three years ago, when the war was on, and orders were flowing in, and he
was picking what crumbs of comfort he could--and also quite a few nice,
bright little nuggets--out of the general chaos. It may seem to you
that he is going as strong as ever. You may suppose that once a week he
still has a lorry back around to the side entrance to take his profits
down to the bank to be weighed and shoveled into the vaults. You may
imagine that he still spends his leisure hours clipping the nimble
coupon. But such is far from being the case, as you would realize if
you could only get him to open his heart to you.
Try asking him to increase your salary--this is a really good way to
find out. Then you will discover that most of his business day is
devoted to running around with his hat in his hand begging hard-hearted
bankers to let him have just a few more hundred thousands--surely a man
has a right to this pittance--so that he may pay his bills and be able
to look the world in the face once more. You will be horrified to learn
of such hideous octopuses--(thank you, Professor, we should have said
"octopi")--as Labor Unrest, Overhead Charges, Depreciation, and Stagnant
Markets. Secure in your weekly envelope with its usual twenty
dollars--unless like ourself, dear reader, you draw an occasional
I.O.U.--you may care little for the vagaries of any other market than
the one at which your wife or landlady buys the family meat and
vegetables. But this great and good man has to bear the brunt of the
fight. Is he complaining? No, friend, he is not.
"It is not for myself," he tells you in a voice quivering with emotion
and considerable brandy-and-soda--they can still get it, of course.
"It's not for myself, my boy. I must keep the old plant going for the
sake of the men and their families."
Just about then you burst into tears and beg his pardon for ever having
even thought of such a thing as more pay.
"You have no idea how delicate and complicated these financial problems
are," he assures you in a burst of confidence, "You don't realize, for
instance, that if I were to raise the wages of everyone in the
institution a dollar a month, I'd simply have to shut the old place up.
And I couldn't bear to do that--the associations, you know."
You have a vision of him in his poverty-stricken old age, out of work,
condemned to spend all his time at Palm Beach or the Riviera. If you
are a man of real feeling, you will tell him you think you could get
along on ten dollars a month less, and would he please take it to help
tide him over his difficulties?
It is experiences like this which convince a man that these are indeed
times of depression. And everything deepens the feeling. See the lines
of people waiting to buy the best seats for musical comedies and
hockey-matches! See them crowding into the cabarets at midnight! And
the jolly little dance-and-supper parties after the show in homes where
the cellar has not yet been entirely despoiled of its treasures!
All this is merely a proof of general anguish of mind. They are seeking
for respite and nepenthe and surcease of sorrow. They are dying game,
so to speak. If they were to sit down quietly at home and think things
over, they might become so desperate as to cut down their expenses. So
they roll out the old touring-car instead, and collect a few congenial
spirits, and possibly some more spirits under the cushion of the back
seat, and go--but it doesn't matter so much now where one goes. All
towns are alike.
Of course, there are financial giants, whose position is so secure that
no money panic can ever disturb their equilibrium or equanimity. We
called on one the other evening--two floors up over a grocery store. It
was a cold night, the heat was off, he was wearing his overcoat in the
house, and was feeding old newspapers into the parlor grate. In the
intervals he was reading Anatole France in the original, and consulting
a big French dictionary every line or so.
"Come in," he roared, "and help feed the fire. I've left the hero in a
delicate and somewhat improper position, and I want to see if anything
happened. I'll tell you in a minute." And he reached for the
dictionary.
We intimated that we would certainly like to know if anything of an
indelicate nature occurred, so that we might rush right out and report
the matter to the proper authorities.
"But how can you be interested in such things as that," we enquired,
"when hundreds of your fellow-millionaires and near-millionaires--they
are human beings after all--are writhing in financial agony? Have you
any European holdings, any Russian roubles, or anything of that sort?"
"I'm not holding 'em any longer," he said with a shameless grin. "I
gave them to the butcher as an instalment on last month's bill."
"But you must have some stocks on margin--are they properly covered?" we
persisted. That's the kind of fellow we are, always looking for
information--the more unpleasant the better.
"Huh, what's that?" he grunted, after a long pause during which he had
been hunting feverishly for a word. "What's that, margins? Are my
margins covered? Sure, they're covered, old top--and so are the
missus's and the kid's. Our margins are all protected from the
weather--also our chests and such other places as one usually takes cold
in."
But what's the use of talking to a man like that? He shut the book with
a bang and reached for the tobacco-jar.
"Now what do you know about that?" he groaned. "Nothing happened after
all. Just as things were at their liveliest, and the hero held out his
arms, and the heroine--well, just then the old Abbe blundered in
and...."
But there is something criminal and callous about such indifference as
this.
[Illustration: TAMING THE FURNACE]
*Taming the Furnace*
"And what the devil do you know about taming furnaces, anyway?" asks the
reader, presuming that the reader has a somewhat abrupt style in
conversation. "Here you go around bragging about being a bachelor and
having inclinations for the monastic life and all that sort of
rot"--meaning the bragging, of course--"and yet you have the nerve to
write an article on how to handle a furnace. G'wan and teach your
grandmother to suck eggs!"
Thereupon, the reader in torrid indignation drops the book and goes down
into the cellar, and seizing a short shovel with a broken handle tosses
half a ton of coal into the maw of the steel dragon there--a dragon
which consumes its own heat and lets none of it get as far as the
radiators.
Incidentally, why should it be regarded as the height of absurdity to
teach one's grandmother to suck eggs? Why should one's grandmother be
expected to know all about sucking eggs? Is one's grandmother a weasel
that she should be universally regarded as a supreme exponent of this
art? We are aware that this paragraph is in the nature of a digression,
but we have all our life been puzzled to account for this curious
tradition that grandmothers know everything to be known about removing
the contents of eggs by the primitive process of suction. We feel quite
sure that both our own personal and private grandmothers knew nothing
about it. We are also sure that we would never have had the nerve to
teach them how to do a thing so obviously vulgar and futile.
Furthermore, no one's grandmother could afford to suck eggs at the
present market quotations. So what would be the use, anyway, even if
she did know how? Altogether this seems to us a very silly proverb.
But, to return to furnaces, we really do know something about them--not
everything (what man does?), not even a great deal, perhaps, but still
something. And we ought to know something, for we have wrestled in
spirit and otherwise with every one of the fifty-odd varieties--hot air,
hot water, steam, and everything that lies between. Some men are born
furnace-tenders. Some learn it from plumbers. But we have had our
knowledge forced upon us.
One of our earliest and least-treasured recollections is of an enormous
old furnace in our grandfather's house--a mediaeval contraption, all
bricked-in, as big as a cottage, with a mouth the size of a pair of
folding doors, and a capacity for coal which would make a twin-screw
steamship turn a dark bottle-green. We used to be held up to the door
of it when we had been very naughty, and have it explained to us that
naughty boys were sent to a place bearing a general resemblance to that
bed of red-hot coals. We do not recall that we had much joy of the
prospect.
Later on, when we had got to the point of having Holy Writ retailed to
us with expository remarks--our preceptors usually picked out something
infernally gruesome--we used to associate that old furnace with the
various trials by fire mentioned in the Old Testament. Especially could
we see those three brave young Hebrews, who were condemned by old
Nebuchadnezzar to be burned to death, standing smilingly on the familiar
coals--each with a fire-insurance policy in his pocket, as we presume
now. Else why be so cheerful about it?
Even as a boy at grandfather's place we began to form that intimate
acquaintance with furnaces which has been the bane of our young life.
When the furnace man did not turn up--usually as a sequel to a nocturnal
endeavor to make the distilleries enlarge their plants--we had to shovel
coal into that grinning old monster until our back and arms ached, and
we would cheerfully have thrown in a few sticks of dynamite if there had
been any handy.
But, of course, that sort of thing is part of the penalty of being a
member of a family. We have no complaints to make. If a fellow will
permit himself to be dragged into a family he must pay the price
thereof. What we really object to is that since we have attained the
dignity of manhood and the responsibility of a vote in provincial and
federal affairs, we are still obliged to toil in cellars with a
coal-shovel--a black-and-white slave, so to speak.
It would be different if we were married. We would expect to look after
a furnace. And, anyway, to a married man what is a little trouble more
or less?--he has lots of it. But freedom from worry about the furnace
should be one of the most sacred privileges of the bachelor. We have
been deprived of our rights. Instead of "the" furnace, we have several
to think about. We are one of the busiest little amateur stokers in
town.
There must be something in our appearance which suggests that we have a
masterful way with furnaces, that we can make them eat right out of our
shovel. It has become a habit with our lady friends when we call on
them in the evening--naturally we have social duties to perform--to pat
the radiator in a reflective sort of way, and then smiling brightly at
us to say in a casual but wheedling tone something to the following
effect:
"Oh, Mister O'D."--a few of them call us Peter in a sisterly way--"I
just hate awfully to bother you, but paw is at the lodge and--well, you
are such a good hand with a furnace. It's such a comfort to have a man
who is really handy around the house, and--just a shovelful--thanks!"
So we bid a temporary farewell to the company and to all the delights of
polite conversation, and retire to the cellar to give first aid to a
rusty demon of a furnace whose vital spark is almost extinct. Laying
our coat neatly folded on the bottom step of the cellar-stairs, we first
seize a long lever which comes out every moment or two on our toe, and
we shake enough ashes out of the grate to stifle Pompeii. Then groping
our way to the coal-bin--away at the other end of the cellar--we proceed
forcibly to feed the furnace with a broken scoop-shovel. About half of
each shovelful misses the little opening--why the dickens do they put
such small doors on the things?--and by the time we have accomplished
the chore we are knee-deep in anthracite. Great stuff for a nice, new
serge suit, that!
When we come upstairs again we are coated with a soft covering of
powdered ash, our collar is melted, our hands suggest that we have been
working on a slag-pile, and the young lady insists on sitting on a
little narrow chair instead of on the sofa as usual. Every time we stir
she glances nervously at the rug and the upholstery. The social
atmosphere grows chillier and chillier, though the water is boiling in
the "rads."
About an hour later "paw" comes home from the lodge, disappears into the
subterranean depths, and emerges in a moment to ask in a loud
belligerent voice who th'ell has been and gone and put all that coal on
the furnace, and if people are aware that coal costs fifteen dollars a
ton, and if people wouldn't be better advised to mind their own
business. Whereupon daughter blushes violently and rushes out to him in
the hall. There is a brief dialogue which is brought to a conclusion by
"paw" grunting, "Oh, him, is it?" in a manner not altogether flattering.
Even at home in the flat where we lived for two somewhat cramping
years--we swept the pictures off the walls every time we put on our
shirt--we could not get away from furnace troubles. The thing was an
obsession, that's all. Our proprietor, that inaccessible local divinity,
was supposed to supply heat, which naturally implies a furnace and a
furnace-man. There really was a furnace and also a furnace-man, but the
two were seldom found in conjunction.
Down in the cellar there was an enormous structure of cast iron, with
twisted pipes sticking out of it in all directions as though it were
some sort of mechanical octopus. And down in the very heart of it there
were usually half a dozen coals smouldering away. That was its ordinary
condition. But two or three afternoons a week a local financier, who
had about thirty furnaces on his visiting list, used to call and pour a
ton or so of coal down its throat. Then he opened wide all the drafts
and went rejoicing on his way to the bank to deposit his latest
dividend.
About midnight on such days we were all awakened by a noise which seemed
to combine the roar of the angry surf with a riot in the Ford automobile
plant. There were also suggestions of a volcano in active eruption.
The furnace was boiling! Then one hustled into a dressing-gown and one
hurried down to the cellar to shut the thing off; and, as one passed
bashfully by, one saw sights through open doors that no gentleman would
ever speak of.
We have a friend, however, who has mastered the furnace problem--about
as well, that is, as mortal can hope to do it. He has devoted years of
thought and much bullion and energy to the task. He has a huge furnace
all encased in white asbestos--it sheds its nighty every now and then
and has to get a new one--and on this furnace he has more electric
attachments than would run a suburban trolley system. All he has to do
before he goes to bed is to wind up two or three clocks and set half a
dozen hands on as many dials, and the furnace does the rest. It keeps
the house at a certain specified heat--unless, of course, it goes out,
which it does every so often--and moreover, it will turn on the heat at
any specified time in the morning. Instead of having to get up in a
chilly house and wander dismally down to the cellar to open the blamed
thing up, he has only to lie awake in bed and listen if the regulator is
working properly--and three times out of five it is. But, of course,
this is rather hard to hear, and if it shouldn't be working and he
didn't notice it--well, on those mornings he eats his breakfast in his
coon-skin coat.
Naturally he has to remove the ashes and shovel in the coal, but that
only takes an hour or so a day. Besides, it is fine exercise. Nothing
like putting on your furnace-clothes and tying a damp silk handkerchief
over your face and going down for a little bout of graeco-roman with the
furnace to give you an appetite. And the thirst!--but what's the use of
talking about that nowadays?
It may be thought that we are prejudiced against furnaces. We are. We
admit it frankly. And we have good reason to be. If it hadn't been for
a furnace that went out, we might to-day be a happily married man and
the father of a large--oh, well, perhaps that is taking a little too
much for granted. But we might have been married, at any rate.
She was a druggist's daughter, a lovely girl of about eighteen summers.
That is, she claimed eighteen summers, though perhaps a few summers were
so short and so cold that she forgot to count them. Her father lived
and had his shop in a Prohibition town--this was before there was no
other kind of town. Naturally he was the principal citizen of the place
and the popular saver of many masculine lives. Father used to prescribe
for gentlemen for miles around, the prescriptions being usually taken in
the back of the store. No one ever bought anything out of the show-case
except cigars.
We used to drop into the store occasionally to ward off a chill or a
fever or something of that sort--we were always strong for preventive
medicine--and it was there we met daughter. It was a case of one good
long look, a few words about the weather we were having, and then we
went straight home and tore up all the pictures on our chiffonier. Not
long after we got into the habit of taking her out in father's buggy--it
had a large top and the horse could be trusted.
So we whiled away the autumn. At Christmas we sold something and blew
the proceeds on a couple of dozen of those red, red roses, which are
almost as significant as an engagement-ring. Gwendoline--'t was thus she
loved to be called--told us several times with thrilling emphasis that
she "just loved those roses to death." Everything seemed to smile upon
our suit.
The night we went with our mind made up to settle the matter
conclusively--even to the date of the ceremony and the nicest place to
spend the following week--was a bitterly cold one. In fact, the parlor
where we sat waiting for Gwen to come down seemed decidedly chilly. But
she floated in looking radiantly beautiful to the eye of affection, and
the light was low, and--oh, dash it all, we forgot about the temperature
entirely. It is a poor lover who can't furnish his own heat.
Conversation was graceful and animated, but with an undercurrent of
serious purpose. We felt that something was expected of us, but
naturally a man of tact and romantic feeling doesn't plunge into a
proposal of marriage as though it were the purchase of a dog-collar. It
is a thing to be led up to; and we were casting about in our mind for
the most graceful and effective way of doing so, when we began to
realize that the room had grown strangely cold and that the lady was
looking rather blue--with a tendency to redness about the nose. Also
she was gazing at us in a curiously critical way, and we remembered that
we never look our best when we are chilly. There is a certain
spottiness--but these details are unnecessary.
It grew colder and colder. Gwendoline got a shawl, and we turned up our
coat-collar as unobtrusively as possible and put our hands in our
pockets. The lady became absent-minded, and in spite of ourself our
thoughts wandered to tall glasses with something hot in them and pieces
of lemon floating around.
There is no use dragging out this account of the disaster. The whole
thing simply fizzled out. A masterful man might perhaps have saved the
day--or the evening, to be accurate--by seizing the lady, slamming her
against his throbbing heart, and warming her up at the fire of his own
ardor. But we let the psychological moment shiver by. She passed us
with a curt nod on the street next day, and six months later was married
to a chap in the bank. Her father took him into the business at
once--she was an only child.
Do you wonder we hate furnaces?
[Illustration: MIKE]
*Mike*
Cats have character. You may not like them, but you have to respect
them. They feel no affection, and they make no pretence of it. If they
rub up against your leg and purr, it is because they like the stuff your
trousers are made of--yes, madam, we are speaking for ourself!
Now, it is just the opposite with dogs. You like dogs, but usually you
don't respect them. They are not sufficiently self-centred and
independent. They lack poise and that repose of manner which is the
unfailing sign of the aristocrat.
Dogs are too fond of you--in itself an evidence of a lack of
discrimination--and too demonstrative. One of the meanest-souled human
weasels that ever slunk home from his office in the evening to be nasty
to his wife and slap the children has a dog. And that dog watches for
him for hours, and comes tearing down the street to greet him, barking
his head off and turning somersaults in delirious joy.
Now, who ever saw a cat come tumbling and barking down the street to
greet anyone? The finest and ablest man in the Empire--Lloyd George,
Haig, or even Sir Arthur Currie or the virtuous Newton Wesley
Rowell--couldn't get a flicker of a cat's whisker, if they came home
after six months' absence all covered with medals. The only arrival to
make a cat sit right up and mew in salutation is the milkman in the
morning.
That's the fascination and mystery of cats--their independence and their
inscrutability. Furthermore, they have utterly no morals, and they are
perfectly unabashed about it. If a dog does something he knows to be
wrong, he hangs his head and his tail and crawls around on his stomach
and presents a ridiculous spectacle of contrition and self-abasement,
till you let him know he is forgiven. Then he probably jumps into your
lap, and licks your glasses off your nose, and sticks his paw in among
the cigars in your vest-pocket. The only safe way to forgive a dog is
from the top of a high ladder.
But a cat doesn't care whether you forgive her or not. She feels no
compunction and shows no gratitude. She will walk off with a
porter-house steak or present the household with a family of war-kittens
with equal nonchalance and aplomb--we always make a point of using
French words when discussing these matrimonial irregularities, such is
our delicacy.
Of course, Mike wasn't that kind of a cat--to present the household,
that is. He might figure as the injured husband or the co-respondent in
these regrettable affairs, but never as the fair, frail one. Though, as
a matter of fact, the family at first was under the impression that he
was a tabby.
Mike was an under-sized and very quiet black kitten, with a pair of the
worst bow legs we have ever seen on anyone but Harry Lauder. His back
legs were straight enough, but he looked as if he had been run over by a
motor lorry in front, or brought up with his head under a low beam. They
gave him a curious resemblance to a somewhat battered
prize-fighter--whence the war-like title, "Mike."
It has never been clearly established in the family who was responsible
for bringing Mike into its bosom and its milk-pitcher, so to speak. Mike
arrived, that's all--probably he liked the air of cultured serenity
about the house and walked in. With a promptness which is a strong
tribute to his fascination of manner, even at this early age, he won our
landlady's heart, and was formally adopted under the name of Yvonne.
Personally, we were always opposed to Yvonne as savoring too much of
coquetry or hauteur. We wanted something simple and homely like Mary
Elizabeth or Emma Jane. But Yvonne it was, and Yvonne it remained till
it became generally apparent that the name didn't fit Mike's gender or
his mode of life.
We would like to devote a great deal of space to telling the reader what
a cute little rascal Mike was in his Yvonnehood, so to speak, and how we
loved to come down in the morning and find him sitting in our Toasted
Pine Flakes, or stuck in the cream-jug--he used to come right up from
the cellar to be with us.
We would like to tell all this, so that our unmarried lady-readers could
write in to us about their own cats and their cunning ways, and all we
girls could have a perfectly lovely time together--they might even bring
the cats down. But _tempus fugit_--these French phrases will break
in--and we must on to the mournful and disheartening story of Mike's
adult life, with the sad light it throws on the impotence of pure and
beautiful surroundings to correct a naturally evil character.
The beginning of Mike's downfall was staying out o' nights. While still
a kitten Mike had been accustomed to take an evening stroll, but his
notion of bedtime grew hazier and hazier. He became distinctly less and
less retiring. Finally Mike had to be stalked like a chamois every
evening and dragged by the tail off some perilous peak of fence.