When she was alone Joan sat and gazed not at her wall but at the
pictures that came back to her out of a part of her life which seemed
to have been lived centuries ago. They were the pictures that came
back continually without being called, the clearness of which always
startled her afresh. Sometimes she thought they sprang up to add to
her torment, but sometimes it seemed as if they came to save her from
herself--her mad, wicked self. After all, there were moments when to
know that she _had_ been the girl whose eighteen-year-old heart had
leaped so when she turned and met Jem’s eyes, as he stood gazing at her
under the beech-tree, was something to cling to. She had been that girl
and Jem had been--Jem. Her throat strained itself because sobs rose in
it, and her eyes were hot with the swell of tears.
She could hear voices and laughter and the click of balls from the
billiard-room. Her mother and Palliser laughed the most, but she knew
the sound of her mother’s voice would cease soon, because she would
come back to her. She knew the kind of scene they would pass through
together when she returned. The old things would be said, the old
arguments used, but a new one would be added. It was at once horrible
and ridiculous that she must sit and listen--and stare at the growing
wall. It was as she caught her breath against the choking swell of
tears that she heard Lady Mallowe returning. She came in with an
actual sweep across the room. Her society air had fled, and she was
unadornedly furious when she stopped before Joan’s chair. For a few
seconds she actually glared; then she broke forth in a suppressed
undertone.
“Come into the billiard-room. I command it!”
Joan lifted her eyes from her book. Her voice was as low as her
mother’s, but steadier.
“No,” she answered.
“Is this conduct to continue? Is it?” Lady Mallowe panted.
“Yes,” said Joan, and laid her book on the table near her. There was
nothing else to say. Words made things worse.
Lady Mallowe had lost her head, but she still spoke in the suppressed
voice.
“You _shall_ behave yourself!” she cried, under her breath, and
actually made a passionate half-start toward her.
“Wouldn’t it be wise to remember that you cannot make the kind of scene
here that you can in your own house?” said Joan. “We are a bad-tempered
pair. But when we are guests in other people’s houses--”
“You think you can take advantage of that!” she said. “Don’t trust
yourself too far. Do you imagine that just when all might go well for
me I will allow you to spoil everything?”
“How can I spoil everything?”
“By behaving as you have been behaving since we came here--refusing
to make a home for yourself; by hanging round my neck so that it will
appear that any one who takes me must take you also. I came in here to
tell you,” she went on, “that this is your last chance. I shall never
give you another.”
Joan remained silent, and her silence added to her mother’s helpless
rage. She moved a step nearer to her and flung the javelin which she
always knew would strike deep.
“You have made yourself a laughing-stock for all London for years. You
are mad about a man who disgraced and ruined himself.”
She saw the javelin quiver as it struck; but Joan’s voice as it
answered her had a quality of low and deadly steadiness.
“You have said that a thousand times, and you will say it another
thousand--though you know the story was a lie and was proved to be one.”
Lady Mallowe knew her way thoroughly.
“Who remembers the denials? What the world remembers is that Jem Temple
Barholm was stamped as a cheat and a trickster. No one has time to
remember the other thing. He is dead--_dead_! When a man’s dead it’s
too late.”
She was desperate enough to drive her javelin home deeper than she had
ever chanced to drive it before. The truth--the awful truth she uttered
shook Joan from head to foot. She sprang up and stood before her in
heart-wrung fury.
“Oh! You are a hideously cruel woman!” she cried. “They say even tigers
care for their young! But you--you can say that to _me_. ‘When a man’s
dead, it’s too late.’”
“It _is_ too late--it _is_ too late!” Lady Mallowe persisted. Why
had not she struck this note before? It was breaking Joan’s will: “I
would say anything to bring you to your senses. I came here because
it _is_ your last chance. Palliser knew what he was saying when he
made a joke of it just now. He knew it wasn’t a joke. You might have
been the Duchess of Merthshire; you might have been Lady St. Maur,
with a husband with millions. And here you are. You know what’s before
you--when I am out of the trap.”
Joan laughed. It was a wild little laugh, and she felt there was no
sense in it.
“I might apply for a place in Miss Alicia’s Home for Decayed
Gentlewomen,” she said.
Lady Mallowe nodded her head fiercely.
“Apply, then. There will be no place for you in the home I am going to
live in,” she retorted.
Joan ceased moving about. She was about to hear the one argument that
was new.
“You may as well tell me,” she said wearily.
“I have had a letter from Sir Moses Monaldini. He is to be at Broome
Haughton. He is going there purposely to meet me. What he writes can
mean only one thing. He means to ask me to marry him. I’m your mother,
and I’m nearly twenty years older than you; but you see that I’m out of
the trap first.”
“I knew you would be,” answered Joan.
“He detests you,” Lady Mallowe went on. “He will not hear of your
living with us--or even near us. He says you are old enough to take
care of yourself. Take my advice. I am doing you a good turn in giving
it. This New York newsboy is mad over you. If he hadn’t been we should
have been bundled out of the house before this. He never has spoken
to a lady before in his life, and he feels as if you were a goddess.
Go into the billiard-room this instant, and do all a woman can. Go!”
And she actually stamped her foot on the carpet. “You might live in
the very house you would have lived in with Jem Temple Barholm, on the
income he could have given you.”
She saw the crassness of her blunder the next moment. If she had had an
advantage, she had lost it.
Wickedly, without a touch of mirth, Joan laughed in her face.
“Jem’s house and Jem’s money--and the New York newsboy in his shoes,”
she flung at her. “T. Tembarom to live with until one’s death-bed. T.
Tembarom!”
Suddenly, something _was_ giving way in her, Lady Mallowe thought
again. Joan slipped into a chair and dropped her head and hidden face
on the table.
“Oh! Mother! Mother!” she ended. “Oh! Jem! Jem!”
Was she sobbing or trying to choke sobbing back? There was no time to
be lost. Her mother had never known a scene to end in this way before.
“Crying!” There was absolute spite in her voice. “That shows you know
what you are in for, at all events. But I’ve said my last word. What
does it matter to me, after all? You’re in the trap. I’m not. Get out
as best you can.”
She turned her back and went out of the room--as she had come into
it--with a sweep Joan would have smiled at as rather vulgar if she
had seen it. As a child in the nursery, she had often seen that her
ladyship was vulgar.
But she did not see the sweep because her face was hidden. Something
in her had broken this time, as her mother had felt. That bitter,
sordid truth, driven home as it had been, had done it. Who had time
to remember denials, or lies proved to be lies? Nobody in the world.
Who had time to give to the defense of a dead man? There was not
time enough to give to living ones. It was true--true! When a man is
dead, it is too late. The wall had built itself until it reached her
sky; but it was not the wall she bent her head and sobbed over. It
was that suddenly she had seen again Jem’s face as he had stood with
slow-growing pallor, and looked round at the ring of eyes which stared
at him; Jem’s face as he strode by her without a glance and went out
of the room. She forgot everything else on earth. She forgot where she
was. She was eighteen again, and she sobbed in her arms as eighteen
sobs when its heart is torn from it.
“Oh, Jem! Jem!” she cried. “If you were only in the same _world_ with
me! If you were just in the same _world_!”
She had forgotten all else, indeed. She forgot too long. She did not
know how long. It seemed that no more than a few minutes had passed
before she was without warning struck with the shock of feeling that
some one was in the room with her, standing near her, looking at her.
She had been mad not to remember that exactly this thing would be
sure to happen, by some abominable chance. Her movement as she rose
was almost violent, she could not hold herself still, and her face
was horribly wet with shameless, unconcealable tears. Shameless she
felt them--indecent--a sort of nudity of the soul. If it had been a
servant who had intruded, or if it had been Palliser it would have been
intolerable enough. But it was T. Tembarom who confronted her with his
common face, moved mysteriously by some feeling she resented even more
than she resented his presence. He was too grossly ignorant to know
that a man of breeding, having entered by chance, would have turned
and gone away, professing not to have seen. He seemed to think--the
dolt!--that he must make some apology.
“Say! Lady Joan!” he began. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to butt
in.”
“Then go away,” she commanded. “Instantly--instantly!”
She knew he must see that she spoke almost through her teeth in her
effort to control her sobbing breath. But he made no move toward
leaving her. He even drew nearer, looking at her in a sort of
meditative, obstinate way.
“N-no,” he replied deliberately. “I guess--I won’t.”
“You won’t?” Lady Joan repeated after him. “Then I will.”
He made a stride forward and laid his hand on her arm.
“No. Not on your life. You won’t, either--if I can help it. And you’re
going to _let_ me help it.”
Almost any one but herself--any one, at least, who did not resent his
very existence--would have felt the drop in his voice which suddenly
struck the note of boyish, friendly appeal in the last sentence.
“You’re going to _let_ me,” he repeated.
She stood looking down at the daring, unconscious hand on her arm.
“I suppose,” she said, with cutting slowness, “that you do not even
_know_ that you are insolent. Take your hand away,” in arrogant command.
He removed it with an unabashed half-smile.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn’t even know I’d put it there. It
was a break--but I wanted to keep you.”
That he not only wanted to keep her, but intended to do so, was
apparent. His air was neither rough nor brutal, but he had ingeniously
placed himself in the outlet between the big table and the way to the
door, He put his hands in his pockets in his vulgar, unconscious way,
and watched her.
“Say, Lady Joan!” he broke forth, in the frank outburst of a man who
wants to get something over. “I should be a fool if I didn’t see that
you’re up against it--hard! What’s the matter?” His voice dropped again.
There was something in the drop this time which--perhaps because of her
recent emotion--sounded to her almost as if he were asking the question
with the protecting sympathy of the tone one would use in speaking to
a child. How dare he! But it came home to her that Jem had once said
“What’s the matter?” to her in the same way.
“Do you think it likely that I should confide in you?” she said, and
inwardly quaked at the memory as she said it.
“No,” he answered, considering the matter gravely. “It’s not
_likely_--the way things look to you now. But if you knew me better
perhaps it would be likely.”
“I once explained to you that I do not _intend_ to know you better,”
she gave answer.
He nodded acquiescently.
“Yes. I got on to that. And it’s because it’s up to me that I came out
here to tell you something I want you to know before you go away. I’m
going to confide in _you_.”
“Cannot even _you_ see that I am not in the mood to accept
confidences?” she exclaimed.
“Yes, I can. But you’re going to accept this one,” steadily. “No,” as
she made a swift movement, “I’m not going to clear the way till I’ve
done.”
“I insist!” she cried. “If you were--” He put out his hand, but not to
touch her.
“I know what you’re going to say. If I were a gentleman--Well, I’m not
laying any claims to anything--but I’m a sort of a man, anyhow, though
you mayn’t think it. And you’re going to listen.”
(To be continued)
[Illustration]
RITUAL
BY WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT
Lord God, what may we think of Thee,
Save that in stars we drink of Thee,
Save that in the abundance of Thy sunlight we have seen
Thine excellent intention;
And Thy marvelous invention
In great and little living things and all the grades between?
Lord God, what may we say to Thee
Who know our hearts give way to Thee
Surely at last in secret depths, though protest long denies,
And that to live is wonder
With worlds above and under
Unreached of any mortal heart, blurred to all mortal eyes?
Lord God, the fitting praise to Thee
Rather would seem to raise to Thee
Only pure honesty of mind, waiting Thy stalwart will;
Like as the hills believe Thee,
Like as the seas receive Thee,
Like as the trees whose rustlings cease,--who hear Thee and are still!
[Illustration: TOPICS OF THE TIME]
THE SPIRIT OF THE CENTURY
“The magazine needs no other aim than to be worthy of the name it
bears.”
Thus wrote ~The Century’s~ first editor, Dr. J. G. Holland, in the
first number of this magazine nearly forty-three years ago. He
referred, of course, to the magazine’s original title, which was
“Scribner’s Monthly”; but ~The Century’s~ earnest ambition to realize
the full meaning of its present significant title can find no fitter
expression. It continues to believe that success will be attained
only as it becomes really the representative magazine of this new and
spectacular century of American life.
For the information of many inquiring friends, it seems wise at this
time to say that there will be no “new” ~Century~ in the sense of a
changed ~Century~. There can be none. In remaining the “old” ~Century~,
merely growing with the times, merely holding fast to its historic
place in the front of progress, this magazine, in these richer days of
hard thinking and prompt acting and strenuous living, these tumultuous
days of changing eras, remains by mere definition the organ of what
is noblest and forwardest in American life. The first editor of this
magazine stated editorially that it was conducted in “the free spirit
of modern progress and the broadest literary catholicity.” The fourth
editor joyfully reaffirms this creed. There can be no simpler and more
comprehensive statement of this magazine’s present spirit and purposes.
In the twentieth-anniversary number, Richard Watson Gilder, who, on Dr.
Holland’s death in 1881, succeeded to the editorship, reaffirmed the
creed in these words:
If there is any one dominant sentiment which an unprejudiced
reviewer would recognize as pervading these forty half-yearly
volumes, it is, we think, a sane and earnest Americanism. Along
with and part of the American spirit has been the earnest endeavor
to do all that such a publication might do to increase the
sentiment of union throughout our diverse sisterhood of States--the
sentiment of American nationality. It has always been the aim of
~The Century~ not only to be a force in literature and art, but to
take a wholesome part in the discussion of great questions; not
only to promote good literature and art, but good citizenship.
Allowing for different conditions, Mr. Gilder might have written this
for to-day.
In the same editorial utterance Mr. Gilder dwelt strongly upon
“the spirit of experiment” which, he said, had always inspired the
magazine’s policy. This we take to be merely another phrase for Dr.
Holland’s “free spirit of modern progress.”
Five years later, on the occasion of our twenty-fifth anniversary, Mr.
Gilder wrote in these pages:
During the next ten years there should be in America especially
a revival of creative literature. If there is, or should be at
any particular time, a lack of energy, or a lack of quantity
or quality, in the American literary output, it can be merely
temporary; for our condition is full of social, political, and
industrial problems; life in the New World is replete with
strenuous exertion of every kind, of picturesque contrasts, and of
innumerable themes fit to inspire literary art. American life is
rich in feeling and action and meaning.
American life is richer many times over in feeling and action, and
especially in meaning, than when Mr. Gilder penned these words. The
intervening years have brought to the surface a myriad of surging
currents of human desire and necessity and passion, then concealed,
almost unsuspected, below the surface.
It cannot have escaped any reader of ~The Century~ that we are living
in a period of amazing achievement as well as of portentous social
development. Yet any worker in the furrows of life may well be pardoned
for failure to realize the detail and immensity of our achievement.
Could one devote himself wholly to discovering the facts of modern
accomplishment, it would take a busy life to get abreast of the mere
news of it, and to keep there. Ours are times of such variety and
complexity that none can be expected to grasp much more than the
technicalities of his own work-bench.
Like most prophesies, Mr. Gilder’s has been only partly fulfilled. Yet
the eighteen years since he uttered it have proved at least that it
was true, though its realization has been delayed by the extraordinary
activity of these later years. The history of all human progress shows
that the art of any period is, so to speak, the flowering of that
period. The bloom appears only after stem and stalk have shot to their
full growth, and leaves have expanded and darkened to their maturity.
The bubbling sap of Mr. Gilder’s time is showing now in new and
surprising growth, and our problem to-day is not so much to enjoy the
flowering literature which he promised as to study and to measure and
to comprehend as nearly as possible the wealth of scientific and social
and political and industrial achievement which has amazingly developed.
There is no escaping the fact that civilization, like the river
tumbling and swirling between two lakes, is passing turbulently from
the old convention of the last several generations to the unknown,
almost unguessable convention of the not distant future. The feminist
movement, the uprising of labor, the surging of innumerable socialistic
currents, can mean nothing else than the certain readjustment of social
levels. The demand of the people for the heritage of the bosses is not
short of revolution. The rebellious din of frantic impressionistic
groups is nothing if not strenuous protest against a frozen art. The
changed Sabbath and the tempered sermon mark the coldly critical
appraisement of religious creeds. And science, meantime, straining and
sweating under the lash of progress, is passing from wonder unto wonder.
Perhaps Mr. Gilder’s period of literary flowering, though surely
coming, must be postponed another decade. The need of the moment is to
discover where we are, what is accomplishing about us. Where have all
these struggling activities brought us? What have they really done?
What do they mean? Whither do they tend?
It is time we look this question of the present squarely in the eye,
in order, if for no other reason, that we may intelligently face
the future. It is time that, in business phrase, we take account
of stock. It is time that the chemist, for example, trembling
over the revelations of his amazing combinations, know that the
psychologist, too, is excited about the astonishing developments of
his own laboratory; that the elated conquerors of the air realize the
achievement of those who plod in the groaning shops of town; that the
biologist, amazed at his artificial propagation of life, appreciate the
telegraphic annihilation of space.
Thus only may we wisely choose our steps in these uncertain times,
remembering that change is not always degeneration; oftener it is
progress. There are periods when men live literature, not write it,
and consequently literary barrenness may mean merely lying fallow, and
still be progress. Especially must we not be too hasty of judgment, for
while there are times to preach and times to act and times to pronounce
judgment, there are at long intervals also times, between the passings
out and the comings in, when it behooves all men to watch and to wait
and to study the signs. There are abundant reasons to believe that such
a time is at hand, and ~The Century~, now, as in the past, stands by to
help.
During the months, perhaps the years, to come, in Dr. Holland’s “free
spirit of modern progress,” in Mr. Gilder’s “spirit of experiment,” and
in Mr. Johnson’s spirit of public helpfulness, ~The Century~ will offer
to its readers a summing-up of the results of this wonderful period,
and a fair presentation of the changes attendant upon the passing of
our present order and the establishment of the new.
Not as an advocate shall we present these causes, nor again in protest;
but in the fair, free, unbiased spirit of investigation. Facts must
precede opinions. It is poor rowing against the rapids between the
lakes. Let us study these manifestations fairly and sympathetically
before we draw conclusions. It will be ~The Century’s~ pleasure and
public duty to enlist the services of able authorities in every cause,
and to present each justly from its own point of view.
Such a program will, we feel sure, help materially the cause of human
progress, because it will help men and women to comprehend life as it
passes.
As for the rest, we shall conserve the best that ~The Century~ has
stood for in the past. We shall offer a larger proportion of fiction
than formerly, and shall bring it as near to truth, and make it
as interpretative of life, as conditions allow. We shall maintain
illustration at the highest point modern method will permit. We shall
cultivate history and poetry and the essay. We shall explore conditions
at home and abroad. We shall make this magazine, fearlessly and in the
white light of to-day, as nearly the magazine of the century as courage
and devotion and eyes that see and minds that shrink not can do.
[Illustration]
In Lighter Vein
WORLD REFORMERS--AND DUSTERS
[Illustration]
Though often entranced by that brilliant group of cosmic
problem-solvers--Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Chesterton, and
others--I insist on my personal irresponsibility for the state of
Mankind as a whole. These men are always nursing civilization.
They regard it as a sort of potted plant which they fear to find
frost-bitten of a morning. This is especially clear in the latest
writings of Mr. H. G. Wells, who would tidy up the whole world at once.
At one swoop he would remove the shirts from our clothes-lines and the
errors from our minds. The world is too large for his feather duster;
he had thought to find it a smaller planet that he might have kept at
least half-way clean. Now see what he has on his hands--everything in
a mess, Africa backward, China careless, the sex relation by no means
straightened out, socialism, imperialism, industrialism, planless
progressivism littering up things, and nobody caring a rap--at times
it seems to the good housewifely soul almost too much for one person
to manage. And then that infernal human diversity--slow minds, stupid
minds, minds made up too soon, or not at all, closed minds, tough
minds, tender minds--what’s to be done with them? He burns to do
_something_. At least he says he does.
In one of his books he describes himself in fancy as going about the
country and, with the keenest joy, spearing Anglican bishops. Though I
am myself a stranger to the sport, I believe the pleasure of spearing
bishops is exaggerated. For once begun it must lead logically to a
daily drudgery of slaughter among the great crowds of folks who are not
intellectually independent or morally daring--lead, in short, to the
massacre of those who are not particularly exciting, a large task and
tedious.
I wonder if we commonplace persons are not right after all in a certain
instinct of distrust toward these gifted writers. We believe implicitly
in their fancies and not at all in their facts. We believe in the world
they have invented and not in the world they have observed; and we
distrust them utterly as world-pushers. The signs are plain--terribly
plain sometimes--that it is when they have the smallest notions that
they say their largest things.
_The Senior Wrangler._
LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE: _NEW STYLE_
(REFORMER, UPLIFTER, SOCIAL SERVICER AND BELIEVER IN BETTERMENT)
BY ANNE O’HAGAN
WITH A PICTURE BY E. L. BLUMENSCHEIN
[Illustration: LADY CLARA: _NEW STYLE_]
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Though, ’neath the Tennysonian frown,
You’ve ceased to play at hearts, what need
For throwing _all_ the graces down?
The quip, the wile, the wingèd smile,
Must these in truth be quite retired,
Reformer of a thousand ills,
O lady with a mission fired?
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
You cause a tumult in my head.
I do not know how many quarts
Of coal-tar every year are fed
In store-made pies, or what dread dyes
Give that bright emerald to canned peas.
I do not know the cure for graft,
Or juvenile delinquencies;
And, oh, my very soul is sick
Of these and topics like to these!
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
On suffragism you’ve a view.
You have one on the cost of war,
And what the working-girl should do.
Your uplift crusade comprehends
The stage, the mart, the funeral bier;
Your dinner-table talk has grown
Statistical and very drear.
Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,
By yon blue heavens above us bent,
The gardener Adam and his wife
Yawn at your plans for betterment.
We never see such sad ennui
Among our hapless human brood
As when the ladies’ motto runs:
“’Tis fashionable to do good.”
* * * * *
Clara, Clara Vere de Vere,
If time hangs heavy on your hands,
Are there no suitors at your gates,
No squires of dames about your lands?
Go, play the game of hearts again,
Coquette, and sparkle, languish, glow;
Ask pardon of the folk you’ve bored,
And let the thousand causes go!
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Drawn by Reginald Birch
“THE PET HAS BECOME OF MATERIAL AID TO HIM IN HIS WALL STREET WORK”]
THE NEWS IN WALL STREET
BY JAMES L. FORD
Author of “The Literary Shop”
WITH PICTURES BY REGINALD BIRCH AND MAY WILSON PRESTON
~Algy Bond~ is one of the brokers who is doing remarkably well in Wall
Street now. He is widely known as a cotillion leader, as vice-president
of the Westminster Kennel Club, and as a member of the MacDowell
Musical Union. He has lately trained Grassmere Dolly--his intelligent
French poodle--so that the pet has become of material aid to him in his
Wall Street work.
~Money~ has been easier in Wall Street since the sale of many
gilt-edged mining and industrial securities brought a number of
eager home-builders into the market. The new fashion of papering the
walls of country homes with these beautiful and durable specimens of
steel-engraving has created a lively demand for the stocks in question.
~The~ opening of the new station of the Herald Ice Fund at the corner
of Wall and Broad streets created a profound sensation in the financial
district. The Stock-Exchange closed during the distribution of the
ice, and many pitiful scenes were enacted as the members of the great
banking-houses crowded about the wagon and fought for the chilly cubes
that were handed out to them. An office boy generously shared his piece
with a bank president. The magnate burst into tears, and promised that
he would make his benefactor rich by never giving him a tip on the
stock-market.
~Yeggmen~ entered the office of Bilkheimer Brothers, Bankers and
Brokers, last Saturday night, and blew open the safe with dynamite.
When Mr. Abie Bilkheimer, the popular bond specialist, and the head of
the firm, reached his office on Monday morning, he found a ten-dollar
bill and a card on which were inscribed a few words of heartfelt
sympathy from the yeggmen.
~That~ a cat cannot live in a vacuum has been proved by a series of
recent experiments carried on by the Wall Street Class for Scientific
Study to which many of the younger brokers belong. It was found that
the quickest method of killing a cat is to lock it in the vaults of
that trust company which claims the largest capital and surplus.
~Many~ charitable persons have been in the habit of scattering pennies
from the gallery of the Stock-Exchange, but this practice has been
forbidden since Looey Pinchenstein (the organizer of the pool in Rio
and Hernandez copper) fractured his nose in the scramble. Pennies will
hereafter be left with the doorman to distribute at the close of the
day.
~The~ Tribune Fresh Air Fund has received a touching letter from little
Willie Noodle, inclosing thirty-eight cents--which he had saved in a
toy bank from his candy money--and expressing the hope that it would
help to send a poor ticker-tied broker on an outing to the sea-shore.
[Illustration:
“A POOR TICKER-TIED BROKER”
Drawn by
May Wilson Preston
]
~The~ other day a gentleman of provincial aspect was found wandering
on Wall Street in a dazed and feeble condition. Upon being questioned
as to the nature of his errand there, he announced his intention
of opening an account with a Wall Street brokerage firm.... When
the police finally rescued him from the surging mob of brokers, it
was found that he had suffered severe contusions about the hips and
breasts. He is at present confined in one of the private wards of the
observation pavilion.
CONTINUED IN THE ADS
A DIRGE INSPIRED BY A REGRETTABLE TENDENCY IN THE PERIODICALS OF OUR DAY
BY SARAH REDINGTON
(With the usual apologies to Swinburne)
If I wrote sonnets soulful
And you wrote ads for beans,
And I got in your section
’Twould cause me deep dejection.
(My Muse would be so doleful
In such unwonted scenes.)
If I wrote sonnets soulful,
And you wrote ads for beans.
If you had sung the praises
Of soap or safety-pin,
And found some high-brow lyric
Beside your panegyric,
You’d be as mad as blazes
To see bards butting in.
If you had sung the praises
Of soap or safety-pin.
When, on page eight, perusing
“The Baby and the Cop,”
Its dénouement I’m bidden
To seek, ’mid ads half hidden,
I find it hanged confusing
And let the Baby drop.
When, on page eight perusing
“The Baby and the Cop.”
When one is just deciding
To buy a fountain-pen,
And in the ads one’s seeking
For “Notablot Non-Leaking,”
_Who_ wants to be colliding
With “Wives of Famous Men”?
When one is just deciding
To buy a fountain-pen.
Oh, magazines suggesting
A boarding-house ragout,
_Why_ mix your tales and ballads
With ads of soups and salads?
It’s hard enough digesting
The awful stuff we do.
Oh, magazines suggesting
A boarding-house ragout.
[Illustration:
JUMBLE MRS. RYMBEL MR. RYMBEL SYMBOL RAMBLE RONDEAU AND RHYME
(THE BABY) (THE TWINS)
THE RYMBEL FAMILY. FROM A RECENT PORTRAIT BY OLIVER HERFORD]
HOW THE RYMBELS BROKE INTO VERSE
The above portrait is the first authentic likeness of the eccentric
Rymbels. It portrays them rymbling, _chez eux_. It is, in particular, a
speaking, not to say a _shouting_, likeness of Mr. Rymbel.
This interesting, demented, and extremely misunderstood verse family
was first discovered and laid bare to the public by Mr. Herford in the
August issue of ~The Century~. As a result of his happy discovery, and
because of his two remarkable rymbels in that issue, he has lately been
appointed Rymbel Laureate of America. Since their successful début,
public interest in the Rymbels has increased amazingly. In New York the
fever is now at its height. Everybody’s rymbling it. Rude, ridiculous,
and ribald rymbels are arriving by every post.
For those who are not already confirmed rymbelists it may be merciful
to explain that, roughly speaking, a rymbel is any poem of two, four,
or six stanzas, preferably of five lines each, in which the ultimate
word in one verse must inevitably be a miscue for the subject-matter of
the next. This miscue is due to three things: eccentricity, deafness,
and dementia, all of them pronounced Rymbel family characteristics.
Whenever Mr. Rymbel embarks on the first verse, Mrs. Rymbel, because
of her deafness and lightness of mind, seizes on the most unexpected
meaning embodied in the last word of her husband’s verse, and proceeds
properly to mangle it in the second, after which the children take up
the tangled skein, and do a little mangling on their own.
In the masterly canvas at the head of this page, Mr. R. is seen
inflated with an afflatus and embarking on his first verse. Mrs. R.,
with a tight hold on the baby, is feverishly awaiting her all important
cue. Symbol, their beautiful daughter, is the seated lady shown at the
right of Mr. R. The astute reader will already have guessed, because
of the prevalence of flowering hay in her hair, that, mentally, Symbol
is, to put it charitably, only sparking on one cylinder. Ramble, the
eldest son, has, it will be seen, just rebuked Rondeau and Rhyme, the
twins, who, after hearing parts of their father’s verse, have turned to
their mother to mutter: “What’s the matter with his metre-motor, mater?”
Miss Carolyn Wells, who has for years been on the most intimate terms
with the Rymbels, and who might almost be called a member of the
family, has preserved, as souvenirs of a boy-and-girl affair with
Master Ramble, two noteworthy examples of rymbelican verse. In the
first of these the Rymbels have touchingly voiced their preferences for
the nobler and loftier bards of our day. It is entitled:
A RYMBEL OF RHYMERS
Dear Edith Thomas! Oft do I
Feel in my heart the call of her.
Swift to my book-shelf then I fly,
And, hovering ’twixt a laugh and cry,
I read and re-read all of her.
Oliver Herford! How can praise
Add aught to his renown?
His comic kits, his fetching fays,
His books and works and healthful plays,
Are known all over town.
Charles Hanson Towne! his lyrics flow
Soft as the dews of Harmon;
His tastes are musical, and so
To please them he will often go
To “Lohengrin” or “Carmen.”
Bliss Carman all our hearts must win;
To higher thought he’d urge us;
Divinely tall, divinely thin,
Austere of mien, he should have been
A beadle or a burgess.
G. Burgess, Super-Sulphide! yet
Perhaps more saint than sinner.
His rhymes cavort and pirouette,
And as for that mad thing, Vivette,
I almost wish I’d been her.
Oh, Witter Bynner, oftener sound
Your note of lyric joys!
Come, poets, let us gather round,
Lest our brave pipings yet be drowned
By some strange foreign Noyes!
* * * * *
~Mr. L. Frank Tooker~ of Callao, Peru, insists that the rymbel is
didactic, and that its highest form is found in Spanish South America,
where it is used to inculcate the prudence and self-restraint for which
that region is preëminent. In illustration of this contention, he sends
this from Callao:
THE PRUDENT LOVER
I think when I behold her face,
It is so varee fair,
’Tis best to get acquaint’, you know,
And so I gaze _simpatico_:
That’s how you call to stare.
Ah, she was pausing on that stair
So timid like the fawn;
And fawn-like were her eyes, her lips
Were like the flowers the slow bee sips
Upon the dewy lawn.
But, _hola! she_ was not in lawn;
For as she turned to go,
I saw the pearls glow at her throat,
The satin gown about her float,
Though timid like the doe.
_Caramba!_ I have not the dough
For such expensiveness.
The eyes, the lips, the timid air,
That’s varee nice; but, oh, beware
That C. O. D. express!
* * * * *
Again the low rymbling sound of Miss Carolyn Wells!! This time ART is
her impassioned theme. She writes from Hansontown, Herfordshire.
ON A PORTRAIT OF NANCY
Full winsome was her bonny face,
And eke her golden hair.
Her gown was weft of rarest lace;
And high aloft, with gentle grace,
A sunshade pink she bare.
The She Bear from the forest came,
Just why, I cannot state.
The creature seemed to be quite tame;
Methought, would I her favor claim,
I must ingratiate.
In gray she ate! The lunch was fair,--
We had a window-seat.
Her gray gown meek, yet debonair;--
Demure,--yet with a regal air,--
She looked imperial,--sweet.
“Imperial suite? Yes,--I dare say
’T would make our voyage gladder.”
My wife is mad about display--
(But when I mentioned what we’d pay,
It only made Rose madder!)
Rose madder,--’tis the tint I’d use
To paint my brain’s fair figment;
A shape, half goddess and half muse,
And all in misty, pinkish hues,
The color scheme,--the pigment.
The color scheme the pig meant? Ma’am,
That _was_ a subtle fancy!
In tints of dawning gooseb’ry jam,
And those soft pinks of early ham,
We painted little Nancy!
[Illustration: Drawing by Birch
THE “ELITE” BATHING DRESS
_Now so much in vogue at Newport_]
We have been distressed to learn, from our great Metropolitan dailies,
that the ladies of assured and ultramundane position at Newport have
recently suffered severely from the unwarrantable intrusion on Bailey’s
Beach of certain Sunday Supplement sketch artists, society editors,
female policemen, independent kodakers, and foreign noblemen. As an
indirect result of these intrusions the “Elite” bathing dress has been
designed to assuage the sensibilities of the more modest and fastidious
among the hostesses of Newport. Our illustration shows Mrs. Reginald
Ochrepoint and Wu, her clever pet, ready for their morning dip.
[Illustration: Drawn by C. F. Peters
FROM GRAVE TO GAY
~The Freshman~: “Oh--er--might I be excused from my lectures for a
few days? The truth is--er--I want very much to attend the funeral
of an old and trusted friend.”
~The Dean~: “Well, really, Robinson,--I wonder if that is quite
necessary?--Now, if it were your father or your mother, I should,
of course, be only _too_ delighted.”
]
THE WISE SAINT
(A FABLE FOR ANYBODY)
BY HERMAN DA COSTA
PICTURE BY W. T. BENDA
[Illustration]
De debble see St. Peter sneak into heaben’s gate;
He holler: “What’s yo’ hurry? Wait dar, Peter! Wait!”
De saint pull in de latch-string, an’ holler: “Now, you go!
I’ll sic de houn’ dawg on you de fustest t’ing you know.”
“I speaks you like a ge’man,” de debble up an’ say,
“And yere you shets me out, sah! Fer shame! to ack dat way!”
“Don’ argify,” say Peter. “You leads fo’ks into sin.
Ain’t shettin’ you out, nohow; I’s shettin’ mahse’f in.”
LIMERICKS
TEXT AND PICTURES BY OLIVER HERFORD
[Illustration]
THE CONSERVATIVE OWL
A Canary, its woe to assuage,
Once invented a wireless cage.
The owl shook his head,
“It’s a Great Thought,” he said,
“But it’s far in advance of the age.”
[Illustration]
THE OMNIVOROUS BOOK-WORM
Quoth the book-worm, “I don’t care one bit
If writers have wisdom or wit;
A volume must be
Pretty dull to bore me
As completely as I can bore it.”
THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK