is, the fellow in charge was a regular Ninth-Warder, and when I got
abreast of him he hailed me with, ‘Soy, cully, wot sort d’ yer want?
I got a chim-dandy Sunny-school line er samples fer use in dose
joints, or I c’n gi’ yer hot stuff up ter de limit an’ beyon’. See?
Here’s a lot of damaged “wot t’ ’ells” dat I’ll trun down fer a
fiver, an’ no questions ast. Soy, burn me fer a dead farmer if I ever
sol’ dem at dat figger before; but dey’s some dat Townsen’ did n’
use, an’ yet dey’s dead-sure winners wit’ de right gang. See?’
“And then I woke up, if I was asleep; and if I wasn’t, I wish I could
find the store again, for I’d be the greatest dialect-writer of the
age if I could get goods on credit there. Say, waiter, we came for
lunch, not supper.”
XXI
“FROM THE FRENCH”
When a Frenchman sets out to write a tale that shall be wholly
innocuous, he succeeds--and thereby drives his readers to seek in De
Maupassant and Zola the antidote for his poisoning puerility.
He generally lays the scene in London, that he may air his ignorance
of things foreign; and when the tale is done it contains absolutely
nothing that would bring the blush of shame to any cheek in
Christendom, seek said cheek where you might.
The following is a fair sample of the unharmful French story. I
trust that if it had been printed without preamble or credit, the
discerning reader would have exclaimed, upon reading it, “From the
French!” I have called it--
IT IS GOOD TO BE GOOD
In the great city of London, which, as you may know, is in England,
there is a bridge, famous throughout the whole town as London Bridge.
One dark night, many years ago, two men started to cross it in
opposite directions, and running into each other, their heads crashed
together in the fog which day and night envelops the city.
“_Parbleu!_” cried one, a fellow of infinite wealth; “but have you,
then, no better use for your head than to make of it a battering-ram?”
“_Sapristi!_” replied the other, speaking in the coarse tones of
an English mechanic out of work. “What matters it what I do with
it? A moment more and I shall be in the Thames” (a large river
corresponding to our Seine, and in equal demand by suicides).
“To-night, for the first time in my life, I commit suicide!”
“Why, then,” said the other, “we will jump together, for it is for
that purpose that I have come to this great bridge.”
“But,” said the mechanic, “why should you commit suicide? I can
tell by the feeling of your garments that you are rich, and by the
softness of your head that you are noble.”
“True, I am both of those things, but, also, I have exhausted every
pleasure in life but the pleasure of suicide, and would now try
that. But you, you are a mechanic out of work, as I can tell by your
speech. Why should you seek pleasure instead of employment?”
“Alas, sir! I have at home one wife and seventeen children, all
flaxen-haired, and all as poor as I. I cannot bear to go home to them
without even the price of a _biftek_ or a _rosbif_.”
“Come,” said the nobleman; “I will defer my sport for the night. I
have never seen a starving family. It will furnish me with a new
sensation.”
“Ah! but you have a kind heart, and I will not refuse you. The river
will keep. Follow me.”
[Illustration]
They followed each other through the region of the Seven Clocks, and
through Blanc Chapel, afterward the scene of the murders of “Jean
the RApper,” until they came to the wretched apartment of the poor
artisan. There, huddled in the corner of the room, were sixteen of
the starving but still flaxen-haired children. The mother sat near
the fireplace, so that she might be near the warmth when it came. In
the other corner of the room--for they were so poor, these people,
that they could not afford four corners--sat a vision of beauty, aged
seventeen and a girl, _ma foi_! At sight of her the count’s eyes
filled with tears of compassion, and he handed his purse to the
wretched father and said: “My good man, do not stir from here. I will
return in an hour with furniture!”
Tears of gratitude coursed down the thirty-eight cheeks of the poor
family, and they no longer felt hungry, for they knew that in a short
time they would be sitting upon real sofas and rocking in chairs
like those they had seen through the windows of the rich on Holy
Innocents’ Day.
The count, whose full title was Sir Lord _E_rnold CIcil Judas GeorgeS
HErold WAllington, grandson of the great Lord of WAllington, was
as good as his word, and in an hour he returned with six of his
servants, bearing sofas and cushions and tables and tête-à-têtes, and
what not.
The family seated themselves on the furniture, and, clasping his
knees, overwhelmed him with thanks.
“_Dame! Sacré!_” cried he. “It is nothing, this thing I have done.
What is it that it is? Know, then, that for the first time in my life
I have the happiness.” Then, turning to the father: “Give me the
purse. I left it as a collateral. Now that you have the furniture,
you will not need it. But that angelic being there, she shall never
weep again. I will take her with me.”
“Ah!” said the mother; “but that is like you, Count WAllington.
You mean that she is to be a maid in your father’s house? Ah! what
prosperity!”
“Ah! do not insult the most beautiful being who ever went about in a
London fog. She a servant? Never! I will make her my wife. She shall
be Miledi Comptesse _E_rnold CIcil Judas GeorgeS HErold WAllington!”
In Southwark-on-Trent, a suburb of London, is the hospital for those
about to commit suicide. Ring the bell at the gate, and you will be
admitted by sixteen flaxen-haired ones who will conduct you to the
governor and matron. Need I say who they are, or whose money built
the institution?
And when you read in London _POnch_, among the court news, that a
great beauty has been presented to the Queen of England, London, and
Ireland, you will know that it is the Comptesse WAllington. She is
presented at all the levees, and, with her husband, the handsome and
philanthropic Lord WAllington, is the cynosure of all English eyes.
It is good to be good.
XXII
ON THE VALUE OF DOGMATIC UTTERANCE
FROM MY “GUIDE TO YOUNG AUTHORS”
My dear young reader, if you are thinking of launching a little craft
upon the troublous sea of literature, see that it is well ballasted
with dogmatic assertions. (I should like to continue this nautical
metaphor further, but I am such a landlubber that I doubt if I should
be able to mix it properly, and what interest has a metaphor if it
be not well mixed?) But to continue in plain English: A dogmatic
assertion carries conviction to the minds of most unthinking
people--in other words, to most people. (You and I don’t think, dear
reader, and is it likely that we are worse than the rest of mankind?)
If you purpose becoming a novelist of character, follow my
directions, and your first book will nail your reputation to the mast
of public opinion. Fill your story full of such utterances as these:
“Chaplain Dole always nodded his head a great many times to express
affirmation. This is a common practice with persons who are a little
hard of hearing.” (It isn’t, and yet it may be, for all I know to the
contrary; but it will carry weight. Nine persons out of ten will say,
“Why, that’s so, isn’t it? Haven’t you noticed it?”)
[Illustration]
It doesn’t matter what you say; if you say it dogmatically it
will go. Thus: “She walked with the slow, timid step that is so
characteristic of English spinsters.” That’s a fine one, for it may
excite contradiction, and contradiction is advertisement. Here are
half a dozen examples: “He tapped his forehead with his left little
finger, a gesture peculiar to people who have great concentration of
mind.” “His half-closed eyes proclaimed him a shrewd business man.
Why is it that your keen man of affairs should always look out at
the world through a slit?” “The child spoke in that raucous tone of
voice that always presages cerebral trouble.” “Miss de Mure waved
her fan languidly, with a scarcely perceptible wrist motion, a sure
indication that she was about to capitulate, but Mr. Wroxhaemme,
not being a keen observer, took no note of it.” And, “He spoke but
three words, yet you sensed that he was an advocate. Why is it that a
lawyer cannot conceal his profession? A doctor may talk all day, and
if he bar shop his vocation will not be detected; but a lawyer tunes
up his vocal chords, as it were, and the secret is out.”
If all the above specimens of “observation” were introduced into
your story the critics would unite in praising your keenness of
vision.
Perhaps you would like to figure as a musical author. Few authors
know anything about music, and you don’t have to; dogmatism and
alliteration in equal parts will take the trick. Please step this way
(as they say in the stores) and I will show you.
“She played Chopin divinely--but she did not care to clean dishes.
Chopin and care of a house do not coalesce. A girl may love Beethoven
and yet busy herself with baking; Bach and the Beatitudes are not
antagonistic; Haydn, Handel, and housekeeping hunt together; Schumann
and Schubert are not incompatible with sweetness and serenity of
demeanor and a love for sewing; Mozart and Mendelssohn may be admired
and the girl will also love to mend stockings; Weber and work may
be twins: but Chopin and cooking, Wagner and washing, Berlioz or
Brahms and basting, Dvořák and vulgar employment--or Dvořák and
darning (according as you pronounce Dvořák)--are eternally at war.
So, when I have said that Carlotta was a devotee of Chopin, I have
implied that her poor old mother did most of the housework, while the
sentimental maiden coquetted with the keys continually.”
Fill your stories with such bits of false observation, and
ninety-nine persons out of a hundred will accept them at their
face-value; which remark, being in itself a dogmatic assertion, will
doubtless carry weight and conviction with it.
XXIII
THE SAD CASE OF DEACON PERKINS
It is now some fifteen years since the dialect story assumed undue
prominence in the literary output of the time, and about eight
since it became a “craze.” There is no craze without its attendant
disease or ailment: thus roller-skating developed “roller’s heel”;
gum-chewing, “chewer’s jaw”; bicycling, the “bicycle face,” and later
the “leg”; housekeeping, “housemaid’s knee”; golf-playing, “idiocy”;
and so on, every craze having a damaging effect upon some portion of
the anatomy. It is only within the last year, however, that it has
been discovered that an over-indulgence in dialect stories is liable
to bring on an affection of the tongue.
A peculiarly sad case and the most notable that has thus far been
brought to the attention of the public is that of Deacon Azariah
Perkins of West Hartford, Connecticut.
Far from deploring the spread of the dialect story, he reveled in
it, reading all the tales that he could get hold of in magazines
or circulating library. But his was not a healthy, catholic taste;
he had ears and eyes for one dialect alone--the negro. For him Ian
Maclaren and Barrie spread their most tempting Scotch jaw-breakers in
vain; he had no desire for them. After fifteen years of negro dialect
in every form in which Southern and Northern writers can serve it,
any specialist in nervous disorders could have told the deacon that
he was liable to have “negromania”; but West Hartford does not
employ specialists, and so the stroke came unheralded, with all the
suddenness of apoplexy.
Deacon Perkins has always been able to think standing; indeed, he
has been called the Chauncey Depew of West Hartford, and no revival
meeting or strawberry festival or canned clam-bake was considered a
success unless the deacon’s ready tongue took part in the exercises.
[Illustration]
Last Sunday they had a children’s festival in the Congregational
Church, and after the children had made an end of reciting and
singing, the deacon was called upon for a few remarks. He is a
favorite with young and old, and a man of great purity and simplicity
of character. He arose with alacrity and walked down the isle with
the lumbering gait peculiar to New-Englanders who have struggled with
rocky farms the best part of their lives. He ascended the platform
steps, inclined his head to the audience, and spoke as follows:
“Mah deah li’l’ chillun! Yo’ kahnd sup’inten’ent has ast me to mek a
few remahks.” (Subdued titters on the part of the scholars.) “Ah don’
s’pose you-all’ll b’lieve me w’en Ah say dat Ah too was once a li’l’
piccaninny same as yo’, but Ah was, an’ Ah ’membeh how mah ol’ mammy
use teh tek me to Sunny-school.” (Consternation on the part of the
superintendent and teachers.)
“Now, ef you-all wan’ to go to heb’n w’en yo’ die, be ci’cumspectious
’bout de obsarvence ob de eighth c’man’ment. Hit ain’t so awful
wicked ter steal--dat ain’t hit, but hit’s jes nach’ly tryin’ to a
man’s self-respec’ ter git cotched. Don’ steal jes fer deviltry, but
ef yo’ is ’bleeged ter steal, study de wedder repohts, ac’ accordin’,
an’--don’ git foun’ out--or in, eiver.”
During the delivery of this remarkable speech the deacon’s face wore
his habitual expression; a kindly light shone in his eye, a smile of
ineffable sweetness played about his lips, and he evidently imagined
that he was begging them to turn from their evil ways and seek the
narrow path.
But at this juncture Dr. Pulcifer of New York, the eminent
neurologist, who happened to be spending Sunday in West Hartford,
whispered to the superintendent, and on receiving an affirmative
nod to his interrogation, went up to the platform. He held out his
hand to Deacon Perkins, who was making a rhetorical pause, and said
kindly, “Good morning, uncle.”
“Mornin’, sah,” said the deacon, bowing awkwardly and scratching his
head.
“Can you direct me to a good melon-patch?”
Deacon Perkins gave vent to an unctuous negro chuckle. Then, holding
up his forefinger to enjoin caution, he tiptoed off the platform,
closely followed by the doctor; and before nightfall he was on his
way to a private hospital for nervous diseases, where rest and a
total abstention from negro-dialect stories is expected to restore
him to his usual sane condition of mind in a short time.
XXIV
THE MISSING-WORD BORE
Then, there’s that bore whose thoughts come by freight, and the
freight is always late. You know what’s coming, that is, you can
imagine the way-bill, but he won’t let you help him to make better
time, and runs his train of thought as if it were on a heavy grade.
He starts to tell a story, blinking his red eyes, meanwhile, as if he
thought that they supplied the motive power for his tongue. To make
listening to him the harder, he generally tells a very old story.
“One day, William Makepeace--er-er--”
“Thackeray,” you say, intending to help him. Of course it is
Thackeray, and he was going to tell about the novelist and the
Bowery boy; but he is so pig-headed that he shifts on to another
track.
“No; Dickens, Charles Dickens. One day, when Charles Dickens was at
work on ‘Bleak’--er--er--”
“‘Bleak House’?” you say.
“No!” he snaps; “‘Dombey and Son.’ One day, when Charles Dickens was
at work on ‘Dombey and Son,’ he was approached by his biographer,
John--er--er--”
“Forster?”
“No; it wasn’t his biographer, either; it was Edmund Yates.”
[Illustration]
You now take a gleeful pleasure in seeing how hopelessly you can make
him tangle himself up by the refusal of your help, but he doesn’t
care. He’ll tell it in his own words, though the heavens fall and
though he starts a hundred stories.
“Charles Dickens had a very loud way of--er--er--”
“Dressing?”
“No, no! He had a loud way of talking, and he and Edmund--er--er--”
“Yates?”
“No, sir; Edmund Spenser.”
Of course this is arrant nonsense on the face of it, but he won’t
admit that he’s made pi of his story, and he goes on:
“Edmund said that Charles--”
“Dickens?”
“No, sir; Charles Reade. Edmund said that Charles Reade thought
George--er--”
“Meredith?”
“No; hang it all! George Eliot. He thought that George Eliot never
wrote a better book than ‘Silas’--er--”
“‘Marner’?”
“Not at all! ‘Silas Lapham.’”
Now, if you are merciful, or if you are refinedly cruel, either one,
you will allow him to finish his story in peace, and, like as not,
he will start all over again by saying: “I guess I inadvertently got
hold of the wrong name at the beginning. It was not Dickens, as you
said, but Thackeray. Thackeray was one day walking along the Bowery
when he met a typical--” And so on to the bitter end.
For the sake of speed, do not ever interrupt his kind!
XXV
THE CONFESSIONS OF A CRITIC
I met a prominent literary critic the other evening. A review signed
with his name or even with his initials is apt to make or mar the
work treated therein.
Now, I have not a little hypnotic power, and the mischievous idea
came into my head to hypnotize him and make him “confess.”
We were sitting in the reading-room of an up-town club. I led the
conversation to the subject of hypnotism, and soon gained the
critic’s consent to be put into a trance.
I did not influence him any more than to put his mind in the attitude
of truthfully answering what questions I might ask him.
_Q._ Which do you prefer to criticize, a book that has already been
reviewed or one that is perfectly fresh?
_A._ Oh, one that has been reviewed, and the oftener the better. I
thus gain some idea of the trend of critical opinion and shape my
review accordingly.
_Q._ Do you ever run counter to the general sentiment?
_A._ Yes; if I find that a book has been damned with faint praise,
I sometimes laud it to the skies and thus gain a reputation for
independence that is very useful to me. Or if a book has been
heralded by the best critics of both countries as “the book of the
year,” I sometimes pick it to pieces, taking its grammar as a basis,
or some other point that I think I can attack without injury to
my reputation for discernment, and again I score a victory for my
independence.
_Q._ Why don’t you like to be the first to review a new book?
_A._ For the same reason that most critics hate to--unless, indeed,
they are just out of college and are cock-sure of everything. I
fear that its author may be one of the numerous coming men. I may be
entirely at sea about the book. I prefer to get some idea of what the
consensus of the best opinion is.
[Illustration]
_Q._ Then you do not consider your own the best opinion?
_A._ No; no one critic’s opinion is worth much.
_Q._ Can you tell an author by his style?
_A._ Always, if I know who he is before I begin to read. But it is
hazardous work to say such-and-such a work is by such-and-such a man
unless there are internal evidences aside from the style. Once a
book was sent to me for criticism. Before I opened it I lent it to a
waggish friend of mine, and he returned it next day. I looked at the
title-page, saw that it was by an absolutely unknown man and that
the scene was laid in India, and, of course, I felt safe in giving
it fits on the principle that Rudyard Kipling is not likely to be
equaled in this generation as a depicter of Indian life. Well, I said
that it was painfully crude and amateurish; that it might do for the
“Servants’ Own,” but was not a book for ladies and gentlemen; that
it had absolutely no style or local coloring; that the scene might
as well have been laid in Kamchatka; and that it was marked by but
one thing, audacity, for the author had borrowed some of Kipling’s
characters--to the extent of the names only. In short, I had fun with
that book, for I knew that my fellow-critics would with one accord
turn and rend it. By mere chance I didn’t sign it.
_Q._ And who had written the book?
_A._ Why, Kipling. My friend had cut another name out of a book and
had pasted it so neatly over Kipling’s wherever his occurred that I
was, of course, taken unawares. You can’t bank on style. Look how
positive people were Mark Twain had not written “Jeanne d’Arc.”
I here interrupted the flow of his conversation to say: “Your
experience is not unlike that of the reviewer who criticized ‘Silas
Lapham,’ and who had a sort of hazy notion from the similarity of
titles that it was by the author of ‘Silas Marner.’ You may remember,
it created a good deal of amusement at the time. He said that it
was a mistake for George Eliot to try to write a novel of American
life; that the vital essence--American humor--was lacking; that Silas
Lapham was a dull Englishman transplanted bodily into a very British
Boston; that his daughters were mere puppets, and the attempts at
Americanisms doleful in the extreme. He concluded by saying that her
‘Romola’ had shown that she was best on British soil, and that she
would better keep to the snug little isle in the future.”
“Yes,” said he, with a grin; “I remember that. It was my first
criticism. Most people supposed it was a humorous skit, even the
editors who accepted it, but I never was more in earnest. I was young
then.”
_Q._ If you received a book to review with the name of Hardy on the
title-page, would you give it a good send-off?
_A._ I certainly should, for I am a great admirer of Hardy; but I
should prefer to wait until some one else had done so, for fear it
might be another put-up job and turn out to be the work of some
fifth-rate English author.
I then brought him out of his trance. He sat silent for a moment. I
picked up the “Saturday Review” from the table and said, “Criticism
is a very noble calling.”
“It is indeed,” he responded earnestly. “It is one that requires
great insight into human nature, absolute independence, and not a
little charity.”
With which beautiful sentiments he rose and, bowing, left the room.
XXVI
HOW ’RASMUS PAID THE MORTGAGE
A DIALECT STORY
I
Oh, de wolf an’ de har’ dey had a great fight.
(Down on de ribber de wil’ geese is callin’.)
De har’ pulled de wolf’s teeth so’s he couldn’ bite.
(A-callin’ me to my long home!)
Said de wolf to de har’, “Don’ hit so hard.”
(De dew on de hollyhock’s all a-dryin’!)
An’ he killed de har’ w’en he co’t him oaf his guard.
(Ah’ll dry up an’ go home!)
Up the vista formed by a narrow, tortuous Virginia lane, came Uncle
’Rasmus, an aged darky, singing one of the songs of his race that
never grow old--because they die young, it may be.
As he hobbled along the path, he talked to himself, as was his wont:
“Golly! Ah mus’ hurry up, o’ de fo’kses won’ hab no dinnah; for, be
jabers, ’tis mesilf that has got to git riddy dthat same. Och, worra!
worra! but ’tis no synekewer Oi’m havin’, an’ dthat’s dther trut’.”
Just then his watch struck five minutes to six, and he ran off toward
the homestead of Squire Lamar, saying, as he did so, in his quaint
way: “Veepin’ Rachel! der boss will kick der live out mit me.”
Before the war Squire Lamar had been the richest man in Oconee
County; but the conflict had ruined him, and he now had little except
his plantation, horses, and stables. He lived in his ancestral house,
which was heavily mortgaged, with his wife and children.
’Rasmus, his only servant, an ex-slave, supported the family by
collecting dollars--at night.
As he ran toward the house, he saw Squire Lamar on the veranda. Just
then a horseman dashed up. He was the sheriff of Oconee County.
’Rasmus took advantage of the commotion, and ran into the kitchen to
cook the dinner. On seeing the squire, the sheriff called out to him:
“The mortgage on this place will be foreclosed if the $3600 due is
not forthcoming by to-morrow noon.”
“Alas!” said the squire; “you see how we are situated. I haven’t a
dollar, and wouldn’t know how to earn one if I had.”
At this juncture, ’Rasmus, who had cooked the dinner during the
conversation, came up and said: “Massa, Ah’s a free man, Ah know Ah
is; but avick, ’t is a mighty shmall wan Oi’d be if I wouldn’t help
out a poor omadhaun like yerself. ‘Caed mille fail the Bryn Mawr
dolce far niente.’ Zat ees mon motto, an’ so, deah massah, I will
guarantee to git de money by to-morrow noon.” Then turning to the
sheriff, he said in a manly tone that contrasted ill with his ragged
garments: “Ye maun fash awee, laddie, doon the skim.”
After a few more words, the sheriff, who was really a kind man at
heart, rode off, saying he would be on hand the next day, and if the
money were not forthcoming, he would march them all off to the county
jail, ten miles distant. After blowing the dinner-horn, ’Rasmus
hobbled off to his humble cottage.
II
On arriving at his cabin, ’Rasmus took a bolster-case full of dollars
from under the bed, and proceeded to count them. There were just
$3000. “Now, Ah mus’ git $600 more before to-morrow, or else me poor
masther’ll be wor-r-rkin’ in the chain-gang. Ach, Himmel!” said the
good old darky, his eyes suffused with tears, “if dot took blace, it
zeems as if mein herz would break.”