louder than ever, with a speed limit of fifty miles an hour. Only the
best of them can run faster than that. Quiet, conservative people in
Paris like to get to bed at three o'clock; after all, what is the use of
keeping late hours and ruining one's health and complexion? If you make
it a strict rule to be in bed by three, you feel all the better for it
in the long run--health better, nerves steadier, eyes clearer--and
you're able to get up early--at half-past eleven--and feel fine.
Those who won't or don't go to bed at three wander about the town, eat a
second supper in an all-night restaurant, circulate round with guides,
and visit the slums of the Market, where gaunt-eyed wretches sleep in
crowded alleys in the mephitic air of a summer night, and where the idle
rich may feed their luxurious curiosity on the sufferings of the idle
poor.
The dinners, the theaters, the boulevards, and the rest of it are all
fun enough, at any rate for one visit in a lifetime. The "real wicked"
part of it is practically fake--served up for the curious foreigner with
money to throw away. The Moulin Rouge whirls the wide sails of its huge
sign, crimson with electric bulbs, amid the false glaze of the Place
Blanche. Inside of it there is more red--the full red of bad claret and
the bright red of congested faces and painted cheeks. Part of the place
is a theater with a vaudeville show much like any other. Another part is
a vast "promenoir" where you may walk up and down or sit at a little
table and drink bad brandy at one franc and a half. In a fenced off part
are the Oriental Dances, a familiar feature of every Parisian Show.
These dances--at twenty cents a turn--are supposed to represent all the
languishing allurement of the Oriental houri--I think that is the word.
The dancers in Paris--it is only fair to state--have never been nearer
to the Orient than the Faubourg St. Antoine, where they were brought up
and where they learned all the Orientalism that they know. Their "dance"
is performed with their feet continuously on the ground--never lifted, I
mean--and is done by gyrations of the stomach, beside which the
paroxysms of an overdose of Paris green are child's play. In seeing
these dances one realizes all the horrors of life in the East.
Not everyone, however, can be an Oriental dancer in a French pleasure
show. To qualify you must be as scrawny as a Parisian cab-horse, and it
appears as if few débutantes could break into the profession under the
age of forty. The dances go on at intervals till two in the morning,
after which the Oriental houri crawls to her home at the same time as
the Parisian cab-horse--her companion in arms.
Under the Moulin Rouge, and in all similar places, is a huge dance hall:
It has a "Hungarian Orchestra"--a fact which is proved by the red and
green jackets, the tyrolese caps, and by the printed sign which says,
"This is a Hungarian Orchestra." I knew that they were Hungarians the
night I saw them, because I distinctly heard one of them say, "what
t'ell do we play next boys?" The reference to William Tell was obvious.
After every four tunes the Orchestra are given a tall stein of beer, and
they all stand up and drink it, shouting "Hoch!" or "Ha!" or "Hoo!" or
something of the sort. This is supposed to give a high touch of local
colour. Everybody knows how Hungarians always shout out loud when they
see a glass of beer. I've noticed it again and again in sugar
refineries.
The Hungarians have to drink the beer whether they like it or not--it's
part of their contract. I noticed one poor fellow who was playing the
long bassoon, and who was doing a double night-shift overtime. He'd had
twenty-four pints of beer already, and there were still two hours before
closing time. You could tell what he was feeling like by the sobbing of
his instrument. But he stood up every now and then and yelled "Hoch!" or
"Hiccough!"--or whatever it was--along with the others.
On the big floor in front of the Hungarians the dance goes on. Most of
the time the dances are endless waltzes and polkas shared in by the
nondescript frequenters of the place, while the tourist visitors sit
behind a railing and watch. To look at, the dancing is about as
interesting, nothing more or less, than the round dances at a Canadian
picnic on the first of July.
Every now and then, to liven things up, comes the can-can. In theory
this is a wild dance, breaking out from sheer ebullience of spirit, and
shared in by a bevy of merry girls carried away by gaiety and joy of
living. In reality the can-can is performed by eight or ten old
nags,--ex-Oriental dancers, I should think,--at eighty cents a night.
But they are deserving women, and work hard--like all the rest of the
brigade in the factory of Parisian gaiety.
After the Moulin Rouge or the Bal Tabarin or such, comes, of course, a
visit to one of the night cafés of the Montmartre district. Their names
in themselves are supposed to indicate their weird and alluring
character--the Café of Heaven, the Café of Nothingness, and,--how
dreadful--the Café of Hell. "Montmartre," says one of the latest English
writers on Paris, "is the scene of all that is wild, mad, and
extravagant. Nothing is too grotesque, too terrible, too eccentric for
the Montmartre mind." Fiddlesticks! What he means is that nothing is too
damn silly for people to pay to go to see.
Take, for example, the notorious Café of Hell. The portals are low and
gloomy. You enter in the dark. A pass-word is given--"Stranger, who
cometh here?"--"More food for worms." You sit and eat among coffins and
shrouds. There are muffled figures shuffling around to represent monks
in cowls, saints, demons, and apostles. The "Angel Gabriel" watches at
the door. "Father Time" moves among the eaters. The waiters are dressed
as undertakers. There are skulls and cross-bones in the walls. The light
is that of dim tapers. And so on.
And yet I suppose some of the foreign visitors to the Café of Hell think
that this is a truly French home scene, and discuss the queer
characteristics of the French people suggested by it.
I got to know a family in Paris that worked in one of these Montmartre
night cafés--quiet, decent people they were, with a little home of their
own in the suburbs. The father worked as Beelzebub mostly, but he could
double with St. Anthony and do a very fair St. Luke when it was called
for. The mother worked as Mary Magdalene, but had grown so stout that it
was hard for her to hold it. There were two boys, one of whom was
working as John the Baptist, but had been promised to be promoted to
Judas Iscariot in the fall; they were good people, and worked well, but
were tired of their present place. Like everyone else they had heard of
Canada and thought of coming out. They were very anxious to know what
openings there were in their line; whether there would be any call for a
Judas Iscariot in a Canadian restaurant, or whether a man would have any
chance as St. Anthony in the West.
I told them frankly that these jobs were pretty well filled up.
Listen! It is striking three. The motors are whirling down the asphalt
street. The brilliant lights of the boulevard windows are fading out.
Here, as in the silent woods of Canada, night comes at last. The
restless city of pleasure settles to its short sleep.
_THE RETROACTIVE EXISTENCE OF MR. JUGGINS_
_The Retroactive Existence of Mr. Juggins_
I FIRST met Juggins,--really to notice him,--years and years ago as a
boy out camping. Somebody was trying to nail up a board on a tree for a
shelf and Juggins interfered to help him.
"Stop a minute," he said, "you need to saw the end of that board off
before you put it up." Then Juggins looked round for a saw, and when he
got it he had hardly made more than a stroke or two with it before he
stopped. "This saw," he said, "needs to be filed up a bit." So he went
and hunted up a file to sharpen the saw, but found that before he could
use the file he needed to put a proper handle on it, and to make a
handle he went to look for a sapling in the bush, but to cut the sapling
he found that he needed to sharpen up the axe. To do this, of course, he
had to fix the grindstone so as to make it run properly. This involved
making wooden legs for the grindstone. To do this decently Juggins
decided to make a carpenter's bench. This was quite impossible without a
better set of tools. Juggins went to the village to get the tools
required, and, of course, he never came back.
He was re-discovered--weeks later--in the city, getting prices on
wholesale tool machinery.
After that first episode I got to know Juggins very well. For some time
we were students at college together. But Juggins somehow never got far
with his studies. He always began with great enthusiasm and then
something happened. For a time he studied French with tremendous
eagerness. But he soon found that for a real knowledge of French you
need first to get a thorough grasp of Old French and Provençal. But it
proved impossible to do anything with these without an absolutely
complete command of Latin. This Juggins discovered could only be
obtained, in any thorough way, through Sanskrit, which of course lies
at the base of it. So Juggins devoted himself to Sanskrit until he
realised that for a proper understanding of Sanskrit one needs to study
the ancient Iranian, the root-language underneath. This language however
is lost.
So Juggins had to begin over again. He did, it is true, make some
progress in natural science. He studied physics and rushed rapidly
backwards from forces to molecules, and from molecules to atoms, and
from atoms to electrons, and then his whole studies exploded backward
into the infinities of space, still searching a first cause.
Juggins, of course, never took a degree, so he made no practical use of
his education. But it didn't matter. He was very well off and was able
to go straight into business with a capital of about a hundred thousand
dollars. He put it at first into a gas plant, but found that he lost
money at that because of the high price of the coal needed to make gas.
So he sold out for ninety thousand dollars and went into coal mining.
This was unsuccessful because of the awful cost of mining machinery. So
Juggins sold his share in the mine for eighty thousand dollars and went
in for manufacturing mining machinery. At this he would have undoubtedly
made money but for the enormous cost of gas needed as motive-power for
the plant. Juggins sold out of the manufacture for seventy thousand, and
after that he went whirling in a circle, like skating backwards, through
the different branches of allied industry.
He lost a certain amount of money each year, especially in good years
when trade was brisk. In dull times when everything was unsalable he did
fairly well.
Juggins' domestic life was very quiet.
Of course he never married. He did, it is true, fall in love several
times; but each time it ended without result. I remember well his first
love story for I was very intimate with him at the time. He had fallen
in love with the girl in question utterly and immediately. It was
literally love at first sight. There was no doubt of his intentions. As
soon as he had met her he was quite frank about it. "I intend," he said,
"to ask her to be my wife."
"When?" I asked; "right away?"
"No," he said, "I want first to fit myself to be worthy of her."
So he went into moral training to fit himself. He taught in a Sunday
school for six weeks, till he realised that a man has no business in
Divine work of that sort without first preparing himself by serious
study of the history of Palestine. And he felt that a man was a cad to
force his society on a girl while he is still only half acquainted with
the history of the Israelites. So Juggins stayed away. It was nearly two
years before he was fit to propose. By the time he _was_ fit, the girl
had already married a brainless thing in patent leather boots who didn't
even know who Moses was.
Of course Juggins fell in love again. People always do. And at any rate
by this time he was in a state of moral fitness that made it
imperative.
So he fell in love--deeply in love this time--with a charming girl,
commonly known as the eldest Miss Thorneycroft. She was only called
eldest because she had five younger sisters; and she was very poor and
awfully clever and trimmed all her own hats. Any man, if he's worth the
name, falls in love with that sort of thing at first sight. So, of
course, Juggins would have proposed to her; only when he went to the
house he met her next sister: and of course she was younger still; and,
I suppose, poorer: and made not only her own hats but her own blouses.
So Juggins fell in love with her. But one night when he went to call,
the door was opened by the sister younger still, who not only made her
own blouses and trimmed her own hats, but even made her own tailor-made
suits. After that Juggins backed up from sister to sister till he went
through the whole family, and in the end got none of them.
Perhaps it was just as well that Juggins never married. It would have
made things very difficult because, of course, he got poorer all the
time. You see after he sold out his last share in his last business he
bought with it a diminishing life annuity, so planned that he always got
rather less next year than this year, and still less the year after.
Thus, if he lived long enough, he would starve to death.
Meantime he has become a quaint-looking elderly man, with coats a little
too short and trousers a little above his boots--like a boy. His face
too is like that of a boy, with wrinkles.
And his talk now has grown to be always reminiscent. He is perpetually
telling long stories of amusing times that he has had with different
people that he names.
He says for example--
"I remember a rather queer thing that happened to me in a train one
day----"
And if you say--"When was that Juggins?"--he looks at you in a vague way
as if calculating and says,--"in 1875, or 1876, I think, as near as I
recall it--"
I notice, too, that his reminiscences are going further and further
back. He used to base his stories on his recollections as a young man,
now they are further back.
The other day he told me a story about himself and two people that he
called the Harper brothers,--Ned and Joe. Ned, he said was a
tremendously powerful fellow.
I asked how old Ned was and Juggins said that he was three. He added
that there was another brother not so old, but a very clever fellow
about,--here Juggins paused and calculated--about eighteen months.
So then I realised where Juggins retroactive existence is carrying him
to. He has passed back through childhood into infancy, and presently,
just as his annuity runs to a point and vanishes, he will back up clear
through the Curtain of Existence and die,--or be born, I don't know
which to call it.
Meantime he remains to me as one of the most illuminating allegories I
have met.
[Illustration: Meanwhile he had become a quaint-looking elderly man.]
_MAKING A MAGAZINE_
(_The Dream of a Contributor_)
_Making a Magazine_
I DREAMT one night not long ago that I was the editor of a great
illustrated magazine. I offer no apology for this: I have often dreamt
even worse of myself than that.
In any case I didn't do it on purpose: very often, I admit, I try to
dream that I am President Wilson, or Mr. Bryan, or the Ritz-Carlton
Hotel, or a share of stock in the Standard Oil Co. for the sheer luxury
and cheapness of it. But this was an accident. I had been sitting up
late at night writing personal reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln. I was
writing against time. The presidential election was drawing nearer every
day and the market for reminiscences of Lincoln was extremely brisk,
but, of course, might collapse any moment. Writers of my class have to
consider this sort of thing. For instance, in the middle of Lent, I find
that I can do fairly well with "Recent Lights on the Scriptures." Then,
of course, when the hot weather comes, the market for Christmas poetry
opens and there's a fairly good demand for voyages in the Polar Seas.
Later on, in the quiet of the autumn I generally write some "Unpublished
Letters from Goethe to Balzac," and that sort of thing.
But it's a wearing occupation, full of disappointments, and needing the
very keenest business instinct to watch every turn of the market.
I am afraid that this is a digression. I only wanted to explain how a
man's mind could be so harassed and overwrought as to make him dream
that he was an editor.
I knew at once in my dream where and what I was. As soon as I saw the
luxury of the surroundings,--the spacious room with its vaulted ceiling,
lit with stained glass,--the beautiful mahogany table at which I sat
writing with a ten-dollar fountain pen, the gift of the
manufacturers,--on embossed stationery, the gift of the embossers,--on
which I was setting down words at eight and a half cents a word and
deliberately picking out short ones through sheer business
acuteness;--as soon as I saw;--this I said to myself--
"I am an editor, and this is my editorial sanctum." Not that I have ever
seen an editor or a sanctum. But I have sent so many manuscripts to so
many editors and received them back with such unfailing promptness, that
the scene before me was as familiar to my eye as if I had been wide
awake.
As I thus mused, revelling in the charm of my surroundings and admiring
the luxurious black alpaca coat and the dainty dickie which I wore,
there was a knock at the door.
A beautiful creature entered. She evidently belonged to the premises,
for she wore no hat and there were white cuffs upon her wrists. She has
that indescribable beauty of effectiveness such as is given to hospital
nurses.
This, I thought to myself, must be my private secretary.
"I hope I don't interrupt you, sir," said the girl.
"My dear child," I answered, speaking in that fatherly way in which an
editor might well address a girl almost young enough to be his wife,
"pray do not mention it. Sit down. You must be fatigued after your
labours of the morning. Let me ring for a club sandwich."
"I came to say, sir," the secretary went on, "that there's a person
downstairs waiting to see you."
My manner changed at once.
"Is he a gentleman or a contributor?" I asked.
"He doesn't look exactly like a gentleman."
"Very good," I said. "He's a contributor for sure. Tell him to wait. Ask
the caretaker to lock him in the coal cellar, and kindly slip out and
see if there's a policeman on the beat in case I need him."
"Very good, sir," said the secretary.
I waited for about an hour, wrote a few editorials advocating the rights
of the people, smoked some Turkish cigarettes, drank a glass of sherry,
and ate part of an anchovy sandwich.
Then I rang the bell. "Bring that man here," I said.
Presently they brought him in. He was a timid-looking man with an
embarrassed manner and all the low cunning of an author stamped on his
features. I could see a bundle of papers in his hand, and I knew that
the scoundrel was carrying a manuscript.
"Now, sir," I said, "speak quickly. What's your business?"
"I've got here a manuscript," he began.
"What!" I shouted at him. "A manuscript! You'd dare, would you! Bringing
manuscripts in here! What sort of a place do you think this is?"
"It's the manuscript of a story," he faltered.
"A story!" I shrieked. "What on earth do you think we'd want stories
for! Do you think we've nothing better to do than to print your idiotic
ravings? Have you any idea, you idiot, of the expense we're put to in
setting up our fifty pages of illustrated advertising? Look here," I
continued, seizing a bundle of proof illustrations that lay in front of
me, "do you see this charming picture of an Asbestos Cooker, guaranteed
fireless, odourless, and purposeless? Do you see this patent motor-car
with pneumatic cushions, and the full-page description of its
properties? Can you form any idea of the time and thought that we have
to spend on these things, and yet you dare to come in here with your
miserable stories. By heaven," I said, rising in my seat, "I've a notion
to come over there and choke you: I'm entitled to do it by the law, and
I think I will."
"Don't, don't," he pleaded. "I'll go away. I meant no harm. I'll take it
with me."
"No you don't," I interrupted; "none of your sharp tricks with this
magazine. You've submitted this manuscript to me, and it stays
submitted. If I don't like it, I shall prosecute you, and, I trust,
obtain full reparation from the courts."
[Illustration: With all the low cunning of an author stamped on his
features.]
To tell the truth, it had occurred to me that perhaps I might need after
all to buy the miserable stuff. Even while I felt that my indignation at
the low knavery of the fellow was justified, I knew that it might be
necessary to control it. The present low state of public taste demands a
certain amount of this kind of matter distributed among the advertising.
I rang the bell again.
"Please take this man away and shut him up again. Have them keep a good
eye on him. He's an author."
"Very good, sir," said the secretary.
I called her back for one moment.
"Don't feed him anything," I said.
"No," said the girl.
The manuscript lay before me on the table. It looked bulky. It bore the
title _Dorothy Dacres, or, Only a Clergyman's Daughter_.
I rang the bell again.
"Kindly ask the janitor to step this way."
He came in. I could see from the straight, honest look in his features
that he was a man to be relied upon.
"Jones," I said, "can you read?"
"Yes, sir," he said, "some."
"Very good. I want you to take this manuscript and read it. Read it all
through and then bring it back here."
The janitor took the manuscript and disappeared. I turned to my desk
again and was soon absorbed in arranging a full-page display of
plumbers' furnishings for the advertising. It had occurred to me that by
arranging the picture matter in a neat device with verses from "Home
Sweet Home" running through it in double-leaded old English type, I
could set up a page that would be the delight of all business readers
and make this number of the magazine a conspicuous success. My mind was
so absorbed that I scarcely noticed that over an hour elapsed before the
janitor returned.
"Well, Jones," I said as he entered, "have you read that manuscript?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you find it all right--punctuation good, spelling all correct?"
"Very good indeed, sir."
"And there is, I trust, nothing of what one would call a humorous nature
in it? I want you to answer me quite frankly, Jones,--there is nothing
in it that would raise a smile, or even a laugh, is there?"
"Oh, no, sir," said Jones, "nothing at all."
"And now tell me--for remember that the reputation of our magazine is at
stake--does this story make a decided impression on you? Has it," and
here I cast my eye casually at the latest announcement of a rival
publication, "the kind of _tour de force_ which at once excites you to
the full _qui vive_ and which contains a sustained _brio_ that
palpitates on every page? Answer carefully, Jones, because if it hasn't,
I won't buy it."
"I think it has," he said.
"Very well," I answered; "now bring the author to me."
In the interval of waiting, I hastily ran my eye through the pages of
the manuscript.
Presently they brought the author back again. He had assumed a look of
depression.
"I have decided," I said, "to take your manuscript."
Joy broke upon his face. He came nearer to me as if to lick my hand.
"Stop a minute," I said. "I am willing to take your story, but there are
certain things, certain small details which I want to change."
"Yes?" he said timidly.
"In the first place, I don't like your title. _Dorothy Dacres, or, Only
a Clergyman's Daughter_ is too quiet. I shall change it to read
_Dorothea Dashaway, or, The Quicksands of Society_."
"But surely," began the contributor, beginning to wring his hands----
"Don't interrupt me," I said. "In the next place, the story is much too
long." Here I reached for a large pair of tailor's scissors that lay on
the table. "This story contains nine thousand words. We never care to
use more than six thousand. I must therefore cut some of it off." I
measured the story carefully with a pocket tape that lay in front of me,
cut off three thousand words and handed them back to the author. "These
words," I said, "you may keep. We make no claim on them at all. You are
at liberty to make any use of them that you like."
"But please," he said, "you have cut off all the end of the story: the
whole conclusion is gone. The readers can't possibly tell,----"
I smiled at him with something approaching kindness.