After this climax the interview was not so long as it was interesting.
Two men, as far apart as the poles, as remote from each other in
mind and body, in training and education or lack of it, in desires
and intentions, in points of view and trend of being, as nature and
circumstances could make them, talked in a language foreign to each
other of a wildly strange thing. Palliser’s arguments and points of
aspect were less unknown to T. Tembarom than his own were to Palliser.
He had seen something very like them before, though they had developed
in different surroundings and had been differently expressed. The
colloquialism “You’re not doing that for your health” can be made to
cover much ground in the way of the stripping bare of motives for
action. This was what, in excellent and well-chosen English, Captain
Palliser frankly said to his host. Of nothing which T. Tembarom said
to him in his own statement did he believe one word or syllable. The
statement in question was not long or detailed. It was, of course,
Palliser saw, a ridiculously impudent flinging together of a farrago
of nonsense, transparent in its effort beyond belief. Before he had
listened five minutes with the distinctly “nasty” smile, he burst out
laughing.
“That is a good ‘spiel,’ my dear chap,” he said. “It’s as good a
‘spiel’ as your type-writer friend used to rattle off when he thought
he saw a customer; but I’m not a customer.”
Tembarom looked at him interestedly for about ten seconds. His hands
were thrust into his trousers’ pockets, as was his almost invariable
custom. Absorption and speculation, even emotion and excitement, were
usually expressed in this unconventional manner.
“You don’t believe a darned word of it,” was his sole observation.
“Not a darned word,” Palliser smiled. “You are trying a ‘bluff,’
which doesn’t do credit to your usual sharpness. It’s a bluff that is
actually silly. It makes you look like an ass.”
“Well, it’s true,” said Tembarom; “it’s true.”
Palliser laughed again.
“I only said it made you _look_ like an ass,” he remarked. “I don’t
profess to understand you altogether, because you are a new species.
Your combination of ignorance and sharpness isn’t easy to calculate on.
But there is one thing I have found out, and that is, that when you
want to play a particularly sharp trick you are willing to let people
take you for a fool. I’ll own you’ve deceived me once or twice, even
when I suspected you. I’ve heard that’s one of the most successful
methods used in the American business world. That’s why I only say you
_look_ like an ass. You _are_ an ass in some respects; but you are
letting yourself look like one now for some shrewd end. You either
think you’ll slip out of danger by it when I make this discovery
public, or you think you’ll somehow trick me into keeping my mouth
shut.”
“I needn’t trick you into keeping your mouth shut,” Tembarom suggested.
“There’s a straight way to do that, ain’t there?” And he indelicately
waved his hand toward the documents pertaining to the Cedric Company.
It was stupid as well as gross, in his hearer’s opinion. If he had
known what was good for him he would have been clever enough to ignore
the practical presentation of his case made half an hour or so earlier.
“No, there is not,” Palliser replied, with serene mendacity. “No
suggestion of that sort has been made. My business proposition was
given on an entirely different basis. You, of course, choose to put
your personal construction upon it.”
“Gee whizz!” ejaculated T. Tembarom. “I was ’way off, wasn’t I?”
“I told you that professing to be an ass wouldn’t be good enough in
this case. Don’t go on with it,” said Palliser, sharply.
“You’re throwing bouquets. Let a fellow be natural,” said Tembarom.
“That is bluff, too,” Palliser replied more sharply still. “I am not
taken in by it, bold as it is. Ever since you came here, you have been
playing this game. It was your fool’s grin and guffaw and pretense of
good nature that first made me suspect you of having something up your
sleeve. You were _too_ unembarrassed and candid.”
“So you began to look out,” Tembarom said, considering him curiously,
“just because of that.” Then suddenly he laughed outright, the fool’s
guffaw.
It somehow gave Palliser a sort of puzzled shock. It was so hearty
that it remotely suggested that he appeared more secure than seemed
possible. He tried to reply to him with a languid contempt of manner.
“You think you have some tremendously sharp ‘deal’ in your hand,” he
said, “but you had better remember you are in England, where facts are
like sledge-hammers. You can’t dodge from under them as you can in
America. I dare say you won’t answer me, but I should like to ask you
what you propose to do.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do any more than you do,” was the
unilluminating answer. “I don’t mind telling you that.”
“And what do you think _he_ will do?”
“I’ve got to wait till I find out. I’m doing it. That was what I told
you. What are _you_ going to do?” he added casually.
“I’m going to Lincoln’s Inn Fields to have an interview with Palford &
Grimby.”
“That’s a good enough move,” commented Tembarom, “if you think you can
prove what you say. You’ve got to prove things, you know. I couldn’t,
so I lay low and waited, just like I told you.”
“Of course, of course,” Palliser himself almost grinned in his
derision. “You have only been waiting.”
“When you’ve got to prove a thing, and haven’t much to go on, you’ve
got to wait,” said T. Tembarom--“to wait and keep your mouth shut,
whatever happens, and to let yourself be taken for a fool or a
horse-thief isn’t as gilt-edged a job as it seems. But proof’s what
it’s best to have before you ring up the curtain. _You’d_ have to have
it yourself. So would Palford & Grimby before it’d be stone-cold safe
to rush things and accuse a man of a penitentiary offense.”
He took his unconventional half-seat on the edge of the table, with
one foot on the floor and the other one lightly swinging. “Palford &
Grimby are clever old ducks, and they know that much. Thing they’d know
best would be that to set a raft of lies going about a man who’s got
money enough to defend himself, and to make them pay big damages for it
afterward, would be pretty bum business. I guess _they_ know all about
what proof stands for. _They_ may have to wait; so may you, same as I
have.”
Palliser realized that he was in the position of a man striking at an
adversary whose construction was of india-rubber. He struck home, but
left no bruise and drew no blood, which was an irritating thing. He
lost his temper.
“Proof!” he jerked out. “There will be proof enough, and when it is
made public, you will not control the money you threaten to use.”
“When you get _proof_, just you let me hear about it,” T. Tembarom
said. “And all the money I’m threatening on shall go where it belongs,
and I’ll go back to little old New York and sell papers if I have to.
It won’t come as hard as you think.”
The flippant insolence with which he brazened out his pretense that he
had not lied, that his ridiculous romance was actual and simple truth,
suggested dangerous readiness of device and secret knowledge of power
which could be adroitly used.
“You are merely marking time,” said Palliser, rising, with cold
determination to be juggled with no longer. “You have hidden him away
where you think you can do as you please with a man who is an invalid.
That is your dodge. You’ve got him hidden somewhere, and his friends
had better get at him before it is too late.”
“I’m not answering questions this evening, and I’m not giving
addresses, though there are no witnesses to take them down. If he’s
hidden away, he’s where he won’t be disturbed,” was T. Tembarom’s
rejoinder. “You may lay your bottom dollar on that.”
Palliser walked toward the door without speaking. He had almost reached
it when he whirled about involuntarily, arrested by a shout of laughter.
“Say,” announced Tembarom, “you mayn’t know it, but this lay-out would
make a first-rate turn in a vaudeville. You _think_ I’m lying, I _look_
like I’m lying, I guess every word I say _sounds_ like I’m lying. To a
fellow like you, I guess it couldn’t help sound that way. And I’m not
lying. That’s where the joke comes in. I’m not lying. I’ve not told you
all I know because it’s none of your business and wouldn’t help; but
what I have told you is the stone-cold truth.”
He was keeping it up to the very end with a desperate determination not
to let go his hold of his pose until he had made his private shrewd
deal, whatsoever it was. At least, so it struck Palliser, who merely
said:
“I’m leaving the house by the first train to-morrow morning.” He fixed
a cold gray eye on the fool’s grin.
“Six forty-five,” said T. Tembarom. “I’ll order the carriage. I might
go up myself.”
The door closed.
* * * * *
Tembarom was looking cheerful enough when he went into his bedroom. He
had become used to its size and had learned to feel that it was a good
sort of place. It had the hall bedroom at Mrs. Bowse’s boarding-house
“beaten to a frazzle.” There was about everything in it that any man
could hatch up an idea he’d like to have. He had slept luxuriously
on the splendid carved bed through long nights, he had lain awake
and thought out things on it, he had lain and watched the fire-light
flickering on the ceiling, as he thought about Ann and made plans,
and “fixed up” the Harlem flat which could be run on fifteen per.
He had picked out the pieces of furniture from the Sunday “Earth”
advertisement sheet, and had set them in their places. He always saw
the six-dollar mahogany-stained table set for supper, with Ann at one
end and himself at the other. He had grown actually fond of the old
room because of the silence and comfort of it, which tended to give
reality to his dreams. Pearson, who had ceased to look anxious, and who
had acquired fresh accomplishments in the form of an entirely new set
of duties, was waiting, and handed him a telegram.
“This just arrived, sir,” he explained. “James brought it here because
he thought you had come up, and I didn’t send it down because I heard
you on the stairs.”
“That’s right. Thank you, Pearson,” his master said.
He tore the yellow envelop, and read the message. In a moment Pearson
knew it was not an ordinary message, and therefore remained more than
ordinarily impassive of expression. He did not even ask of himself what
it might convey.
Mr. Temple Barholm stood still a few seconds, with the look of a man
who must think and think rapidly.
“What is the next train to London, Pearson?” he asked.
“There is one at twelve thirty-six, sir,” he answered. “It’s the last
till six forty-five in the morning. You have to change at Crowley.”
“You’re always ready, Pearson,” returned Mr. Temple Barholm. “I want to
get that train.”
Pearson _was_ always ready. Before the last word was quite spoken he
had turned and opened the bedroom door.
“I’ll order the dog-cart; that’s quickest, sir,” he said. He was
out of the room and in again almost immediately. Then he was at the
wardrobe and taking out what Mr. Temple Barholm called his “grip,” but
what Pearson knew as a Gladstone bag. It was always kept ready packed
for unexpected emergencies of travel.
[Illustration]
Mr. Temple Barholm sat at the table and drew pen and paper toward him.
He looked excited; he looked more troubled than Pearson had seen him
look before.
“The wire’s from Sir Ormsby Galloway, Pearson,” he said. “It’s about
Mr. Strangeways. He’s done what I used to be always watching out
against: he’s disappeared.”
“Disappeared, sir!” cried Pearson, and almost dropped the Gladstone
bag. “I beg pardon, sir. I know there’s no time to lose.” He steadied
the bag and went on with his task without even turning round.
His master was in some difficulty. He began to write, and after dashing
off a few words, suddenly stopped, and then tore them up.
“No,” he muttered, “that won’t do. There’s no time to explain.” Then he
began again, but tore up his next lines also. “That says too much and
not enough. It’d scare the life out of her.”
He wrote again, and ended by folding the sheet and putting it into an
envelop.
“This is a message for Miss Alicia,” he said to Pearson. “Give it to
her in the morning. I don’t want her to worry, because I had to go in
a hurry. Tell her everything’s going to be all right; but you needn’t
mention that anything’s happened to Mr. Strangeways.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Pearson.
Mr. Temple Barholm was already moving about the room, doing odd things
for himself rapidly, and he went on speaking.
“I want you and Rose to know,” he said, “that whatever happens, you are
both fixed all right--both of you. I’ve seen to that.”
“Thank you, sir,” Pearson faltered, made uneasy by something new in his
tone. “You said whatever happened, sir--”
“Whatever old thing happens,” his master took him up.
“Not to _you_, sir. Oh, I hope, sir, that nothing--”
Mr. Temple Barholm put a cheerful hand on his shoulder.
“Nothing’s going to happen that’ll hurt any one. Things may change,
that’s all. You and Rose are all right, Miss Alicia’s all right, I’m
all right. Come along. Got to catch that train.”
In this manner he took his departure.
(To be continued)
[Illustration: TOPICS OF THE TIME]
THE MOST IMPORTANT YEAR
This number of ~The Century~ closes its eighty-sixth volume, and
the November number will begin what we confidently believe will be the
most important year in the history of this magazine. The period through
which we are living is, in its display of scientific accomplishment
and clashing social forces, the most broadly significant and humanly
spectacular in our forty-three years of existence, and it is our
ambition to be, as nearly as possible, representative of the times in
which we live.
Recognizing that this is, in a real and vital sense, the very age
of fiction, we plan that each number beginning with the November
~Century~ shall contain, in addition to a leading article on
modern conditions, an exceptional fiction feature. In fact the present
number, containing the beginning of the anonymous serial, “Home,” and
Colonel Roosevelt’s paper on the Progressive Party, illustrates our
purpose.
In the November number the fiction feature will be an extraordinary
story by Stephen French Whitman entitled “The Woman from Yonder,”
and the non-fiction feature will be a paper entitled “The Militant
Women--and Women” by Edna Kenton, which, for dignity, power, and
clarity, states the case for the feminists as it never has been stated.
Indeed no person with a mind in the least open can read Miss Kenton’s
brief without sympathy and understanding. Also it is typical of many
clarifying papers on many timely subjects which we plan to publish
through the year.
In December the non-fiction feature will be an absorbing paper on
“The Search for a Modern Religion” by Winston Churchill. In January
the fiction feature will be a most unusual story by May Sinclair. In
February we shall begin a new and important serial novel.
Of course this does not mean that our leaders shall exhaust our
resources. Each number will contain other stories and other papers on
subjects of current importance. The leaders, however, are intended to
be the most important papers on their several subjects that the world
can produce.
An eminent novelist declared to us years ago in his newspaper days his
belief that reporting was the noblest work of man. In later years,
when he had added art to his reports of life and was selling his
novels by the hundreds of thousands, he confirmed the statement of his
enthusiastic youth. Modern fiction is, literally, a report of life,
colored by personality, and formed by art. Its appeal is universal. Its
power is greater than any other engine of civilization. It is to this
period what poetry, what preaching, what oratory, and what editorials
have been to preceding periods. It is practically the only effective
means of approaching the minds of millions of intelligent persons. It
influences to a greater or a less degree the imagining, the thinking,
and the living of nearly all who are literate.
During the coming years ~The Century~ will recognize this
important function of fiction, but in so doing it will not the less
regard fiction as an art. Roughly speaking, one half of each number
will be devoted to serials and short stories, and we shall, in their
selection, work toward an ideal. The problem of selection will be more
complex than for some other magazines, perhaps, for ~Century~
readers are of many and varied tastes. There must be fiction for all
kinds of cultivated readers, for the lovers of artistry and subtlety
and the fine distinctions of human nature and for those who revel in
plot and climax. There must be fiction for the laughter-loving and
fiction for those for whom fiction seriously interprets life. But
whatever its kind it must all possess a common quality, and this, we
realize, it will take long to attain consistently.
Apart from fiction and in addition to the distinguished series
of papers on great current movements already foretold, ~The
Century~ has planned for the coming year a number of features of
extraordinary interest and value. In November, for example, Professor
Edward Alsworth Ross, the distinguished sociologist of the University
of Wisconsin, will begin an examination into Immigration which cannot
fail to stir every American deeply, and undoubtedly will blaze the way
to greatly needed reforms. This is no sensational “campaign,” nor is
it a dry, scientific compilation, but a searching study of great human
facts and conditions that make their own prophecy. And, early in the
winter, Hilaire Belloc will begin an important series of papers on
French Revolutionary subjects.
In literature we have in preparation several papers of permanent and
vital interest. Albert Bigelow Paine, for example, the biographer of
Mark Twain, will contribute, from European wanderings in an automobile
under his own leisurely guidance, papers bubbling with the humor that
is his special possession. The same note of vitality underlies the
year’s projects in biography, history, and science.
In politics ~The Century~ will remain wholly non-partizan.
From time to time, as passing events or other occasions demand, we
shall deal with political personages and parties and policies from a
point of view altogether remote from any mere political interest, and
for the broad purpose of enlightening all citizens irrespective of
partizan creed. We expect, for example, when new situations develop, to
follow Mr. Roosevelt’s paper with papers by political leaders of equal
prominence upon the changing purposes and objects of their respective
parties.
Art has always been ~The Century’s~ special field, and our plans
involve an interesting and important year. But there is another use
for pictures than the selection and display of beautiful and admirable
specimens of art. One picture is often more descriptive than pages upon
pages of the most skilful text, and we purpose to reproduce freely, for
the information of ~Century~ readers, examples illustrating the
more important transitional tendencies in the art and sculpture of our
day.
In Lighter Vein
HOMER AND HUMBUG
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK
Author of “Literary Lapses,” “Nonsense Novels,” etc.
I do not mind confessing that for a long time past I have been very
skeptical about the classics. I was myself trained as a classical
scholar. It seemed the only thing to do with me. I acquired such a
singular facility in handling Latin and Greek that I could take a page
of either of them, distinguish which it was by glancing at it, and,
with the help of a dictionary and a compass, whip off a translation of
it in less than three hours.
But I never got any pleasure from it. I lied about the pleasure of it.
At first, perhaps, I lied through vanity. Any scholar will understand
the feeling. Later on I lied through habit; later still because, after
all, the classics were all that I had and so I valued them. I have seen
a deceived dog thus value a pup with a broken leg, and a pauper child
nurse a dead doll with the sawdust out of it. So I nursed my dead Homer
and my broken Demosthenes though I knew that there was more sawdust
in the stomach of one modern author than in the whole lot of them.
Observe, I do not say which it is that has it full of it.
So, I say, I began to lie about the classics. I said to people who
knew no Greek that there was a sublimity, a majesty about Homer which
they could never hope to grasp. I said it was like the sound of the
sea beating against the granite cliffs of the Ionian Esophagus; or
words to that effect. As for the truth of it, I might as well have
said that it was like the sound of a rum distillery running a night
shift on half-time. At any rate this is what I said about Homer,
and when I spoke of Pindar,--the dainty grace of his strophes,--and
Aristophanes, the delicious sallies of his wit, sally after sally, each
sally explained in a note, calling it a sally, I managed to suffuse my
face with a coruscation of appreciative animation which made it almost
beautiful.
I admitted of course that Vergil, in spite of his genius, had a
hardness and a cold glitter which resembled rather the brilliance of a
cut diamond than the soft grace of a flower. Certainly I admitted this:
the mere admission of it would knock the breath out of any one who was
arguing.
From such talks my friends went away saddened. The conclusion was too
cruel. It had all the cold logic of a syllogism (like that almost
brutal form of argument so much admired in the Paraphernalia of
Socrates). For if:--
Vergil and Homer and Pindar had all this grace, and pith, and these
sallies,
And if I read Vergil and Homer and Pindar,
And if they only read Mrs. Wharton and Mrs. Humphry Ward,
Then where were they?
So, continued lying brought its own reward in the sense of superiority,
and I lied some more.
When I reflect that I have openly expressed regret, as a personal
matter, even in the presence of women, for the missing books of
Tacitus, and the entire loss of the Abracadabra of Polyphemus of
Syracuse, I can find no words in which to beg for pardon. In reality
I was just as much worried over the loss of the ichthyosaurus. More,
indeed: I’d like to have seen it; but if the books Tacitus _did_ lose
were like those he didn’t, I wouldn’t.
I believe all scholars lie like this. An ancient friend of mine, a
clergyman, tells me that in Hesiod he finds a peculiar grace that
he doesn’t find elsewhere. He’s a liar. That’s all. Another man, in
politics and in the legislature, tells me that every night before going
to bed he reads over a page or two of Thucydides to keep his mind
fresh. Either he never goes to bed or _he’s_ a liar. Doubly so; no one
could read Greek at that frantic rate; and, anyway, his mind isn’t
fresh. How could it be?--he’s in the legislature. I don’t object to his
talking freely of the classics, but he ought to keep it for the voters.
My own opinion is that before he goes to bed he takes whisky; why call
it Thucydides?
[Illustration: THE ICHTHYOSAURUS DEVOURING TWO OF THE LOST BOOKS OF
TACITUS]
I know there are solid arguments advanced in favor of the classics. I
often hear them from my colleagues. My friend the Professor of Greek
tells me that he truly believes the classics have made him what he is.
This is a very grave statement, if well founded. Indeed, I have heard
the same argument from a great many Latin and Greek scholars. They all
claim, with some heat, that Latin and Greek have practically made them
what they are. This damaging charge against the classics should not be
too readily accepted. In my opinion some of these men would be what
they are, no matter what they were.
Be this as it may, I for my part bitterly regret the lies I have told
about my appreciation of Latin and Greek literature. I am anxious to
do what I can to set things right. I am therefore engaged on, indeed
have nearly completed, a work which will enable all readers to judge
the matter for themselves. What I have done is a translation of all
the great classics, not in the usual literal way but on a design that
brings them into harmony with modern life.
The translation is intended to be within reach of everybody. It is so
designed that the entire set of volumes can go on a shelf twenty-seven
feet long, or even longer. The first edition will be an _édition de
luxe_ bound in vellum, or perhaps in buckskin, and sold at five hundred
dollars. It will be limited to five hundred copies, and, of course,
sold only to the feeble-minded. The next edition will be the Literary
Edition, sold to artists, authors, and actors.
My plan is to transpose the classical writers so as to give, not the
literal translation word for word, but what is really the modern
equivalent. Let me give an odd sample or two to show what I mean.
Take the passage in the First Book of Homer that describes Ajax, the
Greek, dashing into the battle in front of Troy. Here is the way it
runs (as nearly as I remember) in the usual word for word translation
of the classroom, as done by the very best professor, his spectacles
glittering with the literary rapture of it.
Then he too Ajax on the one hand leaped (or possibly jumped) into
the fight wearing on the other hand yes certainly a steel corselet
(or possibly a bronze under tunic) and on his head of course yes
without doubt he had a helmet with a tossing plume taken from the
mane (or perhaps extracted from the tail) of some horse which
once fed along the banks of the Scamander (and it sees the herd
and raises its head and paws the ground) and in his hand a shield
worth a hundred oxen and on his knees two especially in particular
greaves made by some cunning artificer (or perhaps blacksmith) and
he blows the fire and it is hot.
Thus Ajax leaped (or, better, was propelled from behind) into the
fight.
[Illustration: AJAX, “PROPELLED FROM BEHIND”]
Now that’s grand stuff. There is no doubt of it. There’s a wonderful
movement and force to it. You can almost see it move, it goes so
fast. But the modern reader can’t get it. It won’t mean to him what
it meant to the early Greek. The setting, the costume, the scene have
all got to be changed in order to let the modern reader have a real
equivalent so as to judge for himself just how good the Greek verse
is. In my translation I alter the original just a little, not much
but just enough to give the passage a form that reproduces for us
the proper literary value of the verses, without losing anything of
their majesty. It describes, I may say, the Directors of the American
Industrial Stocks plunging into the Balkan War Cloud:
Then there came rushing to the shock of war
Mr. McNicoll of the C. P. R.
He wore suspenders and about his throat
High rose the collar of a sealskin coat.
He had on gaiters and he wore a tie,
He had his trousers buttoned good and high;
About his waist a woollen undervest
Bought from a sad-eyed farmer of the West.
(And every time he clips a sheep he sees
Some bloated plutocrat who ought to freeze.)
Thus in the Stock Exchange he burst to view,
Leaped to the post, and shouted, “Ninety-two!”
There! That’s Homer, the real thing! Just exactly as it sounded to the
rude crowd of Greek peasants who sat in a ring and guffawed at the
rhymes and watched the minstrel stamp it out into “feet” as he recited
it!
Let me take another example, this time from the so-called Catalogue of
the Ships, which fills up nearly an entire book of Homer. This famous
passage names all the ships, one by one, and names the chiefs who
sailed on them, and names the particular town, or hill, or valley that
each came from. It has been much admired. It has that same majesty of
style that has been brought to an even loftier pitch in the New York
Business Directory and the City Telephone Book. It runs along, as I
recall it, something after this fashion:
And first indeed oh, yes, was the ship of Homistogetes, the
Spartan, long and swift, having both its masts covered with cowhide
and two banks of oars. And he, Homistogetes, was born of Hermogenes
and Ophthalmia, and was at home in Syncope beside the fast-flowing
Paresis. And after him came the ship of Preposterus, the Eurasian,
son of Oasis and Hysteria,
--and so on, endlessly.
Instead of this I substitute, with the permission of the New York
Central Railway, a more modern example, the official catalogue of their
locomotives, taken almost word for word from the list compiled by their
Chief Superintendent of Rolling Stock and rendered into Homeric verse.
I admit that he wrote it in hot weather.
[Illustration]
Out in the yard and steaming in the sun
Stands locomotive engine number forty-one;
Seated beside the windows of its cab
Are Pat McGraw and Peter James McNab.
Pat comes from Troy and Peter from Cohoes,
And when they pull the throttle, off she goes;
And as she vanishes there comes to view
Steam locomotive engine number forty-two.
Observe her mighty wheels, her easy roll,
With William J. McArthur in control.
They say her engineer some time ago
Lived on a farm outside of Buffalo,
Whereas her fireman, Henry Edward Foy,
Attended school in Springfield, Illinois.
Thus does the race of men decay and rot--
SOME MEN CAN HOLD THEIR JOBS AND SOME CAN NOT.
Please observe that if Homer had actually written that last line, it
would have been quoted for nearly three thousand years as one of the
deepest sayings ever said. Orators would still be rounding out their
speeches with the majestic phrase (in Greek), “Some men can hold their
jobs”; essayists would open their most scholarly dissertations with the
words, “It has been finely said by Homer that some men can hold their
jobs”; and the clergy in the mid-pathos of a funeral sermon would lift
an eve skyward and echo, “and some can not.”
This is what I should like to do: I’d like to take a large stone and
write on it--
“_The classics are only primitive literature. They belong in the
same class as primitive machinery, primitive music, and primitive
medicine,_”
--and then throw it through the windows of a UNIVERSITY and hide behind
a fence to see the professors buzz!
CASUS BELLI
There has long been current in New Haven what is sure to be an
apocryphal story of college loyalty, told at the expense of Anson
Phelps Stokes, the popular secretary of Yale. Secretary Stokes is an
ordained clergyman in the Episcopal Church, and, so the story goes, as
he was once journeying west on the train in non-clerical garb, a man of
the self-appointed missionary type approached, and asked him solemnly:
“I beg your pardon, sir, but are you a Christian man?”
Startled, Dr. Stokes looked up and said:
“Oh, d---- it, no.”
The man turned to go, saying in a deeply offended tone:
“Well, I only asked you if you were a Christian man. I don’t see--”
Impulsively, Dr. Stokes caught him by the arm.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said. “I beg your pardon. I thought you
asked me if I was a Princeton man!”
[Illustration]
Died
[Illustration]
[Illustration: R. R.
_HIS LAST PORTRAIT_]
RYMBEL.--Suddenly, of weariness, at his home in Lighter Vein;
Rondeau Rymbel, aged two months. Please omit flowers.
“_Blessed are the misunderstood._”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE HUSBAND SHOP
A FABLE FOR HEIRESSES
BY OLIVER HERFORD
Above the plate-glass window-pane,
Inviting every passing gaze,
Hung an inscription, large and plain,
“_THE HUSBAND SHOP_.” This, in amaze,
Clorinda seeing, stopped wide-eyed,
And stared, then turned and stepped inside.
A floor-walker whose faultlessness
And condescending air proclaimed
One of the _table d’haute noblesse_,
Approached Clorinda and exclaimed,
With graceful undulating palm:
“Something in husbands? _Oui, Madame._”
“We have the latest thing of all
In husbands; kindly step this way.
We’re using them on hats this fall,
In place of plume or floral spray,
The creature being pinned or tied
With chiffon bows on either side.”
He leads the way, all wreathed in smiles,
And wonderful in spotless spats
That flitter like twin butterflies
Along an avenue of hats,
Each one displaying on its brim
A husband--fashion’s latest whim.
Clorinda tries them each in turn
Before the glass; some are too small,
And some too cold, and some too stern,
And some are slightly soiled, and all,
When punctured by the hat-pin’s steel,
Betray by squirms how bored they feel.
At last Clorinda came to one
Marked “_Dobbs_,” that scarce seemed worth her while;
But when she tried it on for fun,
It met the hat-pin with a smile,
As if to say, “Oh, beauteous miss,
Even a stab from you is bliss!”
“The very thing! but thrown away
Upon a _hat_!” Clorinda cried.
“’T would make a sweet corsage bouquet.”
The shoppers stared quite stupefied
To see Clorinda Dobbs depart
Wearing a husband next her heart.
[Illustration: Drawing by F. R. Gruger]
A TRIUMPH FOR THE FRESH-AIR FUND
_Charity Note._ “Owing to the enterprise and generosity of the United
Welfare League, a gentleman, widely known in New York as Happy Harry,
was recently ‘rescued’ on the Bowery, washed, shaved, shod, and sent to
Sunnyside, in Sullivan County, New York.
“We are glad to learn, from recent advices from Sunnyside, that the
stranger is wholeheartedly entering into the life and spirit of the
place.”
THE SENIOR WRANGLER
_SNOBBERY--AMERICA VS. ENGLAND_
“How the Americans _do_ love a Duke!” is a frequent comment of the
British journals, and they then proceed to the sober generalization
that “the United States is a nation of flunkies and of snobs.” Whoever
will be at the pains to follow British weekly journalism will find
this sentiment repeated every little while. Good old British Podsnap!
No half-way course for him. He is not the man to shilly-shally with
a nation, and he will speak the plain truth to any hemisphere, no
matter how it hurts the hemisphere’s feelings. Vulgarity is a matter of
geography. It is reckoned from Pall Mall as time is from Greenwich.
But as to snobs. New York’s streets are of course often choked with
them. A duke, an elephant, a base-ball pitcher on Fifth Avenue, may
at any time be the center of a disproportionate and servile attention
from both the American people and the press. Yet the cult of the
egregious and the greatly advertised has never the deep devotion
of sound snobbery. It is not for an upstart and volatile people to
dispute the calm supremacy of British snobbery. Your true snob is not
inquisitive at all. He has no sense of any social values not his own.
It is among the tightly closed minds of the tight little island that he
is seen at his best. What other nation could produce, in journalism,
such inimitable snobs as the Lord Alfred Douglases and the Saturday
Reviewers?
American snobbery is not a sturdy plant. There is too much social
uncertainty at the root of it. What the British take for snobbery
over here springs from quite alien qualities--curiosity, a vast
social innocence, and a blessed inexperience of rank. To be sure, if
King George comes to New York some one may clip his coat-tails for a
keepsake; and it is quite probable that Mrs. Van Allendale, of Newport,
if asked to meet him, will be all of a tremble whether to address
him as “Sire” or “My God.” But what has this in common with the huge
assurances of British snobbery--its enormous certainty of the Proper
Thing, in clothes, people, religion, sports, manners, and races, and
its indomitable determination not to guess again?
[Illustration: KING GEORGE IN NEW YORK]
_OUR TENDER LITERARY CELEBRITIES_
One day, not so very long ago, a well-known American author was laughed
at in a morning newspaper. It was apparently not meant for stinging
satire. But the author felt it somewhere about him and complained
to the editor of the pain. He wrote a letter for publication--long,
earnest, very indignant. I am, said he, the victim of a “malignantly
humorous attack.” By which process he turned a poor joke on himself
into a good one, and incidentally exposed a too tender private
temperament to the public gaze.
Sometimes it seems as if the whole body of recent American literature
were not worth the damage sustained by character while consuming the
fruits of success. There are signs of a bad schooling, of too steady
a fare of sweets. For what doth it profit a man to run to a hundred
thousand if he turn out a prig? The thing too often happens. His
constitution may have been none too robust at the start, but it is
awful to think what might become of any of us. Undermined by reciprocal
endearments, we, too, might rage at the first word of criticism and
swoon at the sound of laughter. Potatoes will sprout in a warm cellar,
though some are worse than others. It is the effect of too much shelter
in the great author’s life.
I condemn no man. I condemn the influences. Fortified against
displeasure, barricaded against even chaff, there comes a time when the
soul’s dark cottage needs ventilation. There should be more outside
breezes in The Literary Life.
[Illustration]
OUR PARENTS
TWO POEMS BY CHARLES IRVIN JUNKIN
PICTURES BY HARRY RALEIGH
[Illustration]
_WHEN PA IS SICK_
When pa is sick,
He’s scared to death,
An’ ma an’ us
Just holds our breath.
He crawls in bed,
An’ puffs an’ grunts,
An’ does all kinds
Of crazy stunts.
He wants “_Doc_” Brown,
An’ mighty quick;
For when pa’s ill,
He’s _awful_ sick.
He gasps an’ groans,
An’ sort o’ sighs,
He talks s’ queer,
An’ rolls his eyes.
Ma jumps an’ runs,
An’ all of us,
An’ all the house,
Is in a fuss,
An’ peace an’ joy
Is mighty skeerce.--
When pa is sick,
It’s somethin’ fierce.
[Illustration: “WHEN PA IS SICK, IT’S SOMETHIN’ FIERCE”]
_WHEN MA IS SICK_
When ma is sick,
She pegs away;
She’s quiet, though,
Not much t’ say.
She goes right on
A-doin’ things,
An’ sometimes laughs,
Er even sings.
She says she don’t
Feel extry well,
But then it’s just
A kind o’ spell;
She’ll be all right
To-morrow, sure.
A good old sleep
Will be the cure.
An’ pa he sniffs,
An’ makes no kick,
Fer women-folks
Is always sick.
An’ ma she smiles,
Lets on she’s glad.--
When ma is sick,
It ain’t s’ bad.
[Illustration: “WHEN MA IS SICK, IT AIN’T S’ BAD”]
[Illustration: HORACE.--]
“I SING OF MYSELF”
(An ode by Horace.--Book II, Ode 20)
BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER
Before I end this glorious batch
Of deathless verses, friend Mæcenas,
I’ve something still to add, to snatch
One laurel more to share between us.
(I mention all of this to no man
Except perhaps a friend--or Roman.)
Now that my time has come to die
(Within a score or two of years),
I wish to have it known that I
Shall gladly leave this “vale of tears,”
Because (and how my friends will chortle!)
I shall be more than just immortal.
Into the clear and boundless air
I shall ascend with sounding pinions.
Shouting a buoyant “I don’t care,”
Laughing at kings and their dominions.
And folks will say (how well you know it!),
“Q. Flaccus? Ah, he _was_ a poet!”
My wings shall sprout,--why, even now
I feel all creepy and absurd-like,--
My skin is roughening somehow,
My legs are positively birdlike.
And see, sure as I’m growing older,
Feathers and quills on either shoulder!
And I shall fly about as long
As I’ve the slightest inclination,
A veritable Bird of Song
Without a local habitation.
Like Icarus, I’ll travel surely
And (need I say it?) more securely.
From where the Dacian hides in shame
To where the river Rhone runs muddy,
All men will celebrate my name;
My works will constitute a study.
I shall be loved by people pat in
The ways of elementary Latin.
Then let there be no dirge for me,
No petty grief or lamentation.
Why weep for one who’s sure to be
A joy and honor to creation?
Ah, you’re a lucky man, by Venus!
To have a friend like _me_, Mæcenas.
NEWPORT NOTE
THE LATEST SENSATION IN SMART SOCIETY
“Mrs. Algy Flint gave an informal turkey-trot last evening at ‘On
the Rocks,’ her palace in Newport. Prizes were awarded to the best
dancers. The first prize (an Owen Johnson Salamander fire-screen--for
stenographers and débutantes) was won by Miss Dolly Marble, for a novel
little dance entitled ‘The Tangorilla.’ The second prize (a Pankhurst
forcible feeder--for infants and invalids) was awarded to Bertie Stone,
her clever and light-footed partner.”
[Illustration:
Drawing by Birch
“THE TANGORILLA”]
SOCRATIC ARGUMENT
BY JOHN CARVER ALDEN
Straight, at his ruler’s stern command,
The contents of the cup, offhand,
Inclusive of its dregs and lees,
Was promptly drained by Socrates.
More than his foes,--perhaps his wife--
Caused his Xanthippe-thy for life.
THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK