well to come here before your vacation is over, just to see what kind of
people the Lord allows to encumber the earth. It will show you how many
human brutes there are loose in the world who don't try any longer to
appear decent when they think their identity is swallowed up in the
multitude of a great city. There are just as selfish folks in the
smaller towns, but they are afraid to give themselves up to it, because
somebody in the crowd would be sure to recognize them. Here a man has
the advantage of a perpetual _nom de plume_, and he is tempted to see
how pusillanimous he can be even when he is just here on a visit. I'm
going home next week, before I completely wreck my immortal soul.
I left your mother pretty comfortable at home, but I haven't heard from
her since I left.
Your father,
BILL NYE.
THE AUTOMATIC BELL BOY
XXVIII
Little did B. Franklin wot when he baited his pin hook with a good
conductor and tapped the low browed and bellowing storm nimbus with his
buoyant kite, thus crudely acquiring a pickle jar of electricity, that
the little start he then made would be the egg from which inventors and
scientists would hatch out the system which now not only encircles the
globe with messages swifter than the flight of Phoebus, but that anon
the light of day would be filtered through a cloud of cables loaded with
destruction sufficient for a whole army, and the air be filled with
death-dealing, dangling wires.
Little did he know that he was bottling an agent which has since pulled
out the stopper with its teeth and grown till it overspreads the sky,
planting its bare, bleak telegraph poles along every highway, carrying
day messages by night and night messages when it gets ready, filling the
air with its rusty wings--provided, of course, that such agents wear
wings--and with the harsh, metallic, ghoulish laughter of the
signal-key, all the while resting one foot on the neck of the sender and
one on the neck of the recipient, defying aggregated humanity to do its
worst, and commanding all civilization, in terse, well-chosen terms, to
either fish, cut bait or go ashore.
Could Benjamin have known all this at the time, possibly he might have
considered it wisdom to go in when it rained.
I am not an old fogy, though I may have that appearance, and I rejoice
to see the world move on. One by one I have laid aside my own
encumbering prejudices in order to keep up with the procession. Have I
not gradually adopted everything that would in any way enhance my
opportunities for advancement, even through tedious evolution, from the
paper collar up to the finger bowl, eyether, and nyether?
This should convince the reader that I am not seeking to clog the
wheels of progress. I simply look with apprehension upon any great
centralization of wealth or power in the hands of any one man who not
only does as he pleases with said wealth and power, but who, as I am
informed, does not read my timely suggestions as to how he shall use
them.
To return, however, to the subject of electricity. I have recently
sought to fathom the style and _motif_ of a new system which is to be
introduced into private residences, hotels, and police headquarters. In
private houses it will be used as a burglar's welcome. In hotels it will
take the mental strain off the bell-boy, relieving him also of a portion
of his burdensome salary at the same time. In the police department it
will do almost everything but eat peanuts from the corner stands.
I saw this system on exhibition in a large room, with the signals or
boxes on one side and the annunciator or central station on the other.
By walking from one to the other, a distance in all of thirty or forty
miles, I was enabled to get a slight idea of the principle.
[Illustration: In hotels it will take the mental strain off the
bell-boy, relieving him also of a portion of his burdensome salary at
the same time (Page 256)]
It is certainly a very intelligent system. I never felt my own
inferiority any more than I did in the presence of this wonderful
invention. It is able to do nearly anything, it seems to me, and the
main drawback appears to be its great versatility, on account of which
it is so complex that in order to become at all intimate with it a
policeman ought to put in two years at Yale and at least a year at
Leipsic. An extended course of study would perfect him in this line, but
he would not then be content to act as a policeman. He would aspire to
be a scientist, with dandruff on his coat collar and a far-away look in
his eye.
Then, again, take the hotel scheme, for instance. We go to a dial which
is marked Room 32. There we find that by treating it in a certain way it
will announce to the clerk that Room 32 wants a fire, ice-water, pens,
ink, paper, lemons, towels, fire-escape, Milwaukee Sec, pillow-shams, a
copy of this book, menu, croton frappe, carriage, laundry, physician,
sleeping-car ticket, berth-mark for same, Halford sauce, hot flat-iron
for ironing trousers, baggage, blotter, tidy for chair, or any of those
things. In fact, I have not given half the list on this barometer
because I could not remember them, though I may have added others which
are not there. The message arrives at the office, but the clerk is
engaged in conversation with a lady. He does not jump when the alarm
sounds, but continues the dialogue. Another guest wires the office that
he would like a copy of the _Congressional Record_. The message is filed
away automatically, and the thrilling conversation goes on. Then No.
7-5/8 asks to have his mail sent up. No. 25 wants to know what time the
'bus leaves the house for the train going East, and whether that train
will connect at Alliance, Ohio, with a tide-water train for Cleveland in
time to catch the Lake Shore train which will bring him into New York at
7:30, and whether all those trains are reported on time or not, and if
not will the office kindly state why? Other guests also manifest morbid
curiosity through their transmitters, but the clerk does not get
excited, for he knows that all these remarks are filed away in the large
black walnut box at the back of the office. When he gets ready,
provided he has been through a course of study in this brand of
business, he takes one room at a time, and addressing a pale young
"Banister Polisher" by the name of "Front," he begins to scatter to
their destinations, baggage, towels, morning papers, time-tables, etc.,
all over the house.
It is also supposed to be a great time-saver. For instance, No. 8 wants
to know the correct time. He moves an indicator around like the
combination on a safe, reads a few pages of instructions, and then
pushes a button, perhaps. Instead of ringing for a boy and having to
wait some time for him, then asking him to obtain the correct time at
the office and come back with the information, conversing with various
people on his way and expecting compensation for it, the guest can ask
the office and receive the answer without getting out of bed. You leave
a call for a certain hour, and at that time your own private gong will
make it so disagreeable for you that you will be glad to rise. Again, if
you wish to know the amount of your bill, you go through certain
exercises with the large barometer in your room; and, supposing you have
been at the house two days and have had a fire in your room three times,
and your bill is therefore $132.18, the answer will come back and be
announced on your gong as follows: _One_, pause, _three_, pause, _two_,
pause, _one_, pause, _eight_. When there is a cipher in the amount I do
not know what the method is, but by using due care in making up the bill
this need not occur.
For police and fire purposes the system shows a wonderful degree of
intelligence, not only as a speedy means of conveying calls for the fire
department, health department, department of street cleaning, department
of interior and good of the order, but it furnishes also a method of
transmitting emergency calls, so that no citizen--no matter how poor or
unknown--need go without an emergency. The citizen has only to turn the
crank of the little iron marten-house till the gong ceases to ring, then
push on the "Citizens' button," and he can have fun with most any
emergency he likes. Should he decide, however, to shrink from the
emergency before it arrives, he can go away from there, or secrete
himself and watch the surprise of the ambulance driver or the fire
department when no mangled remains or forked fire fiend is found in that
region.
This system is also supposed to keep its eye peeled for policemen and
inform the central station where each patrolman is all the time; also as
to his temperature, pulse, perspiration and breath. It keeps a record of
this at the main office on a ticker of its own, and the information may
be published in the society columns of the papers in the morning. It
enables a citizen to use his own discretion about sounding an alarm. He
has only to be a citizen. He need not be a tax-payer or a vox populi.
Should he be a citizen, or declare his intention to become such, or even
though he be a voter only, without any notion of ever being a citizen,
he can help himself to the fire department or anything else by ringing
up the central station.
Electricity and spiritualism have arrived at that stage of perfection
where a coil of copper wire and a can of credulity will accomplish a
great deal. The time is coming when even more surprising wonders will be
worked, and with electric wires, the rapid transit trains, and the
English sparrows all under the ground, the dawn of a better and brighter
day will be ushered in. The car-driver and the truck-man will then lie
down together, Boston will not rise up against London, he that
heretofore slag shall go forth no more for to slug, and the czar will
put aside his tailor-made boiler-iron underwear and fearlessly canvass
the nihilist wards in the interest of George Kennan and reform, nit.
THE END.
* * * * *
AN ARTICLE ON THE WRITINGS OF
James Whitcomb Riley
BY "CHELIFER"
THE AMBROSIA OF JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.
"Chelifer" in "The Bookery."--Godey's Magazine.
There are writers that take Pegasus on giddier flights of fancy, and
writers that sit him more grandly, and writers that put him through
daintier paces, and writers that burden him with anguish nearer that of
the dread Rider of the White Horse, and there are writers that make him
a very bucking broncho of wit, but there is no one that turns Pegasus
into just such an ambling nag of lazy peace and pastoral content as
James--I had almost said Joshua Whitcomb--Riley. If you want a panacea
for the bitterness and the fret and the snobbishness and pretension and
unsympathy and the commercial ambition and worry and the other cankers
that gnaw and gnaw the soul, just throw a leg over the back of Riley's
Pegasus, "perfectly safe for family driving," let the reins hang loose
as you sag limply in your saddle, and gaze through drowsy eyes while the
amiable old beast jogs down lanes blissful with rural quietude, through
farmyards full of picturesque rustics and through the streets of quaint
villages. Then utter rest and a peace akin to bliss will possess your
soul.
To make readers content with life and glad to live is one of the most
dazzlingly magnificent deeds in the power of an artist. This is too
little appreciated in the melodramatic theatricism of our life. This
genius for soothing the reader with a pathos that is not anguish and a
humor that is not cynicism, this genius belongs to Mr. Riley in a
degree I have found in no other writer in all literature.
Of course, Mr. Riley is essentially a lyric poet. But his spirit is that
of Walt Whitman; he speaks the universal democracy, the equality of man,
the hatred of assumption and snobbery, that our republic stands for, if
it stands for anything. Now downright didacticism in a poet is an
abomination. But if a poet has no right to ponder the meanings of
things, the feelings of man for man and the higher "criticism of life,"
then no one has. If to Pope's "The proper study of mankind is man," you
add "nature" and "nature's God," you will fairly well outline the poet's
field.
Mere art (Heaven save the "mere"!) is not, and has never been, enough to
place a poet among the great spirits of the world. It has furnished a
number of nimble mandolinists and exquisite dilettants
for lazy moods. But great poetry must always be something more than
sweetmeats; it must be food--temptingly cooked, winningly served, well
spiced and well accompanied, but yet food to strengthen the blood and
the sinews of the soul.
Therefore I make so bold as to insist that even in a lyrist there should
be something more than the prosperity or the dirge of personal _amours_:
there should be a sympathy with the world-joy, the world-suffering, and
the world-kinship. It is this attitude toward lyric poetry that makes me
think Mr. Riley a poet whose exquisite art is lavished on humanity so
deep-sounding as to commend him to the acceptance of immortality among
the highest lyrists.
Horace was an acute thinker and a frank speaker on the problems of life.
This didacticism seems not to have harmed his artistic welfare, for he
has undoubtedly been the most popular poet that ever wrote. Consider the
magnitude and the enthusiasm of his audience! He has been the personal
chum of everyone that ever read Latinity. But Horace, when not exalted
with his inspired preachments on the art of life and the arts of poetry
and love, was a bitter cynic redeemed by great self-depreciation and
joviality. The son of a slave, he was too fond of court life to talk
democracy.
Bobby Burns was a thorough child of the people, and is more like Mr.
Riley in every way than any other poet. Yet he, too, had a vicious
cynicism, and he never had the polished art that enriches some of Mr.
Riley's non-dialectic poetry, as in parts of his fairy fancy, "The
Flying Islands of the Night."
Burns never had the versatility of sympathy that enables Mr. Riley to
write such unpastoral masterpieces as "Anselmo," "The Dead Lover," "A
Scrawl," "The Home-going," some of his sonnets, and the noble verses
beginning
"A monument for the soldiers!
And what will ye build it of?"
Yet it must be owned that Burns is in general Mr. Riley's prototype. Mr.
Riley admits it himself in his charming verses "To Robert Burns."
"Sweet singer, that I lo'e the maist
O' ony, sin' wi' eager haste
I smacket bairn lips ower the taste
O' hinnied sang."
The classic pastoral poets, Theokritos, Vergandil, the others, sang with
an exquisite art, indeed, yet their farm-folk were really Dresden-china
shepherds and shepherdesses speaking with affected simplicity or with
impossible elegance. Theokritos, like Burns and Riley, wrote partly in
dialect and partly in the standard speech, and to those who are never
reconciled to anything that can quote no "authority," there should be
sufficient justification for dialect poetry in this divine Sicilian
musician of whom his own Goatherd might have said:
"Full of fine honey thy beautiful mouth was, Thyrsis, created
Full of the honeycomb; figs AEgilean, too, mayest thou nibble,
Sweet as they are; for ev'n than the locust more bravely thou singest."
I have no room to argue the _pro's_ of dialect here, but it always seems
strange that those lazy critics who are unwilling to take the trouble to
translate the occasional hard words in a dialect form of their own
tongue, should be so inconsistent as ever to study a foreign language.
Then, too, dialect is necessary to truth, to local color, to intimacy
with the character depicted. Besides, it is delicious. There is
something mellow and soul-warming about a plebeian metathesis like
"congergation." What orthoepy could replace lines like these?:
"Worter, shade and all so mixed, don't know which you'd orter
Say, th' _worter_ in the shadder--_shadder_ in the _worter_!"
One thing about Mr. Riley's dialect that may puzzle those not familiar
with the living speech of the Hoosiers, is his spelling, which is
chiefly done as if by the illiterate speaker himself. Thus
"rostneer-time" and "ornry" must be AEolic Greek to those barbarians who
have never heard of "roasting-ears" of corn or of that contemptuous
synonym for "vulgar," "common," which is smoothly elided,
"or(di)n(a)ry." Both of these words could be spelled with a suggestive
and helpful use of apostrophes: "roast'n'-ear," and or'n'ry.
Jumbles like "jevver" for "did you ever?" and the like can hardly be
spelled otherwise than phonetically, but a glossary should be appended
as in Lowell's "Biglow Papers," for the poems are eminently worth even
lexicon-thumbing. Another frequent fault of dialect writers is the
spelling phonetically of words pronounced everywhere alike. Thus
"enough" is spelled "enuff," and "clamor," "clammer," though Dr. Johnson
himself would never have pronounced them otherwise. In these
misspellings, however, Mr. Riley excuses himself by impersonating an
illiterate as well as a crude-speaking poet. But even then he is
inconsistent, and "hollowing" becomes "hollerin'," with an apostrophe to
mark the lost "g"--that abominable imported harshness that ought to be
generally exiled from our none too smooth language. Mr. Riley has
written a good essay in defense of dialect, which enemies of this form
of literature might read with advantage.
But Mr. Riley has written a deal of most excellent verse that is not in
dialect. One whole volume is devoted to a fairy extravaganza called "The
Flying Islands of the Night," a good addition to that quaint literature
of lace to which "The Midsummer Night's Dream," Herrick's "Oberon's
Epithalamium," or whatever it is called, Drake's "Culprit Fay," and
other bits of most exquisite foolery belong. While hardly a complete
success, this diminutive drama contains some curiously delightful
conceits like this "improvisation:"
"Her face--her brow--her hair unfurled!--
And O the oval chin below,
Carved, like a cunning cameo,
With one exquisite dimple, swirled
With swimming shine and shade, and whirled
The daintiest vortex poets know--
The sweetest whirlpool ever twirled
By Cupid's finger-tip--and so,
The deadliest maelstrom in the world!"
It is a strange individuality that Mr. Riley has, suggesting numerous
other masters--whose influence he acknowledges in special odes--and yet
all digested and assimilated into a marked individuality of his own. He
has studied the English poets profoundly and improved himself upon them,
till one is chiefly impressed, in his non-dialectic verse, with his
refinement, subtlety, and ease. He has a large vocabulary, and his
felicity is at times startling. Thus he speaks of water "chuckling,"
which is as good as Horace's ripples that "gnaw" the shore. Note the
mastery of such lines as
"And the dust of the road is like velvet."
"Nothin' but green woods and clear
Skies and unwrit poetry
By the acre!"
"Then God smiled and it was morning!"
Life is "A poor pale yesterday of Death."
"And O I wanted so
To be felt sorry for!"
"Always suddenly they are gone,
The friends we trusted and held secure."
"At utter loaf."
"Knee-deep in June."
--But I can not go on quoting forever.
Technically, Mr. Riley is a master of surpassing finish. His meters are
perfect and varied. They flow as smoothly as his own Indiana streams.
His rimes are almost never imperfect. To prove his own understanding he
has written one _scherzo_ in technic that is a delightful example of bad
rime, bad meter, and the other earmarks of the poor poet. It is "Ezra
House," and begins:
"Come listen, good people, while a story I do tell
Of the sad fate of one I knew so passing well!"
The "do" and the "so" are the unfailing index of crudity. Then we have
rimes like "long" and "along" (it is curious that modern English is the
only tongue that finds this repetition objectionable); "moon" and
"tomb," "well" and "hill," and "said" and "denied" are others, and the
whole thing is an enchanting lesson in How Poetry Should Not be Written.
Mr. Riley is fond of dividing words at the ends of lines, but always in
a comic way, though Horace, you remember, was not unwilling to use it
seriously, as in his
"----U-
Xorius amnis."
Mr. Riley's animadversions on "Addeliney Bowersox" constitute a
fascinating study in this effect. He is also devoted to dividing an
adjective from its noun by a line-end. This is a trick of Poe's, whose
influence Mr. Riley has greatly profited by. In his dialect poetry Mr.
Riley gets just the effect of the jerky drawl of the Hoosier by using
the end of a line as a knife, thus:
"The wood's
Green again, and sun feels good's
June!"
His masterly use of the caesura is notable, too. See its charming
despotism in "Griggsby Station."
But it is not his technic that makes him ambrosial, not the loving care
_ad unguem_ that smooths the uncouthest dialect into lilting tunefulness
without depriving it of its colloquial verisimilitude--it is none of
these things of mechanical inspiration, but the spirit of the man, his
democracy, his tenderness, the health and wealth of his sympathies. If
he uses "memory" a little too often as a vehicle for his rural pictures,
the utter charm of the pictures is atonement enough. He has caught the
real American. He is the laureate of the bliss of laziness. His child
poems are the next best thing to the child itself; they have all the
infectious essence of gayety, and all the _naivete_, and all the
knife-like appeal. It could not reasonably be demanded that his prose
should equal the perfection of his verse, but nothing more eerie has
ever been done than the little story, "Where is Mary Alice Smith?" with
its strange use of rime at the end.
Of all dialect writers he has been the most versatile. Think of the
author of "The Raggedy Man" or "Orphant Annie" writing one of the finest
sonnets in the language! this one which I must quote here as a noble
ending to my halt praise:
"Being his mother, when he goes away
I would not hold him overlong, and so
Sometimes my yielding sight of him grows O
So quick of tears, I joy he did not stay
To catch the faintest rumor of them! Nay,
Leave always his eyes clear and glad, although
Mine own, dear Lord, do fill to overflow;
"Let his remembered features, as I pray,
Smile ever on me. Ah! what stress of love
Thou givest me to guard with Thee thiswise:
Its fullest speech ever to be denied
Mine own--being his mother! All thereof
Thou knowest only, looking from the skies
As when not Christ alone was crucified."
Life is the more tolerable, the more full of learned sympathy, and
thereby of joy and value, for the very existence of such a man.
* * * * *
LIST OF MR. RILEY'S BOOKS.
A CHILD WORLD. (NEW.) Tales in verse of childhood days. Cloth, 12mo,
$1.25. Half calf, $2.50. Hand-made Paper edition, bound uniform with
"Old Fashioned Roses," $2.
NEGHBORLY POEMS, including "The Old Swimmin' Hole," by Benjamin F.
Johnson, of Boone (James Whitcomb Riley.) Cloth, illustrated, 12mo,
$1.25. Half calf, $2.50.
SKETCHES IN PROSE, and Occasional Verses. Cloth, $1.25. Half calf,
$2.50.
AFTERWHILES. Sixtieth thousand. With Portrait. Cloth, $1.25. Half calf,
$2.50.
PIPES O' PAN AT ZEKESBURY. Five Sketches and fifty Poems. Cloth, $1.25.
Half calf, $2.50.
RHYMES OF CHILDHOOD. Dialect and other Verses. With Portrait. Cloth,
$1.25. Half calf, $2.50.
THE FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT. A Fantastic Drama in Verse. Cloth,
$1.25. Half calf, $2.50.
GREEN FIELDS AND RUNNING BROOKS. Dialect and Serious Poems. With
Portrait. Cloth, Illustrated, $1.25. Half calf, $2.50.
ARMAZINDY. Hoosier Harvest Airs, Feigned Forms, and Child Rhymes. Cloth,
$1.25. Half calf, $2.50.
OLD FASHIONED ROSES. A selection of popular Poems, from Mr. Riley's
Works. Printed in England. 16mo, uncut, $1.75.
AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE. Illustrated in colors. Oblong 4to, $2.50.
A UNIFORM EDITION of Mr. Riley's Works in 9 volumes, 12mo, cloth, per
set, $11.25. Half calf, 9 volumes, 12mo, per set, $22.50. Published by
The Bowen-Merrill Co., Indianapolis and Kansas City. Sent post-paid to
any address on receipt of the price.