butler.--Florence in the conservatory.--The proposal.--“At last,
Jack Mortimer, you have proved yourself _a man_!”--Great chime
effect.--Curtain.
A variant on this is the story of the traveler who is stranded on
Christmas eve in a strange city far from his family. Don’t forget to
play up his extreme loneliness for a page or two. Then he either falls
in with another homesick stranger, or helps out the party in distress
who always appears at just the proper instant in this story. And at
the end, his entire family, which has traveled all night, appears to
surprise him.
So much for the city. After all, you were country-bred yourself, and if
you prefer the country or the wilds for your story, they also are rich
in stock devices. What better place than a Christmas story to tell of
the old couple who have never had a child? We hear the ring at their
door-bell, but as we turn the page no one is found at the door. But
wait!--there in a basket is a cooing baby. A scrap of paper pinned to
its dress begs, “Be good to baby!” And so on December 25, 19--, the old
couple at last have their child.
It is also on December 25 that the selectmen of almost any town--_your_
selectmen--have decided that at last poor old Marthy Pettibone--whose
only son disappeared years ago--must be taken to the poor-farm. The
carriage waits at the gate. Dejected Mrs. Pettibone has just gone back
to get her bird-cage. At that instant a tall stranger, bronzed and
bearded, wearing a massive gold watch-chain, strides up the path and
knocks at the door. Need I go on?
Perhaps most reliable is the Christmas tale of the _hinterland_. A gang
of unkempt lumbermen or miners are snowed up by the worst blizzard of
the decade. It looks as if they would have to fall back on bad whisky
as Yuletide recreation. At this point the fearless young girl appears
on the scene, arriving somehow. (If necessary, use a flying-machine.)
The whisky is put out of sight and mind, and clean red shirts are
donned. Follows the scene of the Christmas tree with an improvised
Santa Claus and comic gifts, succeeded by a spelling-match and Virginia
Reel. And what end so appropriate as the picture of the young girl
lifted on to a table while the rough diamonds drink her health in
ginger-pop which the cookee produces at the right moment. That ought to
be enough of a Christmas story for any one; but if more seems needed,
insert at the proper point the defense of the girl--from a half-breed
who _would_ have whisky--by the young civil engineer of Harvard or Yale.
Or if you are not suited with any of these, why not take a shot at
the yarn of Christmas at sea or below the equator? If, however, you
sympathize with those who like an occasional pellet of religion
sugar-coated as fiction, nothing is simpler than to give them the
allegorical Christmas story. And I mustn’t conclude this survey of the
property-room of holiday fiction without reference to the house-party
story. The man must be very tall, very athletic, very handsome, and
“virile.” The girl must have blue eyes and gold hair, be petite,
and pert as a boarding-school miss. Remember to have them talk to
each other as if they--and you--were being paid by the paragraph.
The gatling-gun warfare of love-making must be carried on while they
arrange the Christmas tree for little Tommy. And the hero’s final
successful assault--with force used if necessary--must be made in the
vicinity of the mistletoe.
Such, then, is the range before you,--of allegory, the city, the
country, and that no-man’s land where picture men, seven feet tall,
philander with debutantes.
The choice is yours; or, if you have no preference, it is easy enough
to draw lots to decide. The whole business is almost too simple. At
latest, midsummer should turn the trick. And you will be doing good all
round.
The editor will be spared the pangs of reading Christmas fiction while
making up his Easter number.
As for you, you will have no one but yourself to blame if you do not
utilize holly, mistletoe, and chimes to finance your pleasant summer
vacation.
Hopefully yours,
_Leonard Hatch_.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: IN LIGHTER VEIN]
BROTHER MINGO MILLENYUM’S ORDINATION
(AS RELATED BY HIMSELF)
BY RUTH McENERY STUART
When I was a little pickanin’,
Down on Sweet Gum plantation,
I used to heah de preacher preach,
An’ screech an’ screech an’ screech,
Expoundin’ out salvation.
He’d open up dat Bible-book
Befo’ de congregation,
An’, sir, he’d read dem Scriptures out,
An’ shout an’ shout an’ shout an’ shout,
Widout no education.
He nuver knowed ’is A, B, C’s,
Much less pronunciation;
But when he’d focus on a page,
An’ rage an’ rage an’ rage an’ rage,
Gord sont interpretation.
He’d show de devil’s forkèd tail
Out clair, in his noration;
He’d h’ist dat pitchfork up on high,
An’ cry an’ cry an’ cry an’ cry,
An’ p’int insinuation,
An’ I’d brace up an’ clench de pew
An’ try to hol’ my station,
Whilst he’d light up de fumes o’ hell,
An’ yell an’ yell an’ yell an’ yell,
’Tel we could smell damnation!
One day I swooned off in a tranch,
F’om brimstone suffocation;
An’ red-hot sins wid forkèd tails
Riz up wid wails an’ wails an’ wails
An’ stopped my circulation!
I felt jes’ lak a cushion o’ pins
Big as de whole creation;
My tongue was swole too thick to speak,
But de pins dey’d stick, an’ de sins dey’d shriek!
’Tel I los’ all sinsation.
* * * * *
I come th’ough on de tranch-room flo’,
Wid de mou’ners on probation;
An’ when I heerd ’em screech an’ screech
’Bout “a babe an’ sucklin’ called to preach!”--
_Dat was my ordination._
BUSINESS IN THE ORIENT
BY HARRY A. FRANCK
He is the selfsame fellow still, the Cairene merchant, as in the days
of Harun-al-Rashid. His shop may be the lower story of a great modern
building, his wares the products of monster factories; yet he squats in
cross-legged contentment as of yore, amenable only to the loquacious
system of bargaining dear to the heart of the Oriental. The Western
tourist, foolishly regarding time as of value, will lose all equanimity
long before he has completed the smallest transaction. If his knowledge
of the East and his patience suffice, and he begins negotiations early
enough in the day not to be driven forth as the merchant sets up his
shutters at nightfall, he may obtain the article he seeks at a just
and equitable price. If he gains possession of it in less than the
accustomed time, he will certainly have paid more than its market
value, be his business acumen what it may.
Vagamundo, the Western traveler experienced in the ways of the East,
catches sight, during a stroll through the bazaars, of an Arabic blade
that takes his fancy. It hangs high at the top of the open booth,
on the raised floor of which, close-circled by his tumbled chaos of
wares, serenely squats the proprietor, with folded legs. Vagamundo, as
from the merest curiosity, pauses to run his eye over the countless
articles, suggests with a half-stifled yawn that the simitar looks
like what might be a convincing weapon in the hands of an enemy,
ventures to hope that the merchant is enjoying the fine weather, and
strolls leisurely on. The shopkeeper continues to puff drowsily at his
water-bottle, in his eyes the far-off look of the day-dreamer, until
the Westerner is all but out of earshot. Then he appears suddenly to
awake, and drones out a languid invitation to return. Vagamundo pays no
heed to the summons for some moments, gazes abstractedly upon the wares
displayed in another booth, then wanders slowly back toward the object
that has attracted his attention. The merchant hopes that the traveler
is enjoying the best of health, invites him to squat in the bit of
space not already occupied by himself or his wares, offers a cigarette,
and falls to discussing the latest doings of the mixed courts or the
state of the cotton crop in the delta. By the time the second cigarette
is lighted, he turns the conversation deftly to the simitar, and
remarks that, though it is hung among his wares rather for ornament
than for sale, it is possible he may some day tire of beholding it
and part with it for--perhaps eleven hundred or a thousand piasters.
Vagamundo, puffing reminiscently for a time, recalls having heard a
friend express a desire to obtain such a weapon for, say, seventy-five
piasters or so, and wonders, after all, why that friend should care for
so useless an article. The shopkeeper regrets that the two prices named
do not more nearly coincide, trusts that the inundations will not be so
late this year as last, as, indeed, the Nilometer has prophesied they
will not, and reaches again for the tube of his narghile. Vagamundo
expresses his delight that the khedive has recovered from his recent
attack, thanks the merchant for his disinterested hospitality, and
saunters away.
The shortest instant before he is finally lost from view in the surging
stream of donkeys, pedestrians, camels, runners, and bazaar-loungers he
is called back to learn that the merchant is of the opinion that the
new land tax will work more effectively than the old, that the simitar
is probably worth only seven hundred and eighty piasters, and that some
of the eucalyptus-trees in the Esbekieh Gardens are to be removed. With
all due respect to Cromer Pasha Vagamundo doubts the practicability of
his latest scheme of taxation, and hopes that his friend may somewhere
run across such a simitar at one hundred piasters.
Thus the transaction continues: a third, a fourth, even a fifth time
Vagamundo returns. By the sixth visit he has dropped the fiction of
a friend, and openly offers two hundred and twenty-five piasters for
the blade, and the shopkeeper arouses himself sufficiently from his
lethargy to take the weapon down for inspection, and expresses a
willingness to part with it for two hundred and seventy-five.
Over newly rolled cigarettes the negotiation proceeds, now touching
upon the prevalence of ophthalmia, now debating the success of the
recent installation of sugar factories, anon skirting the matter of
simitars, their manufacture and price. Speaking of simitars, the
merchant suspects that for the one in hand he would be satisfied
perhaps at two hundred and fifty piasters. Vagamundo lays that
sum--which both recognized from the beginning as the just price--on
the mat between them, grasps his newly acquired property, and, amid
protestations of lifelong friendship from the merchant, takes his
departure.
Manchester business men and Chicago captains of industry, scorning
such childish methods, have dived into the maelstrom of the bazaars of
Cairo with the avowed intention of “doing business” after the manner
of to-day and the West; but all in vain. The Cairene shopkeeper will
hurry in his transactions for no mortal man. Whether his wares are
purchased or not is, at least to every outward appearance, a matter
to which he is at all times utterly indifferent. Let the pulsating
Westerner, with his strange notions of the relative value of time and
ease, press his mercenary suit too forcibly, and he discovers to his
surprise, and perhaps even to his dismay, that the merchant of the East
displays his wares and squats by day among them merely as a recreation
and amusement, and that the notion of selling anything from the trifles
about him is farthest from his thoughts.
A BALLADE OF PROTEST
BY CAROLYN WELLS
My Pegasus strains at his curb,
Although I have him tightly geared.
Though I protest, with speech acerb;
I cannot hold him, I’m afeard.
Oh, never has he so careered!
He’s like a bee-stung Hippodrome;
But, though his laws I’ve e’er revered,
I will _not_ write a Cubist Pome!
To keep my seat doth me perturb;
He plunges on, with head upreared,--
As he had eaten witches’ herb,--
Raging his maddened way, unsteered.
He wants my fair word-pictures smeared
With thought laid on in polychrome!
Nay, we shall leave one fence uncleared;
I will _not_ write a Cubist Pome!
He’d have me shape a lissome verb
Like a three-sided noun, ensphered!
He babbles of effects superb,
Produced by themes with truth veneered.
No! Till the Joy of Life is biered,
Till Reason wobbles in her dome,
Till all Fame’s other eels are speared,
I will _not_ write a Cubist Pome!
L’ENVOI
Pegasus, go and dree thy weird;
Down Duchamp’s staircase sadly roam;
I cannot have _my_ laurels queered,--
I will _not_ write a Cubist Pome!
[Illustration: Drawn by Oliver Herford
FOREIGN LABOR
Looking over our spring samples.]
[Illustration: Drawn by J. R. Shaver
NINETY DEGREES IN THE SHADE
“Aren’t we having fun, Father?”]
[Illustration
THE BUTTERFLY
BY RUTH McENERY STUART
Sis’ Butterfly aimed to work all right,
But ’er wings des was heavy, an’ ’er head too light;
So she riz in de air, caze she see she was made
Jes’ to fly in de sun in de beauty parade.
An’ she ain’t by ’erself in dat, in dat--
An’ she ain’t by ’erself in dat.
]
THE SAME OLD LURE
BY BERTON BRALEY
When west winds blow,
I want to go
Where mountain-peaks are wrapped in snow,
And breathe the air
That thrills you there
With strength to do and nerve to dare!
When west winds call,
I hate it all--
This life of petty things and small!
And I have cried
Again to ride
Where sun is clear and plains are wide.
When west winds sigh
At night, I lie
And dream of careless days gone by.
(To hear me blow,
You’d never know
I’d not been west of Cleveland, O.)
LIMERICKS
TEXT AND PICTURES BY OLIVER HERFORD
[Illustration]
THE GNAT AND THE GNU
“How absurd,” said the gnat to the gnu,
“To spell your queer name as you do!”
“For the matter of that,”
Said the gnu to the gnat,
“That’s just how I feel about you.”
[Illustration]
THE SOLE-HUNGERING CAMEL
A camel, with practical views
On the nutritive value of shoes,
To the mosque would repair
While the folks were at prayer,
Little dreaming their soles they would lose.
THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK