have seen. However, I am not sure they are quite so wise when they go a
notch beyond this and assert roundly that everything which they have
seen is true. For my own part I don't believe that white rabbits are
actually born in high hats. The truth is quicker than the eye, but it is
hardly possible to make any person with fresh young sight believe that.
Question the validity of some character in a play or book by a young
rationalist and he will invariably reply, "Why she lived right in our
town," and he will upon request supply name, address, and telephone
number to confound the doubters.
"Let the captious be sure they know their Emmas as well as I do before
they tell me how she would act," wrote Eugene O'Neill when somebody
objected that the heroine of "Diff'rent" was not true. This, of course,
shifts the scope of the inquiry to the question, "How well does O'Neill
know his Emmas?" Indeed, how well does any bitter-end rationalist know
anybody? Once upon a time we lived in a simple age in which when a man
said, "I'm going to kick you downstairs because I don't like you," and
then did it, there was not a shadow of doubt in the mind of the person
at the foot of the stairs that he had come upon an enemy. All that is
changed now. During the war, for instance, George Sylvester Viereck
wrote a book to prove that every time Roosevelt said, "Viereck is an
undesirable citizen," or words to that effect, he was simply dissembling
an admiration so great that it was shot through and through with
ambivalent outbursts of hatred. Mr. Viereck may not have proved his
case, but he did, at least, put his relations into debatable ground by
shifting from Philip conscious to Philip subconscious.
In the new world of the psychoanalysts there is confusion for the
rationalist even though he is dealing with something so inferentially
logical as a science. For here, with all its tangible symbols, is a
science which deals with things which cannot be seen or heard or
touched. And much of all the truth in the world lies in just such dim
dominions. The pessimist is very apt to be stopped at the border. For
years he has reproached the optimist with the charge that he lived by
dreams rather than realities. Now, wise men have come forward to say
that the key to all the most important things in life lies in dreams. Of
course, the poets have known that for years, but nobody paid any
attention to them because they only felt it and offered no papers to the
medical journals.
It would be unfair to suggest that no dreamer is a pessimist. The most
prolific period of pessimism comes at twenty-one, or thereabouts, when
the first attempt is made to translate dreams into reality, an attempt
by a person not over-skillful in either language. Often it is made in
college where a new freedom inspires a somewhat sudden and wholesale
attempt to put every vision to the test. Along about this time the young
man finds that the romanticists have lied to him about love and he
bounces all the way back to Strindberg. Maybe he gets drunk for the
first time and learns that every English author from Shakespeare to
Dickens has vastly overrated it for literary effect. He follows the
formulae of Falstaff and instead of achieving a roaring joviality he goes
to sleep. Personally tobacco sent me into a deep pessimism when I first
took it up in a serious way. Huck's corncob pipe had always seemed to me
one of the most persuasive symbols of true enjoyment. It seemed to me
that life could hold nothing more ideal than to float down the
Mississippi blowing rings. After six months of experimenting I was ready
to believe that maybe the Mississippi wasn't so much either. Romance
seemed pretty doubtful stuff. Around this time, also, the young man
generally discovers, in compulsory chapel, that the average minister is
a dull preacher; and of course that knocks all the theories of the
immortality of the soul right on the head. He may even have come to
college with a thirst for knowledge and a faith in its exciting quality,
only to have these emotions ooze away during the second month of
introductory lectures on anthropology.
Accordingly, it is not surprising to find F. Scott Fitzgerald's Amory
Blaine looking at the towers of Princeton and musing:
Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old
creeds through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally
to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a
new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty
and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all
wars fought; all faiths in man shaken....
Nobody wrote as well as that in Copeland's course at Harvard but there
was a pretty general agreement that life--or rather Life--was a sham and
a delusion. This was expressed in poems lamenting the fact that the
oceans and the mountains were going to go on and that the writer
wouldn't.
Generally he didn't give the oceans or the mountains very long either.
All the short stories were about murder and madness. We cut our patterns
into very definite conclusions because we were pessimists and sure of
ourselves. It was the most logical of philosophies and disposed of all
loose ends. One of my pieces (to polish off a theme on the futility of
human wishes) was about a man who went stark raving, and Copeland sat in
his chair and groaned and moaned, which was his substitute for making
little marks in red ink. He had been reading Sheridan's "The Critic" to
the class with the scene in which the two faithless Spanish lovers and
the two nieces and the two uncles all try to kill each other at the same
time, and are thus thrown into the most terrific stalemate until the
author's ingenious contrivance of a beefeater who cries, "Drop your
weapons in the Queen's name." At any rate when I had finished the little
man ceased groaning and shook his head about my story of the man who
went mad. "Broun," he said, "try to solve your problems without recourse
to death, madness--or any other beefeater in the Queen's name."
And it seems to me that the young pessimists, generally speaking, have
allowed themselves to be bound in a formula as tight as that which ever
afflicted any Pollyanna. It isn't the somberness with which they imbue
life which arouses our protest, so much as the regularity. They paint
life not only as a fake fight in which only one result is possible, but
they make it again and again the selfsame fight.
XXVI
GLASS SLIPPERS BY THE GROSS
When Cinderella sat in the ashes she should have consoled herself with
the thought of the motion-picture rights. No young woman of our time has
had her adventures so ceaselessly celebrated in film and drama. Of
course, she generally goes by some other name. It might be "Miss Lulu
Bett," for instance.
For our part, we must confess that much as we like Zona Gale's modern
and middle-western version of the old tale, Cinderella is beginning to
lose favor with us. Her appeal in the first place rested on the fact
that she was abused and neglected, but by this time the ashes have
become the skimpiest sort of interlude. You just know that the fairy
godmother is waiting in the wings, and you can hear the great coach
honking around the corner. Undoubtedly, the order for the glass slippers
was placed months in advance. More than likely it called for a gross,
since there are ever so many Cinderella feet to fit these days--what
with Peg and Kiki and Sally and Irene and all the authentic members of
the family. Indeed, for a time, Cinderella was spreading herself around
so lavishly in dramatic fiction that one sex was not enough to contain
her, and we had a Cinderella Man. All the usual perquisites were his
except the glass slipper.
And now the time has come when the original poetic justice due to the
miss by the kitchen stove has quite worn off. Cinderella has been paid
in full, but how about her two ugly sisters? They have gone down the
ages without honor or rewards. Each time their aspirations are blighted.
Although eminently conscientious in fulfilling their social duties, it
has availed them nothing. We are determined not to welcome the story
again until it appears in a revised form. In the version which we favor,
Prince Charming will try the glass slipper upon Cinderella, and then
turn away without enthusiasm, remarking in cutting manner, "It is not a
fit. Your foot is much too small." One of the ugly sisters will be
sitting somewhat timidly in the background, and it will be to her the
Prince will turn, exclaiming rapturously: "A perfect number nine!"
And they lived happily ever after.
And while we are about it, a good many of the fairy stories can stand
revision. This Jack the Giant Killer has been permitted to go to
outrageous lengths. Between him and David, and a few others, the
impression has been spread broadcast that any large person is a perfect
setup for the first valiant little man who chooses to assail him with
sword or sling. We purpose organizing the Six Foot League to combat this
hostile propaganda. Elephants will be admitted, too, on account of the
unjust canard concerning their fear of mice. We and the elephants do not
intend to go on through life taking all sorts of nonsense from
whippersnappers. The success of Jack and all the other little men of
legend has undoubtedly been due to the chivalry of the big and strong.
Dragons have died cheerfully rather than take a mean advantage and slay
pestiferous and belligerent runts by spitting out a little fire. Why
doesn't somebody celebrate the heroism of these miscalled monsters who
have gone down with full steam in their boilers because they were
unwilling even to guard themselves against foemen so palpably out of
their class?
Take St. George, for instance. Do you imagine for a minute that his
victory was honestly and fairly earned? British pluck and all the rest
of it had nothing to do with it. The dragon could have finished him off
in a second, but the huge and kindly animal was afflicted with an acute
sense of humor. Between paroxysms it is known to have remarked: "I shall
certainly die laughing." It could not resist the sight of St. George
swaggering up to the attack in full armor like an infuriated Ford
charging the Woolworth Building. And the strangest part of it all is
that the dragon did die laughing just as it had predicted. St. George
flung his sword exactly between a "ha" and a "ha." The tiny bit of steel
lodged in the windpipe like a fishbone, and before medical assistance
could be summoned the dragon was dead. Of course it was clever, but we
should hardly call it cricket. All the triumphs of the little men are of
much the same sort. Honest, slam-bang, line play has never entered into
their scheme of things. Their reputation rests on fakes and forward
passes.
Then there was the wolf and Little Red Riding-Hood. The general
impression seems to be that the child's grandmother was a saintly old
lady and that the wolf was a beast. Let us dismiss this sentimental
conception and consider the facts squarely. Before meeting the wolf Red
Riding-Hood was the usual empty-headed flapper. She knew nothing of the
world. So flagrant was her innocence that it constituted a positive
menace to the community. The wolf changed all that. It gave Red
Riding-Hood a good scare and opened her eyes. After that encounter
nobody ever fooled Red Riding-Hood much. She positively abandoned her
practice of wandering around into cottages on the assumption that if
there was anybody in bed it must be her grandmother.
The familiar story, somehow or other, has omitted to say that Miss Hood
eventually married the richest man in the village. Perhaps the old
narrator did not want to reveal the fact that on top of the what-not in
the palatial home there stood a silver frame, and upon the picture in
the frame was written: "Whatever measure of success I may have attained
I owe to you--Red Riding-Hood." And whose picture do you suppose it was?
Her grandmother? No. Her husband? Oh, no, indeed! It was the wolf.
XXVII
A MODERN BEANSTALK
The legends of the world have been devised by timorous people. They
represent the desire of man, sloshing around in a world much too big for
him, to keep up his courage by whistling. He has pretended through these
tales that champions of his own kind would spring up to protect him.
"Let St. George do it," was a well known motto in the days of old.
And we must insist again that such tales are false and pernicious
stimulants for the young. We intend to tell H. 3d that when Jack climbed
up the beanstalk the giant flicked him off with one finger. We want the
child to have some respect for size and to associate it with authority.
Otherwise we don't see how we can possibly prevail upon him to pay any
attention when we say, "Stop that." If he goes on with these fairy
stories he will merely measure us coolly for a slingshot.
As a matter of fact, he doesn't pay any attention now. The time for
propaganda is already here. In our stories the ogre is going to receive
his due. Of course, we will add a moral. It would be wrong to lead the
boy to believe that brute force is the only effective power in the
world. Now and then a giant will be killed, but it will not be any easy
victory for one presumptuous champion with a magic sword. Instead we
will explain that little Jack was not killed when the giant flipped him
off the beanstalk. The huge finger struck him only a glancing blow.
Nevertheless, it took Jack a good many days to get well again. It was a
fine lesson for him. During his convalescence (naturally we will have to
think up a shorter word) he did a lot of thinking. As soon as he was up
and around he scoured the country for other boys and at last he managed
to recruit a band of fifty. The first dark night Jack climbed the
beanstalk again, but he took along the fifty. By a prearranged plan they
fell upon the giant from all sides and managed to bear him down and kill
him. We certainly are not going to admit that a giant can be opened by
anything less than Jacks or better.
Following the account of the death of the giant will come the moral. We
will explain that Jack is small and weak and that there are great and
monstrous powers in the world which are too strong for him. But he need
not wait for the superman or the magic lamp or anything like that. He
must make common cause with his kind. At this point we shall probably
digress for a while to go into a brief but adequate exposition of the
League of Nations, municipal ownership, profit sharing and the single
tax.
Dropping the serious side of the discussion, we shall add that even a
great broth of a man can be spoiled by too many cooks. There is no power
in the world great enough to resist the will of man if only he moves
against it valiantly--and in numbers.
Maybe H. 3d will not like our version of "Jack and the Beanstalk" half
as well as the original. But we fear that when he grows up he is going
to find that there are still dragons and ogres and assorted monsters
roaming the world. We want him to be instrumental in killing them. We
don't want him to get clawed by going forward in foolishly overconfident
forays.
There is the Tammany Tiger, for instance. Here and there a brave young
fellow rises up and says, "I'm going to kill the Tiger." Having read the
fairy stories, he thinks that the thing can be done by a little courage
mixed with magic. He paints REFORM on a banner, charges ahead before
anybody but the Tiger is ready and gets chewed up.
This is sentimentally appealing, but it has been a singularly useless
system of ridding the city of the Tiger. I want H. 3d to know better and
to act not only more wisely but more successfully. Somewhere in the
story I plan to work in a paraphrase of something Emerson once said.
Jack's last words to his army just before climbing the beanstalk will
be, "If you strike a giant you must kill him."
XXVIII
VOLSTEAD AND CONVERSATION
There is one argument in favor of Prohibition. It certainly helps to
make conversation on a railroad train. In the years before Volstead we
had ridden thousands of miles silently peering at the two strangers
across the smoking compartment and wondering how to get them talking.
The weather is overrated as a common starting point. It dies after a
sentence.
Now we have a sure method. Begin with, "Well, this is certainly just the
day for a little shot of something," and you will find enough
conversation on hand to carry you across the continent. Indeed, nothing
but an ocean can stop it.
Some day, of course, we are going to run into a stranger who will reply,
"Prohibition is now the national law of our land and I want you to know,
sir, that I intend to respect it."
This has never happened yet. It makes us wonder how the drys get from
point to point. Either they stay at home, abstain from smoking or betray
their cause for the sake of friendliness. During two years of frequent
travel we have never yet met an advocate of Prohibition in a smoking
compartment.
There was nothing but the most fiery opposition on the part of the man
who was going to Rochester.
"It's making criminals out of us," he declared severely but with an ill
concealed joy at the thought of being at last, in ripe middle age, a
law-breaker. He carried us into Albany with tales of men who "never
touched a drop until they went and passed that there law." All these
belated roisterers he pictured as reeling in and out of his office under
the visible effects of illegal stimulation. He sought to create the
impression that he thought the condition terrible, but evidently it had
contributed a new and exciting factor to the wholesale fruit business.
Even the pre-Volstead drinkers he seemed to find not unworthy of his
concern. All of them used to take just one and stop. Now his life was
beset with roaring graybeards.
Leaving Albany, the young man in the check suit took up the talk and
began a vivid account of recent experiences in Malone, N. Y., which he
identified as the strategic point in bootlegging activities. Opening on
a note of pathos, in which he wrung the hearts of his hearers by
recounting the amazingly low price of Scotch near the border, he
introduced a merrier mood by relating a conversation between two farmers
of the section which he had overheard.
"What style of car have you got?" asked one of the men in the allegedly
veracious anecdote.
"Twenty cases," replied the other laconically.
According to the estimate of the narrator, a bootlegger passes through
Malone every eight minutes. He saw one take a turn into Main Street
careening along at fifty miles an hour and skid so dangerously that the
auto tipped, throwing a case of whiskey clear across the road. "He went
out of town making seventy," added the story teller.
Invariably the bootlegger was the hero of his tales. These modern Robin
Hoods he pictured as little brothers to all the world except the revenue
officers. Once two revenooers caught one of the gallant company and were
about to proceed with him to Syracuse, toting along four telltale
barrels of rye. But they had gone only a short distance on their journey
when they were overtaken by two men in a motor truck escorting a
prisoner, heavily manacled, and ten barrels of whiskey. After a short
confab they agreed to relieve the revenuers of their prisoner and
deliver both miscreants to the proper authorities in Syracuse. The
gullible agents of the law gave up their man.
"And," continued the rum romancer, "they never did show up at Syracuse
at all. That second crowd they weren't revenue men at all. They were
bootleggers."
Indeed, the young man declared that in Northern New York there is a well
organized Bootleggers' Union, which pays all fines out of a common fund.
So great was his seeming admiration for the rum runners that we
suspected him of being himself a member in good standing, but soon we
were moved to identify him as a participant in a trade still more
sinister. An acquaintance came past the green curtain and inquired
eagerly, "Did you sell her?"
"Twice," said the young man enthusiastically and without regard to our
look of horror as we were moved by circumstantial evidence to believe
him not only a white slaver but a dishonest one.
"Yes," he continued. "I had my work cut out. You see he doesn't like
Nazimova."
We were a little sorry to find that the young man was a motion picture
salesman. It made us fear that perhaps some of his bootlegging yarns had
been colored with the ready fiction of his business. Still it was
interesting to sit and learn that Niagara Falls got "Camille" for only
$300.
The middle-aged man, the one with the large acquaintance among belated
drunkards, seemingly had little interest when the conversation turned
from bootlegging to the silver screen. We never did hear what business
"The Sheik" did in Albany because he was roaring at a skeptic about
cabbage.
"I tell you," he shouted, "they got 110 tons off of every acre."
Now we yield to no man in love of cabbage, but we should not find such
quantities appealing. It would compel corn beef commitments beyond the
point of comfort.
The skeptic made some timid observation about onions. We did not catch
whether it was for or against.
"Do you know," said the cabbage king, "that 75 per cent. of all the
onions in America are eaten by Jews?" He said it with rancor, whether
racial or vegetable we could not determine. To us it seemed an unusual
tribute to an ancient people. No other story of their executive capacity
had ever seemed to us quite so convincing. We marveled at the
extraordinary cooperation which could hold a habit so precisely to an
average easy to compute and remember.
We were also moved to admiration for the census takers. Statistics seem
to us man's supreme triumph in solving the mysteries of a chaotic world.
Creation, of course, was divine, but even that did not involve
bookkeeping.
For a time we considered abandoning our project to write a novel about a
newspaper man and his son and make it, instead, a pastoral about a hero
simple and sincere whose life was dedicated to the task of determining
the ultimate destination of every onion raised in America. Then, since
art ought to be international, we planned to widen the scope of the tale
and include Bermuda. This would enable us to develop a tropical love
interest and get a sex appeal into the story. We are not sure that a
book would have a wide sale on onions alone.
Of course other vegetables might enter the story. There could be a
villain forever tempting the hero to abandon his career and go after
parsnips. Titles simply flooded our mind. We thought of "Desperate
Steaks," "Out of the Frying Pan" and "A Bed of Onions," although we had
a vague impression that W. L. George had done something of this sort in
one of his earlier novels. "Breath Control" we dismissed as too
frivolous. "Smothered" was too sensational.
Eventually we abandoned the whole project. We feared that we might not
be up to the atmosphere of an onion novel.
Still, the advertising might be very effective if the publisher could
be induced to bill the book under a great, flaring headline, "The Onion
Forever."
But the train of thought was cut short when the demon vegetable
statistician got up and said, "If I could have just one wish in the
world, I'd choose a fruit farm between here and Lockport." Looking up to
see where "here" was, we observed the Rochester station. The trip had
seemed but a moment, and all because of Prohibition.
By the way, did you know that 14.72 per cent, of all the potatoes raised
in America come from Maine?
XXIX
LIFE, THE COPY CAT
Every evening when dusk comes in the Far West, little groups of men may
be observed leaving the various ranch houses and setting out on
horseback for the moving picture shows. They are cowboys and they are
intent on seeing Bill Hart in Western stuff. They want to be taken out
of the dull and dreary routine of the world in which they live.
But somehow or other the films simply cannot get very far away from
life, no matter how hard or how fantastically they try. As we have
suggested, the cowboy who struts across the screen has no counterpart in
real life, but imitation is sure to bridge the gap. Young men from the
cattle country, after much gazing at Hart, will begin to be like him.
The styles which the cowboys are to wear next year will be dictated this
fall in Hollywood.