Strongheart's original master falls in love with Miss Houston and
marries her. It was probably the only union for the heroine which the
dog would have sanctioned, and yet we cannot imagine that it left him
entirely happy. Once the much beset young woman was given over into the
care of a good man, Strongheart must have realized that his vocation was
gone. Ash Brent was dead and all the other villains had been captured by
the Sheriff. Placidity stared Strongheart in the face.
To be sure, he bit people only because they were bad, but, like most
reformers, he had learned to love his work. It was to him more than a
duty. We doubt whether he remained long with the honeymooners. It is our
notion that on the first dark night he took to the wilds again. We can
imagine him stalking a contented cow in the moonlight. The poor beast
lowers her head for grass and Strongheart, seeking to convince himself
that the horns have been employed in an overt act, mutters: "You would,
would you!" Then comes the leap and the crashing of the great wolf jaws.
It is the invariable tragedy of the reformer that, though his work has
been accomplished, he cannot retire. First come the giants and then the
windmills.
XVII
ALTRUISTIC POKER
Although Ella Wheeler Wilcox's autobiography is a human document
throughout, nothing in it has interested us quite so much as her
description of her husband's poker system in the chapter called "The
Compelling Lover."
"In my early married life," writes Mrs. Wilcox, "he was much in demand
for the game of poker," but a little later she explains, "Even in his
love of cards and in his monotonous life of travel for the first seven
years after our marriage, when card games were his only recreation, he
introduced his idea of altruism. This, too, was a matter known only to
me. He played games of chance only with men he knew; whatever money he
made was kept in a separate purse, and when he came home he asked me to
help him distribute it among deserving people."
Any new system is worth trying when your luck is bad, and yet it seems
to us that there are fundamental objections to the scheme suggested by
Mrs. Wilcox. At least, we don't think it would work well for us. If we
drew a club to four hearts we might bravely push all our chips forward
and say "Raise it," provided the risk was ours alone. We couldn't do
that if we were playing for Uncle Albert. Our anxiety would betray us.
Even if Aunt Hattie had been mentally selected as the beneficiary of the
evening we should feel compelled to play the cards close to our chest.
She is a dear old lady and not a bit prudish, but we're sure she would
never approve of whooping the pot on a king and an ace and a seven spot.
Then take the debatable question of two pairs. Personally we have always
believed in raising on them before the draw. Such a procedure is
dangerous, perhaps, but profitable in the long run. Under the Wilcox
system it might be difficult to take the larger viewpoint. It is more
than possible that we would grow timorous if Cousin Susie's hope of a
comfortable old age rested upon eights and deuces.
Some years ago we used to encounter, every now and again, a kindly
middle-aged gentleman who was playing to send his brother to Harvard. It
weighed on him. Whenever he looked at his cards he had his brother's
chance of an education in mind. In fact, he grew so excessively cautious
that anybody could bluff him out of quite large pots merely by reaching
for a white chip. Some of the players, we fear, used to take advantage
of this fact. As we remember it, the young man finally went to the C. C.
N. Y.
Of course, Ella Wheeler Wilcox makes no claim that the system is a
winning one. The implication is quite the other way. After all, she
writes of her husband, "He was much in demand for the game of poker."
XVIII
THE WELL MADE REVIEW
One of the simplest ways in which a critic can put a play in its place
is to refer to it as "well made." The phrase has come to be a reproach.
It suggests a third act in which the friend of the family tells the
husband, "Take her out and buy her a good dinner," and the lover decides
that he will go back to Mesopotamia----"Alone!"
George Bernard Shaw changed the style, and taught playgoers to refuse to
accept technic as something just as good as spiritual significance. We
now await the revolt against the well-made revue. Each of the Ziegfeld
Follies is perfect of its kind, but just as in the plays of Pinero, form
has triumphed over substance. The name Ziegfeld on the label means a
magnificent product perfect in every detail with complete satisfaction
guaranteed, but it is a standardized product. You know just what you are
going to get. Ziegfeld scenery, Ziegfeld costumes mean something
definite. Even "a Ziegfeld chorus girl" suggests an unvarying type. The
hood is as unmistakable as that of a Ford automobile.
At times one is struck with a longing to find a single homely girl among
all the merry marchers. And there is at least a shadow of a wish to
encounter, likewise, something in a song or a set or a costume rough,
unfinished and ungainly. Alexander sighed and so might Ziegfeld. His
supremacy in the field of musical revue is unquestioned. Even the shows
with which he has no connection follow his modes as best they can,
though sometimes at a great distance. He really owes it to himself and
to his public to put on, in the near future, a very bad revue so that in
the ensuing year that most precious element in
entertainment--surprise--may again come to the theater through him. The
first of all the Ziegfeld Follies must have furnished its audience with
a night of startled rapture. The rest have produced a pleasant evening.
Burdened by years of success, Mr. Ziegfeld must be hampered by
innumerable rules about revue making. He has created tradition and
probably it rises up in front of him now and again to bark his shins.
The Follies is still an entertainment, but now it is also an
institution. Plan, premeditation and the note of service must all have
won their places in the making of each new show in the succession. The
critic will not depart in peace until he has seen somehow, somewhere an
altogether irresponsible revue. It will be produced not by Edward Royce
but by spontaneous combustion. Some of it will be terrible. Few of the
costumes will fit and many of them will be in bad taste. None of the
tunes will be hummed by the audience as it leaves the theater. But,
nevertheless and notwithstanding, this irresponsible revue of which I
speak is going to contain two good jokes.
I had at least a glimmer of hope that _Shuffle Along_ might be the first
blow of the revolution against the well-made revue. Early explorers in
the Sixty-Second Street Music Hall came back glowing with discovery.
And yet after seeing the negro revue it seems to me that stout Cortes
and all his men were duped. In book and music and dancing _Shuffle
Along_ follows Broadway tradition just as closely as it can. It is rough
with old things which have crumbled and not with new things which are
unfinished. And yet it is easy to understand the thrill which swept
through some of the pioneers who were the first to see _Shuffle Along_.
In it there is one quality possessed by no other show which has been
seen in New York this year. Most musical comedy performers seem to be
altruists who are putting themselves out to a great extent in order to
please you and the other paying customers. _Shuffle Along_ is entirely
selfish. No matter how enthusiastic the audience, it cannot possibly get
as much fun out of the show as the performers. Not since the last trip
to New York of the Triangle Club have I seen the amateur spirit more
fully realized in the theater. Perhaps the performers get paid, but it
does not seem fitting. The more engaging theory is that each member of
the chorus of _Shuffle Along_ who keeps his work up at top pitch until
the end of the season receives a large blue sweater with a white "S. A."
on the front and is then allowed to break training. The ten best
performers, in addition, are tapped on the shoulder. There is a rumor
that social distinction as well as merit enters into this selection, but
it has never, to my knowledge, been confirmed.
Of course, nothing in the remarks above is to be construed as implying
that people in the Ziegfeld choruses do not have a good time. Such a
statement would certainly be far from the facts. As somebody or other
has so aptly said, "It's great to be young and a Ziegfeld chorus girl."
The difference is that no Caucasian chorister, including the
Scandinavian, has the faculty of enjoying herself with the same
frankness and abandon as the African. Centuries of civilization and
weeks of training make it impossible. The Follies girl knows what she
likes, but she has been taught not to point. A certain reserve and
reticence is part of the Ziegfeld tradition. Even the most daring of Mr.
Ziegfeld's experiments in summer costuming are more esthetic than
erotic. Though the legs of the longest showgirl may be bare, one feels
that she is clothed in reverence. When the lights begin to dim, and the
soft music sounds to indicate that the current Ben Ali Haggin tableau is
about to be disclosed, I am always a little nervous. So solemn and
dignified is the entire atmosphere of the affair that I feel a little
like a Peeping Tom in the presence of Godiva and generally I cover my
eyes in order that they may be preserved for the final processional in
which one girl will be Coal, another Aviation and a third the Monroe
Doctrine.
The parade is one of the traditions of the Follies. "When in doubt make
them march," is the way the rule reads in Mr. Ziegfeld's notebook. All
of which opens the way to the suggestion that Mr. Ziegfeld should try
the experiment some year of cutting about $100,000 out of his bill for
costumes and using the money to buy a joke. In that case the marching
chorus girls could pass a given point.
XIX
AN ADJECTIVE A DAY
It was a child in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale who finally told
the truth by crying out, "He hasn't got anything on," as the king
marched through the streets clad only in the magic cloth woven and cut
by the swindling tailor. You may remember that everybody else kept
silent because the tailor had given out that the cloth was visible only
to such as were worthy of their position in life. The child knew nothing
of this and anyway he didn't have any position in life, so he piped up
and cried, "He hasn't got anything on." And though he was but a child
others took up the cry, and finally even the king was convinced and ran
to get his bathrobe. The tailor, as we remember the story, was executed.
In course of time that child grew up, and married, and died leaving
heirs behind him. And they in turn were not so barren, so that to-day
vast numbers of his descendants are in the world. Nearly all of them are
critics of one sort or another, but mostly young critics. Like their
great ancestor they are frank and shrill, and either valiant or
foolhardy as you choose to look at it. Certainly they seldom hesitate to
rush in. No, there is no doubt at all that they are just a wee bit
hasty, these descendants of the child. It is rather useful that every
now and then one of them should point a finger of scorn at some falsely
great figure in the arts and cry out his nakedness at top voice. But
sometimes they make mistakes. It has happened not infrequently that
worthy and respectable artists and authors in great coats, close-fitting
sack suits, and heavy woolen underwear, have been greeted by some member
of the clan with the traditional cry, "He hasn't got anything on."
This may be embarrassing as well as unfair. Ever since the child scored
his sensational critical success so many years ago, all his sons have
been eager to do likewise. They have inherited extraordinary suspicion
regarding the raiment of all great men. Even when they are forced to
admit that some particular king is actually clad in substantial
achievement of one sort or another, they are still apt to carp about the
fit and cut of his clothing. Almost always they maintain that he
borrowed his shoes from some one else and that he cannot fill them.
In regard to humbler citizens they are apt to carry charity to great
lengths. In addition to the incident recorded by Andersen they cherish
another legend about the child. According to the tradition, he wrote a
will just before he died in which he said, "Thank heaven I leave not a
single adjective to any of my descendants. I have spent them all."
The clan is notoriously extravagant. They live for all the world like
Bedouins of the Sahara without thought of the possibility of a rainy
day. Their gaudiest years come early in life. Middle age and beyond is
apt to be tragic. Almost nothing in the experience of mankind is quite
so heartrending as the spectacle of one of these young critics, grown
gray, coming face to face in his declining years with a masterpiece. At
such times he is apt to be seized with a tremor and stricken dumb.
Undoubtedly he is tormented with the memory of all the adjectives which
he flung away in his youth. They are gone beyond recall. He fumbles in
his purse and finds nothing except small change worn smooth. The best he
can do is to fling out a "highly creditable piece of work" and go on his
way.
Still he has had fun for his adjectives for all that. There is a
compensating glow in the heart of the young critic when he remembers the
day an obscure author came to him asking bread, though rather expecting
a stone, and he with a flourish reached down into the breadbox and gave
the poor man layer cake.
"After all," one of the young critics told me in justifying his mode of
life, "it may be just as tragic as you say to be caught late in life
with a masterpiece in front of you and not a single adequate adjective
left in your purse. Yes, I'll grant you that it's unfortunate. But
there's still another contingency which I mean to avoid. Wouldn't it be
a rotten sell to die with half your adjectives still unused? You know
you can't take them with you to heaven. Of what possible use would they
be up there? Even the bravest superlatives would seem pretty mean and
petty in that land. Think of being blessed with milk and honey for the
first time and trying to express your gratitude and wonder with, 'The
best I ever tasted.' No, sir. I'm going to get ready for the new eternal
words by using up all the old ones before I die."
XX
THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER
They call him "the unknown hero." It is enough, it is better that we
should know him as "the unknown soldier." "Hero" suggests a superman and
implies somebody exalted above his fellows. This man was one of many. We
do not know what was in his heart when he died. It is entirely possible
that he was a fearful man. He may even have gone unwillingly into the
fight. That does not matter now. The important thing is that he was
alive and is dead.
He was drawn from a far edge of the world by the war and in it he lost
even his identity. War may have been well enough in the days when it was
a game for heroes, but now it sweeps into the combat everything and
every man within a nation. The unknown soldier stands for us as symbol
of this blind and far-reaching fury of modern conflict. His death was in
vain unless it helps us to see that the whole world is our business. No
one is too great to be concerned with the affairs of mankind, and no one
too humble.
The unknown soldier was a typical American and it is probable that once
upon a time he used to speak of faraway folk as "those foreigners." He
thought they were no kin of his, but he died in one of the distant
lands. His blood and the blood of all the world mingled in a common
stream.
The body of the unknown soldier has come home, but his spirit will
wander with his brothers. There will be no rest for his soul until the
great democracy of death has been translated into the unity of life.
XXI
A TORTOISE SHELL HOME
Every once in so often somebody gets up in a pulpit or on a platform and
declares that home life in America is being destroyed. The agent of
devastation varies. According to the mood of the man with forebodings,
it is the motion pictures, the new dances, bridge, or the comic
supplements in the Sunday newspapers. It seems to us that these
defenders of the home are themselves offensively solicitous. If we
happened to be a home, we rather think that we would resent the
overeagerness of our champions. They act as if the thing they seek to
preserve were so weak and pitiful that it must go down before the gust
of any new enthusiasm.
After all, the home is much older than these dragons which are said to
be capable of devouring it. Least of all are we disposed to worry over
deadly effects from the new dances. This fear has recently been put into
vivid form by Hartley Manners in a play called "The National Anthem," in
which Laurette Taylor, his wife, was starred. Jazz, according to Mr.
Manners, is our anthem. The hero and the heroine of his play dance
themselves to the brink of perdition. The end is tragic, for the husband
dies and the wife narrowly escapes from the effects of poison which she
has taken by mistake while dazed from drink and dancing.
This seems to us special and exceptional. A vice must be easy to be
universally dangerous. All the moralists assure us that descent by the
primrose path is facile. Skill in the new dances argues to us a certain
strength of character. We do not understand how any person of flabby
will can become proficient. In our own case we must confess that it is
not our strength and uprightness which has kept us from jazz, but such
traits as timidity and lack of application. As a boy we painstakingly
learned the two-step. For this we deserve no great credit. It was not
our wish, and only the vigorous application of parental influence
carried us through. After we broke away from the home ties we began to
back-slide. The dances changed from month to month and we lacked the
hardihood to keep up. Cravenly we quit and slumped into a job.
None of our excuses can be made persuasive enough for exoneration. All
there is to be said for work as opposed to dancing is that it is so much
easier. Of course, our respect is infinite for the sturdy ones who have
gone through the flames of cleansing and perfecting fire and have earned
the right to step out upon the waxed floor. Few of them escape the marks
of their time of tribulation. Every close observer of American dancing
must have noted the set expression upon the face of all participants.
There is hardly one who might not serve as a model for General Grant
exclaiming: "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all
summer."
No form of national activity begins to be so conscientious as dancing.
Up-to-date physicians, we understand, are beginning to prescribe it as
tonic and penance for patients growing slack in their attitude toward
life. At a cabaret recently a man pointed out a dancer in the middle of
the floor and said: "That woman in the bright red dress is fifty-six
years old." We were properly surprised, and he went on: "Her story is
interesting. Two years ago she went to a neurologist because of a
general physical and nervous breakdown. He said to her: 'Madam, the
trouble is that you are growing old, and, worse than that, you are ready
to admit it. You must fight against it. You must hold on to youth as if
it were a horizontal bar and chin yourself.'"
We looked at the woman more closely and saw that she was obeying the
doctor's orders literally. Her fight was a gallant one. Dancing had
served to keep down her weight and improve her blood pressure, but there
was not the slightest suggestion that she was enjoying herself. She had
bought advice and she was intent upon using it. And as we looked over
the entire floor we could see no one who seemed to be dancing for the
fun of it. A few took a pardonable pride in their perfection of fancy
steps, but that emotion is not quite akin to joy. They were dancing for
exercise or prestige, or to fulfill social obligations.
All this is admirable in its way, but we have not sufficient faith in
the persistence of human gallantry to believe that it can last forever.
The home will get every last one of the dancers yet because it is so
much easier to loaf in an easy-chair than to keep up the continual
bickering against old age, indolence, and the selfishness of comfort.
Motion pictures may be more dangerous because we are informed that they
are still in their infancy. But perhaps the home is also. In spite of
the length of time during which it has been going on, its possibilities
of development are enormous. Within the memory of living man a home was
generally supposed to be a place where people sat and stared at each
other. Sometimes they visited neighbors, but these trips were
traditionally restricted to occasions upon which the friends were ill
and too helpless to carry on a conversation. If any one doubts that talk
is a recent development in home life, let him consider the musical
instruments of a generation which is gone. Take the spinnet, for
instance, and note that even the most carefully modulated whisper would
have drowned out its feeble tinkle.
To be sure, our ancestors had books and a few magazines, but they were
not of a sort to promote general conversation. Only the grown-ups were
capable of exchanging their views on Mr. Thackeray's latest novel. But
now, when the group returns from an evening at the motion-picture
theater where "The Kid" or "Shoulder Arms" is being shown, it is
impossible to keep anybody out of the discussion on account of his lack
of years. Little Ferdinand has just as much right to an opinion about
the prowess of Charlie Chaplin as grandpa, and, according to our
observation, it is a right almost certain to be exercised.
Of course, before we began this discussion of the decay of home life we
should have set about coming to some definition acceptable to both sides
of the controversy. Now, when it is too late to do anything about it, we
are struck by the fact that we are probably talking at cross purposes.
It is our contention that man is not less than the turtle. We think it
is entirely possible for him to carry his home life around with him. It
would not seem to us, for instance, that home life was impaired if the
family took in the movies now and again or even very frequently. Nor are
we willing to accept a bridge party down the street as something alien
and outside. In other words, a man's home (and, of course, we mean a
woman's home as well) ought not to be defined by the walls of his house
or even by the fences of the front yard. The anti-suffragists once had
the slogan "Woman's place is in the home," but what they really meant
was "in the house," since they used to insist that the business of
voting would take her out of it. It seems to us that the woman of to-day
should have a home with limits at least as spacious as those of the
whole world. And so naturally she ought to have her share in all the
concerns of life.
XXII
I'D DIE FOR DEAR OLD RUTGERS
"He fought the last twenty rounds with a broken hand." "The final
quarter was played on sheer nerve, for an examination at the end of the
game showed that his backbone was shattered and both legs smashed."
"Although knocked senseless in the opening chukker, he finished the
match and no one realized his predicament until he confessed to his team
mates in the clubhouse."
These are, of course, incidents common enough in the life of any of our
sporting heroes. To a true American sportsman a set of tennis is held in
about the same esteem as a popular playwright holds a woman's honor.
There is no point at which "I give up" can be sanctioned. Not only must
the amateur athlete sell his life dearly, but he must keep on selling it
until he is carried off the field. Accordingly, it is easy to understand
why Forest Hills seethed with indignation when Mlle. Suzanne Lenglen
walked (she could still walk, mind you) over to an official in the
middle of a tennis match and announced that she was ill and would not
continue. It was quite obvious to all that the Frenchwoman was still
alive and breathing and the thing was shocking heresy.