reception room, “I thought it only due to myself to make a statement for
publication, particularly since you have been interviewing some of my
noted—er—er—competitors, or perhaps I should say fellow-sufferers, and
setting them right with the public. Not that I consider them exactly in
my class, of course. Unlike Solomon and Bro. Young, I did not believe
in what I might call numerically-simultaneous matrimony, nor like
Mr. Bluebeard did I think a man justified, whatever the provocation,
in resorting to the most extreme measures himself and taking the law
into his own hands. Let everything be done strictly according to law,
was my motto. I defy anyone, in the case of my wives, to find the
coroner’s verdict defective. I am not saying there is not such a thing
as justifiable uxoricide. But I can’t understand how a man could get up
his nerve to do it. Certainly, speaking for myself, after being bossed by
the first five, I’m sure I didn’t feel like raising my finger, or even
my voice, against Mrs. Henry Tudor VI. If they lost their heads I do not
think the whole blame should rightly rest on me. It takes two to make
a quarrel. There were faults on both sides—especially theirs. History
records the—that is—rather sudden shufflings-off of my several spouses,
but it doesn’t tell the real reasons therefor. Sometimes it seems to
me that the history of my case must have been written either by old
bachelors or by members of the women’s rights association. Certainly if
experienced married men had done the job they wouldn’t have left out all
the extenuating circumstances.”
“As what, Your Majesty?”
“Well, did you ever see any reference in history to the annual earthquake
at St. James’ Palace known as the Fall house-cleaning cataclasm? Of
course you haven’t. And yet we husbands were afflicted with the same
epidemics in those days, that seem so far away, as you are now.”
“I never thought of it before, Your Majesty. With the canning and
house-cleaning seasons over, a modern married man begins to realize just
how the soldiers felt the day the armistice was signed.”
“Precisely. Even though he knows the trouble is bound to recur when the
germs get in the air again next Fall. But the man who has been married to
only a limited extent can’t begin to sympathize with a case like mine.
The first few wives are the hardest.
“Take this matter of house-cleaning. Every wife has her own system, her
exclusive, copyrighted plan of offensive campaign which differs from
everybody else’s. My first wife, for example, believed in moving all the
furniture out of the dining room into the hall on the very first day
of the attack and then served all meals for two days in the form of a
stand-up free lunch in the butler’s pantry. The regular hall furniture
was moved into the parlor to make room for the dining room furniture.
Consequently the place was so cluttered up there was nowhere to sit down.
But of course all husbands, even when house-cleaning is not prevalent,
have to stand a good deal. My second wife, as soon as she was inaugurated
in office as secretary of the interior and speaker of my house, reversed
all the precedents of her predecessor. When the house-cleaning epidemic
arrived she collected all the furniture in the palace and piled it up in
the dining room. On fine days during the upheaval I got a hand-out on
the back porch and on wet days I ate in the cellar. I had just become
fairly accustomed to this domestic arrangement when Wife III, Series A,
appeared on the scene with some entirely different and equally ingenious
scheme for turning the house downside up. So it went, each new domestic
administration having its own peculiar policies, not only with reference
to house-cleaning but to all forms of domestic discipline. I was willing
enough to obey—I realized that is the first duty of soldiers and
husbands—but I had work keeping track of the orders. I perceived then why
so many married men were volunteering for my new army to fight in France:
they wanted to get where there would not be quite so much discipline.
“As I was saying, I got mixed on my orders and was constantly making
mistakes. Wives so often fail to realize that accidents will happen to
the best regulated husbands. For instance, Wife No. 1 had a rule that I
must be in by eleven o’clock, but might stay out till twelve if I could
tell just where I’d been. Wife No. 2 changed the hour to ten and No.
3, if I recall correctly, fixed it at ten-thirty. It’s not strange if
occasionally along late in the evening I got a trifle mixed as to which
administration was in office at that precise moment and consequently
strayed a bit from the prescribed schedule. I could not always be sure
whether I was supposed to be running on eastern or central standard time.
As a result the first unvarying greeting that met my ears on my arrival
home was apt to assume the sharply interrogatory form. I always answered
whenever I could distinctly remember. At least I did my best. Matrimony
is paved with good intentions.
“There were other disadvantages, also—connected with what I now perceive
to have been my mistaken matrimonial policy—which may not occur to
persons of more limited experience. For instance, how many realize that
I was virtually at the mercy of a soviet of my wives’ relations? When
a wife happened to shuffle off did her relatives immediately conclude
that they were no longer my connections by marriage? They did not. They
still considered themselves close relations—even closer, when I sought
to borrow money from them. After a few matrimonial administrations I
had enough ‘in-laws’ to fill a convention hall. Indeed, they did form a
sort of mutual benefit association and used to meet and pass resolutions
of condemnation on me and condolence with the new incumbent every time I
happened to change wives. Sore, of course, because they weren’t invited
to the wedding. But I had to draw the line somewhere. In those days, as
now, they used to term it ‘solemnizing’ a marriage, although that word
‘obey’ in the ceremony was a joke. And half the time I felt just like
a sort of comic supplement. In all my voyaging on the seven seas of
matrimony I can recollect very few times when I was allowed to do any of
the steering. Looking back, life seems to have been just one wife after
another. Why did I do it? Well, I read in the newspapers the other day a
supposedly sensational story of a Boston man who got married while under
the influence of hypnotism, but I couldn’t see that the case contained
any unusual feature.”
“Speaking of matrimony, Your Majesty (as you have just been doing so
extensively), have you any advice to offer? What do you consider the
lucky month for marriage?”
“Young man,” replied the king in solemn tones as he arose to bid me
adieu, “I don’t know anything about that. But I can tell you this: there
are at least six unlucky ones. That is as far as I experimented.”
And though I possessed only one-sixth of his matrimonial experience, I
shook the aged monarch’s hand in silent sympathy before tiptoeing from
his pathetic presence.
XVI
DON QUIXOTE SAYS HE WASN’T SO CRAZY AS SOME MODERN REFORMERS
As the trim figure in a neatly fitted sack suit arose to greet me
with an odd mixture in his manner of ancient courtesy and the modern
“glad hand,” my face must have betrayed my surprise at his unexpected
appearance for he exclaimed: “Astonished, eh? Most earth folk are. Seem
to expect to see the shade of Don Quixote de la Mancha togged out in his
old cast-iron clothes and helmet with a sword for a walking stick. They
fail to make allowance for the fact that we shades progress, just like
you people down below. We try to be as up-to-date as possible. I suppose
you thought, too, you were going to interview a harmless lunatic and
listen amusedly to his rambling conversation and perhaps have the fun of
joshing him a bit. Well, I’m happy to say I’ve got over my delusions,
or illusions or whatever they were. And shall I tell you what cured me?
Why, watching the antics and performances of some of you down on earth.
My motto is thoroughness. I want to do every job up in the most complete
style. I will either be the champion, the record-holder, the biggest in
the bunch or else nothing at all. I may once have been in a fair way
to becoming the world’s most inspired idiot and champion all-round,
catch-as-catch-can professional ‘regulator,’ but I’m now a has-been, a
second-rater. There’s too much competition. I’m ashamed of myself. I
throw up my hands and quit. Do you understand me?”
“Well, not entirely, Don Quixote. What modern competitors or successors
have you got?”
“Do you have to ask that?” he replied. “Why, I can get materialized and
take a run below and in five minutes see more fellows crazier than I ever
was than I can count. Or I can just stay up here and read the newspapers.
I was reading only this morning of a bill that’s going to be introduced
in the Maine Legislature to prohibit women from wearing high-heeled
shoes. They used to call me a fool reformer, but I never was quite so
idiotic as to try to reform women’s dress in the slightest particular.
Trying to dictate feminine fashions would be just about as sensible as
attempting to sweep back the ocean. The next thing they know somebody
will be trying to tack an amendment on to the Constitution forbidding
women to wear furs in summer and low shoes and open-work waists in
winter. I see one writer calls the anti-high-heels measure ‘Quixotic.’
That shows all he knows about me. I was accused of being slightly off at
one time, but nobody ever charged me with utter imbecility. And I see
that some other professional set-’em-all-rights are going to put the ban
on tobacco—if they can. They’ll have some hard sledding. But I was glad
to observe that a judge had the sense to turn down an application for a
charter from an anti-tobacco association. The society’s announced object
was to make the growing, manufacture, sale and use of tobacco illegal. I
held my breath until I found what the judge did.
“And what did the judge do? Opening a fresh box of Havanas, he carefully
selected a long, slender, chocolate-colored panatela, with a red and
gold waistband, cut off the end with his gold-mounted clipper, fished a
match out of his vest pocket, struck it on the ink-stand, applied the
blaze to the end of the cigar, blew a fragrant cloud of incense to the
ceiling in worship of the spirit of justice and perfect impartiality,
gave a great big sigh of measureless content, and then proceeded to write
an opinion on the subject that did my heart good to read. In dignified,
judicial terms he affectionately advised the anti-tobacconists to go
soak their venerable heads; he reminded them that the most admirable
and wholly beneficial occupation of the human species is minding its own
business; and intimated that so long as the court should continue to
enjoy unimpaired intellectual vigor and be in full possession of all its
faculties, it would never authorize a movement to regulate the personal
conduct of rational adult beings by organized idiocy.
“It was an elegant set-back for the chronic busybodies, but I haven’t
much hope it will be permanent. Mark my words, those fellows are only
getting ready to break out in some new place. If they can’t prohibit
tobacco they’ll attack chewing gum or ice cream soda. One of these
days I expect to pick up the paper and read: ‘New Sundae Law Proposed.
Association Opposed to Ice Cream Soda in Any Form Applies for Charter.’ I
may have made a few mistakes that time when I was supposed to be a little
off my balance, but I never made the same mistake twice. I tilted at
those old windmills, as they turned out to be, but I didn’t respond to an
encore. Some of your modern reformers are continually butting their heads
against stone walls, and if their heads weren’t so thick they couldn’t
get away with it.
“Folks laugh at that account of my exploits and adventures, but they
don’t stop to notice that there are lots of fellows running around loose
who are ten times funnier than Don Quixote ever was. For instance, I
understand you have a good many Congressmen-at-large. There are societies
already comprising some fifty-seven and one-half varieties of butters-in,
advocating all kinds of reforms, including the prohibiting of flowers
from growing on Sunday. The first thing we know they’ll be having
each new Congress decide whether men shall wear their hair pompadour
or brushed down (if they have any), rule on the question of visible
suspenders in summer and settle the length of moustaches, coats, sermons,
stockings, lawns, skirts, soft drinks and hatpins. And of course there’ll
be a law compelling all persons to wear long faces.
“Now, I may have been a bit erratic at one time, but I never got up a
Society for the Prevention of Public Enjoyment. The trouble with lots of
your reformers is, that not satisfied with being ‘off’ themselves, they
want to drive other folks crazy. They’re doing it. Take that proposed
state anti-snoring law out in Oklahoma. It’s going to declare any person
a public nuisance who keeps other folks awake at night with solos by his
nasal organ. But nobody dreams of interfering with the scoundrel who
dashes along the street in his automobile at two A. M. with his muffler
cut-out. I see you’re surprised at my keeping tab on things down below.
There’s a reason. It gratifies me to realize that if I were back on earth
I should have no trouble procuring a certificate of perfect sanity after
the way so many folks are behaving. I see one man was paid $300,000 for
pounding another man who got $200,000 for letting him do it. And the very
persons who contributed to that fund kick the loudest about the high cost
of living. And yet they used to call me unsound! Puck said a mouthful
when he remarked: ‘What fools these mortals be.’ The world is a place of
perpetual change, and yet lots of women continue cheerfully to give up
two dollars a curl for a ‘permanent’ Marcel wave. Foolish men are less
concerned with how many miles they can get out of a gallon than with how
many smiles they can get out of a quart.
“But what showed me more clearly than anything else whither you earth
folks are drifting was a sign, on my last trip, outside a butcher’s:
‘Tongue, 48 cents a pound; brains, 33 cents.’ If tongue is getting to be
worth so much more than brains, then I’m glad I shuffled off when I did.”
And as I volplaned back to earth I wondered also why our topsy-turvy
world ever considered Don Quixote loco.
XVII
PHARAOH SOLVES SERVANT PROBLEM
All the way to King Pharaoh’s house I kept wondering how I should
enter the presence of decayed royalty. More modern monarchs, I knew
from my reportorial experience, were frequently regular fellows whom
it was perfectly safe to offer to shake hands with and perhaps, after
a brief acquaintance, to slap on the back and ask for the loan of
a cigarette or the “makin’s.” But the thought of conversing with a
four-thousand-year-old personage who had retired from the king business,
yet retained his former notions of dignity and grandeur, filled me with
awe. Imagine my astonishment, therefore, when in response to my ring at
the front door it slowly opened about half an inch, as if someone were
trying to peek out and size up the visitor, and then a moment later it
was thrown back and a commanding figure, who I knew from his pictures was
none other than Pharaoh himself, stood in the doorway with a smile of
welcome.
“Come right in,” he exclaimed. “I was afraid at first you might be
a walking delegate of the Dish-Breakers’ Union.” And there stood the
erstwhile mighty monarch clad in a long blue-checked apron, the kind that
pins up over the shoulders with a couple of thing-a-ma-jigs and comes
’way down below the belt. His sleeves were rolled up above his elbows and
he had the general appearance of a cross between a chauffeur who had been
digging in the garden and a butler who had taken an automobile apart and
was now trying to put the pieces back again.
“Your Majesty,” I began, with a low obeisance, but that was as far as I
got with my speech of introduction.
“Come right out in the kitchen,” he interrupted affably, “and we can have
a chat while I’m doing up my dishes. I understand you want to interview
me on the servant problem. You’ve come to the right shop. I can talk
feelingly on the subject. In the course of forty-five centuries of
experience I’ve hit all the high spots, from the time when I had fifteen
hundred cooks and chambermaids in the house and six hundred charioteers
in the royal garage down to the cruel present, when I’m reduced to doing
my own work. The servant problem! I’ve solved it. I could send you out
of here so chock full of information about it that you couldn’t walk
straight. Have a smoke? Mrs. Pharaoh objects to my smoking a pipe and
washing the china at the same time (she complained at dinner of a decided
flavor of nicotine in the soup) but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t
light up while I’m finishing the job. Then, after I manicure the knives
and forks, massage the sink, and take a brief and exhilarating spin
around the dining room with my new six-cylinder carpet sweeper, I’ll have
nothing to do but fix the oatmeal for tomorrow morning, in the jackpot or
whatever you call it, put it on to boil and I’ll be at your service.
“Yes, it may seem to you like considerable of a comedown,” said his
former majesty when we were comfortably settled in armchairs in the
library, “but during the last few days, since I let the sole remaining
servant go, I’ve been experiencing the first real peace I’ve known in
just four thousand five hundred and sixty-two years. Quite a long time
when you come to think of it. You ask me to define the servant problem
and then comment upon it. Let me tell you some of our recent troubles
with ‘domestic assistants.’ That’s what they want to be called nowadays.
Oh, yes, we have servants up here. This isn’t exactly heaven, you know.
Somebody has said that voyaging on the sea of matrimony is all right
until the cook wants to be captain. Well, our cooks have all wanted to
be commanders-in-chief with the pay, pretty near, of active admirals. And
among them they’ve mighty near wrecked the ship. The next to the last
we got, No. 19, promised to be the light of our existence. The light
went out one night and never came back. Her testimonials said she was a
very good cook. They must have been referring exclusively to her moral
character. Her successor was described as ‘a perfect treasure’, but,
according to the proverb, ‘Riches take wings,’ and she was no exception.
In her case, however, it was just as well. She claimed to have cooked ten
years for John D. Rockefeller. And it did not occur to us until later
that Mr. Rockefeller is a chronic sufferer from dyspepsia.
“This wasn’t home any more. It was getting to be a one-night lodging
house for ‘domestic assistants.’ You mustn’t call ’em servants, you know,
not since they’ve organized. And they certainly are sticklers for union
rules, union hours, union wages. Why, our last laundress (excuse me,
I should say ‘garment ablutionist’), refused to wash any except union
underwear. Fact! And now I hear they’re agitating for the three-shift or
platoon system, like the firemen, each set on duty eight hours. Well,
the other day we reached a crisis when Cook 20 served notice that
she’d quit unless we built an addition to the garage to accommodate her
runabout, and threw in an extra allowance for gasoline. I decided to fire
the whole bunch: the ‘upstairs girl’ (whom I’d often consigned to the
lower regions), the waitress (who believed all things ought to come to
her while waiting), and the cook (who was always getting everybody else
into hot water, but wouldn’t put her own hands in). So I made a clean
sweep (something we could never get any of the servants to do) and I’ve
been walking delegate of the Husbands’ Labor Union, and ‘kitchen police’
myself, ever since. And it’s been as peaceful and quiet around here as
the Sahara Desert. I haven’t enjoyed myself so much since the day the
business agent of the Children of Israel Pyramid Builders’ Union fell off
the top of Cheops and they had to dig him out of the sand with a derrick.
“There are various ways of solving the so-called servant problem.
Speaking from an experience of roughly four thousand years, I should say
the best way is to do your own work. It is a lot less work in the long
run. But if you are determined to have servants, then you must adopt the
modern viewpoint, treat ’em like the high-priced specialists that they
are and fix up a regular schedule providing that the mistress shall have
at least one evening out a week and the use of the parlor on the nights
the maids aren’t entertaining. Our last cook had ‘Wednesday’ engraved
on her visiting cards (it was her receiving day), and when her cousin
was released from the penitentiary after serving six months for petty
larceny (he stole a Ford), she gave him a coming-out party that kept the
neighborhood awake until three o’clock in the morning. I read somewhere
the other day that under the modern system employers and servants are to
treat each other as equals—but I don’t believe the servants will do it.
They’re getting too proud for that. We made the experiment of having the
cook sit with us at the dining table, but it didn’t work out very well.
We were kept so busy waiting on her that we didn’t get half enough to eat
and she criticized the way in which I took my soup. A better plan would
be to have all the family eat at the second table.
“But speaking of servant troubles back in Egypt a few thousand years
ago—those were the happy days. Suppose one of the palace cooks threatened
to quit because she could get two kopecks more a week and every Sunday
out from a lady on the next street. We just told her to pack up without
waiting to get dinner; there were about forty-nine more cooks in the
kitchen. We had so many at one time that it took six to fry an egg. There
was one disadvantage, we had the worst soup I ever tasted—too many cooks,
you know—but there were lots of benefits from always having plenty of
help. It’s true the kitchen on Saturday night looked like a convention
of the Policemen’s Mutual Benefit Association, with all the cops calling
on the girls, but it made us feel quite safe from burglars. The modern
housewife is handicapped because she can’t exert her authority. If she
has several servants she’s afraid to fire one because the rest might
quit. And if she has only one she can’t fire her because she doesn’t know
where she’d get another. Even administering a mild reprimand nowadays
means that you’ll have to do your own washing. It’s rather different
from the times when I was king and had a list of penalties hung up in
the kitchen as a warning. Tough pie-crust meant three months in jail and
the cook who burnt the toast was thrown to the crocodiles. I had three
servants standing behind my chair at dinner—and nowadays servants won’t
stand for anything. They trembled at my slightest frown—nowadays they
give me the shake. Every time I passed they’d salaam and chant: ‘Preserve
our gracious ruler.’ Today they’d be shouting: ‘Can the king!’
“And so I say times haven’t merely changed; they’re turned upside down.
And the folk we used to call servants are on top. What are we to do?
Why, if we want to be free and independent and rich and enjoy ourselves,
we’ll beat ’em at their own game, we’ll join the Bread Molders’ Union
or become kitchen chemists or garment ablutionists or general domestic
aides-de-camp—the real successors of royalty. There are only two ways to
solve the servant problem: do your own work or go out and do somebody’s
else’s. I tell you—beg pardon, I smell something burning in the kitchen.”
Out we dashed, to find the helpless oatmeal suffering a martyr’s fate.
Pharaoh contemplated the ruin for a moment and it inspired his parting
word:
“Good-bye, young man, and perhaps if more people did their own work for
a while they would learn, after all, to have some sympathy for servants.
We can’t get along without ’em. The servant girl may be a perpetual
conundrum, but civilization isn’t ready to give her up.”
XVIII
NERO DISCUSSES JAZZ
I shuddered as the city editor announced my assignment. True, I had
tackled departed desperadoes and undesirable citizens whom I feared about
as much in the spirit as in the flesh, but they were different. None of
these could be such a formidable customer to interview as an ex-emperor
who was notorious for his callous cruelties.
But duty is duty, and I donned my bullet-proof vest, put a revolver in
my hip-pocket with a bottle of non-spirituous nerve tonic which a kind
physician prescribed for me, and sallied forth to my waiting plane.
Five minutes later I was sitting calmly in the presence of the former
imperial tyrant. The ordeal of introduction I had so much dreaded
proved to be nothing. I had found the ex-emperor as approachable as a
presidential candidate two months before the convention and as willing
to talk for publication as a grand opera star who’s just lost another
$10,000 necklace.
Could this be the old monster I had read about, I wondered, as
overflowing with welcome he invited me to make myself thoroughly at home.
“What do you want me to talk about?” he asked. “Modern music and
musicians? Delighted. Then you still regard me as an expert? I am
gratified to hear it. I had feared that some slanderous stories that were
circulated might have prejudiced you earth folk against me.