of art. We are sentimental enough to wish to add the tag that after a
few minutes Carpentier came out to the center of the ring and shook
hands with Dempsey and at that moment he smiled again the same smile
which we had seen at the beginning of the fight when he stood with his
hands above his head. Nor is it altogether sentimental. We feel that one
of the elements of tragedy lies in the fact that Fate gets nothing but
the victories and the championships. Gesture and glamour remain with
Man. No infighting can take that away from him. Jack Dempsey won fairly
and squarely. He is a great fighter, perhaps the most efficient the
world has ever known, but everybody came away from the arena talking
about Carpentier. He wasn't every efficient. The experts say he fought
an ill considered fight and should not have forced it. In using such a
plan, they say, he might have lasted the whole twelve rounds. That was
not the idea. As somebody has said, "Better four rounds of----" but we
can't remember the rest of the quotation.
Dempsey won and Carpentier got all the glory. Perhaps we will have to
enlarge our conception of tragedy, for that too is tragic.
XII
JACK THE GIANT KILLER
All the giants and most of the dragons were happy and contented folk.
Neither fear nor shame was in them. They faced life squarely and liked
it. And so they left no literature.
The business of writing was left to the dwarfs, who felt impelled to
distort real values in order to make their own pitiful existence
endurable. In their stories the little people earned ease of mind for
themselves by making up yarns in which they killed giants, dragons and
all the best people of the community who were too big and strong for
them. Naturally, the giants and dragons merely laughed at such times as
these highly drawn accounts of imaginary happenings were called to their
attention.
But they laughed not only too soon but too long. Giants and dragons have
died and the stories remain. The world believes to-day that St. George
slew the dragon, and that Jack killed all those giants. The little man
has imposed himself upon the world. Strength and size have come to be
reproaches. The world has been won by the weak.
Undoubtedly, it is too late to do anything about this now. But there is
a little dim and distant dragon blood in our veins. It boils when we
hear the fairy stories and we remember the true version of Jack the
Giant Killer, as it has been handed down by word of mouth in our family
for a great many centuries. We can produce no tangible proofs, and we
are willing to admit that the tale may have grown a little distorted
here and there in the telling through the ages. Even so it sounds much
more plausible to us than the one which has crept into the story books.
Jack was a Celt, a liar and a meager man. He had great green eyes and
much practice in being pathetic. He could sing tenor and often did. But
it was not in this manner that he lived. By trade he was a newspaper man
though he called himself a journalist. In his shop there was a printing
press and every afternoon he issued a newspaper which he called _Jack's
Journal_. Under this name there ran the caption, "If you see it in
_Jack's Journal_ you may be sure that it actually occurred." Jack had no
talent for brevity and little taste for truth. All in all he was a
pretty poor newspaper man. We forgot to say that in addition to this he
was exceedingly lazy. But he was a good liar.
This was the only thing which saved him. Day after day he would come to
the office without a single item of local interest, and upon such
occasions he made a practice of sitting down and making up something.
Generally, it was far more thrilling than any of the real news of the
community which clustered around one great highroad known as Main
Street.
The town lay in a valley cupped between towering hills. On the hills,
and beyond, lived the giants and the dragons, but there was little
interchange between these fine people and the dwarfs of the village.
Occasionally, a sliced drive from the giants' golf course would fall
into the fields of the little people, who would ignorantly set down the
great round object as a meteor from heaven. The giants were considerate
as well as kindly and they made the territory of the little people out
of bounds. Otherwise, an erratic golfer might easily have uprooted the
first national bank, the Second Baptist Church, which stood next door,
and _Jack's Journal_ with one sweep of his niblick. If by any chance he
failed to get out in one, the total destruction of mankind would have
been imminent.
Once upon a time, a charitable dowager dragon sought to bring about a
closer relationship between the peoples of the hills and the valley in
spite of their difference in size. Hearing of a poor neglected family in
the village, which was freezing to death because of want of coal, she
leaned down from her mountain and breathed gently against the roof of
the thatched cottage. Her intentions were excellent but the damage was
$152,694, little of which was covered by insurance. After that the
dragons and the giants decided to stop trying to do favors for the
little people.
Being short of news one afternoon, Jack thought of the great gulf which
existed between his reading public and the big fellows on the hill and
decided that it would be safe to romance a little. Accordingly, he wrote
a highly circumstantial story of the manner in which he had gone to the
hills and killed a large giant with nothing more than his good broad
sword. The story was not accepted as gospel by all the subscribers, but
it was well told, and it argued an undreamed of power in the arm of man.
People wanted to believe and accordingly they did. Encouraged, Jack
began to kill dragons and giants with greater frequency in his
newspaper. In fact, he called his last evening edition _The Five Star
Giant Final_ and never failed to feature a killing in it under great red
block type.
The news of the Jack's doings came finally to the hill people and they
were much amused, that is all but one giant called Fee Fi Fo Fum. The Fo
Fums (pronounced Fohum) were one of the oldest families in the hills.
Jack supposed that all the names he was using were fictitious, but by
some mischance or other he happened one afternoon to use Fee Fi Fo Fum
as the name of his current victim. The name was common enough and
undoubtedly the thing was an accident, but Mr. Fo Fum did not see it in
that light. To make it worse, Jack had gone on in his story with some
stuff about captive princesses just for the sake of sex appeal. Not only
was Mr. Fo Fum an ardent Methodist, but his wife was jealous. There was
a row in the Fo Fum home (see encyclopedia for Great Earthquake of 1007)
and Fee swore revenge upon Jack.
"Make him print a retraction," said Mrs. Fo Fum.
"Retraction, nothing," roared Fee, "I'm going to eat up the presses."
Over the hills he went with giant strides and arrived at the office of
_Jack's Journal_ just at press time. Mr. Fo Fum was a little calmer by
now, but still revengeful. He spoke to Jack in a whisper which shook the
building, and told him that he purposed to step on him and bite his
press in two.
"Wait until I have this last page made up," said Jack.
"Killing more giants, I presume?" said Fee with heavy satire.
"Bagged three this afternoon," said Jack. "Hero Slaughters Trio of
Titans."
"My name is Fo Fum," said the giant. Jack did not recognize it because
of the trick pronunciation and the visitor had to explain.
"I'm sorry," said Jack, "but if you've come for extra copies of the
paper in which your name figures I can't give you any. The edition is
exhausted."
Fo Fum spluttered and blew a bale of paper out of the window.
"Cut that out," said Jack severely. "All complaints must be made in
writing. And while I'm about it you forgot to put your name down on one
of those slips at the desk in the reception room. Don't forget to fill
in that space about what business you want to discuss with the editor."
Fo Fum started to roar, but Jack's high and pathetic tenor cut through
the great bass like a ship's siren in a storm.
"If you don't quit shaking this building I'll call Julius the office boy
and have him throw you out."
"Take the air," added Jack severely, disregarding the fact that Fo Fum
before entering the office had found it necessary to remove the roof.
But now the giant was beginning to stoop a little. His face grew purple
and he was swaying unsteadily on his feet.
"Hold on a minute," said Jack briskly, "don't go just yet. Stick around
a second."
He turned to his secretary and dictated two letters of congratulation to
distant emperors and another to a cardinal. "Tell the Pope," he said in
conclusion, "that his conduct is admirable. Tell him I said so."
"Now, Mr. Fo Fum," said Jack turning back to the giant, "what I want
from you is a picture. There is still plenty of light. I'll call up the
staff photographer. The north meadow will give us room. Of course, you
will have to be taken lying down because as far as the _Journal_ goes
you're dead. And just one thing more. Could you by any chance let me
have one of your ears for our reception room?"
Fo Fum had been growing more and more purple, but now he toppled over
with a crash, carrying part of the building with him. Almost two years
before he had been warned by a doctor of apoplexy and sudden anger. Jack
did not wait for the verdict of any medical examiner. He seized the
speaking tube and shouted down to the composing room, "Jim, take out
that old head. Make it read, 'Hero Finishes Four Ferocious Foemen.' And
say, Jim, I want you to be ready to replate for a special extra with an
eight column cut. I'll have the photographer here in a second. I killed
that last giant right here in the office. Yes, and say, Jim, you'd
better use that stock cut of me at the bottom of the page. A caption,
let me see, put it in twenty-four point cheltenham bold and make it read
'Jack--the Giant Killer.'"
XIII
JUDGE KRINK
H. 3d, our three-year-old son, has created for himself out of thin air
somebody whom he can respect. The name of this character is Judge Krink,
but generally he is more casually referred to as "the Judge." He lives,
so we are informed, at some remote place called Fourace Hill. H. 3d says
Judge Krink is his best friend. He told us yesterday that he had written
a letter to Judge Krink and had received one in reply.
"What did you say?" we asked.
"I said I was writing him a letter."
"What did he say?"
"Nothing."
This interchange of courtesies did not seem epoch-making even in the
life of a child, but we learned later just how extraordinarily important
and useful Judge Krink had become to H. 3d. Cross-examination revealed
the fact that Judge Krink has dirty hands which he never allows to be
washed. Under no compulsion does he go to bed. Apparently he sits all
day long in a garden, more democratically administered than any city
park, digging dirt and putting it in a pail.
Candy Judge Krink eats very freely and without let or hindrance. In fact
there is nothing forbidden to H. 3d which Judge Krink does not do with
great gusto. Rules and prohibitions melt before the iron will and
determination of the Judge. We suppose that when the artificial
restrictions of a grown-up world bear too heavily upon H. 3d he finds
consolation in the thought that somewhere in the world Judge Krink is
doing all these things. We cannot get at Judge Krink and put him to bed
or take away his trumpet. The Judge makes monkeys of all of us who seek
to administer harsh laws in an unduly restricted world. The sound of his
shovel beating against his tin pail echoes revolution all over the
world.
And vicariously the will of H. 3d triumphs with him, no matter how
complete may be any mere corporeal defeat which he himself suffers. The
more we hear about the Judge the more strongly do we feel drawn to him.
We would like to have one of our own. Some day we hope to win sufficient
favor with H. 3d to prevail upon him to introduce us to Judge Krink.
* * * * *
We are never to meet Judge Krink after all. He has passed back into the
nowhere from whence he came. It was only to-day that we learned the
news, although we had suspected that the Judge's popularity was waning.
Some visitor undertook to cross-question H. 3d about his relations with
Krink and it was plain to see that the child resented it, but we were
not prepared for the direction which his revenge took. When we asked
about the Judge to-day there was no response at first and it was only
after a long pause that H. 3d answered, "I don't have Judge Krink any
more. He's got table manners."
XIV
FRANKINCENSE AND MYRRH
Once there were three kings in the East and they were wise men. They
read the heavens and they saw a certain strange star by which they knew
that in a distant land the King of the world was to be born. The star
beckoned to them and they made preparations for a long journey.
From their palaces they gathered rich gifts, gold and frankincense and
myrrh. Great sacks of precious stuffs were loaded upon the backs of the
camels which were to bear them on their journey. Everything was in
readiness, but one of the wise men seemed perplexed and would not come
at once to join his two companions who were eager and impatient to be on
their way in the direction indicated by the star.
They were old, these two kings, and the other wise man was young. When
they asked him he could not tell why he waited. He knew that his
treasuries had been ransacked for rich gifts for the King of Kings. It
seemed that there was nothing more which he could give, and yet he was
not content.
He made no answer to the old men who shouted to him that the time had
come. The camels were impatient and swayed and snarled. The shadows
across the desert grew longer. And still the young king sat and thought
deeply.
At length he smiled, and he ordered his servants to open the great
treasure sack upon the back of the first of his camels. Then he went
into a high chamber to which he had not been since he was a child. He
rummaged about and presently came out and approached the caravan. In his
hand he carried something which glinted in the sun.
The kings thought that he bore some new gift more rare and precious than
any which they had been able to find in all their treasure rooms. They
bent down to see, and even the camel drivers peered from the backs of
the great beasts to find out what it was which gleamed in the sun. They
were curious about this last gift for which all the caravan had waited.
And the young king took a toy from his hand and placed it upon the sand.
It was a dog of tin, painted white and speckled with black spots. Great
patches of paint had worn away and left the metal clear, and that was
why the toy shone in the sun as if it had been silver.
The youngest of the wise men turned a key in the side of the little
black and white dog and then he stepped aside so that the kings and the
camel drivers could see. The dog leaped high in the air and turned a
somersault. He turned another and another and then fell over upon his
side and lay there with a set and painted grin upon his face.
A child, the son of a camel driver, laughed and clapped his hands, but
the kings were stern. They rebuked the youngest of the wise men and he
paid no attention but called to his chief servant to make the first of
all the camels kneel. Then he picked up the toy of tin and, opening the
treasure sack, placed his last gift with his own hands in the mouth of
the sack so that it rested safely upon the soft bags of incense.
"What folly has seized you?" cried the eldest of the wise men. "Is this
a gift to bear to the King of Kings in the far country?"
And the young man answered and said: "For the King of Kings there are
gifts of great richness, gold and frankincense and myrrh.
"But this," he said, "is for the child in Bethlehem!"
XV
THE EXCELSIOR MOVEMENT
The fun of most of the criticism of George Jean Nathan's lies in the
fact that he has been an irreconcilable in the theater. Rules and
theories have been disclaimed by him. Each play has been a problem to be
considered separately without relation to anything else except, of
course, the current dramatic activities in Vienna, Budapest and Moscow.
Most of his themes have been variations of the two important aspects of
all criticism, "I like" and "I don't like." Masking his thrusts under a
screen of indifference, he has generally afforded stirring comment by
the sudden revelation of the fact that his enthusiasms and his hates are
lively and personal. Being among the unclassified, the element of
surprise has entered largely into his expression of opinion.
But of late it is evident that Mr. Nathan has grown a little lonely in
functioning as a guerilla in the field of dramatic reviewing. He is
envious of the cults and his scorn of Clayton Hamilton, George Pierce
Baker and William Archer seems to have been nothing more than what the
Freudians call a defensive mechanism. He too would ally himself with a
school--to be called the George Jean Nathan School of Criticism.
His latest volume of collected essays, entitled "The Critic and the
Drama," is designed as a prospectus for pupils. It undertakes to codify
and describe in part the theater of to-day and to analyze and explain
much more fully George Jean Nathan. He insists on our knowing how the
trick is done. To us there is something disturbing in all this. We have
always been among those who did not care to go behind the scenes at the
playhouse for fear that we might be forced to learn how thunder is
contrived and the manner of making lightning. Still more we have feared
that somebody would impel us into a corner and point out the real David
Belasco. We much prefer our own romantic impression gathered wholly from
his curtain speeches at first nights.
It is painful, then, to have the new book insist upon our meeting the
real Mr. Nathan. It was not our desire ever to know how his mind worked.
We much preferred to believe that the charming little pieces in the
_Smart Set_ had no father and no mother except spontaneous combustion.
To find this antic author burdened with theories is almost as
disillusioning as to hear of Pegasus winning the 2.20 trot or one of the
muses contracting to give a culture course at the Woman's Study Club of
New Rochelle.
And the worst of it is that the theories of Mr. Nathan, when exposed in
detail, seem to be much like those of other men. Even those who have
never had the privilege of attending a performance of Micklefluden's
"Arbeit" at Das Hochhaus in Prague early in the spring of 1905 have much
the same philosophy of the critic and the playhouse as Mr. Nathan. Thus
we find him explaining that Shakespeare was "the greatest dramatist who
ever lived, because he alone of all dramatists most accurately sensed
the mongrel nature of his art." Mr. Nathan also insists sternly that
criticism must be personal, and in discussing the relation between the
printed and the acted drama he ingeniously makes a comparison with
music.
"If drama is not meant for actors," he cries, "may we not also argue
that music is not meant for instruments?" We see no reason on earth why
Mr. Nathan should not argue in this manner, since so many hundreds in
the past have raised the same point. It is also interesting to learn
that Mr. Nathan thinks that the drama can never approximate nature. "It
holds the mirror not up to nature but to the spectator's individual
nature." He has also discovered that "great drama, like great men and
women, is always just a little sad."
"The Critic and the Drama" is probably the most profound book which Mr.
Nathan has ever published and it is by far the dullest. His pages are
alive with echoes even at such times as they are not directly evoked and
called upon by name. One of the difficulties of profundity is
overcrowding. A man may remain pretty much to himself as long as he
chooses to keep his touch light and avoid research. Taking a suggestion
from Mr. Nathan, it may be said that all great masses of men are a
little serious. In the plains and the rolling country there is room for
an individual to skip and frolic, but all the peaks are pre-empted.
It may not be generally known that the young man who carried the banner
with the strange device was lucky to die when he did. Had he eventually
reached the summit which he sought he would have discovered to his great
dismay that he merely constituted the 29th division in the annual outing
of the Excelsior Marching and Chowder Club.
Criticism gives the lie to an ancient adage. In this field of endeavor
"The higher the fewer" may be recognized as an exquisite piece of
irony.
XVI
THE DOG STAR
_The Silent Call_ presents the most beautiful of all male stars now
appearing in the films. In intelligence, also, his rank seems high. The
picture is built around Strongheart, a magnificent police dog. There
are, to be sure, minor two-legged persons in his support, but
practically all the heavy emotional scenes are reserved for Strongheart.
The dog star has virtues which are all his own. Any man of such glorious
physique could hardly fail to betray self-consciousness. His virility
would obsess him to such an extent that there certainly would be moments
of posturing and swagger. Strongheart is above all this. He never trades
upon the fact of being a "he dog" or even emphasizes that he is
red-blooded and 100 per cent police.
Unlike all the other handsome devils of the screen, he goes about his
business without smirking. His smile is broad, unaffected and filled
with teeth and tongue. And above all, Strongheart does not slick down
his hair with water or with wax.
Fine mountain country has been selected for _The Silent Call_ and we see
Strongheart galloping like a racing snow plow through white meadows
which foam at his progress. He fights villains with great intensity and
sincerity, devastates great herds of cattle and brings the picture to a
fitting climax by leaping from a jutting cliff to drown a miscreant in a
whirlpool. We have seen no photography as beautiful nor any picture so
vivid and live in action.
The story itself is good enough, but somewhat less than masterly.
Repetition dulls the edge of rescue. The heroine, for instance, never
should have been allowed to visit God's own country without a chaperon.
Her propensity for predicament seems unlimited. Let her be lost in a
virgin forest, if only for a moment, and out of the nowhere some villain
arises to buffet her with odious and violent attentions.
She keeps Strongheart as busy as if he had been a traffic police dog. He
is forever engaged in indicating "Stop" and "Go" to the stream of
miscreants who bear down upon Miss Betty Houston. Villainicular traffic
in the Northwest woods seems to be in need of constant regulation.
Strongheart bit some bad men and barked at others. Both measures were
effective, for this is an unusual dog in that his bark is just as bad as
his bite. He never questioned the character or the intentions of the
heroine. After all, he was only a dumb animal and his loyalty was tinged
with no suspicions.
We must admit that the human frailty of doubt sometimes led us to carp a
little at the rectitude of Miss Houston. Her plights were so numerous
that we were mean enough to wonder whether all were accidental. There
was one particular villain, for instance, who attempted to abduct her no
less than four times. We could not dismiss the thought that perhaps she
had given him some encouragement. Indeed we would not have been
surprised if at last there has come a caption quoting the heroine as
saying: "Get along with you, dog, and mind your own business." This,
however, did not prove to be within the scheme of the scenario writers.
In all justice to Miss Houston, it must be said that, though she owed
Strongheart much, he was also in her debt. It took the love of a good
woman to drag him back from degradation. He was a nice dog until his
master left the ranch and went East to correct the proofs of a new book.
Strongheart could not understand that and neither could we. It seemed to
us as if the publisher might have sent the galleys on by mail.
Deprived of the care of his owner, Strongheart began to revert to type.
He had been a wolf and he took to long hikes away from home. When he
grew hungry he killed a cow. The cattle men put a price upon his head
and Strongheart became an outcast.
His return to civilization was effected by the first attack upon Miss
Houston. Even a wolf knows that it is only a coward who would strike a
woman. The police instinct proved stronger than the call of the wild and
the great beast bounded out of the thicket and seized Ash Brent by the
trousers. This was the first of many meetings between Ash and
Strongheart. The last and decisive encounter was in the whirlpool. The
dog swam to the bank alone and sat upon the bank to howl the piercing
death cry of the wolf.