been warned in advance I should have thought this was surely
an impostor—a barefaced one, too, for he wore no beard—to whose room I
was ushered by a bellboy of the Olympus Hotel.
“Surprised at my appearance, eh?” he chuckled. “Everybody is. Expect to
see a ferocious-looking monster with a long blue beard and a bowie knife
sticking out of his belt. It’s about time the folks down below got the
real facts, not only of my appearance but of my character. That’s why
I’ve consented for the first time to talk for publication. I want to be
set right in the eyes of those mistaken mortals. You are a young man and
unmarried, I presume, from your happy, carefree countenance. Well, then,
here is a thing I hope you’ll learn by heart: where singleness is bliss
’tis folly to have wives. I’ve tried it and I know. I, too, was once a
happy, cheerful, careless bachelor, like Adam, you know. And like Adam I
didn’t get my eyes opened until after marriage. By the way, speaking of
Adam, did you ever pause to think that not until marriage came into the
world did man have to dig for a living? Yet I digress. What I started out
to say was that marriage is an excellent institution, but like all good
things, it can be overdone. My mistake was in being too idealistic. I had
resolved to find the ideal, the perfect wife, the kind you read about in
poetry (a perfect woman, nobly planned, to warn, to comfort and command).
Well, my first wife laid too much emphasis on the ‘command.’ She took it
literally. I found I had made a mistake and decided to bury it. If at
first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Clementina was her name. She was
not of a trustful nature. Invariably her first greeting on my returning
home late at night took the sharply interrogatory form: ‘Where have you
been?’ Frequently I would have been glad to tell her, only I could not
remember. It has been said that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder,’
but it did not seem to work out that way worth a cent at three o’clock
in the morning. We had words, she seeking to obtain what she termed the
‘last’ one. But still there were always more to follow.
“I came in time to feel that I did not possess that treasure of
treasures, a wife’s perfect confidence in her husband. One night, I
remember, I started to get into bed with my overcoat on. It was merely a
bit of harmless absent-mindedness. But Clementina continued to refer to
the trifling incident daily, and nightly, for weeks afterwards. She even
communicated the circumstance to friends and relatives, including her
maternal parent, who naturally had no interest in the subject. When we
were invited out to dinner she employed the incident as a conversational
topic. I begged her to desist. She refused. I realized that it was high
time to ‘try again.’ I need not go into details. But Clementina ceased
to trouble and the weary was at rest. The coroner was a personal friend
of mine. I had voted for him in three different precincts, and he kindly
brought in a verdict of ‘justifiable uxoricide,’ or something of that
sort, and everything was nice and comfortable.
“That was Clementina. Now let me see—let me see—who came next? Susannah?
No, she was Number Three, I’m pretty sure. My memory isn’t what it used
to be, but if I only had my old card index here I could tell you in
two seconds. Sapphira? No, she came later. Oh, now I’ve got it: Maria.
Yes, I had to get rid of Maria within a year. Nice, amiable girl she
was, too, in most respects. Always had the meals on time, never hauled
me out at night to call on the new neighbors, would rather darn socks
for her husband than crochet a new sweater for herself, and had an
impediment in her speech. I’d often heard there were such women, with
impediments in their speech, but had never met one before. I thought it
was a recommendation, but I was mistaken. It only made her take that
much longer to say what she was going to say, anyway. When Maria and
the impediment clashed it was always Maria that finally won out. But it
took time. Verbally Maria required a long time to pass a given point,
but she kept on until she passed it. Maria had one great fault. You’re
not married, young man, and you may not grasp this defect in all its
hideousness. But this was it: she always talked to me when I was trying
to shave.
“At that time I wore a beard, but no side-whiskers, and I shaved every
morning before breakfast. It was Maria’s invariable habit to stand
at the bathroom door and engage in conversation—or rather monologue
interspersed with questions. In consequence I got to spending more money
for court-plaster than for shaving soap. A man stopped me on the street
one day, gave a second look at my liberally-scarred countenance, and
hailed me as a fellow graduate of Heidelberg. Finally, I decided that
this business had gone on long enough. I gave Maria fair warning. The
very next morning she stuck her head in at the door, just as I was trying
to steer around a pimple below my right ear, and told me not to forget
to bring home those lamb chops for dinner. I cut a gash an inch long and
dropped the razor on the floor. That was Maria’s farewell appearance.
There was no demand for an encore. The coroner kindly found that the
impediment in her speech had stuck in her throat and she had choked to
death. He was a good scout.
“And now we come to Susannah, Number Three, Series N. G. Susannah started
out splendidly. She came highly recommended. I thought she was going to
be one of the best wives I ever had. But, like all the others, she soon
disclosed a fatal failing. I call it ‘fatal’ because it always turned
out that way for all my wives. It may seem a trifle to you, young man,
but that’s because you’ve never been married. The trouble was this, and
it soon got on my sensitive nerves: the only time I could get Susannah’s
absorbed, undivided attention was when I talked in my sleep. Then, I
have reason to believe, she would sit up and listen by the hour. But at
other times she might as well have been totally deaf, so far as paying
attention to what I was trying to say was concerned. She always seemed
to be thinking of something—I hope it wasn’t somebody—else. I’d start
telling her about a business deal I’d just put through with some fellows
up at Bagdad, or begin discussing the chances of the Damascus ball team
for winning the pennant next year, and before I’d talked ten minutes I’d
see as plain as day that she wasn’t hearing a word I said.
“She’d contracted the crocheting habit, too—I don’t know where she
picked it up—and she’d work away, whispering to herself and nodding at
me every now and then, until I thought I’d go wild. One night while I
was right in the midst of telling her a funny story I’d heard at the
Khayyam Country Club, she actually interrupted me to remark that she’d
just found a new way of purling 14 by casting off 11 and dropping 34,
or something of the sort, and I just up and—and— Well, there’s no need
to harrow your feelings. Suffice it to say that I added one more to the
Association of Former Mothers-in-Law of Bluebeard. Whenever one of my
wives departed this life rather suddenly the ex-mothers-in-law always
held a sort of indignation meeting. Sometimes they passed resolutions,
too. But it didn’t seem to do any good. Just advertised the fact that I
was a widower again. Didn’t seem to prejudice the girls against me. In
fact, one leap-year I had to get a lot of rejection slips printed, like
the magazine editors use, for replying to proposals. I read somewhere
once that it always made a fellow popular to get a reputation as a
lady-killer, and I seem to have proved it.
“And so it went. All the undertakers in town were trying to stand in
with me. But I thought they went a little too far when they adopted
a set of appreciative resolutions and invited me to address their
annual convention. Some folks have no sense of propriety. The preachers
showed more tact. It’s true that one offered to do all my marrying
on the basis of a yearly contract, but that was a strictly private,
business arrangement, the same as I had with the firm of caterers and
liverymen which supplied both cakes and camels. I could go on all
night telling you about my other wives and the causes of their sudden
shufflings-off—Sapphira, who objected to my smoking in the front
parlor; Anastasia, who believed the adjective ‘annual,’ as applied to
house-cleanings, meant every week; Boadicea, who was strong for women’s
rights, but refused to go downstairs first to tackle the burglar; Sheba,
who took me along when she went shopping and parked me for two hours
outside a department store; Delilah the Second, who wanted to cut my
hair so as to save enough money to get herself a new winter hat, as if
my overhead charges weren’t high enough already. These are just a few
samples from my souvenir collection of matrimonial misfits that I happen
to recall offhand. The proverb says, ‘A word to the wives is sufficient,’
but I never found it so. Not by a long shot. I found action more
effective than words. They say bigamy means one wife too many; but so
does monogamy sometimes. If my experience helps other married men I shall
be glad to have given this interview. I like to talk, because nowadays I
feel I can do so without interrupting some wife or other. Just one word
more, and then good night:
“There is no marrying in heaven. Fools rush in where angels fear to
tread.”
II
QUEEN ELIZABETH DISCLOSES WHY SHE NEVER MARRIED
“Nothing would have induced me to talk for publication,” said Queen
Elizabeth, as she negligently lit a cigarette and with a graceful gesture
invited me to take a seat, “if you hadn’t printed that interview with
that horrid old Bluebeard last week. They used to say that I was a
heartless coquette, and that all the men were losing their heads over me.
Well, if a young man had come to ask me, around the year 1588, why I had
never married—as you have just done—he’d have lost his head in just about
the time it would have taken the chief executioner to respond to a hurry
call. But times have changed and we change with them. History has done
many cruel wrongs to my memory, and I want to be set right. I didn’t stay
single for lack of proposals, I can tell you. Why, before I was sixteen
the front yard of our palace looked like a college campus, it was so full
all the time of young men carrying flowers and boxes of candy and ringing
the doorbell, wanting to know if Princess Elizabeth were in. I had every
other girl in England jealous of me, if I do say it myself. But I saw too
much of marriage at home. My father did enough marrying for the whole
family.
“Life got to be just one stepmother after another. I began to lose
count. I decided that one member of the family had given enough of a
boost to the institution of matrimony, and it didn’t need any further
endorsement from me. I soon appreciated the truth of the saying, ‘Man
proposes.’ I got so many proposals I had my maids of honor knit a lot
of mittens to hand to the fellows as a souvenir. Finally the men saw I
was in earnest and let me alone; that is to say, most of them. A few
foolish fellows continued to write poetry (that is what they called it)
and send presents, but my mind was made up and I refused to change it. It
was about this time that our court fool remarked that woman’s favorite
occupations were changing her mind, her clothes and her name. And about
five minutes afterward he changed his permanent address to the Tower of
London. All the world’s a stage, as my friend Shakespeare used to say,
and ninety-nine out of a hundred men consider themselves perfectly
equipped for the rôle of comedian. But it’s possible to be too fatally
funny.
“Now, about that interview with Brother Bluebeard last week. I suppose
he thought _he_ was funny when he said about the only time a man gets
his wife’s absorbed, undivided attention is when he talks in his sleep.
But that’s about the only time a man says anything worth listening to.
It just made my blood boil—that man Bluebeard calmly talking about the
wives he’d killed. Not that I believe half of it. He was only boasting.
And that reminds me: there used to be an organization called the
Ananias Club. But who ever heard of a Sapphira Club? There wouldn’t be
enough members to hold a meeting in a telephone booth. But ‘all men are
liars,’ and married ones have more ready-made opportunities. It has been
estimated that in a married lifetime of forty years the average man will
be called upon to answer the perfectly reasonable inquiry, ‘Where have
you been?’ 14,610 times. This calculation allows for 365 answers in each
ordinary year and 366 in leap-years. And when her husband replies to her
altogether proper interrogation, too often the wife realizes, like the
Queen of Sheba, that the half has not been told her.
“From Ananias to Munchausen and down to the modern press agent, the
experts at exaggeration have all been men. Fishermen’s tales and sailors’
yarns are proverbial. A woman trying to tell a lie feels like a fish out
of water, and at the first opportunity flops back into the ocean of truth.
“There’s another slander on women I’d like to say a few words about,
and that’s the charge of talkativeness. Men have always flocked to the
talkative professions like ducks to water. Most lawyers and barbers are
men. Are there any women auctioneers? There are few women preachers.
There was a time when all the talking in the world was done by one man,
but there was no conversation until the arrival of Eve. She did the
listening. It is essential to conversation that there be a listener, and
man’s happiness was not complete until there was somebody to hear him
talk. The average husband loves to deliver home lectures on baseball in
summer and politics in winter. Here we have the reason for the popularity
of women’s clubs. No man being present, they have a chance to talk. Go
into any church Sunday morning and what do you see? An audience composed
principally of women listening to a man talking. The recording angel
who tries to keep up with a man has to be an expert at taking lightning
dictation. One of the newest works in three large volumes is entitled,
‘Last Words of Great Men.’ The edition makes no pretensions to being
complete. That, of course, would be impossible when we have had so many
great men, all of them talking steadily to the last. But it is worth
noting that we have only meagre records of the last words of any great
woman. Poor thing! With her husband, and a man doctor and a clergyman at
her bedside, what chance would she have?
“I’ll admit that there have been a few of the so-called great men of
history who have not been noted for their love of talk, but when such
a man is discovered everybody calls attention to him as if he were a
genuine curiosity of nature. He is usually given a nickname indicative of
his peculiarity, such as William the Silent, and people travel miles to
get a look at him. Practically every man is Speaker of the House, and in
his case the title is no misnomer. For instance, it’s a question whether
all the ancient martyrs put together ever said as much about their
sufferings as one modern man with a boil on his neck. Man even goes ahead
and invents new languages like Esperanto and baseball, and golf.
“Wives of great men most remind us that they talked all of the time,
and departing left behind them words that were not worth a dime. Isn’t
that what one of your own American poets said? Sounds something like it,
anyway.
“But you wanted to know just why I never married. Well, it was because
of these nasty flings at women by the men that I’ve just been speaking
of. If they say such things before marriage, what won’t they say after?
They’re always talking about women’s curiosity, starting with Eve and the
apple. I suppose if there had been a _Saturday Eden Post_, Adam would
have written alleged jokes about it or run a funny department called
‘Musings of a Married Man.’ I blame that Eve and her apple story for this
eternal joshing about feminine curiosity. You needn’t look surprised,
young man. I’m talking twentieth not sixteenth century language these
days, and since yours is a family newspaper probably it’s just as well
that I am. When I was queen you’d have thought the English language
consisted principally of proper nouns and improper adjectives. We called
a spade a spade, and then some. If a lady disliked a gentleman she didn’t
say he was a mean old thing. She began by calling him a diabolical
blackguard and horse thief, and then gradually grew abusive.
“Woman’s curiosity! All the census-takers and private detectives and
professional Paul Pry’s who stick their noses into other people’s
businesses are men. So are all the explorers, the individuals who are so
curious to find out what’s going on at the other end of the earth that
they can’t content themselves at home. If, in the history of the world,
a woman has ever been seized by an overwhelming desire to see what the
North Pole looks like, she has cleverly concealed the fact. While the
men were organizing North Pole and South Pole expeditions, and relief
expeditions, and expeditions to rescue the relief expeditions, the
wives and mothers remained patiently on the job at home. And when the
missing discoverers came back covered with hero medals, and suffering
from chilblains, and writer’s cramp, and lecturer’s sore throat, and
coupon-clipper’s thumb, the women never asked why heroine medals seem
so scarce these days. Talk about curiosity! There’s a universal inquiry
which is being put by some man to some woman in some part of the world
at every second of every minute of the twenty-four hours, and it is
this: ‘What did you do with that LAST money I gave you?’ There it is
again, that insatiable curiosity of man which will not let him rest. Man
is a perambulating question mark, the personification of the rising
inflection, a chronic case of interrogationitis. And he has the nerve to
talk about woman’s curiosity!”
“How about Sir Walter Raleigh?”
“Ah, young man, there are exceptions to every rule, and a woman is
generally willing to take an exception. Walter was an awfully nice
fellow, at first, but I was dreadfully disappointed in him. Do you know,
that business of the velvet cloak and the mud puddle was only what you
would call a grandstand play? I found out later. It was his last winter’s
cloak, and he was just on his way to the Charing Cross rummage sale to
give it away, when he happened to meet me. I know it’s so, because I
got it straight at the meeting of the Westminster Sewing Society from
the Countess of Leicester’s sister-in-law, who said she was told by the
cousin of a woman who knew an intimate friend of a friend of Walter
Raleigh’s aunt. And she said he actually laughed about it afterward!
“Do you wonder I stayed single? Perhaps I’ve said too much already, but
one word more and I am finished. Do you know, young man, why women say
marriage is a lottery? It is because they draw most of the blanks.”
Subdued, but with a sigh of relief, I withdrew hastily from the royal
presence, feeling that “man’s inhumanity to man” wouldn’t be a marker to
what would have happened to Queen Elizabeth’s husband.
III
JOHN PAUL JONES AND A GROGLESS NAVY
“Interview your great-uncle and find out what he thinks of our modern
navy,” said the city editor.
“My great-uncle?” I asked.
“Admiral J. Paul Jones. Wasn’t he one of your distinguished relatives?
You’ve got the same name.”
“Oh, Uncle John? I believe we are related, but he was one of the rough
specimens—sort of a piece of bark on the family tree—other side of the
family, you know.”
“Well, you may find his bark worse than his bite.”
“Which planet is his shade living on now, do you know?”
“Neptune, I presume.”
And that is where I found him. He gave me genial greeting.
“Shiver my timbers, but I’m glad to see you. Come alongside and cast
anchor, my lad, and tell me what wind blew you here.”
I explained that the mighty world below was palpitating for a few timely
remarks from its old fighting hero.
“Fire away, then,” he replied. “What’s the first question?”
“Do you believe, Admiral,” I asked, “that a navy can be run on water—that
is to say, of course, the ships have to run on water ... but I mean the
men. Do you think——” And then I got tangled up and came to a full stop,
for the expression on the old sea dog’s face was a mixture of puzzlement
and pugnacity.
“What do you mean?” he roared. “Not to give the men water in place of
grog?”
His attitude was positively menacing. I began to grow nervous.
“Why—er—that is the idea, Admiral. Do you believe it is possible to
conduct a navy efficiently on prohibition principles?”
“Prohibition? Never heard the word before. And now that I have heard it
I don’t like the sound of it. What are you jibbing and windjamming in
this way for? Come right out and run up your true colors. Do you mean to
tell me that anybody is seriously proposing to do away with grog in the
American Navy? I’d hang the dastardly rascal from the yard-arm. Walking
the plank would be too good for him.”
“Well, Admiral, you might as well know the whole truth. Grog has not
only been abolished in the Navy (and that took place some years ago),
grog has been abolished throughout the country. Liquor can neither be
manufactured nor sold anywhere in the United States.”
Perhaps I should have broken the startling news to the old fellow more
gently. But instead of the expected outburst of anger he sat stunned,
still as a statue, or a speak-easy in Harlem.
For two minutes or more he kept silent. Then he spoke. “Say it again,” he
muttered in a weak tone, “and say it slow.”
I complied.
“No grog for them as fights the battles, no whiskey, no brandy, no
shandy-gaff, no Jamaikey rum, nothin’ but milk and water. What kind o’
putty-faced swabs—But I needn’t ask. I see it now. You’ve been conquered
by them Turks and water-drinking Mohammedans. But who’d have thought it?”
And he shook his grizzled head disconsolately. “No whiskey, no brandy,
no shandy-gaff, no Jamaikey rum,” he went on muttering to himself as in
a daze, over and over again, until I thought it might be advisable to
recall him to himself.
“America thinks a great deal of you, Admiral,” I interrupted his
melancholy monologue. “The nation cherishes the memory of your thrilling
exploits. It will never forget your heroic deeds.”
The old Admiral brightened up a bit at this, but quickly relapsed into
his melancholy mood. “No whiskey, no brandy—” he began again, when I
tried the effect of another diversion.
“The nation is still safe, Admiral, and it has the largest number of
ships and sailors in its history. The recent great war produced its
heroes, too. We do not lack for defenders, you will be glad to know, if
ever America is assailed again.”
“Yes, I’ve heard something about it,” he grumblingly admitted. “There’s a
new-fangled cowardly sort of craft that goes under water and stabs in the
back, a regular assassin, I call it. Farragut and Perry and some of the
boys went down to perform at a seance in Philadelphia the other night,
and they heard a lot of talk about your new naval heroes that have made
us back numbers. There was Sims, and Daniels, and Benson, and—and—Admiral
What’s-his-name? I can’t just think of it. Gray? No, that’s not it
exactly. Admiral—Admiral—”
“Not Grayson?”
“Yes, that’s it, Rear Admiral Grayson. His flagship was the _George
Washington_, I believe. And Admiral Denby, what did he do? I just can’t
recollect on the moment.”
“Mr. Denby is not an Admiral; he’s the Secretary of the Navy. He’s not
supposed to go to sea. He sits at a desk, instead of standing on a deck.”
“Oh, I see. But Rear Admiral Grayson? I wish you would describe some of
his exploits to me.”
“Well-er—that’s a little difficult to explain, Admiral Jones, for you
have been so long out of touch with our system. Admiral Grayson is really
a doctor, and—”
“You mean the admirals say he is a doctor and the doctors say he is an
admiral?”
“Oh, no, Admiral, not so bad as that. He is a medical admiral, not a
fighting admiral. Rear Doctor—I mean Rear Admiral—Grayson was a naval
surgeon, and he has been regularly promoted to the post of rear admiral.
His job was looking after the President’s health, and all agree that he
tendered good service.”
“Oh, a medical admiral, eh?” grumbled the old sea dog in a disappointed
tone. “So that’s what he is. I can see him now, standing on the bridge of
the good ship _Calomel_, stethoscope in hand, studying the symptoms of
the approaching foe, writing the battle orders on prescription blanks
and getting ready to fire a volley of quinine pills, three times a day
before meals, at the hated enemy. I can see him taking the temperatures
of the crew before going into action, and then, with a lancet in one hand
and a scalpel in the other, preparing to repel boarders. I can see him
charging the enemy (five dollars a visit, half price for office calls,
consultations fifteen, operations, what you’ve got), I can hear the
ringing words of command to candidates for vaccination: ‘Present arms.’
I can see him, with his trusty clinical thermometer and his rapid firing
hypodermic, bravely—”
“You’ve got the wrong idea, entirely, Admiral Jones,” I hastened to
interrupt. “It’s different from your day. None of our admirals do any
hand-to-hand encounters. There are no more clashes at close quarters.
Sometimes ships fight each other four or five miles apart.”
The grizzled veteran looked as if he scarcely understood what I was
saying.
“No coming together with grappling irons, and fighting it out fair and
square with pistols and cutlasses on the quarterdeck? A modern naval
battle is just a long-distance artillery duel between Sunday School
classes composed of total abstainers, as likely as not commanded by a
specialist on whooping cough and measles? I guess it’s a good thing I
shuffled off when I did. In my time a sea fight was more a matter of men
than of machinery. I wouldn’t know how to go about it today. Everything
is changed. I’m sure I’d forget to order a double round of hot lemonade
for all the crew, instead of a stiff glass of grog, before going into an
engagement. I must tell Farragut about it. I suppose they wouldn’t let
him say anything stronger than ‘_Darn_ the torpedoes,’ or ‘Oh, fudge,’
if he were down on the job today. And Commodore Perry: ‘We have met the
enemy and made ’em all sign the pledge.’ That’s the sort of message
he’d be expected to send nowadays. I suppose with all these new-fangled
inventions you’ve been telling me about, wireless, and range-finders,
and searchlights, and turbines, and seaplanes and torpedoes and all the
rest of ’em, a fellow has to stay sober to work ’em. In my day we always
considered that a man fought better when he was about three sheets in the
wind. I don’t say our ways were perfect, but I’m sure I wouldn’t feel
at home on one of your big floating machine shops. I’d forget myself
sometimes and want to get close enough to the enemy to see him without a
telescope—or a stethoscope.
“Well, you’ll have to excuse me now, my lad. I have a date with Lord
Nelson for three o’clock, to join in the historic and comforting ceremony
known as splicing the main brace. I’ll break the news to him about what
you’ve just been telling me. He’ll need a bracer after he hears it.”
And as the old hero hobbled away I could hear him muttering to himself:
“No whiskey, no brandy, no shandy-gaff, no Jamaikey rum; water, water
everywhere, but not a drop o’ drink.”
IV
JOSHUA ADVISES DAYLIGHT SAVING
“How about an interview with one of the shades on daylight saving?” I
suggested timidly, as the city editor was racking what he calls his brain
in search of a suitable assignment.
“Right! Get hold of one of the old astronomers, Galileo, or Ike Newton,
or—or—”
“How would Joshua do?”
“Joshua? You don’t mean Josh Whitcomb? He wasn’t a real character. He was
only—”
“No, I mean the Biblical Joshua—fellow who made the sun stand still.
That’s what our modern clock-fixers are trying to do. And as the pioneer,
the original inventor of the scheme, a few views on his twentieth century
imitators ought to be interesting.”
“Go to it. He can’t make the situation any more confusing than it is
already.”
I found the ancient prophet reclining under his own vine and fig tree,
studying a brightly colored seed catalogue. With alacrity he accepted my
invitation to talk for publication.
“Daylight saving, eh?” he mused. “It’s odd how you moderns never seem
to get any ideas of your own. Always the same old thing over again.
There’s nothing new under the sun. And now you’re trying to beat old
Tempus Fidgets with what you imagine is a brand new scheme, but really is
older than Solomon’s mother-in-law. What do you expect to get out of it,
anyway?”
I started to explain how getting up an hour earlier in the morning
through putting the clocks ahead gave us an additional hour of daylight
at the other end of the day, when the old prophet cut in: “Just fooling
yourselves, eh, a great, big game of make-believe by grown-ups in order
to have a little more time for play? You move the clock forward and
pretend it’s an hour later, by general agreement? Well, why don’t you
extend the idea while you’re about it and apply it to other things
besides clocks and time?”
“What, for instance, Mr. Joshua?”
“Well, take the thermometer, an instrument that’s been invented since
my time. When I lived on earth we never suffered much from either heat
or cold, because we hadn’t any thermometers to tell us that we were
uncomfortable. If it were one hundred and ten in the mighty scarce shade
out on the desert, we didn’t know it. Eighty-five or a hundred and
fifteen—it was all the same to us. We never had any hot waves. There were
no daily lists of heat victims. The thermometer liar was unknown. Nobody
was initiated into the Ananias Club for boasting that the thermometer on
his back porch hadn’t in fifteen years varied a degree from the official
weatherman’s. We may have felt a little warmer under the mantle some
days than others, but we couldn’t tell in degrees how uncomfortable we
were, and so we were spared a lot of suffering. It’s the thermometer
that makes you moderns take such a morbid interest in the weather.
If you hadn’t any means of measuring the heat and the cold, why, you
wouldn’t care anything about them. I was a prophet, but I never went so
far as to dare to prophesy the weather. I knew my limitations. But your
government guessers, backed up by their thermometers, seem willing to
take any chances. Now, I suppose it’s too much to expect you to abolish
your worrisome thermometers entirely, but why not take a hint from your
daylight saving business and tinkering with the clock twice a year, and
do a little fixing of your thermometers?
“For example? Well, for a beginning you would have to adopt a new kind
of thermometer with changeable or removable figures. On April first of
each year let everybody mark his thermometer down ten degrees. That is to
say, the present figure ninety would be replaced by eighty, and eighty by
seventy, and so on. The first hot spell would prove the practicability
of the device. The scheme is purely psychological, of course, but so is
daylight saving. Under the old pessimistic thermometer, which has done so
much to encourage the Society for the Promotion of Justifiable Profanity,
the temperature, we will say, would be eighty-five degrees in the shade,
provided you could find any. But according to the marked-down thermometer
it would be only seventy-five, just warm enough to sit comfortably on
the front porch and smoke your pipe and read the paper while your wife
was washing the dishes in the kitchen. Then in mid-July along comes
what, under the old arrangement, would have been a regular scorcher,
with the mercury registering ninety-two and all the meteorological
Munchausens in town down at the corner drugstore boasting that their pet
instruments were registering one hundred and two plus, in the shade. But
the optimistic thermometer, operating under the universal heat-saving
law, would record only eighty-two degrees. And everybody would be
comparatively cool and comfortable. In fact, you would practically never
have it ninety degrees in your climate.
“Think what that would mean to perspiring humanity! For we all know how
the thermometer affects our feelings. And the optimistic thermometer
would work just as well in winter as in summer. It would only be
necessary to mark it up ten extra degrees in October. Then you would
have mighty few zero days. The saving in coal would be tremendous, for
we all regulate the heating apparatus by the thermometer instead of the
feelings. The optimistic thermometer in winter would register seventy
degrees in the living room when the old-fashioned instrument would have
made it only sixty. Isn’t that as sensible as daylight saving?”
“It is certainly a novel idea, Mr. Joshua,” I replied in a non-committal
tone. “You seem to be carrying out to the logical extreme the Scriptural
theory that as a man thinketh in his heart so is he. Do you know of any
other practical application of the principle?”
“It is capable of indefinite extension,” responded the ancient prophet.
“Take the matter of people’s ages. Lots of folks are so sensitive on the
subject that it makes them unhappy and others are discriminated against
in business or the professions because they happen to be a year or two
past an arbitrary age limit and have a bit of gray in their hair. Now,
why not by common agreement let everybody over the age of forty mark down
his or her age ten years? We are all as old, not as we look or feel, but
as we think we are. If we can say it is only five o’clock when it’s six,
then we can assume we are only fifty years old when, according to the
strict, literal calculation, we are really sixty. Let’s give psychology a
chance.”
“Fine idea, Mr. Joshua. Make believe that it’s an hour later or earlier
than it is, that it is ten degrees hotter or colder than it is, and that
we are all ten years younger than the record says. We live largely in a
world of self-delusion anyway. That is what makes living endurable. You
would only carry the principle a little farther, if I understand you. But
there’s one little device for human happiness I wish you would add to the
others.”
“And that is?”
“A barometer that will always predict fair weather when I want to play
golf Sunday morning and rain if my wife wants me to go to church.”
But from the look the prophet gave me I saw that Joshua couldn’t be
joshed with impunity, and leaping into my astral airplane I glided back
to good old terra firma.
V
KING SOLOMON’S FAMILY VACATION TRIP
“My wife has just told me where we are going to spend my summer
vacation,” remarked the city editor. “It’s been said that nothing is
absolutely certain in this world, but it’s as sure as anything can be
that I’m going to spend my three weeks just where the missus tells me.
We never have any discussion on the subject at our house—none of that
mountains or seashore business George Ade wrote about, ending in a
compromise on the wife’s favorite mountains. But it’s always a relief
when the suspense is over and the annual announcement by friend wife is
made.
“And that reminds me; how about an interview with one of the shades on
the modern vacation, summer resorts and all that sort of thing? Got
anybody in mind for it? Noah? No, that trip of his was no summer vacation
picnic. Suppose you ask Solomon how he managed the annual vacation
business with all those wives of his. They tell me he was the wisest man
that ever lived, and I’ll say he needed to be?”
I was gratified to find the shade of the former monarch and much-married
man not at all averse to talking for publication. “You see,” he observed
with an apologetic smile, “I don’t often get the opportunity to talk
without being interrupted. It’s quite refreshing to have an appreciative,
interested listener. Fortunately you have come on the very day when
the Wives and Daughters of Solomon Association is holding its annual
convention, and the mothers-in-law also are attending in their capacity
of honorary members. They haven’t the privilege of voting—only of
speaking from the floor—but that’s quite satisfactory. They don’t care
where they speak from so long as they speak.
“And so, as I have said, we can have a cozy little chat. What did you
want me to talk about? Summer vacations? My boy, I could tell you things
about the trips I have taken in my capacity as a multiple husband that
would dissuade you from matrimony ever after. But I do not wish to relate
all the harrowing details. I’ll just give you a hint.
“Well, to start at the beginning, during the first few years of my
married life the summer vacation germ spared our happy home. But as I
gradually added more wives to my collection, an agitation was begun to
get me to take them away somewhere for the summer. The wives began to
find fault with the Jerusalem climate.
“They started to criticise what they called the stuffy little rooms
of the royal palace. They suggested that other families were closing
their houses, or renting them furnished for the summer, and going
to the shore of the Mediterranean, where resorts had sprung up that
advertised paradoxically cool breezes and a hot old time. They made life
so miserable for me that finally one day, after a committee of wives
had presented the subject and threatened that they would all go away to
Mediterranean City on their own hook if I didn’t consent, I yielded.
“And then ensued such a season of preparation as I hope I shall never
have to go through again. Four hundred new trunks bought, four hundred
new summer outfits ordered. The palace as if by magic became filled
with seamstresses and fitters and millinery architects and all sorts of
strange women I had never seen before. You couldn’t walk down the front
stairs without stumbling over a seamstress or two.
“The parlor, the living room, the library, all seemed full of sewing
societies. Perfect strangers thronged the halls, their mouths full of
pins, and tape measures hung around their necks.
“And then, the night before we were to depart, a special committee
of wives called on me to exhibit the standardized bathing suit they
had decided upon and get my official O. K. At first I was inclined to
criticise—and then I reflected what a very, an exceedingly small thing it
was to quarrel about—and graciously gave my consent.
“The next day we left Jerusalem for Mediterranean City. And we created
some sensation. I headed the procession, followed by the Mesdames
Solomon mounted on the four hundred camels. Then came a detachment of
mothers-in-law on army mules (they were invited to come in relays during
the summer) and the first instalment of the baggage train brought up the
rear.
“The second instalment was to come next day with the things the wives had
forgotten and sent back for. And other baggage trains were to follow from
time to time during the summer, as needed.
“We were several days upon the journey. Before leaving I had not felt
that I needed a vacation, but before we finally arrived at Mediterranean
City I was ready for the rest cure.
“You see, traveling in those days was not like what it is now. A camel
with shock absorbers and air-cushion springs might be a comfortable
vehicle, I should imagine, but in his primitive state a camel’s motion is
quite different from that of a limousine or a parlor car. Rubber heels
had not been invented or I would surely have had our camels equipped with
them.
“We had to camp out along the roadside several nights, and none of
the wives were used to that. And they did not hesitate to express
their feelings. We had started out with a goat among our numerous
menagerie, but at an early stage of the proceedings he escaped into the
desert—doubtless in search of peace and quiet.
“However, he was not missed. I took his place. It was a rôle to which, in
spite of my royal rank, I was accustomed. Everything that went wrong—and
that meant practically everything that happened from start to finish—was
blamed on me. I was even accused of having planned and perpetrated the
excursion, when I had never had the slightest notion of leaving Jerusalem
until they suggested it. Finally my patience was exhausted, and I up and
told them if they didn’t like it they could go to Jericho. Then, as now,
Jericho was far from being an ideal place of summer residence, and their
complaints gradually ceased.
“Well, we finally arrived at Mediterranean City, and then our sorrows
began in earnest. I don’t know whether you have ever had any practical
experience with the Mediterranean mosquito. I have never been quite able
to forgive Noah for bringing ’em into the ark. A reception committee
of these pests met us at the city gate and escorted us to the Hotel
Paymore—so we were stung twice—when we arrived and when we paid the bill
on our departure.
“The first hitch came when the clerk started assigning the rooms. It
seems there were only some two hundred with an ocean view—and four
hundred wives demanding a room apiece. The clerk threw up his hands and
appealed to me. He had heard of some puzzling problems I had solved in
my capacity as the world’s champion wise man—I threw up my hands and
appealed to the proprietor. And he joined in the pleasing indoor pastime,
known as passing the buck, by sending in a riot call for the police. But
they didn’t come. They were men of long experience, and they knew better
than to come between man and wives.
“The upshot was that we drew lots for the first night, the arrangement
after that being to take turns occupying rooms with the ocean view.
As for myself, with my usual benign disposition, I took a six-by-nine
chamber—a room commanding a splendid prospect of the great desert. But I
had learned not to be too particular.
“I cannot say that I enjoyed my first and only family summer vacation.
Think of four hundred wives wanting to be taken out rowing every day!
Think of being required to affix wriggling angle-worms to four hundred
separate and distinct fish-hooks! I need not enter into details. These
samples are sufficient.
“It is enough to say that after the regular vacation period was over
I was compelled, on the advice of my chief physician, to enter the
Jerusalem Sanitarium and Rest Cure in order to recuperate. It was ‘never
again’ for me.
“I hear there is some complaining today among married men over having
to take their wives to the seashore or the mountains. But they should
pause to consider that their experience, at worst, can be only one
four-hundredth as strenuous and wearing as was mine. I remember the day
we got back home to the palace in Jerusalem. Every last one of those
wives was so glad to be back that she went up to her room and had what
she called ‘a good cry.’”
“And what did you do, Your Majesty?”
“Oh, I went down cellar and took a smile.”
And, notwithstanding my citizenship in the dryest nation on earth, I felt
that Solomon had richly earned that spirituous solace.
VI
BRIGHAM YOUNG ENDORSES WOMAN SUFFRAGE
“I’ve got a job for you that’s some assignment. You say _you_ always
have to suggest the subjects for these interviews with the shades. Well,
here’s one for you that I thought of last night all by myself. Interview
Collector Brigham Young on woman suffrage.”
“Collector Young? I can’t quite recall on the moment. Let’s see: what did
he collect?”
“Wives. Had one of the largest modern collections on record. When they
were young used to call ’em his souvenir spoons. You may have a tough
time getting him to talk, but if you succeed it ought to be hot stuff. I
can imagine what Brigham Young would think of woman suffrage.”
But my usually infallible city editor was wrong on both points. Collector
Young was not averse to talking for publication, and his views on woman
suffrage were quite different from those he might have been presumed to
hold.
“Take a seat. Glad to see you,” he exclaimed with all the affability
I had been accustomed to receive during my adventures in interviewing
illustrious spirits. “Thought I mightn’t wish to talk for publication?
Why, I’ll talk for anything. Mighty glad of the opportunity. I talk
now on the slightest provocation. Sometimes when there’s nobody else
to talk to I talk to myself. Do you realize, young man, what it was to
have forty-nine wives, simultaneously, and just about how much chance a
husband had to get in an occasional remark edgewise? And as for getting
the last word in a more or less animated discussion! Why, it always
looked as if there never were going to be any last word.
“But after my extensive and varied matrimonial experience, as I have
said, you can imagine the amount of pent-up opinions, the quantity of
suppressed conversation I still have in my system. For thirty-two years
my principal rôle in life was that of silent listener. Think of having
to sit still and listen to forty-nine separate and distinct, and largely
contradictory, reports of the meeting of the Mount Zion Missionary and
Sewing Society! Think of listening every Sunday afternoon to forty-nine
individual criticisms, chiefly destructive, of the feminine fashions
observed in the congregation! Imagine the position of a so-called head
of the house who could never utter a word without interrupting somebody
or other! But the most maddening experience I had to undergo was when
they all came down with the crocheting craze at the same time—or else
the knitting mania—another form of feminine insanity—it’s all one to me.
When the spell was on they wouldn’t talk to anyone else or let anyone
else talk to them. It put them out of their count, they said. But they’d
sit there in the front parlor—the whole regiment of them—and knit away,
muttering some mysterious words to themselves. And never condescending
to explain to a mere man what it was all about. They declared that would
be ‘casting purls before swine.’ The click-click-click of the needles,
forty-nine pairs of them all going at once, would sound like a knitting
mill running full blast. And they always knitted in the evening, the
time they insisted on my being at home. Said it made them nervous to be
left alone in the house at night. Why, the forty-nine of them could have
talked an ordinary burglar to death in half an hour and robbed him of his
tools. But they thought they ought to have a man’s protection.”
“That reminds me, Mr. Young, of something I wanted to ask you before I
knew you were going to be so courteously communicative. You will pardon
me, I know, but I have often wondered how certain things were managed
in such a-er-er—such a numerous establishment. For instance, the average
husband with only one wife expects to be asked where he has been when
he returns home late at night, but if he had forty-nine matrimonial
partners, why, er-er—”