Chapter II: Preface (2)

Perhaps the most important landmark in all the realm of pastry is the tradition-hallowed and chocolate-roofed éclair, whose long nave affords sanctuary for whipped cream or custard. (Not necessarily _chocolate_-roofed, however: the eaves may be tinged instead with a soft patina of _café au lait_.) This mellow-hued pile, eminently edible, is cherished by multitudes of devotees.

Another structure beautiful in ruin is the massive patty that serves as donjon-keep for oysters. Upon its crumbling ramparts parsley has found root, and encircling its fissured base is a broad moat of gravy. Gaunt, sugarless; no oyster can hope to escape.

An equally notable tower is the stately white charlotte russe. Its impenetrable wall of cardboard, re-enforced inside with a doughty thickness of cake, rises sheer from the glacis of the plate and terminates in crenelated battlements over the edge of which hang masses of cream, ready for the invader. Upon the topmost pinnacle is posted a sentinel cherry.

Of contrastingly mild aspect are the various crisp terraces--those luxuriant Hanging Gardens, where fruits of every sort are spread out in gorgeous profusion: rows of gold-gleaming apricots; neat hedges of orange plugs; happy pears and orderly better-halves of peaches; a bed of sugar-fed strawberries, each tucked in snugly; grapes chaliced in fluted pie crust; jocund apple chips and banana checkers, cuddled cosily slice against slice. Truly a paradise in pastry!

And there are a host of other fair shapes: the pantheon-like Kossuth cake, beneath the low dome of which is a votive offering of cream; the amazing custard skyscraper, with its innumerable floors, no walls, and gaily iced roof; the Byzantine _baba au rhum_, inlaid with tutti-frutti mosaics and steeped in subtle enchantment; and countless others--fanes, kiosks, minarets, pavilions, reliquaries of jam--baffling description or digestion.

Frail, ephemeral, created with no thought of permanence; and yet we should hardly enjoy them more if they were built of everlasting marble. The craftsmen who design them, scorning personal glory, do not sign their works. For theirs is the true æsthetic spirit, so rare in this commercial age. Their handiwork faithfully bears out the precept "Tart for Tart's Sake."

THE CARE OF THE HUSBAND

The average young wife is regrettably inexperienced in the matter of husbands. Unless it has been her fortune to have a wise mother or a divorce, she is likely to be quite ignorant of how to care for and train the "big stranger" who comes into her life. Therefore these precepts of friendly counsel may not seem to the matrimonial novice altogether amiss. The advice I would give is simple (in the fullest sense of the word); so that after the young wife has had a few husbands, she can dispense with it, if not sooner.

_Feeding._--This is the most important problem a wife has to face. The husband must be made to feel that he is well fed. Otherwise he will not be contented and docile.

During the first week after marriage, when he is still quite infantile and tender to the point of mushiness, he may be fed from the hand or spoon. This method will be found especially satisfactory in cases where the husband shows symptoms of sickly sentimentality.

Throughout the entire first month he will be so demanding of care, so bewildered by the strange new world in which he finds himself, as to be barely able to maintain sanity; in short, he will be so soso that she will have to prepare all the food herself, or at least make him think she does.

But later a change of diet will be found necessary. He will demand scientifically prepared foods. If the change is managed in the right way, it can be accomplished with only slight upset to his disposition. Simply alter the feeding formula so that the total quantity is lessened and the proportion of sugar and burnt materials is increased. It will soon take effect. In a day or two he will say, with a worried look, "Darling, I'm afraid the cooking is too much for you." And you know what he really means. After that the transition to avowedly professional cooking will be quite painless.

_Outings and Play._--During the first few months the husband will not need many outings. He will be happy and contented if allowed to romp about the house. Such toys as hammers, picture wire, curtain rods, etc., will keep him occupied.

Later, however, there will come a period of restlessness. Then you must take him out more and more, and let him run and play with other husbands--after you have made sure, of course, that they are good, well-behaved husbands. The companionship of these innocent sports will tend to make him one himself.

When, as time goes by, he reaches the stage where he begins to take notice, the wife must be very careful, for he is highly impressionable. At this time a wife will do well to look out for her husband herself, instead of entrusting him to some empty-headed girl, whom she may not really know at all. If he needs amusement let her divert him with brightly-colored silks and baubles which she wears and he pays for. Let her take him to see the pretty theater, and show him the beautiful mountains and the big blue ocean, and tell him fairy stories about economy, and teach him to draw nice big cheques in his little cheque book.

Discipline cannot begin too early. The husband must be taught that he can only have the things that his wife decides are best for him, and that no protesting on his part will do any good. If he proves fretful, chide him by threatening to go live with your mother. If, after that, he is still unruly, threaten to have your mother come live with you.

In this way he will soon learn to mind. Indeed, before long you will be able to show him off before company with the assurance that he will behave just as you have trained him to; and you will have the satisfaction of hearing your friends declare he does you credit.

_Awakening his mind._--This is one of the chief duties and responsibilities of wifehood. It cannot be shirked. For while no husband is expected to know anything at marriage (the fact that he got married attests that), he is expected a year or so later to look intelligent when the lady next to him at dinner discusses Coué and Scriabine, and to know that Gauguin is not something to be got from a bootlegger. For him not to know these things would be a reflection on his home training, or, in other words, his wife. She will be considered negligent unless she has instilled into his rudimentary mind a smattering of whatever is accounted smart. For every wife is judged by the way she brings up her husband.

Note.--If in the above treatise I have borrowed from the learned
doctors who have written concerning the Care of the Baby, I am
sorry; for I see no prospect of ever being able to pay them back.
Even this small note of mine will be discounted.

TERMINOLOGY OF TARDINESS

Our late demented newspapers are in a plight. They are no longer afflicted with a shortage of paper, but they are still cramped by a dearth of names for their afternoon editions. All the stand-by titles have been exhausted. By midday the "Home Edition," "Night Edition," and "Special Extra" have come and gone, and there is still the whole afternoon with nothing left to tempt the tired business man but various grades of "Finals." New nomenclature is needed, names that will stir the imagination and summon the cents.

Desirous of doing what I can toward alleviating this distressing situation, I venture to suggest the following schedule:

8 A. M.--Late Edition--_One star_

9 A. M.--Extremely Late Edition--_Two stars_

10 A. M.--Inexcusably Late Edition--_Three stars_

11 A. M.--Hopelessly Late Edition--_One constellation_

12 M.--Midnight Edition--_Two constellations_

1 P. M.--Tomorrow Morning Edition--_Group of planets_

2 P. M.--Tomorrow Afternoon Edition--_Complete solar system_

3 P. M.--Day-After-Tomorrow Edition--_Comet_

4 P. M.--Next-Week Edition--_Large comet_

5 P. M.--Next-Month Edition--_Unusually large comet_

6 P. M.--Next-Year Edition--_Complete zodiac_

7 P. M.--Special Doomsday Extra--_Milky way and nebulae_

OPPRESSORS OF THE MEEK

I am not afraid of bloated bondholders. I suspect that they are just humans like myself, only that they have money.

But I am afraid of their servants. _They_ are not human. No one ever saw them eat or sleep or smile.

My millionaire host may overlook the fact that I am using the salad-fork for the fish; not so his English butler. This austere personage takes note of my error in silence, and, when the salad course arrives, steals up behind me like Nemesis, and lays by my plate the fork that correct form demands. I feel chastened.

His eye is always upon me. I can't even take a sip of water without his calling attention to it by stealthily refilling my glass.

If he didn't watch me so closely when I am helping myself, I wouldn't be so nervous. As it is, my hand trembles under his grueling stare. Just at the critical moment when my tongful of asparagus, conveyed like a hot coal, is poised in mid-air between the serving-dish and my plate, I flinch, and there is a green-and-white avalanche. I make a frantic slap at it as it falls, and by good luck it lands on the plate. To be sure, some of the stalks are craning their necks perilously over the edge, but that is a small matter compared with what might have happened. I rake them into the middle of the plate, sit gasping at the thought of my narrow escape.

There is an awkward pause. The bon mot I was about to utter apropos of an opera I had never heard has left my mind entirely. I can't think of anything to say. Finally, in desperation, I remark idiotically to the dowager at my left, "I love asparagus; don't you?"

The next time he passes a dish, I lose my nerve. I lift my hand to help myself, and then, as I catch his eye, draw back, shaking my head. No, I won't take any chances.

After that I keep to a strict diet, eating only the things that appear on my plate when it is put down in front of me. If the plate arrives naked and empty, naked and empty it remains, even though the course consist of my favorite delicacy. I suffer the pangs of Tantalus.

Alligator-pear salad--more to be desired than gold, yea, than much fine gold--is offered to me. I covet it. Everything gastronomic in my nature craves it, but cowardly fear restrains me (it looks slippery), and I refuse it. I could almost weep.

As the dinner proceeds and my modified hunger-strike continues, I begin to regain confidence. I feel that my abstemiousness, implying as it does a jaded palate and an aristocratic indigestion, is highly fashionable. I fancy that in refusing ambrosia I am showing a godlike superiority.

I expand with self-assurance. Just watch me startle these plutocrats with my scorn of their costly food. I'll make myself the lion of the evening.

"May I help you to shortcake, sir?" asks a low, ironically respectful voice.

My pride collapses. The butler has seen through me to the cowardice in my heart. From his lofty pinnacle he stoops to succor me. But I rebel.

"I'll help myself, thank you," I retort, for I am on my mettle now, and boldly prize off a towering segment of the dessert. Would _I_ let a menial reveal to the whole table that I was afraid to help myself? Never! Why, I'd sooner--

Dizzily the creamy thing totters, keels over, and falls with a sickening flop, a mushy sound, as of the impact of a wet sponge. Juicy red berries gambol hither and thither.

For a moment the shortcake lies helplessly on its side like a jellyfish that the tide has left. But only for a moment; for a wrecking-crew, made up of the butler and his assistant, comes hurrying on the scene. With emergency plate and scraper they remove the debris, while I turn purple and clutch at my collar for air. Then, after a mortifying amount of crumb-gleaning and cream-mopping, they spread a napkin before me in the presence of my swell friends, as if to shield the cloth from further depredations. I draw back to allow them to put it there, and in so doing squash a hidden strawberry against my waistcoat. As a final humiliation, a fresh piece of shortcake is brought to me _already on a plate_.

If there is anything more formidable than an English butler, it is an English valet. Somebody else's valet, I mean; for I suppose that if a person had one long enough, he could get so that he wouldn't be afraid of him. But as for a perfectly strange English valet!

"Your key, please, sir," demands Hawkins upon my arrival at my friend's summer palace. He bows slightly.

"What key?" I ask uneasily.

"The key to your traveling-bag, sir."

I am just stopping overnight on my way home from a house party in the woods, and all my spare raiment is soiled and bedraggled.

"So I can unpack your things, sir," threatens the Great Mogul.

"Never mind, thank you," I stammer. "I've lost the key."

"Very good, sir," he replies and goes.

But not permanently. When I return to my room at midnight, elated over having trounced my host in countless games of billiards, I am met at the door by my oppressor. In his hand is a small object.

"I fetched a locksmith out from the city, sir, and 'ad 'im make this for you, sir. It fits quite correctly, sir."

And one glance about the room--from the snaggle-tooth comb on the dresser to the frayed pajamas the mussiness of which no festive laying out can hide--makes me aware of my utter ignominy.

Since when I have confined my week-end visiting exclusively to lumber camps.

PUTTING PEDAGOGY ACROSS

There is much well-meaning propaganda in progress for the preservation of professors. Alumni are appealed to, bankers are buttonholed, and in every college club the diagram showing the Big Game play by play has been replaced by a dial showing how many millions have been garnered to date for the fund; all this in order that the saying "Live and learn" may be reversible as "Be learned and yet live."

Wouldn't it be more humane (instead of giving the professors money, to which they are not accustomed) to teach them how to "sell" themselves? Today every one is paid according to how completely the public or the plutocrats are "sold" on him. Only salesmanship can save the scholars.

The time is ripe for some gilt-edged grad such as Morton K. Mung, President of the Newark Noodle Corporation, to announce, when stalked by the subscription squad: "No, gentlemen of the Adopt a Professor Committee, your suggestion that by donating seven cents a day I keep an instructor in paleontology from starvation, or be godfather to an authority on Sanscrit at eight cents, strikes me as impractical. With the cost of living rising again, next year they will want nine and ten cents--and you see the position that would put us in.

"No, gentlemen, I'll do better. I'll solve this situation once for all by loaning my general sales manager, Mr. Blat, to dear old Weehawken for two months, and he will give the members of the Faculty the same tutoring course he gives the men we send out on the road. Within a year after they leave his hands these same profs you've mentioned will be writing 'Success Through Sanscrit' and 'How I made My Pile with Paleontology' for the _American Magazine_."

At the conclusion of this loyal speech the committee would give a long cheer and depart checkless but with a new vision.

And, sure enough, the pale pedagogues would emerge from Mr. Blat's snappy seminar simply exuding system. They would possess the Power to Meet Men, the Personality that Wins. Laboratory recluses would burst forth primed to impress with Bigger Biology--Contains More Bunk.

The Sanscrit savant, formerly threadbare, but now a nifty dresser, would immediately hop a train for New York and breeze into the office of Hugh G. Wads, senior member of Wads & Wads and Chairman of the Trustees of Weehawken University.

"Good morning, Mr. Wads," he would say aggressively. "I've come here this morning to talk Vedas."

"Vedas? I don't get you. Never heard of such a stock. It isn't listed on the big board, and if it's traded in on the Curb, the dealings must be pretty small. Besides, I thought you were a professor at Weehawken."

"Right. I am a professor, if you choose to put it that way. Technically, though, I'm a promoter, and my proposition is VEDAS (Trade mark copyrighted 2000 B. C.)."

"Vedas? I still don't get you."

"Ah, that is precisely why I am here. I was sure you would want to know--Cigar?--Well, Vedas are the wisdom songs of India. Mellowed by forty centuries in the parchment. One hundred per cent Hindu. Classy yet conservative; noble yet nobby. You know what caste is among the Brahmins?--well, that's how exclusive these are!"

"Indeed."

"Yes, and I'm offering them for immediate delivery to students."

"But how does this concern me?"

"I was just getting to that. This is a proposition which requires considerable capital for its development. At the present time only seven students have asked for Vedas, yet I have estimated that the supply of Vedas now mellowing out in India is enough for at least 180,000 students. Which means that if we created the demand--why, think of the business we could do! When you come right down to it, a Veda, when presented in the right way, can be as catchy as a Kewpie."

"Hm. How much money would you need to start with?"

"Fifty thousand dollars. Besides my salary, which would be $15,000 outright, plus a bonus of one and one-half cents per Veda per student, there would be the cost of advertising in the college catalogue, the conducting of a circularizing campaign to a selected list of student prospects and the publication of a promotion organ to be entitled 'India Ink.' Then, too, of course, I would have to have a commission on gross tuition receipts and text book sales and an ample expense account for entertaining in the class-room and in my home. Now will you kindly put your name here on the dotted line?"

"Before I guarantee you all this money, tell me one thing. What is the real value of these Vedas?"

"They are the quaint quintessence of conservatism, and will occupy youthful minds menaced by modernism."

"I'll sign."

Succored by the science of salesmanship, any professor would be able to achieve affluence. Fortunes would rise from footnotes; and there would be big money made in bibliography.

COACHING FROM THE SIDE-LINES

Thanks to the roadside advertisements, driving a car has become as easy as playing a pianola. You just watch the instructions that appear along the edge, and regulate your levers and pedals accordingly. Thus, when you see:

DANGEROUS CURVE

SOUND RASPON

--you reach instinctively for the button of your electric horn. Later, seeing:

SHARP DESCENT

APPLY EUREKA NON-SLIP-ABLE BRAKE

--you comply gracefully. A mere twist of the wrist or dislocation of the ankle does the trick.

He that reads may run. Any man who has ever watched an organist pull out stops and push them in again can become a motor virtuoso. Any woman accustomed to following instructions in cutting out a dress pattern, can grasp the idea as easily as, when told to, she grasps the lever which operates BINGO'S NORTHPOLEAN RADIATOR COOLER. It is so simple that it is imbecile.

Every peculiarity of the route is heralded. All its little irregularities, its deviations from straightness, its bad declines and sudden uppishnesses, even the small faults which an easy-going person would overlook, are held up sternly in warning.

GUSTY CORNER

RAISE BREEZ-O EXTENSION WIND-SHIELD

SANDY STRETCH

SPRAY GEARS WITH ANTI-GRIT

PUDDLES

APPLY SPLASHOL EMERGENCY MUD-GUARD

RAILROAD CROSSING

PUT EAR TO LOCOMOTIVE DETECTAPHONE

DANGEROUS BOULDER

BEFORE RAMMING THIS MAKE SURE ACHILLES COLLISION BUFFER IS
PROPERLY ADJUSTED

VILLAGE SPEED TRAP

APPLY BACKFIRE WITH READY CONSTABLE EXTERMINATOR

Occasionally, as a relief from the faults of the road, its favorable points are dwelt on. Thus,

MOUNTAIN VIEW

ENJOY IT THROUGH AUTO-FLEX NON-REFRACTORY GOGGLES

In general, however, the emphasis is upon the perils of the way, as--

ONLY 1 MILE TO HOTEL SOAKUM

(Here no specific instructions are given, it being understood that the accessory involved is one's pocketbook and that the directions are: "OPEN ALL THE WAY.")

The system has one drawback. The signs never fail, yet there is such a thing as trusting them too implicity. I knew a man who, as the result of trying to obey seven signs telling him to "BE SURE TO DINE AT" as many different inns, stripped the lining of his esophagus. And I knew of another man--a timid, earnest, nervous old gentleman--who depended on signs so completely that one day, at a dangerous part of the road, being suddenly confronted with the command:

USE PLEXO

he fell into a panic. "Plexo, plexo!" he muttered in bewilderment. "Where _is_ the plexo lever? I can't find the plexo button! Something terrible will happen unless I find it."

It did. As, with trembling fingers, he fumbled through the entire outfit of attachments, he forgot to steer, and unluckily ran off the edge of a precipice; so that he did not live to learn that plexo was a massage cream.

FAST AND LOOSE

There is no constancy so affecting as that of a faithful button. Friends may be devoted; yet they seek your company partly for the pleasure of it. Dogs may show the uttermost fidelity; but you feed them. But the attachment of buttons is without taint of self: it is pure, spontaneous.

This loyalty is the more remarkable when you consider how empty their lives are. The outlook through their buttonholes is but a narrow one. Their daily labor, a mere mechanical buttoning into and out of an uncongenial flap, is deadeningly monotonous. (I have seldom known a button whose heart was really in its work.) In surroundings so little adapted to the building up of character, they display a stanchness that is akin to stoicism. Indeed, many a button will stick doggedly to an old weatherbeaten garment long after the perfidious nap has fled.

There are, unfortunately, buttons wanting in probity, deceitful buttons that pretend to be strongly attached to you when detained by but a single thread, irresponsible buttons that fly off at a tangent, immodest buttons (of the cloth-covered variety) that disrobe in public. But deliberately vicious buttons are rare. The fact is, few buttons would go to the bad, were it not for the heartless indifference of their owners. Too often a headstrong young button, that might easily have been saved had it been brought up short the moment it showed signs of looseness, is allowed to reach the end of its rope, fall, and be utterly lost.

And the dereliction of one may mean the ruin of its family. I was told of a sad case, once, where an entire clan of brown buttons, dwelling happily together on the front of a coat and waistcoat--polished, distinctive buttons they were, not be matched anywhere--were cruelly banished, because of a single erring member.

While to neglect buttons is most reprehensible, there is such a thing as showing them too much indulgence. For buttons must not be coddled: when toyed with, they droop.

Tender-hearted women, actuated by sympathy and not realizing the consequences of what they were doing, have been known to _pamper_ buttons. Because a button has a pleasant, open countenance, one of these misguided persons will support it on her costume in idleness. She may even surround herself with a retinue of glittering sycophants that never knew a buttonhole--great saucerlike hangers-on, lolling on their stems; brazen braggadocios, flashing with insolent militarism; and puny silken pettinesses, mere pills of buttons. Often I have been shocked to see a swarm of these drones perched indolently on the show part of a garment while, underneath, a squadron of industrious hooks and eyes grappled with the work to be done.

Such sights are, to thoughtful people, almost as depressing as the massacre of helpless shirt buttons by a baleful flatiron. Are buttons to become effete? Will they, in the course of generations of _dolce far niente_, lose their stamina? The signs are ominous.

THE PRIMROSE PATHOLOGY

I am laying an ego. With the assistance of a soako-analyst I am overhauling my instincts, liberating my innate masterfulness. Just wait till you see my rebuilt personality.

It's wonderful what the right soako-analyst can do to your complexes and your finances. My soako is a woman, of course. Male soakos are best for feminine mind-patients; but any man who needs to have his psychic self revamped should hand over his unconscious to a sympathetic lady soako. The attunement is lovelier. She can more understandingly separate him from his inhibitions and his dollars.

My soako and I, we have talks by the hour. At fifty dollars per. We talk about criminals and insane people and how everybody's crazy if they only knew it. She explains how that dream I had after eating that stringy Welch rarebit--that dream about throwing the size twelve overshoes at the canary--proves that I secretly desire to murder Uncle Alfred and elope with Mary Garden. If I could just commit that homicide and meet Mary, these annoying conflicts would clear and leave my unconscious as serenely blank as my conscious. So far, Uncle and Mary are still having it out atavistically in my foreconscious. I must eat some more Welch rarebit.

Before I went to this nerve therapeutist I had fears. But she has cured me. She is all nerve. I thought there were some things one could not mention to a lady. I thought that when visiting a lady, even by appointment (office hours: 9--5) one could hardly make certain allusions without incurring a "Sir! Leave this house instantly and never let me hear your conversation again!"

But now that I have been initiated into the New Freedom, I know that the automatic prehensile response is another fifty on my bill.

So I am learning, progressing. A new mental day is breaking and so is my bank account. The dun is near.

But when I get my mind--what'll I do with it?

I think I'll become a soako myself and take in lady patients.

FIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD

This world would be a far different place if there were peace among pens. As it is, however, every pen wears a drop of ink on its shoulder.

Not even the tender ministrations of chamois cloth will soothe its savage heart. It is deaf to sweet reasonableness. Returning drunk from the inkwell, it will smutch the hand that fed it, cast blots upon the fairest names, and ravish virgin sheets of paper. And when you try to force it to a more civilized way of behaving, you discover it has its points crossed.

A pen thus divided against itself will not write. There must be freedom for the black fluid. There must be perfect harmony--two prongs with but a single point, two parts that meet as one. Disunion is a sign of weakness.

I had a pen once whose prongs became estranged. They were egoists: each followed his individual bent, and was determined to make his own mark in his own field. For the sake of appearances, they took their meals of ink together, but immediately afterward, when pressure was brought to bear upon them, they separated. Yet when one of them, striving too hard after originality, broke under the strain, his widow was left desolate.

More domestic in an old-fashioned way is that staunch, blunt family, the Stubbs. They are firm and substantial sort of pens. By people who dislike them they are called phlegmatic, stodgy, close, stiffnibbed; and it must be admitted, they do lack the sprightliness of the Sharps; but, after all, these unyielding puritans, with their heavy touch, are more trustworthy than their acute but volatile cousins. For temperament in a pen finds vent in sudden splutterings.

The difference in their natures is evidenced by the way they meet obstacles. The Stubbs, plodding along doggedly, overcome all hazards in the paper; whereas the Sharps, tripping nonchalantly, come to grief at the first bunker, and before they get started again, waste several strokes and gouge the course. And when the Sharps attempt to run the gauntlet of expensive linen stationery (the higher the price, the higher the ridges), they get held up at every cable crossing. But there is a kind of paper--smooth, slippery, insidious--that prompts both the Sharps and the Stubbs to evil ways. They know they are doing wrong, however; for they are ashamed, and conceal their tracks, rendering all tracing impossible.

It is a great pity that pens are not more consistent about their ink giving. One moment they are stingy, and the next lavish. Perhaps this may be due to absent-mindedness.

Beginning a letter to a crabbed old relative, you say to your pen, "Give me a little ink for 'Dear Uncle Jonathan.'"

It ignores the request. You urge again. Still it is thinking of something else. "Here, wake up, now!" (You shake it violently.) "Give me some ink!"

"Why, certainly," it replies effusively. "Take a blot."

And "Dear Uncle Jonathan" is buried with deep mourning.

Haphazard as their outgivings appear to be, I have a theory that they are in reality quite logical; for I have noticed that _pens spend most ink on things that are worth most_. Thus, a pen that would grudge to disburse a single minim on a cheap sheet of a pad, will gladly expend all it has upon a costly embroidered tablecloth. And it finds the flyleaf of a handsome book (which if separate from the volume it would regard as a mere scrap of paper) amazingly absorbing. If it take a fancy to something large and sumptuous, such as an oriental rug, and yet not have on hand sufficient ink for such an outlay, it will appropriate it with a deposit of spot splash.

However little aptitude a pen may have for writing, it is sure to display rare skill as a fisherman. In the most unpromising inkwell it will catch deep sea monsters that astound you. It will spear great flounders of blotting paper and wriggly eels of string. It will drag up from the bottom wreckage of forgotten times, prehistoric flora and fauna--an antique rubber band, a female tress (perhaps of some ink-nymph long dead or discharged), a tack bent with age, a perfectly preserved shoe button, a less perfectly preserved mummy of a fly.

The perseverance of this follower of Izaak Walton is admirable. It will cast patiently again and again without a single dribble, and then, all at once, it will come struggling triumphantly to the surface with a whale of a June bug it has harpooned. Whereupon, as is the custom with fishermen who write, it will make a grand splurge of its catch on paper.

In order to prevent such piscatorial dippiness, pen fanciers have bred the _fountain_ species, the latest variety of which is self-spilling. Pens of this artificially produced species are very nervous. They have to be handled with extreme care. For example, if one of them is held upside down, all the ink runs to its head, and there is danger of a hemorrhage. Its digestive system is poor: it regurgitates and bubbles at the mouth. The least thing upsets its stomach. If you forget to put its cap on, even in mild weather, it contracts a serious congestion of the throat; with the result that the next letter you write proves dry-point etching.

Taken all in all, pens have a great deal to answer for. The record they have left on the pages of history is a black one. Many a person who has sat down to write something bright and optimistic, has been so disillusioned and embittered by his pen, that he has ended by hacking a hymn of hate or drooling a dirge of despair. Which accounts for most of the world's harsh diplomacy and morbid literature.

Even this essay was originally intended to be cheerful.

ENLIGHTENMENT

At last I have found out the awful truth about humanity. I never even suspected it. Till last evening I went along my way cheerfully, blindly, never guessing that my fellow-men were steeped in evil.

But now I know. My eyes have been opened. For last night I went to one of those enlightening film dramas that reveal life as it is. It was called "Her Blackest Sin," and it comprised nine reels of terrible truth.

It was one of those fine moral sermons to which every mother ought to take her son, and every niece ought to take her uncle, and every stepaunt ought to take her Pekingese.

I only wish my daughter could have seen it; but as I haven't any daughter, she couldn't have.

This drama shows how a handsome but thoughtless woman may sink in sin without ever meaning to. Yes, the strange and pitiful part about it is that she really never intended to be a fallen, crime-seared creature. She sins witlessly: she is scenarioed into it. Perhaps she is too anxious to please. She appears at wild cabarets and wears gowns that are cut to the quick, not because she desires to of her own accord, but because it is expected of her by the audience. Lack of firmness leads to her undoing: she is first pliant, then supple, then sinuous. She displays too little backbone, and too much.

Poor woman, what chance has she amid so many dress suits? Only too late does she learn that stiff bosoms cover none but hard hearts, and that there is no gleam so sinister as that of a silk hat, covering as it does baldness of the baldest sort.

Innocent at first, hardly a reel passes before she begins to stop and work her face, just the way the villains stop and work their faces. (Of course, being still a modest woman, she does this only in the privacy of a close-up.) By the seventh reel even her high-minded husband has become afflicted with the taint, and is stopping and working _his_ face.

And so the drama progresses, growing blacker and more enlightening every minute. I can't be too grateful to the producers of this film for the unflinching way in which they accepted the responsibility of my innocence and warned me. If they had not, I should probably have gone to the end of my days without ever knowing that people were at bottom only smiling criminals.

But now, thank goodness, I'm warned and on my guard. I'm posted on sin. When a man comes up to me and shakes my hand, I'll know he's a hawk looking for a home to break up; and when a woman smiles at me, I'll know she's a vampire.

They won't catch _me_! I'll just watch them surreptitiously when they are off their guard until I see them working their faces, and _then_ I'll have them!

For now I am an expert on evil. That film showed me the thrilling seductions of a life of vice; so that if I am ever confronted by them I shall be able to recognize them at once and say how do you do. And at the end there was one of those solemn moral warnings, such as everybody thinks everybody else is supposed to need; so in future I shall know what to avoid in _that_ line.

And this entire transformation of my life cost me only thirty-three cents.

HOLIDAY MISGIVINGS

When, on Christmas night, I take a private view of the collection of presents I have received, I realize that I am a much misunderstood person.

I sit down sadly and wonder what I could have done to create such an impression. Is there something _queer_ about me? If so, then wouldn't it have been more tactful, more kind, to have come to me and told me of it, instead of thus brutally proclaiming it to the world? But that is the way people are: they will serenely _assume_ things they wouldn't have the face to mention.

Those morbid socks!--half hose and half a disease. The loom that made them must have been degenerate. It is plain that they were never intended to be put on, because the paste-board document that lurks in the bottom of the box declares they are "guaranteed against any sort of wear." And these were esteemed suitable associates for my feet!

I have no recollection of sniffling, in public; yet here are nine dozen handkerchiefs, an outfit for someone with chronic coryza. As for the assemblage of pocketbooks, purses, wallets, coin holders, etc., I only hope that after I have paid my holiday bills there will be enough money left to half-way fill the pocketbook I have already.

But the crowd that seems most oppressive is that of the calendars. Am I really so absent-minded as to require seven engagement pads? Am I so lax about settling my accounts that my butcher and grocer and milkman feel called upon to supply me the means of knowing what day of the month it is?

Anything may pass for a calendar, so long as it complies with the law by having a little batch of months attached to the bottom like an appendix:--a snapshot of Cousin Gertrude's baby (oh, the deuce! I suppose I was expected to give that kid something for Christmas!); a pastoral chromo, entitled "Shearing the Lambs," sent me by a firm of brokers; a picture of a child in a nightie saying its prayers, with the compliments of the Schweinler Beef Packing Co.; a hand-tinted but feebly glued print of Paul and Virginia, inscribed, "Jones and Bergfeldt, Plumbers."

One calendar, consisting of a sheaf of large placards, each purporting to exhibit a specimen of female beauty, is so throttled by its silken cord that when February 1st arrives and I attempt to give one of the beauties the flop-over in order that I may gaze on the next for a while, the situation proves too tense. The eyelet suddenly splits into an outlet, and the jilted maiden, cast off by her sisters, collapses upon the floor.

All of which is most distressing; but no more so than the notion that women seem to have of what a man likes. I shall never forget the pair of slippers that Aunt Josephine bestowed upon me last year. They were what are technically known as _mules_, but in reality they were a couple of long rafts, each with an arching toe-cabin that would have accommodated both feet. The low racing sterns extended so far aft of my heels that the latter stood almost amidships.

Navigation was difficult. They kept running afoul of each other; so that I would suddenly find my starboard foot partly on the port slipper and mostly on the floor. Sometimes one of them would dart ahead several lengths and capsize, obliging me to turn skipper. No matter how earnestly I lifted their bows, their sterns always dragged. A landsman would have said that my progress resembled pumping a rhapsody on a pianola, or skiing in the Alps.

The unreasonableness of these mules reached a climax one morning while I was visiting the Cholmondeley-Browdens. I encountered my hostess unexpectedly as I was returning from my bath. In the excitement of the moment, both slippers bolted, one of them performing a spectacular flip-flap, and the other skidding through the balustrade of the stairway and landing below in a globe of goldfish; while I made my escape in a state of pedal nudity.

As for the neckties I have received--truly, Love is blind!

ALL, ALL ARE GONE, THE OLD FAMILIAR FAÇADES

Nowadays when it is hard for the casual observer to distinguish Somebody's Mother from Somebody's Jazz Baby, it is not to be wondered at that houses as well as humans are disguising their age. Victorian brownstone mansions that later sank to boarding-house seediness now renew their youth as the "Rubens Studios" or "Haddon Chambers"; drab office buildings, yielding to a sudden access of sand, take on new complexions as talcumy white as those of the flappers passing by.

He would be a tactless and cruel man who would say, "I know when that one's corner stone was laid." Or, "My great uncle knew that one when it was only three stories high." Or, "It didn't have that cornice until its gables began to fall off." Or, "You ought to have seen the stoop it had before they put in the steel braces."

Beauty doctoring to buildings must have become quite an art. It takes skill to know how to eliminate the dark lines under tired window sills, lift the sagging balconies, reduce protuberant bay windows. Only a trained chisel can remove a superfluous ornament in a way that will guarantee against its reappearance.

We are shocked, though, at the brazenly commercial character that certain sedate houses have taken on in the giddier part of town. Buildings that were formerly quiet residences, keeping themselves retiringly back from the bustle, and modestly shielding themselves with brown balustrades, now shamelessly come forward as close to the line as they dare, meeting the idle stroller half-way, not with lowered shades, but with broad plate-glass assurance, and even displaying scandalous lingerie.

We cannot but feel that buildings thus bedizened in the effort to keep from being neglected, will not command the same reverence that used to be inspired by the mossy old manse or the messy old mill. Theirs is hardly the Age of Innocence.

Would the old home seem as homely to you, after it had been exterior decorated? Would it be as dear?

Oh, much dearer!--as the real estate agent will tell you, or your own broker.

MY MUSEUM

I called her Plury. That is to say, I would speak of her by that endearing appellation when she was running along smoothly and seldom missing in either cylinder. Her real name, however, was E. Pluribus Unum.

You see, I had wanted an automobile, but found that no single make was within my means. So I bought Plury--just as a person who cannot afford beef, veal, chicken, turkey, lamb or pork, orders hash. Individually Fords, Buicks, Overlands, Peerlesses, Simplexes, Pierce-Arrows, etc., were too expensive for me; but collectively, combined in the form of second-hand Plury, I could afford them all, at $132.50.

Plury was a cosmopolitan. Her rear axle was Italian, her steering-wheel was French, her magneto was Austrian, and her mudguards were Belgian. It was hard to maintain her neutrality. For example, a German cogwheel that clutched with an English one--scarred veterans, both of them--kept the gear box in a constant state of friction. (When such international clashes occurred, it was always difficult to find out which one had started the trouble.) Then, too, among the American-made parts there was much jealousy between those that had come from rival factories. The tires were of four different makes, each boasting a surface specially patented against skidding; but each strove so hard to shove the other three into the gutter, that all four cavorted about the road in a most unseemly fashion.

Many were the heartburnings, the incompatibilities of temperament, of the parts thus yoked together. Whenever these dissentions brought matters to a standstill, I would have to get out and apply the monkey-wrench of peace.

Plury was hardly a _noble_ car in either appearance or speed, yet I was genuinely fond of her. Her lamps had a wistful look--a look as innocent and helpless as that with which poached eggs gaze up at you before they die. As for her slowness, that made little difference; because her speedometer, geared presumably for a racing car, exaggerated. And, after all, what is speed but a number on a dial? While I saw "71" registered there I was not disturbed by the fact that bicyclists were passing me.

I admired her pluck. She would chunk along stoically, accepting other people's dust without complaint, when in a condition of health that would have prostrated any other machine. (Thoroughbreds do not show the greatest endurance.) Bravely she would drag herself home, after a hard afternoon's work, with a leak in her radiator and congestion in all her bearings.

I used to practice vivisection on her, taking her apart and putting her together in new ways. It was a fascinating kind of solitaire, solving the problem of what to do on rainy Sundays. In a few hours' time I could shuffle the parts and deal out an entirely new model. Under my care Plury changed her shape with ultrafashionable frequency. A model that I was particularly interested in trying out was number nine (_i. e._, the eighth transformation). This was such a daring rearrangement that it seemed too wonderful to be true. But it worked, and thrillingly. In this form Plury exceeded all her previous speed records. The speedometer dial registered 87, and a swarm of gnats had hard work keeping up with us.

Proceeding at this reckless pace, we approached a hilly curve marked "DANGER: DRIVE SLOWLY." I changed gear. The cogs emitted a grating, crunching sound, as of quartz in a stone-crusher, and then subsided. I got out to view their death grapple.

But I had no sooner set foot upon the ground than the roar of an infuriated claxon startled me so that I leaped clear aside into the ditch. In that instant a huge Fiat, armed with a brazen fender, swung around the curve and rammed Plury in the radiator.

Plury _splattered_ like a charlotte russe hit by a sledgehammer. The road and neighboring fields were full of her.

The liveried chauffeur of the Fiat got out and began to brush the dust from the front of his car. A frightened fat man picked himself up from the floor of the tonneau and called to me, "Are you badly hurt?"

"No," I replied. "I'm all right, I think."

"Good!" he said, in a tone of great relief. "Then let's settle the damages at once, for I don't want this thing to get into the papers." With a shaky hand he drew out a checkbook. "What was the value of your car?"

I hesitated.

"Would you consider _five thousand_ sufficient indemnity to close the whole matter--personal injuries, property damages, and everything?"

I considered it!

And after he had gone, I fondly stooped and kissed Plury's tin remains.

ON CHAIRS--AND OFF

AS a person who frequently sits, I should like to know why there are so many uncomfortable chairs. Why is it that people who are apparently mild and kind-hearted will foster in their homes, at their very firesides, chairs of the most insidious cruelty? Why will dear old ladies cherish these household monsters, festooning them with ribbons and fancywork?

Of course I realize that every chair represents some furniture-maker's theory of beauty and comfort, that every lump, ridge, and crook is supposed to have its aesthetic or anatomic reason; what I object to is being tortured for heresy just because I am physically unable to agree with these theories. An innocent-looking willow rocker that stands invitingly on my aunt's veranda is built on the assumption that the human back is in the shape of an S. Perhaps the Apollo Belvedere may have a back like that; but not I. Mine, sitting in that rocker, feels more like the Dying Gladiator's.

I am fond of Nature and I have the greatest respect for her, but my joy in things sylvan does not extend to rustic chairs. As parlor editions of the woodpile they are certainly ingenious, but their surface, which resembles that of a corduroy road, is hardly adapted to sitting purposes. Then, too, there are always a few nails in evidence. And I can never resist picking at the loose shreds of bark on the arms, with the result that, before I know it, I am sure to skin quite a large place, and then feel mortified.

The city cousin of the rustic chair is the high-backed carved seat. This has a lion's head that catches you at the nape of the neck, and a couple of scrolls for your shoulder-blades. The seat itself is a huge slab of wood that feels like adamant. This chair looks best against the wall, and the fact that it weighs about fifty pounds is one reason why it generally stays there.

Another massive chair is the Morris. It indeed took the imagination of a poet to conceive of sitting on a folding-bed that was only half folded. When I get into one of these contrivances its bedlike quality makes me so drowsy that I almost fall asleep, yet its chair-like quality keeps me awake--with the result that I remain in a semi-comatose condition, from which I rouse myself occasionally to climb out and shift the rod to another notch.

A variety that is not to be relied on--much less, sat on--is the loop-the-loop species, which is found in cheap restaurants and at amateur theatricals. This consists of a four-legged tambourine, backed by two loops of wood, the outer one in the shape of a Moorish arch and the inner one in the shape of a tennis racket. Exactly half of these chairs in existence have racks under them to hold your hat and gloves, whereas the other half have no such racks; so that exactly half the times I sit on one of these chairs and put my hat and gloves under the seat those articles fall disconcertingly to the floor.

A kind of rocker much in vogue is a medley of young banisters, a sort of improvisation on a turning-lathe. When new this chair emits a peculiar creaking sound. In the course of a few weeks it loosens up till quite supple, so that, in rocking, the various rods perform a complicated piston motion. This process continues till gradually the chair reaches the stage where at every rock it comes apart and puts itself together again--or almost together.

Best-parlor chairs run to extremes of fatness and leanness. They are either pampered, slender, gilded things--mere wisps of chairs--that offer a most precarious support, or fat, puffy, tufted affairs, satin feather-beds on sticks--no, not feather-beds, either, for they have twanging springs that tune up every time you sit on them. The colors of this latter variety may be endured in winter, but when summer comes it is necessary to suppress them with linen slips.

One interesting species, the elevated rocker, is nearly extinct. This curious chair, able to skid on rollers like any other, has a little rocking department upstairs, so that it can wobble to and fro on its track without doing the least harm in the world.

I could speak of the personal idiosyncrasies of chairs, such as the trick some of them have of shedding their castors at the slightest provocation; I could tell of the rocker that insisted on sidling away from a reading-lamp; or the chair that, while not supposed to be a rocker at all, teetered diagonally on its northeast and southwest legs--but the chair I am now sitting on has given me such a cramp that I shall have to get up and take a walk.

MINIMS

THE NIGHT OF THE FLEECE

Wimley was the mildest man living. Consequently, when Molly said, in her most decisive tone, "Nonsense! I won't hear of your going back tonight, before you've even seen our new tennis-court," he realized that he would have to stay over the week-end.

Not that he didn't want to, in one way; for he liked Molly, and admired the way she bossed the servants and ran the house for her mother. Then, too, the weather, which seemed to be growing hotter every minute, would be far more endurable out here in Avondale Manor than in the city. What troubled him was the fact that he had not brought a handbag.

"I'll lend you some of Father's things," she went on. "It will be no bother at all."

When the evening drew to a close and bed-ward migration began, he was shown to the guest-room.

"I hope you will find everything all right," said his hostess as she bid him good night.

He replied that he was sure he would. Then he opened the door. The heat met him like a solid wall. Throwing off his coat, he went to the two windows to see if they could really be open. Yes, they were; but the thick fly-screening kept out any air that might have desired to enter. He glanced at the bed. There was something blue and white lying folded on it. As he drew nearer, he could see that this something was fuzzy. Picking it up, he discovered it to be a pair of woolen pajamas. Horrors! Not even in the bitterest winter could his skin endure the feel of wool. He wondered if Molly's father ever really wore such things. Perhaps his wife had given them to him, and perhaps that was why the old gentleman was staying so long in South America.

Midnight found Wimley still looking the pajamas squarely in the fuzz. An awful thought was in his mind: What would Molly and her mother think of him if they found them unrumpled and therefore unused?